|
Fairness Questioned
I have read your endorsement for Parkey Strader for the 14th District House seat being vacated by Rep. H. E. Bittle. Although I believe that the Metro Pulse is free to endorse any candidate it chooses for any reason it sees fit, in the interests of fairness you should disclose to your readers some background information about your relationship with the person you endorsed.
Brian Conley, publisher of the Metro Pulse, is an owner of Cardinal Development, a downtown developer and property owner with day-to-day interaction with the Tax Assessor’s Office, Parkey Strader’s employer. Mr. Conley is also a contributor to the campaign of Mr. Strader, having donated $500 on May 10, 2004. (This information can easily be found at www.state.tn.us/tref, under Mr. Strader’s first financial disclosure.) Mr. Conley has therefore put himself in the position of having a financial interest in the outcome of this election, and thus engaged in the unethical practice of attempting to influence the election with his “newspaper.”
During the entire campaign for this important state office, neither Mr. Conley nor anyone from his newspaper has contacted my campaign to discuss the issues or ask any questions of any kind regarding the race. On July 15, 2004, I wrote you and asked for just such an opportunity, but I never heard back from you. I would have liked to discuss my positions on TennCare reform, controlling the state budget without increasing the tax burden on Tennessee families, and improving education for our children, but Mr. Conley has apparently chosen go the way of Fox News and decide what he wants his readers to know about important local issues. Instead of focusing on these important issues, Mr. Conley talks about Mr. Strader’s supposed “saving of tax money” as Tax Assessor, yet fails to mention that Mr. Strader made a mistake which cost Knoxville taxpayers $1.2 million; that Mr. Strader failed to keep records on over 8,000 appeals that his office heard (thus keeping those appeals and their outcomes secret), including appeals on certain properties owned by Mr. Conley; and that Mr. Strader wants to now draw a third taxpayer-funded paycheck. Saving taxpayers money indeed!
Congratulations Mr. Conley, you promised “editorial independence” when you purchased the Pulse; I just didn’t know it was independence from journalistic integrity.
Chris Oldham
Knoxville
Tasting Each Other’s Ketchup
This morning’s NPR reports struck two chords that seem to echo a single chorus. In the post-presidential debate analysis, referencing factcheck.org, the commentator highlighted the erroneous quote by President Bush that his tax cuts were not beneficial to the upper class, when in fact the top 20 percent of our population is not taxed on their affluent status.
Following this journalistic exposure of the power of the rich, the next report was on the ketchup wars. Bush supporters, in an attempt to undermine Kerry, have started up their own ketchup company, “W,” in honor of the first George W. (Washington, that is), with the label motto: “If you don’t support the Democrats then why does your ketchup?”
In a matter of weeks, thousands of dollars have poured into the Republican pockets. The Heinz Corp., in defense, came back with the argument that they donate equally to both parties and that this advertising is a political ploy. The culinary truth lies in blind taste tests, where partisan samplers chose each other’s crushed tomatoes instead of their own. One woman ended the tasting spree with the suggestion that perhaps we should be doing more “tasting of each other’s ketchup.”
This is precisely the metaphor that calls attention to the stain of our current political communications and the need for concerted public dialogue efforts. Public dialogue is the method to the madness, the way to achieve listening and understanding, and put our heads together to solve critical social ills.
Standing in a friend’s kitchen, as she stirred her homemade tomato sauce, I suggested she add a little sugar, now a little basil, she mixed and tasted, and. beaming a smile, it was clear that two heads are better than one.
According to Tom Atlee, of the Co-Intelligence Institute, many heads are better than none. If we continue to allow lining our narrow pockets instead of expanding our minds and our senses, to guide our behaviors, we may end up with more ketchup, but will we really have the one that tastes the best?
Adrienne Dessel
Knoxville
A Gentleman and a Scholar
Thanks to Jack Neely for his warm remembrance [Oct. 14] of the late David Harkness. I knew him for over 30 years and was one of the many people he befriended and encouraged.
