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Biorhythms: what goes up must also come down; just ask Herman Cain

I’m a great believer in biorhythms. You know, those not-quite-definable ups and downs in one’s life that determine not just how you feel but often things that happen that are quite out of your control.

It seems as if most of us go through life in neutral, with periods when everything goes just right and other periods when everything goes wrong. The musician who penned the lyrics “The future’s so bright I have to wear shades” was obviously going through a period of positive biorhythms at the time. Murphy, when he wrote his Laws, was without doubt in a biorhythmic downturn when he declared law number one: “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.”

I used to think such ideas were nonsense, that we make our own luck and if things are going badly, it is our own fault for making bad choices. Poppycock, bad things happen to good people all the time, while the undeserving all too often hit the Powerball or pick the right horse.

Instead, I think we make bad choices because we’re suffering from a downturn in our biorhythms. This past week was for me, a perfect example.

I started off by getting a little notice from my bank, announcing that I had an overdraft in my account. Naturally I didn’t get the notice until a week after the overdraft occurred and I had written several more checks, resulting in a black hole in my finances, expanding constantly to swallow surrounding stars.

My bank covers my checks but, as comedian Bill Cosby once so aptly put it, “When you write a bad check, what does your bank do? They charge you more of what they already know you don’t have enough of.”

I had made a $100 error in my checkbook. By the time I found out and covered the error, I had another $144 in overdrafts, which left me eating cheese and crackers for a week and paying late fees on utility and cable bills.

Shake it off. These things happen and after all, you’re at fault for not being able to add and subtract accurately.

Early this week, it was time for me to do my duty as Campbell County’s tax enforcement officer and cite some miscreants into court who have ignored my friendly warning letters. Being the first time I have issued citations, I turned to our friends at the Campbell County Sheriff’s Department for guidance in how to fill out the citation documents.

I was told to fill out the forms and give the white and blue copies to the Sheriff’s Department for service, keep the pink copy and turn the yellow copy into the Clerk of the Court.

The first thing I noticed is that the book contains five copies of each citation, an original and copies for everyone from the court clerk to the courthouse janitor. You are supposed to fill out the top sheet and it will carbon though to the underlying pages, all printed on different pastel colors.

I quickly learned that no amount of pressure can produce legible copies through five sheets of paper. The fifth copy, at the very bottom of the pad, is also the one that is marked “defendant,” meaning the person who is being summoned into court, why and when. That one, at least, needed to be completely legible.

So I spent half an afternoon and most of the next morning copying over and over, name, address, nature of violation, explanation of what occurred, etc. etc. Finally I finished and took the citations into the General Sessions Court Clerk’s office to have them processed and served.

“Oh, just give us the top sheet. We’ll make copies and send them around.”

I wept, uncontrollably.

No time for self pity, however. I had a class scheduled at 3:00 p.m. to teach after-school science enrichment to my third graders up at Valley View. This of course, was Valentine’s Day, so the kids had been gobbling down chocolates, candy canes, Tootsie Rolls, suckers and every conceivable form of sugar since early in the day.

At first I thought someone had released a flight of bats into the classroom until I realized those shadowy figures flitting around in a blur were actually my third graders, bouncing off the walls in a perpetual sugar rush.

At some point, about halfway through the hour and a half class, it suddenly dawned on me that I had to film the school board meeting that evening, but had left the camera sitting on the coffee table back at my home in Lake City.

“OK. Don’t panic. There is plenty of time to drive from Valley View to Lake City, pick up the camera and make it to the courthouse in time to set up,” I told myself.

You know, I used to be pretty efficient at changing flat tires. In my youth I always drove on tires until they were at least 50,000 miles past warranty, no sign of tread remaining and about as out of round as a watermelon. That was before they came up with the utility spare, that pathetic little spare that is now the standard in new vehicles and guaranteed to get you down the road, hopefully to the next interstate exit.

The standard jack and tire wrench have also declined in quality to the point where successfully changing a tire on the side of the road is, if not an impossibility, at least an improbability. I attempt to keep good tires on my van at all times, having learned the hard way that I really don’t want to deal with flat tires. Of course, good tires are no protection from a three-inch metal bolt.

So rushing back on the interstate last Tuesday to grab a camera and rush back to the courthouse, the predictable happened, of course. It was at this point that I discovered that the jack that I’ve never had to use, was in fact not all there. Also, my cell phone was at home, sitting on the coffee table next to the camera.

