boomer's archives
boomer's archives
Coal miners’ museum – time to tell a story that is long overdue
Last week was one of those rare occasions when I did not
attend the Campbell County Commission’s monthly gathering, as I had bigger
fish to fry on Monday night.
This particular fish was the gathering of the Anderson
County Commission down in Clinton, where squires were set to vote on whether
or not to spend a hundred grand on the county’s red-headed stepchild, my
home town of Lake City.
The hundred grand is the
purchase price for the former Bank of America building on
This museum has been a work in progress, or lack of
progress, for over a quarter of a century now, first envisioned by a group
of us back during Tennessee’s Homecoming ’86 celebration.
We established a Coal Creek miners’ museum at the time in
the old Wenders’ Department Store building next to City Hall, and as former
miners and their families donated or loaned tools, lamps, old photographs,
script and other artifacts for the displays, we gradually filled up several
rooms with the history of old Coal Creek, Briceville and Beech Grove.
The Town of Lake City owned the building, which was once
the original Coal Creek Opera House, where Vaudeville acts, musical troupes
and the like came to perform. We hoped to obtain historic preservation
status for the building and perhaps a grant or two to replace an aging roof
and renovate the interior, but alas, it was not to be.
A state official, perhaps at
the urging of city officials, decreed that the old building had been too
extensively remodeled to qualify for historic preservation grants.
Our consolation prize was a single room in the community
center, once the town’s small library, where all of the displays and
artifacts were stacked on top of each other with no space to tell the story.
And that is where things stood
for a time, until a new mayor, Buck Wilson, took office and rekindled
interest in the museum. Buck’s motivation was simple:
The City was able to lobby for
some county and state funding to earn a matching federal grant and before
you knew it,
What do you get when you have $150,000 to spend on
architectural plans and design for a “world class” museum? Answer – first
you get an appropriate architectural firm “suggested” by the
grant-makers, in this case a Washington-based firm that specialized in
museums and such.
Then you get a design for a
structure deserving of $150,000 worth of plans and drawings, price tag for
construction- 16 million dollars. When the design and the price tag were
presented to the museum board and other interested citizens, you could hear
the air go out of the room. One museum board member observed, “If you added
up all of the appraised value of all the residential and commercial property
in
Perhaps an exaggeration, but you get the picture. The
momentum for the museum was stalled in its tracks. Over the next three
years, two of the city council members who had supported the museum died,
then Mayor Wilson became ill, eventually left office and passed away, his
vision for a museum unrealized.
But the dream had not entirely died with him. My personal
stake in this project dates to Homecoming ’86. I wrote and edited the small
Coal Creek/Lake City history book that proved to be the museum’s chief
source of revenue through the years, and served through it all as the
board’s treasurer, keeping tabs on our modest bank accounts as they grew
from a few hundred to $15,000 or so.
I also preserved negatives and copies of the numerous old
photographs that were loaned for the book, submitted to the newspapers I
worked for or otherwise offered to the museum, hoping that someday a new
group of local people would step forward with the energy to see this thing
through.
Perhaps, with a new building and new momentum, that day
has come at last, when we can tell the story of the area’s coal miners,
their lives and their sacrifices so that our school children can understand
the legacy they have inherited.
And what a story we have to tell! From the coming of the
railroads and the coal mines following the Civil War to the establishment by
southern states of a convict lease system that was nothing more than an
extension of the institution of slavery, supposedly ended with the Civil
War.
It is the story of how
courageous coal miners from Anderson, Campbell and other counties rose up in
rebellion against the state itself to end convict lease, making
It is the story of roughly 200 coal miners, including
young boys, who perished in the Fraterville mine disaster, which up to that
time in 1902 was the worst mining disaster in American history.
They did not die in vain. The magnitude of the disaster
forced a complacent industry to look at safety practices and more
importantly, forced a complacent government to look more closely at
enforcing mine safety and improving mine rescue techniques.
The death of numerous young
boys who had accompanied their fathers into the mine that day helped provide
the spark for stronger child labor laws as applied to mining, while the poor
treatment of the perished miners’ families encouraged the first unionization
of
A second disaster in 1911 at Cross Mountain Mine killed 84
more miners, but improvement in rescue techniques resulted in some lives
being saved.
The story that
It is the story of how these sacrifices fueled America’s
rise as an industrial giant, powered the trains that carried our nation
westward and the warships that helped us win three wars, and how this legacy
has set us very uniquely apart from the rest of the South, and the nation,
for better or worse.
We’ve still got a way to go
toward telling this story. But at least we now have a building constructed
of solid bricks and mortar and not just a drawing on paper. With that we can
build, even if we have to do it one nail at a time, until we can finally
tell our story the way it should be told.
Why virtual schools won’t rule? Bubba can’t kill the
quarterback with a tweet
The
Campbell County Board of Education got the numbers they wanted on Tuesday
night, and wasted no time approving a contract with K12, Inc. to host a
virtual school program. K12 can now sign up online students to the 1,500
student cap, with
The county will keep 4 percent of the state’s money and
hand over the other 96 percent to K12 to cover the cost of educating the
students. Based on the estimates for BEP funding, the county could stand to
take in $412,000 as its share of the pot, Finance Director Jeff Marlow told
the board.
Why wouldn’t
Of course there are some
questions that went un-asked, such as how will the virtual school effect
But for the sake of argument,
let’s say that a hundred of those 1,500 online students are from
Math has never been my strong suit but that appears to be
a decline of somewhere around $700,000 in state BEP funding, versus the
county’s total share of the virtual school program - $412,000.
But we don’t have to pay to educate those 100 students, so
it shouldn’t affect us, right? Well, we’ve already built school buildings
with classroom space for those kids. The portion of BEP funds that goes to
offset the debt service on those classrooms isn’t virtual, it’s real, and
still has to be paid.
A hundred fewer students in
I hear school officials moan all the time about how
declining enrollment is behind the loss of teaching positions and the
continuing financial pinch that our schools experience. We don’t yet know
how a virtual schools program will impact future enrollment.
Virtual schools are a reality and are most likely the wave
of the future in this increasingly cyberspace world. The school board should
not be faulted for wanting to get in on the cutting edge. What they
shouldn’t do is assume that hosting a virtual schools academy will be some
sort of cash cow until all the cards are on the table. That last card that
we’re dealt might turn out to be the joker.
Speaking
of jokes, how about last week’s Highway 25 yard sale? It was ballyhooed on
TV as the local answer to its big brother, the Highway 127 Yard Sale that
attracts bumper-to-bumper shoppers to
I knew we
were in trouble when I saw the map in the LaFollette Press, showing the
route of the yard sale extending down from Lexington, Kentucky through
Jellico, LaFollette, Caryville, Clinton and on to . . . Chattanooga. I
was at a meeting in
One
resident looked at the map, then looked out the window at
The other “oops” was that the Town of Lake City allowed
the Anderson County Tourism folks to organize a community yard sale at the
ballpark, with a $10 set-up fee going to the coal miner’s museum building
fund.
As a member of the museum board, I agreed to volunteer my
time early Saturday morning to be at the ballpark to collect fees and direct
vendors to their spots. Of course, the handful of vendors in that town could
also choose to set up at two or three wide spots in the road for nothing.
Guess what they chose to do?
The idea
of a Highway 25 Yard Sale faces a couple of minor challenges not present
over on Highway 127, at least in
Challenge
number two was obvious to me last Friday when I drove from Caryville to
Duff. There are no yards. There were two or three families set up near the
Highway 25 intersection with
If they’re going to make this
work in
So let’s see, we’ve got school boards that may be
mathematically challenged and newspapers that appear to be geographically
challenged. An outside observer might think that we have an education issue
here. Of course this is Big Orange Country, after all. An outside observer
only needs to read the News-Sentinel’s story on the latest NCAA academic
progress report to come to the conclusion that we have an education issue.
The Vols
new football coach Butch Jones has a reputation for bringing up the academic
standing of teams he has coached. That is good, because the Big Orange
desperately need improvement.
OK, so the
football team has been going through some tumultuous times recently, with
four coaches in six years and mass transfers of athletes. So how does that
explain the baseball team, which finished dead last in the conference
academic ratings? I thought the football players were supposed to be the
dumb jocks and baseball players were the brainy ones. Not in Big
Men’s
basketball finished a little bit better. The Vols finished eighth out of
fourteen teams. Well, really eighth out of twelve teams. The APR ratings are
a four-year average and
Big Orange
fans voice their displeasure at finishing behind
Sadly, most fans could care less as long as the Vols
manage to keep their academic heads above water and not get banned from
postseason play, assuming they once again win enough games to qualify for a
bowl appearance.
Come to think of it, that may be the only thing that keeps
our education system from transforming completely to virtual schooling
anytime soon. Bubba can’t kill the quarterback with a tweet, and fans want
their bone crunching to be real, not virtual.
Well-informed parents might ask - can we pay for virtual school with
virtual dollars?
Things are definitely looking up since my last column.
School is out and the science enrichment kids at Valley View have a break
from Mister Boomer, and thankfully, vice versa.
The county held its delinquent tax sale last Saturday and
the rush to serve notice on delinquent taxpayers is past, for now at least.
In a reminder that the after-effects of the recession are still with us,
over a hundred parcels of property went on the auction block, up from 40-50
just a few years ago.
These property owners still have a year to redeem their
property, and many will, but at a much higher cost since they must now pay
interest on the purchase price to the high bidder.
The county took in $25,984 in overdue taxes and another
$8,345 in interest and penalties, but that is only part of what it will cost
delinquent taxpayers to redeem the auctioned property. Add to the taxes,
penalty and interest, another $1,432 for service of process to cover
certified mail costs, $382 to cover computer data fees, $18,680 to cover the
fees for the Clerk & Master’s office and another $16,038 to cover attorney’s
fees and title search costs.
Now that original $26,000 or so in overdue taxes has cost
another $45,000 in fees, interest and expenses, a increase of roughly 173
percent! That means a property owner who had a $1,000 tax bill paid $2,730
to save their property from the auction block. But that only applies to
those taxpayers who were able to get in before the sale and pay off their
tax bill before it went up for bid.
The county also collected $229,842 in “overbids,” the
amount that buyers paid over the base taxes, interest and expenses. That’s
880 percent of the original tax bill. To redeem their property, the original
owner will have to pay interest to the buyer on that entire amount, up to
ten percent if they wait the entire year to redeem the property.
As much as we all hate to pay taxes, it definitely becomes
a losing game when you fail to pay property taxes on time, and especially if
one waits until the overdue taxes go the full distance and the property goes
on the auction block. I can only hope that all of the original owners had no
intention of holding on to their property and let it go, instead of failing
to save it because they couldn’t come up with the money in time.
The total
take for the auction was $305,733, but the county commission, Finance
Director Moneybags Marlow and school board need not lick their chops just
yet in anticipation of spending the money. A little over $2,800 of that
total belongs to the City of
If anyone comes in and pays off their delinquent tax,
penalties, interest and costs, the county must refund the sales price and
interest to the bidder.
While they’re waiting for delinquent tax collections or
the appearance of a money tree in the front lawn of the courthouse, the
school board is looking at other ways to educate more kids at less cost.
Hence, the presentation last week by representatives of K12, Inc. to the
board, inviting Campbell County to sponsor a virtual school where students
get all of their instruction online and need never darken the halls of an
actual school building.
The two K12 spokespersons, Joe Chisum and Karen Ghidotti,
gave a smooth presentation to the board about the virtues of an
Internet-based education. Chisum confidently told the board that virtual
schools are the wave of the future and that changes in state laws allow
public school districts to become partners with online providers such as
K12.
“We anticipate a rush by school
districts to get in on this and
“There were some problems – too many students in that
first year,” Chisum agreed. “Test scores were not what we had anticipated.”
I found the presentation to be much like K12’s slick
brochure – long on style and short on content. Karen Ghidotti handled most
of the presentation, explaining the concepts, describing the amount of
instructional materials in “pounds” that are sent out to each student and so
on. To most questions from board members, she prefaced her responses with
“That’s a very good question,” then went on to give generalized answers.
Since K12 is still in the process of preparing a proposal
that gets down to dollars and cents, neither representative could answer the
big question asked by Lawson, “Is there any way that you’ll be charging us
more than we receive from the state?”
“Chisum’s response was less
than direct. “We’ll be under contract to you to provide the services.”
The LaFollette Press editorial page jumped on the virtual
school bandwagon with both feet last week, challenging the school board to
be at least “brave enough to try.”
I can see that, like it or not, this is the wave of the
future. The current generation communicates more through twitter and
Facebook than we ever did in person. There will probably come a time when
physical schools, like newspapers printed on actual paper, will be a
curiosity of the past. They will be relegated to museums that, by the way,
people will no longer be allowed to visit in person, but through virtual
tours on their computers and Ipads.
My advice, such as it is, to the school board would not be
to reject the concept of a virtual school, but tread carefully. The
presentation by the K12 folks simply reminded me that this firm and others
like it are not in this business to provide a public service, but to turn a
profit. The board needs to be fully aware of the bottom line and every line
in between before committing to a contract.
Some kids with special needs or who don’t socialize well
with other kids may benefit greatly from the opportunity to be educated at
home online. I keep coming back to another statement in the LaFollette Press
editorial, however.
“But what’s in the best academic interest of a particular
student should ultimately be left up to a well-informed parent, whose given
multiple options for their child to succeed,” the Press urged.
That’s the rub, isn’t it?
Sadly, too many
Kids weak on
There is, I believe, an old adage about not trying to do
too much at once or you will do everything poorly. Brother, did I learn the
truth of that during the past couple of weeks.
It all started a couple of
weeks back when I got stuck with jury duty down in
I had to turn in a stack of notices un-served because I
ran out of time. Of course by now, the names of the delinquent taxpayers
have been spread across the pages of two newspapers for the past couple of
weeks. Anyone who isn’t aware that their property is about to be sold is
either 1) deceased and the heirs can’t agree on who should pay the taxes 2)
about to declare bankruptcy or be foreclosed upon and care less about paying
the taxes 3) in jail with their house quarantined as a former meth lab or 4)
some combination of the above reasons.
Still, it bothers me to not get all notices formally
delivered, just in case one is for a little old lady whose late husband
handled all the complicated paperwork. Fortunately there is a one-year
redemption period to protect such little old ladies (or men) from being
unceremoniously tossed from their homes.
So, running behind schedule on both delinquent tax notices
and wheel tax violations, I also had to film the school board meeting last
week and write a report for WLAF. Rector Miller dropped his suggestion
to use Johnny Bruce’s athletic director salary to pay for additional school
security officers and instead went along with a motion to ask the squires to
come up with the additional money.
Later, after the board voted to authorize boy’s and girl’s
soccer teams at CCHS, Rector commented that this would add another sport to
the athletic director’s duties and the director should be compensated for
it.
I assumed he was talking about Johnny Bruce and this was
some sort of mind game to keep Bruce focused on solving the security
problem. Turns out Rector was referring to CCHS athletic director Sherry
Chapman, although he didn’t name names, so I had to apologize and correct
the story.
I should really apologize to Sherry for denying her the
raise, and to Johnny for taking his raise back, but then it was all rhetoric
and no actual money has yet materialized.
So I fumbled the school board meeting as well as my tax
work. What more could I mess up in one week? There’s always my lawn, which
has now taken on aspects of the Amazon rain forest. Wednesday would have
been a perfect day for mowing grass, but I was busy tying up loose ends on
my aforementioned foul-ups so only dedicated an hour or so late in the day
to cutting trails through the grass.
“I will rush home after my last Valley View science
enrichment class on Thursday and finish the job,” I told myself. I got home
at 5:05 p.m. and began changing into work clothes. At 5:09 p.m. I heard the
first rumbles of thunder. At 5:15 as I was rolling out the lawnmower, the
skies over my yard opened up, Noah floated past in his ark and waved. So
much for mowing grass.
This was
also the final week for my after-school science enrichment classes at Valley
View. I usually wind up the 3rd
graders with a visit to “Mr. Boomer’s rock pile” where the kids get to pick
out quartz-lined hollow geodes and break them to find and keep the shiny
crystals inside.
That project went off pretty well, but not so the class on
Thursday for grades 4-5. The older kids are also exposed to a little world
geography as well as science, I having discovered that very little geography
is currently taught before kids reach middle school.
I buy up a stack of second-hand student atlases at McKay’s
used books each year and give one to each student to take home and study.
Their incentive is a geography bee at year’s end with prizes of coins or
sample gemstones from foreign countries for each correct answer and a grand
prize for the highest score.
Jury duty forced me to cancel the previous week’s classes
when we usually prepare for the geography bee so I typed up a list of study
questions to give the kids before the big day on Thursday. But work and
meetings delayed my arrival at the school and I didn’t have time to
distribute the study list on Tuesday as planned.
Instead I asked the assistant principal to take the lists
around on Wednesday, at least giving the kids one night to locate countries,
oceans, rivers and mountain ranges in their atlas.
Thursday I arrived at the school and asked the office
manager if the lists were given out. “I hope so but don’t count on it. All
the children were watching a movie when he went to deliver the lists so he
brought them back to the office.”
I asked the first student to arrive in the classroom if he
had received his study questions.
“Yes” (relief)
“Have you studied them?”
“I’m going to study them in free period.”
“The geography bee is this afternoon!” (panic)
“We just got the list this morning.” (desperation)
I tried to re-schedule the last class until the following
week but no dice, too much going on at the school during graduation week. We
soldiered on and held the geography bee without any preparation time. At
least, I told myself, I’ll see if these kids have bothered to open their
atlases since I gave them out in October.
A dozen or so of my students showed up for the class, and
one by one, I gave them the chance to locate, on a blank wall map, places
drawn randomly from a hat.
“
“The
“
“No that’s
“The
At the
beginning I was strict. “
“You’ve
got your hand on two countries. Which one is
Later I loosened up some.
“The
“Well,
that’s really closer to the
In the end I just ended up giving things away.
“Here’s a
coin from
I ended things up by making sure everyone had a prize or
two, even the boy who guessed every time and mostly guessed wrong. His final
score: minus five points. I also admonished my class, telling them that when
they grow up some of them will be dealing with people all over world by way
of the internet; they should at least know where those people live on a map.
The sobering thing is, their knowledge of the world isn’t
likely to get all that much better, as high school and middle school
curriculums are now downgrading geography and mixing it with history in a
combined “social studies” course
But then, how much can you say to a kid whose world is
home, school and maybe the lake, or a long trip to Dollywood. They will grow
up and become aware of this wide and increasingly hard world soon enough.
County’s collection of mayors a good source for nightmares
Criminals seem to be coming in threes this week. First, we
had the three idiot college students who were arrested for covering up for
their buddy, one of the Boston Marathon bombers.
I know it’s a big no-no for teenagers and young
twenty-somethings to snitch on their buddies. Not supposed to tell who
smuggled the booze into the dormitory. Not supposed to tell whose bag of
marijuana that was the cops found in the back seat, etc.etc. But not
supposed to tell about that college roommate who just exploded a bomb that
killed and maimed dozens of innocent people, including children?
Those college cronies will probably have a decade or so
behind bars to ponder the difference. Let’s hope the lesson makes an
impression.
Then there are the three
brothers in
Here in
I can see “trespassing on federal property.” I can even
see “destruction of property.” But sabotage? This goes to show that you can
plant bombs, take pot shots at the White House or mail poison to members of
Congress and expect to be punished. But one of the most severe punishments
is reserved for the crime of “embarrassing the federal government.”
A security company or private detective agency would have
tested Y-12’s security procedures in a mock break-in for a small fee, say
$100,000 or so. These three peace protesters did it for nothing and
uncovered serious security flaws, thankfully before some bearded radicals in
turbans uncovered the same weaknesses.
For their valuable contribution to national security, the
three now face lengthy prison terms. The elderly nun may die in prison,
achieving the martyrdom in the name of peace that she seems to be seeking.
Instead, they should send the Department of Energy a bill for services
rendered.
Whether we agree with their
positions and methods or not, and I don’t, we should still flood the White
House with emails demanding a presidential pardon. The three did the country
a great service in uncovering security lapses at very little cost other than
some red faces at DOE and its
I’m stuck on jury duty this
week down in
One of the first jurors to be seated, I then had to sit
through two hours of three lawyers asking the same questions over and over
to other prospective jurors and alternates until we could find fourteen
people to whom nobody objected. Good time to make up for a restless night.
My night was made restless by
another one of those
In a compromise intended to give everyone a little
something, the new metro government would feature a rotating county mayor,
with the mayor of each town or city alternating with William Baird to run
the county for a week.
So in my dream, County Mayor Mike Stanfield of LaFollette
hired Thomas Hatmaker as his vice mayor. The next week, County Mayor Les
Stiers of Jellico gave him a 40 percent raise. The following week, County
Mayor Chris Stanley of Caryville fired him without giving a reason and the
week after that, County Mayor William Baird asked the TBI to launch an
investigation into questionable hiring practices.
The following
“
The four remaining county mayors instructed yours truly,
as the county’s tax enforcement officer, to arrest the Jacksboro board of
Mayor & Aldermen for refusing to purchase county wheel tax decals for their
police department. It was at this point, predictably, that I woke up in a
cold sweat.
Insurance, Wall Street and air travel a tangled web, but the
Internet rules
I’m a big enough man (understatement) to admit when I’m
wrong. I received some bad information a couple of weeks back that lawyer
Terry Basista had stated that had received the controversial video of
apparent animal abuse at the shelter and put it out over the Internet.
Terry tells me that the video was already on U-tube before
he ever saw it, so my information was wrong. The column seems to have
stirred up things on R.L.’s program the other night when one caller claimed
I accused Terry of creating said video. I never did, and someone else on the
program corrected the record.
Some animal right crusaders in
One commissioner has suggested that the county wash its
hands completely, turn the shelter over to the Humane Society to operate and
divert the $140,000 annual appropriation to other needs. So the problem of a
shelter with not enough money to operate efficiently will be solved by
taking away what money it does have.
That lets the county off the hook, at least until voters
start complaining about stray dogs and cats running loose because there is
no animal control program to pick them up. I can’t wait to see what
comes next.
One thing I am not wrong about.
After being abused in a couple of airport security lines after 911, I swore
off flying to anywhere within a two-day’s drive of
Now comes the sequester, and
the FAA has furloughed air traffic controllers, causing major delays at most
of the nation’s major airports. I can now honestly say that I can drive to
I can avoid air travel, but like everyone else, one thing
I can’t avoid is the insurance industry. I just received the renewal notice
on my homeowner’s policy this week and was amazed to see a 50 percent rate
increase over last year. Predictably, I called my agent immediately to
question a few things on the declaration sheet.
“You’ve got the replacement cost of my home set at
$115,000. I built it three years ago for $66,000 and home values are down.
No way could I get $115,000 out of that home!”
“But we don’t insure based on home values. We insure based
on replacement cost and our analysis indicates that building costs are up in
your zip code by that degree.”
“What about this estimate of $80,000 for personal
property? I donated my million-dollar art collection to the Campbell County
Animal Shelter. I could replace everything I own for half that much!”
“Our company follows industry standards of setting the
value of contents at 75 percent of the replacement cost.”
“OK, what about this – loss of use of home, valued at
$42,000? Do you think I would spend three months living in the penthouse
suite at the Hyatt Regency while my home is rebuilt?”
“Sir, that is the standard equation, blah, blah, blah.”
“I think I’ll shop around a bit before I renew this
policy.”
“Feel free (snicker)”
What I discovered is that everybody’s home insurance rates
are through the roof this year. The insurance companies will have a million
different explanations for why costs are up, risk assessment is higher, etc.
etc. ad nauseum. They don’t want to tell customers the truth, which is that
we’re all paying the cost of climate change.
You know, that thing that
conservatives in Congress deny is happening – “climate change.” In the past
few years, the insurance industry has taken its licks – hurricanes on the
So those of us in relatively untouched parts of the
country have to pay higher premiums to help the insurance industry offset
their losses. It would be nice if the companies would just tell us the truth
instead of feeding us unbelievable gobblygook.
It wouldn’t make the increased costs any less painful, but
at least the companies would show customers enough respect to tell them the
truth, instead of trying to confuse everyone with double talk.
Of course, even if the insurance industry was not
suffering from hefty weather-related losses, they would still have to worry
about their other risk factor, which is loss of the value of their
investments. The insurance industry makes much of their profits by investing
our premium dollars, so when the economy and Wall Street go in the tank,
profits are down and rates go up.
That is not reassuring, based on the sell-off panic that
Wall Street experienced just this week when somebody hacked into the
Associated Press website and put out a fake news flash that the White House
had been bombed and the President injured.
Investments tied to computers went
into automatic “sell off” mode before anyone could verify the accuracy of
the report and the Dow Jones dipped a couple of hundred points in a matter
of minutes, all caused by a bogus Internet report. Gives one a rosy, warm
feeling inside about our nation’s future, doesn’t it?
Mandatory gun ownership? Could be a blessing in disguise
Boomer's Corner - By Charles "Boomer" Winfrey
So much going on, I hardly know where to start. The animal
shelter hubbub has calmed down a bit, with Mayor William Baird closing the
shelter and placing employees on administrative leave while the TBI
investigates accusations of animal abuse.
I predict that the investigation will uncover some shoddy
procedures, but no criminal wrongdoing. Shelter director Betty Crumley,
however, has become a political liability and may not return.
Betty’s case is sad, in a way. Active in the Humane
Society, she championed establishment of the shelter, along with namesake
Adrion Baird. I don’t see her as being the type of person who would
willfully be cruel to animals.
Her people skills, however, are another matter. Her
inability to work with local animal lovers and her resistance to accepting
criticism have combined to make too many enemies when what she needs are
supporters.
Alas, the shelter’s problems come down to that root of all
evil – money. The shelter as planned was to be funded by a combination of
county taxpayer dollars and animal registration fees. A previous county
commission, facing criticism from dog owners, eliminated the registration
requirement. Budget constraints have kept the shelter’s appropriations flat
for several years now while costs continue to go up.
The result was predictable. A shelter that is too cool in
winter and too warm in summer, that sells cat carcasses to a biological
supply company to raise funds and skimps on drug costs by failing to sedate
animals before administering lethal injections.
You get what you pay for.
The gun control debate in
They did nothing. The next test will come in election
year, when we see if the NRA bully has the clout to defeat some of the
senators, such as Pennsylvania Republican Pat Toomey, who dared to support
expanded background checks. Until gun control advocates are willing to
organize, raise large amounts of money and fight the NRA in the trenches of
American politics, future gun control debates will go the same way.
There may yet be hope for
those of us who seek a silver lining behind every cloud, however. A Farragut
city councilman intends to propose that Farragut go the way of some small
Seems the Second Amendment protects every American’s right
to own and keep a firearm, but does not protect our right not to own one.
The good news is that once every gun-happy Farragut homeowner is packing,
along with every Farragut homeowner who has never owned, handled or fired a
gun in their lives, the potential for slaughter will be high.
State Senator Stacy Campfield lives out that way, along
with the voters who keep returning him to office, so a stray bullet or two
could be a blessing to the rest of us.
Of course I don’t know how Farragut will deal with
situations where the head of household is a convicted felon. I’m guessing
the city will have to round up any convicted felons living inside the
corporate limits and send ‘em packing since they can’t legally possess
firearms.
Commissioner Thomas Hatmaker proposed a little ordinance
Monday might that would have sent convicted felons packing from county
employment, or at least prevented the county from employing said felons in
the future.
Vice Mayor David Young, who is a convicted felon, made an
impassioned plea to commissioners to remember that many people who made
mistakes in their youth have gone on to lead useful, law-abiding lives and
should not be forced to pay for their mistakes over and over. He asked how
many of us can honestly say that we’ve never done anything that could have
landed us in the same boat.
I can relate to that. Like all red-blooded American males,
I can think of numerous felonies I may have committed in my reckless youth,
usually in the name of wooing women. In addition, “Contempt of Congress” is
considered a serious offense and I confess that I have been in utter
contempt of Congress ever since I was old enough to vote.
Grandpappy Winfrey once
spent a year in a
On the other side of the
family tree, Great-Grandpappy Sharp was a coal miner who had to leave the
state for a time after the Coal Creek War back in the 1890s. Granny used to
tell of how her daddy would load a coffee can full of bullets and climb
Walden’s Ridge to his position, where he would spend the day shooting at any
Tennessee State Militia soldier who popped his head up behind the walls of
His shift over, Grandpappy Sharp would come back down for
a good night’s rest before spending the next day shooting at soldiers again,
He was one of several thousand area coal miners who were never convicted of
their felonies.
The commissioners seem to have taken David Young’s pleas
to heart, as they voted 14-1 to, as Steve Rutherford said, “Not kick a man
while he’s down.” Poor Thomas cast the only vote for his proposal. Marie
Ayers seconded his motion “to bring it up for discussion” and then voted
against it.
On a more positive note, my science enrichment students at
Valley View got to go on their field trip on April 1 to the Gatlinburg
Aquarium. The vice principal had to cancel out at the last minute due to a
family emergency, the head count and the check to the aquarium were off
because some parents counted teenagers as “other children” while the
aquarium counts them as adults, and the bus had a flat tire on the way home.
The principal cancelled
personal travel plans to bravely accompany the trip, the aquarium worked
with us to make the check come out even and we limped home on one of the two
dual wheels on the bus. The 50 kids were blissfully ignorant of all the
little problems, had a great time and hopefully learned a little something
as well – and we didn’t lose a single chaperone. All in all a successful
field trip! (UPDATED THURSDAY, APRIL 18, 2013, 4:00 PM)
Being part of the
Last week was one of those weeks. First came the
pride, as the community’s outpouring of love and caring for a
14-year-old girl’s courageous fight against cancer made national news.
The schoolmates of Katelyn Norman led the way as an
entire community exerted every effort to help Katelyn realize her
“bucket list” dream of attending her high school prom. An entire
community reached out to let her know she was loved, and her story
touched millions through the attention of national news media.
While Campbell Countians could hold their heads
high with pride over the national attention gained by Katelyn’s story,
another kind of attention placed our county in an unkind light the same
week.
Video leaked over the Internet appeared to expose
the folks at the Adrion Baird Animal Shelter of abusing animals and
treating them inhumanely. To prove the point that there are few zealots
more zealous than animal lovers, shelter director Betty Crumley was
bombarded by death threats to the point of being given police
protection, while courthouse offices were inundated by angry calls from
all over the country.
“People were even
calling our office,” County Clerk Debbie Wilson said last week. “We told
them we had nothing whatsoever to do with the animal shelter but they
just wanted to let us know what low life human beings we people in
Vice Mayor David Young told me Friday that he spent
the entire week responding to telephone complaints over the shelter
rhubarb. “I started out being nice and patient. By the end the phone
calls were so abusive and threatening that I just hung up on some of
them before I would say something I would regret,” David recalled.
County Mayor William Baird, showing uncommonly good
sense, found that he had urgent business to attend to down in Nashville
last week and left his Vice Mayor in charge of the office.
As it turns out, lawyer Terry Basista, formerly a
member of the animal control board, ‘fessed up last week to putting the
incriminating video out over the web. It was sent to him by a former
shelter employee and appears to have been doctored considerably, if not
completely fabricated.
“PETA actually came to our defense,” Young pointed
out. “They said that they had inspected our facility and found no
evidence of the kinds of abuse the video purported to show.”
PETA did take shelter personnel to task for using
the same dosage of an euthanasia chemical on larger dogs that is used
for smaller dogs, resulting in a longer delay before the animals’ hearts
stop. Accusations that dogs were placed in the freezer while still alive
or suffered pain during the euthanasia process are totally unfounded,
Young stated.
The shelter also fails to follow another PETA
recommendation, that animals be given a dose of sedative before being
injected with the fatal chemical. Young claims that budget restraints
have made it impossible to sedate all of the animals first, but that the
euthanasia injection does not cause pain or discomfort.
Whether any of the criticisms aimed at the shelter
are justified might just come down to who you believe, but it does
underscore the fact that hubris seldom ends well. Director Crumley may
be a dedicated individual, but she comes off in public meetings as being
arrogant and stubborn, especially when faced with criticism from the
county’s animal lovers.
Betty simply wants nothing to do with the folks
with Campbell County Friends of Animals, an outspoken group that has
been pushing for more adoption-friendly policies such as allowing
volunteers to place photos of adoptable animals on Facebook or other
online venues.
She has resisted offers for free volunteer help
from people who she sees as critical of her performance and has made a
poor impression with many county commissioners. The result is
predictable. Just because you are paranoid, the old saying goes, does
not mean people are not out to get you.
If part of the shelter’s problem involves budget
restraints. If the shelter cannot afford the cost of sedating every
animal that must be put down, a good way to encourage donations to
offset the costs would be by making friends and not enemies.
While the shelter controversy has given our county
a black eye to go with our Katelyn halo, county commissioners got a
preview of more trouble on the horizon at Monday night’s workshop.
Can you spell E-911? Perhaps not, unless it’s
spelled “b-r-o-k-e.” That appears to be the way our 911 system is
heading, with revenues from the public down about 50 percent in recent
years.
The problem is cell phones, and the fact that
telephone landlines are going the way of 8-track tapes, movies on VHS
and the U. S. Postal Service – consigned to the obsolete scrap heap of
history.
The E-911 system, so ballyhooed when set up as the
answer to all our prayers for prompt response in emergencies, is funded
partially by an appropriation in the county budget and partially from a
surcharge on telephone bills. Problem is, the surcharge is on stationary
landlines. When 911 was established, cell phones were still an
occasional luxury.
Not so anymore. The
number of business and residential landlines in the county has declined
by nearly half in the past few years, and monthly revenues have declined
right along with them. The state did set up a system for assessing cell
phones, at the rate of a dollar a month, but the State of
“Not enough,” 911 Director Charlie Hutson told the
squires Monday, A bill to increase the cell phone surcharge went nowhere
in this year’s legislature, as the majority GOP lawmakers obviously
viewed it as a “tax increase.” They, of course, would much rather do
nothing and leave it up to local governments to increase taxes to help
E-911 survive.
Without more revenue from telephone subscribers or
a hefty increase in county funding paid for by property taxpayers, E-911
will still function, Hutson explained, but more than likely without
dispatchers. Instead, an automated system would direct incoming calls
from the 911 call center to the appropriate emergency service based on
the location of the call.
Callers would then be transferred to the Campbell
County Sheriff’s Department, police and fire departments in the various
towns or other appropriate agencies. He did not explain how a
location-based relay system could separate police calls from fire calls
or requests for an ambulance, and it seems likely that the absence of
911 dispatchers would mean a delay in response time, perhaps a fatal
delay in some cases.
While commissioners mull over how to deal with the
looming 911 crisis, one crisis seems to be resolved. The commission’s
EMS Committee took a vote Monday night that will finally put the
embattled Pinecrest Volunteer Fire Department out of its misery once and
for all.
Pinecrest VFD, you
might recall, became insolvent last year under a mountain of debt
approaching $200,000. How such a thing might happen can only be guessed
at, but the fact that former Pinecrest Chief Jerry Moat was arrested
last week on an indictment from
At any rate, the Pinecrest board disbanded the
department and tried to start off from scratch with a new Norris Ridge
Volunteer Fire Department. They declined to declare bankruptcy, however,
choosing to salvage the department’s station houses by assuming and
consolidating the Pinecrest debt.
The commission pledged 15 grand to the new fire
department, once Norris Ridge had applied for its tax exempt status from
the IRS. Fast forward nearly six months and the Pinecrest area is still
being covered from afar by Campbell County Rural Fire Service and
Jacksboro Fire Department.
Norris Ridge Chief McCullah admitted Monday night
that his department still hasn’t applied for the 501(c) (3) tax exempt
status because they can’t afford the $850 filing fee. Naturally, not a
penny of the county appropriation has been spent and now the folks at
Campbell County Rural Fire Service would like the share of the money
that would have gone to Norris Ridge for the past five months.
The EMS Committee
voted unanimously to recommend that the county funds be divided between
the Rural Fire Service and Jacksboro, with Campbell County Rural Fire
Service assuming permanent responsibility for most of Pinecrest while
Jacksboro covers the
If this plan works, folks in Pinecrest might
eventually see their insurance rates fall back to normal levels, all
areas of the county will again have fire protection and the commission
won’t have to spend more money than they have already appropriated. The
only losers will be the creditors for Pinecrest/Norris Ridge VFD and all
of the dedicated volunteer firefighters who put their hearts and souls
into their community fire department and their trust in the wrong man.
Dear WLAF,
We hope this message
finds you well. We're writing to clarify certain misinformation
included in WLAF's April 10 report regarding PETA's involvement with the
Campbell County Adrion Baird Animal Shelter. We understand that the
information is being shared by others via social media, such as on this
Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=315639751898437&id=395292177235646#!/permalink.php?story_fbid=398542250243972&id=395292177235646.
Please be assured that PETA has not visited the county shelter and is
therefore unable to offer any firsthand information in that regard. We
contacted county officials in writing and by phone to urge them to
ensure that the shelter follows humane euthanasia recommendations from
national experts and in accordance with state laws. Additionally, PETA
provided them with recommended guidelines for operation and standards of
care<http://www.sheltervet.org/about/shelter-standards/>
from sheltering experts the Association of Shelter Veterinarians, and
we've urged them to follow the guidelines closely.
Regarding pre-euthanasia sedation, PETA concurs that this is not always
in the best interests of the animal. Whenever possible, a cooperative
animal should be held and comforted and given an intravenous (IV)
injection of sodium pentobarbital (or in the case of some cats, kittens,
and puppies, intraperitoneal, or IP injection, using the proper
recommended dosage, may be more appropriate). Fractious and hyperactive
animals must always be handled cautiously, and unfortunately, two
animals of the same breed and size may react differently to the drug
(and in some, the drug may actually exacerbate fractious behavior).
There is an unacceptable inherent risk in having a policy of
administering the same drug to a number of animals and hoping or
assuming that their responses will be uniform. Each animal must be
individually evaluated to determine if sedation is necessary.
Thank you for your time and attention. I can be contacted at
443-320-1277 and TeresaC@peta.org<mailto:TeresaC@peta.org>.
Sincerely yours,
Teresa Lynn Chagrin
Animal Care and Control Specialist
Cruelty Investigations Department
cc: The Honorable David Young,
Deputy Mayor of
Kids can be worth a trip to Hades,
In my job enforcing various
It’s time to begin planning the annual spring field trip
for my science enrichment students at Valley View Elementary. This year I
noticed an ad in the News-Sentinel for a temporary dinosaur exhibit at
Ripley’s Aquarium in Gatlinburg.
“Perfect,”
I said to myself. My 4th
and 5th
graders study ecosystems including ocean life, while the third graders study
rocks, fossils and ancient life, the most popular of those being dinosaurs.
But one does not plan to take a
busload of kids, ages 9-11, on a trip without knowing what to expect. Since
I’m otherwise engaged during the week, I drove up to Gatlinburg on a
beautiful Saturday afternoon. For any of you out there considering a visit
this spring to the Gateway to the
There were, of course, the
usual mobs of tourists and shoppers, which always make the trip into town a
bit adventurous. I hit the traffic line about a mile short of the city
limits. Slow going, but nothing unusual for Gatlinburg. Then I approached
the cutoff north toward
Finally I reached the turnoff to the aquarium, joined the
line into the parking garage and found a space. So far, so good. After
talking with folks in the education department about school group rates,
classroom programs and the like, I forked over twenty-five bucks for one
adult admission. This was necessary so I could tour the place and estimate
how long it will take our school group and what the kids will see.
Again, so far, so good. Then it was time to depart. Exit
the parking garage. Well, exit the parking space. Then I joined the line on
the third level trying to exit the garage, and went nowhere. An hour later,
I had made it to the first level, and could almost see the ticket booth.
Last Monday night, county commissioners raked
Environmental Service Director Don Boshears over the coals. They were angry
over his decision to cut hours at convenience centers and all the calls they
are receiving from an angry public.
These people weren’t angry. Angry is the emotion one feels
when you sit in line for an hour and a half creeping slowly out of a parking
garage, get within four car lengths of the exit, and watch some pencil neck
walk down to his car, parked two spaces from the exit, start his engine and
back out when the car in front of you lets him break the line. Total wait to
the exit, approximately 60 seconds.
Finally out of the garage, after paying an extra hour’s
parking fee for the time spent in line trying to get out. It was immediately
clear why the wait had been so long. A long line formed on the side street
where the garage exited, waiting for a chance to turn left on Main Street
into the bumper-to-bumper single lane of traffic leading back toward
Knoxville.
I inched slowly forward as about one car every five
minutes was able to make the turn. Finally I reached the place where the
street divided into two turning lanes and whipped to the right, turning east
toward the national park.
No traffic at all, no stops except at pedestrian
crosswalks, all the way through town. Finally, passing mile after mile of
backed up cars leading into town, I reached the park visitor center and the
cutoff for the Gatlinburg bypass toward Pigeon Forge.
Traffic through Pigeon Forge heading away from the
mountains was as light as I’ve ever seen, all the cars still being backed up
in the Gatlinburg bottleneck. Question # 1: Were all these motorists
strangers to the region and clueless about where roads lead? Question # 2:
What part of the sign reading “Gatlinburg bypass to Pigeon Forge” did all
those folks coming out of the mountains not understand?
Fast forward to Tuesday. Time
for me to teach my after-school third grade class and distribute permission
slips for the April 1st field trip. A beautiful day, so I planned an outdoor
class to look for minerals in the
Five minutes after the kids all gathered we got the word:
“Lock-down.” A man who was not authorized to be there tried to pick up a
child, probably an estranged husband/father. So, lock-down; no teaching
materials, no rocks, just 23 slightly amused, slightly nervous children with
nothing to do.
“Can I go out to my car and get an educational DVD for the
kids to watch?”
“No, we won’t let you back in and a security officer
might shoot you.”
So we played my version of the “quiet game.” Everyone kept
quiet and tried to keep a straight face and not giggle while I went around
the room trying to make the kids laugh by whatever facial expressions or
strange noises I could think up. Good thing these kids don’t have cell phone
cameras – I would never live it down.
Finally, after 25 minutes or so, we received the all clear
and could finally go outside. So much pent-up energy should be bottled and
sold. Finally I got them settled down to the challenge of identifying
minerals such as calcite, quartz or “fool’s gold” among the limestone
boulders and fossils in the rocks along the nature trail.
“Mr Boomer, here’s some fool’s
gold. Can I have this rock?”
“That rock weighs 40 pounds. Can you lift it?”
“No.”
“Then you can’t have it.”
“Awww.”
“Here’s a squidward fossil, Mr Boomer! Can I have it?”
“I saw it first. I want it.”
“Hold on. Here’s two, three fossils on the rock. I’ve got
my rock hammer. I’ll break it in half and you can each have some.”
And so it went, until time to go in for snacks and wait
for parents to pick them up. Great thing about kids, they’re resilient. One
minute worried because there’s a “bad man” near the school. The next,
enthralled by a fossilized bug on a muddy chunk of rock.
Keeps me young. Come April Fool’s Day, we’ll go back to
Gatlinburg, hope for lighter traffic and take whatever comes. It’s worth a
trip back to Hades to see the smiles on their faces.
Congress, on the other hand,
appears more concerned with staying in the good graces of the National Rifle
Association than whether children can continue to smile. I wish for Congress
that they should all go to Gatlinburg on a Saturday afternoon, and not find
their way back out. (UPDATED FOR THE WEEK OF
MONDAY, MARCH 25, AT 6:00 AM, 03/22/2013)
Words can be powerful things, the wrong words can get you in trouble
You will have to forgive me for showing a bit of bias, but
as a writer, I’ve always considered words to be powerful instruments, more
powerful than guns or bombs. They reach more people and tend to hang around
longer.
Choosing the right words can make someone immortal – “Four
score and seven years ago;” “Ask not what your country can do for you.”
Choosing the wrong words can end a political career. Choosing the wrong word
can also lead to unintended consequences.
Take our own dear county commission. A proposal brought up
at last week’s workshop calls for the creation of a “solar panel oversight
committee.” The stated purpose of said committee would be to review the
records, energy production and financials of the solar panel project to
determine if it is a good idea to expand it from school buildings to other
county buildings.
The school board’s attorney advised the board to
“respectfully decline” the invitation from the commission, should it be
offered. The board appeared in agreement with his advice. In other words,
“Stay out of our business!”
Attorney Dail Cantrell also pointed out that all of the
records the commissioners want to “oversee” are public records open to
inspection upon request. The rub was not the school board not wanting their
business reviewed by commissioners, the rub was in that one little word,
“oversight.”
The county commission by law can have no oversight over
the business of the school board, beyond approving or disapproving the
school budget. Any attempt to do otherwise would lead to a quick slap on the
wrist from the courts.
The commission can re-name their committee, something like
“solar panel assessment committee” or “solar panel study committee” and get
away with it, but that one little word, “oversight” indicates some level of
control, which is not legal.
Of course, the three individuals suggested to serve as the
“oversight committee” are all folks, who forgive me if I’m mistaken, have
taken a critical stance against the solar panel project. It might be better
termed the “Find Fault Committee,” because I suspect that is exactly what
they hope to do.
Ah well, I’m sure somebody will come up with the right
words before it’s over, perhaps something more appropriate such as
“urinating contest,” or other words to that effect.
The squires are also being
asked to endorse several pieces of legislation that are being bounced around
down in
Another bill would hold local government officials to the
same open meeting restrictions as members of the state legislature. Sounds
impressive, doesn’t it? What that bill actually does is change the law to
allow county and city officials to meet in secret to discuss policy
decisions as long as a quorum is not present.
Currently, if two or more
commissioners meet to discuss or debate policy, they have to do it in public
with adequate notice. The legislature, in passing
The difference is that if this new law is enacted, county
officials could make the secrecy official and schedule meetings to discuss
policies, as long as they are one vote short of an official quorum for
conducting business. Six or seven commissioners or four school board members
could have all the secret meetings they want.
Another resolution that the commission is being asked to
endorse is “in support of the rights of the people to keep and bear arms.”
Sounds like something our local county commission should jump on with both
feet, doesn’t it? Endorse the Second Amendment of the Constitution, and
protect the rights of legal, law-abiding gun owners who just want the right
to protect themselves, or hunt deer or collect antique guns.
Again, we come up against words. The final paragraph in
the resolution reads that the county commission “Supports and requests the
legislature of the State of Tennessee adopt and enact any and all measures
as may be necessary to reject or nullify the enforcement of any federal
acts, laws, executive orders, rules or regulations in violation of the
Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States . . .”
The word can be a powerful
thing. In this case the word is “nullify.” The Constitution of the
The President of the
If the Congress, by some miracle, was to actually pass a
law restricting automatic weapons or high capacity ammo magazines, it would
more than likely not be a violation of the Second Amendment, which
guarantees citizens the right to keep and bear arms but doesn’t define what
those arms may be. Congress already passed a automatic weapons ban once, a
couple of decades ago, but the law was allowed to expire.
If such a law is
unconstitutional, the courts will quickly strike it down. Meanwhile, any
attempt by a state government to nullify a federal law would definitely
violate the Constitution. The ghost of Andy Jackson might rise from his tomb
at the Hermitage and lead the ghosts of 250,000 Tennesseans who fought for
the
One final word about words. The word “entitlement” has
certainly gotten a lot of play lately, especially among conservative
politicians and conservative pundits who bandy it around in much the same
way they did “welfare.”
Entitlements? Aren’t they the things that are bringing our
country to ruin because lazy people who don’t want to accept personal
responsibility are relying on entitlements to live off hard-working
Americans while that socialist Obama turns our country into a welfare
Euro-state?
I just started collecting my entitlement last month, in
the form of a social security check. This year I reach the unenviable age of
66, at which point I can continue to work full time and draw my social
security without penalty. I opted not to wait until age 70 in hope that I
might be able to pay off my debts before I reach an age where I can no
longer work.
Of course the check I draw is merely paying back some of
the money that has been held out of my pay checks for the past 40-odd years
that I have worked and paid taxes. If I’m really, really lucky, I might live
long enough to collect everything I paid in, plus some of the interest that
money would have earned.
As long as I continue to work and earn over $25,000 a
year, I will also have to pay income tax on my social security income. Since
federal income tax is calculated on net income before social security is
withheld, I am in essence paying taxes on the same money twice.
That is my personal “entitlement.” Next time I hear
somebody toss that word around like it’s a federal giveaway program for
welfare bums, I will feel entitled to reach down their throat, pull out
their tongue and tie it around their nose. They won’t really miss their
tongue anyway, since they do all their talking out of the other end.
Academy Awards miss out, ignore school board and Stacey
Campfield
I have a confession to make. I purposely delayed writing
this column until Sunday night, after watching the Academy Award show. I
wanted to see if the Campbell County Board of Education was going to get a
last minute nomination, but ended up disappointed.
Alas, there is no justice in the world and true talent for
theatrics again goes unnoticed. But our county commission recognized the
talent when they saw it. Last Tuesday night the squires met, quickly
dispensed with business by agreeing with each other on an unprecedented ten
consecutive unanimous votes, and went home. They knew they couldn’t hold a
candle to the school board in the “Best Actor” category and didn’t even make
the attempt.
There is certainly some strong competition, however, if
one’s gaze is drawn to our state capitol, where the General Assembly is in
full swing.
Let’s see,
we have bills to allow guns in parking lots, bills to require teachers to
become armed guards and bills to require
We tried
that once before, I recall. Got our butts kicked at Fort Donelson, Shiloh,
Missionary Ridge, Fort Sanders, Franklin and Nashville, to name but a few.
The Confederate States of
Later,
they told us, “Oh, we forgot to mention, since ya’ll are on the border,
we’ll fight all our battles in
Now the
TEA Party crowd in Congress wants
Later, the Republicans from Kansas, Indiana and
Mississippi will undoubtedly say, “Oh, we forgot to tell you that between
Oak Ridge, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Fort Campbell, the Army
Corps of Engineers, TVA and Tullahoma, you Tennesseans will suffer about ten
times as many layoffs and job losses as our states, but don’t you’uns fret
none, it’s for a good cause!”
Hmmm. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on
me.
But back to the subject of dramatics and academy awards, I
have one final suggestion. Stacey Campfield.
The Knoxville News-Sentinel ran an article last week
entitled “Who keeps electing Stacey Campfield?” They tried to make sense of
how a clown who has been a regular butt of jokes by Stephen Colbert and
other national comedians can not only get re-elected, but has advanced from
the lowly House to the powerful Senate down in Nashville.
They reviewed Stacey’s track record: his early attempts to
gain admission to the Black Legislative Caucus, his “Don’t say gay” bill,
his bill to arm classroom teachers and his bill to cut welfare payments to
families if children do poorly in school.
The News-Sentinel failed to come up with an adequate
answer as to why Stacey keeps getting re-elected or even why he does the
things he does, but I think I’ve figured it out. Stacey Campfield is neither
a clown nor a fool, He is a political genius.
Think
about the district he represents,
These people, the voters who keep Stacey Campfield in
office, don’t need anything from state government. Their idea of a perfect
legislature is one that will do as little as possible and leave them alone
with their money.
Like all
Americans, however, they do like to be entertained. Stacey always manages to
introduce a bill or two down in
Even before he was in a position to introduce legislation,
Stacey knew the value of a good show. While running in his first,
unsuccessful campaign for the legislature, he managed to make headlines by
getting himself tossed out of a barbeque sponsored by Congressman Jimmy
Duncan when he tailed Governor Phil Bredesen around with a sign reading “Tax
and Spend Governor.”
One year, after the legislative session was long past and
Stacey found himself hard-pressed to entertain his constituents, he donned a
Halloween mask and tried to gain admittance to the Tennessee-Kentucky game.
When he later put the mask back on and refused to remove it, he was
unceremoniously tossed out of the stadium. More headlines; more
entertainment for the masses.
He
purposely insults his critics in emails and blogs, suggesting they may need
psychiatric help. When the manager of a
So here’s to ya, Stacey, you old fox. You may be the butt
of late night comedians, banned from Tomato Head and an embarrassment to
your fellow Republicans, but you will probably stay in office as long as you
keep coming up with new material.
But be forewarned. Once the
jokes get old and the material stale, the public will seek a new act and
you’ll be forced to seek a living doing stand-up comedy at a gay nightclub
in Vegas. (UPDATED FOR THE WEEK OF MONDAY,
FEBRUARY 25, 2013, 6:30 AM)
‘Doing the Little Sidestep’ – school board
meeting or just a bad dream?
Boomer's Corner - Charles "Boomer" Winfrey
I had the strangest dream
Tuesday night. Woke me up with a start around 2:00 A.M. I was thrust into
the middle of a movie, one that any of you who, like me are on the backside
of 50, will recall vividly even if you didn’t see it. Dolly Parton fans will
certainly recall her role in “The Best Little Whorehouse in
The film was a musical comedy that appeared in theaters
in the early ‘80s, starring Dolly as the madam of “The Chicken Ranch,” a
legendary bordello of such historic renown and tradition that the winning
football team in the annual Texas-Texas A&M Thanksgiving game was always
treated to a night with the ladies, paid for by loyal alumni while
university officials looked the other way.
In the film a crusading journalist slips a camera crew
into the ranch, filming scantily-clad ladies scampering in all directions
until the local sheriff (Burt Reynolds) tosses the intruders out.
The crusader, played by comedian Dom Deluise has his
proof, however, and kicks off his television expose with a little song &
dance number, “Texas Has a Whorehouse in It!” In my dream, however, Dom
Deluise is replaced by our very own R. L. Gibson. I didn’t know R.L. could
carry a tune, but then this was a dream after all.
Cut to the chase. My dream continued with Dolly and
Burt doing a few songs together. (Unfortunately for the film, Burt could not
carry a tune) until we get to the big song & dance production at the state
capitol.
In the movie, the
The governor does this hilarious number, where he
dances to one side of the stage, tips his ten-gallon hat to the good ole
boys, then shuttles across to the other side, reversing his hat as he sings
and dances “The Little Sidestep.”
Only in my dream, this
number is played out by a chorus – the
As you can imagine, this is the point where I woke up,
my T-shirt soaked in sweat, and realized I had not yet finished my report
for Channel 12 on the recent school board meeting.
Say what you will, the school board can rival the cast
of “Best Little Whorehouse” for drama and entertainment value. Rector Miller
opened the proceedings by reaffirming his love and respect for Director
Donnie Poston and telling folks that his lone concern had been the fact that
Donnie didn’t appear willing to fight off the evil Finance Director, Jeff
“Moneybags” Marlow over potential teacher lay-offs in the upcoming year.
“Mr. Poston assures me that he will do everything he
can to avoid losing another twelve teachers. I’m going to support you, Mr.
Poston, for as long as you want to remain Director,” Rector proclaimed, with
a tip of his ten-gallon hat.
Rector asked me if I
couldn’t say something nice about him this week for a change, so I will.
Rector, you are even more eloquent than the
Danny Wilson was next to speak at the meeting. Danny
supported Director Poston from the get-go, but there appears to have been
some unfortunate exchanges with his fellow First District board member, the
contents of which we can only imagine. Danny offered his sincere apologies
to Rector for “things said,” although most in the audience had no idea what
was said by who about whom for what reason.
Once all the speechifying and peacemaking was complete
Johnny Byrge, another of the original “Get rid of Donnie” group, offered a
motion to schedule a special called meeting at the end of the mandatory
15-day public notification period, “For the purpose of extending the
contract of Donnie Poston as Director of Schools.”
The motion passed by a unanimous vote of 10-0, the
audience applauded and ten-gallon hats were tossed into the air. Everybody
loves a happy ending.
Well, most folks do. My
money is on Eugene Lawson to vote “no” on extending the contract. A teacher
I ran into after the meeting said, “
Probably so, but disagree
or not, I confess that I admire
Some of the squires didn’t seem overly pleased to be
referred to as “the devils I know,” but then that’s Moneybags for you. He is
a master at working with figures, keeping the county out of financial hot
water and finding ways to get things done despite commissioners’ propensity
for wanting to get things done without paying for it.
Where Jeff differs from other accountants and money
czars is that he’s not afraid to voice his opinion, sometimes in rather
plain English, sometimes peppered with some colorful adjectives unprintable
in family publications.
He told the school board at one point Tuesday night, “I
go over to a county commission meeting and they give me grief because they
accuse me of representing the school board. I come to a school board meeting
and you accuse me of representing the county commission.”
The truth is, Moneybags is not personally the target of
official disdain, so much as the position, “Director of Finance.” This
county, some of you may recall, was dragged kicking and screaming into the
Financial Management System from the get-go. The commission would never have
voted to adopt a system that set one person up with control and oversight
over all money matters, if a delegation of bankers and business leaders had
not insisted upon it.
Those community leaders, fed up with budget
mismanagement at every level of county government, more or less suggested
that they would dedicate however much of the money they controlled to
financing the electoral defeat of every commissioner if something wasn’t
done. The squires got the message. They didn’t like it, but they got it.
The school department was another matter, and
stubbornly held out for some time, wanting to control their own money
in-house as they had always done. The year the school budget was so far out
of balance that the board and Superintendent had to cancel bus service for
the last month of the school year was the straw that broke the camel’s back,
and soon the voting public elected some new leaders and the school
department’s bookkeepers were transferred to the Finance Office.
But bowing to pressure and doing it doesn’t mean they
liked it. Marlow is the subject of rumors from every corner, questions about
whether he is favoring certain vendors and contractors, or paying his help
too much, or simply not treating other officials with the respect they
deserve. Every time a vendor gets a contract to do work for the county,
somebody in county government suspects foul play, it appears.
Moneybags may have his faults, but I can only make one
observation. If he’s doing all these things that are unethical or illegal or
simply immoral, and given the number of people out there who are out to get
him, and given the fact that the state comptroller’s office keeps a sharp
eye on the books, why is he not behind bars by now? Marlow has, after all,
served under two county executives, two county mayors, an interim county
executive and comptrollers for at least three, maybe four governors.
Nah, he just gets under
people’s skin. Now he’s probably gotten under the skin of yet another
person, school board attorney Dail Cantrell. Jeff announced at the board
meeting that the State Department of Finance has finally ruled on a request
he made over a year ago, to look into allegations that coal mined in
Yours truly had a small
role in this little adventure as well, when Moneybags asked me to
investigate whether
What I discovered was that
Premium Coal Company was operating a mine in
Moneybags requested a
correction. The state took its time but finally agreed with us. They denied
Moneybags’ request for $240,000 in misallocated funds, I assume because too
much time had passed, but agreed to give
The catch is, nobody is
currently mining coal in
Dail is on the school
board in
“Unsurpassed integrity” or the lawyer whose mouth is moving: who to
believe?
This past week has been a sad one for me, on more than
one level. First came the realization, after the LaFollette Press hit the
streets last week, that Donnie Poston will probably not continue as Director
of Schools after his contract expires this year.
The school board, or is that “fool board,” deadlocked 4-4
at their January meeting on a motion to extend Poston’s contract. Since they
had voted tentatively 9-1 in December to extend it another year if some
changes were made, it appeared this might just be some shucking and jiving
by one or more board members flexing their muscles.
After reading the newspaper interview with Poston, that
appears to not be the case, and whatever bridges were left standing may be
burned beyond repair.
Eugene Lawson, who has already landed the board in
litigation over his propensity for speaking his mind, even when his mind
goes blank and his comments border on libelous, appears to be the spark
behind the latest explosion as well.
Poston told the Press that Lawson and Rector Miller
visited him in his office in November, where Lawson gave Poston the names of
three school system employees he wanted terminated in exchange for Lawson’s
vote to retain Poston as Director of Schools.
Lawson, of course, denies any such thing, but Miller took
a dive, telling the Press, “On advice of my counsel right now, I have been
advised not to comment on that.”
Hmmm. Miller also told the Press that he considers Poston
an “outstanding Christian” with “integrity that is unsurpassed” but feels
some changes need to be made in the school system.
If Miller was present at the alleged meeting between
Lawson and Poston, and if Poston claims Lawson demanded the firing of three
employees in exchange for his vote, and if Miller still considers Donnie
Poston to have “integrity that is unsurpassed,” well, I’ll leave it up to
you readers to decide who you believe.
“Based on my investigation, that did not occur, and I
don’t have a problem making a public statement to that effect. I have no
clue as to how this story has ever gotten out,” Cantrell said, adding, “It’s
a story that I’ve now heard repeated, but based on my investigation, that
exchange did not occur.”
I assume Cantrell’s
investigation involved asking Eugene and Rector if they met with Poston and
if
I wouldn’t go so far as to suggest that Dail Cantrell
would tell anything other than the truth, of course. But I keep recalling a
lawyer friend of mine who once told me, “There are many kinds of truths.”
Cantrell does work for the Board of Education, remember, and not the
Director of Schools.
So where does this leave the
Donnie Poston is too much the nice guy to do any such
thing. He served briefly on the county commission back a couple of decades
ago and decided to not run for re-election because he was disgusted with all
the seamy politics going on around him.
He told the Press, “For the sake of the kids let’s make a
smooth transition.” The board could bring the contract up for another vote
at their next meeting, but Poston said he doesn’t want that.
“We need to do everything we can as professionals. I’m
not a politician,” Poston said. “That just gets me back on course to what
I’d originally offered to start with and planned to do. I have a peace it’s
hard to describe.”
Donnie Poston may be at peace, but if Campbell County
parents give a tinker’s dang about their school system and the future of
their children, the Campbell County Board of Education may see anything but
peace in the upcoming year.
This particular school board is, in my humble opinion,
close to being a failed institution. There is entirely too much political
maneuvering going on behind the scenes, too many board members with personal
agendas, too little real concern for the future of the children and too much
just plain meanness.
I chalk much of it up to too much testosterone. If ever a
school board needed a few strong women to tone down the bar room bull, this
board is a prime candidate. It’s a while yet until the next election, but
it’s certainly not too early for parents to get involved and let this board
know they’re being watched. Might be nice to see a few more people in the
audience at board meetings who aren’t school employees for a change.
Another sad moment for me
probably went unnoticed in
Who, you ask, is Stan Musial? Well, here in Big Orange
Country where serious baseball fans are few and far between, and where the
handful of serious baseball fans are hard pressed to recall anyone who
hasn’t played the game in over half a century, the name probably means
little.
In the City of
Musial played outfield back in the 1940s and ‘50s,
retiring in 1963 after breaking practically every National League hitting
record on the books. Except home runs – he didn’t usually hit those towering
fly balls that would float up into the upper deck and threaten to bring
rain.
Stan was one of those line drive hitters whose home runs
left the park at the speed of a jet airplane but as often as not banged off
the outfield wall, so he set records for batting average, hits. doubles,
runs, RBIs and all those other little things while usually only hitting
30-40 homers a year.
But it was the way in which
he went about playing the game that would be his lasting legacy. Defined by
the news media as “baseball’s perfect knight,” Musial seldom argued with
umpires and never complained when a pitcher threw a ball too close to his
head. He would simply get up, dust off his uniform and knock the next pitch
into the Mississippi River, Lake Michigan or
He was never in so much of a hurry that he wouldn’t take
time to give a kid an autograph, and in an era when ballplayers didn’t make
millions of dollars (Stan’s salary topped out at around $120,000 a year), he
was notoriously generous with charities.
When the first African-American ballplayers began to
break the color barrier in the late ‘40s and early ‘50s, Musial was one of a
handful of white ballplayers who spoke out against the racism they saw in
the dugouts, and went out of his way to make players like Jackie Robinson
feel at ease.
I became a Cardinal fan back
in the late ‘50s. The only baseball team you could watch on local television
was the hated New York Yankees but if you lived in
Finally, one year when my
family was taking a trip to
We ordered tickets two rows up behind the Cardinal dugout
along the baseline in old Sportsman’s Park. Late in the first game of a
double-header, Stan the Man fouled a ball off into the stands. My dad, who
was not at all a baseball fan, trampled several people and nearly broke his
back to retrieve that ball for me.
He paid a ball boy ten bucks to take it into the dugout
and see if Stan would autograph it. Musial had reached base on a force play
and then went into the field so it was a long time before he returned to the
dugout. Quite a bit of time passed and we thought either a) the ball boy
forgot about us or b) Stan the Man was too busy to bother with autographs.
Suddenly Stan stepped to the front of the dugout and
motioned the ball boy over, sending him up our way with the prized baseball,
a smile and a wave.
“Since Stan was out running the bases, they just sort of
passed it around the dugout so a whole lot of the team signed it as well,”
the boy told my father.
Still got that ball. The scratch
where it bounced off a railing is still visible, along with the signatures
of Stan Musial, his buddy and fellow Hall of Fame player Red Schoendienst,
outfielder Curt Flood and a little-known pitcher named Bob Gibson, plus a
few more of my childhood heroes. (UPDATED AT
NOON ON 01/25/2013 FOR THE WEEK OF 01/21/2013)
Gun debate ranges from contentious to outrageous to just plain
insanity
Just another typical week in
There
are questions unanswered of course. Will the IRS padlock the City of
Is Donnie Poston’s job in jeopardy or are some school
board members just flexing their muscles by voting against his contract
extension after voting for it a month earlier?
I’m still waiting for answers to these questions myself,
so have no opinions to share, at least not until more facts emerge. Did
Hansford Hatmaker, as the rumor mill has it, really drive a city vehicle
clear across the state to watch a lady friend graduate from a prison rehab
program?
Facts are fuzzy but one thing is certain. I don’t want
Hansford serving as my designated driver anytime soon.
Is there reason to suspect illegal activities at Jellico
City Hall, where the town appears to have failed to pay employees’
withholding taxes to Uncle Sam, or is it merely a matter of not enough
revenue to pay the bills and putting off paying Peter in order to pay Paul?
Facts again are fuzzy, but the one thing that is certain
is that Jellico needs more revenue, and that will mean higher taxes if the
city is to continue to function. The other fact that seems clear is that
whoever was in charge of auditing the city’s books has failed miserably.
While we must wait on more facts to make any informed
comments about local events, that is certainly not the case in the national
debate over gun control. There have been more than enough comments, both
informed and uninformed, to turn anyone’s stomach, most of those comments
serving one of the numerous vested interests on one side or the other.
The President has finally come out with his list of
recommendations. It include bans on automatic weapons and high capacity
magazines as well as universal background checks on anyone buying guns,
plugging the gun show loopholes. Good luck on any of those, which will
require the cooperation of Congress.
He can, without the help of Congress, push for more
stringent enforcement of existing laws. I noticed on the news that of the
79,000 people nationally who have failed background checks or been found to
have lied on background checks, only 41 have been prosecuted.
Since
even the NRA has voiced support for stronger enforcement of existing laws, I
suspect that we will see more federal sting operations such as the one that
just landed
An outright ban on assault rifles and high capacity ammo
clips will probably still be debated in Congress when the next mass killing
occurs, and the next after that. If those massacres occur in schools, we
will see more schools take on the appearance of armed camps, which will suit
the NRA just fine. More armed guards and armed teachers will mean more gun
sales by the firearms manufacturers that bankroll the NRA.
I wonder if the NRA would still be pushing armed guards
in every school or arming and training teachers if the federal government
suddenly agreed, and because such programs would cost billions of dollars,
announced new federal taxes on the sale of guns, with higher rates on
assault weapons, in order to pay the price tag?
Meanwhile, even if Congress should by some miracle pass a law that limits
assault weapons, gun happy states like
Niceley and Faison are offering a bill to prohibit the
expenditure of state or local funds to enforce any new federal gun control
laws, and to prohibit local and state agencies from enforcing federal laws
unless Uncle Sam foots the bill.
Of
course a lot of state and local officials are tired of unfunded federal
mandates that put more burden on local taxpayers. The Niceley-Faison bill
may be “In-your-face Uncle Sam,” but others are probably more dangerous,
including one by
The debate in Congress and state legislatures promises to
be heated and contentious, but at least predictable and more or less sane.
Not so, some of the comments and discussion appearing in local letters to
the editor or on the Internet, where insanity can be shared freely with the
public.
Probably
the most disgusting report I’ve heard is about conspiracy theory nuts who
have been attacking the parents and victims of the mass shooting in
Parents who have just lost a beautiful six-year-old child
to a senseless act of murder have enough to deal with. They don’t need to
learn they are being called liars and actors by Internet conspiracy nuts,
set on providing inspiration for the next crazed gunman.
I
noticed a letter in the News-Sentinel today from a fellow named Tom Ferguson
that pretty well says it all. Speaking of the Bushmaster rifle used in
Hmmm. I have not been a gun owner myself since my 20s.
Never felt a need to have one, personally, but Mr. Ferguson’s letter may
lead me to change my mind. I really feel like perhaps I need to arm myself
for protection against people like Tom Ferguson.
A sad moment for all us dreamers,
This week has been a real challenge: What to write about
in this first full week of 2013? The rest of the scribbling, blogging and
talking head world is still fixated on guns in schools, fiscal cliffs,
Superstorm Sandy and how much everyone hates Congress.
Tough. I’ve already said all there is to say about guns
in schools, particularly turning teachers into armed guards – “BAD IDEA.”
Like
the rest of
Republican lawmakers in the Northeast discovered the hard way just how far
party loyalty goes with Republican lawmakers in
I can’t
wait to see what happens when the next string of killer tornadoes or
crippling floods hits the
Seems some hard right Pachyderms take their “no tax”
pledge to Grover Norquist more seriously than their oath of office. There
used to be a time when we called that sort of thing “high treason,” but oh
yeah, that was the conservatives talking about far left liberals back in the
‘50s and ‘60s when everyone feared that the Russians were coming.
As far
as Congress, it’s amazing that only eleven percent of Americans approve of
the job done by the recently expired 112th
Congress, and yet most of those turkeys won re-election. One pundit wrote
that we need to hunt down that eleven percent and separate them from the
rest of society.
I disagree. We need to find that eleven percent, and
whether we agree with them or not, give them government jobs. They are the
only honest people around willing to stand behind their secret ballots. At
least half the country, those yahoos who voted for Congressman X, then tell
the pollsters they disapprove of Congress, are hypocrites at best,
bald-faced liars at worst.
I can safely say this because I haven’t voted for an
incumbent congressman since . . . I’ve not sure I’ve ever voted for an
incumbent congressman. I did vote for an incumbent congresswoman, Marilyn
Lloyd. I think the answer to our country’s Congressional nightmare is to put
more women in charge.
This is
only appropriate. Women generally outlive men, so in the end they wind up
owning everything. That means if the country goes down the financial tubes
and
You want something done right, put people in charge who
have the most to gain or lose.
So now that I’ve talked about
all the important issues of the day, what’s left? How about space
exploration? Now that the space shuttle program is history, NASA is having a
fire sale at
I
personally find this very sad. I grew up during that magic period when the
most important thing driving
Neal
Armstrong set foot on the lunar surface not just for
The space agency hopes to find takers among the world’s
private individuals and corporations. Now that we’ve spent billions of
taxpayer dollars paving the way into space and the moon, it’s time to let
private enterprise move in and find a way to make a profit from all that
government technology and research.
Perhaps NBC will launch their own weather satellites in
the future, as the old ones fall into disrepair. They can charge the
government a fee to let them in on where and when the next hurricane will
strike – or FEMA can just stay tuned to the Weather Channel.
The
Prison Corporation of
Too much
science fiction for you? Well, we could just handle space technology the way
we (and the Russians) handle international relations, by selling arms and
armaments. We can lease a few spy satellites and orbiting missile platforms
to
Seriously, despite the cost, I hope we will continue to
push the envelope in exploring space. There is so much to learn. Think about
it, we were clueless about how the Solar System and Universe formed until
scientists looked into deep space from outside our atmosphere. We weren’t
really sure how old our Earth was until we brought back and dated rocks from
the Moon.
If we hope to save our Earth from our own destructive
activities, we need to fully understand what makes it different from the
uninhabitable planets, why Mars lost its atmosphere, where our water came
from, is it possible to create an atmosphere where one does not exist?
Many Christians may feel that
there is nothing to learn, that our Bible says it all. As I often tell my
science enrichment students at Valley View, the Bible tells us what happened, but the
ancient Israelites didn’t have the knowledge to explain how it happened. That is
left to science.
I once hoped to live long enough to see men walk on Mars.
I think the current state of the world makes that highly unlikely, but I
would like to think that those ten and eleven-year-olds in my class will see
it happen. Who knows, one of those budding young scientists might even help
make it happen. We humans, after all, have always based our dreams in the
heavens.
Think 2012 was a rough year? Look
All in all, 2012 was a pretty good year. Even that 48 %
who voted against Barack Obama found a few things worth smiling about – the
economy improved, we finally got Osama bin Ladin, and the election? It
could have been worse. Think President Donald Trump.
On the other hand, Mother Nature continued to fight back
in the war that we humans are destined to lose. Tornados, Superstorm Sandy,
drought, wildfire and floods continue to remind us who is boss, and it ain’t
the TEA Party, pilgrims.
But enough about what has been. What can we look forward
to in 2013? Will things continue to look up or will we discover, to our
horror, that due to an error in counting, the Mayans actually meant to
predict January 21 as the day the world will end?
Once again I humbly present my own predictions, and give
you Boomer’s Fractured Forecasts for the year “Lucky ‘13.”
January
– Congress fails to find a compromise and the nation falls off the fiscal
cliff. Markets are in turmoil, many businesses close their doors and
millions of taxpayers prepare to march on
“Finally Jellico has caught up with the rest of the
country,” Mayor Les Stiers announces. “Now we’re all up the creek without a
paddle.”
February
- Campbell County School Board member Eugene Lawson resigns his seat,
announcing that it would be a conflict of interest now that he has been
hired as the chief contract negotiator for the American Federation of
Teachers.
“The
only way we figured we could keep
March
– State Senator Stacy Campfield introduces a bill in the Tennessee
Legislature mandating that all public school teachers be provided with side
arms and required to wear them at all times in school. The bill is later
amended by lobbyists for the National Rifle association to include pastors,
hospital orderlies and football coaches.
Meanwhile in
April
– Torrential spring rains fall on
“This will cost the county an additional $5 million, but
you can then lease the facility to the federal government for incarcerating
white collar criminals. The pool will be a nice touch,” a representative of
the architectural firm Bustem, Cheatem & Scratch points out.
In
May
–
“You’ve managed to pay for all that asphalt without a tax
increase?” Commissioner Bobby White asked.
“You would be surprised at what you can do with careful
money management,” Potter replied.
June
–
“With this in mind, there is no way UT can have a winning
season for at least the next three years, so we’re decided to go ahead and
fire Coach Butch Jones and his staff now, before the season starts. This
will give UT a head start in the search for a new coach.”
When asked how UT athletics
can afford to pay off another $12 million in contracts before the staff has
even coached a single game, Hart replied, “We have discovered that the
athletic department holds the deed to all UT campus parking. From now on the
“We’re also shaving the costs
of athletic department personnel, “Hart added. “As an example, we’ve laid
off our public relations department and hired a veteran sportswriter from
July
– A
August
–
“Too bad. We just finished redesigning the jail to
accommodate the subsurface swimming pool. Well, it’s back to the old drawing
board,” architects tell the county commission.
At the same meeting
commissioners prepare to vote on a 5-cent property tax increase to pay for
design changes in the
September
– In the early hours of Labor Day Monday, two elderly PETA members, a
Catholic nun and a Hindu pediatrician slip through security at the Campbell
County Animal Shelter and release 136 dogs and cats, two hamsters and a
Thanksgiving turkey from their cages into the wild, scribbling “God loves
all creatures” on the side of the building and covering the office with used
kitty litter.
An investigation results in the suspension of two unpaid
volunteers for security lapses while Senator Stacy Campfield promises to
pass legislation to arm all animal shelter employees across the state.
October
– In the most damning revelations yet, Congressman Scott Desjarlais admits
that he is a regular contributor to National Public Radio, once allowed his
children to watch
November
– A state safety inspector visits the
Agents from the TBI, ATF, FBI
and Interstate Commerce Commission descend on
“I just told my boys that I didn’t care how they did it,
but just find a way to pave some roads. I didn’t take a dime,” Road
Superintendent Dennis Potter says while protesting his innocence.
The following August, while serving 3 to 5 years at a
federal facility in Atlanta, Potter will be re-elected to another four years
as Road Superintendent with 97.4 percent of the vote.
December
– The “Christmas Quake” strikes
Prisoners have yet to be moved into the new facility so
fatalities are light, restricted to one missing assistant DA, three trusties
and an inspection team from the architectural firm of Bustem, Cheatem &
Scratch.
A column that nobody will read – if the Mayans turn out to be right
I don’t really know why I’m
bothering to write this column. After all, it’s 9:00 p.m. on December 20 and
in three more hours the world is coming to an end. That is, of course, if
you put any stock in the forecasting abilities of the ancient Mayans.
Unfortunately the Mayans didn’t say whether the
world is ending at midnight, or perhaps not until noon or even 5:00 p.m.
Since I’m a writer with a writer’s ego, I can’t resist the temptation to get
in one last word, assuming the end comes later in the day and someone has a
chance to read this first.
Personally the worst thing about all this
apocalypse nonsense is that I underwent surgery on Monday. I’ve have been
stuck at home watching TV all week, which has been dominated by an endless
parade of really bad B-movies about the end of the world.
The best commentary I’ve seen about the predicted
end was actually in a comic strip. Two Mayans were carving stone calendars
and one said, “Oops, I just ran out of space!”
“That will really blow some minds in a few
hundred years,” the other Mayan observed.
And so it goes. The Mayans were a people so bad
at urban planning that they managed to eat themselves out of house and home.
They built impressive cities, then farmed the surrounding thin tropical
soils until their farms could no longer grow enough food to support the
cities’ populations, then merely abandoned their temples to the jungle and
moved on.
Those who seriously place any faith in
questionable calendars created by such losers must really be bummed out by
the world as it is, and have just been counting the hours until the end of
time.
Sadly, as this Christmas approaches, one loser
who wanted to end it all managed to do so in spectacular and tragic fashion,
taking 26 innocent lives with him in
The tragic school shooting earlier this week has
cast a pall over all Americans at a time when we hope to rejoice and
celebrate life. It has dominated the news and predictably been taken up as
the topic of the moment by the chattering classes, those of us who like to
share our opinions with everyone else.
A call has once again been raised for more
control over guns, a call that I predict will get lip service from a lot of
politicians until it comes time to actually do something.
Then Congress, fearful of the deep pockets of the
National Rifle Association, will again hmm and haw and do nothing. Assault
rifles and high capacity magazines will continue to be sold to the public
and the whole thing will blow over once the memorial services have ended –
at least until the next time that some nut job decides to end his own
pathetic life and take a lot of innocent people with him.
Some critics say the National Rifle Association
has blood on its hands. That’s not quite true. The NRA is awash in the blood
of innocent Americans. Innocent blood flows through the hallways of the
NRA’s
Anyone who likes to hunt should have the right to
possess as many hunting rifles and shotguns as they want. Anyone who wants
to protect their home should be allowed to keep handguns and rifles for
protection.
You don’t need an AK-47 to protect your home, and
its illegal to hunt with them. You don’t need a pistol that fires twenty
rounds without reloading to feel safe from intruders or muggers. Such
weapons are handy, however, for carrying out a massacre. Their only other
logical purpose is if you want to conduct guerilla warfare against your own
government.
Is this what the NRA condones, mass murder or
high treason and armed rebellion? If not, they should join the voices
supporting restrictions on the sale of high capacity assault weapons, not
fighting such restrictions.
Assuming that gun control is an improbable goal,
there have been numerous other suggestions for how we might avoid future
school shootings, from more focus on mental health issues to armed security
officers in all schools.
