"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 150^th 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 4^th 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 20^th 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 3175^th 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 3175^th 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 1^st 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 4^th and 5^th 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 3^rd to 5^th 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 4^th 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 8^th 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 5^th graders I’m teaching at Valley View will be approaching their mid-30s and paying off the bills for me.

That is, assuming those 5^th 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.