Walking. Fortunately I have friends. Unfortunately, their jack wouldn’t fit my vehicle. Fortunately they were willing to take me to Lake City. Unfortunately, every mechanic in Lake City calls it a day and goes home after 5:00 p.m.

I finally found someone with a jack that worked and dragged myself into the sanctuary of my living room around 8:00. No school board, no film at eleven. The folks here at WLAF were not amused.

Despite the temptation to just stay in bed and not leave my house until my fortunes improved, I ventured out the next day and found that my biorhythms had at least leveled off. My damaged tire was patched quickly, the bank gave me back half of the overdraft fees and my workday was uneventful and productive.

Of course we also have those weeks when everything seems right with the world. One Christmas season, I spent four bucks on two $2 lottery tickets and won $100. The next day I spent four more bucks at a different store and won $500. During the same week I wrote one of my most popular columns, “’Twas the Monday Before Christmas,” had a pleasant visit and dinner with an old girlfriend and was invited to spend January free-loading off my cousins in sunny Florida.

So, pilgrims, just be aware that regardless of how badly things seem to be going, your biorhythms will shift and things will get better. If the future is so bright you have to wear shades, don’t get too full of yourself – things will go wrong eventually, just ask Herman Cain.

I don’t know whether next week will bring an upturn in my fortunes or another downturn, but I’ll go out on a limb and predict one thing – the dozen people for whom I filled out those wheel tax citations will more than likely have a bad biorhythm week.    (updated 4:00 p.m. on 02/10/12 for the week of 02/06/2012)  

 Annexation is a dog that won’t hunt, towns better off upgrading from within

I unloaded on Congressman Jimmy Duncan last week for his sponsorship of a highway appropriation bill that would also increase truck weight limits and allow triple rigs on interstate highways.

So of course, the very next day I read that the controversial section had been removed by a committee, with Duncan saying, “I was always uneasy with that provision.”

I’m glad Duncan agreed to removing legislation that would have been a potential death knell for many motorists, not to mention costing millions in additional damage to highways and costing thousands of truck drivers their jobs. I can’t buy his victim act, however. “Uneasy”? It was his bill, why would he include something in it that made him uneasy?

Ah well, the art of successful politics involves two things: 1) taking credit where credit is not due and 2) plausible deniability – successfully shifting responsibility for unpopular behavior to others. Jimmy Duncan is, if nothing else, a skilled politician.

Less skilled as politicians are the city fathers up in Jellico. The Board of Mayor & Aldermen and the planning commission have been kicking around the idea of annexation for some months now. First they heard from irate citizens in Newcomb, who wanted no part of Jellico.

After assuring those irate citizens that Jellico wanted no part of Newcomb, Jellico’s leaders narrowed their sights to a section southeast of the town including High Cliff. Same results: irate citizens complained, planning commission backed off. Jellico appears to have dropped the idea of annexation, for the time being at least.

Jellico, like my hometown of Lake City and to an extent, LaFollette, are all suffering from the small town version of urban blight. Professionals, business owners and other upper middle class families are attracted to upscale subdivisions where they can mow extensive lawns, dig swimming pools or at least have a bit of elbow room to build a deck, patio or plant a tree or three.

Such subdivisions are rare inside city limits, where the residential neighborhoods are aging, sometimes not so gracefully. As old timers pass on, their children, having already established themselves in the suburbs, have no interest in moving back to the old home place. Instead they rent, or sell to someone who is interested in owning rental property.

The results are predictable: a gradual but steady gentrification of the town with a corresponding lowering of property values and shrinking of the tax base. LaFollette countered this trend for years by strip annexing along Highway 25W, taking in the expanding commercial strip along Jacksboro Pike to include first Woodson’s Mall, then the WalMart and stores at Cumberland Crossing.

Then Woodson’s declined and the WalMart moved on down the highway to be closer to the interstate, and outside LaFollette corporate limits. The city fathers had never bothered to annex many of the residential neighborhoods beyond the four-lane. Why commit to providing garbage, street lights, fire hydrants and police and fire protection to areas that couldn’t pay for themselves in tax revenue?

Oops. Now that the stores have all moved to Jacksboro, those growing residential neighborhoods probably look pretty good. Jellico and Lake City have the same problem, except they never really had the opportunity to annex upscale residential neighborhoods, scarce around both towns.