And just how traumatic would it be for children
to see all their teachers walking around packing pistols, and how long
before a curious child looks in a teacher’s purse while she’s in the
bathroom, removes a gun and it goes off with tragic results? I can see the
legislation now, sponsored by the indomitable Stacy Campfield, to require
all teachers to take mandatory firearms training courses and obtain
concealed weapon permits.
I hope, should such a bill be brought to the
legislature, that lawmakers and Governor Haslam will remember that one of
the most recent school shootings in this area occurred when a teacher at
Powell shot his principal and assistant principal.
The sad fact is, there is no foolproof answer.
Tragedies involving firearms will continue to occur, no matter what steps
are made to prevent them. More resource officers in our schools will help.
Legal restrictions on assault weapons will help. More focus on mental health
will help. Together these steps can decrease the frequency of such tragic
incidents, and that may be all we can hope for, but mass shootings are going
to occur again, somewhere.
Perhaps the best we can do in this time of national
sorrow is place our faith in the spirit of Christmas, hold our families
close, love them and pray that it never happens to us.(UPDATED AT
11:30 PM ON 12/21/2012 FOR THE WEEK OF 12/24/2012)
Charlie Herman proves a point: sometimes you win by losing
Tuesday night’s school board meeting started out on one
of those feel-good, joyous holiday notes, with AFT president Sharon Marlow
and other teachers handing out tins of homemade fudge and candy, various
board members plopping Christmas cards down in front of microphones and
everyone smiling and laughing,
They even managed to agree on most things, a notable
exception being re-establishing some standing committees that have been the
subject of controversy lately. The board split down the middle on that
question 5-5, so for now there are still no permanent standing committees.
Just when I thought things would pass peacefully into a
silent night, the board’s resident Grinch came through. Eugene Lawson
launched into a stinging rebuke of the teachers’ union, complaining that
previous boards had given away the farm to the teachers and that Director
Donnie Poston was still following the terms of a union contract that was
invalidated by the state legislature, rather than board policy.
Moneybags, speaking the always mysterious accountese
language, tried to explain how shifting positions to different accounts
would cover the need without appropriating more money, but Rector merely
seemed to be flustered by the explanation and ended his inquisition with a
“Bah, Humbug.”
While the school board holiday spirit got dampened a
little by sour grapes, not so at a gathering at the courthouse Thursday. The
occasion was a little retirement party for Charles Herman, who is retiring
from his post as public defender.
There was enough food to strangle a whale and a packed
courtroom to hear all the lawyers, judges, clerks and just plain folks wax
eloquent about Charlie and his service to the community.
Nobody that I heard even mentioned what is surely the one
disappointment in Charlie Herman’s career, when he lost his bid for
re-election as Circuit Court Judge many years ago to Rocky Young.
Young beat him out in a hatchet job campaign, accusing
Judge Herman of being soft on crime with too many people getting probation
or community service instead of hard jail time.
I wander if those same voters
would feel the same way today, as
If you live by the sword, you
die by the sword, as the old saying goes. Rocky Young eventually got his
comeuppance from the voters as well, and feeling rejected, moved back to
Charlie Herman did not. He
remained in
I can recall a conversation I had with late Criminal
Court Judge Lee Asbury some years back, when I was still editor of the
LaFollette Press. Judge Asbury and I, and maybe one or two others were
having one of those pot-bellied stove sessions in his office, where the
Judge would wax eloquent about his favorite subjects - crime, politics, elk
and the Campbell Outdoor Recreation Association.
Somehow, the subject of Rocky Young came up (Lee didn’t
like him much, I gathered) and then Charlie Herman became the topic of
conversation.
“You know, in the end
Enjoy your retirement, Judge Herman. You’ve earned it.
Advice for new UT coach: ‘Keep the alumni sullen but not mutinous’
Some years back, I worked for a newspaper that
covered both Campbell and
Jim had an assistant DA, Janet Hicks, who handled
the lion’s share of the prosecutions. Janet was a competent lawyer, I
suppose, but had the personality of a turnip and was generally unpopular
with attorneys, judges and the media.
I once asked Jim, in an off-the-record session,
how he ended up hiring Janet as his top assistant.
“Well I’ll tell you,” he replied. “I had a court
case once where she was the lawyer on the other side and I won the case. I
figured I needed to hire her since I could beat her in a courtroom.”
The thing about Ramsey was, you never knew for
sure when he was joking.
I tell this story because I was reminded of it
last week when the
In Derek Dooley’s unfortunate tenure as
Tennessee’s coach, he managed to lose a couple of heartbreaking games to LSU
and North Carolina in his first season while his second Volunteer team lost
to Kentucky and managed to beat only one quality opponent all year. Right,
he beat Butch Jones’
Dooley’s third team was so inept that they
reached all new lows on defense and a disheartened team with a coaching
staff that already knew they were on the way out went down to Nashville and
got embarrassed by Vanderbilt.
So Dooley was sent packing before the final game
against
I hope Butch Jones does well at
I suspect, if Jones has a losing season next
year, John Adams, GoVols.com and the rest will start writing his coaching
obituary, which will encourage fans to call for his head, which will make
potential recruits nervous about playing for
With
I wonder if they will give Jones and his staff
time to work until their contracts expire, or ask students and faculty to
subsidize another $10 million buyout package?
UT once had a great All-American lineman named
Herman Hickman who, after playing for General Neyland, went on to a long
coaching career at Yale University, back when the Ivy League still counted
for something in football circles.
Herman was never all of that successful, usually
losing about as many as he won, but he coached Yale for many years. A
curious sports writer once asked him about the secret to his long tenure as
coach.
“I like to keep the alumni sullen but not
mutinous,” Hickman famously replied.
Phillip Fulmer failed to accomplish that feat. He
messed up and won a national championship in 1998 and when he could never
quite equal that accomplishment again, he finally got the axe for failing to
live up to heightened expectations. Derek Dooley never got UT’s program past
the mutinous stage and paid for it. Johnny Majors won an SEC championship
once in awhile, led his team to a minor bowl most years in between and never
put together two losing seasons back-to-back.
He kept us sullen but never mutinous and coached
as long as anyone since General Neyland, a true follower of the Herman
Hickman coaching philosophy. So Butch Jones, a word of advice. Strive
for mediocrity, it’s safer.
Congress, it appears, is striving for mediocrity.
The Republicans are beginning to realize that they, unlike President Obama,
must run for re-election sometime down the line and have the most to lose if
they steer the country over the fiscal cliff.
Hard-nosed TEA Partiers like Jim DaMint of
But Congress continues to baffle me with their
collective buffoonery. The latest? The Senate refused to ratify a United
Nations treaty supporting fair treatment for people with disabilities,
despite the presence of longtime Republican Senator Bob Dole in the chamber.
This is a treaty modeled largely on our own
Americans with Disabilities Act, so why the opposition? Because it is a
United Nations treaty, of course, and all good conservatives in Congress
know that anything coming out of the UN must be a Communist plot, or worse
still, an Obama plot.
Bob Dole’s presence made little difference. This
longtime icon of American conservatives would be judged a wimpy moderate by
today’s TEA Party standards.
Congress would be well advised to follow the
Herman Hickman model and keep the voting public sullen but not mutinous.
Obama’s victory in November is a strong sign that the mutiny is right around
the corner.
Politics smells, corporations take, but only people can love and
give
There
were no bombs, of course, and most likely the crank calls originated in
Some people are desperate for
entertainment, it seems, but not so here in
For anyone truly desperate for entertainment, simply sit
in the courthouse parking lot and watch the excavation progress on the
official county hole in the ground, which may end up being an underground
parking garage, a dungeon for the new county jail or if they hit the water
table first, a really expensive public swimming pool.
I personally think the county missed a great opportunity
to raise funds a couple of months back, when the demolition crews dismantled
the old jail to make space for the aforementioned hole. The county should
have erected bleacher seats and advertised the destruction of what was once
known as the “Bates Motel” because you could check in, but there was no
guarantee you would ever check out.
More than a few former residents might have paid good
money for a comfortable seat to watch the destruction, cheering as each wall
came tumbling down. Sheriff’s deputies could have peddled snacks while old
timers debated who had clocked the most days behind those ancient bars.
Meanwhile Black Friday is behind us and the Christmas
shopping season is in full swing. This year consumers are spending as if
there is no tomorrow, which is good news for retailers and credit card
banks, at least until the bills start showing up in January mailboxes.
By then
we should also know if the donkeys and pachyderms in
For
around a hundred employees at the Merita Bakery in
The company blames the union for refusing to grant
further concessions and staging a crippling nationwide strike. The union
blames corporate greed and points out that while asking workers to accept
further cuts in wages and benefits, large bonuses were being granted to
upper level managers.
While there is usually some truth on both sides of such
disputes, it is rather damning that Hostess asked the bankruptcy courts to
approve large bonuses to top managers so these “crucial” administrators
would stay on board long enough to complete the liquidation of assets.
Even more disgusting, the courts approved the bonuses.
How much expertise does it require to go out of business, for Pete’s sake?
Simply lock the doors, walk away and let your creditors hire people to fight
over the remaining assets.
The fact that Hostess had been taken over by venture
capitalists says it all. Think Bain Capital. Think buy a company in trouble
at fire sale prices, play around with it for a couple of years while
granting huge salaries to CEOs and directors, then liquidate the assets at a
nice profit, leaving creditors and longtime employees out in the cold.
Some people’s misfortune can
be other people’s good fortune, as one
Thanks for reminding us all
that despite fiscal cliffs, nasty politics and greedy corporations, there is
still good in the world. Christmas is not just about Black Fridays, shopping
and holiday stress, but a time to reflect on, as one writer put it, the
“better angels of our nature.”
Joseph and Mary lack a photo ID? Billy Joe
White would ‘have an app for that’
Ah, the good ol’ Tennessee legislature. Just when we
thought, with elections behind us that all the loony entertainment was
over, it is almost time for the General Assembly to reconvene in
Nashville.
A preview of some of the witty, zany fun that is in
store for the pubic this year is already making the rounds of county
courthouses, including our own.
Commissioners on Monday night were presented with a
resolution from the Mayor’s office, presumably drafted by some of our
legislators, supporting a bill to require registration of all adult
guests in motels, hotels and the like. This law, they were told, would
make it easier for law enforcement officials to keep tabs on fugitives,
meth dealers and other evildoers who use motel rooms for their evil
doings.
The bill would require motels to keep the register
of all adult guests, with names, addresses, dates of birth and vehicle
license information. With the notable exception of those people opposed
to further invasion of privacy by the government, this seems pretty
harmless so far, but . . .
Another provision of the bill promoted in the
resolution requires anyone registering for a motel or hotel room to
present a valid state or federal photo ID card, such as a photo driver’s
license.
So, if you’re one of those elderly Tennesseans who
has a non-photo ID, don’t try traveling around the state of Tennessee.
You will find, as Mary and Joseph did, no place at the inn and be forced
to sleep in the stable.
I can also visualize this scenario.
Tired motorist: “I need a room for the night.”
Motel clerk: “Yessir. May I see your photo ID
please.”
“Motel clerk: “Uh, I’m sorry, I need to see a
federal or state issued ID.”
Tired motorist: “That is a federal issued ID. It’s
my Canadian drivers’ license.”
Clerk: “I’m very sorry but that isn’t a valid ID in
Tennessee. I‘m afraid I can’t rent you a room.”
“I just drove all the way from Toronto on my way to
Florida. It’s midnight and I’m falling asleep at the wheel. How far do I
have to drive to find a place where I can stay?”
Motel clerk: “Let’s see. That would be Rossville,
Georgia. It’s only about 150 more miles.”
That proposed law still needs some tweaking before
the GenAss passes it, I suspect. That didn’t keep our own county
commission from considering the resolution, photo ID and all.
Fortunately a handful of the squires had the good sense to be skeptical
and vote against it. The resolution failed by one to gain enough votes
for a majority and Mayor Baird, seemingly surprised, ruled it as failed.
That is the kind of poorly thought out bill that
Chancellor Billy Joe White would take much pleasure in shooting down in
his courtroom. Sadly, Judge White passed away this week following
complications from a stroke.
I will miss Judge White, not least because he was a
fan of my newspaper columns. But he was also a good judge, one who could
be relied upon to rein in government when it overstepped its bounds and
wield a heavy hand if government failed to govern wisely.
My personal highlight of Judge White’s career was
back in the early ‘90s when he was forced to rule on a Campbell County
budget impasse that had delayed the opening of county schools for nearly
two months.
The school board kept presenting a budget that they
felt was a bare bones minimum to keep the quality of schools from
slipping, but the county commission was just as determined to avoid a
hefty tax increase at all costs.
The squires kept sending the budget back,
unapproved, to the school board with one message: “We’re not going to
raise taxes to fund this budget. Lay off teachers, close some schools,
or cut out bus service, whatever you have to do to give us a budget
without a tax increase.”
County Executive David Young finally resigned as
chairman of the commission so he could file a lawsuit against both the
commission and the board, placing the matter in the courts, or rather,
in Judge White’s court.
The Chancery Court Judge heard the various arguments
from attorneys for both sides and then declared, “ I don’t see where you
cannot come to a compromise that will enable Campbell County children to
begin going to school.”
Judge White then instructed the board and the
commission to retire to an adjacent room and come back to him in one
hour with a balanced budget that could be approved.
“If you can’t do it in an hour, we will all go
downstairs where I will have you all locked up for contempt of court
until you do agree on a budget,” the Judge added. “One way or another,
children are going to school in this county come Monday morning.”
Melvin “Doctor No” Boshears admits that this is the
only time in history that he ever voted for a tax increase. The school
board made some concessions while the commission voted a small tax
increase and enacted a $30 wheel tax, and the schools opened on Monday.
Judge White could just as swiftly step on the toes
of local government when it overreached its authority. Several years
later, the Campbell County Board of Education passed a “zero tolerance
policy” that mandated an automatic one year expulsion for students
caught with drugs, drug paraphernalia or alcohol in their possession on
school grounds.
The zero tolerance also extended to cell phones.
Back in those times when cell phones were considered a luxury rather
than a necessity of life, the Board reasoned that the only reason for a
kid to have a personal cell phone was to make drug deals.
It was not long before a child in seventh grade at
Jacksboro Middle School was caught with a cell phone and expelled from
school for a year. When it became known that this child had been given
the phone by his parents, who both worked and needed him to call them
when he needed to be picked up, the board was “sympathetic but zero
tolerance is zero tolerance!”
The parents predictably sued. Judge White heard the
case over in Tazewell, listening patiently to arguments from both sides
before ruling.
“The problem here is a policy that ignores common
sense and a punishment that doesn’t fit the crime,” Billy Joe told the
board, ordering that the child be readmitted to school immediately. He
added to the parents that while their child could return to school, the
cell phone stays at home, or he would find them in contempt of court.
Billy Joe could also be rather outspoken when he was
riled up. Recently, lawyer Dave Dunaway expressed displeasure with the
pace at which some of his workers’ compensation cases were being
processed and set for trial by the Campbell County Clerk & Master’s
office. Lawyer Dave filed a complaint with the court, and asked Judge
White to recluse himself from ruling, since he appointed Clerk & Master
Bill Archer and they were personal friends.
Judge White denied Dunaway’s complaint, and in his
order, handed down one of the most stinging pronouncements on an
individual attorney I’ve ever seen in official court papers.
Judge White stated that he would no longer hear
cases brought before the court by David Dunaway, but would refer all
such cases to another judge. His reason? David Dunaway is “a liar when
under oath and a liar when not under oath,” Judge White wrote in his
order.
As I said earlier, Judge White will be missed,
probably not by David Dunaway, but certainly by the majority of
attorneys who argued before his bench. We can only hope that his
replacement will have the same knack for tempering the letter of the law
with a good dose of common sense, something too often lacking among
those who make the laws. (UPDATED AT
6:00 AM ON 11/23/2012 FOR THE WEEK OF 11/19/2012)
Really want to secede? Just move to
Wow, just when I thought the American people had spoken
and all the election madness was behind us, we have a new wave of insanity
making the news.
I’m
talking about, naturally, the “secession movement” being promoted through
petitions on social media. Apparently some 60,000 Texans have petitioned to
secede from the
These are most likely people who, as I’ve pointed out
earlier, just can’t bear the thought of having a black man in the White
House for four more years. They deny that, of course, instead claiming as
Ron Harwell of the Roane County TEA Party has, that they just can’t take “a
communist sitting in the White House.”
Hmm. John
F. Kennedy was more liberal by far than Obama, but nobody petitioned to
leave the
Well, secession is not an option for these poor deluded
sore losers, since that act was defeated on the battlefield in 1865 and
officially banned by the Supreme Court a few years later.
What a shame. My great-great grandpappy, like those of
most of us who can trace our roots in East Tennessee back to the 1860s,
donned Union blue and shot secessionists on behalf of his country. Might be
fun to follow in his footsteps just once.
I jest,
of course, but one can always dream. Meanwhile, another series of online
petitions have been started urging that anyone signing a secession petition
be deported. Despite the old
I have an
alternate plan that makes better sense. Sell
We can
then erect a border fence and deport all of the secession nuts to
The fact is, there are always a lot of sore losers after
an election, most often heard mouthing off down at the local diner over a
cup of coffee or in the bars and American Legion posts after a beer or
three.
One of the great tragedies of the modern online world is
that social media gives these loud-mouthed loonies a forum and an audience
of millions. The news media picks up on their rants and raves and actually
treats it as “news” while late night TV comedians have more fodder for their
monologues. In the end, they do, however, manage to provide us with cheap
entertainment.
Not so
entertaining is the ongoing tragedy of Big Orange football. Instead of
seceding from the Union,
I never would have thought, back in the glory days of the
late 1960s or the more glorious days of 1998, that the Vols would fall on
such hard times, with three coaches in five years, possibly now four coaches
in six years, and a defense that couldn’t stop a high school team.
The more outspoken critics among the Big Orange Nation
are calling for Derrick Dooley’s scalp, led from the rear by News Sentinel
sports editor John Adams, who has been pouring fuel on the anti-Dooley fire
since the season began.
(I’ve
always suspected Adams, an LSU alumnus, of being a secret mole inserted into
Big Orange Country to disrupt UT football and bring an end to LSU’s “
I’m not so sure that firing
Dooley and searching for yet another miracle worker to stop the bleeding is
such a good idea. If there has ever been a testament to the failure of a
“three years and you’re out” approach to building a football program,
What’s it been? Thirty years, thirty-five? How many
coaches? The Cougars may just now be approaching the point where they can
consider a .500 season as normal rather than a resounding success.
The sad
fact is, UT may have made a mistake in firing Phillip Fulmer in 2008. True,
his program had declined from his 1998 national championship year and he was
having problems beating
UT fans and UT administrators gave Fulmer no time to fix
the problem before turning the program over to Lane Kiffin, who had no
loyalty to the university, no loyalty to the fans and no principles when it
came to NCAA rules.
When
Kiffin left us high and dry to go out and attempt to take
Even the
old single wing
No wonder he was able to turn a 5-5 team into a
championship contender in a mere three years.
When
Dickey abandoned UT to return to his native
Battle probably needed to go, as UT football had steadily
declined under his leadership, but he left his successor, Johnny Majors,
with a program that was only a couple of years removed from ten victories.
Majors,
That new
level became apparent when Majors lost to the likes of Rutgers and Army and
was still struggling to reach an eight-win season or compete with Bear
Bryant’s
Majors finally lost his job to assistant Phil Fulmer, not
so much because the program had been on a decline, which was true, but
because he was laying down hints that he would like Doug Dickey’s job as
Athletic Director. Dickey canned him in self-defense, you might say.
All of
this history is merely to say that UT’s current coach has inherited a
program that has never, since the 1920s, been as far down on its luck. The
rebuilding task faced by Dooley was unprecedented in modern
It is obvious that Dooley or somebody has made a serious
error this year when it comes to the defensive side of the game. Either the
defensive coordinator is the wrong guy, his defensive scheme is unsuited to
the personnel or the talent is lacking.
Whatever
the cause,
Instead,
John Adams will get his wish and
UT administrators need to grow a backbone and at least
give the current coaching staff until the end of their contracts to find
some answers. A few hundred empty seats at games might cost a few bucks, but
not nearly as much as paying off all those coaches.
Meanwhile, I strongly suspect that most of the hotheads
calling for Dooley’s scalp sit at home and watch UT football from the
comfort of their couch rather than supporting the program. If they switch
channels, they won’t be missed.
Quake nothing to worry about, just Kentucky Senator McConnell
blowing his stack
The election is mercifully over, and the American people
have spoken, which leaves a whole lot of Republicans trying to figure out
what, exactly, happened last Tuesday.
Some members of the GOP brain trust are moaning about how
Mitt Romney was obviously not the right candidate, that the GOP had a Romney
problem. I contend that the opposite is true and Mitt Romney had a GOP
problem.
Republicans lost all of the so-called “swing states” except
Hispanic
voters in
Women helped Obama win in Iowa, Virginia, Ohio and
Wisconsin, not surprising since Republican senatorial candidates in Indiana
and Missouri made headlines with their comments about rape, pregnancy and
“God’s will.” Both candidates were legitimately raped by female voters and
can now crawl back underneath their rocks.
The solid Republican South,
aided largely by a healthy dose of racism among white male voters, was the
Republicans’ only bright spot. Racism was not a factor, you say? Wake up. My
hometown of
In 2008,
The Republican Party needs to take note of the fact that
the South lost the Civil War. The GOP isn’t going to win many national
elections with a philosophy designed to win big in the South and alienate
the rest of the country, but that is the way the party seems headed.
The GOP is fast becoming a party of old white guys. That
means they have a corner on most of the money and can inundate us with
negative political advertising, but 2012, if nothing else, shows that you
can’t always buy your way into power.
Even the
GOP message about fiscal conservatism and “what’s good for business is good
for
Moon goes on to explain that much of the difference can
be attributed to the fact that when several Democratic presidents took
office, the stock market was in such bad shape that it had nowhere to go but
up. In other words, the economy under Herbert Hoover had hit rock bottom and
had to improve under FDR, and the economy under George W. Bush had slumped
so badly that it had to improve under Barack Obama.
By contrast, the economy under Bill Clinton was so
healthy at the end of his second term that poor George W. had nowhere to go
but down, while despite all the negative opinions about Jimmy Carter’s
presidency, the economy was strong enough when he left office that it
improved very little during Ronald Reagan’s first four years.
Republican hard-liners stubbornly insist that this election proved nothing,
that Americans basically voted for the status quo, or more gridlock in
The fact is, the Republican-controlled legislatures in
many states did everything possible to insure a Republican victory in 2012,
from voter ID laws designed to hold down voting by minorities and the poor
to re-districting plans tilted to heavily favor Republican candidates to a
Supreme Court decision that allows unlimited corporate spending on political
campaigns.
Nothing worked. The Republicans lost because the GOP has
been hijacked by the extreme right wing of their party, while the majority
of Americans are moderate fence sitters. Democrats allowed their party to
stray too far left in the 1970s, resulting in twelve years of Republican
control until Bill Clinton, a moderate, brought the party back toward the
middle.
Despite all the red-baiting, name-calling and questions
about religion and national origins, Barack Obama is also a moderate, not an
extreme liberal, Democrat.
Republicans have allowed the social conservative,
anti-abortion, anti-gay, anti-immigrant, pro-military wing of their party to
take the GOP too far to the right to suit the tastes of most Americans. They
will continue to lose ground until they wise up and move back to the middle.
Meanwhile, how many of you
felt the 4.3 magnitude earthquake we experienced on Saturday? The epicenter
has been pinpointed in the neighborhood of
The quake, they say, was simply caused by Kentucky
Senator and GOP minority leader Mitch McConnell blowing his stack when he
learned that popular country singer and actress Ashley Judd is thinking
about challenging him for the U. S. Senate in 2014.
Mitch, of course, is that fellow who declared, back in
2008, that the GOP’s primary objective for the next four years would be to
insure that Barack Obama’s presidency was a failure. For the President to
fail would, unfortunately, mean that the nation would also have to fail.
Last time I looked, working to bring down your own nation is considered
“high treason.”
In many
parts of the world, they still line people up against a wall and shoot them
for high treason. Mitch is lucky; he’s just going to be legitimately raped
by the female voters of
New election year slogan: “Climate – the one change you can believe
in”
Mercifully, it is merely one week before Election Day,
and an end to political ads, mailers, robo-calls and pollsters. I’m one of
those old fashioned geezers with a landline in my home and a listing in the
BellSouth directory.
As a result, I get an average of three calls a day from
candidates or groups conducting “unbiased” polls. Since everyone who isn’t
unemployed is generally away from home during the day, they always time
these calls for that exact moment when my dinner is coming out of the oven,
or in the middle of the six o’clock news.
Of course
these calls all involve local races or Congressional races, since both the
Romney and Obama campaigns wrote off
I’m tempted here to offer my own personal predictions on
the outcomes of various races, at the risk that readers will take them as
endorsements. Well, perhaps not. It won’t be much of an endorsement to
predict that several candidates in state legislative races will defeat
“Unopposed.”
As much as I would like to see “Unopposed” win a race
here and there, the odds are against it. “None of the Above” has a better
chance of forging a victory or two here and there, if enough voters write
Mr. Above in on their ballots, but asking for a paper ballot is more trouble
than most people are likely to endure.
But I’ll go out on a limb here and predict “None of the
Above” as the victor in the race for Mayor of LaFollette. Seems a logical
choice to me.
We in
After being exposed as a hypocrite for urging a mistress
to get an abortion while claiming to be a “family values” politician,
DesJarlais has now seen a second former girlfriend come forward who claims
he provided her with prescription drugs.
Still, the Democrats are the fools, presuming that their
candidate can win not by convincing voters that he can give them what they
want, but that he is less immoral than the disgraced incumbent. I’ve got two
words for that approach: “Bill Clinton.”
Voters already assume that most politicians are immoral;
they are more interested in knowing what a particular scumbag, if elected,
is going to do for them.
Romney might have a chance of unseating the incumbent
President, except for one problem – his party includes other candidates such
as Missouri Senator “Legitimate Rape” Akin and Indiana Congressman Mourdock,
who thinks if a woman becomes pregnant due to rape, it’s “What God
intended.”
I predict that Mitt Romney is about to learn the truth of
the old axiom, “If you lay down with dogs, you will get fleas.” The
Republican Party seems Hell-bent on becoming the party of rich old white
men. That might give them a big edge in campaign fundraising, but when it
comes to numbers, women rule.
The
GOP-dominated legislatures in many states, including
It might
do that, along with millions of poor people and minorities without driver’s
licenses or birth certificates (who tend to vote Democratic), some young
people who have yet to obtain driver’s licenses and also tend to vote
Democratic and elderly folks without photo IDs who may be holdover Roosevelt
Democrats. Here in
Here in
This
leads one to suspect that county-issued IDs are also legitimate, and we can
expect more legal appeals as time goes on. Eventually a re-elected President
Barack Obama will get to appoint one more justice to the Supreme Court of
the
Meanwhile, the big winner this election cycle appears to
be Mother Nature, which has delivered another of her numerous messages on
the subject of “Climate Change – the one change you CAN believe in.”
But we already know that climate change is so much
baloney made up by Godless tree-huggers and leftist politicians, don’t we?
There ain’t no such animal. It’s all just part of the natural cycle of
things and just like women who won’t get pregnant when they are raped, it’s
all as God intended it.
Hey, I’m
on the downside of 65. I don’t have to concern myself with the fact that by
2040,
My advice
to you 20-somethings out there is to sell your
Jellico could have
tourism angle, only ‘ghost town’ in eastern
The big news
in these here parts this week was that the City of
Mayor Les Stiers called it “a bill-paying error,” but how
can you possibly call it an error to pay your debts when they are due? The
only error I see is that Jellico has no fund balance to draw upon when
things get tight. With that sort of situation, you can expect more of the
same in the immediate future.
The mayor and city council are moving to come up with
some additional revenue, jacking up garbage collection fees and looking to
sell some city-owned land. That might resolve the immediate crisis, but it
looks like Jellico is suffering the same fate as many other small towns
around the state and nation in this recession.
The straw that broke the
camel’s back for Jellico was probably the bursting of the
Jellico isn’t the only berg
that is suffering in the current economy. LaFollette isn’t exactly the
picture of a thriving metropolis either, while
Sad fact is, if Jellico and
We already live in a friendly climate, so folks hang on,
even after the economic engine that powered the town has run out of gas.
Coal mining boom towns don’t disappear overnight like they do out west. They
just shrivel up and die a slow death.
The answer to this inevitable decline is not easy. It
takes leadership that can recognize changes and adapt to them. It takes both
business and political leaders who will sit down and work together to
utilize a community’s strengths and address its weaknesses. Oh, and it takes
a touch of good luck.
Jellico and
But I-75 in a sense was also a curse for both towns. It
made it too easy for city leaders to sit back and expect retail trade from
the interstate to solve all their financial challenges. Downtown is decaying
and stores are boarded up? Bound to happen, the town is just moving out to
the interstate exit. No need to plan.
Too many communities also cling too long to a past that
isn’t going to return. King Coal is dead. Even if somehow a new technology
made it possible to develop Tennessee’s modest remaining reserves of mostly
high-sulfur coal, it would not be in the same way as in the past. Mining
jobs would be few and far between.
The healthiest communities are those with diversified
economies based on a balance of industry, retail trade, transportation,
services and tourism It’s easier when a community finds that balance from
the beginning and much more difficult when a community must reinvent itself,
but not impossible.
It does take unity, determination and the setting aside
of petty political feuding. Unfortunately, the only commodity that most
small towns have in abundance is petty politics that divides rather than
unites.
Getting Jellico’s politicians to work together? Might be
easier to just become a ghost town, at least that would attract tourists.
Speaking of dividing, the presidential race is coming
down to a climax as early voting has begun. After two presidential debates
and countless hours of political advertisement, it looks to me as if we can
predict a winner: Big Bird.
Yes folks, the latest news is that following Mitt
Romney’s statement that if elected, he will cut funding for public
television, Big Bird Halloween costumes are flying off the shelves at
astounding rates. It is practically impossible to find a costume of the
popular Sesame Street character anywhere across the country and
manufacturers are pushing production to take advantage of this unprecedented
demand before its too late.
In a totally unscientific poll that I conducted this week
with parents waiting in line to pick up kids at Valley View Elementary
School and among old timers at both the Hardee’s Breakfast Club and liar’s
bench outside Scottie’s, the results are clear.
If the election were held this week, Mitt Romney would
receive 23 percent of the vote, Barack Obama 16 percent and Big Bird 58
percent. The remaining three percent were unaware that there is an election
this year.
Meanwhile, leave it to irreverent TV political pundit
Stephen Colbert to coin the quote of the week. Colbert, commenting on the
revelation that Congressman Scott DesJarlais, formerly representing Campbell
County, had urged a mistress to get an abortion while touting his
anti-abortion family values, had this to say about DesJarlais:
“He is still adamantly against abortion, except when it
endangers the political life of the father.”(UPDATED AT
2:00 PM ON 10/19/2012 FOR THE WEEK OF 10/15/2012)
County commission not the only thing going to the dogs this week
Some
years ago, before
The comparison to the notorious Nazi World War II death
camp was accurate, considering many animals were being put down as soon as
they were brought in by the animal control officers, without waiting to see
if owners might come searching for missing pets.
There were even reports of animals being dispatched not
with chemical injections but bullets, and unceremoniously dumped in nearby
brush piles.
That sort of thing was supposed to end with the
establishment of a county animal control program and modern shelter. Late
commissioner Adrion Baird, whose name is honored by the shelter, was one of
many Campbell Countians who worked to see an effective control program that
would deal with stray animals in a humane manner and encourage adoption and
an effective spay & neutering program.
Complaints from a newly-formed group called “Friends of
Campbell County Animals” reveal that the county is a long way from realizing
those goals, with 80 percent of the animals brought into the shelter being
killed, many as soon as the mandatory three-day waiting period expires.
Bad blood exists between shelter personnel and animal
lovers who would volunteer their time and even money to encourage more
adoptions and fewer kills, to the point where the Friends group is turning
to the county commission and news media to make changes.
After listening to the complaints and suggestions for
change that “Friends” spokesperson Michelle Davis laid out to commissioners
Monday night, I think I can put my finger on much of the problem – money.
The vision of the early supporters of the animal shelter
included a countywide pet registration program that would help fund the
animal control program as well as provide owner identification of animals
and a low-cost optional spaying & neutering program.
Alas, many
What I see now is an animal control program that is more
about money than it is about animals. The Friends group complains that the
shelter charges $95 to anyone wishing to adopt a pet, to cover a $15
adoption fee and the balance for spaying and neutering, and that is much
higher than what veterinary clinics charge for the same service. Money.
They also protest that the
Another
complaint? While we cannot afford to keep
So what is the answer to this problem? It would seem to
be more funding from the county, either from a registration fee or
taxpayers’ dollars, in order to take money pressures off the shelter’s
operations. Ain’t gonna happen, pilgrims.
But some things can be done to improve the situation.
Mayor William Baird has made some tentative steps toward improving the
adoption rate, agreeing to utilize social media sites to showcase adoptable
animals and looking into Channel 12’s “Green Screen” as a possible way to
expose cute puppy and kitten pictures to the public.
Finding a way to resolve the bad blood between the animal
lovers in the Friends group and the shelter personnel would be a logical
next step. Potential volunteers need to understand the pressures on shelter
personnel to keep the population of animals at manageable levels. That may
mean putting down dogs and cats after a few days rather than having all
animals surviving for longer periods, but living in overpopulated and
underfed squalor.
At the same time, the
shelter’s paid staff needs to take advantage of, and welcome, volunteer
help. If they get a little edgy over volunteers wanting to save every animal
they can, the shelter employees might do well to remember who is responsible
for their jobs in the first place. Without the pressure from animal lovers,
there would be no
Now it has come to light that DesJarlais, while promoting
himself as a pro-life, pro-family conservative, encouraged a mistress during
one of his numerous extramarital affairs to seek an abortion.
I can respect the opinions of both those who support a
woman’s right to choose and those who feel that abortions are wrong. There
appears to be little middle ground and room for compromise in this debate,
but at least proponents on both sides are sincere in their beliefs.
I cannot abide a hypocrite, and DesJarlais is a hypocrite
with a capital H. His opponent, alas, is little better, condemning
DesJarlais while his own record on abortion votes in the legislature is
spotty at best. Voters would probably do well to elect “None of the Above”
to that congressional seat.
Fortunately for
Our choice in the upcoming congressional election rests
between an unabashed liberal, Dr. Mary Hedrick, and a rock hard conservative
in Fleischman. Whichever way you lean, you can at least know that both
candidates are being honest about their positions and not pandering for
votes by saying whatever they think we want to hear.
Jellico,
White Oak and environs were moved into Congressman Jimmy Duncan’s district.
Jimmy is arguably the most conservative Tennessean in Congress, but he’s no
hypocrite.
The
Before more damage could be done to UT’s reputation, Pat
Summit released a statement saying she was not forced to resign and it’s all
a big misunderstanding. Maybe, or maybe Pat is falling on her sword for the
good of the university and longtime assistant Holy Warlick.
It was painfully clear to all of us Lady Vol fans last
year that there were times when Pat wasn’t fully into the games, that her
Alzheimers was taking a toll and Warlick was really in charge of the
courtside action.
That
being said, Pat Summit is the reason that
The
If, as Jennings alleges, Hart did in fact tell Pat Summit
that her physical condition was too serious for her to continue as head
coach and that she must step down, I’ve got only one thing to say: “Dave,
you know how to find the highway back to Alabama and if not, there are a lot
of fans willing to show you the way.”
John Belushi wasn’t dead, just moved to UT’s fraternity row
Confession time. I stayed home Monday morning and watched
the special Today Show college broadcast from UT. I could point out that I’m
nursing a bad cold, had plenty of paperwork to do here at the house and
decided to stay out of the chilly rain, but I would be lying through my
teeth.
I do have plenty of work to keep me right here at my
computer, and am still nursing the final stages of a roaring head cold, but
I couldn’t resist watching the Hoda and Kathie Lee Big Orange scream fest
from UT’s “Hill.”
I really, really hoped that somehow, the disgraced frat
boys from Pi Kappa Alpha would pull a true “Animal House” moment and try to
sabotage the television program in revenge for losing their charter. That
would be worth watching – a John Belushi “Bluto” look-alike springing from
the shadows dressed in pirate garb to kidnap Kathie Lee in mid-sip.
Didn’t happen. Not only did the Pikes keep a low profile
but Kathie Lee isn’t nearly as big a lush as she is portrayed on Saturday
Night Live, and not half as entertaining.
UT should
be thankful that it was the Today Show on campus and not Jimmy Fallon or Jay
Leno. The university and
Depraved might be putting it mildly. I have heard of just
about every wacky way that human beings have invented to get high, but
ingesting alcohol through the rectum to get higher faster might be hitting
an all new low for alcohol abuse. It certainly wins high marks for
stupidity. The kidneys are there for a reason, you know, to keep drunks from
poisoning themselves among other things.
The one frat brother who ended up in the hospital and had
his stupidity immortalized thanks to social media is actually quite
fortunate that the jokes about him are not post mortem.
When I first read about the fraternity’s “butt chugging”
party, however, my reaction was “Pi Kappa Alpha? Of course, who else?”
The
comparisons to the “Animal House” movie are most appropriate in the case of
the Pikes, who had a reputation as the party house as far back as my college
days in the 19th
Century. Well, maybe not that far back. I entered UT as a freshman in 1965,
and Pi Kappa Alpha was “the” fraternity to pledge if you wanted to be cool
and party on, dude.
Being neither cool nor
independently wealthy, I chose not to pledge a fraternity at all, but many
of my dormitory mates went through rush week, became pledges and endured the
ruthless hazing that was part of fraternity life in those days. A couple of
my fellow
In those days, UT’s neat fraternity park had yet to be
constructed. Fraternity row was basically a collection of former private
homes in a two-block area adjacent to Hess and Melrose Halls. Directly
across the street from my dorm sat the Sigma Nu House.
Sigma Nu was considered the nerd fraternity on campus.
Most frats bred future lawyers, businessmen and politicians. Sigma Nu bred
shy bespeckled guys with slide rules hanging from their belts, the type that
would eventually put man on the moon and invent the Internet. Think George
W. Bush or Donald Trump versus Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg.
All of the other frats looked upon anyone belonging to
Sigma Nu with disgust and loathing, while the Pikes reserved a special level
of hatred for the nerds. One early morning, somebody knocked on the front
door of the Sigma Nu house. When a sleepy Nubian opened the door, the nozzle
of a fire hose was thrust into the house and the water turned on full force
from the nearby hydrant.
The masked “firemen” kept the hose trained until
furniture, fraternity brothers, stereo systems and wine decanters were all
washing out the back door. Sigma Nu, in effect, was cleansed of its sin,
which was being un-cool. The university investigated, of course, but found
no definite evidence of those responsible and chalked it off as “a
fraternity prank.”
Everybody knew the Pikes were the culprits. They were the
only fraternity well connected enough to get access to a fire department
hose and hydrant and crazy enough to use them. Years later, individual Pike
members would eventually confess to the deed after safely graduating to the
esteemed position of “alumni with bank accounts.”
The
university might have shrugged off the cleansing of Sigma Nu as a prank, but
the National Park Service took a less forgiving stance when one of their
Civil War cannons went missing from
As the ‘60s moved on into the early ‘70s, fraternities
became less dominant in campus social life. During the pot-fueled Hippie
era, fraternities in general became “un-cool” remnants of an earlier age.
They survived, however, and eventually became cool again. Unfortunately,
judging from recent events they don’t seem to have matured much.
While UT fraternities go out of their way to join wacko
politician Stacy Campfield in making our area a national laughing stock,
Kathy Lee and Hoda should have taken their road show north to Caryville this
past weekend.
There, at
the Louie Bluie Festival, the Today Show could have received a better lesson
in what makes
And for the first time in a couple of years, the weather
cooperated fully. Two years ago the festival was held in June and we learned
the hard way that summer’s 90-dregree heat is coming around earlier these
days. Last year it was held in October and we learned that winter’s chilly
weather is coming earlier as well. Late September, however, turned out to be
almost perfect, a little cloudy early with a slight chance of rain that
stayed away and temperatures that were just right
I volunteered for an early shift and hung around to hear
some music until the cold bug wore me down. By early afternoon the three
performance tents were packed, eateries and craft booths were swamped and
vehicles were stacked up in every available space. Attendance appeared
headed for five figures before the day’s end.
Some
members of the county commission have been talking about how
After this past Saturday I can
only repeat that question. Why would we want to organize a fall festival to
compete with our own fall festival? Louie Bluie is the real McCoy,
folks. We’re not likely to create anything that can top it for
participation, support, or publicity. Let’s work harder to make it even
better, if that’s possible, instead of seeking to divert support from
something that clearly works well.
(UPDATED AT
6:00 AM ON 10/02/2012 FOR THE WEEK OF 09/24/2012)
Time honored tradition - making mole hills from which to build
mountains
Campbell County’s commissioners, having no weighty,
history-making decisions to make, on Monday night did what they have done
best over the past thirty years or so and constructed mole hills so they can
proceed to make mountains of them.
One good example was a budget amendment to make possible
the purchase of a couple of new garbage trucks and some containers for the
Sanitation Department.
Since the squires chose to hold the line on a tax
increase and additional spending this year, they face the challenge of
keeping the ship of government from sinking when it springs a few leaks here
and there. One leak appears to be a couple of the trucks used to pick up
garbage from the county’s convenience centers for transfer to larger tucks
bound for the landfill at Chestnut Ridge.
One of those trucks, Sanitation Supervisor Don Boshears
told squires, is in such poor shape that they restrict it to runs close to
the garage so the mechanics won’t have so far to go to patch it up during
the frequent break-downs.
At a budget committee session, squires nixed one proposal
to buy replacement trucks on credit and save money to pay the bonds off by
closing convenience centers on Saturdays. Finance Director Moneybags Marlow
then worked up an alternate plan, to pay off the notes by using the money
each year normally reserved for capital projects in the sanitation budget.
Squires were uncomfortable with that plan as well,
worried that there would be no money left when a capital expense, such as a
new garbage truck, needs to be funded in the future.
So let me see if I’ve got this straight: the county
shouldn’t use the capital outlay funds to pay for garbage trucks because we
might need that money later, to pay for garbage trucks. Ohhkay.
Predictably, what the commissioners could agree on was a
field trip, as the environmental committee and other interested parties plan
to go out and inspect the questionable trucks and see for themselves if they
are in as bad a condition as Don claims they are.
We’ll see if school teachers, clerical workers and
businessmen can see something that the mechanics have missed, I suppose. Or
maybe it’s just a good excuse for postponing the inevitable in hopes that
something good will happen, such as one of the trucks being swallowed by a
sinkhole so the insurance will pay for a replacement.
Another more or less routine piece of business stirred up
a minor fluff when Mayor William Baird presented his list of committee
assignments for the commission. It was pretty much a carbon copy of last
year’s list, with the addition here and there of newcomer Wendell Bailey and
deletion of retired commissioner Melvin Boshears.
Thomas Hatmaker, the commission’s perennial squeaky
wheel, was unhappy with the list and asked to be added to both the emergency
management and environmental committees, claiming, “I always attend their
meetings and give input anyway, but don’t have a vote.”
The committees that have oversight over the ambulance
service and the sanitation department? I can’t imagine why Mayor
William would leave Thomas off those two committees.
The mayor refused to add Thomas’s name before the
commission voted to approve all assignments, but Thomas simply offered a
motion after the list was approved to add his name. Everybody except the two
squires from Jellico – J. L. Davis and Alvin Evans – voted “yes.” Translate
that vote as “I wish I could get out of all these danged committee meetings
and here this fool wants more of ‘em. More power to him.”
So every committee now has five members except the
aforementioned emergency management and environmental services, which have
six, while Thomas Hatmaker now sits on six committees, which is more in line
with the average. Five other squires sit on six committees, including
newcomer Bailey. A couple, David Adkins and Bob Walden, are on seven, while
most of the others are assigned to five.
These numbers don’t include the Budget & Finance
Committee, which by statute includes every member of the commission.
If one considers having to attend committee meetings as a
good thing, I suppose an argument could be made that the Mayor had
short-changed Squire Hatmaker, placing him on only four committees, a couple
of which meet only once in a blue moon.
A stronger argument could be made that the Mayor’s
selections exhibit a bit of good ol’ boy sexism. Marie Ayers and Beverly
Hall were the only squires to be assigned to only three committees. Marie is
chairwoman of the Budget & Finance Committee, but every commissioner sits on
that committee automatically, and the commissioners, not the mayor, selected
Marie to be the chair. Sue Nance was named to five committees, the low end
of the average.
So the big debate at this month’s commission meeting
involved assignment to jobs that most everyone tries to figure a way out of.
As I said earlier, mole hills, of which mountains are made.
On the
national scene, the big news, now that the protesters in the
In case you’ve been vacationing at the International
Space Station and missed it, Mitt told GOP contributors at a presumably
private affair earlier this year that he didn’t concern himself with the 47
percent of Americans who don’t pay taxes, consider themselves to be victims
on the government dole and will vote for Obama anyway.
One would imagine that all the retired Republicans on
social security are not amused, but I doubt that the statement will change
many minds. Republicans are going to vote for a Republican and Democrats are
going to vote for a Democrat, regardless of how poor the candidate.
Most young people and
minorities are going to vote for Obama, regardless of how high the
unemployment rate is on Election Day. Racists will vote against Obama, even
if unemployment hits an all-time low and Al Qaeda announces that it is
defeated and throwing in the towel the week before the election. That leaves
us Whigs to decide the outcome.
School board hears a clucking sound? Chickens are coming home to
roost
The film, a low budget attack on the Prophet Mohammed and
the Islamic religion, appears to have been produced by a shady character of
Egyptian ancestry who is a follower of the Coptic Christian religion. He and
his supporters apparently wanted to reach a large segment of the Muslim
world by putting out an inflammatory trailer over the Internet.
It
worked. Muslims in over a half dozen countries have taken to the streets,
shouting their “Death to
Politicians simply can’t help themselves, but continue to
be politicians under any and all circumstances. Forget seeking any real
solutions to the problem. It is more important to put the right spin on
things and go after those undecided voters.
The
sobering fact is that it does not take much to encourage crowds to storm the
streets in the Muslim world chanting “Death to
We simply
have to recognize that we are not liked in the Muslim world, period. Even
our supposed allies, such as the president of
As long
as we continue to be a staunch ally of
For the
longest time, through the 1950s into the ‘70s. we could hang back, provide
the bombs and bullets and let the Israelis do the fighting. We guaranteed a
steady supply of Middle Eastern oil just by supporting a few selected
despots such as the royal family of
The
increase of international terrorism beginning in the 1970s has changed all
that, forcing the
Obama was
right in his decision to pull our soldiers out of
We could
probably end a lot of the anti-American sentiment in the Muslim world by
taking a hard line with
We won’t
do that, of course, and it probably wouldn’t work anyway. The Israelis would
simply say, “OK. We’ve already got the bomb. If the
There are
probably still a few isolationists in
We won’t do that either. Too many oil sheiks have bought
too many shares of stock in American companies and our own economy depends
too much on how well European and Asian economies are doing, economies
dependent upon Middle Eastern oil.
The sad fact is, in this increasingly complex and
economically interwoven world, there are no easy answers. The “Arab Spring”
applauded by so many around the world as a sign of hope that Middle Eastern
countries would replace authoritarian dictators with western-style
democracies has an ugly downside – weak governments increasingly at the
mercy of mobs in the streets.
In my view, the most sobering thing about the current
violence is that it took so little to set it off. Perhaps the producer of
that controversial film really is a Coptic Christian who hates Muslims, but
he could just as easily be an agent of Al Qaeda who hates Americans.
If our
terrorist enemies want to stir up massive anti-American sentiment around the
Muslim world, it is far too easy to do. A low budget film lampooning the
Muslim religion traced to the
One thing we can all do is show a little more tolerance
right here at home. There is entirely too much anti-Muslim sentiment in this
country, against American Muslims who have nothing to do with the violence
in foreign lands. Hatred only begets more hatred.
Here on the home front,
The school board, meanwhile, left a room filled with
citizens waiting around Tuesday night for 45 minutes while they held a “five
minute” private executive session with attorney Dail Cantrell at the
beginning of the meeting. Wouldn’t be so bad, but this is the second
consecutive month that this has happened.
I suggested to new board chairman Josh Parker that
perhaps the attorney wouldn’t mind waiting until the board had concluded its
other business before having his executive session. He is, after all, paid
to attend the meetings while members of the public certainly have better
things to do than admire the paint job in the courtroom.
I pointed out a couple of weeks back that citizens
attending school board meetings or watching the telecast probably don’t get
much enlightenment anyway, as much of their business appears to be hashed
out at committee meetings and simply rubber stamped on a consent agenda
without discussion at meetings.
Anyone wishing to see a list of those “consent” items
could always ask for a copy of the agenda, of course. But now the board has
decided to go paperless and a printed copy of the agenda is no longer
available to the public. We members of the media can always ask to have the
documents emailed to us before meetings but that doesn’t help the general
public.
The Campbell County Board of Education, alas, has long
had a culture of sharing as little as possible with the public. Over a
decade ago, I once wandered into a Jellico restaurant for a bite of lunch to
discover nearly the entire school board holding an unannounced meeting. They
all got up and left as soon as I walked into the room.
Those people are long departed and the current board has
simply inherited that culture, but they continue to violate the spirit, if
not the letter, of the state’s open meetings law. One of the items on the
board’s not-so-public agenda Tuesday night was to eliminate their standing
committees.
Not only was too much public business being conducted in
non-public settings, but it appears that the board’s own policies restrict
committees to specific purposes and don’t allow permanent standing
committees.
My deep throat contacts within the school department tell
me that some unfortunate comments uttered by a board member about a school
employee at one of the aforementioned committee meetings has resulted in a
formal complaint. A hearing officer may take none too kindly to the fact
that the meeting was illegal to begin with.
Although Tuesday night’s
executive session was held in private, I thought I heard clucking sounds
coming out of the room at one point. Obviously the chickens have come home
to roost.
Answer to
The donkeys finished their coronation
Thursday night, with President Barack accepting the party’s nomination. I am
still hoping to live long enough to see an incumbent President show up at
the convention and announce, “After giving it considerable thought, I’ve
decided that things are too bad and the thankless American people just want
somebody to blame it on, so I’m out of here. Ya’ll nominate the vice
president or some governor or the washroom attendant, I don’t care.”
Lyndon B. Johnson is the only Prez in my lifetime to
announce he wouldn’t run for re-election, but LBJ ruined all the fun by
bowing out on television early in the primary season. Would have been so
much more entertaining if he had strung the public and the news media along
until the convention, then landed a bombshell.
Ah well, one can always hope. At the same time, I’m just
about sick to death of all politicians of either stripe. Friday the dreaded
jobs report came out. The economy only added around 85,000 new jobs in
August, far short of the 200,000 needed to lower the unemployment rate,
which remains above eight percent.
What did Romney and his Republican supporters do? They
were predictably overjoyed because now Romney can keep hammering away at
Obama and the Democrats on the sour economy.
I’m sorry folks, but why should we trust somebody as our
leader who is happy that millions of Americans are out of work?
Not that the Democrats are any better. Bill Clinton
unseated President Bush the elder back in 1992 with his slogan “It’s the
economy, stupid!”
Fact is, whichever party is out of power sits around
cheering for the country to go to Hell so they can get back into power. What
was it Kentucky Senator and Republican majority leader Mitch McConnell said
four years ago? “Our number one priority is to see that Barack Obama is not
re-elected.”
O.K. Mitch, so your number one priority was to see Obama
fail, which since he is President, means your number one priority was to see
the country fail. The Pachyderms almost pulled it off, too. They refused to
raise the debt limit, taking our nation to the edge of fiscal default,
unless the Democrats agreed to a bipartisan commission to draw up a plan for
lowering the deficit. Then they refused to go along with the commission’s
recommendations because they included higher taxes on the wealthy.
That means we’re pretty much back where we started,
facing another fiscal cliff early next year because the debt limit was not
raised significantly enough to take us forward more than a year or so. And
we face all those mandatory budget reductions that go into effect because
the deficit commission report was rejected, reductions that will put
hundreds of thousands more Americans out of work.
We should
simply have let the country default on its debts last year, I suppose. We
could all be treated to the spectacle of watching the Chinese dismantle the
Or . . . we could do what some politicians like John
McCain seem to think would be the answer to all our problems and start a
couple more wars. At least the people who work for the companies making
bombs and body bags would still have jobs.
Oh, I
forgot. Taxpayers have to pay for those wars. That’s one of the reasons
we’re in the deficit mess we’re in to begin with. Eleven years of continuous
war in
I honestly don’t believe that any politicians have an
answer for what ails us, because what ails us is politicians, whether donkey
or pachyderm. Nobody believes in the art of compromise these days; it’s all
“my way or the highway.”
The TEA Party crowd feels taxed enough already and wants
government off their backs. But they do want good roads to drive their
pick-ups on, a billion-dollar border fence to keep all the wetbacks out and
a few more billion dollars spent on prisons and more cops to keep those
unruly radical poor in check.
The liberals don’t know what they want and the
Republicans just want to be back in power. Oh, and maybe a few more tax
breaks for millionaires so they can become billionaires a little quicker.
May I once more suggest an alternative? The Whig Party
appears to be our only hope. First of all, Whig politicians have not become
corrupt, because there are no Whig politicians. Secondly, you can’t blame
any of our current problems on the Whigs because the party disintegrated
after the election of 1860.
Third, and most importantly, the Whigs were the very
definition of the word “compromise,” something Washington is in dire need of
these days. Henry Clay of Kentucky was the great Whig icon, along with
Daniel Webster, and together they crafted several compromises that kept the
country from falling apart over slavery. Clay is known to history as the
“Great Compromiser.”
Actually, their tendency to compromise had much to do
with the demise of the Whig Party, that and the fact that the anti-slavery
abolitionists in the North and the slave-holding gentry who controlled the
South were much like the conservatives and liberals of today – “my way or
the highway,” or in their case “my way or civil war.”
The last Whig President, Millard Fillmore, put the power
of the White House behind what became known as the “Compromise of 1850,”
securing peace between North and South for a few more years until ol’ Honest
Abe was elected.
That compromise, like many, satisfied no one completely
but it did avoid war for a time. Poor Millard outraged the Southern
Democrats, who wanted to be able to take their slaves with them when they
immigrated to California, and he outraged the Northern Whigs, who wanted to
draw a line at the Texas-Louisiana border and allow no slavery in the
American West.
Alas, the Whig Party power brokers refused to nominate
their own President for re-election and Millard Fillmore retreated to the
obscurity of retirement. Well, almost. He came out of retirement four years
later as a candidate for President under the banner of the “Know Nothing
Party.” They knew one thing – they couldn’t elect Millard to the White
House.
The Whig Party enjoyed a brief, but obscure role in
American history. The first Whig President, William Henry Harrison, holds
the record for the shortest tenure in the White House. William Henry caught
a cold at his inauguration on a blustery early spring day and three weeks
later died of pneumonia.
Vice President John Tyler, known thereafter as “His
Accidentcy,” was the first Vice President to assume the mantle of power
through the death of a President. His stay in the White House was likewise
brief, as the Whigs expelled him from the party before his term in office
expired.
The last elected Whig President was General Zachary
Taylor, the Mexican War hero. “Old Rough and Ready” might have done great
things, but nobody will ever know. Taylor became ill and died a year into
his first term in the White House, leaving the thorny job of crafting a
compromise that would save the Union to his Vice President, the
aforementioned Millard Fillmore.
Why should this history lesson be of interest to us here
in Campbell County? Well, for one thing, East Tennessee Republicans aren’t
really Republicans at all, but Whigs. When Abraham Lincoln defeated Democrat
Stephen Douglas and Southern Democrat John Breckinridge for the White House
in 1860, East Tennessee overwhelmingly supported John Bell, the last Whig to
run for President.
Since the Whig Party vanished after the Civil War, East
Tennessee Whigs had no choice but to throw their support behind the party of
Lincoln, rather than the Southern Democrats dominated by that bunch of
ex-Confederates over in West Tennessee.
If you doubt my word, just look at some of our East
Tennessee Republican leaders. Lamar Alexander? A Republican who supports
environmental causes, wants to restrict mountaintop strip mining and is big
on spending money for education, not mainstream conservative stances at all.
Governor Bill Haslim? He has outraged some conservative
Republicans in Middle Tennessee by leaving gays and (gasp!) Democrats in a
number of state jobs and appointing a Muslim woman to a position in the
Department of Economic Development. The fact that she is a Tennessee-born
Muslim woman seems to have made little difference to the pachyderms calling
for Bill’s scalp.
Shucks, Bill even appointed Madeline Rogero, his former
Democratic opponent, to a job in his administration when he was Mayor of
Knoxville, helping Madeline secure the Mayor’s office for herself a few
years later.
Knoxville Congressman John Duncan, who is generally the
very definition of “conservative,” outraged many Republicans and President
Bush the younger by refusing to go along with the war in Iraq, saying it was
a tremendous waste of money.
Right here closer to home, State Senator Mike Williams of
Maynardville, who once represented Campbell County, outraged the new
majority State Senate Republicans from Middle and West Tennessee by
compromising to support Lieutenant Governor John Wilder, a Democrat, when
the Republicans tried to oust him.
For this betrayal of the GOP, Williams was tossed from
the party. That was the only way the Republicans could get rid of him, since
his home district voters liked the way he did things and would never have
voted against Williams in a Republican Primary.
The reason, my friends, that these East Tennessee
Republicans seem out of step with the state and national GOP is simple.
They’re not Republicans at all, but Whigs.
So my answer to the gridlock
in Washington is simple: revive the Whig Party and elect a Whig to the White
House. If we aren’t satisfied with the job they do, we won’t have to suffer
long. Whigs are notorious for being short-term Presidents.
(UPDATED AT
6:00 PM ON 09/09/2012 FOR THE WEEK OF 09/03/2012)
A country where it’s easier to buy an automatic rifle than to cast a
vote?
The GOP convention successfully dodged Hurricane Issac
and Mitt Romney received his coronation with only minor hiccups here and
there, such as Clint Eastwood’s conversation with a chair and Vice President
wannabee Ryan’s little problem with accuracy.
But then, since when has any politician let a little
thing like accuracy or the facts stand in the way of a good speech?
Now it’s the donkeys’ turn to dominate prime time TV and
I’m sure Joe Biden is up to the challenge of making at least as big an a**
out of himself as anyone in the Republican Party.
Of course here on the home front, Republicans wishing to
make horse’s rumps out of themselves will have to get in line behind Stacy
Campfield. Stacy has managed to make quite a name for himself of late, even
being featured by a national magazine.
Tennesseans, of course, have for decades been featured in various national
publications. Howard Baker’s photographs made
Photography
Magazine and Tennessee Conservationist.
Al Gore has been featured in Nature,
Audubon and most
scientific journals. Pat Summit has more than once been a
Sports Illustrated cover
girl. Only Stacy Campfield, however, has managed to make it as a subject of
Psychology Today.
The
voters of opulent
Less entertaining are the myriad of voter ID laws that
have been passed around the country by Republican-controlled state
legislatures, including our own.
Now I have no problem with political parties pulling
every hat trick they can in their quest for power. Re-districting voting
blocks to favor the party in power is an old and time-honored practice on
both sides of the political aisle. Exaggerations, misconceptions and
outright lies by politicians are as American as apple pie.
I draw the line, however, with attempts to deny people
their right to vote. That is what the voter ID laws are all about, making it
prohibitively difficult for the poor, the elderly and minorities to cast
their votes.
Voter fraud? Bull. You can count the number of instances
on one hand where Tennesseans tried to vote who are ineligible. Illegal
immigrants? They have no intention of attracting attention to themselves by
trying to vote illegally.
No, the majority of accusations of voter fraud that I can
recall don’t involve voters, but election officials, from the dimpled chat
uproar that gave George Bush the election in Florida, all the way back to
the missing ballot box that reappeared in time to give a young Lyndon B.
Johnson victory in his first Texas congressional election.
The Battle of Athens shortly
after World War II had nothing to do with ineligible voters attempting to
cast ballots, but a corrupt
Returning WW II veterans seized the National Guard armory, blasted the
crooked sheriff and his cronies out of the courthouse and didn’t stop
chasing him until he reached the
Fortunately, the federal courts will have the last word on most of these
recent voter ID laws. Two federal three-judge panels have already shot down
both the voter ID law and the congressional re-districting plan passed by
the
I predict that most will either be struck down or states
will be forced to make photo IDs much more accessible and at no additional
cost in order to stand the constitutional smell test. As one political
cartoon I noticed said, “You have to wonder about a country where it’s
easier to get an automatic rifle than it is to cast a vote.”
While our erstwhile leaders seem intent on increasing
security of the ballot box, they can’t even insure the security of nuclear
weapons at Y-12.
I notice that while various government commissions have
criticized everything from upper level management to maintenance of security
cameras and alarms, the only person actually fired for the recent security
breach at Y-12 was the guard who finally did respond to alarms and catch the
three protesters.
His sin was apparently that he treated the Catholic nun
and two old men with kid gloves after he found out who they were, rather
than slamming them to the ground, pummeling them with his nightstick and
cuffing their unconscious bodies together. For that, the guard lost his job
while the higher ups just got transferred around to other positions.
The government appears poised to
throw the book at the three elderly peace protesters, but we might consider
giving them medals instead, for exposing the flaws in nuclear weapon
security before somebody named Osama tried the same trick.
GOP, like Veep Joe Biden, should stay out of storm’s path and not
tempt fate
Ho hum. The big commission brouhaha over the budget was a
non-starter Monday night, leaving all of us media types and other observers
with little in the way of entertainment value.
The squires managed to find another way to come up with
matching funds to earn the federal grant for an industrial park railroad
spur in Jellico, and passed the budget as advertised, without a tax
increase.
With no fireworks to report, our two county newspapers
turned to some investigative journalism for a change, both featuring
articles that I found both interesting and informative.
The Press carried a front page article on the county’s
tax equalization board, which rolled back the property tax appraisal on
Emerson Properties by enough to cost the county around 50 grand in potential
tax revenue.
Emerson last year bought out much of what had been
Villages of Norris Lake, one of those optimistic high end developments that
took it on the chin when the real estate bubble burst in the past few years.
The new owners lost little time in appealing the appraisals placed on these
lakeside and lake view lots when the last state property reappraisal was
conducted, claiming that they were grossly over-valued.
The local board agreed, but may have gone overboard in
lowering values on some lots by nearly 90 percent. The board was also
inconsistent, in that another property owner with lots in the same
development had its appeal denied. Property Assessor Brandon Partin appears
to feel it was too much of a tax break, and says he plans to appeal the
decision to the state board of equalization.
The SOCM
organization, famous or infamous depending on one’s point of view for its
opposition to strip mining, actually got its start back in 1971 when a
handful of mountain residents in
They failed to budge the local boards of equalization,
but won big at the state level, resulting in coal lands being reappraised
across the state to reflect more accurately the true value of the mineral
wealth beneath the surface.
This took a great deal of courage by this handful of
people, many of them long gone. The land companies wielded tremendous power,
both at the courthouse but especially up in the mountain communities where
many people still lived in rented “company houses.”
Most property owners would never take advantage of this
right to appeal other people’s property appraisals. We are usually concerned
only with what we pay, not what our neighbor isn’t paying, but this appeal
process can have interesting results.
Back in
the early 1980s, I owned a small tract of mountain land near
“What do you think your land should be valued for?” the
state appraiser asked.
“Oh, I think $600 an acre is a fair amount, maybe even a
little low,” I replied. “But Coal Creek owns around 50 acres identical to
mine and they’re valued much too low. They should be raised up to at least
$300 or $400.”
The appraiser from the state was dumbfounded. Apparently
he had never had this happen before. “Uh, well, we appraise large tracts
differently than small tracts because not all the acreage is the same,” he
said.
“Still, the land company could divide the road front
tract off and sell it for much more than $90 an acre,” I argued.
In the end, the appraisal team wasn’t about to increase
the land company’s appraisal and face their battery of high-priced lawyers.
They simply applied grease to the squeaky wheel instead and lowered my
appraisal, and that of my other two neighbors, down to $150 an acre.
So, if you feel you’re valued too high, don’t get mad,
get even. Look around for a few properties similar to yours, find one that
is appraised much lower and ask that they pay more. The Board of
Equalization, faced with such an unusual appeal, may lower your appraisal so
that you will just go away.
The county’s other newspaper, the Journal-Leader, decided
to pick apart a school board policy change that basically says the board
must grant permission for cameras to be used to take photos or film board
meetings.
Of course the school board is not likely to ever attempt
to ban cameras from public board meetings. That was just one of several
policy manual changes endorsed by the Tennessee School Board Association and
sent on for local boards to adopt.
But the principal of the thing was what attracted the
attention and condemnation of the newspaper, for good reason. Simply stated,
such a policy violates the state’s open meetings law. The TSBA, which I’ve
always viewed as a bunch of dunderheads advising a flock of sheep, comes up
with a lot of anti-teacher, anti-news media, anti-student and anti-parent
policies that make no sense whatsoever.
This was a good example, a policy based on an attorney
general’s opinion that was reversed by the same attorney general the same
year he wrote it. Somebody forgot to tell the TSBA, or they conveniently
ignored the reversal, and now have passed it down to local boards, creating
a minor furor.
Sadly, openness has never been a strong point with the
Campbell County Board of Education. I’ve been filming the meetings for years
for Channel 12 and can honestly say that if cameras were banned, the public
wouldn’t miss much.
The board prepares a consent agenda that is approved
without discussion, and the agenda provided to the public contains no
explanation of what is contained in the various policy changes and
resolutions. Much of the board’s work involves personnel matters that are
likewise not discussed in public, or the myriad of lawsuits and litigation
involving the school system. That is all hashed out in private “executive
sessions” with board attorney Dail Cantrell.
It is little wonder that the only people who attend most
board meetings are school department supervisors, the news media and
teachers or students who are invited to receive recognition of some sort.
The rubber-neckers who regularly attend commission
meetings gave up on the school board years ago, after falling asleep for the
third or fourth time.
Ah well,
at least the national political picture is growing more exciting.
The Pachyderms, meanwhile, are about to find out if God
truly blesses the GOP agenda, as they prepare to gather in Tampa to nominate
Mitt Romney while the season’s first hurricane blows it’s way toward the
Gulf of Mexico.
Considering the way Congress has behaved in the past couple of years, smart
politicians of either stripe would do well to not risk the Lord’s wrath.
Vice President Joe Biden is not about to tempt fate, and has canceled his
planned trip to
Re-thinking the budget – squires eye ‘James Slusher Honorary
Tax Increase’
The cast is off and I’m back to normal, whatever that is,
following minor surgery a couple of weeks back. Now I can look forward to
months of physical rehab as I train my left hand to function properly once
more.
I went in
for my first rehab session at
I made some crack about expecting my therapist to come
out wearing black leotards with a whip and taser gun and a “Pain is Good!”
tattoo, but she merely smiled and said, “Oh, you must mean Lucretia. You’ll
see her next week.”
Sure enough, when I received my two-month schedule, my
therapist next week is named Lucretia. This is the last time I will ever try
to be a wise*** with anyone who has control over a part of my body.
I would say here that I’ll limit my wise*** comments to
politicians such as our own esteemed body of county commissioners, but other
citizens, such as career commission watchdog James Slusher, have beaten me
to the punch.
When last we heard from Mr. Slusher, he was scolding the
county over the findings listed in the state comptroller’s audit, which
included the oft-repeated suggestion that courthouse offices need more
separation of duties so that the same people who handle money do not keep
the records.
This has come up numerous times in the past with the same
response – courthouse elected officials run their own offices and decide how
many personnel to hire, totally independent of the squires. Most choose to
keep personnel, and costs, down by not separating duties.
Of course this is the same Jim Slusher who a month
earlier, had been at the commission meeting browbeating the squires, who he
called a “failed institution,” for even contemplating a property tax
increase. He got his wish in July, when commissioners cut all requests for
additional spending, trashed their own discretionary fund and approved a
school budget that personnel-wise, is cut to the bone, but with not even a
penny of increase to the property tax.
Monday night the commissioners held their workshop, where
they might have expected some praise from Slusher and the no new tax crowd
for their frugal decisions.
What they got from Mr. Slusher
was another browbeating. Everything the squires cut from the budget was the
wrong thing to cut, they were told. The county needs an industrial
recruiter, the county needs more money in the Road Department for asphalt,
the county needs to take advantage of that federal grant to build a railroad
spur at
What’s more, since
James read the squires the riot act and I can’t say that
I don’t totally agree with him on the importance of most of these things.
The discretionary funds have been a major source of support for volunteer
fire departments, senior citizens and other critical functions of our
community. We need industry, and Jellico seems to have taken an unfairly
lopsided portion of the budgetary hits.
Where I do differ with James Slusher is in my approach to
funding these important functions. I said before that our county is, like
all others across the state and the nation as a whole, suffering the effects
of trickle-down economics. In our case the trickle-down is when Uncle Sam
cuts federal spending and brags about it, but simply passes the costs of
doing the public’s business down to state government.
The members of our state legislature, bless their little
pea-brained hearts, then cut state spending, thump their collective chest
for being watchdogs of the public dollar, and pass the costs on down the
line to county and city governments.
The county commissioners turn around to pass the costs on
down to . . . uh . . . oops, nobody left below them to pass the costs
to except taxpayers. “Surprise, surprise, surprise,” as Gomer Pyle would
say.
For my part, I think a modest
property tax increase each year or two would keep the county current with
rising costs, fund a few things that we need like paved roads and partially
offset the decline in revenues from Uncle Sam and Auntie Nashville. Four to
six cents on the tax rate isn’t going to deprive the average
As for those retirees out on
Slusher, instead, continues to insist that all these
important things should be paid for without increasing taxes a cent. His
answer is to take a scalpel to the budget and carve out the fat, meaning
jobs of county employees. James told the squires, “Government isn’t in the
business of providing jobs, but providing services with the fewest people
necessary.”
He said this while bragging about his role as chief
financial officer at an unnamed college, where he laid off 81 people to
balance the budget while receiving threats, nails under his tires and hate
emails. I thought for a minute there we were listening to Mitt Romney
talking about his days at Bain Capital.
Well, some commissioners responded by pointing out that
county employees pay taxes, spend money and contribute to the local economy
as well, and massive layoffs would just put more people out competing for
the limited number of jobs, drawing unemployment benefits and becoming a
drain, rather than an asset, to the community.
Slusher cheerfully pointed out that the federal
government is preparing to end the 99-week unemployment benefit and we will
all return to a 26-week unemployment cycle, saving taxpayer dollars. Oh joy,
more people without jobs and without benefits. When faced with a choice
between welfare, starvation or selling drugs, guess what most people will
choose? There is something in our natural selection process that prevents
most of us from starving ourselves to death for the good of the taxpayer.
Of course I have a more pointed criticism of the “lay off
people to buy more asphalt while keeping taxes down” approach. Who’s gonna
lay down the asphalt? Who’s gonna collect the taxes? Who’s gonna separate
those duties in courthouse offices?
Slusher and his allies, if he has any left after three
months of conflicting criticisms, seem to think there are all these
dead-enders collecting county paychecks while doing nothing worthwhile.
Some of you out there are now saying, “Yeah. We call them
elected officials and all they do is run for office and collect a check
after winning the election.”
Perhaps so, but elected officials are mandated by state
law. They can’t be laid off. If personnel cuts are made in any county
department, those cuts will be primarily among the people who actually do
the work, and anyone who has been forced to stand in line at a courthouse
office, wait too long for response to an emergency call or sit with a
hundred others in a crowded courtroom all day over a speeding ticket
probably knows we have no great surplus of people doing the work.
Slusher probably would pick on his favorite whipping boy,
the Finance Office, with a staff of thirteen people managing the county’s
money, insurance benefits, payroll checks and budgets. If any of those
employees are dead wood doing nothing, they do a good job of covering it up.
I’m never in that office that everyone isn’t busy doing something, but say
you could cut three, even four positions from Finance, what would that get
you?
Maybe an industrial recruiter, or half a mile of asphalt,
but certainly not everything that the commissioners have had to cut from the
budget to avoid a tax increase, or even make a significant dent in the list.
The squires agreed unofficially to take another look at
the budget next Monday night before final passage, partly due to Slusher’s
protests and partly, I suspect, because several were uncomfortable with the
zero tax increase, zero progress budget to begin with.
Maybe they should put some of
those things back in the budget after all, and jack up the property tax by a
dime or so to pay for them. They could call it the James Slusher Honorary
Tax Increase.
(UPDATED AT
10:00 AM ON 08/17/2012 FOR THE WEEK OF 08/13/2012)
Let’s hear it for the NRA and back yard surface-to-air missile
systems
It has taken awhile, but I’ve finally mastered the art of
typing with one hand. The trick is to write really long sentences, in which
one needs to shift to capital letters less frequently, in order to avoid the
need to hit both the shift key and the letter key at the same time, which of
course requires the use of two hands.
It also helps to avoid using proper names, such as dennis
potter, brandon partin or wendell bailey, so you may notice that I will
refer to these gentlemen simply as the “incumbent” or the “victorious
challenger” in subsequent paragraphs.
Suffice it to say that there were few surprises in
Thursday’s election, at least in this neck of the woods. The incumbent
property assessor was re-elected without much trouble, as was the incumbent
road superintendent and most incumbent school board members. One school
board incumbent, David Lynch, was unseated by a victorious challenger, as
was the recently appointed county commissioner, Scott Stanfield.
Scott’s sister swears that the whole family worked hard
and is disappointed by the loss, but I wonder if Scott, having seen the
details of next year’s budget train wreck looming ahead, didn’t throw the
election. We have only his word that he voted for himself, after all. My
condolences go out to Wendell Bailey.
The one-hand typing comment is partly in jest. I do have
the use of a couple of fingers on my left hand after having surgery last
week, but most of my hand is wrapped up from fingertip to elbow in a bandage
and cast. This has left me with several things for which I can offer thanks.
Number one, I’m thankful that the surgery went well and
I’ve suffered only minor pain and discomfort. The inconvenience has only
given me a greater appreciation for those people who must learn to function
with permanent disabilities.
Number two, I’m thankful that my surgery coincided with
the London Olympics. Three days of TV sitcoms and MASH reruns would probably
have been more than my fragile sanity could bear, but I enjoy watching the
Olympics.
Being in anesthetic pawpaw land for a couple of days also
helped me avoid the final barrage of pre-election political ads. It also
gave me an excuse to not jump up to answer my phone every time it rang,
which is a good thing.
In addition to political robo-calls
from Congressman Chuck “I’m an Obama-hating conservative” Fleischman and
challenger Scottie “I’m an Obama-despising arch conservative” Mayfield,
They should have both resigned from the race and simply
turned over their campaign funds to the taxpayers – it would have done more
for the county than either one is likely to achieve as mayor. I received a
minimum of one automated call from Terry Frank each day for a week and
nearly as many from Warren Gooch, and enough slick campaign mailers to
wallpaper my living room. Anyone who wants a public office that badly should
not be trusted.
The election results elsewhere around the state held few
surprises. Four Democratic state legislators lost their seats to four other
Democratic state legislators after the Republican-controlled legislature
shifted districts around to match incumbent donkeys against each other.
The Democrats cried “foul” but in all honesty, the
donkeys have been guilty of the same tactics in the past when they held the
legislative majority.
The GOP didn’t exactly come out unscathed in their
primary either. Republican Caucus Chairwoman Debra Maggart lost her bid for
re-election after the National Rifle Association poured $75,000 into the
race to help her opponent. Maggart, who votes staunchly conservative on most
issues, angered the NRA by refusing to go along with their “guns in parking
lots” bill.
The NRA’s decision to punish one of the GOP’s legislative
stars has angered many in the Republican leadership, who accuse the NRA of
bullying. The NRA, bullies? Surely not.
If the
GOP members of the legislature had an ounce of courage and self-respect,
they would push a bill next year to abolish possession of automatic weapons
in
Instead, the NRA will probably get their bill passed next
session to allow gun owners to carry their firearms in their vehicles onto
university campus parking lots, private business parking lots, hospital
parking lots and church parking lots, regardless of the wishes of the owners
of said parking lots.
After all, our Constitution guarantees every citizen the
right to arm bears, uh, bear arms. I’m for that. I firmly believe that every
American has the right to possess and carry around at least one
muzzle-loading flintlock rifle weighing somewhere around fifteen pounds,
along with a powder horn, some spare flints and a bagful of .44 caliber lead
balls.
That is the type of firearm that was in use when our
founding fathers wrote the Constitution and I firmly believe in adhering
closely to the intentions of the framers of the Constitution, just like the
NRA does.
As far as automatic weapons capable of firing off a
hundred rounds in rapid succession without reloading? Only the police and
the military should be allowed to possess such firepower. Automatic weapons
are no good for hunting – they are forbidden by most states’ hunting
regulations. They are no good for protecting the home or person –
takes too long to get them out, loaded and in action and you can’t pack them
into your favorite restaurant.
Automatic weapons are useless in target-shooting
competitions and too modern to be considered antique collectors’ items, so
of what possible use does the average citizen have for one.
Well,
paranoid militia types who believe they will have to defend the homeland at
some point from an invasion of turbaned fanatics from
Every time we have a Columbine, or an Aurora or a
Virginia Tech, the media leaps into a frenzy about automatic weapons and how
easy it was for the nut case who did the shooting to obtain their
instruments of destruction. Then the NRA fires off some press releases
quoting the Constitution and the same old “Guns don’t kill people, people
kill people” rhetoric, and the whole debate goes away again.
Until
another nut case, say in
The NRA again has blood on its hands. They feed off the
paranoia of Americans who need a pistol in their pocket to feel secure. They
convince us that any small limits on our ability to own and possess any type
of firearm we might desire are the first steps toward taking away all our
rights to possess firearms.
“First our automatic weapons, then our handguns and then
our hunting rifles and shotguns.” That is the mantra of the NRA and it
appears to work.
So to protect our constitutional, God-given right to bear
arms, we need to expand the definition of “arms” to include as wide a range
of weaponry as possible Let’s hear it for legalization of the back yard
surface-to-air missile! Keeping up with Jones could take on a whole new
meaning. (UPDATED
AT 2:00 PM ON 08/07/2012 FOR THE WEEK OF 08/07/2012)
The big showdown over the budget turned into a no-show
last week when tax protesters got their way and the commission passed a
budget with no property tax increase.
Finance Director Moneybags Marlow did what the squires
instructed him to do and took a scalpel to the budget, trimming a bit here
and there, nudging a little more projected revenue where possible and
leaving off all of the add-ons from departmental wish lists.
There are, of course, victims. The patient survived the
surgery, but not with all body parts intact. Gone are the commissioners’
discretionary funds, which leaves a number of school sports and band
programs, volunteer fire departments and other non-profit groups that
depended on donations from these funds begging money from other sources.
Expect a marked increase in fundraising roadblocks, bake sales and just
plain begging in the upcoming year.
Also gone are plans for an industrial recruiter, a new
garbage truck and additional driver, modest raises for county employees, 25
percent of the county’s support for Jellico’s ambulance service and a
million dollars’ worth of asphalt to pave roads.
The garbage truck may not be needed if the county’s aging
fleet holds together. If one falls apart, well, the squires can replace it
by pulling emergency funds from the fund balance, then figure out how to
replenish the fund balance before the next fiscal year begins.
Many squires through the years treat the fund balance
like a rainy-day fund, but it’s more than that. It is the cash on hand that
keeps the county operating during the first few months of the fiscal year
until current year property tax collections begin to come in after October.
If the fund balance is allowed to fall to a point where
it cannot meet spending requirements, the county faces the unhappy prospect
of borrowing money and paying interest just to keep the lights burning.
Now, this group of squires can look forward to the next
budget, when state revenues will continue to shrink, costs will continue to
rise, and all the fat and a significant amount of meat and bone has already
been removed from the carcass. I suppose they figure that if roads have
deteriorated to a point where the “no tax” crowd can’t drive to the
courthouse, dealing with a potential tax increase will be less painful.
I know I’m beginning to sound like a broken record, but
why resist modest increases year after year and then end up having to pass a
significant property tax increase, and possibly tack on a higher wheel tax,
all at once just to keep things from falling apart?
The six cent increase in the tax rate that was needed
this year to offset declining revenues and state-mandated increases in local
education spending would have cost a taxpayer with a $100,000 home a grand
total of $15 a year. That is much less painful than the combination of a $10
wheel tax increase and ten cent tax increase that these same squires had to
pass a couple of years ago because the previous commission refused to pass
modest tax increases when they were needed.
And some of the revenues projected to balance this budget
are non-recurring and may well be pie-in-the-sky wishful thinking. One
example is the coal severance tax, projected at $60,000 or so in the current
fiscal year, despite the fact that no mines are currently producing coal in
the county.
That 60 grand is money that
the Finance Director has determined should have been paid to
Since the
state has nothing to gain or lose in this readjustment, it is taking its
sweet time. We may or may not receive this $60,000 in the current fiscal
year. The money will have to be withheld from other state revenues owed to
The other big happening in
Congressman Chuck Fleishman was there, along with
Republican opponents Scottie Mayfield and Weston Wamp. I passed on
attending this shindig, just to hear each candidate insist that he is more
conservative than the other conservatives.
“I’m a rock hard conservative Republican and I’m endorsed
by the NRA!”
“Well I’m a cast iron conservative Republican and I’m
endorsed by the NRA, Right to Life and Sons of the Confederacy.”
“That’s nothing, I’m a titanium steel conservative and
I’m endorsed by Soldier of Fortune Magazine, the KKK and Sarah Palin!”
I don’t
quite get the part where these candidates forget that East Tennessee
Republicans tend to be moderates who have elected people like Howard Baker,
Lamar Alexander and Governor Bill Haslam. They were speaking to a crowd in
In fact,
East Tennessee Republicans have always been more or less moderate, dating
back to Abraham Lincoln. East Tennesseans supported the
After
Reconstruction ended, Democrats continued to rule
This has
finally given
Governor Bill is getting a dose of this right now, as GOP
leaders in a number of counties have all condemned him for retaining too
many state employees who are gay or worse yet, Democrats. They are
especially hard on him for hiring a Muslim woman, Samar Ali, to head up
international marketing in the Office of Community & Economic Development.
Accusing Ms. Ali of intending to bring Shariah Law into
state government, some Republican leaders in Williamson, Stewart, Carroll,
Humphreys and several other counties have circulated petitions that
basically call Governor Haslam a turncoat.
I wonder
how Samar Ali, who grew up and attended high school in Waverly, and her
family feel about Republican leaders in her home town criticizing her
hiring. I notice that all of the
When
The only thing Nashville’s got going for it is the home
of Country Music, and let’s face it folks, the Grand Ole Opry stole all the
music from East Tennessee. Maybe it’s still not too late to restore the
State of Franklin.
Forget snake handling; it’s
little ole us versus the
Just as I predicted, we had company at Monday night’s
county commission meeting. Channel 12’s little camera was dwarfed by crews
covering the meeting for WATE, WVLT, WBIR, CW and Fox.
They were all present to see
if
It didn’t
happen, The squires lost little time debating a motion by Beverly Hall,
seconded by Thomas Hatmaker, to send a resolution of support to
Representative Dennis Powers. They voted the motion down 10-2, but Reverend
Andrew Hamblin at least got his moment in the sun. He was interviewed by
every TV network in
The only fireworks at the meeting came when a few other
folks tried to horn in on Reverend Hamblin’s moment by grandstanding for the
TV cameras. Local blogger Jerry Chadwell and constant Finance Department
critic and tax protester James Slusher conspired to take advantage of a
clerical oversight that has existed for months.
While the squires voted last year to allow citizens to
address the commission only at the workshop held one week before monthly
commission meetings, the commission agenda continued to have an item labeled
“Citizens wishing to address the commission” printed on the front cover.
Chadwell admits he pointed this out to Slusher, who
demanded his right to speak at the meeting. Mayor William Baird finally
relented after County Attorney Joe Coker ruled that since the item was on
the agenda, the squires would have to vote to remove it or allow Slusher to
speak.
The commission voted 7-5 to remove the item but with
three squires absent, the vote fell one short of a majority. Slusher then
launched into a re-play of the same complaints he had addressed to the
commission a week earlier, about the findings of an annual state audit which
pointed out several deficiencies. Nearly everything was old news that has
been discussed at commission meetings before, but this time there were all
those television cameras rolling.
I’m not at all sure that the squires had to allow anyone
to speak, despite the county attorney’s opinion. The rules set down by the
commission require that members of the public wishing to address the
commission must sign in on a sheet provided for that purpose before the
meeting is convened. There was no sign-in sheet so Mr. Slusher did not sign
up to speak before the meeting began.
At one point, Slusher crowed, “The Director of Finance is
on defense and I’m on the offense. It’s the offense that scores points.”
Predictably, after that, Finance Director Moneybags
Marlow had to defend himself and explain the audit findings. His
explanations were adequate, but lengthy. Accountants do not offer short
explanations of anything.
After entirely too much of this circular discussion,
Bobby White had heard enough and made a motion to adjourn the meeting,
stating, “We’re not down here doing the business of the people.”
Jerry Chadwell, sitting on the front row next to Slusher,
told White, “You ought to resign.”
White told Chadwell to “Stick it,” and invited him to run
against him. Chadwell replied, “I don’t live in your district,” and White
shot back, “Move into it!”
By this time, William Baird had seen enough and called a
five-minute recess to allow things to cool off. After the recess, White
apologized but Chadwell said something else critical and received a warning
from Baird: “The next comment from the audience and I’ll ask the Sheriff to
remove you from the room.”
Alas, James Slusher’s efforts
were mostly in vain, as all those Knoxville TV stations were present to
report on snake-handling, not
This harping started shortly after Mr. Slusher was
removed by the commission from membership on the Financial Management (FMS)
Committee, which already provides oversight, theoretically, over the Finance
Department. James appears to feel the FMS Committee doesn’t provide enough
oversight, now that he’s no longer a member.
As for Jerry Chadwell, he might be an activist, a
reformer, or a crusader, but one thing he is not is a journalist.
Journalists observe, interpret and report, but they do not insert themselves
into the story. If they have opinions, they reserve them for the editorial
page.
Meanwhile, the most questionable thing I saw the squires
do on Monday night had nothing to do with snake handling, audit findings or
comments from the audience.
Attorney Mark Silvey, representing the Greg Coleman law
firm, approached the commission about joining a class action lawsuit against
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, those two controversial, federally connected
agencies that buy mortgages from lenders and issue guaranteed securities in
exchange.
Freddie and Fannie were established to help make home
ownership more affordable for middle class families, but their tendency to
guarantee loans to people who couldn’t repay them contributed to the
collapse of the housing market and resulting recession.
As a result, Fannie and Freddie have been busy in recent
years foreclosing on a lot of homes, placing them on the market and
re-selling them. Attorney Silvey told commissioners that there is where the
rub is – Freddie and Fannie claim that like the federal government, they are
exempt from paying the transfer fees and taxes when those homes are resold.
Silvey
explained that the counties, including
Joe Coker
pointed out that around 97 percent of that fee goes to the State of
Thomas Hatmaker pointed out that since the county
receives money from the state, it can only help if the state gains more
revenue. Bob Walden made a motion to join the class action, Hatmaker
seconded the motion and all twelve squires present quickly approved the
motion.
Silvey then congratulated
“If this is such a good deal,
why is
By Thursday, I got at least part of my answer when the
Knoxville News Sentinel ran a story about Mayor William Baird filing a
lawsuit on behalf of Campbell County in federal court against Fannie and
Freddie.
Of course William had done no
such thing, but with the commission’s vote on Monday night and subsequent
vote to authorize Mayor Baird to represent the county in this matter, they
had given the Coleman law firm permission to sue on
Apparently the Coleman firm
didn’t feel a need to approach any other counties to join the class action
suit, once they had
This may not be a bad thing. Campbell County could stand
to gain a couple of thousand dollars at most, and by being the primary
plaintiff in a class action, help a lot of other Tennessee counties collect
a few hundred or a few thousand dollars at most and help the state collect a
few hundred thousands or millions of dollars.
It seems that perhaps the federal government, which is
already battling record deficits, will end up paying the bill on this in one
way or another, which means all us taxpayers will pay the bill. That
includes the legal fees that will be earned by the Coleman law firm if they
are successful, and you can bet that will be a few hundred thousand bucks at
the very least.
Maybe the commission should
have taken this matter under advisement and inquired further into why the
state and other, larger counties had not already jumped on the bandwagon.
Maybe it’s just me, but I always have a problem with enriching a gang of
class action lawyers at taxpayers’ expense.
Answer to county’s road woes: build bike trails - very wide bike trails
After
much posturing and gnashing of teeth, the
With James Slusher as lead spokesman, the squires have
heard from the “no new taxes” crowd, consisting largely of people with no
children in the school system. Without coming right out and saying it, this
group’s message seems to be, “Our kids are already educated and on their
own; your kids can always get jobs at Taco Bell. We’re not paying for their
schooling.”
If this sounds a bit harsh, I
meant it to be. I pay taxes down in
But one
of the reasons that property values are higher is that the schools are
better and jobs more plentiful, a result of all that spending on education.
You get what you pay for.
But all the screaming and crying did accomplish
something. School Director Donnie Poston and Moneybags got together, pulled
a little money out of the schools’ capital outlay budget, carried over some
once-in-a-blue-moon savings from utility costs thanks to our mild winter,
and were able to scale back the Board of Education’s request from ten cents
to four.
Of course the next time we don’t have a mild winter, that
$290,000 will have to be made up somewhere so it’s a temporary fix at best.
Still hanging over the squires is that other twenty-cent
increase in “discretionary” spending. A couple of pennies can be saved by
just saying no to Mayor William Baird’s proposal to give non-school
employees a 2 % raise. Another penny or two can be cut by denying the
sanitation department a new truck and driver to operate it. That just leaves
the small matter of a ten-cent tax increase to buy asphalt for the Highway
Department.
Ironically, spending on the asphalt is the least
objectionable thing on the tax protesters’ hit list. They may not worry too
much about education, but they all have to drive on the county’s
increasingly-potholed roads. But ten cents, added to six cents that seems
unavoidable, means a pretty hefty tax increase.
Those opposed to increasing taxes would, I suspect,
prefer to see their roads paved by laying off a few courthouse clerks here
and there, stopping any further work on the Justice Center, maybe shutting
down the recycling center or the animal shelter or the health department.
I’ve got it! We can close the property assessor’s office and lay off all
those people, since we won’t be making any changes to the tax rate or the
tax base in the foreseeable future.
Nah, state law won’t let us do that, and while James
Slusher was protesting proposed tax increases on the one hand, he was
complaining about an oft-repeated audit finding that there is inadequate
separation of duties in the courthouse clerical offices on the other hand.
To separate the people handing money in those offices
from the people keeping the records would be commendable, but would also
require hiring additional clerks, which would require an increase in the tax
rate.
Read Kurt Vonnegut’s novel “Catch-22” for the answer to
this riddle. The book focuses on our hero who wants a medical discharge from
the Army because of insanity, but in order to receive a discharge he must
apply for it. However, anyone who is sane enough to apply for a discharge on
the grounds of insanity is judged to be too sane and the application denied.
However, we may after all have an answer to the problem
of getting our roads paved without raising taxes by a million bucks.
At last Monday’s workshop, squires were treated to a
number of fascinating presentations. Todd Fisher explained the business
incubator program, wherein trained professionals will help prospective
entrepreneurs with business start-ups. He was there presumably to justify
the county leasing an upper floor of a bank building to provide professional
office space, although I’m not sure their clients so far, an individual who
wants to open a metal-working shop and someone interested in growing beans,
really need professional office space in a bank building.
Next came
Reverend Andrew Hamblin from the Tabernacle Church of God, who explained
that his congregation believes in a literal translation of the Bible,
including the taking up of poisonous serpents. He asked the squires to pass
a resolution in support of legislation to repeal
Of course if word gets around, I’ll have competition from
WATE, CNN and Jay Leno. We’re going to make the big time once again,
pilgrims.
Finally, a young CCHS teacher, Jennifer Seals, made a
presentation about the county’s declining health statistics and the need for
bike and walking trails out in the communities to encourage physical
exercise.
Jennifer pointed out that a third of Campbell Countians
are obese and 13.2 percent are diabetic. She admitted that in a tight budget
year, spending money to construct paved bike trails alongside county roads
is not likely a popular idea. “But with our terrible statistics for obesity
and diabetes, Campbell County could qualify for many of the numerous federal
and private grants that are available to construct trails,” Jennifer added.
My first thought was, “Oh no. If we build bike trails
along the sides of Demory and Pinecrest Roads, when the roads get so
potholed that locals can’t drive on them, they will start driving on the
bike trails and take out a cluster of power walkers or bicycle riders.”
Then it hit me. Dennis Potter
can apply for grants to construct bike trails, paid for with physical
fitness dollars from the federal government and various foundations, and
make the trails wider than usual, say wide enough for a Ford F-150 and a
Toyota to pass each other on the curves. People, when money is tight and the
natives are restless, you’ve got to think outside the box.
Campbell
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, it’s hot.
It’s still hot. But the timely rainfall last Thursday night accomplished two
things, in addition to raising havoc over in the Smokies and parts east of
here. 1) It saved local gardens, including my own, from completely burning
up and 2) it encouraged my grass, which always seems to grow when nothing
else can, to take off again, requiring mowing.
This weekend I bit the bullet and got out the lawnmower,
despite the near-100 degree heat. As a prelude to a little minor surgery I
have scheduled later this month, I must have an EKG. I just decided to
self-medicate and do the EKG myself by mowing grass in this heat. I must
have passed, as I’m still here to write about it, but it was brutal.
My personal approach to surviving the current heat wave
while working outside is simple. Work or mow for ten minutes, cool down in
the shade of the back porch for another ten, then go inside and cool off in
air conditioned comfort with a glass of ice tea for another twenty. Then, if
you don’t doze off on the couch, repeat the process.
I may get the whole lawn mowed sometime late next week,
just in time for the next rainstorm.
Neither heat nor rain was a
deterrent last week to
The show attracts thousands of spectators into town from
miles around, and gives local merchants a big financial boost. Any hint from
City Hall that the show would be cancelled might result in a lynching of the
mayor and board of aldermen. As a result, the show must go on regardless.
The Pyro Shows crew selected a different launching site
as well, moving their mortars and shells further away from the maintenance
yard of Powell-Clinch Utility District. For many years I sat in my back yard
and awaited the “really big shew,” when a wayward rocket would slam into the
Powell-Clinch propane tanks. Alas, those in the know tell me it could never
happen, as the tank’s metal walls are much too thick to be affected by the
explosive potential of mere fireworks. But one could always hope.
My back yard is arguably the best seat in town, as the
launching pad for the show is behind the football bleachers, directly across
Coal Creek from my garden and back yard. I always distribute caps to guests
in case the wind shifts in our direction, as spent shells and debris
sometimes rain down on our seats. This year the wind cooperated and the
debris landed in the creek bed, so all we got was the show and the
traditional ice cream and berries afterward.
Campbell County may still get its fireworks show on
Monday night, when the county commission meets in the first of a series of
budget meetings to try to figure out a way around a tax increase ranging
from a low of six cents to a high of 32 ¾ cents.
The six-cent increase is pretty much a foregone
conclusion, as most of it is mandated by state requirements to boost the
local share of education dollars. The other 26 ¾ cents can be avoided if: 1)
Campbell Countians don’t mind waiting around for that once-in-a-lifetime
re-paving of the road leading past their front door (ten cents) 2) the
sanitation department does not receive a new truck and additional truck
driver as requested (1.5 cents) 3) county non-school employees do not
receive the 1.6 percent raise proposed by the mayor (two cents), 4) the
county does not hire an industrial recruiter (one cent) and 5) the school
board’s request is denied for additional money for improvements to education
not mandated by the state (six cents).
I’m sure the tax protesters will be out in force once
again to threaten and cajole the squires to hold the line and deny all
spending increases and promise that not a one of them will be re-elected two
years from now if any tax increase is approved.
Meanwhile, I notice that
This can only mean one thing: the
voters are one hundred percent in favor of what the General Assembly is
doing down in Nashville, which is laying more and more mandated expenditures
off on local county government while providing no additional state money to
help with the funding.
Coming soon: the
American people
It’s hot, just plain hot. But not nearly as hot as the
Republicans are over the Supreme Court decision on the Affordable Health
Care Act, aka Obamacare.
I haven’t figured out what all the fuss is about. We
already pay for health care for everyone as it is. Those without insurance,
when they get sick enough, just rush to the emergency room of the nearest
hospital. The ERs can’t turn them away, but charge about twice the amount
that regular care costs.
Since the uninsured often cannot pay these outlandish
charges, the hospitals write them off as charity care, for which they
receive tax breaks from Uncle Sam. We all pay for those tax breaks when we
pay our taxes, which are a little bit higher because we’re paying for health
care for the uninsured.
Insurance companies also get into the act, by charging
all of us a little bit more on our premiums to cover losses due to
under-insured patients who cannot pay their bills or are late paying them.
Meanwhile, since uninsured people often put off treatment until they are
seriously ill, costs are greater, losses greater and our tax bills and
insurance bills are higher to cover the difference.
When are people going to realize that there are no free
rides? Those complaining about the “individual mandate” seem to be of the
mind that if someone who is uninsured gets sick, we can simply do as the
Eskimos once did and set them out on an iceberg to die, or a good health
care fairy will suddenly appear and take care of everything.
I’ve got decent insurance now that I work for the county,
but for years I had to get by without coverage, when I worked for a series
of small newspapers that couldn’t afford to carry insurance for employees
and didn’t pay enough for employees to afford their own. Complicating my own
situation was the fact that I’m diabetic and therefore in the expensive
“high risk” insurance category.
I also suffer from a hereditary condition called “Dupuytren’s
Contracture.” Small cysts form on my hand that pull my small and ring
fingers inward until they are bent upon my hand. Makes it hard to toss a
baseball, or hold a canoe paddle, a fishing rod or do any of a dozen fun
things I used to do. Eventually it can make typing difficult as well,
affecting my livelihood.
About eight years ago my doctor
sent me to an orthopaedic surgeon in
“Surgery sometimes results in losing the feeling in part
of your hand, and generally the condition comes back after surgery in just a
few years. I would just let it go,” the specialist told me.
A good friend of mine also
suffered from the same problem. I told her what I had learned from the
orthopaedic specialist, but her doctor insisted on sending her to a
different specialist in
“Surgery is the only treatment. It is almost always
successful, rarely ever comes back, and loss of nerve feeling in the hand is
extremely rare if the surgeon knows what he’s doing,” he told her.
She had the surgery performed on both hands and today her
fingers are straight and fully functional. When she first saw her
orthopaedic specialist, she had excellent insurance through her employer.
My fingers are now bent more severely than they were
eight years ago, but the surgeon in Oak Ridge thinks he can completely
straighten the all-important right hand while the more severely malformed
left hand stands a 50-50 chance of complete recovery. If that other doctor
had told me the truth eight years ago, those 50-50 odds would be 100 percent
instead.
But I didn’t have health insurance, the surgery is
somewhat expensive, and the truth was apparently less important than whether
I could afford to pay the bill.
The Affordable Health Care Act, if fully implemented,
will mean that nobody ever needs to be lied to about treatment they need,
simply because the doctor is worried about getting paid. It will mean nobody
needs to wait until a condition grows life-threatening enough to send them
into an emergency room before getting treatment. It will mean that when
someone becomes seriously ill, their friends, family and members of their
church will no longer have to take up collections to help them pay for the
treatment to keep them alive.
The politicians who are stirring up opposition to
universal health care are shameless opportunists, more concerned with
gaining political power than they are with the well-being of their fellow
Americans. Those average Americans who are opposed to universal health care
are at best, uninformed and misled.
The Congressional Pachyderms,
thwarted in their effort to erase Obamacare by their own Bush-appointed
Supreme Court Chief Justice, lost no time in firing back. They immediately
voted to hold the Attorney General of the
The DA for the
Personally, I think it’s a shame that Eric Holder won’t
go on trial for “Contempt of Congress.” His defense could be to poll a
few hundred thousand American voters about how they feel about Congress.
I can hear the defense attorney now, addressing the judge
in this case: “Your honor, I contend that Mr Holder is indeed guilty of
contempt of Congress. However, our polls indicate that 250 million American
citizens also hold Congress in contempt. If you prosecute this man for being
in contempt of Congress, you must also prosecute the entire country for
being in contempt of Congress.”
That, my friends, would be a trial
worth watching.
Common sense solutions to growing
Here at home everyone is well
aware of the multi-million dollar
Last Monday, Finance Jeff “Moneybags” Marlow gave our
squires the bad news that another hundred grand must be taken out of the
county’s rainy day fund to pay for increased costs of keeping prisoners
healthy. That’s an amendment to this year’s budget. The commission will have
to find additional revenue to pay those costs going forward.
Last year,
By now we could not be blamed for asking, “Where will
this all stop?” We need money to keep our roads from falling apart, money to
keep volunteer fire departments viable, money to meet ever-increasing
standards for our schools. Instead, we are pouring dollar after dollar into
keeping criminals off the streets at an ever-increasing rate.
I suggested several years ago that one way to decrease
the costs of incarceration would be to decriminalize or legalize marijuana.
Too many young people were being saddled with criminal records and too many
taxpayers having to pay the costs for fighting a drug that is arguably no
more dangerous than our nation’s legal drug, alcohol.
I also reasoned that kids smoking pot did not instantly
say, “Wow, now I want to try cocaine or meth or Oxycontin!” Most people
start with marijuana, but since it is illegal, they have to turn to dealers
for their supply, dealers who also often sell pills, or cocaine or can show
someone how to make meth.
Legalize pot, regulate the sale as we do booze, and tax
it. That will cut down on the costs of law enforcement, decrease young
people’s exposure to harder drugs and add tax dollars to government coffers
without straining taxpayers further.
Of course that might have been a good argument a decade
ago, but things have changed. Meth and various prescription painkillers are
the major drug culprits these days and I would venture that not enough
people are being jailed just for marijuana to make a significant dent in the
demand for jail cells. Still, any dent at all is worth looking at closely,
so I stand by my argument that legalizing pot would be a wise move.
If marijuana laws are not responsible for the ballooning
rate of convicted criminals, what is? The Knoxville News-Sentinel started
last Sunday with a series on the problem of drunk drivers that was
eye-opening in many respects.
The
numbers help explain, in my mind, why we are constantly being forced to pour
more money into jails and prisons. In 2011,
The newspaper listed
I have great respect for the dedication of MADD and
others who have worked diligently to get drunk drivers off the streets, but
let’s face it, the increasing pressure on taxpayers to build more and bigger
jails coincides to a large extent with the enactment of laws requiring DUI
offenders to do jail time.
First time offenders spend a minimum of 48 hours behind
bars, ranging up to seven days for higher levels of intoxication. Second
offenders spend a minimum of 45 days in jail, third offense nets 120 days
minimum while fourth offenses are treated as class E felonies with a minimum
of 150 days in jail.
Jail time is no cure for an alcoholic. As soon as those
boozers get out, their first stop is likely to be a package store for a
fifth or a convenience store for a six-pack or two. If we’re lucky, someone
else is driving the car, but you can rest assured that the boozer will be
back behind the wheel eventually.
The same can be said for addicts, and an increasing
number of DUI offenders are on pills rather than alcohol, or a lethal
combination of the two.
Many law enforcement officials, judges and DAs, including
our own Criminal Court Judge Shane Sexton, support even more stringent
penalties for repeat DUI offenders. Shane has gone on record as supporting a
special class D felony for serious multiple offenders that would put them
away for two to twelve years.
That’s two to twelve years for which taxpayers must foot
the bill, paying for cell space, jailers, meals and the ever-increasing
costs of medical attention, dental services and hospitalization for this
largely unhealthy segment of our population.
I’ve got another suggestion for how to keep drunk drivers
off the streets, but it appears to have gotten little leverage among
officials and lawmakers for some mysterious reason. Take their cars away
from them!
Why, instead of locking a first-time DUI offender up for
48 hours, requiring construction of an expensive jail cell, can the courts
not simply fine them and impound their vehicle for 30 days?
Going without a car for a month will be a wake-up call to
many first time offenders, when they are forced to beg a ride to their job,
rent a car or walk to the post office and grocery store. Some might even
decide drinking and driving aren’t worth the costs. And those costs will be
increased when the offender has to pay an impoundment fee and tow bill to
reclaim the vehicle after 30 days. Why should taxpayers pay for that?
On a second offense, drunk drivers who haven’t learned
their lesson will have to pay a fine and do without their vehicle for three
to six months, which wouldn’t be a wake-up call, but a slap in the face.
Third offense or greater? The county or state seizes the
vehicle and sells it at auction to help cover the costs of impoundment and
enforcement. Before long, alcoholics who insist on getting behind the wheel
while drunk won’t have a car, won’t have a friend or relative willing to
loan them a car and won’t have a car dealer willing to sell them as much as
a bicycle. They will be off the roads, and taxpayers won’t have to house and
feed them.
Legal minds will argue with me on this idea, pointing out
that often a bank or dealership or finance company has a financial interest
in the vehicle and is faultless when a driver is caught driving while
intoxicated. Car dealers could be required to refer to a state database of
DUI offenders and refuse to sell to anyone with a history of multiple
offenses. If they choose to make the sale anyway, they lose any financial
interest they might have if the vehicle is seized.
Or the courts could allow dealers and financial
institutions to reclaim their property by paying the impoundment fee and tow
bill, as long as the vehicle is not returned to the offender. The drunken
driver would still lose any financial investment he or she has made in the
vehicle, all those car payments down the drain.
For those who feel that taking a person’s car away is not
punishment enough for driving while intoxicated, and that they should be
forced to spend time in jail, I just ask, who is really being punished here?
Taxpayers have to pay more and more of their hard-earned dollars to lock up
people who have a sickness, while the offender gets free room and board and
all medical expenses paid. For some people out there, getting locked up is
an improvement over their normal existence.
Finally,
one more factor can play a role in our burgeoning jail population. We in
Convicted criminals who serve their time and are released
on parole or probation are often saddled with fines and incarceration costs
that they can’t pay and end up back behind bars. Sounds like debtors’ prison
to me. Let’s work out a system to allow those who can’t pay to perform
community service instead. Putting them out on the roadsides or cleaning up
parks is better than paying to put them back behind bars.
Will any of these common sense ideas ever take hold among
those people who make our laws? Probably not. President Dwight D. Eisenhower
once warned Americans about the dangers of developing a “military industrial
complex” where the builders of bombs and warplanes drove our economy and
made war a necessity for economic health.
What we
are seeing instead in
Could tax hike doom squires’ re-election chances? They should
be so lucky!
The natives were restless
Monday night down at the ol’ courthouse. Well, “native” might be a misnomer,
since a good majority of the folks I observed in the audience at the county
commission workshop are residents of a more recent variety, having retired
to beautiful
And that was the rub, it seems. The crowd of concerned
taxpayers had read in the Journal-Leader that the squires might be facing
“the largest tax increase in county history,” and they were in attendance to
let it be known that they feel very TEA (Taxed Enough Already) about things.
Jim Slusher, the former
chairman of the Financial Management Committee, was particularly hard on
county officials. Jim referred to Finance Director Moneybags Marlow as, more
or less, a fiscal dictator. He told the squires that they were a failure,
that David Adkins in particular should resign due to absenteeism, and that
the
Jim reserved his only praise for Road Superintendent
Dennis Potter, who he pointed out, had balanced his budget by laying off
people and cutting costs instead of asking for a tax increase. “His
reward?” Slusher concluded, “No budget increases for asphalt.”
Slusher’s protests were echoed by others, Don Feeney
saying simply, “Me too,” before pointing out how roads out around the lake
are in need of repair. Bill Deguire added, “I’m sick of paying over and
over, higher and higher.”
The rest of the crowd sat in silent agreement with the
speakers, seeming to stir a bit only when a discussion about the future of
Pinecrest Volunteer Fire Department, now called Norris Crest VFD, came up.
Squires told department treasurer James Gross that they want to help the
embattled department survive by agreeing that it can commit the county’s
annual $8,000 donation toward paying off debt, but there is no promise that
the money will be there year after year.
What’s that old saying, “Beware that you may get what you
wish for?”
This group of residents, many of them retirees with no
kids in the school system, want no new taxes and cuts in county spending.
The State of Tennessee is determined that the state’s share of funding for
the Better Education Program, BEP, will grow smaller each year as local
government takes a larger share until each entity is an equal 50-50 partner.
This is bad news for county governments across the state.
Our fearless state legislators can wave their conservative credentials
around and brag about cutting state spending, when all they’re really done
is pass the costs on down the line to local government.
Another old saying is “SH**
always flows downhill.”
Anyway you cut it, the school system is faced with a
$250,000 increase in spending for its share of BEP. To fail to meet that
requirement is not an option as long as the state holds the purse strings
for education. Other increases, such as utilities, insurance, workman’s
comp and so on, can be offset by cuts elsewhere, but that won’t help our
schools get better.
Of
course, if you’re retired, if your kids were educated in
I know that the expensive
properties out around
If you
own a half-million-dollar home out at
As far as the projected tax increase, that is all it is
at present, “projected.” The squires have now heard from one segment of the
peanut gallery. In coming weeks they will hear from department heads about
how this or that department has eliminated positions, cut to the bone and
still needs more money.
They’re already heard from the insurance carriers about
increases in the county’s casualty and workman’s comp coverage. They will
hear from fire departments, non-profit groups, libraries, health care
providers and others, all claiming they have cut costs as far as possible
but need a little more to function.
Jim Slusher predicted Monday night that most of the
squires will not be re-elected come the next election. I predict, the way
things are going at present, most of them won’t care. I ride the
commissioners frequently in my columns, always have, but for the most part
they have a thankless job that most reasonable people wouldn’t want.
The secret of our dysfunctional county has finally been revealed
Taxpayers and voters are
constantly wondering what is wrong with government, whether up in Washington
or right here at home in
“What’s wrong with that bunch down at the courthouse?
A new jail that was already too small before the concrete was dry, roads
that are crumbling, deputies driving into the sides of houses, school
directors indicted for fudging resumes . . Don’t nobody know how to do
nothing around here?”
Pilgrims, I believe I’ve finally put my finger on it!
In my little drop box over at the Finance Office this
week was a packet of forms, identical to those that went out to every county
employee, to be signed and returned before the next payroll check can be
issued.
The forms represented the “latest revision to the
Campbell County Personnel Policies dated January 17, 2012” and required
employee’s signatures to be on all forms and to be received by the
Payroll/Benefits Department by June 15. They included the usual -
acknowledgements that employees are aware that tampering with government
records is illegal, that employees agree to use computers only for
authorized county business, agreement with the county’s policy regarding
comp time, acknowledgement that employees will abide with the county’s drug
abuse policy and so on.
Then there was that other form, tucked in the middle of
all the rest, that I believe explains a lot about why we at times seem to
have a dysfunctional body politick.
The form reads, and I quote word for word, “Admission of
Drug Use or Alcohol Misuse: I ______, freely and without duress and without
coercion admit to the use of _______________ (i.e. amphetamines, cocaine,
marijuana, opiates, phencyclidine or alcohol misuse as defined within the
policy). I acknowledge that such use is a violation of Campbell County
Government Drug Abuse Policy which prohibits such use. . . . My admission of
use and acknowledgment and agreement to the terms of this statement is
indicated by my signature below.”
To make things simple, all county employees are required
to sign a form admitting to drug use or alcohol misuse, or not receive a
paycheck on June 15.
There was no indication in the collection of forms as to
where county employees might go to find said drugs, so I assume employees
are on their own there, to seek out the dealer of their choice in order to
conform to the requirements of the policy.
Now obviously there is a major typographical error in
here somewhere, but at least one courthouse employee I know had already
noticed the conundrum and solved the problem by writing in “Non” in front of
“Admission of Drug Use” and signed the form, rather than rushing off to buy
drugs in order to meet the county’s new policy.
This could, however, explain
all the things we have wondered about concerning
Everybody in Campbell Count government is not stupid or
dysfunctional; perhaps they’re just high. This also might explain the
unprecedented success of the Sugar Shack bakery a mere two blocks from the
courthouse.
Actually, I accosted Finance Director Jeff “Moneybags”
Marlow about the aforementioned form, since it originated from his office.
Jeff explained that Employees can just write “no” in the blank space and
that yes, the wording does seem a bit unfortunate but the forms were drawn
up by personnel with the UT County Technical Advisory Service.
That explains a lot. Often throughout the years when
reviewing some of their technical advice, I’ve wondered what those people
over at CTAS have been smoking. Now we know.
Ah well, at least we don’t live in Wisconsin, where
citizens recently had to live through a bombardment of negative political
ads costing more than the GNP of most Third World countries. In the end,
notorious Governor Walker survived the recall election, raising the spirits
of conservatives across the nation.
Many conservative Pachyderms
predict that
Voters have to be excited about their candidate if
they’re going to turn out in sufficient numbers to win an election. Since
most folks to a certain extent distrust all politicians, campaigning against
one is simply not enough of an incentive. That may be exactly why Barack
Obama could win re-election in November. Conservatives and Southern racists
may despise the man, but nobody can get overly excited about Mitt Romney.
Personally, when all the mudslinging and negative
advertising gets into full swing later this summer, I plan to unplug my TV,
cancel my newspaper subscription and retreat to my back porch.
There I can watch my garden producing the last vegetables
of summer and the birds frolicking in my back yard and pretend that it’s not
an election year. I’ve gotten quite a bit of pleasure from my birds this
spring. Swifts are nesting inside my storage shed while another family of
birds constructed a nest in a boarded up windowsill on my utility building.
That family turned out to be Starlings, not exactly the
most popular of our feathered friends, but I’ve enjoyed watching them
anyway. The mother bird found a small crevice where the plywood has buckled
with age and built her nest on the windowsill. Once the chicks hatched, she
spent hours roaming around the neighborhood, collecting insects and other
morsels, and darting back through the small crevice to feed her young.
I could always tell when momma Starling had flown in with
another treat, as the chicks would raise a ruckus, then she would emerge and
silently glide off to find more food.
Meanwhile, once the chicks were hatched and making a
racket, Papa Starling finally arrived on the scene. He would fly to the top
of the building, making this ugly gawking sound and just sit there,
occasionally flitting to a nearby tree and then back to the roof.
After a couple of days of doing nothing, Papa finally
gathered up a mouthful of insect himself, apparently intent on helping out
the exhausted mother. Alas, the male bird flitted around the small crevice
leading to the nest several times but couldn’t seem to figure out how to fly
inside. He finally gave up and returned to his perch while Mama Starling
continued to enter and emerge from the nest without any effort at all.
I watched this little drama unfold and thought to myself,
birds are really not that different from humans – when it comes to child
rearing, males are about as useless as hair on a doorknob.
Memorial Day - pausing to reflect on men and women we never knew
Many people gathered Monday
afternoon across the nation, in many cases such as here in
I decided to observe Memorial
Day in a more private manner, by digging into my late grandmother’s letter
box. There, among various birthday cards, graduation announcements,
obituaries and the like, were a couple of dozen yellowing envelopes. Most
were postmarked as military mail from places like
These letters were all from my
father and didn’t originate in
Only when my dad returned home
at war’s end, were the missing lines in these letters filled in, that his
Signal Corps company had been secreted across the ocean long before American
troops invaded
The British, it seemed, had
lost most of their trained radio operators on the beaches of
Also among my granny’s letters were two or three others
from overseas, from a different part of the world. These were letters from
my grandmother’s baby brother. Although he was my father’s uncle, Tom Sharp
was more like a brother, the two of them being only two years apart in age
and raised together in the same household.
I gingerly opened the first one
to read. It was on military stationary marked “U. S. Coast Artillery,
“Dear Sis, I hope this finds you well. Now that Jiggs (My
dad’s nickname) has graduated from high school, he should think about
joining up. With his radio skills, he would be a cinch to get a good posting
and quick sergeant’s stripes.”
“The army isn’t a bad life, especially these overseas
posts. The weather here is like summer year round. It can get pretty hot at
times but I’m posted near the ocean and there’s always a good breeze, most
at night.”
“The thing I’ll remember most
about the
Military life overseas is
different from stateside duty. Not as much spit and polish. As long as we do
our job and stay out of trouble, the officers are pretty easy on us. My
captain is pretty easy-going and I manage to get regular passes to go into
I’ve got a girlfriend there and I think you would like
her. She works at a Catholic school and speaks good English. Who knows, you
might end up with a Filipino sister-in-law! If Jiggs were to end up over
here, you might get yourself a Filipino daughter too. The girls are all very
pretty and eager to marry American boys. Ha.”
Got to sign off now. I’m in barracks tonight and it’s
near lights out. I’ve written Cliff a letter and tell Ola I love her and
will write her, as well as Jiggs soon. Love, Tom”
The letter was stamped and postmarked “October 16, 1941.”
The first time I read this letter and two others, I was
struck by my great-uncle’s writing ability. Compared to letters from my dad
and other family members, Tom wrote beautifully and his spelling and grammar
were nearly flawless. Perhaps, I thought, this is where I inherited my gift
for gab. I felt like I knew him, although we never met.
Tom sent one more letter from
the
Those of you familiar with
American history can guess the rest of the story, or at least part of it.
Less than two months after that letter was written, the Japanese bombed
Pearl Harbor and
The next letter my grandmother
received from her brother was on a plain printed postcard. Most of it was in
Japanese, but there was a message in English on one side: “Cpl. Harry L.
Sharp is a prisoner of war of the Japanese Imperial Army. I am interned
in camp number ___ , Philippine Islands. My health is ( ) good (x) fair ( )
poor. I am being well treated.”
That was it, end of message.
The postcard was dated sometime in 1943. The next year, General Douglas
MacArthur kept his promise to return to the
Tom Sharp joined 1,782 other
American prisoners on one of those ships, the
Arisan Maru where men were packed so tightly
together in suffocating heat that those suffering from dysentery simply
relieved themselves while standing. The Japanese guards lowered one bucket
of food and one bucket of water into each cargo hold daily, where desperate
men fought each other for a handful of rice loaded with weevils. Men died on
their feet and were eventually lifted from the hold to be dropped into the
sea.
Somewhere in the middle of the
Five Americans survived the sinking, five out of nearly
1,800. They found an abandoned lifeboat, avoided Japanese ships and
eventually drifted to the Chinese coast where they were rescued. After the
war, one of those men, who served in the Coast Artillery and spent two years
in a POW camp with Tom Sharp, visited my grandmother. He downplayed the
suffering of the POWs, out of compassion I guess, but his visit gave my
grandmother the closure that the official War Department letter could not.
Each Memorial Day, Americans pause from their daily
activities to honor those men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice for
their country. They deserve to be honored. Their sacrifices are all the
greater because most of them, like Tom Sharp, were at the beginning of their
lives rather than the end. Many never had the opportunity to have families
and of those who did, most never got to watch their children grow up.
It is truly a shame that, as one writer observed, “Old
men make wars and young men must fight them.” Imagine a world where only
those of us over 50 were allowed to fight in wars. If that were the case, I
imagine there would be no more wars.
Vehicular headaches are nothing compared to air travel nightmares
I’m having
headaches this week of the vehicular kind. The ancient
I’ve been shopping around for
something in my price range, which is somewhere between “charitable
contribution” and the cost of a Mother’s Day dinner at
The twelve-month factor I can live with. I’ve been driving
a vehicle for five years that my mechanic kept predicting wouldn’t last
another six months. That was each time he worked on it, installing one by
one a rebuilt transmission, a fuel pump, an oil pump, a radiator, timing
belt and water pump and various small parts here and there.
The air conditioner is another
matter entirely. With temperatures predicted to be in the 90s on Memorial
Day weekend, you can expect another long, hot summer. I practically live in
my vehicle, between commuting from
For the time being, the county
has been kind enough to loan me the “airport car.” That’s a retired
Sheriff’s Department cruiser that is kept out at the
One neat thing about driving a car with government tags
and a spotlight still mounted above the driver’s side mirror – it creeps
other motorists out. I like to take my time on the road, usually dawdling
along on I-75 at a modest 65-70 and keeping to the 45 mph limit on the
four-lane between Caryville and Jacksboro.
When driving my old van, everybody else blew me off the
road, pushing well beyond the edges of the speed limit in their rush to go
nowhere fast. I love driving the former cop car around. I’ll head up I-75
toward Caryville at my usual 65 or so, cars will approach in my rear view
mirror doing 75 or 80 and then they will notice the government tags and
spotlight and drop back. Next thing you know, I’ve got a convoy.
Sometimes I drop down to 60, just to be naughty. Sure
enough, some cars still hesitate to pass me until they’re sure the speed
limit is still 70. Such is the power of fear and the cost of a speeding
ticket these days.
But all good things must come to an end and the airport
car returned to the airport. I’ll have to choose soon between bad, worse and
worst of all and purchase another heap. Looking at my options, pumping a
grand or so into keeping my old van on the road another year is looking
better all the time. At least the air conditioner worked.
I can’t say all the repairs I’ve had to make on the van
weren’t deserved. It had a hundred thousand miles on it when I bought it. I
piled another 160,000 miles on the old girl in five years, driving
everywhere from Chicago to New Orleans and St. Louis, numerous trips to
Alabama and some rough miles in western North Carolina. That is to a degree
because after 9/11, I resolved to not fly anywhere to which I could drive in
twelve hours or less.
It wasn’t the fear of terrorists that kept me on the
ground, unless you count the terrorists at the airport security checkpoints.
I just got tired of being treated like livestock by airlines and airports,
and overcharged for the privilege.
Funny thing is, that decision was made back when airlines
still let you check baggage for free, fed you a snack and beverage and
actually tried to accommodate passengers as much as possible to make your
trip comfortable and enjoyable, once you got past the misery of airport
security.
No more. Airlines now charge for checked bags, blankets,
pillows, diet sodas and the little bags of pretzels. Just this week they
heaped what to me is the final indignity upon passengers – extra charges of
up to $25 each way for window and aisle seats that mean couples and families
must pay extra to sit together on most flights.
To me, this is beyond ludicrous. Not only are the airlines
penalizing families by dividing them on flights, but penalizing passengers
who paid that extra money for a window seat by asking them to sit next to
someone else’s eight-year-old for up to six hours.
I have now
officially expanded my boycott of airline travel to include anywhere to
which I can drive within two twelve-hour days, which should pretty well
cover everything as far as the Rocky Mountains, eastern
I once had a credit card that gave airline miles. That,
dear readers, is a fool’s errand if ever there was one. I didn’t fly all
that often, but my miles accumulated each time I used the card for
purchases. My goal was to collect enough miles for a trip to Europe, Only
thing was, I accumulated miles so slowly that they kept raising the required
number of miles for trips and I never quite got there.
Finally, Bank of America decided I had accumulated too
many miles, meaning I let my balance on that particular card get too high
for their comfort and they proposed to double my interest rate. I “opted
out,” halting use of the card to freeze the interest rate while I paid it
down.
My accumulated miles, 50,000 or so, ceased to build and
activity on my miles account stopped. Naturally, the airline let me know
that all the miles I had earned would expire if I didn’t pay a fee to extend
them.
I decided
to take a vacation to
I’ve still
got
(UPDATED
AT 4:00 PM ON 05/25/12 FOR THE WEEK OF 05/21/2012)
Politicians know how to make points
You’ve got
to give Road Superintendent Dennis Potter an “A” for effort, and while we’re
at it, another “A” for political smarts. He met with officials with the
Tennessee Dept. of Transportation Thursday, a meeting that was well covered
by
Instead of detouring all those interstate travelers and
large trucks down crooked Highway 25W and through LaFollette and Jacksboro,
why not take cars off at the Stinking Creek exit and down the less than four
miles of Stinking Creek Road west to Highway 63, then right back onto the
interstate at the Royal Blue exit?
Of course,
that stretch of
“Of course TDOT rejected the idea, they didn’t think of it
first,” Dennis complained after the meeting, “but I tried.”
Yup.
Dennis got nothing but sympathy from the county commission this year when he
asked for more money with which to pave roads. Why not pull a Tom Sawyer on
the State of
If state officials had
accepted the proposal, Dennis gets four miles of pavement. They rejected the
idea, so Dennis still gets credit with
TDOT officials did toss
Meanwhile, has anyone driven in the far right lane of
westbound Appalachian Highway recently? That’s the lane most of the
eighteen-wheelers are driving in while following the detour route. I noticed
it is becoming increasingly rough already, compared to the eastbound lanes
and even the inner westbound lane.
Heavy trucks tend to do that, you know, destroy roads that
aren’t designed for them. It’s liable to be a long, hot and bumpy summer.
On the
positive side, I noticed that Jacksboro Metals is busy erecting a fence
around their recycling business off
Those neighbors were out in
force at Monday night’s commission workshop, complaining about everything
from noise and traffic to loose metal bolts spilled on roadways. The squires
gave them little more than sympathy, since
Even if the county were to pass zoning ordinances
tomorrow, Jacksboro Metals would not be affected. Under the “grandfather
clause,” government cannot retroactively restrict use of private property.
Also,
let’s face it, if the county had a zoning law already in effect, that area
out along
That, of course, didn’t stop Thomas Hatmaker and Scott
Stanfield from inviting the unhappy neighbors down to a town hall meeting to
vent their anger. Dennis Potter isn’t the only public official who’s quick
to take the opportunity for a little political grandstanding.
No harm done as long as people don’t get the wrong idea
about what the county can or cannot do. The county can “encourage” the
recycling business to fence off their property and perhaps keep the noise
down. The county cannot “force” it to do anything as long as Jacksboro
Metals avoids violating any laws, such as water or air pollution.
All of those people who have
shown up at the courthouse in past years, whenever zoning or planning is
being discussed, to loudly protest big government telling them what they can
or can’t do on their own property, need to take note. That tree falls both
ways.
(UPDATED
AT 9:00 PM ON 05/18/12 FOR THE WEEK OF 05/14/2012)
So many things going on that invite commentary! It’s
difficult to decide where to begin – our dysfunctional legislature, even
more dysfunctional Congress, traffic jams in LaFollette, shady politics,
schools, you name it.
I believe I will start, however, by discussing dinosaur
flatulence. That’s right folks, another British university researcher has
spent another small fortune in grant money to look at whether dinosaur
flatulence may have contributed to global warming a hundred million years or
so ago.
The conclusion of Professor
David Wilkinson of
Of course, the world during Barney’s time was already much
warmer than it is today, so the conclusion of the scientists is that
flatulence may have contributed to keeping a warm world yet a little warmer.
Whew, must have been a smelly place back in the Jurassic. Perhaps, rather
than being done in by a meteorite, dinosaurs were victims of a teenaged
dinosaur prankster with a Bic lighter, setting off a mass explosion.
Dinosaurs, and the myriad of ways that university
professors can find to waste money, are on my mind because my third graders
at Valley View just finished their Earth Day project last Friday. The kids
set up a table with a variety of minerals that are found in the ground and
another holding products made from those minerals.
They then challenged children from the other classes to
match minerals with the products they make and gave out polished rocks as
prizes for three correct answers. I don’t know if the other kids learned
much from the demonstration, but my “teachers” certainly knew, by the end of
the day, that the blue crystals known as Celestine actually produce the red
color in fireworks, while the colorless mineral Calcite is the main
ingredient in concrete.
I may have made things too easy for the kids doing the
guessing with some of my clues. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure
out that a purple mineral called Fluorite that “you put in your mouth every
day” might be the fluoride in toothpaste.
Working with kids in grades 3-5 in my after-school science
enrichment program is still fun, most of the time. Each year it seems more
and more activities fill up the schedules of the kids in fourth and fifth
grades, with fewer of the older children having time to spare for extra
science instruction. This year, I had to cancel classes for over a month
while most of the students endured “TCAP boot camp,” an intense preparatory
period to get the kids ready for the yearly TCAP tests.
Don’t get me started on how I feel about teaching to a
test. Suffice it to say that under George W. Bush’s “No Child Left” program,
the test, and resulting rewards or punishment, are really a test of the
schools and the teachers. As a result, everything else takes second seat to
TCAPs, for better or worse.
One has to wonder, however, how much of the material that
is force fed into young minds in a few weeks leading up to tests, remains
with them after it’s over. I used to cram for exams at UT during my college
days. I remembered material that I had picked up along the way throughout
the year and carried that knowledge with me into life. I recall precious few
of the factoids that I memorized for final exam week.
One of the gems of knowledge that does come back to me
every so often is a discussion I once heard from Dr. George D. Swingle, who
taught structural and field geology at UT-Knoxville. George was a highly
respected geologist whose name remains to this day on many of the geological
maps published by TVA and the Tennessee Division of Geology.
When federal and state highway departments were designing
and planning the route for Interstate 75 back in the early 1960s, it was
predictable that they would turn to Doctor Swingle for advice.
“My first
advice to them was to move the route about fifty miles to the west,” Swingle
recalled, “to a more stable topography on top of the
That more
westerly route would have been too far off the main north-south route
linking
Swingle then advised that if
engineers were determined to build an interstate along the top of
On thing about highway engineering departments, they
always hire geologists to advise the engineers, then ignore the advice. We
can see the results of ignoring George Swingle’s advice today, as LaFollette
endures periods of bumper-to-bumper traffic and motorists crawl along old
25W for two hours on their way north and south.
Up on the mountain the problem
has become clear – a fill of slippery gray shale has become saturated with
water, presumably after the French drain at the base filled in and ceased to
function properly. And the “whole kit and kaboodle,” as George Swingle would
have put it, is on its way downhill to
Perhaps, in its next session, the Tennessee General
Assembly can come up with an answer to the problem. Senator Stacey Campfield
will probably be more than happy to introduce a bill that repeals the Law of
Gravity. That would make about as much sense as some of the other things
that came out of the legislature this year.
“Tough on immigrants” states are
Last week I wrote about
delinquent property taxes and how the cost keeps going up the longer one
waits to pay their bill. One thing about it, the county will eventually get
its money one way or the other. A property tax lien takes precedent over all
over liens. Banks and finance companies must pay the taxes to protect their
investments and if there is no mortgage, the property owner pays or loses.
Collecting some of the
county’s other taxes can be more complicated. The wheel tax, about as
unpopular as any tax ever created, cost half the county commission their
jobs when it was first passed a couple of decades ago,
Many of the county’s drivers went to great lengths to avoid paying the tax,
driving to
Since that time much has changed in
Today over 65 of the state’s 95 counties have a wheel tax of some sort or
another.
This has meant changes in state law that make avoiding the wheel tax more
difficult as well. County clerks cannot issue a license plate to anyone who
does not have a home address in their county. A person living in LaFollette
can no longer obtain a license tag in
The one exception that continues to cause confusion is that car dealerships
can still issue new tags for the county where the vehicle is purchased.
Under the law, the new car owner is still required to drop in at the
Campbell County Clerk’s office and purchase a wheel tax decal, but many
owners wait until their out-of-county license expire, then pay the wheel tax
for a new
This obviously gives new car owners the opportunity for a year’s free ride,
while those drivers keeping the same vehicle for several years have to renew
tags in
The drivers riding around with plates from Knox, Anderson or Blount counties
and no wheel tax are not necessarily violating the law on purpose. Many
assume that they are not required to pay the wheel tax until they renew
their plates in
One driver told me that when they bought their new vehicle, they asked the
dealer to transfer their old
Over a thousand
drivers, since last April, have received letters telling them that it just
ain’t so. Most have come in, without any further nudging, within a 30-day
grace period and shelled out the $45. A few have needed a second reminder,
spelling out the penalty for failing to have a wheel tax – an additional $50
fine plus court costs up to $193.
One thing that the
increased wheel tax cost has caused appears to be theft. The Clerk’s office
has seen an increase in the number of people reporting that their wheel tax
decal, their license plate decal, or both, have been stolen from their
plates.
If
the estimates of stolen decals are accurate, a lot of thieves will be in for
an unpleasant surprise. Any tags registered in other counties with stolen
wheel tax decals will still show up on the list maintained by the Tennessee
Division of Motor Vehicles as a person living in
The county gets a
regularly updated list from the state and those people will still get the
letter of violation, regardless of what they may or may not have on their
license plate.
If
a vehicle license is registered in
The simple speeding
ticket then turns into a trip to jail for theft. It would take somebody
pretty gutsy – or incredibly stupid – to drive around the county under those
conditions.
Speaking of “gutsy or
stupid,” either term might apply to undocumented immigrants, otherwise known
as “illegal aliens” living in a number of states that have passed new
immigration laws.
Uncle Sam merely rounds up undocumented immigrants from
“Gettin’
tough on them foreigners” might play well with certain conservative voters,
but you should always be careful what you wish for. The federal government
invests a little money to patrol borders and round up illegal immigrants and
a little more money transporting them back to Mexico, El Salvador or
wherever. Uncle Sam does not have to spend a fortune on new prisons and
jailers to incarcerate hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants simply
for not having the right paperwork.
That is what
Here in
The U. S. Supreme Court is about to rule on the
constitutionality of
Delinquent taxes
and floating houses, don’t forget the sunscreen,
On the weekend of April 14, I rolled up my sleeves,
grabbed the mop, broom and other implements of destruction and tackled
spring cleaning. That, unfortunately, also meant cleaning out my outdoor
storage shed.
By the time I finished sweeping and dusting all the
mold spores, spider webs, insect parts, rock dust, garden dirt, grass
clippings, fertilizer and mouse droppings and dumping same into trash bags,
I was already beginning to cough. Not the little shallow sneezes brought on
by allergies, but deep-seated Black Lung-type hacks reminiscent of my
coal-mining ancestors.
This punishment to my system must have lowered my
resistance enough that I quickly caught one of the upper respiratory
infections going around in this changing weather. Last week was an up and
down roller coaster of good days, sleepless nights, bad days, worse nights
and so on.
Somehow I managed to pull myself together enough to
go to court Friday, where the judge was scheduled to hear the first half
dozen cases of people who had failed to get a wheel tax decal and had failed
to reply to all of the warning letters I sent them.
The court cases were an anticlimax. I showed up armed
with all my evidence, from utility bills to property tax cards to voter
registration records to prove the defendants were still residents of
Every defendant had already been to the Clerk’s
office and purchased their wheel tax decal before court, so the Judge, being
in a forgiving mood, let them off the hook without a fine or court costs. I
got the sense that his generosity has its limits, however, if he keeps
seeing a parade of violators cluttering up the court docket each month.
What I fell behind on last week was one of my other
tax-related duties, and that will keep me heavily occupied for the next few
days. On May 1, the first advertisement will appear in the local newspapers
announcing a delinquent property tax sale in May. I always try to serve the
delinquent tax notices to as many as possible of those owners who failed to
receive the notice by certified mail, before the ad appears in the paper.
My goal to beat the newspaper ad has nothing to do
with bragging rights and everything to do with saving people some money. A
new state law was enacted around three years ago, dictating that delinquent
taxpayers must pay an extra $100 if their name appears in the published tax
notice.
Unfortunately, too many property owners, having
gotten into a pattern of paying their taxes late, wait until the very last
moment and rush in to pay the delinquent taxes, penalties and interest
during the last couple of days before the actual tax sale, often after
seeing their name in the newspaper notice.
By then it is too late to save the hundred bucks, and
a tax bill that may have originally been rather modest has ballooned, adding
18 percent interest for two years, another penalty added by the Clerk &
Master’s office, a fee to cover service of process, a fee to cover the
delinquent tax attorney’s title search and now the $100 publication fee.
A original tax bill of say, $200, can end up costing
the taxpayer anywhere from $450 to $600 by the time its all over, and that
extra money does not go to support your schools or build roads, but is eaten
up in clerical fees, attorney’s fees, postage fees and newspaper advertising
costs.
Some property owners get blindsided by a
misunderstanding concerning their mortgage holder, whether that be a local
bank, a finance company or some distant banking chain such as Wells Fargo or
CitiBank.
I have property owners who complain when I deliver
their delinquent notice, that “The bank is supposed to take care of this for
me.”
True enough, if you have an agreement in your
original mortgage that requires the bank or finance company to pay all taxes
and add those costs back into the mortgage each year. Most often, if that
clause is part of your mortgage, the lender will take care of everything in
a timely manner.
The problem comes in where property owners read
clauses in their mortgage that state if the property owner fails to pay
taxes, the lender may pay those taxes to protect their collateral and charge
the taxes and penalties back into the loan amount. In such cases the
property owner is responsible for paying the taxes on time and if they fail
to do so, the bank will most likely step in and pay the taxes at the last
minute to prevent the collateral from being sold by the county.
In such cases, last minute means just that – last
minute. All penalties, interest, fees, fines, publication costs and
attorney’s costs will already by tacked on to the original tax bill. If a
bank is going to be forced to cover your behind to protect their collateral,
it’s gonna cost you.
Local banks will sometimes pay delinquent taxes as
soon as they receive a lien holder’s notice, usually several months before
the actual tax sale, saving the property owner at least some interest and
publication costs. Finance companies and big banking chains take their time,
and in some cases it is impossible for the county to notify the lien holder
before a tax sale because mortgage loans are passed around from one company
to another.
This year, while serving lien holder’s notices in
The moral of all this is simple – the longer one
waits to pay property taxes, the more expensive it gets, at an accelerated
rate. If you can’t pay on time, at least pay within the first year after
they are due, when your only extra cost is interest on the original tax
bill. After your taxes become “delinquent” – over a year past due – the
costs go up in leaps and bounds.
Speaking of property taxes, one group of homes that
has long escaped any tax liability is about to be added to the tax rolls.
So-called “floating houses,” large houseboats out on
The problems were 1) difficulty in determining
whether such structures were technically “houses” and subject to real
property taxes, or “boats” that are not and 2) tagging the floating houses
to an actual property tax map and parcel number for assessment purposes,
since Norris Lake is part of the “waters of the state” and has no map and
parcel number.
The legislature recently solved the first problem
with a law that defines floating houses, houseboats, marinas and docks as
real property subject to real estate taxes. Property Assessor Brandon Partin
has solved the second problem by assigning the map and parcel number of the
marina where the houses are docked, identified as a “special interest” in
the same way that mobile homes are identified in a mobile home park.
The challenge for Brandon and his employees now
remains to go out and personally inspect floating houses, confirm that they
are not capable of propelling themselves through the water (which makes them
technically a boat) and determine their value for tax purposes.
Poor
Global warming could sink
Governor Bill Haslam,
being perfectly capable of adding and subtracting, declined to veto the
legislature’s infamous “monkey bill” this week. Since it only requires a
simple majority to override a governor’s veto and since both House and
Senate passed the bill by substantial margins, Governor Bill decided to let
a sleeping dog lie.
The bill, in its final
form, does very little, of course. It simply states that teachers cannot be
punished for allowing a discourse and discussion in their classroom about
alternatives to “controversial” theories such as evolution or global
warming.
Scientists the world
over, were not amused, however. With members of the scientific community, it
was the principle of the thing, that an elected government would give a
backhanded blessing to the mere idea that evolution and global warming are
controversial theories that invite debate.
Evolution may be
controversial in a theological seminary, and global warming may be
controversial in the boardroom of ExxonMobil or among conservative
politicians, but among scientists there is little controversy. Evolution is
fact, and scientists have relied on that premise to help them do everything
from locate pools of oil deep beneath the earth’s surface to develop cures
and treatments for disease.
Global warming is fact
as well. For every scientist, usually supported by grants from oil companies
or conservative think tanks, who publicly questions the idea that we are
making the world hotter, a thousand scientists agree with the concept.
The naysayers usually
agree that the world is getting a bit warmer and that our climate appears to
be changing, but deny that humanity pumping carbon dioxide into the air has
anything to do with it. “It’s a natural cycle,” they claim, that has
occurred at various times throughout earth’s history.
True, the problem is,
it has never occurred as quickly in the past as it is now, thanks to our
inability to control our ravenous apetite for energy.
When the earth has
undergone periods of severe climate change in the past, the change has
occurred over such a long period, thousands or tens of thousands of years,
that life has had time to adapt, that is, to evolve to meet the challenge.
The one time when
climate change occurred too rapidly for life to adapt was around 65 million
years ago, when a giant meteorite struck earth and caused a global winter
that lasted for years. The dinosaurs were in charge then, and we all know
what happened to them.
Oh, but then if you
deny the existence of climate change, you probably deny the existence of
evolution, right? So, how can one argue against climate change and still
point to “natural” shifts in climate that occurred millions of years ago?
After all, according to one Catholic Bishop who worked it all out a few
centuries back by counting backwards through the “begats” in the Bible, the
earth is only 6,000 years old.
Well, you get the
picture. Some things are controversial only if you toss all scientific
knowledge and discovery for the past two hundred years out the window as if
it never existed at all. Treatments for cancer, a cure for polio, control of
smallpox? Never existed. Man on the moon? Never been there. As a matter of
fact we can’t fly either. Airplanes are pure science fiction.
The
“This is all one
theory, of course. Another theory states that the earth is only 6,000 years
old,” the teacher told his students. I never went back.
As far as the concept
of global warming and climate change, the coal and oil companies and their
political puppets are finding their arguments a bit more difficult to
swallow with each passing year. Radical shifts in temperature and rainfall,
continued melting of polar ice, longer and more devastating tornado seasons,
wildfires, droughts, 80 degree February days – these are things we can see
with our own eyes. We don’t need a scientific theory to tell us the weather
is changing.
The only question is
whether human activity is playing a role, and how much of a role. This is a
rather important question, since it determines whether we can do anything to
stop the changes in time to avoid global catastrophe. The energy companies
and their allies would have us believe that climate change is natural and
inevitable, that decreasing our carbon footprint will not help, merely
increase the price of a gallon of gas.
Since most people have
difficulty envisioning life fifty, a hundred years from now, but can readily
feel the impact of $4 a gallon gas versus $3 a gallon gas, climate change
denial seems to be on the upswing.
I saw a statistic that
said the incidence of the terms “global warming” and “climate change” in
major newspapers decreased by 33 percent in 2011. The same article pointed
out that President Obama mentioned “climate change” only one time in his
State of the Union address while mentioning “energy” 23 times.
Many folks obviously are more concerned with today than tomorrow, with their
own well-being than that of their grandchildren. I can live with that. I
have no grandchildren. My advice to everyone is, stop worrying about global
warming. Go down to
Of course that will mean that the State of
Guns invite
trouble, alcohol invites trouble. Do they cancel each other?
You will be relieved
because you won’t have to read more of my ranting about how decrepit and
dysfunctional they are. I will be relieved because, quite frankly, we’re all
a bit safer when they are out of session and unable to cook up more
mischief.
However, their last
days have not been without small acts of drama and black humor, all for our
entertainment. Representative Curry Todd made the news this week by skipping
out on a vote on the floor of the House that will give judges the authority
to order a blood alcohol test if a DUI suspect refuses to submit to one.
Constitutional scholars can debate this bill ad nauseum and it may or may
not stand up in court. For Representative Todd, however, the damage is done.
The West Tennessee Republican, you might recall, was the principle sponsor
of
His trip to the water
cooler to avoid a vote simply brings Todd’s problems back in the public eye
right before campaign time. Good luck on re-election there, Toddie ole boy,
perhaps a future career as a nightclub bouncer will be more successful.
Speaking of guns, the
National Rifle Association has found that there is a limit to the blank
check it has from conservative Republicans to pass laws that permit everyone
capable of carrying a gun to carry one, anytime they want, wherever they
want, whenever they want.
The NRA’s “parking lot” bill would allow employees to keep guns in their
vehicles on company or school property even if the employer forbids weapons
on its private property. The bill had a lot of support from the
conservatives down in
My, oh my, big corporations versus gun lovers! This has to be a
conservative’s worst nightmare. In the end it looks like the corporations
have won round one, as Lieutenant Governor Ron Ramsey,
Personally I have
mixed emotions on this one. I cannot for a moment think of good reasons why
people should feel so threatened on their commute to and from work that they
would need to pack a loaded gun in their vehicle. I mean, if someone
threatens me while I’m behind the wheel, that is why cars have gas pedals
and bumpers.
On the other hand,
there have been numerous occasions when I’m driving, that having a bazooka
or small handheld SAM missile would have been a true joy, like when the guy
cuts in front of me, forces me to slam the brakes, speeds up to pass four
cars on the inside lane, then turns off into a convenient mart.
I’ve got it! Maybe the
NRA can persuade car manufacturers to add built-in machine guns so you
wouldn’t need to carry a pistol around with you. That would give a whole new
meaning to the term “road rage.”
I jest, of course. Fact is, I support hunters’ right to hunt, even though I
haven’t hunted since I was a teenager. I also support people’s rights to
bear arms to protect their homes, although the only firearm I’ve owned for
the past twenty years is an ancient single shot .22 that my granny’s sister
used to shoot pheasants when she was a
For the life of me, I
can’t understand why anyone would want to carry a handgun into a bar, or a
restaurant, a movie theater or a grocery store. As far as I’m concerned, if
you go into a bar to consume alcohol, you do so at your own risk. That’s
your business, but society shouldn’t bless your behavior by allowing you to
carry a handgun while you’re getting inebriated.
My dad was one of the
most enthusiastic gun collectors I ever knew. He had German Lugers and
Walthams, Colt .45s, British .303 Enfields, M-1s, cap and ball pistols from
the Civil war, a couple of muzzle loaders from the early 1800s, a
double-barrel 12 gauge “Nitro Special” that kicked like a mule and a
single-shot .45-70 reputed to have been with Custer at the Little Big Horn.
He had regular ammo,
tracer ammo, armor-piercing ammo, banana clips, full belts for his
water-cooled Browning machine gun and hand grenades, which may or may not
have been defused.
He instructed me at a
young age that all of his weapons were always loaded, and should be treated
as such. I fired them all at one point or another, learning just how hard a
double barrel 12-gauge could kick and learning that single-shot .45-70
carbines throw out so much hot powder that after one shot you are partially
blinded. No wonder the Indians won at the Little Big Horn.
When my dad passed
away, I sat down with my mom and told her, “We need to sell this gun
collection quickly, and make sure everyone around here knows we’ve sold it.
Otherwise somebody is going to knock you in the head to steal it.”
We sold it, lock,
stock and bullet. Nobody ever broke into my mom’s house to steal anything,
since the one thing they would have wanted to steal was no longer there. She
later told me she never felt safe with all those guns around the house, and
never felt safer than he did once they were sold and gone.
The moral? I don’t
know, perhaps that guns invite trouble. Using them to hunt wild animals is
one thing, collecting them like coins or baseball cards another. Packing
them around in your pocket to make you feel like John Wayne? John was 6’4” –
he didn’t feel a need to carry a gun around.
Here on the home
front, Jellico’s Baptists are still protesting the city fathers’ decision to
allow beers sales within 300 feet of a church and to increase the number of
beer permits.
I feel like the members of Crouch’s
The town council and mayor argue that since
Seems like Jellico is looking to milk the cow after it has escaped from the
barn. The only reason Jellico has collected significant revenue on beer
sales over the past few decades is that
I doubt that anyone
from Corbin is going to drive down to Jellico to buy beer, no matter how
convenient it may be, when they can buy it at home. Still, better to sell
Kentuckians package beer that they can haul back to Kentucky than to
encourage more watering holes on the Tennessee side of the line. Let the
Whitley County Sheriff’s Department, rather than the Jellico Police
Department, worry about drunken drivers.
Since
Legislators’ logic appears flawed, but then you’ve gotta consider
the source
Here we are in a new
high tech, constantly changing world - revolutions by Facebook,
instantaneous disaster coverage via cell phone cameras, global warming,
universal health care (maybe), a black man in the White House.
Who’da thunk it, even
a mere ten years ago?
Meanwhile, as I
pointed out last week, the Tennessee Legislature is re-fighting the battle
of man versus monkey, dragging up the ancient Scopes trial out of the musty
archives of history, dusting it off and putting a new name to it, all for
our entertainment.
While they’re at it,
the Legislature is digging up the 1950s, when politicians kept black people
and poor white trash from voting with poll taxes, literacy tests and the
like. Heaven forbid that the uneducated, poor or people of color should be
able to cast ballots. They might put a black man in the White House!
The current version of
voter discrimination is called the voter ID law, and is supposedly designed
to insure that all of us red-blooded Americans will not have our votes
watered down by allowing someone to cast a fraudulent vote, perhaps someone
voting for a dead person or, I shutter to think about it, an illegal
immigrant, a foreigner, casting a vote!
Sorry to rain on your
parade, legislators, but anyone in this country illegally is not likely to
want to attract attention to themselves by trying to vote. As the guy in
charge of enforcing the county’s wheel tax, I love it when the state
computer comes up with someone who has bought a new vehicle, has a local
address and has a Hispanic name
I sent one such person
a letter recently, telling them they needed to purchase a wheel tax decal.
The Clerk’s office was flooded with folks with names like Carlos, Fernando,
Juan and Jorge, all clamoring to buy their wheel tax decals before they too,
received a letter. I even think one or two people who live in Hamblen County
came in and purchased Campbell County wheel tax decals, just to be on the
safe side.
I exaggerate, of
course, but my point is, those immigrant workers, whether you call them
illegal, undocumented, or simply confused, have no wish to get on the
government’s radar screen. They don’t vote; they just go to work, return
home and try to keep their heads down.
As far as voting dead
people, county election commissions do a pretty thorough job of purging the
rolls of deceased voters. In Tennessee, where most precincts are in small
towns and rural communities, the poll workers know practically everyone who
comes in to cast a ballot. They also know who has died, who has gotten
married, divorced, arrested and been in the hospital for gall bladder
surgery.
It ain’t easy to vote
as your dearly departed Uncle Frank when the person running the precinct is
the mortician who laid Uncle Frank in the ground and Aunt Sadie is working
the sign-in table.
Again, I exaggerate
and I know that voting precincts in cities like Nashville and Memphis are
not so personal, although many poll workers live in the communities where
their precinct is located and know many voters. Still, there have been
precious few incidents reported of people trying to vote illegally as a
deceased voter. I cannot recall a single incident that has been reported in
the media in the past couple of decades.
State Representative
Dennis Powers, in a column defending the voter ID law, argues that because
there is no photo ID requirement, there is no way to know exactly how many
fraudulent votes have been cast, inferring that the number may be
significant.
Well, in the eyes of
Dennis Powers and the rest of his ultra-conservative crowd, we can calculate
the exact number of fraudulent votes that have been cast. Just tally up all
the votes for Democrats in the last few elections, add votes cast for less
conservative independent candidates and you have the fraudulent voter list!
I really don’t have a
problem with a photo ID requirement. I have a problem with the types of
photo IDs the various state legislatures, all Republican-dominated, are
willing to accept. This, plainly, shows the true nature of these laws. Photo
driver’s license IDs are acceptable, as are passports, various federal
identity cards and the like. Photo employee IDs issued by state and local
governments are not acceptable – “too easy to falsify.”
Specially-issued voter
IDs available at some trouble and expense at drivers’ license bureaus are
acceptable. Student IDs from universities and colleges are unacceptable –
“too easily falsified.”
Let us call a horse a
horse, a donkey a donkey and a Republican a pachyderm. College students are
dangerous voters. Many, but not all, tend to not vote for conservative
candidates. Some even vote for, gasp, liberals!
Non-students who lack
a photo driver’s license may include an abnormally large percentage of
non-working, stay-at-home mothers or grandmothers. Women, as a whole, tend
to vote less conservatively than men.
Dennis Powers goes on
to argue that the number of legitimate voters who might be denied the right
to vote is too small to take seriously. He refers to lawsuits in Georgia and
Indiana challenging voter ID laws in those states and says they were dropped
because plaintiffs couldn’t find one person who had been denied a vote
because of the new laws.
Perhaps, Dennis, that
is because the new laws haven’t been on the books long enough to impact an
actual election. Give ‘em time. Meanwhile, I seem to recall that some voters
in Tennessee have already been denied the right to vote, including a former
Democratic Congressman, and our photo ID law is not even in full effect yet.
At least Dennis Powers
made some intelligent arguments, if somewhat flawed in their logic. I
noticed that Representative Frank Nicely of Strawberry Plains has trotted
out a little bit of his own logic in arguing against a bill that would allow
school board members to vote on issues by video phone instead of being
present at a meeting.
I have no opinion on the bill at all, not even being aware that it existed
until it was passed this week and reported in the News-Sentinel. The paper
quoted Nicely as complaining that back in the 1860s, two “radical
Republicans” kidnapped two members of the Oregon legislature and
masquerading as the two missing lawmakers, cast the deciding votes in favor
of ratifying the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
“The kidnapping thus
effectively changed the course of history and stole power from the states,”
Nicely was quoted as saying in expressing his doubts about the video voting
bill.
Best I can recall, the 14th Amendment is the one that abolished
slavery. Since most of the slave states were at the time in rebellion and
part of the Confederacy, the states remaining in the Union had little
trouble in finding enough votes to ratify the 14th Amendment,
with or without Oregon’s help.
Is Nicely trying to
say we shouldn’t have abolished slavery? Or perhaps he is suggesting that
the states like Tennessee and Mississippi, that were actively engaged in a
war against our nation, had their power taken away by these two fraudulent
voters.
At any rate, it’s hard
to figure out how a bunch of really dumb legislators could fail to recognize
two imposters among their ranks, how that relates to a video voting bill, or
exactly what Frank Nicely was trying to say anyway.
Representative Nicely has made most of his reputation
by waging what seems to be a one-man war against the Tennessee Wildlife
Resources Agency, and has a reputation as a bit of a legislative bully. I
notice Frank is also considering a step upwards, to run for the Senate.
Sounds more like he needs to consider a step outwards, as in it’s time to
retire before you embarrass yourself further, Frank.
Legislators may prove
Education has been
much in the news lately, with the state legislature managing to stir the pot
as usual, while lawsuit-panicked school boards are dragging the old school
prayer issue back into the news just in time for upcoming elections.
The problem is, the
public gets bombarded by issues that are very different and should be
separated, but they end up being stirred in the same pot until you end up
with the same old “them and us” polarization.
I overheard one lunch
counter philosopher going on Thursday about “them Godless liberals trying
again to shove evolution down our throats and tell our kids they can’t
worship the Lord in school.”
Well, as far as
worshiping in school, that’s pretty much old news, isn’t it? Formalized
school prayer was ruled unconstitutional a long time ago, while kids are
free to pray to God any time they feel a need. They just can’t be forced to
pray by a teacher or administrator.
The annual TCAP tests
are right around the corner, and I can pretty well predict that there will
be more than a few prayers offered up, such as “Lord, please let the right
answer be (a) and not (b).”
Meanwhile, the fallout from
Our board, after
kicking around options such as holding a prayer session in private before
opening the meeting, finally fell right back into the same pattern as
before. There really is no reason not to continue praying before a meeting,
unless someone attending the meeting objects. If someone objects, then the
board can consider whether their principles are worth a court battle.
The other piece of this complicated secular versus spiritual puzzle rests
down in
Leave it up to
The Tennessee General Assembly, in no hurry to again become the laughing
stock of the country, promptly repealed the old law making it a crime to
teach evolution. Creationists have been searching for a way to give
Actually,
Truth is, I’ve always
been a firm believer in evolution as a scientific fact, but I have no
problem in justifying this belief with my faith in a divine power and the
teachings of Christ. Even in teaching earth science to third graders, I am
occasionally challenged by an especially sharp kid who has been paying
attention in Sunday school.
The fact that the
earth is 4.6 billion years old is usually what raises eyebrows, and some kid
is almost certain to object, “God made the world in six days.” Of course you
are just as likely, perhaps more so, to get the same objection from adults
who believe in a literal translation of the Book of Genesis.
To those adults I will
pose the same question I always ask the kid: “How long is one of God’s
days?”
Our day is 24 hours long, and determined by the length of time it takes the
earth to revolve once on its axis. Is the Supreme Being parked on Earth,
perhaps vacationing on the beach at Daytona or writing His memoirs in a
cabin in the
Science has determined
that the earth, and the rest of our solar system, was created some 4.6
billion years ago. If you follow Genesis, that makes one of God’s days
approximately 650 million of our years long.
I can live with that,
but it’s a bit complicated to wrap one’s mind around. I prefer to think that
the Bible tells us what happened, in the most basic sense, but does not tell
us how it happened. That is the job of science, to explain the “how,’ and
evolution, plate tectonics, the so-called Big Bang theory and all the rest
contribute to that storehouse of knowledge and understanding.
The simple truth is,
some things we are not meant to know, and must take on faith. The existence
of God is a matter of faith, and I can live with that because like most
people, I have faith. Science must be a matter of fact, because without it
we wouldn’t be sending people into outer space, we wouldn’t be able to cure
disease, predict the weather or make postings to a Facebook page.
For faith to work for us, it must be separate from fact, and for fact to
work, it must be separate from faith. It’s as simple as that. Let’s hope
that the only real monkeys running around
The other controversy
that is stirring involves teacher evaluations, and a bill in the legislature
to keep them closed to the public. Most TV stations, newspapers and the
Tennessee Press Association will be screaming bloody murder about this,
joined by a lot of parents who want to know if their child’s teacher is any
good or not.
Teachers want the
evaluations kept confidential because 1) they are meant as a tool to help
teachers improve their performance rather than be put on a hot seat and 2)
there are still quite a few bugs in the evaluation system that haven’t been
worked out yet.
I tend to side with
the teachers against my fellow journalists on this one. I’ve never liked a
system that teaches to a test, rather than stimulating children’s natural
curiosity for learning. I’m not sure that evaluations based on test scores
are all of that useful or offer accurate reflections of a teacher’s
abilities.
The last thing school
systems need are for newspapers to publish a grade card of individual
teachers’ evaluations and a mob of parents trying to steer their children
into the classrooms of the high-scoring teachers and away from teachers with
lower evaluations.
Instead, school systems need to continue seeking ways
to help all teachers meet a certain level of excellence so that the
difference in evaluations is barely discernable. Either that, or we need to
set evaluation standards for parents as well. Education does begin, after
all, in the home.
Kids can be a handful, but it takes a
congressman to really waste
money
When observing adults, particularly
of the politician stripe, becomes too burdensome and depressing for me, I
often turn to an old, dependable remedy - kids.
Unpretentious and
uncomplicated, kids can be a balm for the soul, especially if taken in small
doses. I like to take the grandparent, rather than the parent approach –
entertain them for awhile, spoil them rotten and send them back to mom and
dad for all the tough jobs.