Lake City flirted with annexing deeper into Campbell County, but the residents of Ridgewood already have the only thing they really want from Lake City, sewer and water lines, and raised such a stink every time annexation was discussed that the city backed off.

Now Jellico has run into the same stonewall with plans to expand corporate limits and the tax base to outlying neighborhoods. Few people see enough advantages to being inside the city to offset the increased property taxes, and most will radically oppose annexation.

Cities are always looking around for industrial property they can acquire and offer for sale or lease to attract industry. Perhaps it is time these towns begin to look at land that can be developed into upscale residential neighborhoods and doing something to encourage developers to build inside city limits instead of outside in the county.

It may be a whole lot easier, with the right incentives, to persuade developers to create subdivisions in town than to persuade residents outside town to go along with being dragged inside the city limits.

Something certainly needs to be done to reverse the trend. Some of these cities are hard-pressed already to provide services for their residents at affordable costs. In another decade or two, some towns may see their tax base decline and costs rise to the point where they will cease to exist.

On second thought, considering the quality of leadership in some city halls, many residents might begin to feel that would be a good thing.  (updated 4:00 p.m. on 02/10/12 for the week of 02/06/2012)                

Knoxville’s state senator is a clown, but the city’s congressman can be dangerous

Everybody’s favorite legislative clown is at it again. Stacey Campfield has again made Tennessee the laughing stock of the nation with his idiotic remarks about the AIDS virus on Sirius Radio.

In case you’ve been taking final vows at a monastery or just emerged from your cave after hibernating during the first months of winter, West Knoxville’s state senator is the sponsor of a bill that forbids the discussion of all things gay in Tennessee classrooms before high school.

That in itself is silly enough. I don’t recall homosexuality 101 being on the curriculum of any middle schools I’m familiar with, but Stacey is famous for proposing laws to remedy problems that don’t exist, merely to grab a few more controversial headlines.

This time the class clown of the General assembly has really stepped over the line. First, he told a national radio audience that the AIDS virus was first spread among humanity by an airline pilot having sex with a monkey. That statement was just plain ridiculous, and pure Stacey Campfield.

His subsequent comments were equally ridiculous, but potentially more damaging when he claimed it is practically impossible for the AIDS virus to be spread by heterosexual sexual contact. Anybody who takes Campfield’s word on that and decides it’s fine to ignore protection may soon find themselves among the 20 percent of Tennessee AIDS victims who contracted the disease through heterosexual contact.

This time a lot of people are letting Campfield know that they’re fed up with his buffoonery. A “Recall TN State Senator Stacey Campfield” website has received thousands of hits with a good portion of them expressing a “like” which is computer speak for “Amen, brother.”

The latest episode of the Campfield Follies came on Monday, when the owner of Knoxville’s popular restaurant Bistro at the Bijou refused to serve Campfield and ordered him to leave her restaurant.

Martha Boggs, who says she is a married, heterosexual woman, explained that she just got fed up with Campfield, calling him a “bully.” A number of new customers flocked to the Bistro this week, merely to show their support for a restaurant that proudly announces on its menu board, “Today’s Special: Fried Chicken, Crispy Chicken Livers, No Stacey.”

This is, of course, not the first time Stacey has been tossed out of a joint. News-Sentinel columnist Sam Venable reminds us that a couple of years back, he was tossed out of Neyland Stadium at a Tennessee-Kentucky Halloween game when he refused to take off a Mexican wrestler’s mask despite stadium rules against wearing masks.

He was unceremoniously shown the door several years back when he tried to join the legislature’s Black Caucus, accusing African-American lawmakers of discrimination when they pointed out that he is not black.

He has been scolded for parking his car on the sidewalk in front of the State Capitol so he could rush into a session of the legislature, fashionably late, to cast his vote.

So why do the voters continue to return this clown to the state legislature year after year? Not only that, but they elevated him from the lowly House of Representatives to the State Senate in the last election. Campfield represents the wealthiest, most highly educated half of Knox County – Farragut, Campbell Station and West Knoxville.

Apparently these people have all the laws they want already in their favor and feel no need for good, intelligent representation. Instead, they want to be entertained and figure electing a clown to office will provide them with hours of cheap entertainment.

The recall movement will get nowhere. State legislators years ago limited recall petitions to local government officials and excluded state officials, namely the members of the legislature. Stacey may try again to gain entrance to the Bistro, just to grab more headlines, but other Knoxville eateries are unlikely to join the “No Stacey” movement.