That is why I continue
to volunteer at Valley View Elementary to teach science enrichment as an
after-school program. The exposure to 9-10 year-olds keeps me young at
heart, while the fact that I’m exposed for at most, three or four hours a
week keeps me from aging prematurely.
This week my exposure
was extended somewhat, as it was time for our annual field trip, this time
up to the neighborhood of Johnson City to visit the Gray Fossil Site &
Museum operated by East Tennessee State University.
This is the second
time we’ve taken a group of kids to visit this museum, which focuses on life
in East Tennessee around four million years ago, when the climate was so
warm that alligators swam in our ponds, rhinos and elephants grazed on grass
and saber-toothed cats roamed the edges of the forest, looking to pounce on
an unsuspecting tapir or wild pig.
One thing some of the kids come away with from the visit is an understanding
of exactly what a paleontologist does, which is pretty much the opposite of
the fossil hunters featured in the popular
While Hollywood’s
version of paleontologists run around digging up massive dinosaur skeletons
and Hollywood archeologists like Indiana Jones uncover rich caches of golden
treasure, the real-life scientists at Gray spend countless hours sifting
through a bag of sand hunting for one little tooth.
These paleontologists
might spend an entire summer cleaning and preserving one single fossil bone,
but from that single bone might come an encyclopedia of information. For
instance, the chemical content of teeth uncovered at Gray indicate that most
of the herbivores dined on leafy plants, rather than grass, telling us that
the immediate area was heavily forested.
At the same time, analysis of the teeth of the extinct
elephants and rhinos show that they grazed almost exclusively on tall
grasses, telling scientists that somewhere near what is now East Tennessee
there existed vast grassland savannahs, similar to today’s
The kids of course,
learning that being a paleontologist involves long hours in a lab searching
for small clues to the past and does not include running around chasing a
T-Rex, lose some of their enthusiasm for going into that particular line of
work.
Life is like that of
course, full of minor disappointments and reality checks. Pat Summit’s Lady
Vols could, in our dreams, bring her one last national championship in a
storybook ending to an incredible career. Nothing is impossible in sports,
of course, but an undefeated Baylor team with 6’10” superstar Brittany
Griner stands squarely in their way.
The
In reality, they hate us over there, they put up with us because we have
bigger bombs and they can’t wait until we leave so they can go back to their
17th Century existence.
Of course we’re still trying to figure out how to exit
Teddy Roosevelt once told Americans that we should “speak softly but carry a
big stick.” The continuous saber-rattling coming out of some quarters in
I don’t know why we
should fear them. We’re the nation that has enough nuclear weapons to
destroy the world several times over. We are also the only nation that has
ever actually dropped an atomic bomb on another country. Seems we could
simply remind the Iranians of these two inescapable facts.
“Hey,
Here in
We can credit some good traffic control planning, a lot of hard work by
police officers, firemen and volunteers and a big dose of good luck –
I-75 has been shut
down more than once by pavement collapses, the most notable coming some
years back when the entire northbound section slid off into the valley.
Things like that happen when engineers design highways through mountains,
especially when those engineers ignore the advice of geologists who
understand the nature of the ground that is being disturbed.
One thing for certain,
if the pressure from freight and trucking companies to allow higher weight
limits on highways ever succeeds, we will see many more collapsed lanes.
Many of these highways were never designed in the first place to handle the
volume of traffic they now carry, and certainly not designed to handle
heavier weights.
I know one place where federal taxpayers, at least, could save around $100
million a year. You might recall, a few weeks back, when I was complaining
about the expensive so-called “questionnaires” I was receiving in the mail
from Congressman Chuck Fleishman, who represents
Now, it seems, the
Chattanooga Times Free Press has managed to put a price tag on the cost to
taxpayers of these Congressional mailings. Not only that, but they found
that Campbell County’s congressman, Scott DesJarlais, led the pack, spending
$224,000 in one quarter between October and December of last year.
DesJarlais was among the nation’s big spenders on “constituent
communications” for all of 2011, forking over around $282,000 during the
year to let us know what a wonderful job he is doing as our elected
representative. He was outspent by at least three others, including
Republican Congressman Joe Heck of
If each of the 435 members of the House of Representatives averaged say,
$250,000 on these wasteful brochures, most of which never make it past the
post office wastebasket, than we are looking at close to $100 million. That
only covers the House; you’ve also got 100
I am so happy that our nation’s elected
representatives take the effort to spend $100 million to let us know how
they plan to cut federal spending and slash the deficit. What a great
country we live in!
(updated
9:00 a.m. on 03/19/12 for the week of 03/12/2012)
Sales tax fails,
roads crumble, Where to go from here? Buy a good horse
This was the Republican primary, for goodness sakes.
“Republican” is an old Latin phrase which means “No tax, ever, on anything,
for any reason.” Look it up.
Seriously, it’s quite a challenge to convince anyone,
whether rich or poor, young or old, Pachyderm or Donkey, Christian, Muslim
or Jew, to pass a tax on themselves. That’s why we elect congressmen,
legislators and county commissioners, so they can pass the taxes and we’ll
have somebody to blame, cuss and vote against in the next election.
County Mayor William Baird expressed disappointment
that the public failed to approve the referendum, pointing out that allowing
the county road system to deteriorate is not an option. Vice Mayor David
Young suggested that one option, unlikely to be popular, might be to go back
to gravel roads.
Commissioner Thomas Hatmaker repeated his contention
that the county could sell enough rock from its quarries to other counties
to pay for asphalt to pave roads. LaFollette Mayor Mike Stanfield suggested
that the county wastes too much money and should cut spending instead of
raising taxes.
Easy for the mayor to say. The City of
So where does
They could raise the wheel tax, again. See option
number one: been there, done that to pay for the justice center.
The squires could place the sales tax referendum back
on the ballot in November. How could they be sure that the results would be
any different? Well, Dennis Potter could send his crews out to rip up a few
county roads, let the residents eat dust throughout the summer and hope they
vote for the tax increase to get their pavement back.
That might work, if enough voters were impacted by
the bad roads, but then you’ve got all those voters who live inside one of
the county’s four municipalities. Someone who only drives between
There are a few other options that we haven’t
considered, and this seems like an appropriate time to toss them out:
1) Make the Appalachian Highway between Jacksboro and
I-75 a toll road. The county could collect a small amount of the revenue
needed from all the people who leave the county daily to work somewhere else
and an even larger portion of the revenue from all the locals driving to the
liquor stores in Caryville.
2) Stock the numerous potholes forming in rural roads
with fish and charge a fee to anglers.
3) Make the roads leading to Deerfield, Big Creek,
Shaghai, Twin Cove and other
4) Hire some Native Americans from the
4) And my personal favorite – authorize Dennis Potter
to send highway department employees out to neighboring counties to boost
cars, turn the county garage into a chop shop and fund the entire highway
program as an officially-sanctioned criminal enterprise.
Ah well, as you can see, our options for funding
highway maintenance are somewhat limited. The good old days when federal and
state government shared revenue with local county governments are long past.
The federal government spent our share of highway
money on the bombs that George W. Bush dropped on Iraq and the interest they
must pay to China for borrowing the money to drop bombs on Afghanistan. The
state government? The clowns that currently masquerade as the state
legislature are too busy taking
No, I’m afraid, dear Campbell Countians, that we are
on our own. We’ll get exactly what we’re willing to pay for and no more.
Heavy duty four-wheel drive vehicles may be the only thing that can
negotiate our roads before long, but they use a lot of gas and gas is
getting expensive. Personally, I’m looking for a good horse. (updated
11:00 a.m. on 03/09/12 for the week of 03/05/2012)
Calling in an air strike to kill a mouse,
The squires got
together Thursday night and finally appointed a new commissioner to fill the
Third District seat vacated last December by Doctor No. There were no
surprises – they appointed Scott Stanfield, who received only three fewer
votes than Melvin Boshears in the 2010 election.
I offered him my
condolences after the vote. He can now join the 14 other commissioners in
sharing blame for the wheel tax, the property tax, potholes in roads,
overcrowded jails, overcrowded parking lots, understaffed offices, the meth
crisis, underpaid teachers, overpaid county employees, underpaid county
employees, the federal deficit and global warming.
The fact that the man
asked for the job indicates a character flaw. Sane individuals want no part
of public office in these troubled times.
Actually, it is good
that somebody wants to sit on the hot seat. Despite my consistent ribbing of
commissioners, school board members and the like, I have a great deal of
respect for anyone willing to take on these thankless jobs.
Well, I respect most people willing to assume public
office. There are notable exceptions, particularly the members of the
As usual, the
legislators are calling in an air strike to kill a mouse, with the potential
high for “collateral damage” that will plague Tennesseans for years to come. The bill that is moving through the State House and Senate would make it a
Class A misdemeanor to camp on state-owned property where camping is not
designated, obviously aimed at running off the Occupy protesters who have
been overnighting near the Capitol since last year.
The problem is 1) the
severity of the penalty – a Cass A misdemeanor is the most serious of
misdemeanor crimes, punishable by up to a year in jail and $2,500 in fines
or both and 2) the definition of “camping.” Under the proposed bill,
building a fire, carrying out cooking activities, digging or earth breaking
or storing personal belongings are all defined as “camping.”
I personally can’t
wait until a family is arrested for grilling burgers at a state-owned picnic
area. Remember, picnic areas are not “designated for camping.” I can also
see a group of fishermen hauled off to jail for building a campfire on a
state-owned creek bank to warm their buns on a cold Autumn night. Many
people like to fish on creeks and rivers under state highway bridges.
Since I often search
for rocks and fossils in road cuts for my Valley View Elementary School earth science classes,
I’ll be particularly interested in seeing the first group of geology
students and professors from UT who are hauled off to jail for “earth
breaking” when they crack a few roadside rocks with their little hammers.
Ah, our good and wise state legislature. A greater gathering of fools and
asses couldn’t be found at the clown tent during
Speaking of which,
keep a sharp eye on one former state senator in particular, the one whom
innocent Knox County voters elected as their chief executive a couple of
years back.
Have you been keeping up with all the flack over in
Ray recently retired
under a cloud of controversy when her inflated salary and bonus package of
$400,000 was made public and placed under the news media microscope.
Outrageous, of course. Only men wearing suits and working for banks, Wall Street brokerage firms or
TVA are allowed to draw inflated salary and bonus packages worth hundreds of
thousands of dollars.
While Ray’s income was
drawing all that attention from Knoxville TV and newspapers, I kept asking
myself, “Who blew the whistle on Ray and what is their motive?” I recalled
that prior to all of the exposure on Ray’s cozy and questionable contract,
she had been somewhat at odds with Knox County Mayor Tim Burchett over the
future of the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame.
Burchett is uncomfortable with the county’s ownership
of the Hall of Fame. He would like to sell off the property and, supposedly,
reduce the county’s debt or pay off campaign promises to build a new
When Burchett
suggested placing the building on the block to the highest bidder, Ray
countered by strongly suggesting that KTSC could come up with the $4
million-plus estimated sales price and keep the Hall of Fame in public
ownership, guaranteeing that it will remain in Knoxville. Ray, as
strong-willed and pushy a gal as you will find, with many allies among
Knoxville’s rich and powerful, seemed capable of getting her way in the
matter.
Suddenly, Gloria Ray’s
palace came crumbling down around her ears. Her salary became public, her
bonuses under scrutiny and the legality of her contracts under question. Discussions among lawyers, resignations from KTSC’s board and public
criticism from Burchett and Knoxville Mayor Madeline Rojero were soon
followed by Ray’s negotiated retirement.
Now the most recent development, Knoxville TV news is reporting an official
split between the Women’s Hall of Fame and KTSC and an “analysis” of the
contributions and funding that Ray had claimed could pay for purchasing the
Hall from
Suddenly the future of the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame is officially “in
question.” The only thing anyone knows for certain is that Tim Burchett
still seems set on selling the property. Whether the non-profit that
operates the Hall will be able to come up with the money to keep it out of
the hands of a private, for-profit entity is in question. Whether the
Women’s Hall of Fame will continue to exist in
Gloria Ray is no longer in the way and KTSC, which receives a hefty portion
of
While the
Maybe someone should subpoena Burchett’s phone and email records and see who
he has been having discussions with over the Hall of Fame property. What,
six messages from a fellow named “Geno” in
About that I am joking, but to me it is no joke that
the Knoxville News-Sentinel has seemed eager to jump on the bandwagon and
expose Gloria Ray’s chummy contracts and salary package to the public
without bothering to ask, “Who blew the whistle and what is their motive?” That’s the next question that needs to be asked.
(updated
4:00 p.m. on 03/03/12 for the week of 02/27/2012)
Sadly, we get what we’re willing to pay for, and the leadership we
deserve
County commissioners
received another lesson on the limits of their authority Tuesday night. This
batch of mostly first-term squires already received a lesson when they first
took office in how little power county government has, basically being
stooges of state government with no powers not granted to them by the state
legislature.
Now they have learned again the limitations of their power when it comes to
other elected county officials. Marie Ayers wants the
The state requires
homebuilders and contractors to purchase a permit based on the value of the
construction, with a very minimal portion of the fee going to whoever sells
the permit. The state also gave local county clerks the option of whether to
sell the permits or not. County Clerk Debbie Wilson opted not.
Commissioner Ayers stated that she had received complaints from builders who
had their projects delayed because they didn’t know they needed the state
permit and weren’t told when they bought the local permit. Ayers made a
motion to request
Marie pushed her motion anyway, aware that the commission had no authority
to force the Clerk to do anything that the Clerk doesn’t want to do. The
vote deadlocked 6-6 and Mayor William Baird, obviously not interested in
starting a feud with the
Later in the same
meeting, Thomas Hatmaker, who is beginning to vote “no” on so many motions
that he seems intent on replacing the dearly departed Melvin Boshears, had a
suggestion of his own. Thomas suggested the commission should reinstate the
road committee, a committee that squires did away with completely a few
years back.
“If you do, I will not
serve on it, and you better be prepared for a lot of midnight calls,” Bobby
White declared. Bobby should know, he is probably the only current member of
the commission to ever serve on a road committee.
Bobby pointed out that
the commission has no authority whatsoever to force the Road Superintendent
to do anything the Road Superintendent does not want to do, but that the
public thinks a road committee has the power to get their road paved, their
potholes filled or their ditches cleaned.
As a result, White
pointed out, members of a road committee get all the complaints that should
be leveled at the Road Superintendent, all the blame when nothing is done
and have no power to do anything.
Tsk, tsk. Poor,
powerless county commission. Well, almost powerless. They do, however, hold
the purse strings of the county. That is the squires’ one hole card should
they choose to play it.
The so-called fee
offices are fairly independent of any control from commissioners. They are
allotted a portion of the fees taken in from various licenses, permits and
tax collections and that provides their budget. They can hire whom they
choose, decide on a pay scale and how many people they want to employ within
the limits of their approved budget and the squires have no say in the
matter.
Commissioners could
play hardball, refuse to pass a budget or continuing resolution and shut
down county government, I suppose. Yeah, and you could shoot yourself in the
head to gain relief from the misery of a hangnail. Still, there are times
when the fee offices must come to the commissioners for additional financial
help for one thing or another, whether that be to fund a satellite office,
upgrade communications and computer systems or whatever. Squires could
negotiate with the carrot rather than the stick and possibly get changes
they want.
Same with the Highway
Department. Dennis Potter gets most of his funding from the state gasoline
tax and commissioners can’t tell him how to use the money. But if they
really wanted to help citizens who petition the county commission for help
on a road project, all they have to do is allocate money for that project
and only for that project. If the Road Superintendent does the work, he gets
the money. If not, the squires can tell the citizens, “Hey we approved the
money, go complain to Dennis Potter.”
So the commission is
not completely without resources or power to get things done. Only one
problem with this approach – it takes money. To offer fee offices something
in return for providing services they don’t want to provide, or to offer
extra money for paving a particular road that Dennis Potter doesn’t have in
his budget requires money, and when you’re talking about the county
commission, that means tax dollars.
The one true power that the county commission has is the power to raise
taxes, specifically property taxes. This bunch was forced to do that once
already to fund the
Will the public vote
for a local sales tax increase to fund road projects? Residents of the
county’s four municipalities have less to gain by voting a tax increase on
themselves, since their streets are maintained or not maintained by city
government. If a majority of rural residents think like the fellow from
Stinking Creek, who told squires, “People are living in the potholes in that
road,” but told a reporter he would not vote for a tax increase, the sales
tax is doomed to fail.
Well, as anyone who has ever bought a used car can attest, we usually get
exactly what we pay for. Likewise, since
Speaking of leadership, I received a nice little brochure in the mail this
week from Congressman Chuck Fleischmann. Living across the line by a mile or
so in
The brochure was
labeled “Federal Legislative Review and Outlook” with an added line that
read, “Official Survey Enclosed.” This brochure was printed in color on
heavy paper and folded into six equal sections, including the mailing cover
complete with a color photo of the Congressman.
Four of the sections were labeled
“How Chuck is Serving the District,” “How Chuck
is Helping Create Jobs,” “Key Bills Sponsored,” and “Less Taxes, Less
Regulation, Less Bureaucracy.” A fifth section was the title page with
contact information and office hours and quotes from newspapers about
Chuck’s perfect attendance record and his vote against raising the debt
ceiling.
The whole thing was
labeled “Public Document: Official Business,” meaning taxpayers paid for the
printing and mailing. Oh yeah, I forgot the official survey. A small
postcard was attached to one side asking two questions: “Do you think the
country is going in the wrong track or the right direction?” (check
appropriate box) and “What do you think the government should do to create
more jobs?” (a three inch line on which to write an answer).
I’m accustomed to
Congressmen abusing their privilege to waste taxpayers’ money on
self-serving political propaganda. We’ve seen it ever since Congress was
given the “franking privilege” that exempts their mail from the cost of
postage, back somewhere between the times of Andy Jackson and Abraham
Lincoln.
Fleischman, however,
is a self-proclaimed arch-conservative who voted to let the country go into
default on its debts rather than raise the debt ceiling. His brochure, in
all my years of receiving junk mail from Congress, is also the most fancy,
colorful, expensive piece of junk mail I’ve seen.
But at least, if you’re going to waste my money on self-serving junk mail,
Chuck, please get your quotations correct. It’s “on the right track” not “in
the right track’ you ninny. Alas, we do get the leadership we deserve.(updated
7:00 p.m. on 02/26/12 for the week of 02/20/2012)
Biorhythms: what goes up must also come down; just ask Herman Cain
I’m a great believer
in biorhythms. You know, those not-quite-definable ups and downs in one’s
life that determine not just how you feel but often things that happen that
are quite out of your control.
It seems as if most of
us go through life in neutral, with periods when everything goes just right
and other periods when everything goes wrong. The musician who penned the
lyrics “The future’s so bright I have to wear shades” was obviously going
through a period of positive biorhythms at the time. Murphy, when he wrote
his Laws, was without doubt in a biorhythmic downturn when he declared law
number one: “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.”
I used to think such
ideas were nonsense, that we make our own luck and if things are going
badly, it is our own fault for making bad choices. Poppycock, bad things
happen to good people all the time, while the undeserving all too often hit
the Powerball or pick the right horse.
Instead, I think we
make bad choices because we’re suffering from a downturn in our biorhythms.
This past week was for me, a perfect example.
I started off by
getting a little notice from my bank, announcing that I had an overdraft in
my account. Naturally I didn’t get the notice until a week after the
overdraft occurred and I had written several more checks, resulting in a
black hole in my finances, expanding constantly to swallow surrounding
stars.
My bank covers my
checks but, as comedian Bill Cosby once so aptly put it, “When you write a
bad check, what does your bank do? They charge you more of what they already
know you don’t have enough of.”
I had made a $100
error in my checkbook. By the time I found out and covered the error, I had
another $144 in overdrafts, which left me eating cheese and crackers for a
week and paying late fees on utility and cable bills.
Shake it off. These
things happen and after all, you’re at fault for not being able to add and
subtract accurately.
Early this week, it was time for me to do my duty as
I was told to fill out
the forms and give the white and blue copies to the Sheriff’s Department for
service, keep the pink copy and turn the yellow copy into the Clerk of the
Court.
The first thing I
noticed is that the book contains five copies of each citation, an original
and copies for everyone from the court clerk to the courthouse janitor. You
are supposed to fill out the top sheet and it will carbon though to the
underlying pages, all printed on different pastel colors.
I quickly learned that
no amount of pressure can produce legible copies through five sheets of
paper. The fifth copy, at the very bottom of the pad, is also the one that
is marked “defendant,” meaning the person who is being summoned into court,
why and when. That one, at least, needed to be completely legible.
So I spent half an
afternoon and most of the next morning copying over and over, name, address,
nature of violation, explanation of what occurred, etc. etc. Finally I
finished and took the citations into the General Sessions Court Clerk’s
office to have them processed and served.
“Oh, just give us the
top sheet. We’ll make copies and send them around.”
I wept,
uncontrollably.
No time for self pity,
however. I had a class scheduled at 3:00 p.m. to teach after-school science
enrichment to my third graders up at Valley View. This of course, was
Valentine’s Day, so the kids had been gobbling down chocolates, candy canes,
Tootsie Rolls, suckers and every conceivable form of sugar since early in
the day.
At first I thought
someone had released a flight of bats into the classroom until I realized
those shadowy figures flitting around in a blur were actually my third
graders, bouncing off the walls in a perpetual sugar rush.
At some point, about halfway through the hour and a
half class, it suddenly dawned on me that I had to film the school board
meeting that evening, but had left the camera sitting on the coffee table
back at my home in
“OK. Don’t panic. There is plenty of time to drive from Valley View to
You know, I used to be
pretty efficient at changing flat tires. In my youth I always drove on tires
until they were at least 50,000 miles past warranty, no sign of tread
remaining and about as out of round as a watermelon. That was before they
came up with the utility spare, that pathetic little spare that is now the
standard in new vehicles and guaranteed to get you down the road, hopefully
to the next interstate exit.
The standard jack and
tire wrench have also declined in quality to the point where successfully
changing a tire on the side of the road is, if not an impossibility, at
least an improbability. I attempt to keep good tires on my van at all times,
having learned the hard way that I really don’t want to deal with flat
tires. Of course, good tires are no protection from a three-inch metal bolt.
So rushing back on the
interstate last Tuesday to grab a camera and rush back to the courthouse,
the predictable happened, of course. It was at this point that I discovered
that the jack that I’ve never had to use, was in fact not all there. Also,
my cell phone was at home, sitting on the coffee table next to the camera.
Walking. Fortunately I have friends. Unfortunately, their jack wouldn’t fit
my vehicle. Fortunately they were willing to take me to
I finally found
someone with a jack that worked and dragged myself into the sanctuary of my
living room around 8:00. No school board, no film at eleven. The folks here
at WLAF were not amused.
Despite the temptation
to just stay in bed and not leave my house until my fortunes improved, I
ventured out the next day and found that my biorhythms had at least leveled
off. My damaged tire was patched quickly, the bank gave me back half of the
overdraft fees and my workday was uneventful and productive.
Of course we also have those weeks when everything
seems right with the world. One Christmas season, I spent four bucks on two
$2 lottery tickets and won $100. The next day I spent four more bucks at a
different store and won $500. During the same week I wrote one of my most
popular columns, “’Twas the Monday Before Christmas,” had a pleasant visit
and dinner with an old girlfriend and was invited to spend January
free-loading off my cousins in sunny
So, pilgrims, just be
aware that regardless of how badly things seem to be going, your biorhythms
will shift and things will get better. If the future is so bright you have
to wear shades, don’t get too full of yourself – things will go wrong
eventually, just ask Herman Cain.
I don’t know whether next week will bring an upturn in
my fortunes or another downturn, but I’ll go out on a limb and predict one
thing – the dozen people for whom I filled out those wheel tax citations
will more than likely have a bad biorhythm week.
(updated 4:00 p.m. on 02/10/12 for the week of 02/06/2012)
Annexation is a dog that won’t hunt, towns better off upgrading from within
I unloaded on
Congressman Jimmy Duncan last week for his sponsorship of a highway
appropriation bill that would also increase truck weight limits and allow
triple rigs on interstate highways.
So of course, the very next day I read that the controversial section had
been removed by a committee, with
I’m glad
Ah well, the art of
successful politics involves two things: 1) taking credit where credit is
not due and 2) plausible deniability – successfully shifting responsibility
for unpopular behavior to others. Jimmy Duncan is, if nothing else, a
skilled politician.
Less skilled as
politicians are the city fathers up in Jellico. The Board of Mayor &
Aldermen and the planning commission have been kicking around the idea of
annexation for some months now. First they heard from irate citizens in
Newcomb, who wanted no part of Jellico.
After assuring those
irate citizens that Jellico wanted no part of Newcomb, Jellico’s leaders
narrowed their sights to a section southeast of the town including High
Cliff. Same results: irate citizens complained, planning commission backed
off. Jellico appears to have dropped the idea of annexation, for the time
being at least.
Jellico, like my
hometown of Lake City and to an extent, LaFollette, are all suffering from
the small town version of urban blight. Professionals, business owners and
other upper middle class families are attracted to upscale subdivisions
where they can mow extensive lawns, dig swimming pools or at least have a
bit of elbow room to build a deck, patio or plant a tree or three.
Such subdivisions are
rare inside city limits, where the residential neighborhoods are aging,
sometimes not so gracefully. As old timers pass on, their children, having
already established themselves in the suburbs, have no interest in moving
back to the old home place. Instead they rent, or sell to someone who is
interested in owning rental property.
The results are
predictable: a gradual but steady gentrification of the town with a
corresponding lowering of property values and shrinking of the tax base.
LaFollette countered this trend for years by strip annexing along Highway
25W, taking in the expanding commercial strip along Jacksboro Pike to
include first Woodson’s Mall, then the WalMart and stores at Cumberland
Crossing.
Then Woodson’s
declined and the WalMart moved on down the highway to be closer to the
interstate, and outside LaFollette corporate limits. The city fathers had
never bothered to annex many of the residential neighborhoods beyond the
four-lane. Why commit to providing garbage, street lights, fire hydrants and
police and fire protection to areas that couldn’t pay for themselves in tax
revenue?
Oops. Now that the
stores have all moved to Jacksboro, those growing residential neighborhoods
probably look pretty good. Jellico and Lake City have the same problem,
except they never really had the opportunity to annex upscale residential
neighborhoods, scarce around both towns.
Lake City flirted with
annexing deeper into Campbell County, but the residents of Ridgewood already
have the only thing they really want from Lake City, sewer and water lines,
and raised such a stink every time annexation was discussed that the city
backed off.
Now Jellico has run
into the same stonewall with plans to expand corporate limits and the tax
base to outlying neighborhoods. Few people see enough advantages to being
inside the city to offset the increased property taxes, and most will
radically oppose annexation.
Cities are always
looking around for industrial property they can acquire and offer for sale
or lease to attract industry. Perhaps it is time these towns begin to look
at land that can be developed into upscale residential neighborhoods and
doing something to encourage developers to build inside city limits instead
of outside in the county.
It may be a whole lot
easier, with the right incentives, to persuade developers to create
subdivisions in town than to persuade residents outside town to go along
with being dragged inside the city limits.
Something certainly
needs to be done to reverse the trend. Some of these cities are hard-pressed
already to provide services for their residents at affordable costs. In
another decade or two, some towns may see their tax base decline and costs
rise to the point where they will cease to exist.
On second thought, considering the quality of leadership in some city halls,
many residents might begin to feel that would be a good thing. (updated
4:00 p.m. on 02/10/12 for the week of 02/06/2012)
Everybody’s favorite legislative clown is at it again. Stacey Campfield has
again made
In case you’ve been taking final vows at a monastery or just emerged from
your cave after hibernating during the first months of winter, West
Knoxville’s state senator is the sponsor of a bill that forbids the
discussion of all things gay in
That in itself is
silly enough. I don’t recall homosexuality 101 being on the curriculum of
any middle schools I’m familiar with, but Stacey is famous for proposing
laws to remedy problems that don’t exist, merely to grab a few more
controversial headlines.
This time the class
clown of the General assembly has really stepped over the line. First, he
told a national radio audience that the AIDS virus was first spread among
humanity by an airline pilot having sex with a monkey. That statement was
just plain ridiculous, and pure Stacey Campfield.
His subsequent
comments were equally ridiculous, but potentially more damaging when he
claimed it is practically impossible for the AIDS virus to be spread by
heterosexual sexual contact. Anybody who takes Campfield’s word on that and
decides it’s fine to ignore protection may soon find themselves among the 20
percent of Tennessee AIDS victims who contracted the disease through
heterosexual contact.
This time a lot of
people are letting Campfield know that they’re fed up with his buffoonery. A
“Recall TN State Senator Stacey Campfield” website has received thousands of
hits with a good portion of them expressing a “like” which is computer speak
for “Amen, brother.”
The latest episode of the Campfield Follies came on Monday, when the owner
of
Martha Boggs, who says
she is a married, heterosexual woman, explained that she just got fed up
with Campfield, calling him a “bully.” A number of new customers flocked to
the Bistro this week, merely to show their support for a restaurant that
proudly announces on its menu board, “Today’s Special: Fried Chicken, Crispy
Chicken Livers, No Stacey.”
This is, of course,
not the first time Stacey has been tossed out of a joint. News-Sentinel
columnist Sam Venable reminds us that a couple of years back, he was tossed
out of Neyland Stadium at a Tennessee-Kentucky Halloween game when he
refused to take off a Mexican wrestler’s mask despite stadium rules against
wearing masks.
He was unceremoniously
shown the door several years back when he tried to join the legislature’s
Black Caucus, accusing African-American lawmakers of discrimination when
they pointed out that he is not black.
He has been scolded
for parking his car on the sidewalk in front of the State Capitol so he
could rush into a session of the legislature, fashionably late, to cast his
vote.
So why do the voters continue to return this clown to
the state legislature year after year? Not only that, but they elevated him
from the lowly House of Representatives to the State Senate in the last
election. Campfield represents the wealthiest, most highly educated half of
Apparently these
people have all the laws they want already in their favor and feel no need
for good, intelligent representation. Instead, they want to be entertained
and figure electing a clown to office will provide them with hours of cheap
entertainment.
The recall movement will get nowhere. State legislators years ago limited
recall petitions to local government officials and excluded state officials,
namely the members of the legislature. Stacey may try again to gain entrance
to the Bistro, just to grab more headlines, but other
But I’m going to do my little part to send Stacey a message. I’m springing
for twelve bucks and a couple of dollars’ worth of stamps to send him a
little stuffed monkey I found on sale. If a few thousand people would dig up
stuffed monkeys and mail them to Senator Stacey Campfield at the
Stacey Campfield is
merely an embarrassment, sort of like the alcoholic uncle who shows up at
family Thanksgivings or the brother-in-law you have to continually bail out
of jail.
I’ve decided that U.S. Congressman Jimmy Duncan is a bird of a totally
different color.
Jimmy, who is chairman
of the House Transportation Committee’s subcommittee on highways and
transit, is pushing legislation to spend $260 billion on highways over the
next five years, pointing out that more funding for highway construction
means more jobs.
Sounds like a tax and
spend Democrat, doesn’t he? Well, the devil’s in the details, they always
say. Jimmy’s bill would also increase weight limits on federal highways for
tractor trailers from the current 80,000 pounds to 97,000 pounds. It would
also allow some haulers to carry as much as 126,000 pounds on interstates
for restricted distances of 25 miles or less. That piece, I would imagine,
is a favor to the coal industry, which has long lobbied for higher load
limits for short distances.
His bill would also allow triple rigs, one truck hauling three trailers
instead of the current limit of two.
Excuse my ignorance,
but I’m having a hard time figuring out how you can increase jobs when you
replace three piggy-back tractor-trailer rigs with two triple rigs, or how
you can create jobs when four trucks can legally haul the same load that
five trucks must now carry.
The
one job market that has not suffered greatly from the recession has been for
professional truck drivers. Companies are constantly advertising for more
drivers.
But I guess increasing
weight limits by 25 percent would have a positive impact on highway
construction jobs, Interstates are currently designed to support trucks
hauling the current weight limits. Heavier trucks would mean greater highway
damage and more need for constant repair and resurfacing of highways, so the
road builders would be happy as pigs in a mud puddle.
I wonder how much the
Rogers Group and other road-building contractors, along with the big
trucking companies, donated to the Jimmy Duncan re-election fund?
Oh, and I didn’t even mention highway safety. Imagine
having to share a rainy interstate highway with triple rigs or regular
tractor trailers loaded beyond their safe capacity. It’s enough to convince
me to dig out a good county road map and go back to taking the scenic
routes, regardless of how many whistle stop speed limits and slow-moving
farm tractors I have to contend with. (updated
7:00 a.m. on 02/03/12 for the week of 01/30/2012)
Musings on the
After ranting last
week about corporate pirates, judges and vacant seats on county commission,
I find myself this week with nothing left to rant about. This is in part due
to an absence of public meetings, but primarily due to the fact that I’ve
been out of town, vacationing down in warmer climes.
Well, “warmer” is somewhat subjective. Temperatures have been so mild here
in
Actually my sinuses went south for the winter back in October, leaving me
behind to cope with another
I’ve had a long love affair with the State of
I
finally gave up completely on deep-sea fishing in
The one keeper I
pulled in, a 34 -inch grouper, bounced overboard when the captain failed to
secure the cooler he placed it in. Only time I ever had the big one get away
after it was already on ice, but at least the story was good for a
prize-winning newspaper column.
Back when I was much younger and a bit thinner than I presently am, I spent
four months paddling a canoe from Norris Dam to the tip of the Florida
Everglades. “
I
would then quickly wash off the smelly bug repellant, gobble down a few
bites and dive into my tent. After spending 20 minutes smashing the varmints
that entered my tent with me, I would write in my journal by flashlight for
a few minutes then lay down and listen to the sounds of the
There was only one
sound, a low, constant “hmmmm” throughout the night as millions of
mosquitoes buzzed around trying to figure out a way to get into my tent and
feast.
All of the creatures
would vanish with the morning sun, and I would emerge, mostly unscathed, to
break camp and continue my journey. Only when next pitching my tent would I
notice that some of the varmints had escaped my swatting to feed while I was
asleep, only to be squashed when I rolled up the tent.. The bloodstains on
my white tent’s interior survive to this day.
Of course not all of my adventures while on this canoe trip involved a
solitary communion with nature. While paddling the Peace River, I stopped to
celebrate New Year’s Eve at the little town of
The highlight of the
evening came at midnight, when a fellow named Junior rode his Brahma bull
through the bar, knocking over tables, drinks and drinkers before carving a
swath through the dance floor. It turned out to not be as rowdy as it seems.
Junior’s bull was named “Angel” and was the tame pet of a local doctor, a
gentle ride for the doc’s small grandchildren.
Junior, it turned out, had just returned from a trip of his own, having
ridden Angel from
I can attest, you
haven’t line danced until you line dance on the back of a Brahma bull. Angel
especially liked kicking up his heels to the sounds of Charlie Daniels’
fiddle.
Alas, nowadays my visits to the
I’ve changed a bit as I’ve aged, but not by a long shot as much as
The offshore sandbar
that guarded the harbor entrance can no longer be seen – it’s covered with
ten-story condos. Destin now spreads for miles along Highway 98, with
shopping malls, outlet malls, fast food joints, fancy food joints, motels,
hotels, gift shops and a Tom Thumb convenience store at every intersection.
Destin spreads eastward to merge with Sandestin, then
The state has preserved a few swatches of
Ah well, time brings changes and with time, Mother
Nature will change things back. Eventually, the big one, the mother of all
hurricanes, will arrive to blow all the clutter into the
Some rare occasions when I would love to be a county commissioner
There are times,
however rare, when I really wish I could be a member of the county
commission. Some situations just scream for certain motions or statements
that I would just love to offer but cannot, exiled as I am to being behind
the camera in the back of the room.
Such was the case Tuesday night. To begin with, the
various judges scheduled so many people for court appearances the day after
the Martin Luther King holiday that the commission had to move its public
meeting to the cramped meeting room in the
The squires, county
officials and public gamely endured having to cross the street in a pouring
rain, but most were none too happy about it, simply having no choice in the
matter.
I, for one, would have registered my displeasure by offering a motion,
perhaps to re-design the barely-begun justice center to eliminate judge’s
office spaces. My motion would assign the judges new office space, perhaps
in the basement of the Courthouse Annex or the old
The motion would have
died for lack of a second, of course, but would make the point that public
meetings of governing bodies deserve more respect than they get from the
judiciary.
The second instance
where I really wished to be a member of the commission came when the squires
couldn’t come to an agreement on appointing someone to succeed Melvin
Boshears. Johnny Bruce offered a motion to just leave the seat vacant until
August and let the voters decide the issue.
I can understand the
squires’ hesitation to vote on an appointment. Members of the general public
can promise to vote for everyone running for an office, walk into a voting
booth, pull a lever and the candidates will never know whether they kept
their word or not. It’s called a secret ballot and its every voter’s right
to keep their vote private. The commissioners can’t do this, and any vote on
appointing someone to office is going to result in some hard feelings
somewhere along the line.
Of course,
commissioners also cannot decide not to make an appointment. The
constitution demands that every citizen have equal representation and County
Attorney Joe Coker pointed out that voting to leave the seat vacant for more
than 120 days would violate the law of the land because third district
voters would have only two, instead of three representatives
This is where I would
have loved to be a member of the commission. I would have offered an
amendment to leave the seat vacant but assign to it an automatic “no” vote
on every motion. This way, third district citizens would have exactly the
same representation they had before, when Melvin Boshears held the seat.
Another case where I
would love to be a member of the commission involves the sad news last week
that the PACA plant has closed, leaving over 90 people without jobs. PACA,
which produced body armor for the military and police departments, did not
appear to be suffering from loss of contracts or inability to turn a profit.
In fact, it appears
that the company that recently bought PACA, Florida-based Point Blank
Enterprises, purchased the local company in order to get its contracts and
not much else.
Point Blank Enterprises doesn’t seem to have had any interest in PACA’s
loyal employees, or in PACA’s factory location and infrastructure here in
Hey, that’s business
in the cutthroat world of corporate competition, right? Sure there are going
to be a few casualties in the form of people losing their jobs, perhaps
permanently in this sour economy. A few might have to file bankruptcy or
lose homes, so what? It’s nothing personal, just business.
I am a strong
proponent of the old axiom, “Don’t get mad, get even.” If I were a member of
the Campbell County Commission, I would offer a motion to forbid the
Campbell County Sheriff’s Department from purchasing body armor from Point
Blank Enterprises, to send letters to the county’s four municipalities,
urging them to pass similar motions, and also letters to every police
department and sheriff’s department in East Tennessee, urging them to refuse
to give business to a company that takes Tennessee jobs and moves them to
Florida.
In the event that some legal requirement forces local governments to accept
low bids, even from corporate pirates that steal jobs from Tennesseans, I
would move that the county commission ask our state representative and
senator to sponsor legislation, removing low bidder priority for any company
that has moved jobs from
Then I would ask our
county mayor to have a friendly, private meeting with such people as retired
General Carl Stiner, or anyone else with military connections, and see if
they have enough influence with the Pentagon to get a few contracts canceled
here and there.
Vindictive, you say?
Nah, it’s nothing personal. It’s just business.
(updated
8:00 p.m. on 01/25/12 for the week of 01/16/2012)
Improve classroom climate? The answer
doesn’t take 300 grand -
respect the kids
I decided that I’ve
been a bad boy during the past year, so resolved for 2012 to straighten up
my act, lose those holiday pounds and generally treat my body better in the
upcoming year.
Then I made the mistake of watching the latest Republican presidential
debates and the next morning, lurched straight to the Sugar Shack for a
chocolate donut. I mean, if this is the best
Seriously, the debates
have been great entertainment, almost on a level with Campbell County
Commission meetings. Normally, the trail of broken dreams doesn’t begin
until candidates lose a primary or two, but this group has managed to
self-destruct long before the first vote was cast.
Donald the Trump not
only couldn’t generate interest in his candidacy, he couldn’t even convince
other candidates to attend a debate he offered to host. Sarah Palin wisely
figured out that she is much better off making mllions from speaking tours
and her daughter’s books, you betcha, and declined to put her head on the
block.
Herman Cain quickly became barbeque while Michelle Bachman was toast even
before her dismal showing in
Romney is the clear
front runner, even though six out of ten Republicans either can’t stand him
or don’t trust him. Rick Santorum? He is still hanging around on the fringes
but soon to become a Philly cheese steak. That leaves only Libertarian Ron
Paul and Jon Huntsman with a snowball’s chance of derailing the Romney
express. Republicans are attracted to Paul’s fiscal conservative message but
let’s face it folks, the Pachyderms will never nominate a man who wants to
cut back defense spending, legalize pot and legitimize gay marriage.
That leaves only former
Hmmm. A Republican who
has shown that he can actually work with Democrats while retaining
Republican values. An American who actually walks the walk when it comes to
helping disadvantaged children by adopting two orphans? Sounds like someone
that moderate Republicans, independents and former Democrats who are uneasy
over the color of the President’s skin could all support.
Won’t happen. The
Republican Party has been successfully high-jacked by the far right and I
don’t see supporters of the likes of Gingrich, Bachman or Perry supporting
anyone who has shown he can work with Democrats. They would rather bring our
country down around their ears than see a Donkey in the White House for four
more years, which is why that is exactly what we can expect.
Enough about boring
national politics. We have all the entertainment we can wish for right here
at home. There are signs (literally) of unrest all around us. A sign on the
four lane at the former scrap yard owned by Bob Andrews declares the mud
hole left behind when city workers cleared the lot to be a wetland and
nature preserve, naming several individuals.
A
truck is parked down in
But all is not lost in
a cloud of rancor and distrust. I learned Tuesday night that our county’s
teachers are making good use of $300,000-plus of federal stimulus money by
learning how to improve the classroom climate, meaning teacher-student
relationships.
An outfit called the
Flippin Project, or something along those lines, is leading teachers through
a series of trainings on how to better relate to students. Not all teachers
are thrilled with the training, nor are all school board members thrilled
with the cost.
Rector Miller, for
one, aimed some pointed questions at school officials and emphasized that
$300,000 is a lot of money for touchy-feely training. Teachers’ union
president Sharon Marlow noted that she really doesn’t think shaking each of
her high school students’ hands and telling them she loves them each day is
getting her any closer to relating to her students.
If that’s what the Flippin training is all about, I have to wonder what
somebody in the State Department of Education has been smoking. I get that
kind of treatment every time I walk into my
I resist the urge to
scream, “Quit charging me seven bucks a month for my %&#! checking account,”
and instead usually just quip, “I’m beyond help.”
The point is, I know
they’ve been to an employee seminar where they are instructed in proper
greetings for customers. I know they don’t really mean it, or their
greetings would at least vary a little bit day to day. So what good does it
do, really? I would much rather be greeted with, “Hi Boomer. Cold enough out
there for you?” or something, anything that tells me these are real people
and not robotellers.
Want to improve
relationships between teachers and high school or middle school students?
Easy, listen to what the kids have to say and respect them, even the ones
who aren’t honor students.
My former partner in the media consulting business is now director of an
organization down in
Their agenda? Improved
lunchroom meals, more and cleaner bathrooms, better lighting, more complete
libraries, opportunities for teenaged mothers to return to classes with
childcare available, as much emphasis by security officers and teachers on
bullying as is placed on drug enforcement and a dozen other things, all
important to kids but often overlooked by educators.
These kids hold press
conferences for TV and newspaper reporters, attend school board meetings
with parents and demand time on the agenda and behave in most ways like
adults. That is because their parents and the staff at Rethink treat them
much like adults, listening to their concerns, taking them seriously and
helping them achieve their goals.
My favorite experience with Rethink was at a press conference two years ago,
when the federally appointed supervisor for the
The kids had convinced
administrators to let them conduct blind taste tests in several school
cafeterias, where students were asked to sample the standard lunchroom meals
along with a variety of other meals, prepared by a French Quarter chef, that
cost approximately the same amount of money in ingredients and time.
The school officials
were then invited to sample the winning dishes at the press conference, a
mixture of aromatic and nutritious vegetable, cheese and seafood dishes all
prepared with low cost ingredients easily available locally.
I watched as the main
spokesman for the kids, a 15-year-old black kid, walked among the school
officials, urging the federal supervisor, “Be sure and eat everything on
your plate.” That’s exactly what my fourth-grade teacher used to tell us.
School officials
pledged to work diligently to upgrade the quality of cafeteria meals in a
city famous for its great food, everywhere except the public school system.
They also agreed to do away with the “spork” that disgusting little plastic
cross between a spoon and fork that isn’t very good at being either and is
apparently despised by kids.
Small victories? Maybe so. Minor problems compared to curriculums and test scores? Not to the kids. But you can bet some of those kids will grow up, confident in their ability to get things done, to one day sit on school boards, in administrator’s chairs, maybe at the mayor’s desk. (updated 12:30 p.m. on 01/12/12 for the week of 01/09/2012)
2012 promises to be . . . well, at the very least an entertaining year
Oh wow! It’s here at last – 2012, the new year. My
fictitious fractured forecasts are in the bag and now its time to get down
to the serious business of what’s really happening in the world, the country
and dear old
All I can say, dear
readers, is be afraid. Be very afraid. While the economy seems to be on a
slight upswing (good news), this is, after all, Election Year (bad news),
another session of the Tennessee legislature (very bad news) and time to
redistrict political boundaries in line with the 2010 Census (shear outhouse
buffoonery).
While the national news media will be focusing all of their attention on the
presidential race and the rotating clown show that is the Republican primary
season, our beloved lawmakers down in
Well, the Pachyderm
majority in the state senate is hashing it out, at any rate. Nobody else is
going to have much to say about it, period, especially the voters.
Right now it appears that
That might be an improvement over our current status as one of the
easternmost counties in the sprawling Fourth District. I’m not sure if
Congressman Scott Desjarlais from faraway
Ah well, at least
Besides, in the wake of the anti-Obama backlash in the past couple of
elections, it’s hard to tell exactly which precincts are still traditionally
Democratic. I predict the county will remain basically undivided, but one
never knows the mind of the
I
wish the status of my own hometown,
This last bit of gerrymandering took quite a bit of creativity.
I was a crew leader in
the 2010 Census – we’re still looking for the field worker I sent to Smoky
Junction. His last message, before he lost his cell phone signal, said
something that sounded like, “I’m almost there, but I’m not sure where there
is, and have no idea how to get back.”
Seems nobody, and especially State Senator Randy McNally of
There are some rumors that all of
Actually, although Jimmy hates liberals, despises tree-huggers and has
nothing but contempt for journalists, he and I see eye-to-eye on one
subject. I too, strongly opposed George W. “Shrub” Bush’s decision to invade
At least he had the guts to stand up to his fellow Republicans and vote
against the war. Most Pachyderms in Congress only began opposing the war in
But enough about
political districts. What else can we look forward to in 2012? The Tennessee
General Assembly is back in action, and that can only mean bad news for most
of us. I go along with Andy Jackson’s assessment of the GenAss, that the
only good legislature is one that is in recess and not doing anything.
(Actually, I think he was referring to Congress, but the principal is the
same).
This bunch, in addition to re-gerrymandering the gerrymandered voting
districts, is looking to drug test welfare recipients, at a cost that
promises to exceed the savings in rejected claims. As long as Bill Ketron
continues to represent
As long as Stacy
Campfield continues to represent West Knox County, we can expect a few
unconstitutional bills aimed at Hispanics, African-Americans, liberals and
other minorities, along with a few bills targeting the University of
Tennessee and school teachers in general.
Then there’s that fellow out in Jackson, Representative What’s-His-Name, who
if he stays out of jail, will undoubtedly introduce legislation to allow
assault weapons in kindergarten, insane asylums and Sunday School classes. I
can’t wait to see what comes next.
We can also expect
that the federal courts will have full dockets, ruling on the
unconstitutionality of a majority of the legislation passed by the Tennessee
General Assembly.
Here on the local
scene, the political agenda is thin for 2012. The squires have two more
years to entertain us before their terms expire, as does the High Sheriff,
the County Clerk and most other high profile offices. We will elect or
reject a few school board members and a couple of courthouse officials and
that’s about it.
Of course there is
that matter of finding a replacement for Doctor No. The commission has
finally agreed on a process for appointing someone to fill the vacancy. Now
all they have to do is agree on whom to appoint as the newest member of that
august body. Personally I think they should simply leave the seat vacant and
agree to assign an automatic “no” vote to it for the next two years. That
way, nobody will notice that Melvin Boshears has retired.
So, 2012 – will it be a better year that 2011? That depends on one’s definition of “good.” I certainly think it has the potential to be entertaining, and that, at least, gives us a reason to look forward to the next twelve months. Happy new year, everybody, and good luck. We’re going to need it. (updated 4:30 p.m. on 01/06/12 for the week of 01/02/2012)
Can anything be as strange as 2011? Try our fractured forecasts for
2012
News, schmooze,
Anybody can report the news that has already happened, or just re-write the
previous year’s stories and change a few names around. (Joe, Bob, John)
(insert last name) arrested for manufacturing (pick one) meth, marijuana,
counterfeit money. (County commission, City Council, School Board) at odds
over (pick one) ambulance director, sanitation director, maintenance
director, dog catcher.
And so on, ad nauseum.
Is there anything new under the sun? Only here at WLAF.com. We’ll give you a
look at next year’s headlines before they happen, or at least headlines that
we sometimes wish we would see, for a bit of variety if nothing else.
January
– Melvin Boshears finally comes clean about his real
reason for retiring from the county commission in December. “I’m throwing my
hat in the ring for President of the
When it is pointed out
that he is not technically a Republican, Boshears replies, “Yeah but they’re
looking for a conservative and I am the original Doctor No. That Mitch
McConnell fellow is a Johnny-Come-Lately.”
When the votes are
counted in the Iowa Republican caucus, Boshears finishes far behind
front-runners Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, but slightly ahead of Michelle
Bachman, Donald Trump and Herman Cain. “It’s on to New Hampshire!” the
jubilant newcomer tells an enthusiastic crowd of bass pros and duck hunters.
February
– A cold January
results in abnormally high utility bills from the Jellico Utility District.
A mob of 500 irate customers marches on City Hall, only to learn that the
Jellico City Council has voted unanimously to reinstate the Jellico Utility
Board.
“You need to take your
complaints to the members of the Utility Board,” Mayor Les Stiers tells the
mob, handing out a list of the board members’ home phone numbers.
March –
Undeterred by the flop of the “Supertwang” music festival last spring,
promoters announce plans to hold “Rock the Boat,” a combination
Rock/Rap/Folk/Country music festival in June on a floating platform anchored
near Flat Hollow Marina.
“We’ll have top acts
and the audience will be seated on the shore. The lake bank is steep enough
that we should be able to squeeze 20,000 people within sight of the stage,
said festival organizer Harold Roy Atkinson, who denies any connection to
SuperTwang promoter Hal Royce Abramson.
Having finished ahead of Donald Trump, Herman Cain and Rick Perry in
“Just too many states
having primaries at the same time, I couldn’t get around to kiss enough
babies,” the candidate explains as he drops out of the Republican primary.
“But I got the hang of this thing now. I might stay in the race as an
Independent,” Boshears adds with a wink.
April
– The new
County commissioners nearly come to blows at the monthly meeting during a
debate over funding the expanded jail. Finally, Finance Director Jeff Marlow
is asked how the county can fund the project without increasing taxes. “
May
– The eagerly anticipated graduation ceremony for
June
-
The “Rock the Boat” music festival kicks off from a
floating platform on Norris Lake, featuring a myriad of musical talent
including country icons the Oak Ridge Boys, biker icon David Allen Coe,
rapper T-Pac, Brittany Spears, Nickleback and an aging Gladys Knight & the
Pips.
The concert appears to
be going off without a hitch, but the Southern Sons security detail fails to
stop a crazed mob of former teenyboppers who rush the stage while Spears is
performing. Unfortunately the stage sits in 30 feet of water and capsizes.
Most performers are rescued, but listed as missing are David Allen Coe’s
Harley-Davidson, folk singer John Prine and two Pips.
July –
Failing to agree on a tax increase to fund another jail expansion and faced
with a federal judge’s deadline, county commissioners take the Finance
Director’s advice and invest $10,000 in scratch-off lottery tickets. They
hit three $150,000 winners and pay for the expansion.
Road Superintendent
Dennis Potter and the school board are not amused, however, when instead of
tax revenue to pave roads and repair school buildings, the commission offers
$486 in unopened lottery tickets.
August –
Attorney David Dunaway files the last of six lawsuits totaling $862 million
against contractors and subcontractors, the La Follette Utility Board and
various individuals over the accidental dumping of toxic chemicals into the
city sewer system the previous October.
Dunaway contends that
his entire law office staff suffered irreparable brain damage as a result of
breathing the toxic fumes, negatively affecting his ability to file lawsuits
against government agencies.
His case was found to
have no merit, however, when it was revealed that the terrible stench
experienced by citizens of LaFollette came not from the sewer system but out
of City Hall.
September
– Montclair Technology LLC opens its eagerly-anticipated oil refinery in the
The first shipment,
however, consisting of recovered BP crude oil from the Gulf of Mexico, is
accidentally spilled into Elk Fork Creek and soon the entire town is awash
in crude oil leaking into the town’s water supply.
Attorney David Dunaway
descends on Jellico with twelve mentally handicapped law clerks, who manage
to solicit over 400 plaintiffs for a class action lawsuit against the
company and the City of Jellico. The city is dropped from the suit, however,
when Mayor Les Stiers produces a document showing that the industrial park
had been deeded over to the Jellico Utilities board.
October
– Frustrated by the previous season, when Jellico High’s basketball team had
a better record than the Cougars, Campbell County hires former University of
Tennessee coach Bruce Pearl as head coach at CCHS.
Excitement builds over
the upcoming season when Pearl announces that two starters from Oak Ridge,
one from Anderson County and a 6’8” post player from Memphis Melrose have
all transferred to Campbell County. TSSAA mounts an investigation, however,
when a photo emerges on Facebook of the four players posing with Campbell
County coaches at a cookout on McCloud Mountain.
November
– Melvin Boshears sees his presidential aspirations dashed when he finishes
far behind President Barack Obama, Republican Mitt Romney and Socialist
candidate Clarence Darrow, who has been dead for 73 years. He did, however,
gain more write-in votes than Michelle Bachman, Donald Trump and John
Edwards.
“It’s only two years
‘til we elect a guv’ner,” the eternally optimistic Doctor No proclaims.
December
– After Campbell County voters defeat a half-cent sales tax increase by a
margin of 7,822 to 6, county commissioners must again tackle the challenge
of how to maintain the county’s crumbling network of roads.
Road Superintendent
Dennis Potter rejects the commissioners’ offer of $5,000 worth of two-dollar
Jumbo Bucks, but somehow still manages to pave over a hundred miles of
roadways in the next six months.
By a strange coincidence, area banks. lottery outlets and liquor stores
are plagued early in the year by a series of
robberies. Because of his distinctive headgear, the masked culprit soon
earns a nickname as the “Hard Hat Bandit.”
(updated
3:30 p.m. on 12/30/11 for the week of 12/26/2011)
Drug testing for welfare mothers? Try psychiatric evaluations for
lawmakers
And so it has been this year with politicians both large and small, from the
national stage up in
The squires were actually less entertaining this year than last, when the
Baird-Hatmaker feud inspired my updated version of
“Twas the night before Christmas.”
This year the county
commissioners were unusually civil to each other, perhaps inspired by Melvin
Boshears, who has apparently undergone a transformation from “Doctor No” to
Jolly Saint Nick. Melvin showed up at his first meeting as a private citizen
and former commissioner bearing a large red bag filled with gifts.
He then proceeded to
distribute presents to his former colleagues, county officials and anyone in
the audience who caught his eye, along with words of praise for all the
dedicated public servants in the room. After that act, most of the squires
couldn’t wipe the grins off their faces long enough to have a mean thought
and the meeting ended without any fireworks.
Oh, they accomplished
a thing or two along the way. They finally managed to agree on a procedure
for appointing Melvin’s successor, not that they’re any closer to actually
placing a warm body in his seat. That little drama will have to wait until
2012, after all the holiday good cheer has worn off.
The squires also voted
to place an increase in the local option sales tax on the ballot at the next
general election. As written, the half-cent increase would all go to repair
and maintain county roads, finally giving Road Superintendent Dennis Potter
some extra money for paving projects.
Of course the last time
Of course the big show this week was up in
In the end President
Barack Obama won this round, as the Republicans in the House caved in to
pressure from everybody from Republican presidential candidates to the Wall
Street Journal. The hardheaded Tea Party conservatives in Congress nearly
handed the Democrats the greatest Christmas present of all, 30-50 bucks
taken out of the average American’s weekly paycheck that could be blamed
squarely on the Republican House majority in an election year.
Of course they only
extended the cuts for another two months, so the entire debate will be
continued in February in time for a St. Valentine’s Day massacre.
With all the humor and drama coming out of local courthouses and the
nation’s capitol, our friends down in
Stacey is the clown who once stirred up controversy by demanding to be
admitted as a member of the legislature’s black caucus, although he is very,
very white. When rejected, he charged the African-Americans with
discrimination. He also threatened legislative war against the
Less entertaining are
some of Campfield’s proposed bills through the years, such as a “birther”
bill to remove President Obama’s name from the state’s ballot. Most of
Campfield’s bills are usually shot down by the State Attorney General as
unconstitutional before they gain traction, and I would not be surprised to
see his drug-testing bills run into similar walls.
To begin with,
workers’ compensation isn’t an “entitlement,” since it is gained only
through legal action to claim compensation for injuries suffered on the job.
Likewise, one might argue that since employers have to pay into a fund for
unemployment insurance, that is not exactly the state’s money to give or
take away at will.
That leaves welfare, and granted, the State of
I have a few basic
problems with drug testing in general and applying it to welfare recipients
in particular. First are the inherent flaws in drug testing procedure.
Marijuana, a minor drug which many people think should be decriminalized, is
known to remain detectible in a person’s system for a fairly long period of
time.
Some harder drugs,
such as cocaine, crack and certain prescription drugs, vanish from the body
in a short period of time, often within 24 hours. Some perfectly legal
medicines give false readings that can be misinterpreted in many drug tests,
so drug testing remains an imperfect science at best.
From a moral point of
view, if somebody fails a drug test, who is really penalized if they are
denied food stamps? I’m as disgusted as anyone else by the thought of
somebody receiving government help to feed their children, then spending
money to buy marijuana. Starving their kids by denying them food stamps
isn’t going to solve the problem, however.
So just how well has the drug testing requirement worked down in the
Since that program went into effect, 2.6 percent of welfare applicants have
failed the drug test, not exactly an overwhelming number. At this rate the
estimated amount that the State of
$98,000?
So how much has it cost to run drug tests on every person in
What I would like to see passed instead is a bill requiring anyone who wants to be a candidate for legislative office to first pass a drug test, one that the candidate must pay for instead of taxpayers. In the case of Stacey Campfield it wouldn’t be a bad idea to also require a psychiatric evaluation. (updated 6:30 p.m. on 12/23/11 for the week of 12/19/2011)
Who do we trust - politicians we can vote out of office or those we can’t ?
A mother should never
have to bury her children and Dan’s poor mom has now buried two. Her broken
heart must have been uplifted a bit, however, to hear all the testimonials
in Thursday night from Dan’s many lifelong friends. Her son packed a lot of
living into his all-too-short lifetime.
As for the
all-too-long circus we call the Campbell County Commission, their workshop
Monday night was uneventful – until they got around to the question of
replacing retired squire Melvin Boshears. In a rerun of last month’s “Who’s
on First?” show, the squires are still not quite settled on exactly how to
fill the vacancy.
Bob Walden offered a
simplified version of his proposal that last month, left the entire
commission in a state of confusion. This time Bob suggested two voting
rounds instead of three, with the provision that if any candidate receives a
simple majority in the first round, that person will be elected
automatically and voting will cease.
If nobody gets a majority in round one, where anybody and everybody who
lives in
Beverly Hall agreed, admitting that the next candidate in line is also her
brother, and the discussion took off in several different directions as some
commissioners questioned the legality of such a move.
Personally, I can’t imagine why
“Tell
the turkey to pass the turkey.”
“You still mad because
I voted for that tax increase?”
“Nope. I’m mad because
you voted to freeze salaries in my office and eliminate Christmas bonuses.”
“Nag!”
“Grinch!”
Sibling rivalries,
just what this commission needs to spice things up a bit.
Meanwhile, our
esteemed state legislators appear ready to spice things up quite a bit come
January, and the results aren’t likely to be pretty, at least not for most
Tennesseans.
As I have pointed out many times in the past,
It in fact defines the
level of control that state government, particularly the state legislature,
has over local county and city government. State’s rights actually means
that local government has absolutely no power at all, other than those
powers that have been granted them by legislative act.
Through the years,
Tennessee’s legislature has decided that it is entirely too burdensome for
them to supervise everything going on back in county courthouses and has
passed laws that give local government more control over a number of things,
such as setting property tax rates, regulating certain activities, spending
or borrowing money and so on.
Now we have this newly-minted Republican-controlled
legislature that seems to think local governments have been handed too much
control over things in their own counties and cities. They think a group of
politicians from
It may be no mystery
that the most blatant attempts by the legislature to exercise control over
local governments involve the large cities such as Memphis, Nashville or
now, Knoxville. These cities have Democrats in control, while the
legislature is currently of a strong Pachyderm persuasion.
Last session, the
General Assembly passed one law to prohibit city governments from passing
anti-discrimination ordinances that are stricter than state law. That bill
was aimed at Nashville’s ordinance prohibiting discrimination based on
sexual orientation and would probably find widespread support out here in
rural, Southern Baptist Tennessee, but it was merely the tip of the iceberg
that is coming.
Among proposed
legislation that is being prepared for the upcoming session of the
legislature, according to News-Sentinel legislative reporter Tom Humphrey,
is one that will prohibit cities and counties from requiring firms that do
business with local government to provide benefits to employees beyond what
is required by state and federal law.
Few local governments
have attempted to pass a so-called “living wage” ordinance in Tennessee, and
none successfully, so this bill might not have any direct effect either. Not
so with another piece of legislation being proposed, which would prohibit
county governments from increasing local property taxes more than one
percent without approval through a public referendum.
This might sound
perfectly reasonable to most taxpayers until you stop and think about it.
The public very rarely ever votes a tax upon themselves, that’s just human
nature. If tax increases of over one percent had been impossible to
implement, I can think of at least two instances in the nearly 30 years that
I’ve been covering Campbell County politics when schools would not have
opened in the fall.
We would have no options for dealing with such things as a federal court
order to build a larger jail, the need to replace a crumbling school
building or aging fleet of police patrol cars without borrowing money, and
the county’s
ability to pay back those loans would be
restricted by the county’s inability to enact a tax increase.
Oh, but that’s no
problem, the legislature also has a bill pending that would require the
county to get state approval for some bond issues, so we probably couldn’t
borrow the money anyway.
The theme coming out
of the legislature seems to be “the courthouse can’t be trusted” and big
brother needs to step in and look out for the state’s citizens.
Few people have been more critical of the county
commission or city hall through the years than your truly, but I still trust
a government that is close to home more than I trust a government made up
mostly of people I cannot vote out of office. Ever since 1861, when the
Tennessee legislature made that fateful decision to throw its lot in with
Mississippi and Alabama in the Southern Confederacy, they have consistently
proven that they can’t be trusted. Nothing much has changed since.
(updated
4:30 p.m. on 12/16/11 for the week of 12/12/2011)
CCHS graduation? Dissenting seniors at least deserve school board’s
respect
Eugene Lawson, the resident curmudgeon on the Campbell County Board of
Education, isn’t nearly as mean as he likes to let on. Despite his “take no
prisoners” approach to teachers, unions, negotiations, Finance Director
Moneybags Marlow and the news media in general, I’ve talked to some former
students who swear
You wouldn’t be able to
tell it from the board meeting Thursday night, however. The ol’ curmudgeon
surely traumatized a handful of CCHS seniors who worked up the nerve to
address the board and go against the grain of popular opinion.
The topic in question was a request from the president
of the CCHS Student Council, representing a majority of the graduating
class, that graduation be moved from crowded, hot and suffocating Cougar
Stadium to LMU’s Turner Arena up in
Brandon Johnson told
the school board that 151 out of 209 members of the senior class who had
voted were in favor of the change, with the remaining 83 non-voting seniors
presumed to care not a whit either way.
When Rector Miller
suggested that perhaps the board should seek input from parents before
jumping to a hasty decision, Eugene Lawson jumped in with both feet,
complimenting the students and echoing their concerns. He pushed the board
to go forward with a decision rather than risk that LMU might book another
school for the space on May 26.
Chairman Mike Orick
asked for a show of hands of the students attending the meeting who favored
the change and most in the room, a dozen or more, raised their hands in
support. Almost as an afterthought, he also asked if any were opposed to the
change. Surprisingly, four kids raised their hands.
After first hesitating
to speak, three unidentified girls asked for a chance to address the board
on behalf of the 58 students who voted “no.”. They talked about how having
graduation at their own school meant more than holding a ceremony at a
distant college campus. They voiced concerns that students from families of
limited means would not have all of their families and friends present for
graduation because of the distance.
Enter
The other board members
declined to join the attack. They simply dismissed the students with a brief
“thank you” without addressing any of their concerns.
So why am I disturbed
by what I saw at the school board meeting? I actually support the idea of
moving graduation to a spacious indoor arena. I’ve been to a few CCHS
graduations and they are crowded, hectic and uncomfortable. The past couple
of years I’ve passed on it – seems like late May grows hotter and more humid
every year, too hot for my aging bones.
But I appreciate young
people who have the courage to stand up for what they believe, especially
when they’re swimming against the flow. High school students are all too
often ignored by teachers and school administrators, unless they are
promoting ideas that are shared (or pushed) by the adults.
Those students who
attended the board meeting to voice disagreement with the student
council-led move to LMU had not rehearsed or prepared their argument to the
extent of Brandon Johnson. They had to think about it for a minute or so
before screwing up the courage to speak at all. They were so new to speaking
in public to a body of adults that they didn’t even think to introduce
themselves, and the board was so dismissive of their concerns that nobody
asked them their names.
These unidentified
students deserved credit for having the courage to voice their convictions.
They did not deserve to be set upon as if they bore all the responsibility
for the unruly behavior of previous graduating classes.
At
the end of the meeting,
And by the way, what about Rector Miller’s concern that the board should
hear from more parents? Most likely, the same majority of parents will
support the move as the majority of students, but shouldn’t they be heard?
It is their tax dollars that pay the salaries,
after all.
And there are some genuine questions to be answered. This year
Will parents be asked
to pay a graduation fee on top of cap and gown rental? Will the school find
something else they can peddle next year, or will graduation return to
Cougar Stadium with the Class of 2012 being a singular, privileged group?
I’m guessing not, which
means the board will need to address a recurring expense in coming years. I
hope they have a good answer, otherwise the next group of people they may
have to face are the ones who pay the taxes and cast the votes.
Newt Gingrich? – “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me”
I’m just now recovering from National Turkey Day, or as one old Confederate veteran used to term it, “Mister Lincoln’s Holiday.” This particular unrepentant Rebel used to run the Stars & Bars up outside his house and play “Dixie” over loudspeakers to celebrate the occasion while his neighbors gathered for turkey and dressing.
Thanksgiving has a long history of observance and celebration, particularly in the New England states where the arrival of the Pilgrims meant something. But as a nation, we didn’t start celebrating the holiday until the closing months of the Civil War when Abraham Lincoln declared Thanksgiving to be a national day of giving thanks, with naturally, the paid federal holiday thrown in to make it official.
Old Abe was thankful for two things. First, he had just received word that General Sherman had concluded his march through Georgia and had taken the important Confederate port city of Savannah. The long war appeared to be winding down with a Union victory and so grateful soldiers had voted in overwhelming numbers to re-elect Lincoln to another term in office.
Abe’s re-election had looked doubtful just a few months earlier, as the nation was growing tired of war, but successes on the battlefield in late 1864 tipped the scales and the rest is history, literally.
President Barack Obama may have been reading his history books. First he announces the final withdrawal of American troops from Iraq, to be accomplished by early 2012, then his SEAL team takes out Osama bin Laden. But Obama’s timing is off – the election isn’t until next November.
Unlike the thankful Union soldiers who helped put Lincoln back in the White House, veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan returning to civilian life will be greeted by unemployment lines and bank foreclosures. They’re not likely to be amused when Election Day rolls around.
But President Obama may still have something to be thankful for next November, several things actually. He can be thankful for Michelle Bachman, Herman Cain, Rick Perry, Donald Trump, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Jon Huntsman, Rick Santorum, Tim Pawlenty, Ron Paul and Sarah Palin.
While Obama has seemed powerless to make any significant dent in the unemployment picture, Wall Street is still acting like an out-of-control roller coaster and Congress has fallen flat in attempts to cut the federal deficit, the Republican contenders have been busy self-destructing, one by one.
As I pointed out in a previous column, Perry is now Texas toast, Bachman is Wacky Mac and Cain is barbeque. Newt has now risen to the top of the heap as the Conservative standard bearer of the moment. Until, of course, the media begins to remind those on the religious right that Newt divorced his first wife while she was dying of cancer and cheated on his second wife with his now-third wife, while at the same time leading the charge to impeach Bill Clinton for cheating on Hillary.
Newt Gingrich is one of the more intelligent candidates in the race, and his supporters will be quick to point out that his personal life does not trump the fact that he would be a strong conservative leader. Some activists on the religious right are even trying to justify support for this icon of family values. (Of course Newt is an icon of family values – he has three families to prove it).
I just have one problem with Newt Gingrich. I think he is morally unfit to be President of the United States.
The three wives, the cheating, the (supposed) deathbed divorce? Newt can attest that he has gotten religion and ask forgiveness for his past sins and as Christians, we are bound to forgive him.
But Gingrich is a hypocrite, and that we should never forgive. He damned Bill Clinton while committing the same sin. He damned the Democrats for bailing out the banks while collecting huge fees from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. He was such a back-stabbing, opportunistic political animal that his own party orchestrated his downfall as Speaker of the House.
I know that most of us assume that anyone who is a politician should not be trusted, for good reason. We do, however, strive to place someone in the highest office in the land who we think can, at least, be trusted more than the other politicians. Newt? Think Richard Nixon on steroids, someone with Tricky Dicky’s moral compass but with enough intelligence to get away with it.
Alas, I read a magazine article that says the religious right is trying to find room for forgiveness and get behind Newt Gingrich as their best bet to win the White House and advance their agenda.
They have obviously forgotten that as the architect of the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994, Newt and his fellow Pachyderms campaigned as social conservatives and placed hot button moral issues such as same sex marriage and abortion out front to get elected - until they gained control of both houses of Congress. Then it was the same old Republican agenda – tax cuts for the wealthy, deregulation of businesses and industry, downsize federal government except for the military, cut entitlements for the elderly and welfare for the poor.
What happened to the social issues that Christian conservatives cared about? What social issues? The overwhelmingly Republican Congress was too busy helping the rich get richer and the poor get poorer to be bothered with such nonsense.
Christian conservatives need to take heed of the old axiom, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”
Webster’s defines a newt as “any one of a family of small salamanders that can live both on land and in water.” Works for me – a slimy amphibian who can adapt his stance to fit his surroundings.
Meanwhile, I have a number of major problems with the current occupant in the White House, but lack of family values isn’t among them. It is so interesting to see people who have embraced “family values” as their primary motivation for voting, but who turn their back on Barack Obama, with his picture perfect marriage, two cute kids and absolutely no hint of scandal of any sort, to embrace an adulterous hypocrite like Newt Gingrich.
But then, Newt is white and Obama is black. I guess they have to answer to different standards. (updated 3:30 p.m. on 12/02/11 for the week of 11/28/2011)
Occupy Barstool Movement may have answer for country’s sagging economy
Campbell County’s new vice mayor David Young shows signs of brilliance on occasion, but he really needs to follow up on his inspirations.
“I thought about talking to the commissioners before the meeting,” David told me last Monday night, “and getting them to all vote ‘no’ when it came time to accept Melvin Boshears’ resignation. I just didn’t have time to do it.”
What a shame. That would have been a perfect culmination to Doctor No’s career as a county commissioner. Of course, some of the squires might have hesitated, in fear that Melvin would change his mind and stick around if they all declined to accept his resignation.
I prefer to think that they all would have gone along with creating this perfect theatrical moment for a public starved for good entertainment. If they voted against accepting Melvin’s resignation, someone could have always introduced a second motion, to accept his resignation “with regrets,” and quickly given him the bum’s rush out the door.
The squires may end up wishing Melvin is still sitting up there among them instead of out in the audience/ He promised that he’s “stepping down but doesn’t plan to quit,” and proceeded to list all the things he intends to push the commission to do.
Well, our heroes were somewhat entertaining anyway, when it came time to decide on a procedure for replacing Melvin. The only guidelines in law are that anyone can nominate anyone and that the procedure for appointment must be decided upon in advance.
Bob Walden came up with the perfect plan to allow all the squires to vote for all the nominees and therefore make nobody angry. Bob made a motion to allow squires to vote for as many nominees as they wish, with the three top vote-getters moving on to a second round of voting where squires could again vote for one, two or all three candidates. The top two candidates then would advance to a final round of voting with Mayor William Baird having the deciding vote if they deadlocked at 7-7.
This was simply too confusing for most of the commissioners, who asked countless questions and brought up numerous problems until Walden withdrew his motion. Among the questions: what happens if every nominee gets 14 votes in the first round or if one candidate gets a clear majority before the final vote?
Oh well, I’m sure they will finally resolve the puzzle at their December workshop, probably with an equally confusing process, so stay tuned.
I’ve felt a little left out, what with all the national media coverage of the “Occupy Wall Street” movement. But I’m not at all inclined to go out on the streets in Knoxville or the Legislative Plaza in Nashville to interview the protesters. As I advance from middle age to elderly curmudgeon, camping out in the rain and cold is no longer my cup of tea.
Fortunately I learned of a local variation of the protest movement that is more to my liking, and so this past weekend I dropped by the First and Only Chance Saloon down in Coal Creek to speak with leaders of the Occupy Barstool Movement.
First I interviewed the organizers of the local movement, Harley Hamm and his lovely wife Virginia.
“How does the Occupy Barstool Movement differ from what those Occupy Wall Street people are doing out on the streets?” I asked.
“Well first of all, we’re the real 99 percent,” Harley pointed out. “Those Wall Street protesters are just a bunch of kids, old hippies and college students, along with homeless vagabonds who have joined the protest for a chance at a free meal.”
“Yeah, we represent the real majority, red-blooded Americans who work hard all day then come here to occupy barstools until closing time,” added Mrs. Hamm, who prefers to be called Ginnie rather than Virginia for obvious reasons.
“So your protest doesn’t start until people get off from work?” I asked.
“Well actually, most everyone has been here since the bar opened,” the occupant of the adjoining barstool cut in. “Most of us have been laid off and drawing unemployment since 2008.”
“So what are your demands, more jobs?”
“Nah. We’re tired of big guv’mint and all these deficits. We’re sick of seeing our tax dollars going for all those entitlement programs and want to see somebody in the White House who will cut out all the dead wood,” the other protester, who introduced himself as Boise Otis Snodgrass, explained.
“Folks just call me B. O. for short,” he added.
“So you’re against entitlements, kind of like the TEA Party. Isn’t unemployment an entitlement?”
“No. We worked hard to earn that unemployment check. It’s them danged liberals that messed everything up with their regulations and caused my factory to lay off everybody,” another protester, Ike Pinetar, added.
“Beshides, that Obama ish sending all our money back to Kenya, where he came from,’ another fellow, deep in his cups, slurred.
“That’s Colonel Hugh Ray Jass. He’s retired military and has been occupying his barstool 24 hours a day since we started our movement,” Harley Hamm whispered. “You’ll have to forgive him if he’s a bit incoherent.”
“His name is actually Ray Hugh Jass, but the name was a bit awkward, so he shifted around his first and middle names,” B. O. chuckled.
“So Ray Hugh, or Hugh Ray, you must be drawing a pension or social security. Aren’t those entitlements?”
“Nah. We worked for those checks. Them danged liberals better leave my shocial shecurity alone. I’m talking about all that money we shend to Kenya and Indonesia and France,” Colonel Hugh exclaimed as he slid out of his stool to the floor.
“Actually I think it’s the conservatives who are taking aim at entitlements, and the money we send to other countries isn’t an entitlement. It’s called foreign aid,” I commented.
“Hey, just whose side are you on anyway, buddy?”
“Just one more question. The Occupy Wall Street people are getting some criticism because they’re complaining about things but not offering any solutions. Do you all have any solutions to suggest that will make things better?”
“Vote ‘em all out of office, especially that ferigner in the White House,” Harley proclaimed, to general agreement from around the room.
“So you’re going to organize voter registration drives or support a candidate?”
“Well maybe, but we’d have to leave the bar to do that. Most of the guys in here ain’t registered to vote,” Harley replied
“Heck, most of ‘em can’t vote, they’re still on probation,” Ginnie giggled.
Frustrating as my interview was, I tried one more time to take the pulse of the Occupy Barstool Movement, venturing up to Varmint County to visit the Dead Rat Tavern.
“I’ve got the perfect answer to all our problems,” expounded Caleb Hockmeyer, one of the local organizers. “Grow marijuana!”
“Uh, you mean the country should legalize marijuana?” I asked, incredulously.
“Hail no, don’t legalize it?” Caleb replied. “I mean let the tobacco companies grow it and sell it to the Chinese. Pretty soon China will owe us money and there won’t be no more trade deficit or whatever.”
“Yeah, and when all those stoners over in China quit working for peanuts in their factories, those low paying jobs can come back to America,” Elijah “Big Poison” Haig added.
“You think American workers would take those low-paying jobs if they were offered to us?” I asked.
“If’n they don’t, I’m sure the Mexicans will. All we gotta do is let the Mexicans bring their families up here with ‘em,” Elijah explained. “Then they won’t be sending all that money back south of the border and will spend it here. Americans can get jobs serving burgers and fries to all them big Mexican families, teaching their kids and deliverin’ their babies.”
“I’m not sure the Republicans would go along with that approach,” I observed.
“Oh they’re always looking out for business. They’ll go along with the plan. They jest ain’t had time to think it through yet,” Caleb concluded. (updated 5:30 a.m. on 11//24/11 for the week of 11/21/2011)
Squires find new ways to entertain the public; next, bring on the lions
Our county commissioners have finally devolved to a new low – sado-masochism. I know this is making a pretty harsh pronouncement, but how else can we explain the squires’ behavior on Monday night at their monthly workshop.
Several members of Campbell County’s finest accompanied Sheriff Robbie Goins to the workshop to put on a little dog and pony show. The Sheriff was asking commissioners to approve a budget amendment that would fund the purchase of tasers, those cute little guns that fire barbs attached by wires to an electrical current.
That current is sufficient to incapacitate a suspect, while causing no permanent injury, the squires were told. Providing tasers for deputies and jailers will cut down on injuries, both to officers and suspects, and most other law enforcement agencies in the area, including Jellico and Jacksboro police departments, are already using the non-lethal weapons.
To emphasize the point, a young deputy had volunteered to be shot by a taser right there in the courtroom to show commissioners how they work. The squires all nodded in agreement and sat back to enjoy the show.
Deputy White was asked to recite his ABCs, which he did by singing them, kindergarten –style, while an instructor fired the taser wires into his back. The poor deputy screamed out in shock and pain for about five seconds before the current was cut off. His fellow officers quickly removed the barbs, showing commissioners two tiny red spots where the victim was hit. He was apparently no worse for the wear, but strangely quiet for some minutes.
Only then did Vice Chairman Johnny Bruce inform the deputies that the commission had already approved the budget amendment about 45 minutes earlier in a Budget & Finance meeting.
Feeding Christians to the lions has fortunately gone out of vogue, but several of the squires are rumored to have paid a visit to Tiger Haven over in Roane County recently. Could the next group of irate citizens to show up at a commission meeting instead find themselves part of the entertainment?
While people continue to die in Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq and more and more Americans are losing their jobs and/or homes and going out to occupy Wall Street or some other place, the national news media for the past week has been obsessed with the scandal at Penn State.
Everybody who has a column, a blog or a soapbox has been putting their two cents’ worth in about this new low in college athletics. One columnist with Newsweek and the online Daily Beast even went so far as to proclaim that the Penn State situation is symptomatic of the rotten state of affairs in college sports, and suggested that college football programs should just be cut loose as separate entities, presumably free to make as much profit as possible and I assume, treat the players as professionals instead of student-athletes.
Talk about connecting the dots to make two plus two equal five! There are indeed a lot of things wrong with college athletics these days, but most of them revolve around that root of all evils, money, and cutting the programs loose from the limited oversight that they do have will just make it worse.
The Daily Beast columnist wrote that the Penn State child abuse situation is the latest in a string of collegiate scandals including Ohio State and USC giving benefits to players and Tennessee’s “unethical recruiting practices.” That’s sort of like bunching a shoplifter, someone running a red light and a serial murderer together and calling them “bad people.”
What disturbs me is the fact that, if you stop and think about it, Penn State has violated no NCAA rules or policies. Joe Paterno’s record of no recruiting violations or improper benefits offered to players is spotless. He and his staff, including the alleged child predator Jerry Sandusky, were perfect NCAA citizens, with not an unethical act among the lot.
Poor old Bruce Pearl, however, was handed the NCAA equivalent of the death penalty for inviting a couple of prospects over to his house for a meal and then having the poor taste to panic and deny the deed when questioned by NCAA investigators.
Come to think of it, as far as I’m aware, if a student athlete is arrested during a drunken brawl, or suspected of say, armed robbery, or accused of sexual assault, that behavior is between the athlete and the university. If the university finds a way to cover it up or make the charges go away, the NCAA sees nothing, hears nothing, says nothing.
Perhaps the NCAA should cut coaches a little slack on how many telephone calls they are allowed to make to recruits, and instead establish a code of ethics for athletes and coaches that goes beyond whether a kid gets a free meal.
At least the Penn State situation has been so depraved that even the late night talk show pundits have for the most part left it alone. Leno, Letterman, Fallon and their writers have been unable or unwilling to make any jokes about sexual abuse of children, thank goodness. Instead, they continue to zero in on the Republican presidential candidates.
Bachman is toast, Perry is Texas barbeque, Cain is now soul food and the latest Pachyderm to emerge as a conservative challenger to Mitt Romney is our old friend Newt Gingrich. Newt is now in the media spotlight, where the fact that he made big bucks consulting for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is getting some attention.
Somewhere along the line, voters will be reminded that Newt once filed for divorce while his wife was on her deathbed, and the reason he was pushed out of the Speakers’ seat by his own party will be analyzed in detail. In a week or two, Gingrich will join the others. Can anyone spell “Southern fried?” (updated 5:30 a.m. on 11/17/2011 for the week of 11/14/2011)
The last squire – Doctor No’s exit will mark the end of an era
Well the resignation is official and great sadness descends upon the world as a whole. Joe Paterno? Nah. Who cares what happens to the Penn State football program. I’m talking about our beloved “Doctor No,” county commissioner Melvin Boshears.
Melvin has sent a letter to County Mayor Wiliam Baird and his fellow squires, informing them that due to his accelerated loss of hearing, he feels he can no longer serve effectively on the county commission and planning commission and is resigning, effective December 1.
I am devastated by the news. Not since the retirement of Carl Baird has the county’s body politick lost a more colorful character, and one who has given me much good material for my columns through the years.
I saw Melvin one day a couple of months back, right after he had returned from getting a new hearing aid that he hoped would improve his ability to keep track of what is being said at meetings.
“That’s great, Melvin, but you don’t really need it. Just keep doing the same thing you’ve done for the past 25 years and vote ‘no.’ Not a soul will notice the difference.”
I was jesting, of course. Melvin does vote “yes” frequently, on most motions that don’t involve spending money. But the county commission is losing its last great fiscal conservative, of that there can be no doubt. Melvin Boshears considered himself a staunch overseer of the taxpayers’ dollars and figured that the best way to spend them wisely was by not spending them.
What I will miss most about Melvin’s absence from public office will be his sense of humor. Not too many of us are all that talented when it comes to laughing at ourselves, but it is an uncommon virtue, and undoubtedly contributed to Melvin’s success in winning over voters.
I plead guilty to hanging the “Doctor No” tag on Melvin, back when he first served on the commission in the 1980s and early 1990s. Late in the budget year, courthouse head janitor Don Dilbeck approached the county commission with a request. He was out of brooms. Well, actually he had run out of the wide wet mops that he and his assistants used to sweep the courthouse floors.
I seemed to recall that he had broken his last broom, but Don tells me the problem resulted when then-Finance Director Randy Kidd failed to pay a bill and the company supplying the sweepers refused to provide any more on credit.
At any rate, Don asked the county commission to appropriate a couple of hundred dollars toward the purchase of enough wet mops to keep the courthouse clean until the next budget was set.
All of the squires voted for the motion to give Don the needed money except Melvin Boshears. “I don’t see why Don can’t go down to Woodson’s and buy a few brooms for four dollars apiece,” Melvin observed. “ He doesn’t need two hundred dollars and I vote ‘No.’.”
The specter of Don and the other janitors sweeping the entire courthouse each day with a four-dollar broom was just too rich. I tagged Melvin with the nickname “Doctor No” after the villain in the popular James Bond spy movie of the same name.
If I thought my new nickname would insult Melvin Boshears, I was sorely mistaken. His response was to go down to the County Clerk’s office and get a new personalized license plate for his truck that read “DR NO.” He also purchased one for his wife’s car that read “MRS NO.” Like I said, you gotta love someone who can laugh at themselves.
More recently, I notice the media has stuck the “Doctor No” moniker on U. S. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky for constantly opposing everything the Obama administration proposes. I toyed with the idea of suing for copyright infringement but abandoned the idea, since I stole the name from James Bond author Ian Fleming in the first place.
One time, Doctor No admits to voting yes on a tax increase, when the projected county school budget was badly out of balance and commissioners refused to raise taxes to make up the difference. The stalemate lasted through the summer and when Labor Day rolled around, schools were still not in session. As the schools’ starting point was delayed, week after week, Chancellor Billy Joe White finally stepped in and settled the impasse.
Billy Joe’s approach was simple: he summoned commissioners and school board members together before his bench, pointed to an adjacent conference room and told them, “Go in there and when you come out, come out with a balanced budget that will allow schools to open. If you fail, we’ll all go downstairs to a jail cell and you can continue negotiating behind bars.”
“I voted ‘yes’ on raising taxes and approving a wheel tax,” Melvin confesses. “I looked into Judge White’s eyes and saw that he meant what he said. He was ready to put us all behind bars for contempt of court until we passed a budget.”
Melvin’s departure will mark another milestone in Campbell County politics, the end of an era, you might say. He is the last holdover from the old commission that included Johnny Joe Dower, Whit Goins, Carl Baird and others who first began public service as members of the “County Court” back when they were still known by many old-timers as “squires.”
Melvin’s political career doesn’t go back quite that far in years, but in spirit it certainly does. Say goodbye, dear readers, to the last of the squires.
In a melancholy mood after hearing about Doctor No and wishing to punish myself, I watched the Republican presidential debate on TV last night. I have a simple prediction that will infuriate all of my Republican friends, along with anyone out there who isn’t a Republican but has simply been uncomfortable with having a black man in the White House (you know who you are).
Like it or not, President Obama will be re-elected in 2012 unless the Apocalypse intervenes. Why? Because he will win by default. To win an election, you must have a candidate.
Mitt Romney? Conservatives will stay home in droves if Romney is the party’s nominee. Michelle Bachman? She lost as soon as she became a running joke on late night talk shows. Rick Perry? Might have a chance if it’s possible to run a presidential campaign without opening your mouth. Herman Cain? Even if he survives the sexual harassment scandal, Republicans rely too strongly on Southern white voters to win a national election and Herman is unfortunately a black man.
If you overlook all of the gaffes and political mumbo-jumbo, the Republican challengers still fall short. The debate this week focused on the economy and what they would do to fix it. The answer, universally, was, “nothing.” No government, no regulations, no bail-outs, no taxes. Let the free market take control and everything will be just fine.”
Uh huh, and that sound you hear overhead right now is a flock of pigs flying south for the winter. In case we haven’t noticed, the free market is in free fall. Doing nothing will give us the same result – nothing. I’m not at all convinced that Republicans are wrong when they say Obama’s plan isn’t working. I would like to see one of them come up with a plan of their own, but the only plan I’ve noticed is a plan to get elected, and none of them are doing too well at that. (updated 2:30 p.m. on 11/10/2011 for the week of 11/07/2011)
Good Halloween tales (sigh) seem to be a thing of the past
Halloween can be hard on my waistline. I dutifully stocked up on Reese cups, Hershey’s and Milky Ways last weekend to get ready for the parade of little goblins knocking on my door. Only thing, precious few came knocking this year. Seems one of the churches in Lake City held a “trick or trunk” party, blocking off a street where church members gathered for a big tailgate party and gave out candy to any little spooks that came their way.
It was so successful that most kids filled their bags to overflowing at the church and didn’t bother to go door-to-door, leaving yours truly with a dangerously large stock of candy lying around the house.
Things have sure changed since I was a kid. Now churches embrace Halloween as a harmless opportunity to reach out to kids and young parents. Not too many decades ago, most churches denounced Halloween as a “satanic holiday” and had nothing but scorn for October 31.
Of course, those were the days when a lot of people, primarily teenagers, liked to emphasize the “trick” over the “treat.” Time was, you couldn’t drive through LaFollette on Halloween night without getting a few eggs smashed on your car. I always carried a pocketful of quarters and expected to hit the car wash at least two or three times before heading home, since egg yolk could take the paint right off a car if not removed quickly.
Other communities had even more innovative ways to celebrate. For years, on Halloween, young men up in the old Briceville coal mining community would gather on the bridge that carried Highway 116 across Coal Creek in the middle of town. They would then proceed to build a big bonfire in the middle of the bridge and gather around to drink moonshine or bootleg whiskey.
The Anderson County Sheriff’s Department deputies hated to go up there every Halloween and would probably have just left this crowd of rowdies alone, except for one small problem. The bridge in question was asphalt layered over a wooden superstructure, and Highway 116 was the only way to get from Briceville and New River into Lake City to shop, see a doctor or attend high school.
So once the bonfire got really big and roaring, the volunteer fire department was always forced to go up and put out the blaze before it burned the bridge down. Since most of the local Halloween celebrants were well into their cups, deputies were needed to protect the firefighters.
The county finally solved the problem by tearing down the old wooden bridge and replacing it with a modern steel and concrete span. After that, the Sheriff’s Department figured they could just let the Briceville locals gather, drink and set fires all they wanted while deputies kept the peace elsewhere.
It didn’t work. The afternoon of the first Halloween after the new bridge was built, someone spotted a canvass bag in the high weeds along the creek. It contained enough dynamite, stolen from a local mining company, to blow the new bridge into the next county. Deputies continued to patrol Briceville every Halloween to keep damage at a minimum and eventually, the bonfire tradition died out as it was apparently no longer fun setting fire to a concrete bridge.
Even going further back in Halloween tradition, the big thing used to be tipping over outdoor privies. For those of you too young to recall, or unwilling to admit that you can, there was a time when many folks relied on outdoor toilets for their bathroom needs.
The outdoor privy was sort of like a wooden port-o-potty, but without the ability to be pumped out. Instead, the throne seat centered over a hole in the ground filled with fetid water and human waste, sanitized occasionally with a good dose of powdered lye to keep the smell down.
The standard privy was either a one, or in rare cases even a two-seater. A empty thread spool was usually nailed to one wall and served as a toilet paper dispenser, and the standard privy always held one or more Sears & Roebuck mail order catalogs for reading material. These thick catalogs could also serve in an emergency if the toilet paper ran out.
When my father was growing up in the 1930s. everyone around here had a privy, as few people could afford indoor plumbing and septic tanks and pubic sewer systems were non-existent. Halloween was the time when little devils would go around pushing over the more flimsy privies as a favorite trick.
Papa Winfrey abandoned the practice early in life, when he was around nine or ten. He went out privy tipping with some older boys when they found one particularly flimsy structure and commenced to push it over on its side. It pushed a little easier than they expected and Papa Winfrey, his buddy Bill McKamey and one other kid all tumbled into the pit head-first.
My granny liked to tell this story on Papa Winfrey, how she made him strip off his clothes and take a bar of lye soap down to the creek and scrub every square inch until it hurt before allowing him to enter the house for a “good whuppin’.” She burned the clothes.
When I was in high school back in the 1960s, I got to witness the last Halloween privy trick in Lake City history. By that time, public water & sewer systems and health regulations had brought an end to the privy, and the only ones left were mostly for decoration at places like Hillbilly World.
At that time the only bank in town was the First National Bank of Lake City and the bank president was a tight-fisted old codger named Otis K. Leach, known commonly by his initials “O.K.”
On the morning after Halloween, kids on their way to school were treated to the sight of Lake City’s last outdoor privy, having been stolen from a house near Coal Creek, sitting on the front lawn of the newly-built First National Bank (now SunTrust). Painted on the side of the privy in large red letters was “It’s OK to owe O.K.”
You would think that O.K. Leach would be outraged at such an atrocity. Not so. The old bird was the guest speaker at Lake City High School’s weekly commencement program that week and was all smiles when he announced, “I guess you all know it’s OK to owe O.K.” The banker knew an advertising gold mine when he saw one, but still wasted no time in having Lake City’s last privy hauled off to an ignominious fate at the town dump.
Halloween nowadays may be a harmless time for kids (and adults) to play dress-up and a boon to candy manufacturers. It may no longer be a time when police and fire departments need to pay overtime and call out the reserves. But, alas, forgive me if I seem a bit nostalgic for the bad old days. I’ve always loved the excuse to tell a good tale and good Halloween tales are apparently a thing of the past. (updated 1:00 p.m. on 11/04/2011 for the week of 10/31/2011)
Late squire Skeeze Housley had his woes with road superintendent too
Another page was turned in the political history of Campbell County last week, with the passing of Alex “Skeeze” Housley up in Jellico. Sqeeze served for many years on the county commission, dating back to the days when it was still called the “county court” and the chief executive was neither a county mayor, administrator nor executive, but the “county judge.”
Jack Roy Alexander served as county judge during much of the time that Sqeeze served on the court, along with Carl Baird, Carl Teague, Whit Goins, Robert Sharp and other stars of the past.
Representing Jellico and much of the mountainous Fifth District of the county, Skeeze often found himself at odds with Jess Goins, the road superintendent during those bygone days. Mountain folks felt like they were given short shift when it came to road maintenance and often marched to Jacksboro to attend meetings of the commission’s road committee.
Skeeze was a member and if my memory serves me correctly, at various times chaired that committee. Since he also represented many of the citizens with road complaints, he ended up as their advocate whether he liked it or not. Considering who the road superintendent was, Skeeze probably didn’t like it very much.
I recall one instance when residents living up along Whistle Creek, up the mountain from Newcomb, attended the committee meeting en masse. They had complaints similar to those voiced the other night about Ivydell Road. The road had deteriorated to such a point that the school bus driver no longer drove all the way to the end, but required some parents to bring their kids down the mountain to meet the bus.
Jess had the same sad tale – not enough money, too many roads, that we hear today, but he had a certain flair about him that subsequent road superintendents mercifully lack. One resident stood up at the meeting and challenged Skeeze, other members of the committee and Superintendent Goins to “come up on Whistle Creek and see for yourselves how bad our road is.”
Jess left citizens, squires and Chairman Housley open-mouthed with his reply. “I just bought a brand-new Cadillac, and I’m not about to take it up on that road,” the road superintendent announced.
Well, at least he was honest about it, one might say. Jess didn’t like to waste effort and road dollars wherever votes were scarce and that included just about everywhere in the Fifth District. He didn’t waste resources on roads out around the lake either, which were used largely by people who voted in other counties or other states.
Papa Winfrey had a little fishing cabin out at Shady Cove in those days. Since he lived in Lake City and was more or less local compared to his neighbors from Knoxville and Oak Ridge, they convinced him to talk to Jess about getting the ditches cleaned out after they became filled in so badly that water began running in the road during rains.
Papa Winfrey called Jess Goins and asked him if he would send a crew out to Shady Cove. “Mr. Winfrey, you got a shovel?” Jess asked.
“Well yes, of course.”
“Anything wrong with your back?” Jess asked.
“No, reckon not.”
“Then why don’t you get out there and dig those ditches out yourself? Maybe some of your neighbors from up North can help you,” Jess told Papa Winfrey.
Being a man who was used to getting his way with Lake City and Anderson County politicians, my dad was more amused than angry, and told this story more than once.
Folks who think Dennis Potter, or before him, J. T. “Pothole” Leach and son Mike “Washboard” Leach, too often ignored citizens’ complaints about roads are obviously too young to recall the heyday of Jess Goins.
Poor Skeeze caught it from both ends, having to deal with Jess as well as his constituents, and wasted little time handing the gavel of the powerless road committee off to another squire.
Bill Archer recalled a funny tale about Alex Housley the other day. Bill has long dabbled in buying and selling old coins, silver coins, gold and the like. Skeeze, at the time an executive with Union Bank, decided to get in on the action.
“Bill, you’re always running into good deals on hoards of old silver coins,” Skeeze noted.
“Yeah, but usually by the time I can get enough money together to buy them, somebody else has beat me to it,” Bill replied.
“I’ll take care of that problem,” Skeeze said, handing Bill Archer a blank counter-check on his account. “If you run into another good deal, just write them a check.”
Shortly after that, Bill accompanied Judge Billy Joe White on a fishing trip up north. “We got up in Minnesota and the Judge’s truck blew an engine. Turned out we were stranded right down the road from a GMC dealership,” Bill recalled.
“The Judge said he didn’t have enough money with him, or he would just buy a new truck. I pulled out Skeeze Housley’s counter-check and said, ‘I think I have an answer.’” Bill continued. “Skeeze was good-natured about it when we called him and told him we had just written his check to a dealership for $25,000.”
“We went on and finished our fishing trip and as soon as we got back the Judge wrote Skeeze a check to cover the truck. He never did give me another blank check, though,” Bill chuckled.
One thing I liked about Skeeze Housley was that he had a sense of humor. He could laugh at my columns that made fun of the hapless county commission, even if the joke was sometimes on him. I imagine he’s up there somewhere right now, reading this column and getting a chuckle or two out of it. (updated 6:00 a.m. on 10/27/2011 for the week of 10/24/2011)
Americans running out of people to hate except, it seems, for each other
What was it President George H. W. Bush once said, about America becoming a “kinder, gentler nation?” That was right before Bush the Elder launched the first Desert War against Saddam Hussein, so his message might have fallen a bit flat, but at least his intentions were honorable.
It’s appears we might have a second chance for an obvious reason – we’re running out of people to hate. We captured ol’ Saddam and turned him over to his oppressed people for execution, while doing the job ourselves on his vile sons. As everybody this side of the planet Neptune knows, Osama bin Laden now sleeps with the fishes. Now the revolution has caught up with and eliminated Moammar Gadhafi in Libya.
Sigh. Nobody left out there to hate and despise and keep our patriotic fervor at high pitch. Whatever will we Americans do now? Well not to worry. We’re doing a pretty good job of hating each other these days.
The TEA Party hates big government and taxes and presumably, anyone who supports big government and taxes. The Occupy Wall Street movement hates Wall Street bankers, corporations, the politicians who are owned by them and presumably, the TEA Party. Birthers hate Obama. Boy, do they ever hate Obama!
To watch the television news and read some of the letters to the editor in the News-Sentinel, one would assume that all Pachyderms hate Donkeys and all Donkeys hate Pachyderms. Meanwhile, the Pachyderms running for President seem to be doing a pretty good job of hating each other.
Fortunately we live in the real world, not the one sensationalized by Fox News, CNN and NBC. Some of my best friends are Pachyderms, while there are no small number of liberals for whom I have little use, yet I’m an unabashed Roosevelt/Kennedy Democrat of the old school. (My jury’s still out on Obama. He’s exactly what I expected, a middle-of-the-road moderate who has succeeded in disappointing the far left while alienating the far right).
But to cut the President a little slack, he inherited a mess – the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, two wars and a country still scarred emotionally by 911 and seeing a terrorist on every street corner. Could those two icons of the left and right, FDR and Ronnie Reagan, have done much better under similar circumstances?
Roosevelt inherited a nation on the brink of financial collapse, but at least had a few years of breathing room before the Japanese pulled us into World War II. Reagan inherited an energy crisis and the remnants of the Cold War, but had to look hard to find a place to send American soldiers where they could be shot at. Grenada, for Pete’s sake!
Reagan also inherited a paltry national debt compared to the trillions owed when Obama took office, while Roosevelt was able to create massive federal jobs programs precisely because the nation had so little debt and had credit to spare.
So I’m prepared to give Obama a little slack here and there. I’m not sure anyone, living or dead, could sit in the White House in these troubled times and get a favorable rating out of national opinion polls. While we Americans still think pretty highly of our neighbors, co-workers and fellow churchgoers on a personal level, public animosity is at all-time highs.
Washington would be savaged by the left as a war-monger if he sat in the White House today, Jefferson would be accosted by the religious right for keeping a mistress and damned as a socialist by most conservatives, while Andy Jackson would be despised by the left for his treatment of Native Americans and despised by the right for his fiscal policies.
Teddy Roosevelt would be criticized as a tree-hugging environmentalist and Abraham Lincoln would undoubtedly be accused of being soft on illegal immigrants, hated by state’s rights advocates and crucified by anti-war protestors.
Barrack Obama’s best prospects for surviving the current mood of the country may well rest not with him but his opposition. Who, exactly, would the American people prefer to see sitting in the White House? A certain percentage of Americans would answer that question with “anyone!” Southern white racists, birthers, ultra conservatives and their ilk cannot stand the thought of someone running the country who is not exactly like them, from their political philosophy to the color of their skin.
For the remaining 75 percent of us, the answer is less clear. A lot of Democrats are still bemoaning the fact that Hillary didn’t make the cut in 2008, but they will stick to their man in the White House or simply stay at home on Election Day.
Republicans and independents who are unhappy with the way things are going have little choice but to look to the Republican Primary for a glimmer of hope, and what most are seeing offers more desperation than hope. Mitt Romney excites most conservatives about as much as an invitation to a Jackson Day Dinner.
Michelle Bachman was the darling for a day, until she opened her mouth. Sarah Palin showed what I consider surprisingly good judgment by choosing not to run. Rick Perry looked like the great conservative hope for a week or two, until he got all tongue-tied in the debates and was painted as soft on illegal immigrants.
Now we have the “anti-Obama,” Herman Cain. His 9-9-9 plan hits a chord with Americans looking for simple answers to complex questions, but under scrutiny, I fear we will discover that this is just one more way to shift more of the tax burden from the wealthy few to the shrinking middle class.
Herman wants a nine percent national sales tax. When it is pointed out that many states already have hefty sales tax burdens, he says we are comparing “apples to oranges.”
Maybe so, but if I have to pay Tennessee and Campbell County’s 8.75 percent sales tax plus a federal nine percent sales tax every time I buy a Big Mac or a tube of toothpaste, that’s all apples, to the tune of nearly one dollar for every four I spend, coming out of my pocket.
No matter. Remember that one-quarter of Americans who would prefer “anyone” in the White House to Barack Obama? I suspect that “anyone” does not include another man with the same skin color as Obama. Herman Cain might have a compelling conservative message and he might have a winning persona, but I predict he could never be nominated in the Republican primary.
So President Barack Obama may very well be re-elected next November by default, simply because the other side can find nobody who offers a viable alternative. I certainly hope this is not the case. I hope that if Obama is given a second term, it is because Americans are beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel and it is no longer an oncoming train.
Whether you like Obama, dislike Obama or simply have no opinion one way or the other, I hope you will all join me in wishing him well in the upcoming year, because our country needs him to do well. We need to turn the economy around and get people back to work. After a long decade of war, we need to get our troops back home and out of harm’s way in faraway lands. We need Republicans and Democrats in Congress to discover that since we all inhabit this shrinking world together, we need to work together to make it a better place to inhabit.
Unlike Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell, my highest priority is not to see Barrack Obama out of the White House, not if it means taking our country down with him. Instead of wishing for the worst, in order to score political gain, we should all wish for the best. Our children and grandchildren deserve that much from us, at least. (updated 6:00 p.m. on 10/21/2011 for the week of 10/17/2011)
More than one bad smell coming out of Campbell County of late
Smell anything strange riding on the wind in Campbell County this week? This appears to be the “week of the big stink” from one end of the county to the other.
First you’ve got the obvious stink, the one everybody in a two square mile area has lived with for the past week since a subcontractor mixed crude oil and human waste into a toxic cocktail and dumped it into LaFollette’s sewage system last Thursday.
That makes for one sizable mob of outraged citizens, from the entire congregation of LaFollette’s First Baptist Church to the folks in the county school system, who had to dump hamburger meat stored at the old West LaFollette Elementary School.
But the major mistake made by the contractors and subcontractors working on the bridge at Campbell County High may have been dumping this noxious mixture in Dave Dunaway’s neighborhood. Confucius said, “To break wind is merely human. To break wind in a lawyer’s face is pure folly.” Well, he should have said it at any rate.
And so I viewed the twenty minute rant that Lawyer Dave treated the viewers of 1450wlaf.com with on Thursday, describing in every detail how Griffith Services LLC was hired by the company working on the CCHS bridge project to transfer sewage waste from a pipe near the bridge to be dumped at a pumping station near Lyk Nu Body Shop.
Dave outlined how Griffith assured everyone that their three tanker trucks had only carried water until they dumped truck number three, to discover that it was also carrying crude oil. Oops. Dave also mentioned how LUB failed to inspect the trucks or supervise the sewer bypass project, how City of LaFollette officials lied about it, how the Tennessee Department of Transportation was ultimately responsible for hiring incompetent contractors and how Acme Petroleum was really responsible because they were buying the oil that didn’t get emptied from the truck.
Well, just kidding about poor old Acme, which if they actually existed, would have had nothing to do with it, but you get the picture. Lawyer Dave has outlined the future of litigation in our fair county for the immediate future, or at least given us a list of potential defendants, from TDOT and Potter Southeast to Griffith Services to LUB to the City of LaFollette and perhaps one or two more. Hi Ho.
I may be out of step here, but I’m also somewhat concerned about those other two trucks, the ones that weren’t carrying crude oil but had been hauling “merely water.” Since the company saw no harm in also using their tanker trucks to haul human waste, I would really like to know where they have been hauling water from and to where. I want to make sure I don’t swim in any of their water, drink it or catch fish out of it, ever.
While many on this end of the county have been complaining about the terrible stink, folks up Jellico way haven’t noticed it. That may be because the smell wafting out of Jellico City Hall is so strong that it covers up all other odors.
Granted, I have only the reports in the LaFollette Press to go by, but it appears that the Jellico city fathers first took away the small salary paid to members of the Jellico Utility Board, then fired them. The Board of Mayor and Aldermen then appointed themselves to be the new utility board, reinstated the salary and gave themselves a raise.
Then they tried to balk on passing on a TVA-mandated electric rate increase to ratepayers and when the Utilities manager told them they had no choice but to go along with TVA, they fired him. When the Utility Board attorney advised them that firing the manager without cause might cost them $400,000 in unpaid salary, they just fired the lawyer.
So, let’s see if I’ve got this right. The Jellico Board of Mayor and Aldermen is running the city’s utility system, more or less, on the “Ostrich Plan.” Do what you want, if anybody says something you don’t like, fire them, stick your head in the sand and hope the problems go away.
Meanwhile, down at the courthouse, nobody noticed either the stink coming out of Lafollette or the smell emanating from across the mountain. That’s because the folks who live along Ivydale Road were raising quite a stink of their own during the commission workshop, tired of the deteriorating condition of their road.
It’s the same old story with a bit of a different twist. Logging trucks are using the road and helping to tear up the pavement, but Road Superintendent Dennis Potter has no money to re-pave the road. He also claims he has no authority to force the loggers to post a bond against road damage and won’t set a weight limit that would keep the loggers from using the road because jobs are at stake.
Tracy Campbell, who served as spokesperson for the residents, asked the squires to step in and help but got little satisfaction, since as we all know, the county commission has no authority over the Road Superintendent. Since the days of Superintendent J. T. “Pothole” Leach, the commission hasn’t even had a road committee, which was powerless to force J.T. to do anything J.T. didn’t want to do and finally disbanded in frustration.
There is something the commissioners could do, however, but appear unlikely to do it because it would involve spending money they don’t have or raising taxes they don’t want to raise.
Superintendent Potter asked the squires during the last budget negotiations for more money for paving roads. He pointed out that at his current budget for asphalt of around $700,000 a year, and the current cost of paving roads at $70,000 a mile, he can only pave ten miles of road each year. There are 700 miles of roads in the county road system, so everyone can expect to see the lane running past their front porch paved once every 70 years.
The squires couldn’t wrap their minds around such daunting statistics, so adopted the Ostrich Plan (see Jellico City Hall, above), stuck their heads in the sand and gave Dennis nothing for asphalt beyond the ten miles he already has.
Some of the squires would love to help people with road complaints but are both hesitant to spend money they don’t have and hesitant, even if they had it, to hand it over to the Road Superintendent when they have no control over where he spends it. Some observers have predicted that the folks at Ivydale have pestered Dennis to the point that he wouldn’t pave their road if he had the money.
Dennis Potter, for his part, has repeatedly said that with his limited paving budget, he doesn’t want to spend the money on roads that are receiving heavy truck traffic from logging or coal mining, just to see them torn up again in a short time. That’s not much consolation for the hundred or so people living along Ivydale Road or any of the other county roads carrying heavy truck traffic.
It is a shame that logging companies or the land companies that own the trees can’t be required to cover the cost of their use, and destruction, of county roads. At least the severance tax on coal provided some money to counties where coal is mined, while the value of coal and other minerals is supposed to be included in property tax assessments.
The value of timber is excluded, by state law, from property taxes and there is no severance tax on timber, so the logging industry has a free ride compliments of the taxpayers. A state law would be required to change this situation, unlikely with the current crop of big business legislators we have in Nashville.
The county commission does have an answer at their disposal, but it would take a commitment from them that involves spending money on roads, rather than parks, justice centers or school buildings. The commission could earmark some amount, say a million bucks or so each year, for paving projects and place that money in a restricted fund instead of transferring it to the highway budget.
The squires could then re-form their road committee and meet with the Road Superintendent to set up a list of priority paving projects for which the additional money would be used. Citizens could address this committee and try to get on the priority list. If their community lost out to other roads, at least they would have an answer as to when they might expect their road to be paved – this year, next year or two years from now.
The carrot for Dennis Potter would be money from the county to expand the number of roads he can pave. The stick would be that he would not get the money without strings attached, to use where he wants, but would have to agree to follow a priority list established, with his input, by the road committee.
Of course this pipe dream scenario would presume that politics would play no part in the decisions of either the Road Superintendent or the members of the commission, that roads would be prioritized according to condition and need rather than which district they are in or how many voters live along the way. Oh well, it seemed a good idea while it lasted. (updated 6:00 a.m. on 10/14/2011 for the week of 10/10/2011)
Reform Wall Street and clean up Congress? A good job for the Facebook generation
Presidential politics in this country is such a hoot to watch. Who needs reality TV or sitcoms when we’ve got a collection of clowns giving us constant entertainment for free?
The Pachyderms seem to be scrambling front-runners on a weekly basis, which should give you some idea of how together that party is at present. The Clueless Party, I mean the Tea Party, is still setting the pace. Their first darling, Michelle Bachman, has practically disappeared from the radar. First she was the cover girl for Newsweek, then the runner-up to Rick Perry. Now she is Michelle Who?
Rick Perry got the Tea Party crowd all excited for awhile, until they found out that A) he stumbles around in debates like a headless chicken, B) as governor of Texas, he has been soft on illegal immigrants, wanting to provide their children with educational opportunities and C) there are the rumblings of some potential financial scandals that might sink his political ship before it sails.
So now the Tea Party faithful are turning their gaze to New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who has repeatedly denied he has any interest in the White House, meaning of course, he would love to be President.
Christie would be the unanimous pick of the late night comedians like Jay Leno, whose mean-spirited style of humor could find endless potential in Christie’s portly profile. Get ready for a constant stream of “fat jokes,” America.
His confrontational style fits right in with the Tea Party “take no prisoners” philosophy. Unfortunately, his political track record is moderate Republican so in the end, he won’t be their cup of tea after all.
This leaves the inside track to the Republican mainstream candidate, Mitt Romney, who is doing his best to convince the ultra conservatives who have shanghaied his party of late that he is their man. Only problem is, Mitt excites the conservatives in the Republican Party about as much as President Obama excites the left wing of the Democratic Party.
Come to think of it, maybe a Romney-Obama campaign wouldn’t be such a bad thing. All the right wingnuts could boycott the election and go off for a retreat with Sarah Palin, who will only charge $23 million in speaking fees.
All the left wingnuts can boycott Obama, since he turned out to not be the change they were looking for, and go off on a retreat with Ralph Nader, who will speak for food. That would leave the election to be decided by those voters in the middle, who usually decide such things anyway.
That takes care of the race for the White House where we can take our pick of Tweedle Dum or Tweedle Dee, but what about Congress? Americans currently give Congress an all-time low approval rating of twelve percent, meaning nearly nine out of ten of us think they’re doing a horrible job.
My greatest concern here is that twelve percent of us approve of Congress. This is mildly disturbing. There are less than 500 Congressmen and only a hundred U. S. Senators, so their combined families and friends can’t possibly add up to twelve percent of the population. We need to identify that twelve percent and have them brought in for psychiatric evaluation and at the very least, revoke their voter’s registration cards.
The sad truth is, Americans as usual have a low opinion of Congress. They are that “pack of blustering idiots, except, of course, for my Congressman, who is a pretty decent fellow/gal.”
When those Americans who think so poorly of Congress as a whole go to the polls, they will inevitably vote for their incumbent Congressmen and Senators, swearing that it’s all those other fools in Congress who are messing the country up.
Once again, we will get the leadership we deserve.
While the politicians scramble for votes and poll points, a growing number of Americans have joined the “I’m mad as Hell and not gonna take it no more” protest on Wall Street. Well, not precisely Wall Street, which is protected by hundreds of New York’s finest. The protesters are camped out in a nearby park and making occasional forays to get arrested walking in the middle of the Brooklyn Bridge or jaywalking on Broadway.
I think folks have the right idea here, that the true root of all our evils and all our problems lies with the money-changers in the temple whose greed has brought the country close to ruin. They appear determined to escape with the pie, leaving one small slice for the rest of us to fight over.
But protesting will probably get us nowhere, except possibly in jail, or on the inside pages of the New York Times and an occasional mention on CNN. Bank of America will continue to charge monthly fees for ATM cards, AT & T will continue to contract their customer services out to call centers in India and the insurance industry will continue to raise rates, not based on someone’s risk factors but on how much or how little profit they can gain by investing our premiums.
I’ve got another suggestion for how to send a message to Wall Street. Everybody go and buy a share or two of stock. Not enough to hurt your pocketbook if it tanks or help you much if it gains. Buy a share or two of airline stock or bank stock or insurance company stock, whichever industry gets your dander most frequently.
If everybody does it, all 300 million-plus of us, before long common Americans would own a sizable chunk of Wall Street. Then we set up an online information center to monitor corporate greed and make sure the various news media is plugged into that information network.
An airline announces a new policy to charge travelers for carry-on luggage, everybody owning a share or two of that airline sells their stock on the same day. An insurance company refuses to transfer their call center from Mumbai to Cleveland, everybody dumps their stock. A bank eliminates free checking, sell, sell, sell and buy stock in a bank that still has free checking.
Would it work? Well, money talks, as they say, so in theory it could be an effective way to create more conscientious corporate citizens. In reality, you would need to set up a non-profit stock brokerage to handle all the transactions and most likely, the people in charge would figure out a way to manipulate the buying and selling to make themselves rich and some Saudi sheik would end up with our stock shares.
So keep at it, protesters. You may not force Wall Street to change its ways but at least you can make us all feel a little bit better in our misery. I would fly up and join you, but I quit flying shortly after 9/11, when the friendly skies became unfriendly. I’m afraid all us old curmudgeons are going to have to wait around for the Facebook generation to organize the “American Spring.” (updated 6:00 a.m. on 10/06/2011 for the week of 10/03/2011)
Tennessee always gets worse end of swaps with Texas, time to unfriend ‘em
Yeehaa! Texas governor and presidential wannabee Rick Perry made his first swing through East Tennessee on Thursday, with a $1000 per plate fundraising dinner that was “restricted access,” meaning no news media allowed.
Of course anything ‘Ol Tex had to say was bound to get out, that’s just the nature of the beast, and what he said left some of his supporters such as Tennessee’s Lieutenant Governor Ron Ramsey scrambling for damage control.
Perry told his audience of 150 well-heeled Tea Party Republicans that he opposed the half billion dollars in federal “Race to the Top” education funds that Tennessee has been granted to improve the quality of our state’s schools.
“We rejected that federal money in Texas because it would impose federal education guidelines on us and we want to set our own guidelines,” Perry told reporters who asked about the statement following the dinner.
Even Ramsey, the most conservative of Tennessee’s Pachyderm leaders, was caught trying to sidestep around Perry’s comments. I mean, how can a Tennessee politician publicly say he is opposed to $500 million in federal dollars to improve his state’s school system?
Perry also ran into a hot reception at his press briefing, as a couple of Ron Paul supporters among the media protested, telling him “Don’t come back to Tennessee.”
I love it. As you’ll recall, words I once wrote about Perry’s alma mater, Texas A & M University, got me into hot water with the Aggie alumni, resulting in one email message that read, “Don’t come back to Texas or you’ll be hunted down and killed like the dog you are.”
Good, I’ll stay out of Texas and Perry can stay out of Tennessee, and we’ll keep that half billion dollars, thank you,
Personally, I think Tennessee has been on the rump end of trade deals with the Lone Star State for far too long. First we gave them Davy Crockett, to be martyred at the Alamo. Then we gave them Sam Houston, who whipped the Mexicans, founded the Republic of Texas and eventually guided it into the United States. Texas even swiped our state flag, replacing the three stars in the center with one star.
What did Texas give us in return? Well, let’s see, there was Lyndon Baines Johnson and George W. Bush. I rest my case but wait, now they want to throw Rick Perry into the deal. No thanks.
I mean, isn’t this the same Rick Perry who suggested that perhaps Texas should secede from the Union rather than accept Obama’s health care reforms? First he wants nothing to do with the United States, then he wants to be President.
Actually, Texas seceding from the Union might not be such a bad idea, Then we could put up a border fence, declare George W. Bush and Rick Perry to be illegal aliens and refuse to let them back in.
I don’t even think we want Texas A & M to join the SEC. That would give the Vols another Eastern Division foe, probably Auburn, on a regular basis but might jeopardize our traditional rivalry with Alabama. I cannot imagine a football season without the Tennessee-Alabama game.
Oh, and I didn’t notice Governor Perry turning down any of that federal FEMA disaster money earmarked for his state in the wake of the worst wildfire season and drought in Texas history. His Pachyderm pals in Congress almost succeeded in blocking the disaster aid, demanding that any increase in disaster aid be accompanied by spending cuts to other programs that the Donkeys want left alone.
Somehow both sides managed to bury the hatchet just enough to give all those victims of floods, droughts, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes and wildfires some help. The fact that blue states and red states were equally afflicted by disasters may have had something to do with the rare compromising spirit in Congress.
Facebook is in the news again, I notice. This time some folks are accusing the social networking site of following its users, even after they log off, to monitor other websites they visit.
I must admit that I toyed with the idea of setting up a Facebook account, after years of avoiding it like the plague. A friend convinced me that I should get on so I could keep up with a group site for alumni of the long-defunct Lake City High School, while another friend urged me to get on a Campbell County network of people who think, more or less, like I do (a scary thought, that).
When my friend dropped by one evening and tried to convince me to open a Facebook account, I attempted the old “I’ve never tried to get on. Maybe I will if I can figure it out,” ploy.
She didn’t bite. “It will just take a few minutes. Here let me sit down at your computer and I’ll help you set up an account.”
But alas, for some reason my IMac wouldn’t let her log into Facebook. Saved by the bell. “That’s weird, but I’ll go home and set your account up on my computer.”
A couple of hours later, a message popped up on my email officially welcoming me to Facebook, along with a friend request from my patron. I logged on to accept my first friend, but whoa. “Inappropriate password. Try again.”
Several tries and still no luck. I tried all lower case letters, first letter caps, all caps, backwards, frontward, sideways and upside-down with the agreed-upon password.
So, I decided to click on the “forgot your password” icon and create a new one. “Sorry, that email is already assigned to another account.”
I looked around for my twelve gauge but then remembered that I pawned it awhile back to help pay my Internet bill.
So for the past couple of months, my email fills up almost daily with new friend requests and friend suggestions that I can’t accept or respond to. That is probably a good thing. Now I have had an opportunity to see who I would be sharing my life with and quite frankly, for the most part, I’m not all that interested.
So dear readers, I’ve decided to unfriend Facebook. As far as everybody else, you can still be my friend if you want. As always, my phone number is in the book. (updated 6:00 a.m. on 09/30/2011 for the week of 09/26/2011)
Squires try to give citizens good value for their tax dollar – in entertainment
I hate being right all the time. Well, would you believe being right occasionally, especially when it comes to local politics.
In this case, I predicted that it would take about a year at most for the newly elected county commission to choose sides and line up in two factions of almost equal numbers.
This brilliant piece of prognostication was based on past precedent. No matter how united our squires appear to be for the first month or two after taking office, the commission always ends up in neatly divided camps on any number of issues before their first anniversary rolls around.
For some strange reason, the Finance Office and Director Moneybags Marlow have been one of the focal points of division for some years now, dating back to the days when Jerry Cross was County Executive. The departure of Marlow critic Johnny Joe Dower may have taken some of the “personal” out of the criticism, but the Finance Office continues to be at the center of the political maelstrom.
This should come as little surprise, as the Financial Management System was born in the eye of the hurricane, so to speak. The Highway Superintendent wasn’t crazy about the idea, nor was the Sheriff, while the school department was absolutely opposed to it and would have seceded from the county if that was at all possible, and if the school department had, at that time, anyone who knew one end of a budget from the other.
The county’s apparent inability to manage its finances in those days of yore, somewhere around the time that Judge Billy Joe White had to threaten to jail the entire commission and school board to get a budget passed and schools opened, led to the FMS in the first place.
The business community of the county, led by the bankers, the bakers and the candlestick makers, more or less bullied the county commission into adopting the Financial Management Act of 1981, which created a separate finance office to handle all the county’s money and a finance director to oversee it.
It didn’t take too long for the squires to figure out that the most influential committee in county government might now be the one that oversees the finance office, the letting of bids and spending of money. The appointment of members to this committee has been an exercise in bloodletting ever since.
So it was this past Monday night. Mayor William Baird offered a slate of nominations for the four appointed positions on the FMS Committee, while three positions – the Director of Schools, County Mayor and Highway Superintendent – are mandated by state law.
William’s suggestions followed a vote in principal that the commission had already taken, to add the chairman of the school board as one of the four positions. The Mayor’s other three suggestions were commissioners David Adkins, Terry Singley and Bobby White. Booted off the committee to make room for School Board Chairman Mike Orick was James Slusher, that squeaky wheel that the commission appointed from the general public last year.
As they say, that bird didn’t fly and the Mayor’s slate was voted down by 8-7. Melvin Boshears then nominated Slusher to serve another term on the committee but J. L. Davis, who opposed the Mayor’s suggestions, shifted sides to also vote against Slusher. Again, the nomination failed 8-7.
Beverly Hall then nominated another squeaky wheel, Commissioner Thomas Hatmaker. Same results: yays 7, nays 8.
Alvin Evans then nominated Davis, who abstained from voting but didn’t really need the vote. All but Hatmaker, Hall and Sue Nance approved of the retired Jellico banker and one member of the committee had finally been approved.
After that, the squires appeared to tire of the game and bow to the inevitable. Mike Orick was appointed by 13-3 and Bobby White by 14-1, with only Hatmaker consistently holding out. Even Thomas went along with the rest on David Adkins, who was approved unanimously.
But the battle was not yet over. After Marie Ayers received unanimous approval for another turn as chair of the Budget & Finance Committee, both Davis and Hatmaker were nominated to serve as vice chairman. The Mayor called for a vote on the second nominee first, who was Davis, and he won a narrow 8-6 vote of approval with Melvin Boshears taking a trip to the water cooler, so to speak.
Will the squires now return to playing nice together or will this trend continue into other issues? Time will tell. If they follow the path of past commissions, by the end of their second year, 8-7 votes will not be unusual and by the end of year four, the commission will be lucky if they can agree on when to take a bathroom break.
I’ve never quite been able to put my finger on why the commission always splits into factions, Common sense might indicate partisan politics, but I don’t see any trend toward dividing among donkeys and pachyderms and I’m not sure that half the commissioners know whether they’re donkeys, pachyderms or piss ants.
Likewise, squires from the same district are as likely to vote against each other as they are to vote with each other, Remember, come election year, they’ll be fighting each other for votes.
Perhaps the squires find a county commission that goes along with everything without disagreement to be as boring as the audience does. I would like to think that our squires are not dysfunctional. They just want to give the citizens of Campbell County a good show for their tax dollar.
If controversy is a sign of good acting among politicians, the bunch in Nashville and Washington would all be up for Oscars. The latest fluff is over the state’s new voter ID law. Republicans passed the law by claiming it would prevent voter fraud, although nobody could really put their fingers on any glaring examples of voter fraud since the turn of the century. The 20th Century, that is, at about the time that William McKinley whipped William Jennings Bryant for the White House.
Democrat politicos instantly began crying about how the Pachyderms just passed the law to hold down the vote among the poor and minorities, those most likely to not have a picture ID. Are they correct? Well, the Republican legislature made allowances for people who live in nursing homes, likely Republicans, while ruling student IDs unacceptable. Those college kids helped put Obama in office, after all.
Does the voter ID law smell to high heaven? “You betcha,” as Sarah Palin might say if she wasn’t a screaming Tea Party Republican.
So Democratic politicians spend their time loudly criticizing the Republicans and trying to score political points. What they should do is roll up their sleeves, go over the registered voter rolls and make sure that anyone who is an independent or registered Democrat gets a call and if necessary, a ride down to the nearest driver’s license office to get that free, approved photo ID.
Nah, that would take too much effort. Politicians, both Donkey and Pachyderm, would rather spend their time doing what they do best, running their mouths and saying nothing worthwhile. (updated 8:00 a.m. on 09/23/2011 for the week of 09/19/2011)
Roaming canines might feel right at home attending commission’s “zoo”
I attended two meetings down at the courthouse this week. The school board met on Tuesday evening. It took them all of two minutes to unanimously re-elect Mike Orick as chairman and Homer Rutherford as vice chair with nary a dissenting vote nor other nomination.
They then swiftly moved through a consent agenda, financial reports, a few recognitions and a commitment to an energy efficient schools program that will cost $4 million and hopefully save much more than that over the next 15 years. In a little over an hour it was done and everyone was heading for the exits,
The night before, I attended the county commission workshop, where a number of citizens had signed up to address the squires. Two people had dog problems, and particularly problems with the animal control officers’ perceived lack of a timely response.
Another, Rick Gilliam, started out his presentation by suggesting that commissioners Melvin Boshears, Marie Ayers and Thomas Hatmaker, along with Pinecrest VFD chief Jerry Moate and Christian-Journal editor Mike Sliwinski, should all leave the room as he was going to talk about them.
Rick may have talked about them, but most of what he said was a rambling tirade aimed at nobody in particular, in which he mentioned voter fraud, child abuse and just about everything else except the sinking of the Titanic and alien abduction.
His statements made little sense, possibly because Moate interrupted him every five seconds with a grunt, murmured “liar” or “harrumph” while Mike got about three inches from his face to snap a series of photos with the camera advance whirring and clicking at high speed.
Johnny Bruce, who was chairing the workshop instead of the absent Mayor Baird, finally brought down the gavel on this carnival sideshow and called everyone out of order. Whether Gilliam had anything real to present may never be known. He exited, rambling about photo evidence, Facebook and grand juries.
My point is this: for sheer entertainment value, the school board gets a one out of ten score: perfect time to take a nap. The county commission, on the other hand, scores a perfect 10.0. They don’t need to raise taxes to balance the county budget, merely charge a couple of bucks admission fee to attend commission meetings, especially workshops where members of the public get to say their piece.
As far as this particular carnival sideshow, Mr. Gilliam has some hatchets to bury and a reputation as a hothead that means few people take him seriously. Moate’s actions were predictable. He appears much more anxious to dish out criticism that to take it and none too fond of protocol.
Mike tossed aside his objectivity as a journalist and I find that unfortunate. Many a time in my 30-plus years as a journalist, I’ve been the subject of comments and criticism at public meetings, and I always just grin and bear it. After all, being a journalist means you always get the last word.
But, bless their little hearts, at least I wasn’t tempted to doze off during the commission meeting.
The other big topic of the night seemed to be whether the county has gone to the dogs. One family reported that a neighbor’s dogs killed one of their calves, attacked others and that it took animal control several days to respond to their complaints. Another citizen expressed concern over dogs running loose in a neighborhood where small children play.
Three years ago, some of our former commissioners got into a hot debate over the question of whether all dogs in the county should be required to be registered or not. The “keep your big guv’mint hands off my hound dawg” crowd won out, and registration is voluntary in Campbell County.
Now we have dogs running in packs, attacking livestock and animal control officers who say they can’t pinpoint who owns the offending animals. The same officers point out that they can’t be on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week to respond to stray animal complaints.
Dogs, cats and the occasional black bear don’t wear watches or carry calendars, but you can bet that when most animals misbehave, it will be at an “inconvenient” time or day. Looks like our animal control system needs some tweaking before it becomes an “animal out-of-control” system.
Maybe we should go to mandatory registration. That way, if you’re going to have pets, you take responsibility for them. The small fee could go into a pool of money to either hire additional animal control officers or pay the ones we have overtime to go out at night and on weekends if they are called.
Anyone who is so cash-strapped that they can’t afford a couple of bucks for registration could still register their animals at no charge, but they should be required to register them. That way, there will be no question about who is responsible for a dog, and any that are not registered can be legally rounded up, regardless of whose property they are on.
Full disclosure is required here, and I must admit that I’m a dog lover and once had a dog that turned out to be a problem for my neighbors. “Semi” was a 140-pound half Newfoundland, half golden retriever, and probably the most gentle animal that I ever owned.
He did have a few bad habits, however. When I lived for a time up in Elk Valley, Semi liked to roam over to my neighbor’s yard and took a particular interest in the laundry hanging on their clothesline, making a game out of seeing how much of it he could pull down. A round of buckshot didn’t deter him; Newfoundlands have this thick undercoat of downy fur to protect them from cold water and not a single pellet could penetrate his thick hair.
Finally, to spare the neighbors and save my dog, we moved him down to live with an Anderson County friend, where he could feel right at home with her two 180 pound Saint Bernards. Unfortunately, these three oversized mutts soon took to another fun game, chasing the neighbor’s cattle. One of the cows became so agitated that it dropped a calf prematurely.
We paid for the calf and paid for a big fence to keep this pack of canine ponies where they belonged. Semi later moved with me to a canoe livery on the banks of the Clinch River, where he became the beloved mascot for Clinch River Outdoors, contented to prowl the riverbank, chase an occasional Blue Heron and bask in all the attention he received from customers, particularly small children who would climb on and ride his back.
The point is, there are no bad dogs, just dogs that are sometimes placed in the wrong environment or given too little attention or treated poorly. If you’re going to own a dog, take care of it and take responsibility for it. If you can’t do that, buy a goldfish. (Week of September 16, 2011)
High standards and low standards – there’s plenty of both to go around
Until around noon on Thursday of this week, I didn’t think I would have anything to write about except more drivel over the goings-on in Washington. Silly me, this is Campbell County after all.
Suddenly right there before my eyes was a three ring media circus, with Channel 10 camera crews tripping over local reporters for the best seats as Sheriff Robbie Goins faced his first public relations crisis since being elected.
Former Sheriff Ron McClellan is probably thinking about now, “Welcome to the club Robbie.”
The Sheriff had the unhappy duty to announce that he has fired his Chief Deputy, John Finley, as well as detective Jason Henegar, following an incident Monday night when Henegar crashed his private vehicle into a house.
The incident is still under investigation by the THP, but apparently Chief Deputy Finley removed Henegar from the scene of the accident, meaning that both men are technically guilty of violating the law.
Was alcohol involved? We may never know for sure, but it is a crime to leave the scene of an accident, period. Only emergency medical personnel transporting an injured person can legally remove a driver from the scene before investigators arrive.
We are reminded ever so often by such incidents that police officers, firemen, EMTs and other overseers of public safety are also human beings and make human mistakes. Problem is, they are under a zero tolerance policy, and should be.
Remember that old saying, “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” It was penned, I’m sure, with powerful people in mind, such as presidents, kings, dictators-for-life and such. But when it comes down to street level and most people’s everyday lives, nobody wields more absolute power than a policeman on duty.
They have the power to stop you, question you, detain you, search you and your car, seize your property, arrest you, restrain you, handcuff you and if you resist, use physical force or even shoot you. Now that’s absolute power.
Granted, officers had better have reasonable cause to do any of those things, and use force sparingly if at all, or they will pay a heavy price. But at the moment that they are arresting someone, they are in complete control and must be obeyed, period.
With such power comes a heavy responsibility, to be above reproach, above any question of impropriety, to meet the obligations placed upon them by wearing that badge. Police officers may be human and sometimes make human mistakes, but the badge they wear and the oath they take allows no mistakes. They are aware of that fact when they take the job but sadly, sometimes forget and must pay a heavy price.
There was a time when cops had the power but without the scrutiny. As recently as when I was growing up in the 1950s and ‘60s, it was not unusual for police officers to look the other way if they pulled over someone they knew, or rough someone up a bit if they got too much sass while making an arrest.
I remember one old-time Campbell County Sheriff who took office after being away from law enforcement for a number of years. He asked one of his deputies where they “kept the numb-chuks,” a particularly nasty instrument of semi-torture used by cops long ago to restrain a suspect.
The deputy, holding back his laughter with great effort, informed his new boss that that particular police tool had been banned for years.
It was also not that rare a thing in the “good old days” of law enforcement, particularly in big city police departments, for sergeants and lieutenants to carry a drop weapon or two around, an unregistered gun or knife to be dropped at the scene if a rookie cop panicked and killed an unarmed suspect.
Times have changed, and not only because of lawsuits, higher standards, more oversight and better training. Police cars all have cameras, and woe unto any officer who turns off his camera for any reason. Practically every member of John Q. Public has a camera as well, conveniently carried around in their pockets built into Iphones, blackberries and Ipods.
I once was visiting New York City back in the ‘70s and witnessed several cops chasing a suspect on foot. They caught him, took him down and several of them commenced to kicking him and beating him with their nightsticks – right in Times Square with hundreds of witnesses!
I first thought it might be a scene being shot for a movie but one nearby New Yorker said, “Nah, they’re just sending a message. They’re not really hitting him that hard”
Today that message would go viral on a hundred thousand Facebook pages within an hour and those police officers, whether the suspect was seriously injured or not, would be the ones behind bars. Half of New York would be texting, tweeting or sending out the video to the other half before those officers even made it back to their station.
There are still a lot of us around that recall the “good old days,” and probably aren’t all that surprised when a cop is busted for breaking the law or fired for breaking rules. We should be surprised. Cops today are better trained, better educated and better prepared than ever. But they’re still human, and sometimes make human mistakes.
Some folks, particularly those who have had run-ins with the law, may applaud whenever a cop makes a mistake and pays the price. The rest of us should simply remember that they are no better nor worse than most of us, simply held to a higher standard.
So much for high standards. Let us talk for a moment about low standards. Did anyone bother to watch the Republican presidential debate on Wednesday night, or President Obama’s speech on job creation on the following night?
Let’s see, Rick Perry compared Mitt Romney unfavorably to Romney’s Democratic predecessor Michael Dukakis, at least as far as creating jobs. Romney compared Perry unfavorably to his predecessor in the Texas governor’s mansion, George W. Bush, when it comes to creating jobs. Former Utah Governor Stan Huntsman claimed his state beat ‘em both in creating jobs.
Wow, and here I thought we were in the middle of a recession with near-record unemployment. That can’t be true if all those fellows have been out there creating all those jobs!
Meanwhile President Barack has a plan for creating jobs that aren’t really needed since the Republican governors have already created so many jobs. The President intends to extend unemployment benefits to all those people who don’t really need them, and keep the reduced payroll tax deduction in effect for another year, for all those people who are now working thanks to Governors Perry, Romney and Huntsman.
Sooo, I guess we don’t really have an economic crisis after all. All you lazy people out there who aren’t working need to straighten up, go apply for one of those many jobs that politicians have created for you and stop whining. I suspected those economists were all lying merely to grab attention. Nobody pays any attention to economists when the economy is good, after all.
Personally, I think the answer to unemployment is right in front of our noses. Global warming? Climate change? Stop worrying about global warming and embrace it! Keep burning coal and oil and filling the air with hydrocarbons and stop worrying about whether we’re causing catastrophic climate change. We can create a whole new large-scale industry – natural disaster management.
We can take hundreds of thousands of unemployed Americans and train them to be natural disaster specialists. We can create entire battalions of emergency responders who are trained to sift through the rubble left from tornadoes or hurricanes, to build sandbag barricades in flooded towns, fight forest fires and rescue victims.
They can live together in camps, like the old Civilian Conservation Corps boys did during the Great Depression. Instead of being assigned to build shelters at state parks or cut hiking trails and build overlooks in the Great Smokies, however, this modern corps will respond to disasters around the country.
Why, we might even be able to send them to respond to disasters in foreign lands if those countries pay us enough. Trade deficit with Japan? No problem, we’ll send you three companies of Americans trained to put out fires in nuclear power plants for a flat fee of say, a hundred grand an hour. Don’t have the cash? Uncle Sam will pay them and take five percent of the Nissan Corporation instead. (Week of September 5, 2011)
Tea Party to Uncle Sam: “How’s your soul?” . . . until the drums begin to roll
Justin Wilson, State Comptroller of the Treasury, made his highly ballyhooed visit to Campbell County on Tuesday. He toured the courthouse offices, met with various officials, spoke to the Rotary Club and then hightailed it back to Nashville, mumbling something that sounded like, “The horror, the horror!”
Nah, Justin didn’t land in the middle of a re-make of “Apocalypse Now,” but I suspect he had heard enough. Perhaps he got a whiff of Thomas Hatmaker’s Monday night rant on Channel 12, or similar controversies, to indicate what was in store if he followed through on plans to attend the joint meeting of county commission and school board later in the evening.
The Comptroller appears to be none too eager to get drawn into local political battles, so bugged out of the meeting, leaving the squires and school board with a rather harmless session on the proposal for an energy-efficient upgrade to the county school system.
The controversy, of course, revolves around the insistence by some squires that the county needs an audit committee, and the insistence by others, including Mayor William Baird, Finance Jeff Marlow and for the moment a majority of commissioners, that such a committee would serve no useful purpose except to provide a bully pulpit for certain people to attack others.
The Comptroller’s official position has been stated before, that he recommends every county should have an audit committee. Of course, he didn’t think that recommendation through to its logical end before making it. The Comptroller was speaking from the perspective of an auditor and accountant, that there is no such thing as too much financial oversight.
He was not speaking from the perspective of a politician, which would be to figure out how an audit committee might give one some leverage in the political arena. How much you want to bet that Comptroller Wilson goes back to Nashville and tweaks his recommendation, perhaps spelling out exactly who should serve on an audit committee and limiting the parameters under which it would operate?
With the Comptroller absent and no opportunity for another political carnival, the squires had to content themselves with a dog and pony show from the Trane Corporation on a $4 million program to improve energy efficiency in all of the county’s school buildings.
Actually, the proposal makes a lot of sense, especially since Trane will guarantee that over a 15-year period, energy costs will be lowered by enough to save the county that $4 million, plus several hundred thousands to boot.
Trane will get the contract to do all the work, that’s their incentive. They will monitor the savings in energy costs for the length of the program and if results fall short of their guaranteed assessment, they will reimburse the county the difference, and that’s the county’s incentive.
The devil’s in the details, as they say, and squires and board members asked a lot of questions such as, “What happens if we have to replace one of the school buildings that you’ve upgraded before the 15 years expires?”
Apparently, the answers were sufficient to convince a majority that this is a good deal. The school board will vote at their next meeting on going forward with the contract, which will require the county to eventually borrow the $4 million up front. In the meantime, the board must commit $225,000 to Trane to pay for the initial assessment and engineering plans.
Moneybags Marlow, acutely aware of the love-hate relationship that sometimes exists between school board and commission, asked the squires to hold a straw vote on whether they will agree to cover the $225,000 in the event that the assessment by Trane shows that going forward with the $4 million project is not feasible.
The unofficial show of hands seemed to give the school board a go-ahead for the $225,000, although some squires’ hands did not go up and it is still possible that the commission could hang the school board out to dry for the $225,000 should the project get axed. Hopefully the kids will continue to play well together and the real kids will benefit in the end from more comfortable school environments.
Speaking of the environment, I’ve noticed that the Tea Party types have toned down their “just say no to government” rhetoric a bit, at least in the states where Mother Nature has been wreaking havoc. Seems the Tea Party still believes that government should keep its nose out of people’s business, except for, of course, when its time for FEMA to step in and help states recover from tornados, hurricanes, earthquakes, droughts, wildfires, volcanoes, heat waves, floods, tsunamis, landslides, avalanches or an epidemic outbreak of Democrats.
Reminds me a bit of an old poem I once read by that 19th Century English author Rudyard Kipling, the fellow who wrote “The Jungle Books,” “Kim,” “Gunga Din” and all those other novels set in British India. Kipling’s poem was titled, “Tommy,” which was the English nickname for someone serving in the British army.
I went into a public-‘ouse to get a pint o’ beer,
The pubican ‘e up an’ sez, “We serve no redcoats here.”
The girls be’ind the bar they laughed an’ giggled fit to die,
I outs into the street again, an’ to myself sez I:
“For its Tommy this an’ Tommy that an’ “Tommy, wait outside:”
But it’s “Special train for Atkins” when the trooper’s on the tide,
Yes, makin’ mock o’ uniforms that guard you while you sleep
Is cheaper than them uniforms, an’ they’re starvation cheap;
An’ hustlin’ drunken soldiers when they’re goin’ large a bit
Is five times better business than paradin’ in full kit.
Then it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, ‘ow’s yer soul?”
But it’s “Thin red line of ‘eroes” when the drums begin to roll,
The drums begin to roll my boys, the drums begin to roll,
O it’s “Thin red line of ‘eroes” when the drums begin to roll.
Substitute “Uncle Sam” for “Tommy” and you get the picture. Michelle Bachman, the Tea Party’s cheerleader, was down in Florida mouthing off about the hurricane and earthquake being God’s vengeance upon America for . . . what? Overspending? Gay marriage? Overtaxing? National Health Care?
Rick Perry, the current darling of the Tea Party, is the governor of Texas, that bastion of the reddest of red states. Texas is currently in the middle of its worst drought in history, and wildfires are consuming the state, one square mile at a time. I wonder what God is punishing Texas for?
I’m about fed up to my neck with the Tea Party, and I’ve got a very large neck. They complain about the federal government and how its ruining all our lives, and how those liberals are wanting to take our guns, euthanize our grannies and kill our babies before they’re born.
They want less government interference in our lives, except of course, for interfering in the things that they care about, such as a woman’s right to choose, or a business owner’s right to say “no guns allowed.”
Then it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, ow’s yer soul?”
But it’s “Thin red line of ‘eroes” when the drums begin to roll. (Week of August 29, 2011)
Earthquakes? hurricanes? Don’t worry guys, opening kickoff is almost here
What a week! Earthquakes in Virginia, a killer hurricane aimed at Times Square, Pat Summit reveals she has early onset Alzheimer’s’ and the NCAA lets UT off the hook as a reward for tossing Bruce Pearl to the wolves.
Around here, the most exciting thing was the gathering of squires Monday evening to hash out the new voting districts in line with the 2010 Census.
Wasn’t much to hash out, really. The First District is too large and had to give up some people, so the folks who live out on the south side of Old Long Hollow Road, over to Pleasant Ridge Road from the city limits to the old Coolidge School will now be voting in the Second District.
The population of the Fifth District continues to shrink in relation to the rest of the county, so that district gained Ivydell, McCloud Mountain and the areas along Highway 25W north of LaFollette. An earlier suggestion to add Stony Fork to the Fifth District was abandoned when it became apparent that none of the Fifth District squires knew where Stony Fork is or how to get there.
The process was painful to watch at first, as Melvin Boshears and Rusty Orick had some rather different ideas about which neighborhoods in their district should be given up. In the end, Melvin left to go fishing, Rusty left because he no longer had to worry about how many of his voters Melvin might give away, and the rest of the commissioners simply voted to move Melvin and Rusty to Bell County, Kentucky.
I’m kidding, of course. Someone made the motion but it didn’t get a second.
In the end, the commissioners approved a plan, subject to change yet again at their September meeting, that would move around the fewest number of people in order to get the populations of all the districts within ten percent of each other as required by law. The final deviation between most and least populous districts is 9.8 %, so they managed to squeeze in under the wire, barely.
The census results are slowly beginning to be released now, and some of the findings are very revealing of how society is changing. Did you notice the article in Thursday’s News-Sentinel, squeezed in between the headlines about UT basketball, UT football, and the still-sour economy?
The article revealed that the number of males who are primary homeowners or renters and have a male roommate has declined sharply since 2000. It also revealed that the number of male-female households where the woman is the primary homeowner or renter is almost even with the number where the male is the homeowner or renter.
Aha. This tells me that men are finally wising up. At last we have realized that 1) men make lousy roommates and 2) women’s lib is working in our favor and we can now freeload off the lady of the house without fear of becoming social outcasts.
Guys, let’s face it. If our small contribution toward continuation of the species were not necessary, Mother Nature and the laws of evolution would have singled us out for extinction a long time ago. As soon as humankind discovered agriculture and men no longer had to go out, knock a mammoth in the head and drag it back to the cave, we were on a downward spiral.
Then machines came along that made it possible for females to do the same work as men, leaving the males with no role other than to maintain the office football pool and be the boss. Eventually, as machines became more and more complex, females were bound to ask themselves, “Why is it that he’s the boss when I have to help him access his email account and show him how to operate the postage machine?”
Soon we will be relegated to the task of operating the office football pool, then it’s only a matter of time before our female boss realizes she doesn’t really like football all that much.
So guys, before you plop down in front of that couch tonight, open a beer and turn on ESPN, think about the next evolutionary step. In the world of insects, evolution has placed the male of the species in its proper role. Male bees, the drones, mate and then they die. The male preying mantis and male Black Widow spiders mate, and then the female kills them and feeds them to the babies.
Maybe its time we begin to beef up our resumes, either that or devise an exit strategy.
Speaking of Mother Nature, she appears to have a especially large bone to pick this year with the good ole U.S.A. Killer droughts in Texas and the Southwest, killer heat in the Southeast, record snowfalls and record flooding in the Midwest and Mississippi River Valley, killer tornadoes all over the place, an earthquake in Virginia cracks the Washington Monument and now a killer hurricane drawing a bead on Yankee Stadium and Fenway Park.
I heard an old geezer down at a Lake City eatery the other day complaining about the heat. “I blame that #*&! Al Gore. He’s been threatening us with that global warming for years,” he proclaimed.
Maybe so. Natural disasters, wars all around, banks failing, politicians bringing the country to the verge of collapse - the news just keeps getting worse but there is still a silver lining in that cloud. Guys, time to open a beer, plop down on the couch and turn on ESPN. Football season is here and all is again right with the world. (Week of August 22, 2011)
"Commission gives new meaning to “dog days” with their you-know-what contest"
August is well upon us, and that means we’re in the middle of “Dog Days.” I’m not sure where the term originated. Some old timers will say that dogs were more likely to contact rabies in late summer, while others pooh-pooh that notion and say it just refers to the lackadaisical summer heat that leaves one lying around like an old hound dog.
Whatever, dog days were certainly with us Monday night at the Campbell County Commission meeting. Right off the bat, the top dog walked into the room and hiked his leg, marking his territory, and the you-know-what contest was on.
Top dog in this case is Mayor William Baird, chairman of the commission. He quickly marked his territory on the other fifteen hounds in the room by introducing a resolution requiring donations from the squires’ personal discretionary funds to be approved by his office before checks are written.
Thomas Hatmaker, a particularly noisy hound whose baying at the top dog keeps other hounds awake at the meetings, protested louder than most. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” Thomas insisted, pointing out that checks and balances were already in place to make sure the funds were distributed properly.
He pointed out that commission secretary Peggy Henegar already checks the legal eligibility of recipients and Finance Director Jeff Marlow admitted that his office also verifies eligibility before checks are written. To be eligible for donations, an organization must be a government or quasi-government agency, or be a certified non-profit organization.
Thomas also pointed out that the only problem the current group of squires had with the discretionary fund was that the outgoing commissioners spent it all last year before the new group took office, and that William would have no power to prevent that from happening again.
But most of the hounds in the kennel had little to say on the matter, obviously feeling that one more step in the process would make little difference in the distribution of funds. The squires voted 12-3 to let the top dog have the final word with only Thomas, Beverly Hall and Bob Walden voting “no.”
Now we get to the “contest” part. Ever notice how, when a mutt wanders through the neighborhood marking its territory on all the bushes and tires, other dogs lose little time in going over and trying to cover up the scent?
Later in the meeting, Thomas had his chance to cover up top dog’s tracks. He brought up once again the question of an audit committee, insisting that Campbell County needs one whether the State Comptroller has required it or not.
In fact the Comptroller has never suggested that Campbell County must set up an audit committee, something that is done only if a county government shows repeated, serious deficiencies in handling public funds during the annual state audits conducted by outside accountants.
As Finance Director Moneybags Marlow has pointed out, the only recurring deficiency found by state audits has been the failure to segregate duties in the courthouse clerical offices so that the people who keep records do not handle money.
“To do that would require hiring numerous additional employees, and that’s not something you or the office holders want to pay for,” Moneybags told commissioners again Monday night.
Steve Rutherford asked, “Audits are conducted by the state every year and we receive the reports. What is the purpose of setting up an audit committee if we already have audits?”
To that, Thomas explained, ‘The auditors just run a sampling of the books. This committee would have the authority to look at anything, investigate any complaint brought to them.”
Ahhh. Now the picture gets much, much clearer. An audit committee, consisting of three or more unpaid, qualified individuals, would have the power to investigate any allegations made by any individuals against any office holders.
Talk about a bully pulpit! You decide you don’t like a certain official, simply accuse them of financial wrongdoing, Bring a complaint before the audit committee for an investigation. Even if the committee fails to find anything wrong, the seed of doubt is sown with the public, and the voters.
And what sort of people would we find to serve on this committee? It is an unpaid position, meaning nobody is likely to want the job unless they have an axe to grind or have aspirations to public office.
The audit committee would be appointed by the county legislative body, meaning the squires. They could appoint outside individuals, assuming they could find individuals who are qualified to look at complex financial matters and are willing to work for nothing. Or they could simply appoint members of the county commission. The hounds gathering to cover up top dog’s scent?
Maybe an audit committee would be a good idea. I have a suggestion or two that might keep it from becoming a political witchhunt. 1) Any commissioner who votes to establish the audit committee is automatically disqualified from serving on it. 2) The committee will be set up like a grand jury. Any allegations of wrongdoing will be brought before the committee in a closed meeting first, and the committee will weigh the evidence and decide if there is enough justification to conduct an official, public investigation.
Oh, wait a minute, I just eliminated the bully pulpit. I doubt if our hound dogs would go along with those restrictions. It would be like telling the dog, you can sniff, but no covering up the scent with your own. No self-respecting hound dog is going to follow that command without biting back.
No matter, at least for now. Thomas’ motion to establish the audit committee was voted down by a narrow 8-7 margin, close enough that I’m sure we’ve not seen the last of it.
Just when I begin to think that our county commission beats all the others for sheer buffoonery, I hear something that puts things in proper perspective. I was in to see Doc Burrell earlier this week for my biannual scold, you know, “Cut out this, stop doing that, get more exercise” and so on.
Good thing about having Johnny Burrell for my doctor is we can talk a little politics, as Doc is also the longtime chairman of the Anderson County School Board.
“It’s a shame you’re not still covering the Anderson County Commission,” he told me. “They met for four hours the other night and every motion on the budget failed by one vote. Then they tried to adjourn and that failed by one vote. They finally ended up having to recess the meeting because they couldn’t get enough votes to adjourn.”
Well, I will say this much for the Campbell County Commission. They may not be perfect, but at least they have enough sense to know when to quit and go home. (Week of August 15, 2011)
“Times, they are a’changing” but sadly, not all change is for the better
“Times, they are a’changin’.” Songwriter Woody Guthrie wrote that back in the 1930s when the labor movement was getting up a head of steam in America during the depths of the Great Depression.
All I can say is, Woody had no idea. If that hobo guitar picker could magically come back today, the first thing he would notice is there aren’t any hobos anymore, at least not Woody’s version. Woody jumped freight trains to travel from place to place, but nobody does that anymore because there are no boxcars, only sealed container cars, and he would never get past the security gate at an airport.
Woody would also be amazed with all the new technology, instant communication by way of the Internet, with everyone plugged in, tweeting, twittering, texting, befriending, unfriending, watching movies and listening to music on little pocket Ipods, Ipads, Blackberries and Raspberries.
Then he would read about the politicians up in Washington with their stupidity and partisan bickering, and he would read about the anti-immigrant bias, the racism that has emerged in response to our first black president, the “birthers,” the Tea Partiers and he would decide, “Maybe things haven’t changed as much as it seems.”
The man who wrote and sang “This land is your land, this land is my land, from California to the New York island” would not be proud of the America he would see today but you can bet the farm that he would commence to writing songs and doing his best to make true the rest of that verse, “This land is made for you and me.”
I think about how much things are changing every so often, usually after I’ve tried to do something new on my computer and been told what an idiot I am, by a machine, no less. (I take solace in the fact that if that #@&% computer is so smart, why did it wait around for humans to invent it).
I’m also reminded about the changing world every time I attend a meeting, it seems. Just this week, the county commission got into a discussion about all the paper with which they are bombarded. David Adkins suggested that most of the agenda packets, budget materials and other mountains of paper could simply be sent by email, and several squires agreed with him.
They didn’t resolve anything at the meeting, but the seed has been sown and before long, you can bet that those thick agenda packets will no longer be sent out through the mail.
If everything eventually ends up being transmitted electronically, young people won’t notice one way or the other. Most probably have never written an actual letter anyway.
But they text and tweet, you betcha. They text so often that the school board was asked this week to change their obsolete policy banning talking on cell phones during school hours.
Nobody “talks” on cell phones anymore. The students simply text each other constantly, many even mastering the art of texting through their pockets with the banned instrument kept safely out of sight.
CCHS principal Jaimie Wheeler told the board that 90 percent of students carry cell phones or other personal communication devices. She recommended that the board suspend the ban on cell phone use during class changes and lunch, presumably in the hope that they can get the communicating out of their system and be less tempted during actual class time.
The board went along with her suggestion. They’ve come a long way from the board that was sued some years back when a Jacksboro Middle School student was expelled for simply having a cell phone in his possession.
The board’s official policy at that time was that “Students were using cell phones primarily to set up drug deals” and phones should be banned from school or turned in at the office.
Wheeler also had another suggestion for the board, a few changes in the dress code that would include allowing high school students to have pierced noses but no other piercings, such as eye brows or lips. A few board members voiced discomfort with allowing pierced horns, but in the end they voted for the changes.
I can recall a time when girls in many schools were forbidden from piercing their ears, and a boy with a pierced ear would be promptly taken behind the gym and pummeled by the football team. If someone had shown up with a nose ring, the principal and teachers at first wouldn’t know how to react, having never seen such a thing before.
The student would probably have been sent to a doctor to have the object surgically removed, before being expelled or sent to Eastern State Psychiatric Hospital for observation.
But as usual, I’m off the track. The point is, trees are about to become much more plentiful as paper becomes obsolete. One thing that seems to be growing obsolete along with the paper is the United States Postal Service. The USPS, you might have read, is projecting another multi-billion dollar deficit this quarter and is asking Congress to give it a pass on the requirement to deposit money in advance into the postal employee retirement fund.
The postal service is hurting badly as the volume of mail continues to decline, thanks primarily to the Internet. But they can’t lay all the blame on email, texting, Facebook and twitter.
I meandered into the Jacksboro post office the other day to inquire about a couple of letters that had been returned for “insufficient address” after I cross-checked with LaFollette Utilities and learned they were successfully mailing electric bills to the same addresses.
“Well, the address on this one is misspelled. Mt. Paran only has one r,” I was told.
“What mail carrier doesn’t know where Mount Paran is, whether its spelled Paran, Parran or Paron?” I asked.
“The carriers don’t decide that. The mail is all sorted by machine in Knoxville,” was the response.
“You mean if I mail a letter at the Jacksboro post office addressed to a Jacksboro address, it is first sent by truck to Knoxville where it is sorted by a machine, then sent back by truck to Jacksboro?” I asked, incredulously.
“Yup.”
A little further inquiry and I had my answer from a retired postal worker. Some years back, the USPS decided it was cheaper to ship all mail to central sorting centers where a machine could do the work, rather than pay thousands of employees to sort it by hand at small post offices.
Of course 1) that was when gas was not $3.59 a gallon and 2) many small post offices only have one or two clerks anyway and nobody was laid off when they stopped sorting the mail.
I suppose many of those small post offices where the USPS couldn’t decrease the staff, because you can’t have half a clerk or half a postmaster, are among the 100,000 small post offices the USPS wants to close.
That number includes Eagan, on the Campbell-Claiborne County line, and Briceville in Anderson County. Briceville was one of the hundreds of communities across the nation that got a brand new post office back in the fat financial days of the 1970s and 1980s.
East Tennessee Congressman Jimmy Quillen chaired the House committee that supervised the postal service, and his district received more than its fair share of new post offices at a cost of no telling how many hundreds of millions of dollars.