But I’m going to do my little part to send Stacey a message. I’m springing for twelve bucks and a couple of dollars’ worth of stamps to send him a little stuffed monkey I found on sale. If a few thousand people would dig up stuffed monkeys and mail them to Senator Stacey Campfield at the Legislative Plaza in Nashville, he would be too busy opening his mail to dream up more mischief, at least for the rest of this session.

Stacey Campfield is merely an embarrassment, sort of like the alcoholic uncle who shows up at family Thanksgivings or the brother-in-law you have to continually bail out of jail.

I’ve decided that U.S. Congressman Jimmy Duncan is a bird of a totally different color. Duncan is just intelligent enough, and devious enough, to be dangerous.

Jimmy, who is chairman of the House Transportation Committee’s subcommittee on highways and transit, is pushing legislation to spend $260 billion on highways over the next five years, pointing out that more funding for highway construction means more jobs.

Sounds like a tax and spend Democrat, doesn’t he? Well, the devil’s in the details, they always say. Jimmy’s bill would also increase weight limits on federal highways for tractor trailers from the current 80,000 pounds to 97,000 pounds. It would also allow some haulers to carry as much as 126,000 pounds on interstates for restricted distances of 25 miles or less. That piece, I would imagine, is a favor to the coal industry, which has long lobbied for higher load limits for short distances.

His bill would also allow triple rigs, one truck hauling three trailers instead of the current limit of two.  Duncan is quoted as saying, “Job creation is the number one priority for voters across the United States” in explaining his bill.

Excuse my ignorance, but I’m having a hard time figuring out how you can increase jobs when you replace three piggy-back tractor-trailer rigs with two triple rigs, or how you can create jobs when four trucks can legally haul the same load that five trucks must now carry.

 The one job market that has not suffered greatly from the recession has been for professional truck drivers. Companies are constantly advertising for more drivers. Duncan’s bill would cut out the need for approximately one in every five drivers.

But I guess increasing weight limits by 25 percent would have a positive impact on highway construction jobs, Interstates are currently designed to support trucks hauling the current weight limits. Heavier trucks would mean greater highway damage and more need for constant repair and resurfacing of highways, so the road builders would be happy as pigs in a mud puddle.

I wonder how much the Rogers Group and other road-building contractors, along with the big trucking companies, donated to the Jimmy Duncan re-election fund?

Oh, and I didn’t even mention highway safety. Imagine having to share a rainy interstate highway with triple rigs or regular tractor trailers loaded beyond their safe capacity. It’s enough to convince me to dig out a good county road map and go back to taking the scenic routes, regardless of how many whistle stop speed limits and slow-moving farm tractors I have to contend with. (updated 7:00 a.m. on 02/03/12 for the week of 01/30/2012)               

Musings on the Sunshine State – bull riding, fishing and the eternal mosquito

After ranting last week about corporate pirates, judges and vacant seats on county commission, I find myself this week with nothing left to rant about. This is in part due to an absence of public meetings, but primarily due to the fact that I’ve been out of town, vacationing down in warmer climes.

Well, “warmer” is somewhat subjective. Temperatures have been so mild here in Tennessee that the Florida Panhandle wasn’t really that much of a change. But while mild temperatures in Campbell County in January usually are accompanied by cloudy skies and drizzle, mild temperatures on the Gulf Coast come with blue skies, brilliant sunsets and salt air. That makes the ten-hour drive worthwhile.

Actually my sinuses went south for the winter back in October, leaving me behind to cope with another East Tennessee November. They usually stay south until late March or early April so this year I decided to go looking for them. Must have found them in Destin, Florida, because I spent five lovely days without wheezing, sneezing or snorting. Of course when I returned to Tennessee, they insisted on staying behind, still basking on the beach.

I’ve had a long love affair with the State of Florida and like all such relationships, it has its share of ups and downs. As a young man, I couldn’t seem to venture into the Sunshine State without some sort of misadventure, such as the 1967 Orange Bowl. Four of us slept on the beach at St. Petersburg, carried one companion off a deep-sea fishing boat after too few fish and too many beers, and left another companion behind in the Miami jail. He decided that a police officer’s cap would be a great souvenir. The officer and the judge failed to see the humor.