Glad to know that all those soon-to-be-closed post offices are in new buildings. Should be easier to sell that way, at least.
In my view, the real decline of the U.S. Postal Service didn’t begin with the rise of the Internet, nor the new construction craze of a couple of decades back. Their problems can be traced to one Marvin Runyon, Ronald Reagan’s hatchet man.
When he became President, ol’ Ronnie really wanted to privatize government in a big way. He, it was, who saw that private enterprise took over management of lodges, the most profitable entities in many national parks. He also set in motion policies that eventually led to outfits like Haliburton becoming contractors for the military, at a hefty profit I might add.
Ronnie also wanted to privatize TVA, but he carefully noted what happened to Barry Goldwater when Goldwater suggested selling TVA to private power companies back in 1964, Goldwater was one of only two Republican presidential candidates to lose Tennessee since World War II. Reagan didn’t intend to lose Tennessee, so he simply put Marvin Runyon in charge of TVA, figuring Marvin would dismantle so much of the agency that nobody would much care if it was sold to a power company.
Marvin did a pretty good job, eliminating TVA’s role in natural resources management, agricultural research, soil conservation and outdoor recreation. I suppose we can thank Marvin for all the million-dollar home developments out on Norris Lake.
Locals who feel they have lost their lake to outsiders and millionaires may view this differently from locals who have made a living selling lakeside property or building million-dollar lakeside homes, or government officials who count all the property tax dollars generated from the lake. Either way, thanks to Marvin TVA is now – a power company and not much else.
Marvin did such a good job of dismantling TVA and preparing it for eventual private takeover that ol’ Ronnie gave him a second job, as Postmaster General. Did he succeed in setting in motion changes that will eventually lead to privatization of the mail” I guess the folks at Facebook or FedEx can better answer that question. (Week of August 8, 2011)
Tea Party wins, claims defeat. Demos lose, claim a win. The rest of us just lose.
I spent some time Monday night punishing myself by watching CNN’s coverage of the Washington debt crisis. Apparently, the Pachyderms and Donkeys have managed to come to enough of an agreed impasse that they will vote to raise the debt ceiling and head off global financial catastrophe.
The TV talking heads spent a lot of time debating who won, who lost, who gained politically and who should just go home now and save the voters the trouble of sending them home next year.
I probably speak for a lot of us when I say that nobody won, at least nobody outside of Washington. The compromise outraged the far left, which points to the fact that it includes painful cuts, does not take Social Security and Medicare off the table and includes no tax increase on the wealthy.
The compromise disappointed the far right and the Tea Party hotheads, who felt that a mere two trillion in future cuts is nowhere near deep enough. Some will recall the old adage that if both extremes in a debate are unhappy with the agreement, it must be a good one.
“Good for whom?” is the magic question. Shunting most of the hard discussions off to a super committee to iron out over the next year will presumably be good for the politicians. They can continue to posture and argue over cuts versus taxes until the 2012 elections are over, without Americans having to actually experience the fallout from either path until their votes are cast.
President Obama may lose some support from the liberal wing of his party, but presumably will gain traction from the independent voters and moderate Democrats for agreeing to a compromise that avoided financial disaster.
The Republicans who agreed to fewer actual cuts than they wanted, and voted for a compromise that doesn’t completely erase the possibility of tax reform, may lose some support from the extreme conservatives in their party while likewise making gains from the middle.
Both sides condemn the compromise in public as a necessary evil that they had to support for the good of the country. In private, most are probably whistling a sigh of relief that they weren’t forced to actually back up their rhetoric and can now concentrate on the real business of Washington, getting re-elected.
The sad fact is, we have a divided government during tough financial times, complicated by endless foreign wars. Obama and the Democrats can get nowhere with their objectives while the fire-eating Tea Party crowd sets priorities for the Republican-controlled House. The Republicans can get nowhere with their true objectives as long as the Democrats hold the White House and the Senate.
We can expect nothing different for the next fifteen months, and quite frankly, only another election can possibly resolve this mess, either by sweeping one party or the other completely under the rug.
But will the American people be able to resolve the impasse when they cast their votes. Having seen how dysfunctional our government has become, will voters have the wisdom and intelligence to right the listing ship of state? I wouldn’t bet the farm on that. Remember, it’s the voters who put all those idiots into office in the first place.
As far as all those spending cuts for which the Pachyderms, particularly the Tea Party, will be proudly taking credit, how will they play out where it counts, on the streets, in the factories and farms, in the real world outside their Washington D. C. bubble?
I predict that just like other successful efforts to curb federal spending, rare as they have been, many of those cuts will just pass the burden on down to the states, which will in turn pass as much of the burden as possible down to local governments.
A year or two from now, when whatever federal spending cuts we have are firmly in place, I predict that many of those cuts will again trickle down to the courthouse and city hall. When local politicians are forced to increase the property tax yet again, put off paving your road yet again, charge you more for trash pickup, put fewer cops on the streets or force you to stand in longer lines at county offices served by fewer people, don’t blame the county commission or city council. You made that decision when you voted for your congressman and senator.
Was there any ray of light in the murky waters that sloshed around Capitol Hill? There was one, only one, when Representative Gabrielle Giffords arrived on the floor of the House for the first time since her near-death at the hands of an assassin. Giffords arrived to cast her vote, in the event that it might be needed to pass the compromise bill and head off fiscal disaster.
She received a well-deserved ovation, even from conservatives who a year ago would have happily tossed her under the wheels of a political bus. Her courage inspired everyone, and gave all Americans a glimmer of hope that class and courage have not completely vanished from the halls of Congress. Common sense, now that’s another matter. (Week of August 1, 2011)
A little Civil War history can offer strong lessons for today’s leaders
I received an email invite this week to an anniversary celebration to be held on August 1 at the courthouse. The event will celebrate the 150th anniversary of the day that a group of men from Campbell County gathered, probably near that very spot, to swear an oath of allegiance to the United States of America.
This would be considered a patriotic act today but in 1861, of course, this act branded these men as traitors to their country, which by that time had become the Confederate States of America. These men and boys, ancestors to many of us, signed their names that day to join the Union Army and take up arms against their native state of Tennessee.
I’m having some fun with this particular celebration, as the men who took the oath that hot August day in 1861 became “Company B” of the First Tennessee Volunteer Infantry and according to historian Joe Stephens, were the first men from Tennessee to volunteer for the Union.
“But what about Company A?” I asked. I had a good reason for asking such a question since I always assumed the men in Company A were the first Tennesseans to join, my great-great grandpappy among ‘em.
Turns out that history can hold more than one truth, kinda’ like politics. Joe Cooper, a veteran of the Mexican War, lived in the southern end of Campbell County, down around where Cherry Bottom and Ridgewood are today. Joe ran a mill with his brothers on Cove Creek, and he was ardently opposed to breaking up the United States and an outspoken enemy of the Confederacy.
When Tennessee seceded from the Union, Cooper began talking to his neighbors who were of like mind, and soon he and a few other veterans were drilling and training local men to ready them for war against the Confederate government. They drilled at a hillside field known as “King’s Field” somewhere near Cooper’s farm.
Cooper proposed launching an attack on the small Confederate army garrison that had been assigned to guard the passes and roads leading out of Campbell County into Kentucky. Cooler heads prevailed, however, and the county fathers persuaded Cooper that an attack would do little harm to the Confederates in the long term, but would bring serious retribution down on Campbell County.
Cooper then decided to leave home and join the Union Army, asking the men he had been recruiting and training to follow his lead. On August 1, 1861, the first group of volunteers gathered at Jacksboro, swore an oath of allegiance to the Union and signed their names to enroll in the Army of the United States. Presumably, Joseph Cooper collected the oaths and the names. The next day, August 2, a second group of men also took the oath and enrolled in the army.
This is where the hair-splitting of “who was first” comes in. For some reason known only to the ghosts of the past, the men who were sworn in on August 2 took off for Kentucky, right behind their leader Joseph Cooper. They arrived at Williamsburg on August 8 and were formally mustered in by a Union recruiting officer as Company A, First Tennessee Volunteer Infantry.
A week later, the men who had took the oath first finally arrived at Barbourville, Kentucky and were mustered into federal service on August 16 as Company B of the First Tennessee Volunteer Infantry. By this time the men in Company A had already elected officers, been organized into smaller units and assigned their first duties, escorting supply wagons to the federal recruitment center at Camp Dick Robinson.
Following the tradition in volunteer army units of the day, the men elected their own officers and non-coms. Joseph Cooper was elected captain of Company A, Charles Duncan, one of the founders of Longfield Baptist Church, was elected as lieutenant, and Pleasant Sharp, or Pless as his friends called him, was elected sergeant.
Pless Sharp was my great-great grandpappy, a wiry little fellow barely 18 years old when he became a sergeant in the Union Army. How could one so young get elected as sergeant by a group of men, most presumably older and wiser? My dear old granny, who always had a good head for remembering details of family history, said that Pless trapped and hunted all over the mountains of Campbell County, and it was he who Joe Cooper asked to guide the men of Company A across the mountains on back trails, avoiding Confederate patrols until they were safely across the Kentucky border. The men apparently were impressed enough to elect him their superior.
Maybe old Pless was a better guide than whoever led the men of Company B, who knows? More likely, the first group to take the oath were delayed in leaving for Kentucky. Perhaps they had to wait on another guide and didn’t have a Pless Sharp, familiar with the mountain trails, among them. Perhaps increased Confederate patrols made the passage more perilous.
In the big scheme of things, who got where first matters little, Both companies of Campbell County men served side by side in the First Tennessee for three years, joined by hundreds of others from Roane, Claiborne, Anderson and elsewhere. They fought in battles in Kentucky and led the Union Army’s advance back into Tennessee to conquer Cumberland Gap.
When three Confederate armies invaded Kentucky and cut off the Union garrison at Cumberland Gap, they escaped the trap by marching through the trackless wilderness of eastern Kentucky all the way to the Ohio River. They returned, by then mounted on horseback, the next year with General William Sanders to raid deep into East Tennessee and conducted an artillery duel with Confederate troops right in the heart of downtown Knoxville.
The First Tennessee fought at the bloody Battle of Stones River and in numerous battles and skirmishes during Sherman’s campaign to capture Atlanta. Many did not return home, and the graves of Campbell County men are scattered across the South, from the tiny cemetery at Mill Springs, Kentucky to massive military cemeteries in Murfeesboro, Tennessee; Kennesaw, Georgia and even at the site of the infamous Andersonvile prison.
Many of those who did return home found that Confederate authorities had harassed their families and in some cases, seized their homes and everything they possessed. To march off to war, knowing that such retribution was coming, took a special kind of courage.
It took something else as well. In this day, when a Texas governor can threaten to secede from the Union because he doesn’t like the health care plan, politicians can posture and condemn “those devils up in Washington” and some people can drive around with Rebel flags flapping from their pickup trucks, it might be good for us all to look back at our ancestors.
Look back, and understand what patriotism, true patriotism, is all about. It’s one thing to memorize the words to the “Star-Spangled Banner,” or run a flag up the pole on the 4th of July. It’s quite another to walk the walk, risk all and stand accused of treachery, all because one places country above self. The quibbling politicians in Washington should find the courage to do as much. (Week of July 25, 2011)
Want to solve county’s fiscal woes? Try less government, no tax, free enterprise
We need more county commission meetings like the one that was held Monday night. Looking at the agenda, one would expect the meeting to be over in an hour or less. After all, the big ticket item, transferring $300,000 from the fund balance to repair the dying courthouse air conditioning system, had already been taken care of in short fashion by the FMS Committee.
Bless Thomas Hatmaker, however, and always look for him to bring up something that stirs up controversy. Thomas is pushing to reform the way the ambulance service is administered, with less control by Mayor William Baird and more control by commissioners.
But most squires don’t want to administer the ambulance service, and aren’t really interested in getting in the middle of the squabbling that has been going on between EMS Director Danny Sheckles and some of his employees.
Four options were placed on the table for how the service could be structured. Option one would give much more control to the commission, presumably through the ambulance committee. Thomas moved to adopt option one but received nary a vote, nor a second to his motion.
Option number four was then proposed, which would leave the structure almost exactly as it currently exists with Mayor Baird exercising ultimate oversight over Director Sheckles. But in order to vote on the resolution, it first had to be read in its entirety. County Attorney Joe Coker drew the short straw and was required to read the lengthy document, droning on for around half an hour.
Some in the audience left early. Some took bathroom breaks or bolted for the soda machines. I was up early Monday morning after a restless night, so I took a 20-minute catnap while the camera captured all the action. If you are suffering from insomnia during these hot summer evenings, I suggest recording this meeting from Channel 12 and replaying it at bedtime.
Option four was finally passed unanimously, and now we have . . . exactly what we had before, only now with the county commission’s official and complete blessing.
Personally I felt that the squires missed a great opportunity for true entertainment when they failed to discuss more fully the courthouse heating & air system. While begrudgingly voting to free up enough money to cover the costs, the squires left it to the FMS Committee to look at bids and select the least expensive path.
Sue Nance and Beverly Hall were among those commissioners who really begrudged spending all that money. They voted for the budget amendment that declared the cost an “emergency purchase,” but immediately voiced second thoughts and cheered James Slusher’s proposal that the county seek at least three estimates before settling on a company to fix the system.
Beverly and Sue also both work at the County Clerk’s LaFollette satellite office, sharing the same building with the Veterans’ Service Office. Friday afternoon, the temperature in that building reached the mid-80s and a repairman was called.
“The unit is completely frozen over, must be two inches of ice on everything,” he reported. “Usually this means it is cooling at too low a temperature.”
The problem still hadn’t been fixed by Monday and Clerk Debbie Wilson had no choice except to close her satellite office down until repairs are complete.
I will say right now that as far as I can determine, there is no truth to the vicious rumor that Courthouse Maintenance Supervisor Don Dilbeck was seen rooting around in the parking lot of the LaFollette Annex shortly before dawn on Friday. To think that anyone would sabotage the air conditioner is just plain paranoia.
But, come to think of it, two county commissioners did get a good preview of what could happen if the courthouse system breaks down before they get it replaced.
With money being in short supply, perhaps Campbell County should take a page from the book of Tim Burchett. The Knox County Mayor is proposing a fire sale of county-owned property, everything from golf courses and greenways to parking meters and the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame.
We could do something similar here in Campbell County. The school board, after all, just sold off the site of the old Caryville Elementary School to become the next Rocky Top Market. (Board members were undoubtedly relieved that they received no bids from Adult World).
I propose that we could follow Knox County’s lead and have our own fire sale. The Lonas Young Park, now complete and open for business, should be attractive to any number of developers. Maybe Dollywood Enterprises would turn it into a water park. We’ve already got plenty of water, after all.
The animal shelter? LMU could buy it and turn it into a teaching facility for future veterinarians. They could practice their spaying and neutering skills on all the strays that are brought in. The health department would make nice condos while the Veterans Service annex could join the ranks of law offices along LaFollette’s main drag.
We could sell the county quarry, sanitation department and recycling center to Chestnut Ridge Landfill. They’re always looking for somewhere else to dump Knoxville’s garbage. We wouldn’t need the quarry or for that matter, the Highway Department garage, which we could sell to Lyk Nu Body Shop.
We wouldn’t need them because we’ll also sell the county road system! Somebody could buy that and turn it into a system of toll roads. If you live on one of the toll roads, you will be allowed to purchase an annual pass, non-transferable, of course.
Campbell County government can all but shut down, having no responsibilities to speak of except to enforce the law, and arrest people who try to drive on the toll roads without a pass, or dump their garbage at the convenience center without paying or swim at Lonas Young Park or any of the formerly-public boat ramps without paying the admission fee.
For that reason, we will still need to build the new $10.6 million justice center, and probably expand it a bit to hold more beds, maybe up the price tag to $18 million or so. No problem. The county will have enough extra cash from selling off the county to keep the jails and the Sheriff’s Department running, insuring that all the new laws and restrictions are enforced.
About right now you are asking yourself, “Is Boomer nuts? The man has finally tilted completely off his rocker.”
Not at all, pilgrims. I’m proposing a full transition to a less government, no-tax, free enterprise system. I’m not crazy, I’ve just become a Republican. (Week of July 18, 2011)
Millionaire criminals, garden goodies and a little payback for General Sherman’s march
Another sign that the apocalypse is coming: Casey Anthony not only walks free because prosecutors blew their case, but now a California-based tell-all media type has announced that he will offer her a cool $1 million for her exclusive story.
There are a lot of places where crime can go unpunished, but only in America, it seems, can one become an overnight celebrity and wealthy for a) performing a criminal act and b) being dumb enough to get caught. Anyone up for a new reality TV series, “the real murdering housewives of California?”
The next criminal celebrity will undoubtedly be the woman from that state who has been charged with amputating her husband’s manhood while he slept and dumping it down the sink. Lorena Bobbitt, who achieved notoriety a couple of decades back for giving her abusive, philandering husband the same treatment, was simply ahead of her time. She never got a million dollar film offer.
Ah well, life in this country, in this time, is complicated to say the least. I may be considered old fashioned, but I’m beginning to wax nostalgic for the good old days. Summer always does that to me, particularly when that garden patch in my back yard begins to produce something besides weeds.
Last weekend I stuffed myself with corn on the cob, a zucchini-squash-onion- bell pepper casserole, salads of lettuce, broccoli, carrot strips, cucumbers and green pepper, green beans with new potatoes and topped off with strawberries. The only thing that didn’t come out of my own dirt was the butter and salt.
I’m consuming so many vegetables that I’m beginning to look like the Jolly Green Giant, but I can take little credit for this bountiful harvest. My longtime friend Maureen does all the work while I contribute little other than helping to insure that the harvest does not go to waste. .
Little, that is, except for the occasional contribution, such as digging up the sod for the strawberry patch, or digging the asparagus trench, or watering during dry spells, keeping the beans and tomatoes picked when my sharecropper is out of town, weeding a bit here and there and so on. I thought Southern gentlemen were supposed to sit on their verandas, decked out in a white suit with mint julip in hand, watching their peons toil in the fields, but then as most folks will attest, I am no gentleman.
The folks who hired me to enforce the county’s various taxes are beginning to realize that fact, if they didn’t know it before. So far I’ve hit a variety of people for wheel tax violations, including county officials, city officials, utility officials, current and former county commissioners, school board members, prominent attorneys and leading businessmen.
Most of these people, along with hundreds of other just plain folks who have received letters, are not intentionally avoiding the wheel tax. The problem comes from the fact that car dealers and motorcycle dealers have no legal responsibility to see that vehicles are registered in their customers’ home counties, and always give them tags from the dealer’s county.
The dealers charge a pretty penny for title transfer fees and registration and many buyers of new vehicles go away with the impression that all the paperwork is done and over with. Those who know that they need to take care of the local wheel tax themselves often put it off - that’s just human nature.
When Campbell County first passed a $35 wheel tax back in 1990, the state law allowing counties to enact such taxes was only a couple of years old. Campbell County was one of only a handful of counties in the state to have one, and it proved highly unpopular, as a majority of the squires who voted it in were themselves voted out.
In addition, hundreds of Campbell County motorists found it simple to run down to Clinton, or stop on the way to work in Knoxville, and renew their tags in those counties that had no wheel tax. State law now forbids county clerks from renewing license plates for persons who cannot show that they live in that county.
Campbell County is also no longer a lone wolf when it comes to the wheel tax. Of Tennessee’s 95 counties, around 65 have a wheel tax while several others will probably enact one this year. Local wheel tax levies range from around twenty bucks to, in one or two cases, over $100 a year, with Campbell County’s $45 tax ranging somewhere in the middle.
With local wheel taxes now being the norm, the Tennessee Dept. of Revenue has become much more cooperative in sharing information. In March, we received a list from the state showing every Campbell County resident with a license registered elsewhere, and have been notifying those without a wheel tax decal that they are violating the law.
Once the backlog is caught up, the county will receive an updated list every couple of months. From that point on, anyone who buys a new vehicle outside the county and doesn’t quickly purchase a wheel tax decal will be reminded of their responsibility within 60 days of purchase.
Will there still be a few bugs in the system? Of course. Some people will get notices for vehicles that are lying wrecked in a junkyard, or were given to a child who lives off at college somewhere. Some people are silly enough to sell a car or motorcycle to an individual and let the license plate go with it.
In such a case, the wheel tax is the least of your concerns – allowing someone else to drive around with a tag registered to you is like handing over your social security card. If they drive away from an accident, or get photographed by a red light camera somewhere, the officers will show up at your door when the license plate is traced.
One person told me that undoubtedly, many people living in the southern end of the county go down to Lake City and get a post office box so they can renew their tags in Anderson County and avoid the wheel tax. Not very likely, or very smart. A post office box costs $42 a year, almost as much as a wheel tax sticker, and means the owner must drive down to the Lake City post office every day to receive their mail.
Besides, if the rumblings coming out of Clinton prove accurate, Anderson County will soon jump on the wheel tax bandwagon to pay for, you guessed it, a larger jail. Why pay a wheel tax to support schools in another county instead of supporting schools in your own county?
Another person reported someone living in their neighborhood that is driving on Kentucky tags. We have not yet figured out how to catch up with anyone living in Campbell County but driving on an out-of-state license plate. There is a legal time limit for those people to transfer their tags, or be in violation of state law, so they are already living dangerously if they get pulled over for any reason.
But with a few exceptions, the days of large numbers of people avoiding the wheel tax are over. The opportunities for avoiding the tax are decreasing, as are the incentives as more counties begin to collect the tax. We may not like it, but the wheel tax is with us to stay. The school system has become dependent on the revenue to the point where rescinding the tax is merely a pipe dream, and the lost revenue would have to come out of our pockets in some other way, through higher property taxes or a local sales tax increase.
So when the wheel tax is being adequately enforced, what’s next? Well, you know all those nice million-dollar lakeside vacation homes? That’s right, the ones that are advertised for rent on the Internet for up to $4,500 a week during peak summer months by members of the so-called “Ohio Navy.”
Many of those folks are charging state sales tax and the county’s hotel/motel tax and paying on a regular basis. Many others are not. It’s been nearly 150 years since General William Tecumseh Sherman, who hailed from Ohio, laid waste to the South, making the immortal proclamation that “War is Hell.”
I’ve got another quote that will soon apply to any of our Ohio friends, among others, who profit from Norris Lake without giving back their fair share of taxes. “General Sherman, payback is Hell.” (Week of July 11, 2011)
We turn a murder trial into reality television with predictable results
My column is a little late this week, as I had to take a couple of days off to travel to West Virginia to do a little media consulting with a group up there.
I drove through the Coal River Valley, a trip that reminded me of driving along the Little River over in the Smokies, ringed in by steep mountains on both sides through a steep valley cut by a picturesque mountain stream. It could have been the Smokies, except for the conveyor belts that crossed the road every couple of miles, carrying coal from mines on the mountainsides down to crushers and tipples along the river and the road.
This is coal country, in a big way. No apologies, no debates. Coal is king, and without it there would be no jobs in this isolated region. Of course, if coal had never existed here in the first place, Whitesville, West Virginia, would be another Gatlinburg, those mountains would be a national park, the run-down coal camp houses would be replaced by million-dollar chalets and those coal conveyors replaced by ski lifts.
Instead of a handful of good-paying but dangerous mining jobs and a lot of unemployed people living in poverty, everyone would be working as motel clerks, ski instructors, chefs, real estate agents, whitewater guides or in some other segment of a tourism-based economy.
Some folks would rather have the coal and keep all the tourists away. I make no judgments here, just observations. You can decide for yourself which life you might prefer.
One observation that is easy to make is that King Coal is far from a good neighbor. Being the “backbone of the West Virginia economy” means the coal industry makes no excuses. It means that instead of paying a fair share through taxes, instead of providing a safe working environment, instead of being good stewards of the land and environment, the coal industry spends its energies subverting the laws, buying the politicians and perpetuating the myths.
The big debate right now is over mountaintop strip mining, a practice that has only recently come to Tennessee in a small way. In West Virginia, it has been done for years in a big way. One thing that amazes me is how the coal companies can be tearing the top off of a mountain with huge explosive blasts while a few hundred, maybe at most a thousand vertical feet below, they have men working in massive underground mines.
It’s probably not a question of if, but only when, an underground mine collapses due to the activity above, trapping or killing another group of miners. Of course, West Virginia coal operators have never shown much compassion for the men that dig the coal, from hiring gun thugs in the 1930s to murder miners trying to unionize, to the Massey Coal Company disaster a year ago.
Regulators have discovered that the company kept two sets of books – one showing all the safety violations occurring in the mine, another to show to federal mine inspectors. The coal companies do not lack compassion, however. I noticed a sign erected at the entrance to one Massey mine that I passed, a simple memorial stating “We’ll never forget” and listing the names of dead miners.
Even in isolated West Virginia, in an area so remote that nobody can get service on their cell phones, folks were talking about the Casey Anthony trial. America is outraged by the “not guilty” verdict handed down by the jury in this media circus murder trial. They feel justice has not been served if Casey Anthony can walk free after everything points to the fact that she killed her two-year-old little girl, Caylee, so she could resume the life of a party animal.
Well, Casey Anthony will have to answer for her deeds, if not in this world than in the next when she meets her maker. Meanwhile, call me callous if you want, but I’m not sure at all that justice was not served.
Our entire American judicial system is designed on one premise – that it is better by far if a dozen people go unpunished for their crimes than if one innocent person should be imprisoned or executed for a crime they did not commit. That is the reason that the burden of proof “beyond a reasonable doubt” rests with the prosecution and that is the reason that juries are instructed to weigh the facts and ignore public opinion.
The Casey Anthony case, like that of O.J. Simpson years ago, is a classic example of trial in the press, with the news media sensationalizing every motion, every facial expression, every twist of events. Thanks to Facebook, Twitter and an army of bloggers, Americans didn’t even have to stay glued to a TV set to watch every suspenseful moment. They could keep up with the unfolding drama while flying to London, watching their son’s Little League game or over dinner at Cracker Barrel. Ah, reality TV without commercial interruptions!
Given that atmosphere, if I were a member of that jury, I would make every effort to weigh only the facts and shut out everything else. I would want to be able to go to sleep at night say, “You didn’t send someone to prison for life simply because some Fox News or CNN commentator says she should go to prison. You made a decision based on the evidence, not public opinion polls.”
Well, the prosecution failed to make a case that equaled the court of public opinion. They presented much circumstantial evidence but nothing that said, “Beyond a doubt, Casey Anthony planned and carried out the murder of her two-year-old daughter.”
In my opinion, the prosecutors blundered in the very beginning, when they decided to try her for first-degree murder. Did this obviously damaged woman really sit down and plot the murder of her own daughter, then carry it out and develop a string of barely credible lies to cover up her crime?
That, most likely, is the part that jurors found hard to accept and that prosecutors failed miserably to prove.
A more likely scenario is that the mother lost her temper, did something that caused the child’s death, then panicked. She hauled the little body around in her car trunk for days, maybe weeks while trying to figure out how to get out of the mess she put herself in and possibly decided to fake some sort of kidnapping scenario by placing duct tape over the child’s mouth and dumping the body in the woods.
Her lies to family and friends about where Caylee was do not point to a carefully planned murder and alibi, but toward a not-too-intelligent effort at covering up a crime of passion without a clue about how to successfully hide the truth.
If prosecutors had, from the beginning, decided to prove second-degree murder, they may have been successful. Proving Anthony guilty of premeditated murder was just too large a pill for the jury to swallow and they didn’t, much to their credit. But there was so much sensationalism around this trial that prosecutors decided they had to swing for the fences and try for a home run. Problem is, when you go for the home run, you just as often strike out.
So America, if you’re looking for someone to blame for the fact that Casey Anthony got away with murder, you don’t have to look far. Just walk into your bathroom and look at the mirror. This might be a good lesson for prosecutors in our own county to take to heart, as we prepare for our own media circus when Kenneth Bartley faces his second trial.
You could have it worse – you could live in Anderson County, or Georgia
Both the county commission and school board wasted little time in approving a few last-minute spending adjustments and adjourning this week at their year-end recessed sessions.
The only item that elicited any controversy at all was a resolution brought up by Mayor William Baird to increase the allowable mileage on the county’s ambulances before they must be retired. Thomas Hatmaker had some questions about the change and wanted to refer it to a committee but was outvoted 9-1.
The only surprise was an amendment to surrender a $171,000 grant from the federal Office of Surface Mining back to Uncle Sam and abandon plans to run water lines into the Westbourne area of Campbell County.
The water line extension, it was explained, was rejected by the board of the Clear Fork Utility District, despite the fact that the construction would cost the District exactly nothing to extend public water to the sparsely-populated area.
Utility districts must carry lines and such on their books and depreciate those assets on an annual basis, showing a cost on paper that can affect the utility’s bottom line and eventually result in rate increases. Apparently, Clear Fork’s board didn’t feel they could collect enough revenue from the new customers to offset the depreciation.
Too bad. I recall former County Executive Tom Stiner once stating that a goal of the county was to make public water available to every citizen. He didn’t figure on one thing though – that tall mountain that looms between the people in the White Oak-Cotula-Westbourne area and the two municipal utilities that must provide the water, LaFollette and Jellico.
Running water lines through a largely-unpopulated region of land company-controlled mountains to the few isolated communities on the county’s outer edge appears a pipe dream, at least until more people are able to populate that area and provide a broader customer base.
Clear Fork Utility District serves much of the White Oak area but the lion’s share of its customers are in Claiborne County. It has no moral obligation to see that all Campbell County residents are served, it appears.
Ah well. Things could be worse for the folks living along Westbourne Lane. They could live in Anderson County.
Two short articles caught my eye in Wednesday’s Knoxville News-Sentinel. The first, a couple of paragraphs in the news briefs section, reported that the Clinton City Council has managed to pass a budget with no property tax increase that still includes a two percent pay raise for city employees.
Wow, despite all the turmoil over the past couple of years around city managers and other personnel and outcries of mismanagement of funds, Clinton has managed, like a nimble kitty cat, to again land on its feet and cost the good citizens not a penny more in taxes!
Another, slightly larger article also caught my eye – “Anderson revenue will go to Clinton.” That story reported that the City of Clinton has won a review and appeal of the sales tax revenue collected by the state and paid to Anderson County from around 25 businesses out at the Highway 61 exit off Interstate 75.
The state apparently was paying the tax to the county, but Clinton annexed that entire area several years ago and now is due the local share of sales tax derived from the Super Wal-Mart, the restaurants, motels, filling stations and so on that have popped up around the exit.
The cost to county taxpayers is $270,000 for the past year of overpayments; the gain for Clinton the same $270,000. I guess that explains how Clinton can once more balance their budget without raising taxes.
This bothers me, not because Clinton isn’t due the money. They annexed five miles from their city limits out Highway 61 to take in all these businesses and grabbed them fair and square.
Clinton’s city fathers would undoubtedly argue that they annexed the area before much of the commercial development occurred, and that the availability of Clinton’s fire and police protection and other services encouraged Wal-Mart and all those other businesses to locate there.
Sorry, but if you buy that one, I’ve got a bridge I want to sell. Clinton knew, when they annexed, that the Highway 61 exit was due to be the next growth hot spot along I-75 from the Knoxville metropolitan area. The Raccoon Valley exit will never grow commercialy because of the Chestnut Ridge Landfill, and Emory Road in Knox County is already saturated with commercial sprawl.
So Anderson County, already under the gun for increased costs for the school system and like Campbell County, facing a multi-million dollar jail expansion, will need to increase county property taxes or pass a wheel tax to pay those bills and also to make up revenue lost to Clinton. The squires will undoubtedly face an irate electorate come the next election, and we all recall what happened to Campbell County’s squires after they passed a wheel tax 20 years ago.
Of course Clinton residents will have to pay the county tax as well as folks in Lake City, Norris, Oak Ridge and Briceville. They will also have to buy wheel tax decals if that is the direction Anderson County squires decide to go. But Clinton voters will remember who raised their taxes – the county commission – and who didn’t.
Meanwhile, although Clinton annexed along Highway 61 just far enough to take in Wal-Mart, Shoney’s, Fox Toyota and the industrial parks along Highway 441, they didn’t stray too far off the centerline to include all those subdivisions popping up in that part of the county. Clinton receives the sales tax and city share of commercial property tax, without the responsibility for serving all those people, which can get messy.
So, good people of Campbell County, count your blessings. Things could be worse – you could have Clinton for your county seat instead of Jacksboro.
One more thing caught my eye in that same edition of the newspaper – a column by Bill Maxwell reprinted from the St. Petersburg Times about Georgia’s new immigration law. Both Georgia and Alabama have followed the Arizona model and passed tough new immigration laws designed to send those funny-talkin’ feriners back south of the border where they belong. In Georgia, any worker caught with phony documents could be fined up to $250,000 and spend up to 15 years in prison.
Georgia’s good ole boy Bubba legislators reasoned that if they chase all the illegal, Hispanic immigrants out of the state, it will open up many jobs that can be filled by out-of-work good ole boy Bubbas from Georgia.
Problem is, the good ole boys don’t want to work at the jobs the Latino farm workers were doing, for the money the Latinos were being paid or for that matter, any amount of money.
As intended, the new law has kept thousands of illegal migrant farm workers from migrating north with the picking season. Georgia farmers are finding only 30-50 percent of the 11,000 workers they need to harvest their peaches, peanuts and Vidalia onions. The labor shortage, according to the Georgia Fruit & Vegetable Association, will hit the industry with a loss of $250 million.
At least this will solve the little feud between Tennessee and Georgia over water in the Tennessee River. The next time Atlanta suffers a drought and dries up its water supplies, it can just pump the water up from the southern part of the state – they will no longer need it to water crops.
So when that peach cobbler costs you an extra buck or two, a bag of onions doubles in price and you have to leave the peanut butter off the peanut butter & jelly sandwiches, think of the Georgia legislature. They can wait on the next election and ponder the meaning of the phrase, “Be careful that you might get what you wish for.”
Naming a ball field after someone? Squire suggests we kill them first
The county commission accomplished the unlikely, if not impossible, Monday night by actually finishing and approving a budget on time, without any continuing resolutions or dragging the process out until the end of summer and start of the school year.
Since they had already ironed out all the wrinkles in committee meetings, the actual process of approving the various resolutions took up less than ten minutes, leaving the squires with much time on their hands for the remainder of the meeting.
Now a county commission or any elected legislative body with time on its hands can be a dangerous thing. Think the U. S. Congress – the last time they had time on their hands they declared war on Spain. The Tennessee General Assembly this year had a little time on their hands and declared war on teachers.
Our erstwhile squires did nothing so drastic. They did what county commissions have been doing with spare time for centuries, and dedicated a few public places to various individuals.
Well actually, they just discussed dedicating a few public places. Sue Nance offered a resolution to name the new justice center after Judges Lee Asbury, Conrad Troutman and Billy Joe White, and to name the courtroom in the justice center in honor of late County Mayor, and attorney, Jeff Hall.
Rusty Orick objected, not because he opposed honoring these individuals but because the justice center hasn’t been built yet, not the first brick. Rusty said he would prefer dedicating the center after it’s completed and moved to table Sue’s motion.
This commission has been virtually in lockstep on everything they’ve done since taking office, with seldom more than two or three dissenting votes on most issues. Not this time. On the question of whether to dedicate the justice center before or after it is completed, the squires deadlocked 7-7.
Steve Rutherford complicated the situation by missing the meeting, so the commission had its first tie vote. Enter Mayor William Baird. In his first tie-breaker, William voted to table the motion, thus postponing any honors until a later date.
This might not be a bad thing. If the justice center runs into any cost overruns, delays or complications, Judge White may prefer that his name not be associated with the edifice, along with the Hall, Asbury and Troutman families.
The squires weren’t finished, however. Later a motion was offered to dedicate the new little league ball field at the Lonas Young (formerly Campbell County) Park at White Bridge. The recipient of this honor? None other than Commissioner Melvin Boshears, despite the fact that through the years, Doctor No has probably voted against the majority of motions to spend money completing the park.
Since the ball field is completed and ready to dedicate, nobody could object to this honor. Well, you would think as much. Bobby White objected, casting the only “no” vote against Doctor No. Bobby felt a need to explain his vote and stated that he felt such honors should be given posthumously.
Now for some reason this explanation bothers me, although it didn’t draw any questions from the squires. Was Bobby suggesting that the ball field should remain un-dedicated until Melvin has passed on to that big bass tournament in the sky, perhaps many years down the road?
Or was Bobby suggesting that Melvin should be killed in order to qualify for the honor? Bobby didn’t say and we may never know. Personally I’m just disappointed that they didn’t dedicate a football field instead. Then Campbell County could host the annual “Doctor No Bowl.”
OK, so I’ve gone a bit overboard with the Doctor No jokes this week. Indulge me. Since the commissioners were so derned agreeable this month, they left me with precious little to write about. Even Thomas Hatmaker went along with the majority on most things, and postponed his items for discussion until later.
I guess I’ll just have to shift my sights to our friends down in Nashville, who have gratefully adjourned for the year before they could do any more damage to the citizens of the state. That doesn’t exclude damage to the body politick, however and the Pachyderms in control of the legislature seem to have done enough damage there to last into the next election year.
Vanderbilt University released their latest public opinion poll this week, showing that the majority of Tennesseans were not amused by the actions of Tennessee’s first Republican-controlled legislature since Reconstruction.
The poll revealed that support for the General Assembly has plunged 20 percentage points since the legislature convened in January. Before they actually began governing, this bunch had a two-thirds favorable opinion from Tennesseans in the same poll. The post-session results show less than half of Tennesseans, 45.8 percent, have a favorable view of the legislature.
Democrats, predictably, have a low opinion of this legislature, but more ominous for the political future of many of those Republican lawmakers, independents also have an unfavorable opinion of what they have seen so far.
The Pachyderms may be able to shuffle a few districts around, now that the census results are in and re-districting can commence, and strengthen Republican seats and weaken a few donkeys. But try as they might, there’s no way to create a district without independent voters – there’s just too many of ‘em.
Not even all Republicans are happy with the direction this legislature has taken. When will politicians learn? Tennesseans tend to like their Republicans moderate, their Democrats conservative and their independents, well, independent.
Tennesseans all have splinters in their political tail ends from sitting the middle of the fence, and anything too far to the left or right of the center of the fence is gonna get pushed off when voters go to the polls. Maybe we can just avoid all the turmoil of an election and simply dedicate a few public buildings to the Tennessee General Assembly, posthumously, of course.
Want to feel good about our squires? Just watch Knox County in action
The Campbell County Commission is on the verge of a historic milestone, or at least a somewhat historic milestone – completing their budget before the June 30 deadline without any major unfinished business.
Oh, they’ve managed to approve budgets in June once or twice before during Moneybags Marlow’s long tenure as Finance Director, but usually not without postponing some major spending decision until the following year.
Back in the days of Melvin Boshears, Mack Dilbeck, Johnny Joe Dower and other old-timers, one of the squires’ favorite acts was to approve a no-increase tax rate before seeing the first line of departmental budgets. They would then postpone final action into September while they tried to figure out how to trim the spending to match their frozen revenue, sort of like fitting a square peg into a round hole.
This bunch, having already been bitten when the previous commission postponed until after elections a huge tax increase caused by shrunken state revenues, got right down to business.. They were helped by a school board that didn’t toss out any big surprises and managed to submit a balanced budget of their own by the deadline.
That’s not to say that everyone is going away happy. Road Superintendent Dennis Potter is still looking for an answer for how to pave more than a couple of miles of county roads each year without an increase in local money, and most county employees are foregoing raises and settling for still having jobs in a sour economy.
But to balance the budget, meet the need to build a new jail, cover increased costs for fuel, complete several minor capital improvements to schools and a new central office and do all this without layoffs, without increasing taxes yet again and all by the June 30 deadline – no small feat to be certain.
Of course the squires are unlikely to get much credit from the public, which is still steaming over last year’s increases to both the property tax and wheel tax. Perhaps in the long run that was a good thing. This group of commissioners caught so much flak over last year’s tax increases that many simply decided they are doomed to one term in office anyway, so stop worrying about votes and just do the job to the best of their abilities.
The result? They did a good job, with a minimum of in-fighting and clique-forming, are on the verge of passing a balanced budget and seem to be keeping the ship of state sailing in relatively calm seas for the time being. Maybe politicians would all do a better job if they stop worrying about getting re-elected and just do the best job that they can.
If you want to feel better about our own county commission, you don’t have to look too far afield. Our big city friends over in Knoxville just finished their budget as well, and made some interesting changes.
While much of the debate and media attention was focused on County Mayor Tim Burchett’s proposal to slash funding for the African-American Beck Cultural Center, the Knox County squires slipped a few other surprises into their budget that are just beginning to attract attention. They eliminated the $3,000 discretionary funds for individual commissioners, for one thing, leaving Knox County non-profit groups with fewer options for getting a little help from county government.
The Knox County squires also went along with Burchett’s proposal to cut $50,000 that supported free public transportation on K-Trans buses for the elderly and low-income citizens. I guess the Knox County Commission and Burchett figure, “Why help the elderly and poor get around town? They have no business going out to shop when they have no money anyway.”
But while they were busy cutting the budget, that group of squires managed to add a travel stipend for Knox County commissioners of $300 per month for each commissioner.
Folks, my job requires me to travel all over Campbell County delivering delinquent tax notices and to the communities around Norris Lake looking for renters who aren’t collecting and paying the motel tax. I’m paid a decent 46 cents a mile for my travel and I seldom turn in more than $150 in a month. How can a Knox County commissioner who is a part-time official manage to spend $300 a month on travel?
That’s $3,600 a year for each commissioner, or around the same amount for the whole Knox County Commission as the amount they cut from free transportation for the elderly. I guess in Knoxville the squires get the ride and the poor and elderly get the shaft.
I predict that those Knox County squires are going to miss that discretionary fund as well. Campbell County commissioners flirted with eliminating their discretionary money when the new squires took office last year and discovered that all the departed commissioners, whether voluntarily retired or retired by voters, had spent all of the 2010-11 funds before leaving office.
They wisely decided to leave it in rather than face a parade of non-profit groups asking for a slice of the regular budget. At Monday’s workshop, Robin Malowsky, a member of the Anderson County Commission herself, appeared before the squires to ask for some financial help for Junior Achievement. The organization operates the Hollingsworth Center in Anderson County and hosts BizzTown, a training program that teaches fifth graders how to manage simple personal finances and another program aimed at eighth graders entering high school.
All Campbell County schools participate in the Junior Achievement programs, but Campbell County government has not supported the program financially in the past, only a few local businesses, she explained. Malowsky asked the squires to consider pledging $3,500 to support the program..
A moment of hesitation, and then David Adkins commented that his child had attended BizzTown and learned a great deal about handling money wisely. One or two other squires had good things to say about the program, but nobody seemed to have an answer for her financial request. Finally, Steve Rutherford noted that Valley View students always participate and he feels it to be a valuable asset to the county.
“I’ll pledge $250 from my discretionary fund. If every commissioner would do the same, we could meet your request,” Rutherford observed. Quickly, every commissioner nodded, grunted or whistled their agreement and Robin Malowsky went away a happy woman, with a pledge from Campbell County of $3,750 from the commission’s discretionary funds.
The squires were happy as well, meeting a request from an agency that has provided a service to Campbell County students for years without receiving any payback. What’s more, they did it without complicating an already balanced and approved budget, by dipping into their discretionary funds.
Predictably, I haven’t heard anyone suggest eliminating the discretionary fund this year. Squires have found it to be a useful tool for meeting last-minute funding requests, not to mention avoiding the guilt that comes from not being able to support worthwhile causes.
A foolproof plan for retiring in comfort, if Mother Nature doesn’t get in the way
I have finally figured out how I can retire in comfort, with enough cash to live well and enough years left to enjoy it.
I will go to work for the University of Tennessee Athletic Department, probably in the media/public relations office. I’ll work for peanuts, if necessary, or even for nothing to land the job. All I’ll ask for is the standard UT contract with severance pay if I’m fired or resign. I will then foul up badly enough to be fired, collect my $1.8 million severance payout and head for the couch, or perhaps a cruise ship to Tahiti.
Hey, Athletic Director Mike Hamilton resigned, and they’re paying him off with seven figures. I guess Mike must have negotiated that contract with himself.
I’ve shunned my alma mater since Athletic Director Doug Dickey squeezed the width of the seats down by a couple of inches so he could pack another 10,000 fans into Neyland Stadium. When I stood up to cheer for the first time and sat back down on two people’s knees, I swore not to return until Dickey was fired.
They never fired him, and I’ve yet to attend a UT home football game since, although I’ve been to road games in Georgia, Florida and Kentucky. The way Hamilton has managed to waste money has done nothing to change my mind about donating to the athletic programs. A cool $10 million paid out to coaches he has fired, and now he has fired himself with another $1.8 million gift. No big deal, its just donors’ money, after all.
Perhaps that’s what is behind this heat wave we’re experiencing – a few thousand UT contributors growing increasingly hot beneath the collar.
Come to think of it, what has happened to all those global warming skeptics lately? I haven’t heard anyone denying the theories of those “crackpot scientists” in the past couple of months.
I find it interesting that most of those denying the existence of climate change, or at least denying that we humans are contributing to it, tend to be of the more conservative political persuasion, good “red state” Pachyderms, supporters of big oil or big coal, a few fundamentalists who expect the world to end next month anyway and so on.
So when Mother Nature decides to hand the good old USA a whuppin’, where is all the damage? Well, let me see . . . tornadoes in Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Southwest Missouri. Record-setting forest fires and drought in Arizona and Texas. Floods in Mississippi and Louisiana.
The Donkeys might be crowing a bit over this ironic twist of climate change but they’re too busy working on damage control over the sexual misadventures of Anthony Weiner and John Edwards.
Old Ma Nature might be sending a message, but I got the message a long time ago. It doesn’t matter how badly we foul the air or mess with the climate, until somebody figures out a way to make more money cleaning it up than what is made polluting it, the United States is going to do nothing much to change its ways.
The post office will sell stamps that promote clean energy, schools will promote composting and hold “Earth Days” and automakers will design all-electric cars that only wealthy Hollywood celebrities can afford. But then our nation’s leaders will sit down in back rooms and agree we can’t afford to move too fast on this clean energy thing; it might make Wall Street nervous.
My advice? Stop worrying about it. Invest in cheap swamp land in central Georgia – if the crackpots are right, that will be our new seacoast when the Arctic icecap melts and we’ll all be several hours closer to the beach.
Build underground homes – that’s the wave of the future. Safely insulated from tornadoes and forest fires. Make ‘em waterproof with a retractable snorkel that can be raised to bring in air in case of flooding. Since the younger generation hardly pauses from tweeting, texting or surfing the net long enough to breathe fresh air or gaze at the sky, they won’t even miss it when its gone.
Or maybe they will miss it – it is hard to get a signal underground.
Seriously, it is sobering to go back and read some of the predictions those crackpot scientists were making twenty years ago: warmer and drier summers in regions that usually enjoy temperate weather and ample rainfall, excessive rainfall in previously dry climates, more severe weather, more frequent and stronger storms, gradually rising sea levels and in some areas, colder winters with heavier snowfall.
This may all be alarmist propaganda from people who want us to go back to riding horses and reading by candlelight; just don’t scoff too loudly around the folks in Joplin, Tuscaloosa, New Orleans, along the Mississippi River or in eastern Arizona. They’re all becoming believers the hard way.
Slowly, world governments, including our own, are waking up and realizing that new energy policies are needed and we all need to be less conspicuous consumers and more conspicuous conservers. Too late. Those crackpot scientists predicted twenty years ago that strong measures were needed immediately if we were gong to reverse the effects of climate change.
We didn’t, and it did. Change, that is. Hope ya’ll are fond of 90 degree summers, because they are about to come around more often. As for me, I’ll be taking that UT payout and setting off on that cruise to Tahiti . . . . while it’s still there.
County, as usual, has a bad case of gas. Will the real “illegals” please stand up?
Campbell County has certainly been making the Knoxville area news consistently of late, and as usual none of it is good. Foremost at present is the decision to give Kenneth Bartley a new trial. This is an almost-unprecedented decision, for a judge to grant a new trial in a case where a defendant has pleaded guilty, accepted a plea bargain and the appeals court has upheld the decision.
What spurred Judge Jon Kerry Blackwood to order the new trial was not a question of whether Bartley is guilty of shooting three Campbell County High School administrators back in 2005, killing Assistant Principle Ken Bruce.
The new trial was ordered after it came out that Bartley, then only 14, had been given only a few seconds by his attorney to decide whether to accept 44 years in prison or face a jury and possibly receive a life sentence.
Attorney Mike Hatmaker, who was grilled on the stand for much of the afternoon, admitted that the final plea bargain offer was made to him without involving Bartley or his parents, and he had urged the teen to accept the deal at the last second. Mike, according to the News-Sentinel, broke down at the end of his testimony on Thursday and apologized to Bartley’s father.
What’s that old saying, “Beware that you may get what you wish for?” Bartley, now 20, has his new trial. The families of Ken Bruce and the other victims must now relive a tragic time in their lives that they had hoped was behind them.
Bartley’s plea deal would have meant he would be incarcerated until he was nearly 40 years old before qualifying for parole. Apparently that was not acceptable to him or his family. Ken Bruce will never walk the earth again, period, and the other victims’ lives were changed forever.
A jury may now reconsider the charge of first-degree murder levied against Bartley, which could bring a life sentence if they find him guilty. In that case, Kenneth Bartley would be considerably older than 40 before he sees the light of day. He will now be standing trial as a young man of 20 or 21, not a considerably more sympathetic, confused 14-year-old boy.
Also in the news this week were yet another collection of public officials who have failed to live up to their positions of trust. The Knoxville paper reported that the State Utility Management Review Board is looking at an ouster suit against the commissioners of the Sevier Count Utility District, and has already recommended the ouster of the three commissioners for Powell-Clinch Utility District, which provides natural gas to Campbell and Anderson counties.
The Powell-Clinch commissioners are accused of failing their fiduciary duties by allowing former manager Del Roberts to scam some $95,000 from the utility’s ratepayers, as well as abusing their own positions by taking excessive travel reimbursements and paying for employees and vendors to travel to Costa Rica.
Costa Rica? If Powell-Clinch was in the business of providing geothermal energy, that might make sense, as that tiny county is dotted with active volcanoes. The only kind of natural gas you’re going to find in Costa Rica, however, is the smelly “rotten egg” sulfur dioxide emitted from volcanic vents.
Nothing new here. As I pointed out once years ago, Campbell County has always had a bad case of gas.
Something else we have in growing abundance is residents living and working among us that are of Hispanic origin. As long as these Spanish-speaking folk keep to themselves, do their work, are seen only at the corner table of the Mexican restaurant or late at night down at the Laundromat, nobody seems to care much about whether they have the right paperwork or not.
That is, until some of them decide that legally documented or not, they deserve to be treated like human beings and begin to make waves. Apparently that is what 21 Hispanic employees of Baird Tree Company in Caryville have done, and the company first tried to fire the disgruntled employees, and now is attempting to turn them in to immigration authorities.
Baird and the company’s attorney Dave Dunaway contend in federal court that the workers were hired after presenting false identity documents, and they are using that argument to counter a lawsuit by the workers claiming unpaid overtime.
I’m sorry, but if it quacks like a duck, walks like a duck and lays eggs, it most likely is a duck. Baird company officials had to have known when they hired these individuals that they were most likely “undocumented,” “illegal,” or “of questionable immigration status,” take your pick of terminology.
Now we can debate the question all day about whether the United States should have more lenient policies towards allowing guest workers to enter our county from Mexico and points south. We can debate all day about whether immigrants who have entered the country illegally should be deported, given amnesty or jailed.
One thing we can’t argue about is the fact that they are here, in large numbers, and a lot of American employers are depending on their labor and unfortunately, taking advantage of their immigration status to pay low wages, offer substandard working conditions and expect the workers to just stay quiet and take it.
These employers know full well who is working for them and whether those workers are in the country legally or not. They count on the threat of deportation as a tool to keep wages low and profits high. For many of those companies, American citizens need not apply for jobs, unless they’re willing to work under miserable conditions for modest wages and few if any benefits.
We saw evidence of this when that one Hispanic worker was killed in the accident at the Henley Street Bridge project a couple of weeks ago. Britton Bridge is obviously one of those companies, receiving taxpayer dollars to work on a variety of projects around the state, Wonder how they can always be low bidder on these projects? I guess we now know.
Likewise, Baird Tree Company is a contractor for Knoxvlle Utilities Board and I would guess, landed those contracts by submitting the low bid.
The Tea Party crowd, Knoxville Senator Stacy Campfield and others of his ilk all want to round up these illegals and either toss them out of the country or into the clink. Right, we really need to build more jails with our hard-earned tax dollars just to lock up people who don’t have the right paperwork. Maybe we can release a few meth dealers to make room for the Spanish-speaking prisoners.
A better approach would be to reform federal guest worker laws and policies so that more of them can come and go legally. Then there would be less temptation for immigrant workers to bring their families here as well, placing less burden on our schools and healthcare systems. Being here legally, these workers could demand better pay and working conditions, leaving American workers at less of a competitive disadvantage.
That ain’t gonna happen anytime soon, folks. Our government is in a deficit-cutting mood and what better way to cut costs than by getting work done as cheaply as possible and what better way to get work done cheaply than to pay low wages, under poor working conditions, and offer no benefits.
Another approach would be to considerably increase the penalties against companies that hire undocumented workers. It is currently a federal crime to knowingly transport or shelter illegal immigrants. Why is it not a criminal offense to employ them? Oh I forgot, it’s all about economics. Silly me.
Pachyderms and a California preacher – do they know something we don’t?
That California preacher who predicted the end of the world would come on May 21 seems to have gotten his date off a bit. We’re still here, but then again, only the blessed were expected to ascend into Heaven while the rest of us wait around for the Apocalypse. Just in case he was right and you and I are among those left behind, I want to share a few random thoughts while there’s still time:
Random thought # 1) If I were to dig a eight-foot deep pit in my back yard, begin dumping all of my household trash into it and covering it up, I wonder how long it would take before city officials would come knocking on my door armed with writs, citations and handcuffs?
If we’re talking about the City of LaFollette, apparently never, That is exactly what the City is doing at a house they are tearing down on the east end of town, less than a football field’s length from the banks of Big Creek.
It is one of those sad tales – an elderly woman was found deceased in her front yard. Officials discovered that she was one of those people who never threw anything away, including household trash and garbage.
She appeared to be sleeping on a pile of blankets stacked on top of mounds of trash. The house was filled, floor to ceiling, with refuse, infested with rats and completely uninhabitable. The city condemned the property and is proceeding to tear the house down but what to do with those tons of trash and garbage?
The logical answer would be, fit some workers out in haz-mat suits, load the stuff into trucks and haul it to the landfill. This is LaFollette, so logic seems to have nothing to do with it. Instead, workers have excavated a pit, approximately 6-8 feet deep and about ten feet on a side, and are pushing the refuse into it with a small track hoe.
The good news is that at least they’re digging the pit into shale rock and clay, where the refuse might leach into the water table a little slower than say, through limestone. The bad news is, they’re gonna need a bigger pit, or maybe one or two more, before they’re finished.
Random thought # 2) The Cumberland Mountains, that massive ridge to our west and the mountains that sprawl out behind it. Campbell County has long had a love-hate relationship with those hills. We love to hike in them, hunt in them, four-wheel in them or just look at them from afar.
Those mountains divide our county into two distinct regions, have historically hindered travel, and were all but useless to early settlers looking to farm the land. For nearly two centuries we have made war upon them, ripping them apart for the coal, stripping them of their forest cover, clogging their streams with silt and tapping their veins for oil and gas. Some of us have wished the mountains weren’t there, so there would be more flat land for industrial parks, shopping malls and highway bypasses.
Then we watch TV and see the destruction wrought by tornadoes in Alabama, Missouri northern Georgia and even here in parts of East Tennessee. We hear TV news issue the latest tornado watch and severe storm warning for the plateau and parts of East Tennessee, and we go to bed at night and sleep peacefully, snuggled in the arms if our protecting mountains.
We sleep, secure in the knowledge that whatever Mother Nature decides to throw our way, those mountains will most likely deflect the worst of it northeast into Kentucky or cause it to lift up high over our little communities spread along the base of Walden Ridge to drop down further to the east. When I read about hundreds of people losing their lives and thousands more left homeless from the worst season for tornadoes in my lifetime, I give thanks that I live where I do, protected for the most part from Mother Nature’s fury by Mother Nature’s great wall.
Random thought # 3) The News-Sentinel reports that UT has spent nearly $10 million in recent years buying out the contracts of fired coaches. I have to wonder how many scholarships that would pay for, or how many top-notch instructors the university could hire. The true purpose of having a university is to provide an education . . . . or is it merely to provide us with entertainment?
Random thought # 4) Campbell County is now ready to break ground on its new justice center, Anderson County is still trying to figure out how to pay for both an expanded jail and a minimum security workhouse facility, Fentress County citizens are facing a 50 % tax increase to pay for a larger jail.
I would like to see some statistics on how many beds our nation has set aside for prisoners, in all 50 states, among federal and state prisons, county and municipal lock-ups, work houses, prison farms and mental institutions.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower once preached about the dangers of a “military-industrial complex” transforming America into a warlike nation. When is someone going to point out the dangers of a “judicial-prison complex,” or are we destined to become a society composed entirely of cops and criminals?
Final random thought) The Tennessee General Assembly has now completed its session, thankfully, before it could do further damage to the citizens of the state. One thing they did do was slap teachers around pretty thoroughly with the end to collective bargaining and a public hatchet job on the Tennessee Education Association.
Right now teachers, whether Democrat, Republican or Mugwamp, are united in one purpose – political payback come the elections of 2012. It will be interesting to see just how much political clout that teachers, their families and friends can muster.
The Pachyderms pushed their agenda hard and legislated this year as if there is no tomorrow. Perhaps they know something we don’t.
Party-goers get “twanged” while mayor loses contest with squires at fire hydrant
Twang – Websters: “(adj.) A sharp sound made by a musical instrument; (verb) An act of plucking that makes this sound.”
Seems some folks got plucked last weekend by Hal Royce Abramson’s “Supertwang” shindig up the valley. Hoo boy, when that fellow presented his little dog and pony show before the county commission awhile back, I thought to myself, “This boy’s got con man written all over him.”
Perhaps he meant well. Perhaps he would have made a profit and paid all his bills if the weather had cooperated, or he had sold more advance tickets, or if he had enough capital up front to pay the costs regardless of the turnout.
The weather was less than ideal, certainly not hot enough to tempt prodigious consumption of distilled beverages. Supertwang did not sell a multitude of advance tickets. More importantly to the many temporary workers and musicians who didn’t get paid, Abramson obviously did not have the capital lined up to pay his bills and was counting on the gate to make payroll. Big mistake.
Too bad all those folks who signed up to work, perform, sell beer and food, provide land and so on didn’t bother to google Hal Abramson before they got involved. His list includes a couple of books on how to promote festivals, a self-promoting press release or two, and lawsuits, reports of conflicts with partners and of course now, the Supertwang flop.
The News-Sentinel reports that on at least three occasions, festivals promoted by Abramson have resulted in failure – in Jackson , Tennessee, Oregon and Australia.
He asked the Campbell County Chamber of Commerce to endorse his festival, but the Chamber wisely declined and refunded Abramson’s membership check. Uncommonly good sense or plain dumb luck? Doesn’t matter - the Chamber dodged the bullet.
The squires on Monday night bandied around another promotional idea, the ever-resurfacing Lighthouse Lodge & Convention Center. It appeared dead seven years ago, when no takers came forward to invest in a facility proposed to be owned by the county, operated by private entrepreneurs on land owned by TVA and leased to the state park, with only the sales tax proceeds from the lodge offered to guarantee payment of the multi-million dollar construction tab.
Gee, I can’t understand that. Sounds like a deal I would want to invest my last nickel into, if I had a nickel that people like Hal Abramson haven’t conned out of me already.
The squires voted last month to oppose any reincarnation of this dead horse down in the legislature, but Mayor William Baird brought it back around for a second look on Monday, with a proposed resolution supporting the lodge if no taxpayer money is at risk other than sales tax proceeds from the lodge itself.
When something sounds too good to be true . . . well, you know the rest of that one. Thing about this lodge that makes little sense to me is why Campbell County folks keep pushing it. The two major access routes are from Anderson County, which would benefit most from traffic revenue, Campbell County may now have beer sales on Sunday but liquor by the drink is legal only in Caryville and there are already over a dozen area motels that are seldom at capacity.
And conventions? Forget Norris Lake when they can booze it up in Knoxville, Sevierville and Gatlinburg, with the added draw of unlimited shopping opportunities for wives while husbands are convening.
Well, the squires rejected the idea once again by a vote of 11-4. This also is either an exhibition of uncommonly good sense or plain dumb luck. I’ll go with dumb luck this time, as it seemed the main reason the commission rejected the lodge had as much to do with one of those contests between the squires and the mayor, you know, the contests that dogs hold around fire hydrants.
Monday was one of those “Who wears the pants” nights when it came to the relationship between Mayor Baird and the county commission, and on this occasion, William almost left the meeting in nothing but his birthday suit.
The mayor’s supervisory capacity over the Environmental Services Department was also challenged when the squires rejected his nomination for director, T. Don Boshears. The commissioners didn’t appear to have anyone else in mind, they just wanted more of a role in the decision, such as access to the applications, resumes and names of other candidates.
William’s proclamation that “It’s my call” apparently did not suit a number of the commissioners. They just flat voted “no,” which is the one power they do have over the mayor’s selections. Mayor Baird will now have to go back to the drawing board and read up on making friends and influencing enemies if he wants to get his people approved.
Baird’s one advantage is that his chief protagonist, Thomas Hatmaker, could also use a lesson or two in making friends and influencing enemies. Thomas is so critical of everything the mayor proposes that some of the other squires tend to view him as Chicken Little, whose sky is always falling.
As far as the Lighthouse Lodge & Convention Center, perhaps we’ve heard the last of it, perhaps not. Hopefully our leaders will put their energies and talents to work on better things. As that lady in Alabama who had a meteorite crash through her kitchen ceiling a few years back can attest, even Chicken Little can be right some of the time.
Some things won’t go away, while legislature at least “does no harm”
It sometimes amazes me at how many things simply won’t go away, no matter how badly we wish for them to do so. The Campbell County Commission is a prime example of this phenomenon. Oh, I don’t mean we all wish the county commission would go away, although in the view of quite a few citizens that might not be a bad idea.
I’m referring to the topics of discussion and debate that keep popping up month after month like broken records. First and foremost has to be Robert Henson, who has made a career out of haranguing the squires and Mayor William Baird for most of 2011. Robert is still upset about the county powers act, but at Monday night’s workshop, limited himself to protesting the commission’s new rules for allowing public input at meetings.
Robert feels that being limited in the amount of time he can take up at commission meetings and being limited to making comments only at the workshop, where incidentally, there are no television cameras, is a violation of his “right to free speech.”
The simple fact is, while we all have basic rights, the way in which we are allowed to exercise those rights is often more of a privilege. We have the right to peaceably assemble, but if we choose to assemble on private property we may be arrested for trespassing. We have the right to practice our religion, or choose not to practice a religion. If that religion dictates that a man can have more than one wife and he follows it faithfully, he can be arrested.
The rights of citizens to redress of their grievances and exercise of free speech likewise must be regulated so that one person or group does not infringe on others. Such infringement could be, for instance, by taking up all of the time at a public meeting that leaves other business unfinished or inadequately discussed. That’s why legislatures, county commissions and boards have rules of conduct, not only for their members but for the public.
When you abuse a privilege, it often gets taken away. The Campbell County Commission had one of most liberal policies for public comment that I’ve seen, allowing citizens to sign up to speak right up until the minute a meeting begins and allowing public comment at both the workshop and the regular monthly meeting.
Mayor William Baird told Henson Monday night that the new commission rules restricting public comment only to the workshop and setting stricter time limits was not directed at Henson personally. Sorry William, but I’ll bet your nose grew a little bit on that one. If it were not for Henson’s continual abuse of the privilege he enjoyed, those rules would never have been proposed, let alone approved.
But Mr. Henson isn’t the only thing that seemingly won’t go away at commission meetings. There’s also the new justice center, which despite repeated votes approving the center, the funding of the center, the location and size of the center and now who will build the center, is still subject to debate.
A minority of commissioners including Beverly Hall, Thomas Hatmaker, Sue Nance and Bob Walden continue to vote against all motions involving the justice center, but their votes are by this time merely symbolic, as a solid majority on the commission supports building the expanded jail, distasteful as it is.
Until we have justice reform in this country, stop passing more and more laws to put people behind bars instead of performing community service and stop putting people back behind bars because they can’t pay their fines, we will continue to need bigger and bigger jails. It sometimes seems to me that the only growth industries in America today are health care, because of the aging Baby Boom generation, and incarceration, because our answer to everything is “lock ‘em up.”
Another thing that just won’t go away is the Lighthouse Lodge & Convention Center. Urged on by Thomas Hatmaker, the commission voted last month to send a resolution to the legislature opposing the funding and construction of this white elephant.
Now Mayor William proposes to reintroduce another resolution of support for the lodge, provided that there is no cost to Campbell County beyond the sales tax revenue that would be generated by that facility.
The legislators down in Nashville must be getting a bit confused by now, not that confusing our legislators is all that difficult. First Campbell County is for the Lighthouse Lodge, then they’re against it, now they’re for it again.
Meanwhile, since not one thin dime has been offered by any lending institution or investor to pay for construction of said lodge, you have to wonder who is pushing this thing.
The county stands to benefit little, if any, from a lodge that is more accessible from Anderson County, will legally be owned by the county on land owned by TVA and leased to the state, meaning no property taxes, and will have the sales tax committed to paying off the debt.
The operator of such a lodge cannot own it, only lease it, but given the present economy, the specter of high gas prices in the future and its location high above the lake, the prospect of success appears doubtful at best.
The only people who could possibly benefit from this controversial and economically risky venture are those who will get the contract to build it. They would get their money and head to the bank. If the lodge fails and has to shut down, the county gains and loses nothing, the operator walks away, the investors are stuck with an expensive white elephant on a bluff and no sales tax to pay off their investment. As they say, “Want answers? Just follow the money.”
While the commission keeps repeating itself, the Tennessee General Assembly is providing some last minute entertainment as their session winds down. It seems that the wolves, in this case the new Republican majority, are turning on each other.
The controversial bill to abolish the collective bargaining rights of teachers has picked up some opposition among Republicans and no longer appears to be a shoo-in for passage. House Speaker Beth Harwell had to step in and break a tie to get the bill out of committee, but it has no guarantee of passage on the floor, and even less prospect of surviving a veto from the governor, should he choose to do so.
Meanwhile, Representative Andy Holt, sponsor of the now-dead bill that would allow guns on college campuses, has been caught calling a fellow Republican a coward for making the motion to defeat the bill in committee. Hey, I personally think it would be a great idea to allow students with gun permits to go armed on campus, especially at fraternity parties and basketball, football and baseball games. Might put a whole new meaning to the phrase, “Kill the umpire!”
But never fear, our General Assembly has not been wasting all of their time debating senseless legislation. Both the House and Senate this week unanimously voted to declare a new song by Knoxvillian John R. Bean as Tennessee’s ninth official state song.
Can anyone name the other eight official state songs without looking in a Tennessee Blue Book? I correctly guessed “Rocky Top” and “The Tennessee Waltz,” but had never heard of most of the others on the list, and I’ll bet most Tennesseans have never heard of any, save “Rocky Top.” Face it, who dances the waltz these days, and who cares?
But at least our elected representatives were able to agree on something, and naming yet another state song at least does no harm.
Osama in Heaven? Instead of virgins, he’s surrounded by mothers-in-law
What a week we have had! Actually, what a spring, if you’re in the big time news business. CNN has been able to bounce from one “Gotcha” headline to another for the past couple of months. First there was the earthquake in New Zealand. Bad as it was, that was quickly eclipsed by the even bigger earthquake in Japan, complete with deadly tsunami and a nuclear accident thrown in for added drama.
While Mother Nature was declaring war on humanity along the Pacific Rim, we humans were doing a pretty good job of making war on each other in the Middle East. All the war junkies who rush off around the globe, cameras in hand, at the sound of gunfire might have been a bit disappointed at the relatively bloodless ouster of Murbarak in Egypt. No matter, crazy Khadafy in Libya has given us all the bloodshed we could wish for and then some.
Then just when human atrocities appeared ready to push Mother Nature off the front page and back into the obscure scientific journals, she reminded us here in the South who the boss is once again, whipping up a maelstrom of tornadoes that nearly blew Alabama into Tennessee. Actually, quite a bit of Alabama, from checks and magazines to tin roofs and toilet paper, did land in Tennessee and Georgia.
All of this, of course, was just working up to the season’s grand finale, the end at last of Osama bin Laden. By now Osama has undoubtedly awakened, expecting to be waited on hand and foot by what was it – 71, 99 virgins? Instead he is surrounded by 99 mothers-in-law and realizes that he is definitely not in Heaven. Hi Ho.
Instead of finding the arch villain cowering in a cave in the icy Hindu Kush Mountains, our Navy Seals cornered him in a luxurious mansion right in the middle of a comfortable suburb of Pakistan’s capital city, surrounded by military bases and retired Pakistani generals. Surprise, surprise, surprise. It wouldn’t shock me to discover that his utility bills were being paid out of some of that $2 billion in foreign aid that we’ve funneled into Pakistan over the past few years.
A lot of public figures have expressed outrage and skepticism at the idea that bin Laden could live comfortably in Pakistan without some highly placed members of Pakistan’s government and military knowing about it. It’s possible, I suppose, and it’s also possible that the moon is made of green cheese and all those American moon landings were faked and we’ve never been there.
I for one believe that Pakistan is not to be trusted, period. The USA has poured billions in humanitarian and military aid into that country over the years – for what? To help us in our war on terror? The only help they’re given us is to not shoot at our unmanned drones that fly over and occasionally wipe out a nest of al Qaida or Taliban leaders hiding in Pakistan. Then again, perhaps they just can’t hit our drones, even if they wanted to.
The truth is, we pour all that money into Pakistan because they have the bomb, and we don’t want them to use it on India and start World War III, or share it with al Qaida or sell nuclear secrets to North Korea. Oh, I forgot, their nuclear scientists have already sold the secrets to North Korea.
Call me old fashioned, but I’m about over all this fighting by our young men in far-flung mountains that nobody has ever heard of, or dying from exploding booby traps on some dusty desert road. It’s tempting to just say to Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kazakistan, Uzbekistan and all those other Stans: “Have at it! Kill each other all you want, drop nuclear bombs on each other, slaughter each other and chant ‘Death to America’ all you want. Just do it over there in your own backyard and stay out of ours.”
“We’ll stay over here, you stay over there and turn back the clock to the Middle Ages if you want. We’ll put our technology to work and develop an alternative to your oil and you can keep it, or figure out how to eat it instead of our wheat and corn.”
“Oh yeah, in case you get to feeling all macho over having the bomb and decide to use one on us over here where we’re minding our own business, remember this – we’ve still got as many nuclear bombs left over from the Cold War as you’ve got camels, and we’ve been trying to figure out what to do with them all.”
But we’re not going to do that, are we? Ever since World War II, we’ve taken on the role of the world’s policeman, constantly trying to enforce peace on people who don’t want peace, order on people who don’t want order and American democratic principles on people who have never experienced democracy.
Then we’ve also got to protect the interests of all those American corporations that profit from trading with all those developing nations. Too bad the corporations don’t return the favor by being loyal to America.
We send American boys to fight and die in Afghanistan so that Pakistan doesn’t become a dangerous rogue nuclear power and start a war with India, so that India remains a safe place for AT&T, Citibank and Delta Airlines to set up call centers so that Indians can drive us all insane with their broken English when we call our American corporations to complain about a bill.
Well, I can rant and rave all I want about those bad people living in the Middle East who don’t like us, don’t trust us and don’t want anything from us except our money, which we borrow from China. Then I look around right here at home and discover that there are some people here who are just as unscrupulous as Osama and his ilk.
I’m referring to the low life individuals who have been looting the wrecked homes over in Greene County. People lose everything they own to a tornado, then someone comes along and strips the stereos from their cars, the copper pipe from their leveled homes and anything of value left in the rubble. Those looters should be sent over to Afghanistan to dodge Taliban bullets, but they would just sell us out to the highest bidder.
Islamic terrorists may be heartless killers but they at least have integrity of a sort – they believe their cause is just, even if they have no respect for human life. Those looters can’t even say that much.
Terrorist groups exposed in Tennessee: Big Bird and the General Assembly
If I were prone to paying attention to what I hear on TV, I would be writing this column tonight from my bathtub, or a closet or an interior hallway with no windows. I believe in living dangerously, so I’ll just stay at my computer and look out the nearby window at all the pretty lightning.
My flatland cousins from St. Louis have been visiting this week, and are amused by the round-the-clock coverage of Wednesday’s severe weather. They are accustomed to tornado warnings, high winds and thunderstorms, and haven’t before been exposed to East Tennessee weathermen when the rare chance to report on real weather comes along.
I must admit that tonight’s continuous coverage from 4:00 p.m. until the Jay Leno Show has crossed over into the realm of comical extremes. I think the weirdest thing I noticed was one severe thunderstorm warning that gave estimated times of arrival for the following communities: Caryville, Red Ash, Block and Turley, with a few minutes between each location.
I could walk between Caryville, Red Ash, Block and Turley faster than the projected path of that storm. Sorry, but what we have here in the Knoxville viewing area is meteorological overkill. The weatherman thinks, “At last, I get center stage and don’t have to play second fiddle to the anchorman, the anchorwoman or the sports guru.”
Instead of a warning on the bottom of the screen with projected communities that are at risk, we get full-screen views of the regional weather map, the Doppler radar, graphs, computer-generated side views and all the other toys, updated every two minutes for eight hours. By 11:00 p.m., most of the local news anchors and meteorologists were so tired they were beginning to babble, which at least provided comic relief.
But I shouldn’t complain. All the weather news knocked the other national news right off the air, so we were spared the announcement that President Obama has at last convinced the State of Hawaii to release his long form birth certificate.
This should placate the majority of the “birthers.” After all, Donald Trump has already taken credit for forcing the President to release the document after having forced himself to the front of the line of doubting Thomases.
But no, the true birthers will not be satisfied. They know this is all a conspiracy and Obama has the power to falsify any document. They know that he is, in reality, a mole placed among us from the far side of the planet Mars, delivered to Hawaii one dark night in a flying saucer. He will eventually help the Martians take over our country and then the world, so that we can all be processed into puppy chow for the Martian dog food industry.
I am tempted to write this all off as typical sick conspiracy theory craziness, like Area 51, but the birther movement is much more than the small minority of conspiracy nuts we always have among us. A poll found that 45 percent of Republicans polled had doubts about Obama’s American citizenship.
Partisan politics? Maybe, but Republicans didn’t like Bill Clinton either, and nobody doubted his citizenship. Sorry folks, but racism is alive and well in America and the reaction to our first black president continues to underscore that fact.
Of course racism toward African-Americans is an old story, and the racism is less blatant and less obvious than it was during my youth, when Sears had separate water fountains marked “white” and “colored.” Now Americans have new targets for their paranoia, Muslims and Hispanics.
Muslims, of course, are all nefarious instruments of evil, sent here to set up terrorist cells and set off bombs at Toys-R-Us stores. Hispanics aren’t interested in bombing us, they just want to take jobs away from red-blooded Americans and starve us all to death.
But never fear, the Tennessee Legislature is here. That bunch of clowns down in Nashville will show those Hispanic people who’s boss. They will pass a voter ID bill that will keep illegal immigrants from Mexico, or Mars, from voting in our state unless they have an official photo ID card or photo drivers’ license proving their citizenship.
It will cost all the poor Tennesseans who don’t own a car, or elderly Tennesseans who don’t have to have photo drivers’ licenses a little bit of money to be able to vote, but what’s a little poll tax in the pursuit of freedom?
And then our Legislature will take care of those bothersome Muslims as well. Maybe a bill to make the practice of Shariah Law illegal. What? Can’t do that because it’s unconstitutional to interfere with the practice of religion?
No problem, we’ll just authorize the Attorney General and the Governor to investigate and declare any group they choose to be a terrorist organization. Let’s start with the ACLU, the teachers’ unions and oh yeah, how about Public Television? I mean, you don’t for a minute think that Big Bird character would be allowed to pass through an airport security gate, do you?
Wouldn’t it be something if the Tennessee Legislature could do something useful for a change, like figuring out how to bring more high quality jobs into Tennessee? Oh I forgot, high quality jobs require high quality education, and our legislators are too busy cutting the budget for higher education and making war on teachers to worry about such details.
I hope the terrorist group bill passes. With a little luck we can figure out a way to get the Tennessee General Assembly investigated and declared a terrorist organization, in which case we can all sleep a little better at night.
Wanted: investors to move a bridge from Brooklyn to the shores of Norris Lake
I marched into Lyk Nu Body Shop last week and plunked down 50 bucks with an air of accomplishment. After doling out a little here and a little there for the past few months, I finally paid off my balance from a major repair job dating to last year.
“You sure you want to do that?” Mike Freeman asked. “Maybe you ought to leave ten dollars on the books for awhile.” Mike was speaking from experience. Every time I get out of hock, my old van decides it’s OK to break down again.
Sure enough, Monday morning I noticed a clicking and popping sound every time I cut the steering wheel. Turns out the thingie that regulates my air bag is going out. “What happens if it goes completely?” I ask.
“Not much, the air bag explodes in your face while you’re driving down the interstate at 70 mph.” he says.
So it’s back in debt again, and this time I’m gonna leave that last ten bucks unpaid until Hades freezes over, the South rises again or the Campbell County Commission does something intelligent, whichever comes first.
Well, I don’t want to wait until the commission does something intelligent, the folks at Lyk Nu might get tired of waiting for their last ten bucks.
Actually I’m kidding. The squires did something intelligent just the other night when they passed some restrictions on public input at commission meetings. This was another case of unintended consequences, you know, that bugaboo that keeps cursing politicians when they enact laws and regulations without thinking things through carefully.
In this case it wasn’t the politicians who invoked the law of unintended consequences, but a member of the public, namely LaFollette businessman Robert Henson.
Robert, as you may recall, has been badgering the commission for the past couple of months about the so-called County Powers Act, hinting rather strongly that the commission is infringing on his rights and plans to use the act as a nefarious way to slip zoning over on unsuspecting property owners.
The fact that adoption of this local application to state law does no such thing has not made much of a dent in Robert’s arguments, as he continues to show up at commission meetings, demanding yet another chance to browbeat the squires for being a bunch of ruthless scallywags.
So it should come as no surprise that Mayor William Baird finally proposed some changes in the commission’s rules to restrict members of the public from using commission meetings as personal soapboxes. William suggested that in future, anyone wanting to address the commission should make the request through his office at least five days prior to the meeting, be limited to three minutes and be allowed to speak at either the workshop or regular meeting but not both.
The squires weren’t open to restricting the voters to that degree, but they did go along with allowing public comment only at workshops rather than the regular meeting. They kept the time limit at the current five minutes, but assured that in future, the five minutes will be enforced. They also kept the rather liberal requirement that members of the public can sign up to speak right up until the minute before the meeting starts.
This is still a fairly permissive rule, I can look back to past years when the requirement that anyone wishing to address the commission make the request five days before the meeting was strictly enforced. Anyone with a gripe or problem that came up after the five day deadline passed had to either 1) wait another month to be heard or 2) convince one of the squires to ask for a suspension of rules to allow the citizen to speak.
I can also recall times when the chair of the commission strictly enforced the three minute time limit and would remind speakers when the three minutes had passed, and cut them off if they went past it by much. By comparison, the current commission has been extremely liberal in the way they allow the public to have input at meetings.
Until now, that is. When you abuse a right or a privilege, you risk losing it. Henson abused his privilege to give commissioners a piece of his mind. The first time around, he took up close to a half hour on his five minute window, The second time, the debate took up so much time that the squires didn’t get started on their regular agenda before taking a bathroom break after nearly two hours and were still meeting at 10:00 p.m.
Robert was also treating the squires like a group of defendants at a criminal trial with himself as self-appointed prosecutor. It should come as no surprise, then, that a majority of commissioners voted against rescinding the County Powers Act. It would come as less of a surprise, if the vote were held again today, if even more commissioners voted against Henson.
One squire who voted to rescind told me later, “I promised some of my constituents I would vote to rescind it, but by the time Robert finished speaking, I was really tempted to vote to keep it anyway.”
“You get more flies with honey than with vinegar,” Confucius said, or maybe it was Ophrah who said it or Bill Clinton. No matter, the truth of that old adage continues to prove itself. The other old adage that fits here is “Be careful what you wish for.”
Robert Henson wished for county commissioners to listen to him and respond. They did. Now everyone else in the county who wants to be heard by the commission will have to jump through a few more hoops as a result.
The squires did do one other intelligent thing Monday night. They drove a stake into the heart of that old vampire, the Lighthouse Lodge & Convention Center.
That white elephant has been hanging around for years, long past the time when a booming economy made it a possibility and despite attracting opposition from the Tennessee Division of State Parks, TVA, the Norris Lake Homeowners’ Association, Friends of Norris Dam State Parks and the Republic of Kazakistan, not to mention numerous individuals.
The whole idea seemed a bit too good to be true from day one. Campbell County endorses the lodge and will have ownership but has absolutely no financial liability if it fails to succeed. The operators will run the lodge, owned by the county on land owned by TVA but leased to the state park. The only money at risk will be the sales tax proceeds from the operation of the lodge, assuming that there are in fact sales.
With this package in hand, the developers were planning to find a group of suckers, uh, investors willing to pour millions of dollars into their development with no guarantees from either the owners of the lodge, the owners of the land it sits upon or the lessee of the land that the lodge sits upon.
If I went down to Peoples Bank looking for a loan with those conditions, I would be told, “Please leave. We’ve already been robbed once this week.”
So it should come as little surprise that seven or eight years after the project was first proposed to Campbell County, such investors have still not appeared. If they ever do, I want to meet them. I’ve got this bridge up in Brooklyn that I got a really good deal on and I’d like to find some financial partners to help me move it to Norris Lake. I’ll repay them from the toll I’m going to charge the millions of people who cross it every day into Union County.
An educated voter is a dangerous thing
Campbell County now has a new Director of Schools. Many out there feel that the selection of Donnie Poston came a couple of years too late – the many being those who feel he should have been selected during the last hiring round when the previous board went with Dr. Michael Martin.
Monday night I asked one of the other two candidates, Eunice Reynolds, how she felt her chances looked. “I’m not a good old boy and the school board is loaded with good old boys,” Eunice replied. So I guess it should come as little surprise to Eunice or anyone else that an all-male school board would pick the single male candidate among three finalists for the job.
Personally, I’m glad I didn’t have to make the decision. Poston’s track record as principal at the Christian Academy and his previous experience in the central office and as teacher and principal made him a front runner for the job, good old boys or not.
Add to that the fact that Donnie had the good sense to retire from the county commission some years ago after only one term. The political maneuvering and in-fighting were not his cup of tea, he told me at the time, which underscores the fact that the man has uncommon wisdom to go with his other credentials.
Still, Sharon Ridenour has done a credible job as interim director while Eunice certainly has the qualifications, training and experience, if a bit of a take-no-prisoners attitude when it comes to compromising quality education. I would have liked the board’s selection, no matter which of the three they chose.
Donnie may have an easier time than Eunice would in dealing with the board but then again, he may look longingly back on his days as a squire before it’s all said and done. I myself am still trying to get a handle on exactly how I feel about this edition of the Board of Education.
The regular school board meeting Tuesday night was divided into two distinct sessions, the feel good session and the nitpicking session. During the “feel good” session the board congratulated everyone from Winston Churchill to Bill the Cat, or so it seemed. Actually, they gave some well-deserved kudos to 17 Level IV teachers, the CCHS Student Council and Jacksboro Middle School and principal Jamie Wheeler. Also honored was star volunteer teacher, tutor and grant writer Betty Goress, who does what she does for Campbell County schools and children without pay because she loves kids and values education.
Oh yeah, and the board reserved the largest ceremony of the evening for the Jellico boy’s basketball team for winning the regional tournament, complete with complimentary jackets and countless photo ops. One might be tempted to wonder why the board would reserve more celebration for athletic prowess than for academic excellence or selfless volunteerism, but this is the good old boy’s club, after all.
This is also Campbell County, where athletics always takes precedence over academics. The Jellico boys richly deserve all the credit they have received, and I am equally proud of their accomplishments. But I admit to being a little bit saddened and resigned to the fact that historically, school board members, county commissioners and other officials, not to mention parents and most everyone else, place so much more importance on how the football and basketball teams are doing than on whether their children are getting the quality education they need to succeed in life.
Donnie Poston nor anyone else is going to get our schools competitive with other systems without help from parents, and in my view too many parents worry more about whether junior is going to make the team than whether junior can read and write, calculate the square root of pi or knows who gave the Gettysburg Address.
But enough, I don’t mean to rain on Jellico’s parade. Those boys and their coaches worked really hard and deserve all the credit they get and then some.
After the board’s feel good session ended Tuesday night, it went into executive session with lawyer Cantrell. The news must have been sobering, because when they reconvened the meeting their mood had taken a somber turn. Johnny Byrge and Eugene Lawson refused to vote to accept the routine financial report, Byrge stating that his vote was a protest because Finance Director Jeff Marlow was “making a habit” of not attending board meetings.
Of course, Eugene manages to find something to criticize Moneybags Marlow about whenever he does show up, so nothing new there. Fact is, the school department and school board have never much liked being under the Financial Management System. Former School Superintendent Carl Baird would never have signed off on FMS in the first place all those years ago if the county commission had not put a fiscal gun to his head.
Rector Miller then asked questions about rumors that during a week when all children are supposed to get free lunches, some kids were being denied their free lunch because they owed money to the cafeteria for previous lunches. Nobody else had heard such rumors, including the Interim Director, so Miller criticized the Food Services Supervisor for being absent from the meeting and not available to answer his questions.
Johnny Creekmore then joined the complaint parade, asking about reports of an altercation between a bus driver and student at White Oak. Clayton Ray reported that he had looked into the report and viewed the on-board film from the bus. Ray said that the bus driver may have “questioned” a student bus rider “more than she should,” but the camera showed there was no physical contact.
Personally, I feel for the poor bus drivers. I think that kids who act up on a bus endanger themselves and every other child on the bus, since it is difficult for drivers to concentrate on safe driving while dealing with disciplinary problems. Perhaps parents would find a better use of time by asking the student what he or she did to upset the driver, but that’s just me. I don’t have to run for re-election.
Ah well, at least the board limited the nitpicking to cafeteria workers, bus drivers and the Finance Director and left the poor teachers alone. Teachers have taken enough abuse recently from the legislature and other Tea Party types.
I read one article quoting a couple of Tennessee’s past “teachers of the year” as saying that teacher morale is at low ebb following all the criticism from elected officials, who seem more intent on dwelling on a few teachers’ poor performances than on the majority of teachers who are dedicated and hard working.
College educators are also concerned that a lot of promising students will decide to go into other fields if the abuse continues, leaving us with an even greater shortage of qualified teachers entering the profession while many veteran teachers decide to retire as soon as they’re eligible.
I agree with the fact that some teachers probably need to retire and some should never have gotten into the profession to begin with. You can say the same thing about bankers, cops, journalists and politicians. Especially politicians.
But holding teachers solely responsible for the performance of students on standardized tests has never seemed fair to me, when education or at least the love of learning begins at home. Unfortunately, what often begins at home is contempt for education and a dislike of book learning.
Too bad the politicians can’t figure out a way to grade the parents, but oh, yeah, they need their votes to get re-elected and educated voters are a dangerous thing.
Thanks to Mama and Papa Baird, county commission was seldom dull
Some years ago I wrote a column for the LaFollette Press titled “The Battle of the Bairds.” In true nursery rhyme spirit, it had Mama Baird, Papa Baird and Baby Baird, feuding over the naming of a road up in the Fifth District in honor of Mama Baird’s father.
Problem was, Mama Baird, also known as Adrion, as county commissioner did not represent the Fifth District while Papa (Carl) Baird and Baby (Forster) Baird did. The result was unavoidable comedy, and a National Newspaper Association award for yours truly, a debt I cannot ever truly repay.
A couple of weeks back we lost Carl Baird, and on April 5 we lost Adrion as well. Both served many long years as public servants. Carl was one of the longest-serving county commissioners ever, while Adrion, after a long career in federal government with the Department of Education, retired to continue serving back in his home county on a much smaller stage.
I called them Papa and Mama, mainly because they appeared to be very much polar opposites. Carl acted the part of the country bumpkin, plain spoken, working class with a minimum of education. Adrion was the intellectual. He liked to flaunt his knowledge of parliamentary procedure and Robert’s Rules of Order, much to the chagrin of chief rival Lynn Letner and a few others among the squires.
I spent years trying to figure out whether Adrion was a conservative or a closet liberal. He used to write a column for the Press and most of his positions on national issues fell somewhere to the right of Ronald Reagan. At the same time, he once marched up the road with a bunch of tree huggers to protest Champion Paper Company’s Royal Blue chip mill, and led the fight for a truly effective animal shelter and animal control program in the county.
Adrion also grew peaches, kept bees and bottled honey. I think he missed his calling when he chose advanced education and government service over life as a simple farmer. He made more of a mark the way it was, but I believe he was happiest out among his fruit trees.
While on the surface, Mama and Papa were opposites, the reality was that both knew their way around small town politics. Adrion could overwhelm opposition because he did his homework, had all the facts and arguments at his fingertips and exhibited bulldog determination in getting things to go his way. He literally wore down his opponents by refusing to give in.
Carl, by comparison, was the man of few words. He might go through an entire commission meeting without saying anything other than a couple of light-hearted quips, playing the class clown. But Carl knew how to make a statement when it counted most. Once the commission was in the middle of a testy debate over adoption of Southern Standard Building Codes, a topic that many felt came too close to telling people what they could or couldn’t do with their own property.
Those favoring adoption of the Codes argued that the intention was to protect homebuyers from unscrupulous builders who cut corners on construction, while opponents protested that adoption would add enormously to the cost of simple do-it-yourself home projects such as building a shed, adding on to a home or replacing a porch.
Carl listened to the back-and-forth all night without saying much of anything, then he spoke up. “I don’t know much about all this code stuff,” he noted, “But Bessie and I live in an old home place that’s put together with the original wooden pegs. Bessie told me that if the commission votes for something that forces us to replace those wooden pegs, she knows exactly where she’s gonna put ‘em.”
Not only did that comment bring down the courthouse, but halted the debate in midstream. “I can’t argue with that,” Bobby White proclaimed as he withdrew his motion to adopt the building codes.
Carl announced his decision to retire and was feted and feasted by his fellow squires. Adrion’s departure was more abrupt, as he and rival Lynn Letner worked so hard to defeat each other that they both lost their bids for re-election. Adrion was honored at the commission’s last meeting, while he lay ill in the hospital, for his many years of service.
Since both Mama and Papa gave me many years of rich material for my columns and stories, I find it most appropriate to salute them together, both for their dedication and the colorful way that they served.
So long, Mama and Papa, it’s been good to know ya. And the Campbell County Commission wouldn’t have been the same without you.
People around these here parts get pretty bent out of shape about the shenanigans of our squires and school board members, but their agreements and disagreements pale in comparison to the buffoonery going on up in Washington.
As I write this, Congress is on the verge of allowing the federal government to shut down because the two parties can’t agree on a budget. I noticed a group of Tea Party types were out on the Capitol steps chanting, “Shut ‘er down! Shut ‘er down!”
They had people like that back in the 1800s too, but they called them anarchists instead of the Tea Party, and they threw bombs at politicians and kings and opposed all government in any form.
If the federal government shuts down, even for a week or so, soldiers will not be paid, hundreds of thousands of federal employees will be sent home without pay, income tax refunds will be delayed for hundreds of thousands more, along with complications involving other benefits that could affect millions of Americans. Federal projects will be halted and workers sent home, and no telling what delays and complications will attach to federal funding expected and needed by state and local governments.
Meanwhile, the Constitution, that paragon of virtue so often quoted by the Tea Party, insures that members of Congress and the President will continue to be paid their salaries while the rest of the country suffers.
One Tea Party Congressman I watched being interviewed said something along the line of, “Well, if someone doesn’t get paid and can’t pay their rent on time, their landlord will understand that they’ll get their money.”
Hmmm, doesn’t sound like any landlord I’ve ever had. And what if, instead of rent, it’s that credit card payment that can’t be paid on time? Chase and Citibank are out there just hoping that they can find an excuse, such as a late payment, to raise interest rates on a few million credit card accounts.
The sad fact is, instead of working together to keep such a disaster from befalling millions of Americans, politicians from both parties are spending most of their energy trying to figure out how to lay blame for a shutdown on the other party. What Washington really needs is a few dozen Mama and Papa Bairds to go up there loaded down with wooden pegs, and I know exactly where they can put ‘em.
Tax enforcement? Someone who is tough, experienced, and dumb enough
Campbell County officials will probably be watching their neighbors down in Clinton closely over the next couple of months. The Anderson County Commission is struggling to find a way to pay for an expansion to their current overcrowded jail. “Surprise, surprise, surprise,” as TV character Gomer Pyle would have put it.
Anderson County may find the dance floor a bit crowded, seeing as how several other counties are already struggling with the problem. Let’s see, there’s Campbell, Fentress, Knox, Jefferson . . . Oh forget it, half of East Tennessee is in the same fix.
Anderson County (Interim) Mayor Myron Iwanski has suggested that the choice is between a 15-cent property tax increase or imposing a $30 wheel tax, and that is the part that should interest folks here in our own humble courthouse.
Seems we here in Campbell County already have a wheel tax, first enacted back in 1990 to keep the schools open. To say it was unpopular at the time would be somewhat of an understatement, considering that two-thirds of the squires who voted for it were sent packing by voters in the next election, not to mention poor County Clerk Brenda Boshears, whose only crime was that her office was required to collect the money.
Whether the wheel tax is fair or not depends on the point of view. Homeowners have to pay it on top of their property tax, but can at least take comfort that the wheel tax prevents even higher property tax rates. Renters, on the other hand, are considered by some officials to be not carrying enough of their fair share, since they don’t pay property taxes. Renters would disagree, making a logical argument that their landlords pay property tax that is reflected in their rent payments.
There is some truth to arguments that the wheel tax is a so-called “regressive tax,” that is one that taxes most heavily those who can least afford it. The widely accepted sales tax, however, is by far the most regressive tax in the State of Tennessee, with the purchase of food being taxed at the same rate as luxury items. Since there is a cap on the sales tax, really expensive luxuries are taxed even less than food, you might say.
The least fair aspect that I see to the wheel tax is that someone driving a $500 clunker from You Betcha Used Cars pays the now-$45 annual fee, the same as someone driving a $40,000 BMW or a $100,000 Delorian. Come to think of it, the Delorian would probably qualify as an antique by now, which exempts it by state law.
But enough with the debate. Fact is the wheel tax is law and at this point, the county commission couldn’t rescind it if they wanted to, unless they are ready to close the schools and give the Sheriff’s Department motor scooters instead of cruisers.
But there has always been that little question of enforcement to deal with. Here I must come clean with you, dear readers, and confess that I am now the boogey man when it comes to the wheel tax. As many already know, for over ten years now I’ve had a part time job delivering delinquent property tax notices for the county.
In February, that simple chore got expanded to also include enforcing the wheel tax, so now I’m Mister Mean. I don’t feel one bit guilty, however. It has always been my philosophy that if everyone pays their fair share of whatever taxes exist, everyone will pay a little less than if five or ten percent of us get a free ride.
So where is the free ride when it comes to the wheel tax? In many cases, those not paying may not even know they’re getting a free ride. It happens when Campbell County residents trade for a new car, or buy that second car for Mom to drive while Dad is at work or that third car for Junior to drive to Campbell County High School.
More often than not, they’re going to buy it in Knoxville or on Alcoa Motor Mile, or in Clinton or Oak Ridge. The dealer is going to “encourage” the customer to register the new car in the county where they buy it. It means Knox County or Anderson County collects the sales tax and it is less paperwork for the dealers since they are already set up with license plates right there in the store.
So now the driver wheels his or her new Nisson, GMC, Ford pick-up or Toyota out on the highway, taxes paid, tags bought, car payments pending, a thankful of gas and the open road ahead. The last thing on their mind is that final little detail – a Campbell County wheel tax sticker. Many will remember it only if they renew their tags in Jacksboro and trade in that Knox County tag for a Campbell County license plate a year later.
Many others will simply renew in the county where their tag is registered, in person or by mail, either without giving the wheel tax requirement a thought, or in some cases precisely because they have given the wheel tax some thought and choose not to pay it.
There are 37,000 vehicles registered to Campbell County residents. Some 30,000 or so wheel tax decals are purchased each year. Quite a few other vehicles are exempt – government vehicles, commercial trailers, “lifetime” tags provided to certain people such as POWs, etc. and antique auto tags are among those. That still leaves, by varying estimates, anywhere from 1,500 to 3,000 or more vehicles not paying the required wheel tax.
Want to know why the squires had to boost the wheel tax by ten bucks last year? The official answer is to balance the school budget when state revenues decreased and to fund the yet-to-be-built new jail. In reality, if the higher estimates of the uncollected wheel tax are correct, that $10 increase could have been largely unnecessary if everyone paid who is supposed to pay.
This brings us back to the discussion going on in Anderson County about whether to pass a wheel tax to pay for the jail expansion. There would certainly be less incentive for Campbell County folks to register their vehicles down in Clinton if it would mean paying a wheel tax fee along with the tag. If you’re going to have to pay a wheel tax anyway, why not pay in the county where you live and your children go to school?
At any rate, modern technology has now made it easier to keep up with who should be paying what to whom. Years ago, the county hired Alvin Sanders to be a wheel tax enforcement officer. Alvin had to creep around parking lots in schools and apartment complexes, write down license plate numbers, run them through the state’s license plate system to get a name and address, send them a warning letter and in some cases cite people into court.
Now the State of Tennessee can provide the county with a computerized list of all 37,000 tags registered in Campbell County, who owns the vehicle, their address, the make and model of the vehicle, who holds the lien, the name of their firstborn and their cumulative grade point average in high school. Well, just joking about the name of the firstborn and grade point average, but you get my drift. Big Brother is watching us.
It will be a simple matter to cross-check the state’s list with the list of those who have purchased a wheel tax decal in Campbell County, eliminate the exemptions and in the very near future, a parade of letters will begin going out.
Those who receive the letters will have a short grace period to come in and purchase a wheel tax decal or provide written evidence that they no longer live in Campbell County. After that, it gets more expensive, with an additional $35 fine added to the tax and possible court costs.
If you happen to be one of the unlucky folks who receives one of these letters, please don’t be too hard on the girls who work in the courthouse when you go in to pay up. They’re just doing their job of accepting and depositing money for the county. You can blame the State, for making it so easy to find you, or blame that long-ago county commission for passing a wheel tax in the first place.
Or you can blame me, Mister Mean. I don’t mind it at all. I was just watching an old Robert Redford war movie the other night where Redford is asked by his commanding general to lead an attack across a river in open boats against German tanks and machine guns. “I need a man,” the general says, “who is tough enough to lead this attack and experienced enough. But most importantly, he must be dumb enough.”
Bruce Pearl unethical? For the NCAA, that’s like the pot calling the kettle black (03/24/2011)
Thank Goodness for the Lady Vols! I can say that for more than one reason this week. Reason # 1 – we Big Orange fans still have something positive to focus on as the men’s basketball program falls back into the depths of Hades from whence it had arisen a few years ago.
Reason # 2 is more personal. I shelled out good money to buy tickets to the NCAA first round games in Knoxville, so I conned the good folks at WLAF/Channel 12 into finding a pinch hitter to film the county commission meeting this week while I attended the game.
The meeting didn’t end until 10:00 p.m., with the first half taken up by – you guessed it – Robert Henson and his single-minded obsession with the so-called County Powers Act. I’ve already used up too much space here discussing the County Powers Act and will spare you any further agony.
In case you missed it, the squires voted against rescinding that particular resolution by a vote of 8-7. One commissioner who voted to rescind told me later that the longer Henson talked and accused commissioners of being evil-doers, the more inclined he was to change his vote. If the matter comes up again, I predict there won’t be five votes for rescinding it next time around.
So thanks to the Lady Vols, I missed one of the longest and most boring, repetitious commission meetings in years. Unfortunately, nothing can help me miss all the controversy surrounding Bruce Pearl and the men’s basketball program, since that is all the local news media has talked about for the past week.
At first I couldn’t believe the news when Athletic Director Mike Hamilton seemed to pull his support for Pearl last week, feeding media mania about the coach’s future right before his boys played in the NCAA tournament.
Then UT fired him, bang! Since Hamilton and Chancellor Jimmy Cheek had publicly voiced their determination to stand by their popular coach last year, they had to come up with a reason for changing their minds. They claimed the reason was a continuing pattern of violations and problems with the program.
Turns out the “continuing pattern” was that somebody gave one of the players a couple of extra tickets to the Kentucky game, probably for friends or family. That’s a so-called secondary violation at worst, hardly worthy of a slap on the wrist to whoever was responsible.
They also mentioned “non-NCAA related” problems, which one media outlet says involved Brian Williams violating the banned substance policy. Big Brian was probably smoking some of that pot that “wasn’t his” back last year when he was arrested along with other players in the armed robbery fiasco that cost Tyler Smith his scholarship.
But how is a player’s sin the fault of the coaching staff? If that were the normal practice, every football coach at UT since the dawn of time would be fired in their first season.
No folks, the simple fact is, the UT administration caved in to pressure from the NCAA, which doesn’t care how popular a coach is with players and fans, or how much good he has done for his community, or how much punishment he has already accepted from the school and the conference.
Bruce Pearl did not tell the truth to NCAA investigators and in the eyes of the folks in charge of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, that is the unpardonable sin. Pearl didn’t try to perpetuate the lie. He confessed the very next day and apologized. It was sort of like the kid who panics and denies taking cookies from the jar, then thinks about it for awhile and comes clean before dinner.
Never mind. The NCAA slapped Pearl with an unethical conduct charge. No coach in history has ever been charged with unethical conduct and kept his job, and damned if the NCAA was about to let Bruce Pearl become the first. I can imagine that the pressure they placed on Hamilton and Cheek was considerable, as in “You keep Pearl, we will see to it that UT pays a heavy price.”
I don’t fault the Athletic Director or the Chancellor for the poor timing of the announcement, as many UT fans were quick to do. I fault them both for being gutless cowards who are perfectly satisfied with a mediocre men’s basketball program as long as nobody is rocking their boat.
Jim Freeman and I were discussing the worst-case scenario for UT if they kept Pearl, probably two years’ suspension for the coach and possibly the same punishment for the men’s basketball team – a couple of years of being banned from the NCAA tournament and qualifying for an SEC championship.
A severe penalty, to be sure. Jim hit it right on the nose, however, when he pointed out that the University of Tennessee has endured 30 years of mediocrity since the glory days of Ray Mears and Ernie and Bernie, so what’s a couple of years compared to that?
As far as the holier-than-thou folks with the NCAA, I think it’s a little like the pot calling the kettle black when they take the moral high ground with coaches over minor sins like having some recruits over for a barbeque dinner while they’re making their campus visit.
Inviting someone to your house for dinner, last time I checked, was called Tennessee hospitality. Buying a player with a bag of money or a new car, that’s unethical. Inviting a kid to taste your wife’s home cooking or finding a couple of extra tickets so his grandpa can see them play – that’s a violation of policies that are too strict to begin with.
Meanwhile, what of the organization that makes all these strict rules and sets itself up as judge and jury over the professional careers of coaches, the futures of young men and women just out of high school and the support of thousands of loyal fans?
Let’s face it, the NCAA is nothing but a pimp for the National Basketball Association and the NFL, and little more.
If the NCAA really cared as much as they claim about the amateur purity of college athletes and the importance of providing a college education, they would require member universities to offer scholarships to players tied to a contractual agreement. If the player leaves school early to enter the NBA draft, that player would have to forfeit a hefty portion of the signing bonus to the school.
No contract, no scholarship, no playing college ball. Why not do that, NCAA? Because then the professional league would stop playing nice and draft kids right out of high school, forget the requirement that they play a year at the college level before entering the draft.
The NBA has a sweet deal here. Major League Baseball spends a fortune on a farm system of minor league teams, most of them unprofitable, to develop young baseball players into mature athletes ready for the big time. If the player has drug or character problems, they will generally surface during the player’s time in the minors and be dealt with. If they turn out to be short on the talent needed for major league play, that will be determined and they will be told to find another line of work.
The NBA and the NFL don’t need to invest in an expensive minor league farm system for basketball or football. The NCAA does that for them. The member colleges and universities take on the responsibility of maturing the young athletes, rooting out the disciplinary problems and giving them a stage to display their talents and potential as future professionals.
The NCAA is happy to do this, despite the fact that many of the most talented players, especially in basketball, play only a year or two before bolting for the NBA. Sometimes entire teams bolt after only a year or two – last year’s Kentucky team and the Florida national championship team come to mind.
So much for the purity of college athletics and the value of a college education. The NCAA is all about money, nothing more. Newsweek had a graphic this week illustrating the economy of “March Madness” – the NCAA basketball championship tournament. It is a $12.2 billion business.
Here is how that $12.2 billion breaks down. Teams will get $240,000 for each game they play in the tournament. Let’s see, that’s 64 teams at the start, 32 in the next round, then Sweet 16, Elite Eight and Final Four. That’s uh, 124 total for a total payout of a little under $30 million. The value of the ticket sales will total $15.5 million. The championship trophy costs $30,000.
OK, we’ve covered the fans, the teams and the champion and we’re only at $45 million, a long way from $12.2 billion. Well, CBS paid $770 million for the TV license fee, and the NCAA collects another $185 million from corporate sponsors, so now we’re up to a billion dollars.
Oh, the television networks will collect $613.8 million for the TV ads, and last year CBS made another $37 million through online advertising, and the NCAA will sell about $300 million in merchandise, everything from programs to T-shirts to whoopee cushions.
We’re still about $10 billion short of accounting for that $12.2 billion total, though. Oh, I forgot. Beer sales will total $7.5 billion as fans consume over 500 million gallons of their liquid refreshment of choice. The remaining $2.5 billion? Gambling, including $80 million wagered legally on games in Nevada, three times the payout to participating teams. The rest, I assume, is the estimate for office ball boards, racketeers in New York and other illegal forms of wagering.
Ah well, I rest my case. Bruce Pearl, bad. He fed some kids at his home. NCAA, pure as driven snow. All they’re doing is pimping young talent for the NBA and putting on an event that sells 500 million gallons of beer and encourages over $2 billion in illegal gambling.
County power versus state power, and a tip of the hat to delinquent taxpayers (03/17/2011)
Some things in this county just won’t go away. Death and taxes come to mind, but add to that anything that some citizens think might involve zoning, or as some put it, “infringing on our rights to do as we please on our own land.”
That is more or less what was behind another hubbub Monday night when the county commission met for their monthly workshop and spent much of it in another running debate with Robert Henson over the “County Powers Act.”
Henson, you might recall from last month, is of the opinion that the resolution adopted by the squires a few months back is a nefarious plot to impose zoning on rural residents so the county can tell us what we can do and not do in our own front yard.
As I tried to point out last month, it doesn’t appear to me to do anything of the kind. County governments in “state’s rights” states like Tennessee are basically local branches of state government. The commissioners have no powers that are not granted to them by legislative act. That is why, if the commission wants to enact a hotel/motel tax, or establish a solid waste compact, or pass a resolution banning nude bars next to schools and churches, it must be done through a private act passed down in Nashville by the General Assembly.
The only exceptions are those laws already in effect that govern the entire state, such as the requirement that drivers carry liability insurance or that automobile junkyards must be shielded from public highways by a fence, etc. etc.
A few years back, the legislature, growing weary of the multitude of private act requests pouring in from the state’s 95 counties, passed a law called the County Powers Act that is more or less a blanket law for a myriad of powers that county governments might want to have, such as the right to regulate behavior that is detrimental to the health and safety of citizens.
The law allows a county to vote to adopt the act and then dispense with the cumbersome process of going through the legislature to get a bill passed if they want, for instance, to regulate private sewage disposal. Private sewage disposal is already regulated through state law, with enforcement by either the health department or Tennessee Division of Water Quality Control. The County Powers Act would allow local government to also establish and enforce regulations if it chooses.
And that’s the key word here, “chooses.” By itself the County Powers Act does nothing except grant a certain amount of local authority over activities that until now, were regulated only from far-off Nashville. Any specific powers the county might want to assume, such as animal control, would still need to be passed by local ordinance with citizens having ample opportunity to voice opposition or support, suggest changes, or tell commissioners to find another job come election time.
Robert Henson has stirred up enough fear among some of his neighbors that a sizable group, maybe a couple of dozen folks, attended the workshop this Monday to protest the County Powers Act. Henson ignored the five-minute limit on comments from the audience, interrogated several commissioners and argued with the chairman, Mayor William Baird.
In the end, a couple of commissioners felt the heat and announced that they would offer a motion next Monday to rescind the County Powers Act. A couple of others voiced doubts about it. That is what happens when government power is concentrated here at home – citizens can have a voice, often a loud voice, in what is done.
Robert Henson and his supporters should go down to Nashville and try those tactics with the legislature. A few college-age hotheads protesting pending anti-union legislation tried that this week and found out why the legislature keeps the Tennessee Highway Patrol around for security.
In Nashville, citizens are lucky if they can get an appointment to speak one-on-one with their own representative, let alone appear at a committee meeting and be allowed to speak without invitation. And forget disrupting a session of the House or Senate – that’s an automatic ticket to a jail cell.
Personally I see no harm in bringing a few of those governmental powers back home where citizens can have a stronger voice in what is done. Apparently some folks distrust their local government officials more than they distrust a group of far-off lawmakers from other parts of the state. They shouldn’t.
Anyone who thinks the legislature is more capable of making wise decisions than our own county commission needs to take a field trip to Nashville and watch the General Assembly in action. If that experience doesn’t turn you into an anti-government anarchist, nothing will.
Speaking of taxes and local government, this is the time of year when I spend much of my weekends and evenings running around the county delivering delinquent property tax notices to landowners who are behind on their property tax and facing the sale of their property for back taxes.
Most folks by now have either paid or are planning to pay before a sale is held in May, but many are still unaware of a fairly new state law that went into effect a couple of years back. Now, if you delay paying those delinquent taxes until after you see your name listed in the newspaper in early April, the county must add $100 to your bill for each tract that is delinquent.
Some people own property that is divided into two or three separate lots and must shell out another $100 on each lot. That’s a hefty penalty for waiting a few days longer to come in and pay, so I try to see as many people as I can and let them know about the $100 deadline.
It breaks my heart to see how much some folks have to shell out to catch their taxes up. Delinquent property taxpayers aren’t tax cheats; the county will eventually get its money. The tax bill is a lien on the property, so it will be collected one way or another.
What is depressing is that some people who get behind on their taxes struggle to catch up and allow their property taxes to become delinquent every year. Property taxes are due by February 28 each year. If you miss that deadline, you have to pay interest for each month that you are late. That’s not too bad. At an annual interest rate of 18 percent, if you owe $400 in taxes and are two months late paying, it will cost you an additional $12 in interest.
But many people don’t get around to paying their taxes only two months late. Many allow the bill to go unpaid for twelve months, That is when they are declared delinquent, after the taxes are twelve months past due. The unpaid tax is then transferred from the Trustee’s office to the Clerk & Master of the Chancery Court. At that point, an additional penalty and clerk’s fee is added to the bill, plus a fee for service of process (that’s my job) plus a percentage of the original unpaid tax for the delinquent tax attorney’s fee.
Suddenly that unpaid $400 property tax bill has gone to $472 to include a year of interest, then another $100-plus for the penalties and fees. The delinquent tax attorney must conduct title searches on each delinquent property, to insure that any lienholders, new owners or others with financial or legal interest in the property are properly notified. If the delinquent taxpayer still hasn’t paid the bill before the title search is conducted, another $125 is added to the bill.
Now suddenly, that $400 property tax bill has ballooned to $687. Add another year’s interest if the taxpayer still hasn’t gotten around to paying by the time the county prepares for a tax sale and the bill is now $759, more or less. If the tax is still unpaid by the time the ad runs in the local newspaper, add another $100 for a total of $859 owed to the county. Oh, I forgot the interest between February and the date of the tax sale – add another $18 or so in interest for a grand total of $877 on an original tax bill of $400!
But surely there aren’t that many taxpayers who let their bills get so far behind that it costs them over twice the original amount. Last July, I was handed over 1,500 delinquent tax notices to serve, either by certified mail or by delivering in person. At least a couple of hundred will still be unpaid the week before the tax sale, with most of those coming in the last few days to pay their bill, now over twice the original cost.
Well, some are only twice the original cost. Someone who only owes 50 bucks on a vacant trailer lot doesn’t shell out as much in interest, but must pay the same penalties, title search fees, service of process fees and newspaper notice penalty as someone who is delinquent on a $500,000 lakeside home. Those taxpayers may end up paying up to six times the amount of the original bill!
The moral of this story is simple. Thank you, delinquent taxpayers, for keeping your county government in business. However, if you would prefer to have that money to pay on a new car or help finance your child’s education, you would be wise to skimp and save a bit and get those property taxes paid on time, or even within the first month after you get the bill when you can earn a small discount.
Legislative follies: ET can’t vote, sanity not a requirement for office (03/10/2011)
The game of musical chairs continues here in Campbell County as various rhubarbs are resolved, rebellions suppressed and money shifted. The rebellion by now-former Environmental Services Director Dan Murray appears to be over for the moment, as the Judge tossed out his lawsuit against Mayor William Baird on Monday. It didn’t take long for his status to change from “suspended” to “former.”
I admit to knowing little about the particulars of why Murray and the man who hired him for the job ended up at odds and staring at each other across a judge’s bench, but when you file a lawsuit against your boss, you do so at your own risk.
A more surprising change in personnel occurred Tuesday night at the school board meeting. The board was looking to trim the central office staff and free up some funds to pay for retiree insurance benefits for cooks, janitors and other non-certified employees. Director Sharon Ridenour suggested leaving the vacant elementary education supervisor post unfilled, merging that job with the secondary supervisor.
The board would have none of it, and instead vacated another position by doing away with the position of maintenance supervisor. David Wright, the supervisor who lost his job, can of course be transferred to another position and probably will.
Wright is a survivor. He came to the central office with late School Superintendent Carl Baird, survived Baird’s defeat at the polls to become attendance supervisor, transportation supervisor, mentor and trainer for substitute teachers and hold about every job in the system except supervisor of latrines. Come to think of it, I guess the maintenance supervisor is the supervisor of latrines.
The only question I have concerns a comment I heard at the meeting about handing off the maintenance supervisor’s duties to the secondary education supervisor. If the secondary education supervisor’s responsibilities are too numerous to add elementary education to the list, why is it OK to burden that person with supervising maintenance of the buildings?
I may have heard it wrong, I admit. Or perhaps the maintenance crew can do the job without a central office supervisor. If not, well, when something smells wrong, there’s usually something rotten in the fridge.
But enough about the boring news here at home. The real entertainment in these early months of 2011 is down in Music City where our state legislature is in session. Mothers, be sure to hide your babies.
I was in Nashville myself this past Saturday, protesting on the Capitol Plaza with a bunch of waterlogged schoolteachers. Well, I was actually in town to watch the Lady Vols stomp Georgia and crush Kentucky, but couldn’t resist a good protest rally in a drizzling rain, just for old times’ sake.
It was the usual stuff – the marching up the avenue, blowing of horns, waving of signs and rah-rah speechmaking by a collection of labor leaders and liberal politicians. The teachers are predictably unhappy with the Republican-controlled legislature’s efforts to end collective bargaining.
They should be. The bill not only releases local school boards from the requirement of negotiating contracts, but outright forbids them from doing so. If a local board wants to sit down and negotiate with teachers, they should be free to do so. This legislature, as usual, is stepping all over local government.
I got a good lesson in media bias from the experience, however. You know, that “liberal” media bias the conservative pundits are always talking about. I’m not the world expert at counting heads in a crowd and granted, when people are all carrying umbrellas a crowd can look larger than it is, but I’ve had 25 years of experience at estimating crowds for newspaper reports.
I looked out at the mob packing the War Memorial Plaza, counted a few rows and did some quick multiplying. Then I gazed down at the marchers still walking up Deaderick Street and out of sight around the block and estimated the attendance at the rally at 3,000-plus, maybe as many as 5,000.
Over on the distant Capitol steps, you could see a few people milling around who I presumed to be journalists, security guards or photographers. There were a couple of dozen, maybe three-dozen tops; few enough to not be confused about the numbers.
So imagine my surprise when I read the story in the Sunday News-Sentinel about the rally. The AP wire service story reported the teachers’ numbers at around 1,000. Well, that was very low, but maybe the reporter isn’t good at estimating crowds and didn’t want to be accused of liberal bias.
But the same story enlightened me on the identity of those distant figures on the Capitol steps. It was the Tea Party, mounting a counter-demonstration. According to the newspaper report, “several hundred” Tea Party members were protesting against the teachers at the State Capitol.
I noticed, as the teachers were marching up the street, a grand total of three people standing on the sidewalk holding signs with things such as “It’s my tax money!” There were perhaps as many as three-dozen people standing across from the rally at the Capitol, so where were these hundreds of Tea Party protesters?
Media bias? You bet, but not “liberal” bias. The conservatives have been so successful at painting the news media as a bunch of liberal weenies that they go overboard to prove they are not. There’s an old saying that, “The first casualty of war is the truth.” Our country is in a war - a war of words and ideology and it appears that as usual, truth is the first casualty.
So what else is the legislature cooking up? Mostly bills sponsored by Republicans that insure that the Democrats do not return to power anytime soon. In addition to trying to destroy the teachers’ unions, we have the voter ID bill, which will force anyone without a photo driver’s license to pay for a special photo ID card.
This will of course discriminate against poor people living in large cities who rely on public transportation, but hey, most of them, if they vote at all, vote for Democrats. An effort to amend that bill to accept student IDs from college students was voted down by the Republicans, one Pachyderm legislator arguing that student IDs are too easy to falsify. Of course, college students also vote primarily for Democrats.
This bill is supposed to make it more difficult for “illegal aliens” to vote. Wow, we don’t want that, especially that ET character, Wookies, Darth Vader or anyone from the Starship Enterprise. Correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t most of the Mexican immigrants you see washing their clothes down at the Laundromat after 11:00 p.m. want to keep a low profile? I doubt that many. If any, want to attract attention by trying to vote.
Of course the voter ID bill also discriminates against senior citizen drivers who are exempted from the requirement to have a photo drivers’ license. Many of those vote for Republicans, so I expect the Pachyderms will be hearing from some of their supporters, perhaps “former” supporters.
I heard Tuesday night that a few Campbell County teachers who voted for Dennis Powers dropped in to see him about the collective bargaining bill and were shown the door, more or less. Darn, if the county’s teachers, who I imagine are about evenly split between Pachyderms and Donkeys, decide to get together over this issue, Dennis might become a one-term lawmaker. Then we’ll have to put up with his right-wing newspaper columns again.
Finally, while some of the bills down in Nashville are just pain mean, some are unconstitutional like the anti-Muslim bill sponsored by Bill Ketron of Murfreesboro. You know a bill is bad when the historically Republican Knoxville News-Sentinel calls it “unconscionable.”
Then there is Stacy Campfield, whom the otherwise well-educated and intelligent voters of West Knox County insisted on elevating from the House to the Senate. Stacy’s bills aren’t mean; they are humorous, ludicrous, ridiculous or a combination of the three.
He’s the fellow responsible for Tennessee’s “road kill bill” that made national headlines. He’s also known as the white man who tried to join the black caucus, the UT fan who insisted on wearing a Halloween mask into Neyland Stadium and now the sponsor of a bill to make it a crime to let your cat or dog sit on your lap while driving.
Nothing wrong with that bill, except Tennessee already has a law against “distracted driving” that covers that particular offense. Stacy also wants to allow guns for faculty on the UT campus despite the fact that the faculty doesn’t want to carry guns on campus. Stacy does serve one important purpose. He proves that one does not have to be mentally competent, or even sane, to hold an elected state office.
Voters sent Donkeys to the stable in 2010, Pachyderms now headed back to the zoo
I never fail to be amused when I read about the latest exploits of various elected officials, whether it be on the grand scale, such as the national political parties, or on the much less grand scale, such as the City of Jellico.
Last week I told you about the Fentress County Commission, which has sparked a taxpayer revolt by acting like the Campbell County Commission of 20 years ago. For those of you who missed it, that’s when our squires, after refusing to raise taxes for the better part of the 20th Century, finally had to bite the bullet after they had drained the county’s fund balance dry, and not only raise property taxes but also enact an unpopular $35 wheel tax to keep schools open.
Fentress County fathers rejected the wheel tax idea and simply raised property taxes by nearly 50 percent, not 50 cents. Good luck over there in Jamestown during the next election, boys.
Closer to home, the Jellico Board of Mayor & Aldermen voted last week to abolish the Jellico Utility Board, in an apparent effort to mollify citizens who are outraged over high electric bills. Good political theater. Unfortunately, it’s also illegal.
Well, illegal might be a harsh term. Let’s just say, “That kite won’t fly.” The City can legally take over management and billing of water and sewer service, no problem.
The electricity is provided by TVA, which set up a system of local utility boards and electric co-ops beginning way back when Franklin D. Roosevelt was still President, TVA was young and most folks in Campbell County still scanned their newspapers by kerosene lamps and burned coal in a grate to keep warm.
The laws set up to govern electric boards don’t allow for local control except through the appointment of board members. If the newly-elected political regime in Jellico wants to have more control over the utility board, they’ve still got to do it the old fashioned (and legal) way, by appointing their own people to the board as the current terms expire.
It seems the Jellico aldermen and mayor are a bit impatient. They might take heed of the old “You can catch more flies with honey” axiom.
Instead of picking a fight with the utility board, wouldn’t it be better to sit down calmly and discuss ways that Jellico electricity customers might get some relief from the high bills, such as policies to allow partial payments, or short-reading the meters every 24-25 days during cold winter months, or if the utility board proves uncooperative, even setting up a city-funded short term loan system to pay utility bills for citizens on low or fixed incomes?
But when you vote to abolish the other side of a discussion, there is no discussion. Instead the bridge is burnt and must generally be rebuilt. But hey, what the city fathers did might be illogical and illegal, but it makes good politics, right?
That’s sort of like our friends on the national scene, the Republicans who now find themselves in the driver’s seats in numerous states as well as one House of Congress.
I’ve been watching from afar the dramas playing out up in Wisconsin and Ohio, where new Republican-dominated legislatures and Pachyderm governors have rushed pell-mell to punish unionized teachers and other public service employees.
I say “punish” because that is, more or less, what’s happening. As here in Tennessee, teachers’ unions have traditionally supported Democrats with their campaign contributions. No secret there, it’s not so much that unions are dominated by Democrats as that Democrats have historically supported the unions more frequently than Republicans have. Unions support those who support unions, just as corporations support those who support corporations.
One of the reasons the Pachyderms gained control of statehouses in the traditionally pro-union states of Ohio and Wisconsin is that union members weren’t motivated to support Democrats in the past election.
Many working-class voters in those states, disgusted with the slow pace of economic recovery, chronic joblessness and nervous about Democrats’ rush to pass the controversial health care law, voted for change. In the case of the numerous Democratic incumbents across the country, “change” meant electing the Republican candidate.
So what did the new Republican majorities do? They rushed headlong to make good and sure that union supporters will be very motivated when the next election year rolls around. I predict that the Pachyderm majority in those rust belt states will be short-lived, as in over by 2012.
While the national Democratic leadership is obviously decrying the horrible way the Republicans are treating these loyal public employees, they have to be secretly snickering as they tally up the number of seats it would take to return the House of Representatives to donkey control and how many electoral votes it will require to re-elect President Obama.
I know I’ve bored you more than once with that ageless quotation from satirist H. L. Mencken, something along the lines of, “The minority always spends its energy proving that the majority is unfit to govern. Both parties are successful, and both are correct.”
More to the point, these days the party in power seems hell-bent on governing as if there is no tomorrow, and they must pass their agenda quickly, without compromise or logical, civil discussion and debate.
The Democrats were so eager to pass the health care law, repeal “Don’t ask, don’t tell” and push other long-awaited items on their agenda that they seem to have forgotten that we were in the throes of a historic recession. Americans, and particularly voters, had not forgotten, and last November they sent many donkeys back to the stable.
So what do Republicans, now in a strong majority in many statehouses and the House of Representatives, do with their newfound majorities? They propose tax cuts for the wealthy who don’t need to worry about unemployment, they try every angle possible to repeal, delay or challenge the health care law and they declare all-out war on the unions and public school teachers.
The political cartoonists hit it right on the nose: John Q. Public is asked what he thinks is most important. “Jobs!” John Q. replies. “We hear you, universal health care,” the Democrats sing in chorus. “No, jobs!” John Q. repeats. “We hear you, repeal health care and bust the unions,” the Republicans answer.
Neither party seems the least bit inclined to be reasonable, or listen to the other side, or fashion compromises that everyone can live with. Instead, its “My way or the highway,” with both liberals and conservatives claiming hey represent the true majority of Americans and have the only road map for the true path to enlightenment.
Meanwhile, most of us, whether Democrat or Republican, and especially independents, are fence-sitters. In fact, most Americans are constantly picking splinters out of our collective behind from sitting the fence. Republicans prefer moderate Republicans, Democrats prefer moderate Democrats and independents like neither all that much.
Next election, if the Pachyderms don’t wise up, the voters will go to the barn to retrieve the Donkeys. Where do old elephants go? I guess they will all be returned to the zoo.
Tax revolt in Fentress County a reminder of Campbell County’s past money woes
What’s that old snippet of wisdom? No matter how bad things are, somebody else has it worse? Campbell County taxpayers can take solace in the fact that the same holds true for taxes and local politics.
I was chatting the other day with old friend David Beatty, a political lightning rod and former county executive over in Fentress County, about that county’s financial troubles. The goings-on in Sergeant York Country put our own humble controversies to shame.
Quite a few Campbell County citizens were upset last fall when the new county commission voted to raise the property tax by five pennies and add ten bucks to the wheel tax. Commissioners even balked at giving a penny of the tax rate to Road Superintendent Dennis Potter so he could pave a couple more miles of road each year.
I pointed out at the time that we needed to put the five cent tax hike in perspective, that for a $100,000 home, that amounted to merely $12.50, less than the cost of your teen’s admission to watch Twilight: New Moon plus popcorn and a soda.
Over in Fentress County, squires voted last year to increase the property tax by 49 percent, not 49 cents. The actual tax increase was 65 cents on each $100 of assessed value. The owner of a $100,000 home in Fentress County will pay an additional $162.50 in taxes this year.
Predictably, this has resulted in something akin to a tax revolt among our distant neighbors. Ironically, both folks who lean to the left of the political spectrum and those who lean to the right are ganging up on the courthouse, with members of SOCM, that group of bleeding heart liberal tree-huggers, teaming up with proponents of Tennessee Tax Revolt, a group of “get-the-government-off-our-backs” conservatives, to push a petition for charter government.
They want a government that imposes mandatory term limits on elected officials and requires a vote by public referendum to enact a tax increase, among other things.
This might work well if not for one small problem: the public seldom ever votes to impose a tax on itself, even when it is badly needed. Still, it would place the responsibility on county officials to prove they can be good stewards of taxpayer dollars, and they would have to publicly prove that a tax increase is justified and needed in order to convince enough voters.
As in Campbell County, one of the major reasons for Fentress County’s tax woes is the need to build a new jail. The old one is too small and outdated, the county is being forced to house prisoners in other counties and pay a pretty penny for the privilege, and new courthouse security requirements mean not just a jail, but as here in Jacksboro a “justice center” also housing courtrooms and judges’ offices.
Talk about a broken record! Some of our local squires tried one last time Tuesday night to sidetrack our own $10.6 million justice center. Beverly Hall argued that the old jail should be preserved, if for nothing else, than as a storage area for records. Other squires pointed out that the architectural plans for the new justice complex include using some of the space occupied by the old jail and that if it is not demolished, construction will be again delayed.
Beverly’s motion received support from only Sue Nance, Thomas Hatmaker and Melvin “Doctor No” Boshears, and the timeline for the new justice center remains intact.
So why, if both our county and Fentress County are both financing new justice centers, did Campbell County taxpayers escape with only an additional nickel on the tax rate while people in Jamestown are paying through the nose?
As much as some people will hate to admit this, part of the reason lies with Campbell County’s financial management system and its director Moneybags Marlow. Moneybags was able to figure out a formula that included extending the payout on the county’s debt for an extra year and a little economic voodoo here, a little financial sorcery there. The result is, our grandkids might still be paying for the justice center when we’re all comfortably retired, but at least we’ll be able to pay for their education so they can afford to pay the bill.
Another reason for the difference between Fentress and Campbell County’s solution to the financial problem is even more elementary. We’ve already been through what they’re going through, nearly two decades ago.
It was at that time that Campbell County squires woke up one fine day to discover that they didn’t have enough money to keep the schools open, while our rainy day fund, also known as the county’s fund balance, was non-existent. In other words, previous county commissions had avoided tax increases for year after year while failing to cut spending, dipping repeatedly into the fund balance to keep pace with inflation, until the county was broke.
You know those months when car repairs, a nasty letter from the IRS or the need for a good bail bondsman leave you a little tapped out. Yeah, those times when you count the pennies in the mason jar or haul all those aluminum cans down to the recycling center to scrape together enough money to buy two gallons of gas and a happy meal.
That was Campbell County back in the days before financial management, when Chancellor Billy Joe White had to threaten to lock up the entire commission and school board unless they sat down and figured out a way to open the schools. They quickly figured out a way, with both a hefty property tax increase and an unpopular wheel tax.
Apparently Fentress County has reached just such a point, with a dangerously low fund balance and some needs, whether overly generous as many citizens insist, or not, to spend money they don’t have. The result is a whopping big tax increase at a time of economic hardship in one of the poorest counties in the state.
Moneybags Marlow is a political lightning rod in his own right, with about as many enemies as he has friends. But it is good that Campbell County has a money manager, and the often-maligned financial management system has proven its worth. Campbell County’s past and Fentress County’s present both point to the penalty when each department head worries only about his or her department’s budget, a group of part-time commissioners deal with the county’s finances one year at a time and nobody is in charge of looking out for our money over the long term.
A new regime rules in Nashville, but it’s still the same old political games
County commissioners managed to take up a good part of the three-plus hours they spent together on Monday night by rehashing old arguments, apparently on the presumption that if one travels in circles often enough, the result will somehow come out differently. Any dog can tell you that no matter how often it chases its tail, it is still a tail.
One thing that remains a tail appears to be that new, but still un-built $10.6 million jail. Bob Walden, who opposed the expensive version from the get-go, took advantage of an opportunity during the workshop to again question the cost, and why a cheaper, modular jail was not considered.
Veteran commissioners Bobby White and Rusty Orick expressed impatience with any notion of changing plans yet again. White insisted that any more delays and Campbell County will be singing “Here come the judge,” and it will not be pretty.
“The judge will build a Taj Mahal and we’ll have to pay for it,” Bobby predicted.
The opportunity to re-visit the jail debate came when Beverly Hall asked why the old jail cannot be saved instead of demolished, Beverly felt that tearing down the structure would be a waste, when it might be useful, if for nothing else but storage of records.
Only problem is, the old jail is a wreck. The roof leaks, climate control is non-existent and it would probably cost more to make useful than it’s worth. The county was long overdue to build a new jail. They tried to pinch a penny too tightly and built a new jail that was totally inadequate, but that doesn’t change the fact that the original jail, built in the early 1960s, is past the point of redemption.
Another tail that was chased at the workshop was the County Powers Act, that enabling resolution that the commission passed way back before Christmas. Concerned citizen Robert Henson appears to have just gotten around to reading it, and did not like what he saw.
Henson asked for the customary five minutes to address the squires, than took 25 minutes to attack the County Powers Act as a sneaky way to impose zoning on the county’s citizens.
Henson apparently doesn’t think that county government has the right to determine if something is a nuisance, detrimental to public health or objectionable to a community, and regulate or ban it.
Basically the County Powers Act doesn’t appear to me to do anything more than give local government a measure of control over activities that previously were under the control of state government.
If, for instance, an individual is storing old tires illegally on their land, creating a mosquito haven and a plague to neighbors, or dumping septic tank residue on a field that neighbors have to smell, the only remedy in the past was to contact state authorities and wait for the Tennessee Department of Environment & Conservation to send out an inspector and levy a fine.
The new act would give Campbell County the right to pass an ordinance and take immediate action. It might also empower the county to restrict where an adult bookstore can be located, or some other objectionable activity.
That doesn’t mean such restrictions would be automatic. It would still require a vote by the commission to restrict or regulate any specific activity, and all sides in a debate could have their say right here at home, where everybody knows everybody else. In my view, that’s an improvement over regulation coming out of far-off Nashville.
Speaking of far-off Nashville, the legislature is in full bloom down in Music City. Instead of spring flowers, however, all I’ve seen so far have been sour grapes.
It goes without saying that the Tennessee General Assembly has historically been a politically corrupt institution, with most members spending most of their time insuring their re-elections rather than taking care of the citizens of the state. This was the case for decades while the legislature was controlled by Democrats.
So along come the Republicans and wrest control of both houses from the donkeys. The pachyderms suddenly have an opportunity to show how good government can work, with the best interests of the majority of citizens being foremost in their minds.
What have the pachyderms done so far to show us how they are going to re-create a General Assembly that is fair and honest?
They have pushed forward a bill to require photo IDs in order to vote, for one thing, specifically a Tennessee driver’s license. This will cause a hardship for poor people who do not own a car, as well as elderly drivers who have one of the old licenses that don’t require a photo. An estimated 500,000 Tennesseans currently do not possess a photo driver’s license
These folks can pay a fee and get a special photo ID that will enable them to vote, but only 33 of the state’s 95 counties have centers that provide those IDs., meaning a lot of people are going to have to drive some distance. An attempt to amend the bill to allow Medicare cards to serve as photo IDs for voting purposes was voted down.
Many voters who are currently registered will probably fail to obtain an ID and now be denied their right to vote. And if the fee ID is allowed to stand, we are once more back to the days of charging a poll tax.
Why would the Republican-controlled legislature pass such a law? Do we have a problem with illegal immigrants trying to vote in Tennessee elections? Oh sure, if you’re in the country illegally, you really want to draw attention to yourself by trying to vote. Well, poor people tend to vote more often for Democrats, don’t they? I can’t really think of another purpose for it.
Next bill on the table would abolish the right of teachers’ unions to negotiate contracts with school boards. Anti-union sentiment is pretty much a staple of pachyderm politics, but this little law might also be motivated by the fact that the Tennessee Education Association donated more campaign dollars to Democrats than Republicans in the past election.
According to the TEA lobbyist, a Republican legislator pressured the union for more campaign money and was unhappy with the results. Could this be retribution? I thought the “new” legislature was going to get beyond that old, corrupt, politically-motivated way of doing things.
Other bills that have surfaced early on would allow the state to meet the legal requirement for public notice by posting a pending change in the state constitution on government websites instead of in newspapers of general circulation. That would save taxpayers’ dollars, but how many people routinely visit government websites? And again, its only the poor and the elderly nowadays who often don’t have home computers, and the current regime in Nashville seems to care little about either group.
Even the vote to delay the merger of Memphis and Shelby County school systems seems to have political motivation. Memphis is predominantly black and Democrat. Shelby County outside Memphis is white and Republican. ‘Nuff said.
So, I’m so happy to see we’ve got a brand new attitude down in Nashville and a new commitment to fair government where people mean more than politics.
Actually, the only law the General Assembly could pass that would really benefit Tennesseans might be a bill to disband the General Assembly. I doubt seriously that we would miss them much.
Tired of the cold? Legislature should generate enough hot air to warm us all
I keep hoping for some interesting news to break hereabouts so I’ll have something to comment upon, but all we get is more snow, more cold, cold again, then snow and so on. Global warming is upon us, I suppose. No, wait. The correct term is “climate change” or “ice age.” I’ve lost track.
No matter, there’s global warming to go around here in Tennessee. That’s because the Tennessee General Assembly is back in session down in Nashville, and they will produce enough hot air to warm every place from Memphis to Johnson City by at least five degrees.
The Pachyderms are in complete charge in this year’s version of the legislature, so now they will have a perfect opportunity to prove that they can govern just as ineffectively as the Donkeys. I have complete faith that they will not disappoint us in that respect.
The GenAss is off to a good start. The new Republican majority has already rolled out a bill that will require driver’s license exams to be conducted only in English, which should really tickle the Germans who are building the new Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga and the Japanese who now own about half of the state’s industries.
They’ve rolled out a number of other anti-illegal immigrant bills and one sponsor, Bill Ketron of Murfressboro, suggests rolling them all together into one “omnibus” bill that he contends, “will send a single message.” I think the message he’s looking for is “Go back where you came from.”
I’m for that. I think all Tennesseans should go back where they came from and give the state back to its original owners, the Cherokee Nation. Since my Granny Sharp was a quarter Cherokee, I’ll be waiting for all you carpetbaggers to mail your house deeds to me here at WLAF.
Seriously, a poll shows that most Tennesseans agree that illegal immigrants take jobs from locals and place a burden on social services, while a majority of Tennesseans also oppose deportation and would support giving immigrants a path to citizenship.
We complain about the numbers of immigrants from Mexico and other Latin American countries that flood across our borders illegally, but our country places huge hurdles in the way of those same people coming to our country legally. A Mexican applying for a visa to visit America can expect delays that stretch into years, and must often place a cash bond to guarantee they will not remain.
Meanwhile, someone from Japan, India or any country in Western Europe has little difficulty in gaining entrance to America and remaining indefinitely. And even after 911, Saudis and citizens of many other Arab nations are welcomed with open arms, if a bit nervously. All the Mexicans want to do is pick our beans, shovel our sludge and wash dishes in Chinese restaurants; I don’t know of any who are interested in blowing up the Empire State Building.
The Republican legislature does have one very good idea that has emerged this year. While they are talking about cutting out state funding for that bunch of shameless liberals who run public television, they also want the state’s public TV stations to broadcast sessions of the State Senate and State House of Representatives “gavel to gavel.”
This is good, At last Tennesseans will be able to see their legislators in action. From what I’ve seen of past legislatures in action, this should guarantee that nine out of every ten will be voted out of office two years from now. Want term limits? Just let the voters see the General Assembly at work and the term limits will take care of themselves.
The other rhubarb emerging from the early days of the legislature involves an undeclared war that some of the newly elected conservatives, along with the Tennessee School Board Association, appear ready to wage against the teachers’ unions.
You remember the Tennessee School Board Association. They’re the folks that recently “instructed” our local school board, among others, to stop leading off meetings with a prayer. I noticed last week that the Campbell County School Board led their meeting off with a prayer, no discussion or debate, and no protests from the board attorney.
So much for the TSBA. Associations don’t send directives to their members, they’re supposed to take directives from their members. I suppose some of their member boards directed them to attack the teachers’ unions’ power to negotiate contracts and extend the time required for teachers to gain tenure, but then perhaps not.
After all, the Tennessee Farm Bureau claims to represent the interests of all of its thousands of members who buy Farm Bureau insurance when in reality, their lobbyists represent the interests of a handful of big corporate agribusiness firms. No telling who pulls the Tennessee School Board Association’s chain.
I agree that the teachers unions sometimes protect teachers who shouldn’t be teaching. There are some teachers out there hiding behind the tenure policies who are either burned out, unfit, or poorly prepared. Most are anything but, and are dedicated, hard working and will never be paid what they are worth to society.
I think, by and large, that Campbell County currently finds itself with a capable school board. Such has not always been the case, and in many counties it is not the case now.
Unions only emerge when management exploits workers to the point where unions become necessary. This has always been true, whether we’re talking about coal miners toiling in unsafe, unhealthy conditions for low pay in the 1930s or school teachers losing their jobs or missing out on promotions because the didn’t vote for the right person. That practice was common enough in Campbell County as recently as my early days covering the news.
In addition to praying, the school board also voted to set all schools’ thermostats at the same levels – 70 degrees in winter and 72 degrees in summer. Wow, I can see teachers lobbying now to get classrooms with outside doors, so they can crack them when the sweat begins to roll.
I keep my thermostat at 67-68 in winter and that’s plenty warm enough as long as I don’t run around the house in my birthday suit. Can’t wait to see some of those heating bills for the schools.
Heating bills have been in the news around here this week as well. Predictably, the cold weather has resulted in some sticker shock when LUB and Jellico Utilities recently sent out the bills for the past month. Jellico citizens in particular seem to be up in arms, and the reason may not entirely be attributable to the cold weather.
I talked to one or two Jellico residents this week. Both had astronomical electric bills this month. One said his bill was read for 39 days, the other said 34 days. This, if accurate, is ridiculous. In one of the coldest months of the year, a utility is four to nine days late in reading meters? That means that some folks are paying for nearly a month and a half on one bill; no wonder customers are up in arms.
I have relatives living up in the icebox state of Iowa. One cousin told me some years ago that their local utility “short-reads” meters during the coldest winter months. The January, February and March bills are read every 25-28 days. This means that customers will pay for 35 days for a couple of months when the weather breaks in the spring, but the bills will be more uniform and easier on people with fixed incomes.
Seems a simple enough fix. I wonder why our local utilities haven’t thought of it.
Florida trip, news from Egypt
turn thoughts to days gone by
Back from sunny Florida, where I finally caught up with my sinuses, which migrated south back in October and left me behind in Tennessee. Unfortunately, when I got ready to return to chilly Big Orange Country, my sinuses refused to budge. Last time I saw ‘em, they were basking in the heated pool at Destin.
Destin, Florida is quite the tourist Mecca these days, wall to wall condos, overpriced seafood restaurants and outlet malls. My family used to vacation there when I was a kid, back in that other century, in the 1950s.
I remember the town as a sleepy little fishing village. We always stayed at one of the two beachfront motels, in an efficiency unit where we could cook the fish my dad planned to catch from one of the party boats that operated out of Destin’s little harbor.
While Papa Winfrey and his old army buddy Sid ventured out in search of Red Snapper, yours truly would stay on the beach with mama and get sunburned, playing on the sandbar that guarded the empty harbor. Today that sandbar is covered with high-rise condominiums and the sleepy harbor is festooned not only with a fleet of fishing charter boats but private yachts as well.
My dad stopped going to Destin after one memorable trip. His fishing buddy was Sid Ellis from Roswell, Georgia. Papa Winfrey and Sid served in the Signal Corps together during World War II and remained friends for years after returning to civilian life. They usually planned a vacation trip together every summer to go deep sea fishing, and their favorite spot was Destin, where they had befriended the captain of one of the party boats, named the “Florida Girl.”
I recall the Florida Girl as being pretty typical of fishing boats from that era, small by today’s standards, constructed of wood and of debatable seaworthiness. My recollections may be colored somewhat by the fact that the tub nearly sank on Papa Winfrey’s last trip.
Sid and Pop joined a couple of dozen other paying customers on a trip one summer when I was probably about ten or so, still too young for my dad to waste money taking me out for an entire day of hard-core fishing. My mom and I would hang out on the beach, then do down to the dock in the late afternoon to see what the mighty anglers brought in from the sea.
On this particular afternoon, the boat didn’t show at the expected time around 5:00 p.m. By 6:00 p.m. still no sign, and waiting family members began to get anxious. Several went down to the harbor office, where they were told the boat had a bit of “engine trouble” and would be late getting in.
Around midnight the Florida Girl finally limped into port, accompanied by a Coast Guard cutter. The “engine trouble” turned out to be a split bulkhead that began leaking so badly that the pumps couldn’t keep up and the boat nearly sank.
Compounding the problem was the fact that the Florida Girl, being a small boat, had no lifeboats and only a couple of dozen of the old kapok life preservers, while there were around 40 people on board.
As the captain and crew passed out the limited supply of life preservers, Papa Winfrey and Sid both declined, handing theirs off to a couple of women. They then retreated to the stern where they propped themselves on the rail, beers and cigars in hand.
Sid later told the rest of the story, in his deep Georgia drawl: “I looked over at Harry (Papa Winfrey’s real name) and asked, ‘Haarry, what you gonna do if this here tub sinks?’
“ ‘Sid,’ he says, ‘See that little short feller over there with the dumb lookin’ hat?’ I says, ‘The one wearing the purple shorts?’ He says, ‘Yeah. He’s wearing my life jacket.’”
Sid added, “I pointed to another Yankee, a skinny little feller, and said, ‘That’s my life jacket yonder.’”
Fortunately for the two tourists, the crew finally slowed the leak enough that the pumps kept it afloat. The Coast Guard arrived and the Florida Girl limped back safely into port. The next morning the boat had settled to the bottom of the shallow harbor. Having caught no fish, Papa Winfrey and Sid gave up on Destin after that and started vacationing in Panama City instead.
About a decade or so later, I had the opportunity to be driving through Destin with some college buddies and stopped off at the harbor. “Whatever happened to the old Florida Girl and its captain?” I asked one of the charter fleet captains that had been around longer than most.
“That guy was an outlaw,” he replied. “Couldn’t make ends meet taking people out to fish so he started smuggling guns to Cuba for Castro’s rebels. Last we heard the Cuban navy blew him out of the water.”
My thoughts turned to Papa Winfrey and Sid this week as I watched the news coming out of Egypt. That’s where the two of them served most of their hitch during the war, and but for a quirk of fate, I might have been born in Egypt.
Papa Winfrey, known affectionately as “Jiggs” around Lake City, was a self-educated electronic genius of sorts. He began repairing the old upright broadband radio sets when he was in high school, opening his own shop over a drug store. When he entered the army after Pearl Harbor, they found out that he knew a little about radio, at a time when most Americans still didn’t own one.
My dad only spent one day in basic training. They pulled him out on the second day and sent him off to Missouri to advanced radio school. Since advanced radio school was only available to soldiers with the rank of sergeant or higher, they made him a “buck sergeant” a week after he entered the army.
It was in Missouri that Jiggs met my mom, who worked at the PX on the base. When they first met, he was still wearing his private’s uniform. The next time they met, it was at an off-base club and he was wearing civilian clothes.
He called and asked mom out for a date later that week, but when he showed up, he was wearing sergeant’s stripes and had a jeep and a driver. She thought he was impersonating a sergeant to impress her and refused to go out with him until he got his captain on the phone to confirm that, “Yes, Winfrey is a sergeant.”
That was in February,1942. They married in April and by June, my dad, his buddy Sid and their entire Signal Corps company was on a troopship bound for North Africa. The United States Army wouldn’t arrive in North Africa for another seven months; dad’s company was being sent out early to be attached to the British Eighth Army in Egypt.
It seems that the British Army had lost most of its experienced radio operators and repairmen when they had to retreat from the Germans and evacuate Dunkirk. Unfortunately, the ship carrying their radio specialists didn’t make it out of Dunkirk and the British were desperate.
They asked their American allies for help and the 3175th Signal Corps Company was our answer. They arrived in Egypt just as the German Afrika Corps under Field Marshal Edwin Rommel was running the British across Africa for a last stand at a place in the desert called El Alamein.
Dad’s company was assigned to operate a radio relay station out in the desert sands near the Pyramids of Giza, about 40 miles south of Cairo. Back in those days, before we had all those satellites orbiting the earth, radio signals followed line of sight.
If you wanted to send a radio message from say, England to India, England’s largest colonial possession, it had to be relayed from Bombay, India to the Seychelles Islands in the Indian Ocean, then to Durban, South Africa, up the East African coast through Kenya to Egypt, then to the island of Malta south of Italy, on to the British naval base at Gibralter and finally to England.
The Germans wanted very badly to disrupt the British line of communications. They nearly bombed the tiny island of Malta into the Stone Age in an effort to cut the signal, but Malta held out. When Rommel invaded Egypt, it was assumed by the British that he would try to capture the radio relay station at Giza, so they loaded it with high explosives and gave my dad the button.
“I say old chap, if Jerry should happen to break around our lines and come over the rise, do evacuate the station and then push this button. You’ll have about 60 seconds to get away from the blast,” Papa Winfrey was told.
Fortunately for yours truly, my dad never had to push the button. The Germans did send a tank squadron through the desert in an effort to destroy his station, but the famed British “desert rats” ambushed them about three miles away and left nothing but smoking wreckage. That’s as close as my dad got to the action, posing for photos with his men on top of some blasted-out German Panzer tanks.
“I was in the rear with the gear,” dad said years later. His skills in operating complicated radio stations kept him in Egypt as the shooting war moved on to Sicily, Italy, France and finally Germany. Instead of crawling around in some European foxhole, he performed duties such as wiring the interior of the Great Pyramid with electric lights so President Roosevelt could tour it safely, or flying out to Tunesia to rebuild a captured German communications center.
After the Germans surrendered, the Army began preparing to send our men home. An official from Standard Oil Company made my dad an offer: “Stay here, muster out in Egypt and go to work for us. We need electricians. We’ll pay to bring your wife over here, give you a nice home, servants and a fat paycheck.”
Alas, Jiggs was homesick for the hills of Tennessee and just plain sick of desert sand, heat and camels. He came home, I was born in LaFollette and don’t have to worry about the “birther” crowd complaining if I ever run for President.
So I’ve watched the growing unrest in Egypt with a special curiosity. I hope the people protesting Mubarak will succeed in getting him to step down peacefully, but I wouldn’t bet on it. Egypt has had a long tradition of authoritarian rule dating to the days of Cleopatra, and these rulers have seldom given up easily or without bloodshed.
I just hope Islamic radicals don’t hijack the revolution and turn Egypt into another America-hating sandpit like Iran. I’ve always dreamed of one day, maybe after I retire, heading over there to check out my dad’s old haunts. Probably won’t, but it would be a shame to lose the dream.
February 10, 2011
Tired of the cold? Legislature should generate enough hot air to warm us all
I keep hoping for some interesting news to break hereabouts so I’ll have something to comment upon, but all we get is more snow, more cold, cold again, then snow and so on. Global warming is upon us, I suppose. No, wait. The correct term is “climate change” or “ice age.” I’ve lost track.
No matter, there’s global warming to go around here in Tennessee. That’s because the Tennessee General Assembly is back in session down in Nashville, and they will produce enough hot air to warm every place from Memphis to Johnson City by at least five degrees.
The Pachyderms are in complete charge in this year’s version of the legislature, so now they will have a perfect opportunity to prove that they can govern just as ineffectively as the Donkeys. I have complete faith that they will not disappoint us in that respect.
The GenAss is off to a good start. The new Republican majority has already rolled out a bill that will require driver’s license exams to be conducted only in English, which should really tickle the Germans who are building the new Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga and the Japanese who now own about half of the state’s industries.
They’ve rolled out a number of other anti-illegal immigrant bills and one sponsor, Bill Ketron of Murfressboro, suggests rolling them all together into one “omnibus” bill that he contends, “will send a single message.” I think the message he’s looking for is “Go back where you came from.”
I’m for that. I think all Tennesseans should go back where they came from and give the state back to its original owners, the Cherokee Nation. Since my Granny Sharp was a quarter Cherokee, I’ll be waiting for all you carpetbaggers to mail your house deeds to me here at WLAF.
Seriously, a poll shows that most Tennesseans agree that illegal immigrants take jobs from locals and place a burden on social services, while a majority of Tennesseans also oppose deportation and would support giving immigrants a path to citizenship.
We complain about the numbers of immigrants from Mexico and other Latin American countries that flood across our borders illegally, but our country places huge hurdles in the way of those same people coming to our country legally. A Mexican applying for a visa to visit America can expect delays that stretch into years, and must often place a cash bond to guarantee they will not remain.
Meanwhile, someone from Japan, India or any country in Western Europe has little difficulty in gaining entrance to America and remaining indefinitely. And even after 911, Saudis and citizens of many other Arab nations are welcomed with open arms, if a bit nervously. All the Mexicans want to do is pick our beans, shovel our sludge and wash dishes in Chinese restaurants; I don’t know of any who are interested in blowing up the Empire State Building.
The Republican legislature does have one very good idea that has emerged this year. While they are talking about cutting out state funding for that bunch of shameless liberals who run public television, they also want the state’s public TV stations to broadcast sessions of the State Senate and State House of Representatives “gavel to gavel.”
This is good, At last Tennesseans will be able to see their legislators in action. From what I’ve seen of past legislatures in action, this should guarantee that nine out of every ten will be voted out of office two years from now. Want term limits? Just let the voters see the General Assembly at work and the term limits will take care of themselves.
The other rhubarb emerging from the early days of the legislature involves an undeclared war that some of the newly elected conservatives, along with the Tennessee School Board Association, appear ready to wage against the teachers’ unions.
You remember the Tennessee School Board Association. They’re the folks that recently “instructed” our local school board, among others, to stop leading off meetings with a prayer. I noticed last week that the Campbell County School Board led their meeting off with a prayer, no discussion or debate, and no protests from the board attorney.
So much for the TSBA. Associations don’t send directives to their members, they’re supposed to take directives from their members. I suppose some of their member boards directed them to attack the teachers’ unions’ power to negotiate contracts and extend the time required for teachers to gain tenure, but then perhaps not.
After all, the Tennessee Farm Bureau claims to represent the interests of all of its thousands of members who buy Farm Bureau insurance when in reality, their lobbyists represent the interests of a handful of big corporate agribusiness firms. No telling who pulls the Tennessee School Board Association’s chain.
I agree that the teachers unions sometimes protect teachers who shouldn’t be teaching. There are some teachers out there hiding behind the tenure policies who are either burned out, unfit, or poorly prepared. Most are anything but, and are dedicated, hard working and will never be paid what they are worth to society.
I think, by and large, that Campbell County currently finds itself with a capable school board. Such has not always been the case, and in many counties it is not the case now.
Unions only emerge when management exploits workers to the point where unions become necessary. This has always been true, whether we’re talking about coal miners toiling in unsafe, unhealthy conditions for low pay in the 1930s or school teachers losing their jobs or missing out on promotions because the didn’t vote for the right person. That practice was common enough in Campbell County as recently as my early days covering the news.
In addition to praying, the school board also voted to set all schools’ thermostats at the same levels – 70 degrees in winter and 72 degrees in summer. Wow, I can see teachers lobbying now to get classrooms with outside doors, so they can crack them when the sweat begins to roll.
I keep my thermostat at 67-68 in winter and that’s plenty warm enough as long as I don’t run around the house in my birthday suit. Can’t wait to see some of those heating bills for the schools.
Heating bills have been in the news around here this week as well. Predictably, the cold weather has resulted in some sticker shock when LUB and Jellico Utilities recently sent out the bills for the past month. Jellico citizens in particular seem to be up in arms, and the reason may not entirely be attributable to the cold weather.
I talked to one or two Jellico residents this week. Both had astronomical electric bills this month. One said his bill was read for 39 days, the other said 34 days. This, if accurate, is ridiculous. In one of the coldest months of the year, a utility is four to nine days late in reading meters? That means that some folks are paying for nearly a month and a half on one bill; no wonder customers are up in arms.
I have relatives living up in the icebox state of Iowa. One cousin told me some years ago that their local utility “short-reads” meters during the coldest winter months. The January, February and March bills are read every 25-28 days. This means that customers will pay for 35 days for a couple of months when the weather breaks in the spring, but the bills will be more uniform and easier on people with fixed incomes.
Seems a simple enough fix. I wonder why our local utilities haven’t thought of it.
2/3/2011
Florida trip, news from Egypt
turn thoughts to days gone by
Back from sunny Florida, where I finally caught up with my sinuses, which migrated south back in October and left me behind in Tennessee. Unfortunately, when I got ready to return to chilly Big Orange Country, my sinuses refused to budge. Last time I saw ‘em, they were basking in the heated pool at Destin.
Destin, Florida is quite the tourist Mecca these days, wall to wall condos, overpriced seafood restaurants and outlet malls. My family used to vacation there when I was a kid, back in that other century, in the 1950s.
I remember the town as a sleepy little fishing village. We always stayed at one of the two beachfront motels, in an efficiency unit where we could cook the fish my dad planned to catch from one of the party boats that operated out of Destin’s little harbor.
While Papa Winfrey and his old army buddy Sid ventured out in search of Red Snapper, yours truly would stay on the beach with mama and get sunburned, playing on the sandbar that guarded the empty harbor. Today that sandbar is covered with high-rise condominiums and the sleepy harbor is festooned not only with a fleet of fishing charter boats but private yachts as well.
My dad stopped going to Destin after one memorable trip. His fishing buddy was Sid Ellis from Roswell, Georgia. Papa Winfrey and Sid served in the Signal Corps together during World War II and remained friends for years after returning to civilian life. They usually planned a vacation trip together every summer to go deep sea fishing, and their favorite spot was Destin, where they had befriended the captain of one of the party boats, named the “Florida Girl.”
I recall the Florida Girl as being pretty typical of fishing boats from that era, small by today’s standards, constructed of wood and of debatable seaworthiness. My recollections may be colored somewhat by the fact that the tub nearly sank on Papa Winfrey’s last trip.
Sid and Pop joined a couple of dozen other paying customers on a trip one summer when I was probably about ten or so, still too young for my dad to waste money taking me out for an entire day of hard-core fishing. My mom and I would hang out on the beach, then do down to the dock in the late afternoon to see what the mighty anglers brought in from the sea.
On this particular afternoon, the boat didn’t show at the expected time around 5:00 p.m. By 6:00 p.m. still no sign, and waiting family members began to get anxious. Several went down to the harbor office, where they were told the boat had a bit of “engine trouble” and would be late getting in.
Around midnight the Florida Girl finally limped into port, accompanied by a Coast Guard cutter. The “engine trouble” turned out to be a split bulkhead that began leaking so badly that the pumps couldn’t keep up and the boat nearly sank.
Compounding the problem was the fact that the Florida Girl, being a small boat, had no lifeboats and only a couple of dozen of the old kapok life preservers, while there were around 40 people on board.
As the captain and crew passed out the limited supply of life preservers, Papa Winfrey and Sid both declined, handing theirs off to a couple of women. They then retreated to the stern where they propped themselves on the rail, beers and cigars in hand.