I finally gave up completely on deep-sea fishing in Florida a few years back when the state placed 30-inch size limits on all fish worth fishing for. Seems like everything we hooked came in at 29 ½ inches and had to be thrown back. Of course none of those fish survived. A school of porpoises circled our boat and scooped up everything we tossed overboard, so we paid out nearly a hundred bucks each for a “feed the dolphins” cruise.

The one keeper I pulled in, a 34 -inch grouper, bounced overboard when the captain failed to secure the cooler he placed it in. Only time I ever had the big one get away after it was already on ice, but at least the story was good for a prize-winning newspaper column.

Back when I was much younger and a bit thinner than I presently am, I spent four months paddling a canoe from Norris Dam to the tip of the Florida Everglades. “Everglades” must be an old Indian word, meaning “land of the eternal mosquito.” Each evening I would halt at my designated campsite, quickly pitch my tent, slather myself in mosquito repellant and prepare supper.

I would then quickly wash off the smelly bug repellant, gobble down a few bites and dive into my tent. After spending 20 minutes smashing the varmints that entered my tent with me, I would write in my journal by flashlight for a few minutes then lay down and listen to the sounds of the Everglades until dropping off to sleep.

There was only one sound, a low, constant “hmmmm” throughout the night as millions of mosquitoes buzzed around trying to figure out a way to get into my tent and feast.

All of the creatures would vanish with the morning sun, and I would emerge, mostly unscathed, to break camp and continue my journey. Only when next pitching my tent would I notice that some of the varmints had escaped my swatting to feed while I was asleep, only to be squashed when I rolled up the tent.. The bloodstains on my white tent’s interior survive to this day.

Of course not all of my adventures while on this canoe trip involved a solitary communion with nature. While paddling the Peace River, I stopped to celebrate New Year’s Eve at the little town of Arcadia, home to a watering hole known as “The Corral.” Yup, you guessed it, New Year’s Eve with a bunch of redneck cowboys.

The highlight of the evening came at midnight, when a fellow named Junior rode his Brahma bull through the bar, knocking over tables, drinks and drinkers before carving a swath through the dance floor. It turned out to not be as rowdy as it seems. Junior’s bull was named “Angel” and was the tame pet of a local doctor, a gentle ride for the doc’s small grandchildren.

Junior, it turned out, had just returned from a trip of his own, having ridden Angel from Arcadia to Tennessee for the 1982 Knoxville World’s Fair. When he found out I had just paddled a canoe from Tennessee to Arcadia, he insisted that I join him at the seat of honor, astride Angel’s back.

I can attest, you haven’t line danced until you line dance on the back of a Brahma bull. Angel especially liked kicking up his heels to the sounds of Charlie Daniels’ fiddle.

Alas, nowadays my visits to the Sunshine State are much more relaxed, involving short walks on the beach and the consumption of prodigious quantities of seafood. Where once I used to obtain my seafood the hard way, diving for Florida lobsters in the Keys, digging for clams on Sunset Key or battling King Mackerels from the deck of a boat, I now dig for my credit card at places like Pampano Joes’s or Harbor Dock.

I’ve changed a bit as I’ve aged, but not by a long shot as much as Florida has changed. Destin, when I used to spend summer vacations there as a child with my family, consisted of a couple of seedy motels, a harbor full of equally seedy fishing boats, a shrimp house and a couple of diners and gas stations. For nightlife, one could venture over to Fort Walton Beach to take in a movie or get a beer at one of the bars near Eglin Air Force Base.

The offshore sandbar that guarded the harbor entrance can no longer be seen – it’s covered with ten-story condos. Destin now spreads for miles along Highway 98, with shopping malls, outlet malls, fast food joints, fancy food joints, motels, hotels, gift shops and a Tom Thumb convenience store at every intersection.

Destin spreads eastward to merge with Sandestin, then Santa Rosa Beach, Blue Mountain Beach, Grayton Beach, Seaside and other “model” communities until you are in the outskirts of Panama City. Every square foot along the seaside is covered by a rental townhouse, villa or a condo. In some places they’ve had to stabilize the sand dunes with metal seawalls to keep the condos and townhouses from washing into the sea with the next hurricane, as they are built much too close to the water.

The state has preserved a few swatches of Florida as it used to be, state parks at Topsail Beach and Henderson Beach, segments of Gulf Islands National Seashore on Okaloosa Island and a state forest preserve. These are sanctuaries for wading birds and other critters. On one hike in Topsail State Park, I encountered an armadillo, or as they call them in Texas, a “possum on the half shell.”

Ah well, time brings changes and with time, Mother Nature will change things back. Eventually, the big one, the mother of all hurricanes, will arrive to blow all the clutter into the Gulf of Mexico. Or global warming will turn out to be real, despite what Tea Partiers say, and melting Arctic ice will raise sea levels and turn Destin back into a swamp. Eventually this stretch of golden sand will be returned to its rightful owner – the eternal mosquito.    (updated 6:00 p.m. on 01/28/12 for the week of 01/23/2012)      

  Some rare occasions when I would love to be a county commissioner

There are times, however rare, when I really wish I could be a member of the county commission. Some situations just scream for certain motions or statements that I would just love to offer but cannot, exiled as I am to being behind the camera in the back of the room.

Such was the case Tuesday night. To begin with, the various judges scheduled so many people for court appearances the day after the Martin Luther King holiday that the commission had to move its public meeting to the cramped meeting room in the Jacksboro Municipal Building.

The squires, county officials and public gamely endured having to cross the street in a pouring rain, but most were none too happy about it, simply having no choice in the matter.

I, for one, would have registered my displeasure by offering a motion, perhaps to re-design the barely-begun justice center to eliminate judge’s office spaces. My motion would assign the judges new office space, perhaps in the basement of the Courthouse Annex or the old Central School office building, with no budget for heating and air conditioning.

The motion would have died for lack of a second, of course, but would make the point that public meetings of governing bodies deserve more respect than they get from the judiciary.

The second instance where I really wished to be a member of the commission came when the squires couldn’t come to an agreement on appointing someone to succeed Melvin Boshears. Johnny Bruce offered a motion to just leave the seat vacant until August and let the voters decide the issue.

I can understand the squires’ hesitation to vote on an appointment. Members of the general public can promise to vote for everyone running for an office, walk into a voting booth, pull a lever and the candidates will never know whether they kept their word or not. It’s called a secret ballot and its every voter’s right to keep their vote private. The commissioners can’t do this, and any vote on appointing someone to office is going to result in some hard feelings somewhere along the line.

Of course, commissioners also cannot decide not to make an appointment. The constitution demands that every citizen have equal representation and County Attorney Joe Coker pointed out that voting to leave the seat vacant for more than 120 days would violate the law of the land because third district voters would have only two, instead of three representatives

This is where I would have loved to be a member of the commission. I would have offered an amendment to leave the seat vacant but assign to it an automatic “no” vote on every motion. This way, third district citizens would have exactly the same representation they had before, when Melvin Boshears held the seat.

Another case where I would love to be a member of the commission involves the sad news last week that the PACA plant has closed, leaving over 90 people without jobs. PACA, which produced body armor for the military and police departments, did not appear to be suffering from loss of contracts or inability to turn a profit.

In fact, it appears that the company that recently bought PACA, Florida-based Point Blank Enterprises, purchased the local company in order to get its contracts and not much else.

Point Blank Enterprises doesn’t seem to have had any interest in PACA’s loyal employees, or in PACA’s factory location and infrastructure here in Campbell County. I suspect that the Florida company saw a good opportunity to buy out a competitor, eliminate it and take its business, and nothing more.

Hey, that’s business in the cutthroat world of corporate competition, right? Sure there are going to be a few casualties in the form of people losing their jobs, perhaps permanently in this sour economy. A few might have to file bankruptcy or lose homes, so what? It’s nothing personal, just business.

I am a strong proponent of the old axiom, “Don’t get mad, get even.” If I were a member of the Campbell County Commission, I would offer a motion to forbid the Campbell County Sheriff’s Department from purchasing body armor from Point Blank Enterprises, to send letters to the county’s four municipalities, urging them to pass similar motions, and also letters to every police department and sheriff’s department in East Tennessee, urging them to refuse to give business to a company that takes Tennessee jobs and moves them to Florida.

In the event that some legal requirement forces local governments to accept low bids, even from corporate pirates that steal jobs from Tennesseans, I would move that the county commission ask our state representative and senator to sponsor legislation, removing low bidder priority for any company that has moved jobs from Tennessee to another state.

Then I would ask our county mayor to have a friendly, private meeting with such people as retired General Carl Stiner, or anyone else with military connections, and see if they have enough influence with the Pentagon to get a few contracts canceled here and there.

Vindictive, you say?  Nah, it’s nothing personal. It’s just business.    (updated 8:00 p.m. on 01/25/12 for the week of 01/16/2012)