Sid later told the rest of the story, in his deep Georgia drawl: “I looked over at Harry (Papa Winfrey’s real name) and asked, ‘Haarry, what you gonna do if this here tub sinks?’
“ ‘Sid,’ he says, ‘See that little short feller over there with the dumb lookin’ hat?’ I says, ‘The one wearing the purple shorts?’ He says, ‘Yeah. He’s wearing my life jacket.’”
Sid added, “I pointed to another Yankee, a skinny little feller, and said, ‘That’s my life jacket yonder.’”
Fortunately for the two tourists, the crew finally slowed the leak enough that the pumps kept it afloat. The Coast Guard arrived and the Florida Girl limped back safely into port. The next morning the boat had settled to the bottom of the shallow harbor. Having caught no fish, Papa Winfrey and Sid gave up on Destin after that and started vacationing in Panama City instead.
About a decade or so later, I had the opportunity to be driving through Destin with some college buddies and stopped off at the harbor. “Whatever happened to the old Florida Girl and its captain?” I asked one of the charter fleet captains that had been around longer than most.
“That guy was an outlaw,” he replied. “Couldn’t make ends meet taking people out to fish so he started smuggling guns to Cuba for Castro’s rebels. Last we heard the Cuban navy blew him out of the water.”
My thoughts turned to Papa Winfrey and Sid this week as I watched the news coming out of Egypt. That’s where the two of them served most of their hitch during the war, and but for a quirk of fate, I might have been born in Egypt.
Papa Winfrey, known affectionately as “Jiggs” around Lake City, was a self-educated electronic genius of sorts. He began repairing the old upright broadband radio sets when he was in high school, opening his own shop over a drug store. When he entered the army after Pearl Harbor, they found out that he knew a little about radio, at a time when most Americans still didn’t own one.
My dad only spent one day in basic training. They pulled him out on the second day and sent him off to Missouri to advanced radio school. Since advanced radio school was only available to soldiers with the rank of sergeant or higher, they made him a “buck sergeant” a week after he entered the army.
It was in Missouri that Jiggs met my mom, who worked at the PX on the base. When they first met, he was still wearing his private’s uniform. The next time they met, it was at an off-base club and he was wearing civilian clothes.
He called and asked mom out for a date later that week, but when he showed up, he was wearing sergeant’s stripes and had a jeep and a driver. She thought he was impersonating a sergeant to impress her and refused to go out with him until he got his captain on the phone to confirm that, “Yes, Winfrey is a sergeant.”
That was in February,1942. They married in April and by June, my dad, his buddy Sid and their entire Signal Corps company was on a troopship bound for North Africa. The United States Army wouldn’t arrive in North Africa for another seven months; dad’s company was being sent out early to be attached to the British Eighth Army in Egypt.
It seems that the British Army had lost most of its experienced radio operators and repairmen when they had to retreat from the Germans and evacuate Dunkirk. Unfortunately, the ship carrying their radio specialists didn’t make it out of Dunkirk and the British were desperate.
They asked their American allies for help and the 3175th Signal Corps Company was our answer. They arrived in Egypt just as the German Afrika Corps under Field Marshal Edwin Rommel was running the British across Africa for a last stand at a place in the desert called El Alamein.
Dad’s company was assigned to operate a radio relay station out in the desert sands near the Pyramids of Giza, about 40 miles south of Cairo. Back in those days, before we had all those satellites orbiting the earth, radio signals followed line of sight.
If you wanted to send a radio message from say, England to India, England’s largest colonial possession, it had to be relayed from Bombay, India to the Seychelles Islands in the Indian Ocean, then to Durban, South Africa, up the East African coast through Kenya to Egypt, then to the island of Malta south of Italy, on to the British naval base at Gibralter and finally to England.
The Germans wanted very badly to disrupt the British line of communications. They nearly bombed the tiny island of Malta into the Stone Age in an effort to cut the signal, but Malta held out. When Rommel invaded Egypt, it was assumed by the British that he would try to capture the radio relay station at Giza, so they loaded it with high explosives and gave my dad the button.
“I say old chap, if Jerry should happen to break around our lines and come over the rise, do evacuate the station and then push this button. You’ll have about 60 seconds to get away from the blast,” Papa Winfrey was told.
Fortunately for yours truly, my dad never had to push the button. The Germans did send a tank squadron through the desert in an effort to destroy his station, but the famed British “desert rats” ambushed them about three miles away and left nothing but smoking wreckage. That’s as close as my dad got to the action, posing for photos with his men on top of some blasted-out German Panzer tanks.
“I was in the rear with the gear,” dad said years later. His skills in operating complicated radio stations kept him in Egypt as the shooting war moved on to Sicily, Italy, France and finally Germany. Instead of crawling around in some European foxhole, he performed duties such as wiring the interior of the Great Pyramid with electric lights so President Roosevelt could tour it safely, or flying out to Tunesia to rebuild a captured German communications center.
After the Germans surrendered, the Army began preparing to send our men home. An official from Standard Oil Company made my dad an offer: “Stay here, muster out in Egypt and go to work for us. We need electricians. We’ll pay to bring your wife over here, give you a nice home, servants and a fat paycheck.”
Alas, Jiggs was homesick for the hills of Tennessee and just plain sick of desert sand, heat and camels. He came home, I was born in LaFollette and don’t have to worry about the “birther” crowd complaining if I ever run for President.
So I’ve watched the growing unrest in Egypt with a special curiosity. I hope the people protesting Mubarak will succeed in getting him to step down peacefully, but I wouldn’t bet on it. Egypt has had a long tradition of authoritarian rule dating to the days of Cleopatra, and these rulers have seldom given up easily or without bloodshed.
I just hope Islamic radicals don’t hijack the revolution and turn Egypt into another America-hating sandpit like Iran. I’ve always dreamed of one day, maybe after I retire, heading over there to check out my dad’s old haunts. Probably won’t, but it would be a shame to lose the dream.
1/26/2010
Looking for feedback? Beware
lest you get what you wish for
Occasionally someone will ask me, “Do you miss your old newspaper days?” Not really. When I was news editor at the Press and other papers before that, I developed a half-pack-a-day habit. Not smokes, but Rolaids. Haven’t eaten a Rolaid since 2002, and that’s a fact.
One thing I do sometimes miss is feedback, in the form of nasty little letters to the editor, that gave me some indication about 1) whether anyone out there actually reads this drivel and 2) how much I get under reader’s skins with my comments and opinions.
The folks here at WLAF haven’t designed a forum to receive feedback yet, unless they have and in my cyberspace-challenged ignorance, I haven’t figured out how to access it. As a result, I only rarely receive any comments or criticisms about my column, and then only when someone has the chance to deliver said criticism face-to-face.
My “Monday Before Christmas” nursery rhyme seems to have been well received. Judge Billy Joe White even read it aloud at one of the courthouse Christmas parties, with Melvin Boshears in the audience. I needle “Doctor No” more than most, but you gotta like anyone who can laugh at himself.
As with news stories past, the one or two complaints I’ve received so far were from unexpected directions. When ranting about how we should just legalize marijuana to save the costs of building more jails, I noted that anyone of my generation who claimed to have never tried the smelly weed was either a bald-faced liar or lived a hermit’s life in the Yukon.
One of my old schoolmates accosted me over that one, taking offense that I called her a liar. Well, I pointed out, my friend grew up on Highway 116 between Briceville and New River, so the Yukon Territory definition might fit in that case.
This past week’s column, which could have offended any number of people, has thus far earned yours truly only one comeuppance, from an individual who questioned my comment that ancestors of most Campbell Countians fought for the Union during the Civil war.
Sorry to disappoint all you Confederate flag-waving good ole boys, but it’s true. Campbell Countians, always an independent lot, had fewer complaints with the far-off government in Washington than they did with that meddling crowd of plantation owners who ruled down in Nashville.
Campbell County men not only migrated north in droves to join the Union Army, but they were the first Tennesseans to join the Union Army. Company A, of the 1st Tennessee Volunteer Infantry, the first hundred men from the Volunteer State to be sworn into federal service, was composed entirely of men from Cove Creek, Big Creek and Jacksboro.
They went on to raid Knoxville with General William Sanders, fight at Stones River and help General Sherman lay waste to northern Georgia. Come to think of it, maybe that’s why the Big Orange always seems under a curse when they play in the Georgia Dome.
So, Bubba, if you can trace your ancestry in Campbell County back to the 1860s, better rip that Stars & Bars decal off your pickup before great-great-great grandpa’s ghost slips sugar in your gas tank.
That’s pretty much it – all the negative feedback I’ve received so far after nearly six months of writing columns. Come to think of it, I probably should beware what I wish for. My first experience with a column and the Internet came back in my LaFollette Press days, when I made some unfortunate observations about Texas A&M University.
Little did I know that an Aggie alumnus lived in Jacksboro, subscribed to the Press and was also active in an Aggie online chat room. For the next week or two, Publisher Larry Smith would approach my desk each morning with a two-inch stack of email messages.
“Don’t ever write about the State of Texas again,” Larry would repeat each morning, unceremoniously dumping the stack on my desk.
My favorite was this anonymous message: “Don’t ever come back to Texas. You will be hunted down and killed like the dog that you are.”
Years later I found myself returning from Mexico City through Houston’s airport. The flight from Mexico was late and we missed our connection to Nashville. Since the airline gave our seats away to standby passengers, they offered to put us up in a hotel for the night.
“You don’t understand,” I pleaded, “I can’t spend the night in Texas, I’m under a death warrant from the Texas A&M Alumni Association.”
The poor clerk must have taken me seriously. They found a flight on another airline and got us to Nashville with no further complications.
I’m waxing eloquent about ancient history this week for two reasons. One, not much happened in the past few days other than the usual parade of meth lab explosions, DUIs and sigh, good news, which nobody wants to hear anyway.
The good news includes the fact that Campbell County schools all met state requirements and are off the hot seat, at least temporarily. School board member Eugene Lawson was less than thrilled with the results at the last board meeting, however, pointing out that while meeting benchmarks in math and language arts, Campbell County students did terribly in science and social science.
“Don’t they teach science and social studies in school anymore?” Eugene scolded nobody in particular.
Teaching science enrichment as a volunteer a few times a month up at Valley View, I can answer that question. Among the 30-odd students in my 4th and 5th grade class, not one in ten could tell me on which continent the Rocky Mountains are located.
Most everyone had heard of Madagascar, thanks to the animated film, but the only kids who could locate it on a map were one or two who had my class two years ago when we held a geography bee. Most had no clue where the Indian Ocean is located or Australia. Only a couple knew the longest river on earth is the Nile in Africa and half couldn’t identify the country that borders the United States to the south. Viva Mexico!
I notice that they do include general science as a regular part of the curriculum, and squeeze a little geography and history in here and there as part of reading assignments, but the emphasis is on core subjects: language arts, math, language arts, math, and so on.
I really can’t expect my handful of 3rd to 5th graders to remember the rock cycle, how the solar system was formed, a definition of an ecosystem or the periods of geologic time. I merely hope that I present the subjects in a way that is interesting and entertaining and will stimulate the kids’ love of learning.
That may be what’s missing too often in modern education, stimulating a student to appreciate knowledge. I’m no expert, so I don’t pretend to have the answers, but these kids I see are sharp. Most can access information on the Internet more easily than their teachers; they ask engaging, and sometimes surprising questions.
Why isn’t this natural curiosity about the world around them better reflected in test results? Answer that, podner, and we’ll send you to Washington to fix all our problems. Of course the love of learning and stimulation of a child’s natural curiosity must begin in the home, but it’s not entirely fair to lay all blame off on parents.
Take them out of the classroom on field trips and they learn, and retain what they learn. Design role plays, games and other entertaining ways to learn and they learn, and remember. But these and other approaches require resources and instructor-intensive efforts. We entered a mass production phase of education years ago, with budget restraints requiring schools to educate more, faster, for less.
Now, typically, bureaucrats want to hold the kids accountable for the system’s failures. All I can say is, you reap what you sow.
Oh, the second reason I’m rambling on with old stories and pet peaves this week: I’m writing this column early. My St. Louis cousins have rented a condo down in Destin, Florida for the month and desperately need my assistance.
They’re afraid the water in the heated pool
and Jacuzzi may be too hot and they want someone to test it for them, and to
taste the grouper to make sure it isn’t tainted with oil. I’m duty-bound to
lend my help in this endeavor.
1/19/2011
Ah spring! 27,000 beer drinkers,
but only a “minimum of violence”
One thing is certain – when the weather turns sour, life slows down and the news along with it, Campbell Countians can always count on the county commission meetings to liven things up.
Such was the case last month with the fireworks between Mayor William and Commissioner Thomas and while this month’s meeting was tame by comparison, it provided more than enough “gotcha” moments to keep everyone amused and entertained.
A large crowd gathered in the peanut gallery, including former squires Whit Goins and John Bond, former Environmental Director Tip Jones and former mayoral candidate Fred Cole, among others. This was a sure indication that somebody was expecting a show.
The show everyone was looking for, I suspect, was a disappointment. Rumors had been flying all day about a current commissioner who stood accused of conflict of interest. The Campbell County Daily Grapevine, that icon of speed and accuracy, even had it that District Attorney General Paul Phillips would attend to demand the resignation of the still-unidentified commissioner. Everyone I encountered was playing a guessing game about who was on the hot seat.
The mystery and the anticipation were the result of the usual anonymous calls to Channel 12 call-in shows, along with the cage-rattling bloggers we have in these here parts, ever watchful for some new brew to heat and stir.
In this case the big fireworks turned out to have a fuse that sizzled and crackled without the big boom at the end.
All the buzz revolved around David Adkins, probably one of the least controversial of the new squires, and his previous ownership of school buses with county contracts. As it turned out, Adkins had become aware of a potential conflict almost as soon as the election results were in, and asked County Attorney Joe Coker to find out if he could legally serve the office.
Coker presented three separate Attorney General’s opinions to the commission Tuesday night, each of them basically saying the same thing – it isn’t illegal for someone who has business contracts with a county to run for office or to serve, as long as those contracts are not altered, neither renewed nor amended, after the person takes office.
In Adkins’ case, he handled the potential conflict by transferring the bus routes to his brother, an action that school officials approved by executive action and that will be on the agenda at the next school board meeting.
With the rumored appearance of the District Attorney being just that, a rumor, Jerry Chadwell addressed the commission to make sure the matter got a proper airing in public. He was told that the commission has no jurisdiction over school department contracts and he was talking to the wrong group of officials. After School Director Sharon Ridenour explained that the matter had been dealt with by the transfer between brothers, Chadwell murmured, “So it’s a family thing,” and left.
Ah, few things are sadder than a muckraker when the muck turns out to be kitty litter. I’ve been there once or twice.
But the squires, with a little help from the audience, did not disappoint as far as entertainment value on this night. The infamous Doctor No, our own Melvin Boshears, actually made a motion to impose a tax on the citizens of the county, in this case a two-cent local gasoline tax that would be used to pave all those miles of crumbling county roads.
Relying on a similar measure in distant Williamson County, Melvin pushed the commission to send a resolution to our representatives in Nashville, seeking a private act to allow the county to collect the local tax. He at first asked for an act that would need to be approved by the voters in a public referendum, and received a hesitant second from Bob Walden.
Melvin then changed his mind and amended his motion to allow a two-thirds majority of county commission to finalize the tax rather than a public vote. Walden promptly withdrew his second and no other squire would touch it with a ten-foot pole. Afterward, Road Superintendent Dennis Potter added his two cents’ worth.
“That tax would benefit my department, but I’m opposed to it,” Potter told the commission. “Citizens are taxed enough already.”
One squire, I forget which one, quipped, “If that had passed, the referendum on a gas tax would have been on the ballot at the same time that you’re up for re-election.”
But the real show of the evening was a sales pitch from a fellow named Hal Royce Abramson, or something like that, who told squires he generally just went by Hal Royce because people couldn’t spell his last name anyway.
Hal represents a company that puts on festivals, and he was there to let the commission know that he’s got a whopper of a country music festival planned this spring up in the Well Springs area on land that stretches along Norris Lake and across from Pro Anglers Shop.
Hal’s festival will feature no big name entertainers, but several “moderate” acts so they can keep the cost at a reasonable $65 for a weekend of fun in the sun. He’s already selling the first of 27,000 tickets online and through other venues, has lined up a port-o-john company, bought advertising on area TV and radio and is signing up vendors for food, T-shirts and suntan oil.
Replying to one question, Hal admitted that the Campbell County Chamber of Commerce had returned his membership check, apparently declining to endorse the festival. “I hold no ill feelings. They may have reacted to our festival logo, which includes a Confederate flag,” he explained.
Despite the fact that most Campbell Countians’ ancestors fought for the Union, it’s more likely the Chamber’s hesitation involved something other than a flag logo, such as the revelation that the festival will be selling beer.
“We have applied for a beer permit. We will sell no beer to anyone without a ticket and picture ID, so there will be no underage drinking allowed,” Hal promised.
He also promised that this would not be “another Bonneroo,” adding, “We will not tolerate drug use.”
Hal then told squires that he is talking with several security companies to make sure that security is tight. “The problems always occur after the music has ended when drinking combines with somebody’s interest in somebody else’s girl friend,” Hal explained. “We want to minimize any violence.”
Wow, that’s a relief. I’m glad that violence will be minimized.
So Hal asked for the commission’s blessing, which they did not immediately offer, and took his leave. He promises tens of thousands of tax dollars, up to 300 temporary jobs and an influx of visitors to swell the coffers of county businesses. All that for only a minimum of violence and a little friendly beer drinking, foot stomping and hell raising along nearly two miles of lakeshore and cow pastures.
Remember when I predicted that Caryville’s vote to allow liquor by the drink would have unintended consequences? One of those was that beer can now automatically be sold in the county on Sundays. No small coincidence that a weekend music festival that relies partially on beer sales would need to sell beer on Sunday. Yeehah!
1/13/2011
I spent the better part of Wednesday night, when not shivering and running to turn up the thermostat, by watching the television coverage of the memorial service for the victims of the recent Arizona tragedy.
I watched not only the speech by President Obama, but against my better judgment, the commentary by CNN’s panel of pundits and talking heads that followed the service. I was curious if they could avoid putting their usual political spin to such a solemn moment.
Obama’s speech moved me – his call for an end to the finger pointing and a return to a civil discourse between people with opposing views. He seemed to be appealing mainly to those on the political left to step back from laying blame for the shooting on those on the political right, and urged all Americans to honor the memories of the fallen, especially nine-year-old Christina Green, by turning to the “better angels of our nature.”
Predictably, the comments from the talking heads varied somewhat. One Democrat staffer called the speech “transformational” and predicted that the University of Arizona would one day erect a plaque there to commemorate the speech. Arizona? Bound to happen.
A former speech writer for President Bush, on the other hand, generally gave the President passing marks but bemoaned the “rally atmosphere” at the service, where Obama was frequently interrupted by applause and occasional whistles.
I heard the background noise too, but avoided holding the President responsible, thinking instead, “This is what they get for holding a memorial service on a college campus.”
Both left-leaning pundits and right-leaning pundits seemed in agreement, however, that Obama’s appeal to go forward with civility and avoid trying to assign blame for the actions of one deranged mind was exactly what Americans need to hear. Both sides applauded the tone of the President’s words, regardless of how they felt about the speaker.
Both Democrat and Republican commentators were also in agreement on something else. While Obama may or may not have hit a home run with his speech, Sarah Palin definitely struck out.
Palin, possibly in an effort to stay on the political playing field with Obama, released an eight-minute video earlier in the day in which she lashed out at the media for focusing on her “crosshairs” depiction last fall of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. She criticized the tendency of those on the left and the “liberal media” to hold up her vindictive campaign rhetoric as an example of the sort of polarizing politics that may have inspired the sick shooter to pull the trigger.
Well, when the shoe fits . . . . ! Both conservative and liberal commentators felt that Palin’s remarks were totally inappropriate at a time when the nation’s focus should be on the victims of the tragic shooting. As one Republican speech writer observed, “This video message was all about her; she didn’t even mention the victims.”
I suspect that those bullets that flew in Tucson, while failing to take the life of intended victim Congresswoman Giffords, may have instead struck a fatal blow to the political life of Sarah Palin. Considering the fact that she couldn’t even successfully complete her job of governing one of the most sparsely populated states in America, this may not be a bad thing.
On the extreme side of the President’s conciliatory tone was not only Palin’s self-centered rant, but also comments I heard the night before on Jay Leno’s night owl program, where one of his guests was left winger Bill Maher. This fellow is a good example of a left wing nut, as opposed to a right wing nut.
Maher, an unabashed atheist and hater of all things conservative, reminds me of the fact that if you move far enough to the left and far enough to the right, you close the circle at some point labeled “crazy.” This is how Communist dictator Stalin of Russia and Nazi dictator Hitler of Germany were able to forge an alliance and divide poor Poland between them – there wasn’t a dime’s worth of difference between the two of them.
Maher’s definition of the NRA was predictable – he called it the National Assassin’s Association, and laid the blame for the Tucson tragedy squarely in their lap for fighting the regulation of firearms. He overlooked the fact that Gabrielle Giffords is a gun owner and supports the right to bear arms.
He did make one good point, however, when he noted that until 2004, clips for automatic handguns that hold 33 bullets were illegal until Congress, under pressure from the NRA. allowed the ban to expire.
Why would anyone want a handgun that can fire 33 bullets in less than 20 seconds without reloading unless they plan a mass murder? That is one restriction that needs to be back in place, regardless of what the National Rifle Association thinks. If they fight that, maybe they should change their name to the NAA.
And speaking of atheists, the Campbell County School Board had a hand grenade landed in their lap Tuesday night when board attorney Dail Cantrell told them to stop opening their meetings with a prayer. I would say he “advised” them to can the prayer, but that would be inaccurate. Dail more or less commanded them to do so, in the name of the Tennessee School Board Association.
Seems that TSBA has handed down the command from on high, based on rulings by the liberal Sixth District Federal Court in Cincinnati, that such prayers violate the separation of church and state.
Dail prefaced his remarks by affirming his faith and saying how hard it is for him to pass on such legal pronouncements. He added that other federal district courts have ruled that opening school board meetings with a prayer is permissible, but that the Sixth District includes not only Tennessee and Kentucky but also Michigan and Ohio.
“For some reason, Ohio has the largest concentration of atheists in the country,” Cantrell added. “The Sixth Circuit has taken a different view on prayer at meetings and this will eventually have to be taken to the Supreme Court.”
Several board members were less than amused by this revelation. Sarge Collins from Jellico argued, “There are a lot of smart people in this room. It seems we could start the protest here in Campbell County.”
Chairman Mike Orick asked Cantrell what would happen if the board continued to open meetings with a prayer.
“They could put the board in jail,” Cantrell replied. That seemed to end the debate right there, with a few whistles and groans, as Orick seemed resigned to Cantrell’s suggestion that the board could meet privately a short time before opening the public meeting to share a prayer, as they are doing in Anderson County.
This is where yours truly, sitting behind the camera at the back of the room, thought to myself, “Whoa!”
Who, exactly, is the “they” that is going to put our school board in jail? Certainly not the Tennessee School Board Association. All they’re good for is giving out awards for “architectural excellence” for expensive school construction projects and doing a really poor job of finding a decent Director of Schools for our humble little county.
Likewise, the Sixth Judicial District Court in Cincinnati doesn’t even know Campbell County, Tennessee exists. Their rulings were based on some lawsuits elsewhere, probably up there in that, according to our attorney, “atheist stronghold” in Ohio.
Is Dail Cantrell going to put the board in jail? Not if he wants to collect his next paycheck.
Fact is, if Campbell County’s school board wishes to continue opening meetings with a prayer, they’re free to do so, at least until such a time as someone complains to a judge and obtains a court order telling the board to stop. Then, of course, they run the risk of being in contempt of court if they persist in praying.
Correct me if I’m wrong, lawyers, but I think the Campbell County Board of Education can only be found in contempt of a court order aimed at the Campbell County Board of Education, not some other board in some other state.
Board newcomer Josh Parker, near the end of the meeting, said, “We should stand our ground. I’ll go to jail with you. I agree with Sarge, this is worth fighting for.”
While I think that the emphasis of the Board of Education needs to be on educating our children rather than exhausting resources fighting in court for principles of personal belief, I agree with Josh and Sarge on this one. At some point people need to stand up for their beliefs and values – that is also a lesson for our young people.
Dail Cantrell said that this question will eventually be settled in the U. S. Supreme Court. He is correct. It will be settled as soon as a board somewhere has the courage to stand up for its principles and appeal this decision by the District Court. That board may well lose, but they will at least have been true to their own beliefs. And if they win, they win a victory for all communities that wish, not to push their religion down the throats of others, but simply to publicly reaffirm their faith.
One thing though. If the Campbell County School Board was to decide to continue praying, invite a court order and take this thing to the Supreme Court, I would advise them to choose another attorney to make the argument, one who hasn’t already locked them up in his mind.
They can probably find a good lawyer to take their case pro bono. Arguing a case before the U. S. Supreme Court is quite a feather in one’s legal cap, if they’re up to the challenge.
12-30-2010
Boomer’s Fractured Forecasts for 2011
It’s that time of year again – everybody from network TV stations to the LaFollette Press to the New York Times is running a “Year in Review” series to remind us again that the news sounds like a broken record. Recession, terrorists at Disney World, unemployment, terrorists in our garden clubs, oil spills, terrorists at Toys R Us, Pachyderms and Donkeys, terrorists in the halls of Congress. Ho hum, is there nothing new to report?
Well, WLAF.com can give you news that nobody else has – yet. That’s because we’re going to report the news before it happens, right here in Boomer’s Fractured Forecasts for 2011! So without further ado, let us gaze into my crystal ball and see what’s in store.
January - The Campbell County Board of Education withdraws its request that the county commission pay for post-retirement insurance for non-teachers after auditors complete their review of former Director Michael Martin’s records. The auditors announce that all cooks, janitors and maintenance personnel already qualify for insurance because they apparently have doctorate degrees from the University of Wyoming.
February – The demolition of old Caryville Elementary School is completed, solving a long-standing mystery when the Town of Caryville’s missing tractor is discovered, entombed in the furnace room under a pile of coal cinders.
The School Board puts the vacant property up for sale and it is promptly snatched up by the proprietors of “World of Booze,” billed as the “world’s largest liquor emporium.” Caryville’s Board at first protests the sale but drops their objections when they discover that the only other bidder on the property was “Adult World.”
March - After a lengthy search process, LaFollette City Council votes to hire former Mayor Cliff Jennings as the city’s new Police Chief. When asked why he voted to hire his old adversary, Vice Mayor Hansford Hatmaker replied, “Because it’s going to be so much fun when we fire him.”
April - The proposed new Justice Center hits another snag when a federal judge suggests that the jail will need space for yet another 95 beds if the county wants to avoid a federal injunction, adding another million dollars to the project’s cost. In an emergency session with architects, the commission approves some minor changes to the design to avoid the additional costs.
Local judges Joe Ayers and Shane Sexton, along with the District Attorney, are not amused, however, to discover that their new offices will now be located in cell block B next to the DUI holding tank.
May - Newly-elected Congressman Scott Dejarlais votes six separate times to eliminate earmarks from the federal budget, while adding projects to the budget for his 4th District totaling $988 million. These include a public swimming pool in his native Marion County, a $300,000 skate park in Jamestown and $28 million to convert the former Brushy Mountain State Prison into the James Earl Ray National Monument.
June – Buckling to pressure, EMS Director Danny Sheckles tells county commission that he will no longer dock twenty dollars from employees who fail to turn in reports at the end of their shifts but will look into other means of discipline.
Ambulance employees express concern when a hunchback arrives, carrying a box of thumbscrews, whips and branding irons.
July – Hundreds of citizens from Moneymaker Lane, Calhoun Road and other neighborhoods storm the monthly commission meeting, demanding that the county do something to keep commercial development, unwanted shelters and politicians out of their neighborhoods. The commissioners then vote unanimously to implement a countywide zoning plan.
August – Hundreds of citizens from Demory, Duff, Stinking Creek and other communities storm the monthly commission meeting, demanding that the county keep its nose out of people’s lives. The commissioners then vote unanimously to rescind the decision to implement a countywide zoning plan.
September – As part of Tennessee’s Civil War Sesquicentennial celebration, the Caryville Civil War Council renews the re-enactment of the Battle of Pine Mountain. The re-enactment ends poorly, however, when a stockpile of black powder is accidentally ignited. The blast propels a cannon barrel over a half mile and through the roof of Adult World, maiming two truck drivers, a Scott County minister and three former LaFollette police officers.
October – As a fundraiser for Toys for Tots, county officials sponsor a “Haunted Courthouse” during the week before Halloween. Among the most popular attractions are the “Medieval Jail,” the “Tax Collector from Hell” and the “Hanging Judge.” Things go terribly wrong, however, when Commissioner Thomas Hatmaker arrives portraying a vampire, and Mayor William Baird shows up with a bagful of wooden stakes.
November – Congress finally passes a federal budget containing $36 billion in earmarks. Congressman Scott Dejarlais votes against the budget twelve times, but arrives in Campbell County to take credit for including funding for the new $66 million White Bridge National Recreation Area.
December – All charges against Dr. Michael Martin and Karen Bundren for falsifying educational records are finally dropped by federal prosecutors when it is discovered that Michael Martin and Karen Bundren are the same person.
“She actually does have a PhD from the
University of Wyoming, although he earned it as Michael Martin,” former
school board chairman Eugene Lawson pointed out, adding, “I kind of wondered
why we never saw the two of them together at the same meeting
12-23-2010
“Twas the Monday before Christmas
‘Twas the Monday before Christmas
And all through the courthouse
Not a creature was stirring
Except Thomas Hatmaker, who called the Mayor a louse
Down at City Hall
All the stockings were hung in good order
But Mike, Joe and Cade ripped ‘em all down
Searching for a hidden tape recorder
The courthouse was packed
For the squires’ jovial yuletide meeting
But hopes for peace on earth
This night proved to be quite fleeting
Roll call had just begun
When from the roof arose such a clatter
Everyone jumped from their seats
To see what was the matter
“Maybe it’s Santa!” we mused
Through the crowd ran cold chills
But alas, ‘twas only Moneybags Marlow
With another stack of bills
Hatmaker, Hall and Doctor No
Were told with some authority
You cannot meet in secret
They voted to anyway; good they were in a minority
Nelsie Wooden asked for money
To send books to our kids, no less
She’s one heck of a salesman
Even got Doctor No to vote “yes”
The gas company in Jellico
Can pay only part of their tax
The squires took the offer because
Campbell County always has a bad case of gas
Solid waste directors all filed lawsuits
Tip Jones won his, and departed
Alas, the new one is unhappy too
And his litigation has just started
Up on the podium
Mayor William chaired the meeting
He may look a bit like Santa
But not so his final greeting
“If you don’t shut up” he told Thomas
“I’ll have you removed from the room”
Squires moved quickly between them
Lest someone lower the boom
Tempers were flaring and tensions high
But we were left with this thought
Everyone wished all a Merry Christmas
Whether they meant it or not
Merry Christmas, everyone, and tune in next week for Boomer’s Fractured
Forecasts for 2011
12-9-2010
Celebrating the good in a person’s life
is the best way to mourn their passing
I lost one of my oldest and best friends this week. One of the negatives of surviving into one’s 60s is that you begin to bury your friends.
If we live long enough, we all must go through the ritual of watching our parents and grandparents age and eventually pass on. That’s a day none of us want to see but know that eventually we will; it is the cycle of life.
It is a little different when you lose someone who is your peer, someone you played with as a child, grew into adulthood with and with whom you experienced life, both the good and the bad. It makes you understand more fully your own mortality.
George John Cruze and I have been friends since the fifth grade. In many respects, John was always the ying to my yang. He loved the New York Yankees, I couldn’t stand them; he captained the 8th grade debate team for Richard M. Nixon, I led the team for John F. Kennedy. John directly or indirectly introduced me to two of the special women in my life, conned me into joining a group that eventually gave direction to my choice of career and eventually into journalism.
He is responsible for my first trip outside the cozy confines of the United States into a poor Third World country, and he has also landed me in more tight places, edge-of-disaster situations, adventures and misadventures than I care to think about.
When people speak of John, many will undoubtedly voice regret for promise unfulfilled. His old high school coaches used to say he was one of the best natural athletes they ever saw, but he lacked the discipline to excel. Political pundits will speak of the surprising run out of nowhere that he once made in a losing effort to be elected Anderson County Executive and how if he had just stayed in politics and played the game, the sky was the limit.
Others will bemoan the fact that he cut short a promising military career and still others will point out that he eventually had some scrapes with the law that brought all his dreams crashing down.
Personally I thought he handled all the inevitable ups and downs of life just fine until his last few years, when alcohol came to control his life a little more each day. The past couple of years were especially painful for me as I watched my friend lose his zest for living in an alcoholic haze.
John always seemed to love living on the edge. If he had followed the natural order of things, he would have become a high school or college football coach, such was his love of the game, his grasp of strategy and fundamentals and his natural ability to lead and motivate.
Instead, coming out of school he leaned toward a career in the military. He landed in Vietnam as a freshly minted second lieutenant, one of three assigned as forward observers for an artillery battalion. Eight weeks later he was the only one of the three still alive. Having been either lucky or skilled enough to survive that far, he was rewarded when the battalion needed a new executive officer and now-First Lieutenant Cruze got the nod, and a better chance at coming home in one piece.
Vietnam was not without its price, however. John returned home to serve as a Captain in the Tennessee National Guard and re-enroll at UT-Knoxville, but he carried some demons around that he couldn’t shake or even reveal to those close to him. He also fell into regular bouts of depression; his UT friends called them his “black moods.”
Whatever demons John was trying to purge, after completing his accounting degree he decided to go in the opposite direction of his Vietnam experience and joined the Peace Corps. I visited him in 1974, traveling to his assignment area in the most poverty-stricken, isolated corner of the second poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, Honduras.
A few days of dining at John’s favorite corner eatery and I was winging my way back to semi-civilization, to the dive resorts on the Caribbean coast to recover from food poisoning and sunstroke. I was able to return to my pampered American lifestyle after four short weeks of roughing it. John remained in Honduras where he was dumped from his bed by an earthquake, nearly drowned by a hurricane that killed thousands of people and eventually caught up in the middle of a local civil war.
He finally made his exit from the country when one side in the civil war put a price on his head and he had to be smuggled through the countryside to the American Embassy, where he remained for the last couple of months of his tour of service before returning to Tennessee.
Returning home, my friend tried to settle into a somewhat normal lifestyle. A couple of years running the business end of the Black Lung Health Clinic in Jacksboro followed by an unsuccessful run in politics. Falling in love, marriage and two sons followed in short order, but the marriage failed.
After his experiment in local politics, John was recruited to work as an administrative assistant for the Anderson County Sheriff’s Office. Only problem was, the sheriff was Dennis Trotter, who would later be led in handcuffs to his own jail by FBI agents. Trotter wanted no administrative assistant looking over his shoulder so he used the grant money to put on an extra jailer – my friend John. A couple of years of watching the inside workings of Trotter’s department and John lost all zest for being in local government.
He later had his own scrape with the law, while attempting some presumably lucrative but illegal horticultural activities that landed him behind bars and with a felony record. This former army officer and college graduate was thereafter forced to eke out his living as a carpenter.
His dreams dashed, John began to turn more and more to a drug that while not illegal, can be no less devastating to one’s body and soul. Alcohol slowly began to take control of my friend’s life until, for the past couple of years, I felt like I hardly knew him.
If he was truly playing out a death wish, alcohol and a wreck on I-75 up in Kentucky finally accomplished the task. After lingering for a few weeks and being discharged home, infections set in and John lost his battle for life Monday afternoon.
Why do I choose to share these private affairs and thoughts with you, my readers? There’s a lesson or two for us all in such tragic tales. There’s the lesson to be learned about the dangers of alcohol abuse, of course, or the plight of our veterans who carry around memories that most of us are thankful we need not share.
But most importantly, we can find peace in times such as this by diverting our thoughts to the best, rather than the worst, in a person’s life. My friend failed to follow one path that would have given him the greatest sense of accomplishment and joy, but his oldest son did, and is coaching football up in the Tri-Cities area.
He made mistakes later in life that
sidetracked his dreams, and he paid a heavy price for those mistakes. But
those mistakes in no way detract from the sacrifices he made for his
country, and for all of us, serving both in war and in peace in hopes of
leaving the world a little better than he found it. We should all hope to do
as much.
12-2-2010
Rainy days and architects, or is that
architects make for rainy days?
I delayed sitting down at my computer to write this week’s column until late Tuesday night, after it stopped raining. This is because I was busy observing the decades-old Winfrey family tradition called “watching the creek.”
This tradition dates far beyond my short time on this planet, probably back to 1897, the year my great-grandpa Charlie Sharp bought his two-story home along the rich floodplain of Coal Creek. Until my grandmother replaced her fireplaces with gas stoves back in the 1970s, I can still recall the notch on her mantel, about four feet off the floor. That notch marked the high water mark during the flood of ’27, granny once explained.
As a child I saw no such devastating floods but can recall watching my father launch an aluminum fishing boat where Lake City’s post office now stands to motor down and pluck granny from her front porch. High water usually managed to get a few inches to a foot deep in her house at least once a year, whenever the spring or winter rains fell hard and steady for a long enough period.
All of that drama ended in the late 1950s when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dredged Coal Creek. They took around 50 feet off the back of granny’s garden for the project but it was worth it to put an end to the annual floods.
But the floods that gave what’s left of my garden some of the richest topsoil in the county still give cause for the occasional sleepless night. Lake City, as part of its agreement with the Corps, is supposed to maintain the flood control channel, but you can imagine how that has worked out.
The town does sporadically take a few truckloads of gravel out of a spot here or there, and manages to keep trees and underbrush from growing back along the creek, but the silt washing down out of the mountains has slowly filled in the creek bed in places.
I realized about 15 years ago that I once again live in a flood-prone area when I returned home one rainy night to find my canoe, which had been resting in the back yard, floating around in the front yard. The old home place that I inherited was high enough off the ground to escape damage, but my outbuilding, sitting on a concrete slab, was under two feet of water.
I put on a wetsuit that was hanging in my closet and waded out to the outbuilding, where my chest freezer was bobbing around like a cork. In probably one of the dumbest things I ever did, I sloshed in and unplugged the freezer from its electrical outlet, not once thinking about the fact that I was standing in two feet of water. God looks after drunks and fools, they say, so nothing happened.
The old home is gone now, replaced by a modern house that is hopefully far enough above ground level to escape any periodic high water. When the creek rises like it did this afternoon, however, I begin to regret that new heating & air unit in my back yard, sitting on a slab barely two inches off the ground.
And so I watch the creek, just like my ancestors did for three generations. I move my lawnmower and anything else that water could damage to the back porch, and I watch to see if I’ll need to cut off the power to my heating unit and hope the water doesn’t ruin it.
Looks like I dodged a bullet this time. The rain is passing on to the east and while the creek flooded the ballpark and just-erected backdrops for nativity scenes, homes, including that of yours truly, were spared.
Before the rains began to fall, I wandered down to the Campbell County Courthouse Monday night for the performance of “The Justice Center, Act II.”
You’ll recall that in the first act a couple of weeks ago, the county commission voted 11-4 to borrow another $2.6 million and extend the county’s debt for another year to build the long-debated and longer-delayed new jail and justice center. Thomas Hatmaker was the most outspoken critic of the plan, voting not “no” but “absolutely no.”
This Monday the whole shebang had to be revisited when Finance Director Moneybags Marlow discovered that the bond market isn’t as friendly as he expected and higher interest rates would add 80 grand or so a year to the cost of the building.
By the time of the meeting, however, Jeff had some good news for the squires. The architects had reviewed the plans and found enough places where they could trim down the costs by over a million dollars. This would offset the higher interest rates and enable the bidding on the project to continue as planned.
Hatmaker took the opportunity to bring up his same objections all over again, that the county should look at a cheaper, modular-type jail and abandon plans to include new courtrooms and judicial offices in the new building. His objections received the same support as last time – four votes including his own.
Budget Committee Chairwoman Marie Ayers made the most notable observation of the night, expressing her discomfort with the fact that the architects were able, on such short notice, to find just enough savings in the building plan to offset the increased interest. Their discovery meant that no tax increase would be necessary and probably insured that the commission would not vote to axe the whole project out of frustration.
To me there is nothing mysterious about this revelation. Architects collect their fee as a percentage of the cost of the entire project. The more expensive the project, the higher the architect’s fees. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that all architects design as much fat into their plans as possible to swell their purses. That would be . . . less than honest.
But I agree with Marie. It sure is amazing that with the future of the project possibly on the line, the architects were able to find just enough savings here and there to save the day, and their fees. Such good fortune! Suffice it to say that the temptation is always going to be there to design a Cadillac when a Chevrolet would do.
Unfortunately, major building projects require the services of an architect to design the plans, and even if a county had employees with enough design expertise to draw up their own building plans, the law would not allow it. State and federal laws require licensed architects to be employed to design any public building; that’s just the way it is.
My own experience with architects involves the Town of Lake City and its dream of creating a museum honoring the coal miners whose sweat and sacrifice built the community when it was once known as Coal Creek.
Back before the economy caved in, the Town managed to get a $150,000 federal/state grant to design and plan a world class “National Coal Mining Museum.” We already had a modest little museum in the town at one time, but the building was demolished to make way for a new City Hall and all of the artifacts, photos and relics were moved into one overcrowded room in the community center.
I was on the museum board and we struggled to raise money, selling $10 books on the history of Lake City and taking in a few modest donations here and there, hoping one day to raise enough to buy an existing building somewhere in town that could be converted into a more spacious museum where everything could be properly displayed.
Suddenly, with a new, much more ambitious plan for a museum that would serve as a tourist attraction and revitalize the old downtown area, the Town of Lake City was able to land that $150,000 grant. I thought, “Wow, with that much money we could buy any one of several existing buildings and with volunteer help, remodel it into a nice museum.”
But the grant was specific – it was to be used to hire an architectural firm to come up with a design and plan for a “world class” museum. We couldn’t raise a nickel from Uncle Sam for a Chevrolet, but a Cadillac, now that was a different matter.
The firm that was selected, with a bit of
outside urging, I’m sure, was from Washington, D.C. When all the money was
spent Lake City had its plan – for a $16 million facility that will probably
never be built because you could buy the whole town of Lake City for $16
million and have some change coming.
11-25-2010
Thanksgiving: simply an exercise
in the power of positive thinking
“National Keep Candy Factory Workers’ Employed Day,” otherwise known as Halloween, is behind us and now its time for “National Support Heartburn Medicine Manufacturers’ Day,” that time-honored holiday whereby celebrants eat until the cooks have to bring the wheelbarrow in to cart us away from the table.
Thanksgiving, of course, is much more than merely another excuse for American gluttony. It is a holiday of giving thanks for the fact that in the 1600s, a boatload of English religious fundamentalists survived their trip across the Atlantic to land at Plymouth Rock and steal a patch of land from the Native Americans who lived there.
The Pilgrims, totally unfamiliar with how to survive in the New England wilderness, nearly starved to death until the local natives taught them how to fish and what vegetables to plant in which seasons. The Pilgrims thanked their saviors by inviting them to Thanksgiving dinner, where the Indians were allowed to cook and serve the food in return for leftovers.
I jest, of course. Although paintings and numerous Thanksgiving pageants depict Pilgrims and Indians dining peacefully at the same table, there is no actual documentation of that fact. For that matter, Thanksgiving did not become an official national holiday until 1864. Before Abe Lincoln’s time, it was strictly a New England tradition handed down as local custom.
Lincoln, who was facing a rough campaign to be re-elected as President in the middle of a long and bloody Civil War, found his political fortunes bailed out in the summer of 1864 when General Sherman captured the City of Atlanta while General Grant was able to push General Robert E. Lee’s Confederate army back to the outskirts of Richmond.
Lincoln easily won the election, thanks to the tens of thousands of votes cast for him by Union soldiers who could at long last feel victory within their grasp. Old Abraham promptly proclaimed Thanksgiving to be a national day for giving thanks, presumably for the outcome of the election as much as anything, and gave federal employees and postal workers a day off with pay.
One of my fictional characters, Colonel Cornelius Jass of Varmint County, celebrates what he terms “Mr Lincoln’s Holiday” by running the Stars and Bars of the old Confederacy up a flagpole and firing off an ancient smooth-bore cannon, to the chagrin of his neighbors.
But regardless of its origins and the fact that the Thanksgiving holiday is but another in a long line of events designed to keep grocers and farmers in business, it is also a time to pause and give thanks for our many blessings.
Those of you who have been unemployed for the past year can be thankful for your continued good health, or if you are not in good health, you can be thankful that you have health insurance. Unless, of course, you’re one of the 30 million Americans without health insurance, in which case you can be thankful for the support and love of friends and family.
If you’re divorced and your kids aren’t speaking to you, you can be thankful that you don’t have to cook Thanksgiving dinner or put up with the grandkids, and if they expect you to cook Thanksgiving dinner anyway, you can be thankful that your ex-spouse and his new girl friend won’t be there.
My point is, there is always something we can find to be thankful about; it’s just a matter of mastering the art of positive thinking.
For my part, I sat down last night and gave some careful thought to all of the things I have to be thankful about, and was amazed at the bounty of my blessings. Here is a partial list of my reasons for giving thanks on this day of Thanksgiving:
1) I’m thankful for the controversial full-body scanners and invasive pat-downs at the nation’s airports because it reinforces my decision several years ago to drive, rather than fly, to any destination within a thousand miles of home.
2) I’m thankful to my students at Valley View Elementary School because teaching a volunteer class with them once a week keeps me young, and reinforces my long-ago decision not to have kids of my own.
3) I’m thankful for the Vanderbilt Commodores and Kentucky Wildcats. Tennessee will never be the worst team in the SEC as long as they continue to field football teams.
4) I’m thankful for Lady Vol basketball coach Pat Summitt, who has proven you can win more games than any other coach in college basketball history without ever once being accused of violating NCAA rules.
5) I’m thankful for former President George W. Bush. Thanks to him, I finally gained a new perspective on the presidency of Richard M. Nixon, who I once assumed would be the worst President in my lifetime.
6) I’m thankful for Harry Potter. Now perhaps we’ll see the end of this Twilight/New Moon vampire craze, at least until the next film hits the theaters.
7) I’m thankful to the unknown person who lifted 30 bucks out of my glove compartment last summer and to Chase, Citibank and Bank of America. Through cost comparisons, I now know who the real thieves are.
8) I’m thankful to my relatives for spending the month of October in Tennessee and giving me an excuse for not driving to St Louis for Thanksgiving this year.
9) I’m thankful for all of my friends who found out I wasn’t planning to spend the holiday with family and invited me to join them for Thanksgiving. I now have dinner scheduled at noon, 2:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. Tomorrow I’ll be thankful for Rolaids, Alka-Seltzer and Pepto-Bismol.
10) I’m thankful, and you should be as well, for the Campbell County Commission and the Campbell County Board of Education. Thanks to them, you don’t always have to read tripe like his in my column.
Happy Thanksgiving, everybody. May your
blessings be many, your problems have solutions and your giblets
plentiful.
11-17-2010
“Change” is in the wind, but for a
real change, let’s try the Whig Party
When embattled President Barack Obama promised two years ago to give America “change you can believe in,” I don’t think a Republican majority or the emerging Tea Party was what he had in mind.
Regardless of national or state politics, we certainly have seen our share of change right here in Campbell County with the recent election. At the same time, as some witless wit once quipped, “The more things change, the more things stay the same.”
On the “change” front, who would have ever expected a town in this county to vote “wet?” Caryville voters’ recent approval of liquor by the drink and retail liquor sales had attached to it one of those “unintended consequences.” thanks to some of the fine print in state laws regulating legalized liquor sales.
Now, beer may be sold on Sundays outside municipal limits, something I suspect would never have gained approval from the county’s rural voters. The major businesses that will benefit from this are the marinas out on Norris Lake, all safely outside corporate limits and most if not all eager to cater to the demand for beer from weekend sun and water lovers.
Those prone to conspiracy theories might wonder if marina operators’ money was behind the Caryville liquor referendum after all. I prefer to believe that conspiracies require more foresight and intelligence than is usually exhibited by the average Campbell County politician – it is probably just pure dumb luck that has benefited the boat docks where beer is sold, now seven days a week.
I’ve already pointed out the big change on the county commission, which has three female members for the first time in history. Jellico has an even more pronounced facelift with the new board of mayor & aldermen, namely the first African-American board member.
Not only is Venita Johnson the first black board member and a female, also a rarity in Jellico politics, but she received enough votes to qualify as the city’s vice mayor.
I can remember a time, somewhere around 25 years ago give or take a few, when a young Gwen Brown, an African-American woman working for the engineering firm of Barge, Waggoner, Sumner & Cannon, made her first appearance as a grants consultant to the Jellico board.
The all-male, all-white board gave her the cold shoulder, to say the least. There was at least one racial slur uttered by one alderman, loudly enough that I’m sure she overheard it. After the meeting, Gwen was a wreck and years later would recall that I was the only friendly face she encountered during that first night in Jellico; we’ve been friends ever since.
Of course Gwen was so good at her job that over time, she helped the Barge Waggoner firm become the main go-between for many federal and state grants for water lines and other infrastructure projects, not only in Jellico but the rest of the county’s towns and cities as well.
I’ve been meaning to give Gwen, now a partner in her own firm, a call. I’d really like to hear what her reaction was when she learned about the Jellico election results.
So times, they are a’changing. In some respects the changes are more like a revolving door, however. Take partisan politics for instance. Few would disagree that Campbell County has taken on a decidedly pachyderm flavor recently. After years of electing Democrats to represent us down in Nashville, Campbell County has now elected its third consecutive Republican state representative, beginning with William Baird, then Chad Faulkner and now Dennis Powers.
It was not so very long ago, in 2000, that Campbell County was the only county in East Tennessee to support Al Gore for President.
This is not so much a radical change as it is a return to Campbell County’s historic roots. The county, like much of East Tennessee, voted for the Whig Party in most elections prior to the Civil War. Campbell Countians flocked to the banner of the “Old Union” during the war, rebelling against the secessionist Southern Democrats down in Nashville who took the state, disastrously, into the Confederacy.
After the war ended, and for the next half-century or more, Campbell Countians were by and large “Lincoln Republicans,” voting consistently with the party that had fought to preserve the Union.
All of that changed with the coming of King Coal, and more specifically the coming of the United Mine Workers union that organized miners to fight for higher pay and better working conditions in the scattered coal camps at Royal Blue, Oswego, Westbourne and a dozen other places.
With the onset of the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt forged the powerful Democratic coalition of educated New England liberals, Southern white Democrats and the working class of organized labor that would control national politics for the better part of the next half-century.
Campbell Countians, with their strong roots in coal mining culture, became Roosevelt Democrats, or as some would say, “Hoover Democrats.” The Democratic Party held sway around here consistently well into the 1960s.
Slowly, things began to change with the decline of the underground coal industry, The coal camps were largely abandoned as miners no longer found work and the mines shut down. The older folks stayed put but younger families began moving into the towns. At first they brought their Democratic voting habits with them. Most precincts in LaFollette and Jacksboro, along with Jellico and Caryville, tended to vote for donkeys more often than not.
As the old timers from the coal camps began to pass on and the old loyalties forgotten by many in the younger generation, we’ve seen a gradual shift in the direction of the county’s Republican roots.
But a word of advice to the county’s pachyderm leaders. These are not so much Republican voters in the sense of “Lincoln Republicans” who vote the party line that their granddaddy voted. Those traditional Republicans are still pretty much restricted to the historic farming communities in Powell Valley and out toward the lake.
Campbell County’s new voting block seems to me to be more or less independents who lean toward the conservative end of the political spectrum. If the Republicans in Nashville and Washington prove themselves no more capable of changing “business as usual” than the Democrats were, these voters will turn on them in an instant.
Personally, I’m waiting for both parties to mess things up so bad that we will see the resurrection of the Whig Party. I know they haven’t elected a president since Millard Fillmore, but you gotta like the Whigs’ platform: opposition to removal of the Cherokees to Oklahoma and westward expansion including the annexation of Texas.
In other words, we’ll all be better off if we give Texas and
California back to Mexico and give the rest of the country back to the
Indians. Then we can let them figure out how to pay off the national
debt.
11-11-2010
Unpopular problems usually
require unpopular solutions
Both the county commission and school board met this week and passed motions that promise to infuriate many Campbell Countians. Said citizens will just have to be infuriated, because in both cases local government had little choice in the matter.
The squires spent over an hour in a closed executive session Monday night before emerging to add an item to next week’s meeting agenda – a budget amendment to add 2.6 million dollars to the 8 million already earmarked for a new justice center.
For the mathematically challenged, this means taxpayers are on the verge of spending 10.6 million, that’s 10.6 followed by five zeroes, to house prisoners, the sheriff’s department, judges, prosecutors and various courtrooms.
Finance Director Moneybags Marlow figured out a method to pay for the more than 25 percent increase over original estimates without additional tax increases, by re-financing the county’s debt at lower rates and adding one additional year to the payments we’re already making.
This is good, now I can rest easier knowing that I’ll be one more year removed from this mortal plane when the debt is finally retired, and those 5th graders I’m teaching at Valley View will be approaching their mid-30s and paying off the bills for me.
That is, assuming those 5th graders have made it out of high school and found jobs by 2031. The school board also passed a little motion on Tuesday night, setting the notorious TCAP test scores as counting for 15 percent of a student’s final grade for the year. Those test results will eventually rise to 25 percent of the student’s grade, meaning a kid who never misses a class, makes passing grades in every subject but for some reason does not do well on the standardized TCAP tests in the spring, is most likely doomed to repeat that grade the next year.
Ever since the TCAPs were initiated, teachers have been forced to change their tactics and teach to the test, at least for the 2-3 months following Christmas until the TCAPs are finished. I’ve never been a fan of teaching to the test, as I think it stifles creativity, limits the scope of what children have the opportunity to learn and especially with younger kids, places undue stress on them and their ability to take tests.
I think that learning is most effective when children are taught a love for learning. I don’t think force-feeding the subject matter expected to be on a test will generate much of a love for learning.
But hey, that’s just me, and a lot of teachers and professional educators. The school board had no choice in the matter, however, as the State Department of Education has handed down the mandate from on high. The state, for its part, is merely reacting to the mandate handed down from on higher – in this case the federal government and the “No Child Left Behind” law passed under President Bush the Younger.
The federal government, as we all know, should be an expert in figuring out what is best for our ten-year-old children. They have already figured out how to keep them paying for the national debt until they reach retirement age, paying for the Wall Street bailout of 2008, the stimulus package of 2009, the S&L bailout of the 1990s, the Iraq war of 2002-09, the Afghan War of 2001-eternity, the Gulf War of 1991 and the Reagan war on drugs.
Oh, did I mention the war on drugs? We lost that war as soon as it was declared, but that brings me back to that first topic, the proposed justice center.
Why does the county commission feel a need to spend $10.6 on a new jail? Again, it comes as a mandate from on high, in this case the almost-certainty that a federal lawsuit will soon be slapped on the county for overcrowded jail conditions. Seems the jail expansion we paid for a few years back was totally inadequate to meet the county’s ever-growing population of inmates. Now, because previous commissions were unwilling to spend the amount of money that was actually needed, we must throw good money after bad.
I have an answer that would save us all that $10.6 million, but a lot of people won’t like the message. The federal government should follow the lead of California, which although it failed on the first try, will undoubtedly legalize marijuana sooner rather than later, probably in the next election.
Some of you are thinking, “I always suspected Boomer of being an old hippie, now we know for certain.”
Hate to disappoint you but I grew my beard while on a four-month canoe trip when in my late 30s. In my college days I was clean-shaven with short hair and preferred Jack Daniels over Acapulco Gold.
Of course, anyone of my generation who claims to have not smoked pot is a bald-faced liar or lived the life of a hermit in the Yukon Territory, and that includes all those 60-year-old Tea Party activists. Personally, I prefer the high of life to artificial highs, especially as I approach my dotage and my gray matter begins to decrease in quantity and quality.
But my argument for legalizing the smelly weed has nothing to do with whether it is moral or not. It is strictly economics, something the most devoted conservative can understand.
Over half the arrests made in this country are for violating marijuana laws, and most of those are for possession rather than selling or growing the drug. The simple truth is, our nation has been forced to spend hundreds of millions on more and larger jails and prisons, more jailers, more police officers, more of everything because of a dumb little smelly weed that used to be grown to make rope.
The reason, we are told, is because marijuana is a drug and it leads to harder drugs, crime and physical and mental health problems. Alcohol causes much more physical and mental grief, but it is legal. Tobacco kills millions, but it is legal.
Most everyone in law enforcement will admit that people do not smoke pot and suddenly feel an urge to run out and buy cocaine or heroin. People who use marijuana are automatically thrust into an underground society of lawbreakers, which is shared by others who use crack, cocaine, meth and a myriad of other illegal, and more lethal substances.
Still, we continue to fill our jail cells with people, young and old, whose only crime is using or possessing marijuana. Add to that all the foolish people who continue to think they can drive a vehicle while under the influence of alcohol and you have the formula for why we must spend ten million dollars on a new jail.
On the larger stage, the continued status of marijuana as a forbidden substance has returned our country to the days of the “Roaring ‘20s” when prohibition of alcohol brought organized crime into existence. Our states along the Mexican border, southern Florida and inner cities across America have become veritable war zones for violent gangs, largely funded by marijuana revenue.
I say legalize the stuff, regulate it and tax it. Let it be sold to adults in the same way that liquor and wine are sold, in carefully regulated retail outlets. Once it is no longer a forbidden fruit, I suspect it will lose its appeal with many teenagers, but if not, at least pot smokers will no longer have to keep company with the users of harder drugs to imbibe, and that should keep many away from that “next step.”
The drug cartels will still exist, as long as there is a demand for the stronger illegal drugs like cocaine and various pharmaceuticals, but an important source for funding their wars and illegal activities will be removed.
Legalizing and taxing marijuana will also provide law enforcement with tax dollars to combat the harder drugs, rather than draining tax dollars to put pot smokers behind bars and work them through the court system.
Our nation experimented with the prohibition of alcohol in the 1920s and ‘30s and the experiment failed miserably. We also prohibited marijuana around the same time, but since its use was mostly restricted to poor minorities and Hispanics, there was not the same sense of urgency in repealing that prohibition.
Middle class white America discovered marijuana in the 1960s and ever since that time, we have been experiencing the painful lessons of the prohibition era all over again. It’s past time to use common sense, something that seems woefully short in Washington, and decide where our nation’s limited financial resources should be used – turning another generation into prohibition criminals or using those resources for some higher purpose such as giving that generation the education they will need to keep America on top.
Oh, and the other key to avoiding that $10.6 million new jail – stop locking up drunk drivers for 30, 60 or more days. Let them go as soon as they sober up, but without their vehicle. Keep that in an impound lot for a few months and release it only after the DUI offender pays the impound and towing fees.
On a second or third offense, keep the vehicle for a longer period and charge more fees. Eventually these drivers will not be able to beg, buy or borrow a vehicle, or they will learn their lesson and sober up.
Banks, auto dealers and finance companies won’t like that approach one bit, if they have to pay off the impound fees to retrieve their foreclosed vehicles. Banks, auto dealers and finance companies can solve that little problem by checking a potential buyer’s record for DUIs as well as their credit history, and adjusting their interest rates according to the risk factor.
Maintaining a fenced-in and secure impound lot will cost a
little money, pilgrims, but it’s not even in the ballpark with the cost of a
new jail.
11/04/2010
Election 2010 was the Donkeys’ to
lose . . . . and they did a good job
Election 2010 is finally history, and not a moment too soon. It will take most of us at least a month to wipe all the mud off our clothes as mean-spirited politics reached a new level this year. Neither political party can claim the high ground, as I’ve seen ads that stretch the truth, focus on negative personal attacks and even spread bald-faced lies coming out of both political camps.
But it is over at last, and now all the pundits and self-proclaimed experts can earn their wages for the next couple of weeks analyzing what swept the Pachyderms to victory over the Donkeys all across the nation.
The Democrats were already making their excuses early, accusing the Republicans of pouring millions of corporate dollars into campaigns to tilt the balance of power and purposely becoming the “Party of No” in order to stymie the Obama Administration from healing the economy.
The Pachyderms, for their part, continue to insist that the election results show that Americans soundly reject the Democrats’ big government, tax and spend approach to running the country.
Personally I don’t buy either argument. Certainly, as far as what motivated many voters, “it’s the economy, stupid.” The continuing scarcity of jobs, the continuing housing crisis, the simple fact that many Americans have less to spend while businesses continue to struggle; all of those factors contribute to widespread national anger with the way things are, and therefore anger with the powers that be in Washington.
The Republicans certainly benefited from the fact that the average American voter has a very short memory. Voters have already forgotten, it appears, that this economic crisis hit us under the watch of President Shrub, not quite up to being a Bush. They choose to ignore the fact that we have now handed control of the House of Representatives back to the people who got us into this mess in the first place by deregulating Wall Street and the banks and allowing them to run amuck with people’s hard-earned dollars.
But that is far too simple an explanation for the Democrats’ failure at the polls, because the Donkeys in Congress held a significant minority even before Obama was elected in 2008. They have to share some of the blame for allowing the lending abuses that led to the housing crisis and the resultant recession.
After 2008, the Republicans did what politicians in the minority party seem to always do, which is everything in their power to cause the majority party to fall flat on its face. No wonder the country seems to go in circles.
I read one quote in a newspaper the other day that says it all. I think the person being quoted was H. L. Mencken, a silver-tongued political columnist for the Baltimore Sun back in the days of the first “Great Depression” in the ‘20s and ‘30s.
“Both political parties expend their energies trying to prove that the other party is unfit to govern. Both are correct, and both succeed,” Mencken wrote.
Well, we will see. We will see how, exactly, extending the Bush tax cuts to multi-millionaires will help us lower the national deficit. We will see how we can manage to balance the budget while continuing to increase spending for national security and the military, as many Conservatives seem to favor. We will see how the Tea Party crowd intends to cut the budget and still provide the money needed to educate our young people to the level necessary to compete with the Chinese and the Europeans.
I fear that they will find ways to cut the federal budget – by laying more and more of the costs for social services, education, health care and even national security and law enforcement off on the states. You’ve heard of unfunded mandates, I’m sure. Our county commissioners complain about them all the time, about requirements handed down by state government that force local government to find ways to pay for them, generally in the form of property taxes.
Those unfunded mandates work at the higher level too, with Uncle Sam setting standards and telling state governments, “You don’t have to meet these standards, but if you don’t, no more federal highways dollars,” or” no more federal grants for Medicaid, no more federal education funds,” and so on.
I hope I’m wrong. Unlike Rush Limbaugh, I don’t want to see the President fail, and I don’t want to see the Republicans fail. I hope they find the magic potion to fix the economy that Barack Obama has failed so far to find. I hope that somehow, politics will take a back seat to the need for all Americans to work together to solve our problems.
I won’t hold my breath.
But back to why the Democrats lost so convincingly across the board. I chalk it up to cowardice as much as anything. Give it to the Conservatives, whether you agree with their approach or not, they stick to their principles. Whether they appear to be winning or losing, Pachyderms stick to their values: friendly to big business, friendly to the wealthy, opposed to strict government regulation and opposed to taxes and spending.
They make no apologies, but simply try to convince the majority of Americans that what is good for the wealthy is good for everyone, and appear to be pretty successful at it.
Democrats found themselves under attack on just about every front over the past year, from health care reform to the stimulus package and bank bailouts. Some even blamed them for the Gulf oil spill and “Obama’s war” in Afghanistan.
A Democratic candidate could have stood up and said, “Dern tootin’ I voted for health care reform. We have 30 million Americans who can’t afford health care and we must care for them – or would you rather just set them out to die?”
A Democratic candidate could have said, “The economy faltered because of Bush administration policies, but I make no apologies for voting to bail out the banks and the auto industry, no matter how bad the taste. Doing nothing at all would have landed us in another Great Depression and destroyed the lives of middle class Americans.”
A Democratic candidate could have said, “I favor policies that help the least among us, people who need help – the elderly, the sick, the impoverished. I make no apologies for doing what any decent human being, what any good Christian should do.”
Given the mood of the country, those Democrats may well have been defeated anyway, but at least they would have lost while hanging on to their principles. Instead, as soon as the Republicans began to paint them as free-spending liberals in league with Obama and Nancy Pelozzi, many of them ran for the hills.
They ran ads touting their support for the NRA, which will endorse a Democrat when Hades freezes over, they ran ads declaring their disgust with the leaders of their own party and finally they stooped to personal attack ads that did nothing but further turn off voters.
In a sense, the Republicans did not so much win the elections of 2010 as the Democrats lost them.
Here in Campbell County, there were few surprises. Congressman Lincoln Davis found that attack ads on opponent Scott DeJarlais did little to keep him in office. Even Campbell County voters gave DeJarlais, from far-off Marion County, 60 percent of the vote over Davis, from nearby Jamestown.
Dennis Powers, who failed miserably in a couple of previous efforts to unseat Jerry Cross from the state legislature, found the political mood more to his liking this time around and will represent Campbell County and Union County down in Nashville.
The local trend toward more women in office continued in the LaFollette municipal election, where Stephanie Grimm joins Joe Bolinger on city council. Finally, Jellico continues to be dry, but Caryville will now have package liquor stores while restaurants can serve mixed drinks and wine, if Caryville can attract said restaurants.
Probably a good thing that Caryville just now got around to voting “wet.” If the town already had a watering hole, the county’s Democrats might be closing the joint down this week.
10-27-2010
Who needs Facebook when you’ve got the gift of gab
Some weeks it is easier to come up with something to write about than others. This is one of those “others.”
My reward for traveling eight hours last week in a bus filled with kids seems to be that I was exposed to some nasty bugs going around. One of them took hold in my bronchial tubes and decided to stay awhile.
As a result, I’ve not really been paying much attention to goings-on in these here parts for the past few days, other than to notice that the Cougars finally won one, in their division no less, which is more than the Vols can say at this point in the football season. It’s not been a pleasant Autumn for football fans in Campbell County.
Well, maybe I can think of something to write about between now and Thursday, except that by Wednesday morning I’ll be rolling down I-40 toward Nashville, to spend three days at a training conference for other trouble-makers and rabble-rousers, helping teach them how to rouse rabble.
Wednesday afternoon, I will have the pleasure of an early dinner with one of my former students in the art of journalism, Beverly Wooden. Beverly started out in journalism while still in high school at CCHS, picking up public records and writing obituaries at the LaFollette Press.
We quickly recognized her talent and soon had her writing feature stories and covering news. She has moved on and is now a senior editor with an online news service, where she could potentially earn twice the money that I ever did, without ever leaving the comfort of her living room.
Well, actually, she could earn her living on her laptop while basking on a beach in Hawaii or Jamaica. That’s the beauty of the web.
The times, they are a’changin’ and nothing is changing faster than communications. Daily newspapers are becoming dinosaurs, with shrinking readership, shrinking ad revenue and declining quality. I think small local weekly papers like the Press will most likely outlive the big dailies.
How is that possible, you ask, that the small town newspaper will survive where the Chicago Tribune does not? Why did the lowly forerunner of the rat survive, safe in its den, while the mighty T-Rex succumbed to the blast of a giant meteorite.
One of Tennessee’s weekly newspapers, the Bledsonian-Banner down in Pikeville, used to have a masthead I loved. Right there at the top of the front page, it read, “The Only Newspaper That Gives A Damn About Bledsoe County.”
That pretty well says it all. If you want to find out how the President is doing in polls, or the latest death toll in Afghanistan or the latest bank to do something disgusting to its customers, you can either turn on the TV, read the daily newspaper, listen to the radio or look it up on countless sources online, from blogs to websites to tweets and twitters.
If you want to know who got arrested, married, divorced or sued in your hometown, the local paper, local radio station or in some obvious cases the local cable channel, are your only sources.
The so-called “new media” is the wave of the future, however, and for the most part the wave of the present as well. I conducted a training back in August up in Kentucky. Present were a mix of eastern Kentucky hillbillies, black folks from West Tennessee and city slickers from up around Cincinnati.
One of the presentations involved how to get important social or political messages out by way of Facebook, and we asked how many folks out of the two dozen in the room had Facebook accounts. Everyone raised their hands except yours truly. I guess that makes me a dinosaur as well. But hey, you’re reading this online, so there’s hope for the old dog to learn a few new tricks, at least.
But not everything about the new media is rosy. Things have a way of going viral on the web before facts have been properly checked out. Political dirty tricks can be more effective, lies can gain a broader audience and lives can be ruined before the victim even knows he or she is a victim.
As an example, look at the black woman in Georgia who lost her position in the federal government over comments that were taken out of context and transmitted on the web. Although they apologized and offered her another job, her confidence in and loyalty to the people she had worked for was permanently destroyed.
When I retired from newspapers, I was invited to write a blog. I declined, saying my ego wasn’t so fat that I presumed people would care enough about what I thought. Of course the real reason was that I didn’t really see how one could make a living writing a blog.
Most bloggers are still faced with that challenge, although a few have developed a large enough following that advertising revenue keeps them in turnip greens.
But blogs aren’t news. They are one person’s take on what is happening, just as my column here at WLAF (you can call it a blog if you want, I refuse) is my take on what is happening. Opinions are like, well, you know the rest of that one. Don’t confuse facts with opinions.
Back in my newspaper days we used to have one major competitor, the Campbell County Daily Grapevine. It’s still around. It carried the news ten times faster than the radio station and a hundred times faster than the paper, and its about one-tenth as accurate as either.
But despite getting their information from the grapevine hours before Channel 12 carried the story and days before we at the Press wrote about it, people still tuned in Channel 12 and still bought the Press. Why? Because until they saw it in print or on the screen it was just a rumor.
The greatest service of the web is that communications is now instantaneous across the globe. The greatest danger is that rumors are in print, right there on the computer screen, and unless and until they have a system that can verify their accuracy, people are going to accept them as fact.
Well shucks, looks like I’m out of space and I never did think of a good topic for my column this week. I may be a dinosaur when it comes to the new technology, but remember this - nothing ever substitutes for the gift of gab.
10-21-2010
Officials have one thing in
common - the title “former”
The folks here at WLAF.com were pushing the panic button Wednesday night when my column still hadn’t arrived in their in-box as midnight approached. I usually write it on Tuesday, but this past Tuesday I was on a bus with 112 Valley View students and parents, winging it down to Georgia to visit a museum filled with dinosaurs, gold nuggets, Apollo space capsules and all kinds of other good things both fascinating and educational.
Well, actually I was on one of two buses. We had so many kids show up at 6:00 a.m. for the four-hour trip that we had to call in reinforcements. When everyone was seated, there were no seats remaining, so yours truly spent eight hours sitting on the floor next to the driver, with my feet resting on the steps leading from the door.
Wednesday morning at 7:30, I rolled out of bed, and promptly into the floor. Couldn’t get the old legs to work for the first 15 minutes, then I was able to crawl into the kitchen for a refreshing glass of OJ. Only I couldn’t get my hands to grip the lid. So I crawled back into the bedroom and tried to get back in bed, but I couldn’t manage to lift myself off the floor.
The feeling finally came back in my legs around 10:00 a.m., and then I really had something to regret. Oh, the agony! Makes one question whether this is all worth it or not until I recall watching one wide-eyed youngster staring up at Stan the T-Rex for the first time, or a whole pack of third graders scratching around in the sand of the museum’s “fossil pit.”
“Mr. Boomer, I found a Squidward,” one exclaimed, holding up a tiny ammonite fossil from roughly 200 million years ago, distantly related to the squid character in Spongebob Squarepants cartoons.
Yeah, it’s worth it. Now let me get on with this column so I can go back to my heating pads and Ben-Gay.
Education has continued to make the headlines in Campbell County this week, but not the good kind that involves kids and learning new things. Instead, Dr, Martin and Mrs Bundren are still in the news as more facts come to light, facts that seem to point to a collusion between the two officials to falsify Bundren’s PhD credentials.
Bundren’s supposed-doctorate degree from UT-Knoxville has already been shown to be pure fiction, and if that were the only problem, one might forgive Martin for letting his emotions rule his head and simply not carrying out a proper background check.
But it turns out that in order to fool the Department of Finance, Bundren also submitted a falsified PhD transcript to the State of Tennessee from the University of Wyoming. She never attended the University of Wyoming, but Michael Martin did, receiving his doctorate from that school. He also contacted them last October to request that a copy of his transcript be sent to Karen Bundren.
Oops. Looks like the smoking gun has been uncovered without a whole lot of trouble. Former School Board chairman Eugene Lawson is being criticized in some circles for not catching on to this escapade earlier, since he was tipped off over a year ago that Bundren was presenting herself around here and there as “Doctor Bundren.”
Eugene did look into things, but at that time, regardless of what she might have been calling herself, Bundren was not being paid the additional money that comes with a PhD. County officials had little control over what Bundren might be calling herself at conferences or among other educators, as long as she wasn’t being treated as such on her paycheck.
Also, I might say that the claims of falsifying credentials seemed far-fetched in the beginning. After all, we’re talking about two people making a combined $174,000 a year. With benefits, their combined jobs were worth a cool quarter of a million dollars. Why would any intelligent, educated person risk that over a lousy $3,745 raise?
Well they did. Why? I can only surmise that we’re talking hubris here. Hubris, as defined to be “we’re so smart, nobody will catch on,” and hubris, as “We’re in charge here and nobody dares question us.”
Doctor Martin isn’t the first person sitting at the top to make such a mistake. Just ask former Tennessee Governor Ray Blanton, former millionaire banker Jake Butcher, former President of the United States Richard Nixon or former Illinois Governor Rod Bla-whatever-itch.
The one thing that all these people have in common, along with Doctor Michael Martin, is the term “former” in front of their titles.
Greed and hubris seem to be reaching epidemic proportions around here lately. Just a quick glance at the Knoxville newspaper on Tuesday reveals that Del Roberts, former president of the Powell-Clinch Utility District, is under investigation for spending $95,000 in public funds for his own gain over the past couple of years. Roberts was supposedly respected as an excellent manager who had worked for the natural gas utility for 19 years and was earning an annual salary of $95,472.
That’s gone now, possibly traded in for an orange prison jumpsuit.
And remember that Knoxville mom who made national headlines back in 2006 for blowing tens of thousands of dollars on her teenaged daughter’s sweet 16 party, including the gift of a $50,000 BMW? I guess, since Leslie Ann Gibbs allegedly lifted $4.5 million from the brokerage firm she worked for, she really didn’t need to worry about such ridiculous spending since it wasn’t her money in the first place.
Maybe the kid will drive that BMW down to Nashville on occasion to visit mommy in prison.
It’s easy to understand why someone who is down to their last dime might try to duck out without paying for ten bucks’ worth of gas, or shoplift or even break into someone’s car. It’s unforgivable to steal from someone else, but at least we can understand the motives of someone who is desperate, or starving, or even has a serious drug habit or gambling debts.
You can even understand the career criminals who have never known anything else and have nothing to lose. What amazes me are those people who have great jobs, fat salaries and comfortable lives, but apparently even that isn’t enough. They always seem to want more, and many of them eventually get exactly what they deserve.
10-13-2010 County treated to latest remake of
“The Good, The Bad and The Ugly”
Considering what has transpired in the halls of power here in Campbell County during the last week, I half expect to see Clint Eastwood riding into town looking for the film set for “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.”
The good is probably the least noticeable so far, at least outside the offices of the Campbell County Board of Education. The results are in for the various achievement tests for both elementary and secondary schools and the news is good, or at least better than many suspected.
Despite higher standards that have many school systems wringing their hands over declining scores, Campbell County’s elementary schools all scored passing grades with one minor exception - language arts at LaFollette Elementary School needs some improvement. All other county K-5 schools scored passing grades in all subjects.
The problem remains in the middle school system, where many scores were in the orange alert range (the scores were color coded with green being good, orange bad). But Campbell County High School, which appeared on the verge of being declared a failed school by state authorities just a couple of years ago, has now inched back from the precipice and scores and graduation rates, while still needing improvement, have shown some definite progress.
So much for the good. The bad is not all of that bad, more like inevitable, but will be bad news for county property owners and motorists alike. The commission last week finally came to the realization that there is simply not enough fat in the budget to offset $900,000 in increased costs, and approved the equivalent of a ten cent tax increase.
The squires didn’t raise property taxes by ten cents, however, preferring to make everyone a little angry instead of making half of the county very angry. They cut three cents off the projected 13-cent tax increase by denying Dennis Potter’s request for more asphalt money, combining some positions in the Sanitation & Solid Waste Department and finding a few other cuts in the General Fund.
They then gave property owners something to frown about by raising the property tax by five cents, or about twelve bucks on a $100,000 home. They then gave renters with two or three cars parked in their back yard something to frown about by raising the wheel tax by ten bucks.
Former Tennessee football great Herman Hickman, who later coached at one of the Ivy League schools for many years, used to say he liked to “keep the alumni sullen but not mutinous” by not winning too much or too little.
Looks like the squires hope to keep voters sullen but not mutinous by cutting costs a little, taxing homeowners a little and taxing car owners a little. Of course, those voters who own both an expensive home and a garage full of automobiles may yet mutiny.
Since the commission must hold a public hearing before raising the tax rate above the state-certified rate, I’m sure they will get an earful from the mutinous segment of the population.
Now for the ugly. Most everyone by now has heard about the sudden resignation of the Director of Schools last week after it was revealed that he had approved a raise for Title I Director Karen Bundren based on her having a PhD in Education when in fact, she is merely Professor Bundren, not Doctor Bundren.
This could be passed off as a careless failure to double-check credentials, except Bundren and Director Michael Martin are romantically involved. Whoops, once again an intelligent male of the species appears to be letting the wrong part of his anatomy do his thinking for him. Shades of John Edwards and Bill Clinton!
There is no way to know if the two participated in a willful conspiracy to defraud the county out of money, or whether being in love, Doctor Martin simply wasn’t going to doubt his girl friend’s word and was the victim of a lie.
Either way, it is a sad situation. The raise that Bundren earned for her fictional doctorate degree was $3,745 a year. For that, she lost an $80,000 job and Doctor Martin had to resign from a job paying over $94,000 a year. I’m not the best at math, but it seems that sacrificing $174,000 for less than $4,000 is a bad trade in anyone’s book.
I noted a couple of weeks ago that Doctor Martin, being a “them” and not from around these parts, has no “cronies” in Campbell County. He could have used a few, it seems. What he did have are enemies. I’m not sure who all was out to get him, but new School Board member Rector Miller made no secret of his intention to see Martin ousted when he was running for the office. From what I’ve heard, that bad blood involves an expulsion at CCHS and other ugly matters.
Martin also made some rather sudden changes in leadership at some of the schools as soon as he took office a couple of years back, so he has undoubtedly made other enemies as well.
Being in a position of power and responsibility is going to lead to making some enemies. There is no way to avoid it that I’m aware of, but what one does not do is hand your enemies the bullet to shoot you with. Martin didn’t hand his enemies a bullet, he handed them the loaded gun and a shoulder to help steady their aim.
Campbell County schools are just beginning to show some improvement in test results and actually got the money they needed from the squires without one of those long, drawn-out budget battles we’ve seen in times past. Now the system is faced with finding new leadership and patching up some wounds. We’ll see if the current School Board is as efficient in choosing leaders as they are in getting rid of them.