Mr. Harkness’s title at UT for decades was “the director of library services,” which didn’t come close to describing the many hats he wore so well. He was a ceaseless advocate for UT and the state of Tennessee, and represented the university in countless ways—many of them on his own time. He gave countless talks to groups of little old ladies, lunchtime Rotarians, and historical societies in far-flung counties. He was one of the handful of people in my life who lived up to that old phrase, “a gentleman and a scholar.”
In our time, when universities under the budget gun are forced to act ruthlessly efficiently, there seems to be no room anymore for a fellow like David Harkness. A blessing, then, on the unknown soul who hired him, created the Extension Library, and ensconced Mr. Harkness in it.
If there were ever a UT graduate who lived up to the lines on the Vol Statue, “He that beareth a torch shadoweth himself to give light to others,” David was that man. He is gone, but that light still shines.
Jeff Bradley
Boulder, Colorado
National Health Works
Victoria Abbott’s letter in Metro Pulse [Oct. 14] had this curiousstatement: “Socialized (national, single-payer) healthcare is antiquated and failing everywhere, yet it continues to be one of the biggest desires of the Democratic Party.”
Both parts of this sentence are false. Regarding the first part: Every country that has a national health plan (and that’s all industrialized nations except the United States) pays less than we do here in the United States, while providing all of their citizens access to needed care. As for the second part: Unfortunately, the Democratic Party is pushing only for a plan that would bolster the present employer-based health insurance system, which is failing.
National health insurance holds down costs by forming the largest possible group of beneficiaries, thus lowering the cost per-person for the insurance pool as a whole. That’s how insurance works: Group rates are better than individual rates; therefore a national risk pool is far better than the very selective pools preferred by private plans, who ultimately make their profits by denying care to those who need it most.
What we need to do in the United States is not to re-import prescription drugs from Canada; we need to import the Canadian system in order to bring down costs for Americans here in the homeland. Canadians pay far less than we do for their care, and they live longer than we do. True, they pay higher taxes for universal coverage, but they don’t pay anything to bloated private insurance companies whose greatest achievement has been to deny coverage to 45 million Americans.
Freedom to die from lack of health insurance is not something to be celebrated. When it comes to healthcare, freedom means every American being free from the fear of sickness or death based purely on how much happens to be in their bank account.
Stan Ivester
Knoxville
Tearing out the Hair
After reading more of the same tired anti-Bush drivel (Sandy Huneycutt’s “Bush’s Giant Distraction” [Oct. 7]) I feel so compelled to just intellectually rip you infantile Democrats up one side and down the other. You don’t even make it difficult; it’s embarrassing.
Let’s talk about the leadership, (clearing the throat), the Democratic Party has offered up to the nation shall we? George McGovern, Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry, congratulations! One long litany of losers, and you want to lecture us on leadership?
You tell the majority of us: “Accept gay marriage,” and we say, “No,” and you cry, “Judge!”
You tell the majority of us: “Abortion on demand,” and we say, “No,” and you cry, “Judge!”
We say: “Spread democracy,” and you whine like little children that there’s a price for this!
Woman in Afghanistan now go to school and vote, and the hypocrites that you are, you say nothing!
Children are learning in Iraq; massed graves are uncovered, Saddam, a psychopath, sits in a jail cell; and versus these world-shaking events the best you’ve got is: “Bush lied, War for oil, blah, blah, blah.” My goodness it’s sad.
When I run into a Democrat, you are all so predictable; you’re unreasonable; you’re negative with no solutions, and boring.�And, to think, I, once a product of the New York State socialist higher education system, could come to these conclusions; my liberal socialist professors must be tearing their tenured hair out. That actually brings a smile to my face.
John A. Guerin
Knoxville
Who’s on 7?
I tip my hat to whomever for the consistently insightful page 7 editorial column. Regretfully, I have to flip Metro Pulse the finger for omitting a byline, which seriously dilutes the editorial’s full mojo.
At the risk of hysterical overstatement on my part, in excluding a byline, you are in danger of being mistaken, by the casual reader, for another sticky tentacle of the trackless miasma of pandering PR (propagandanoid reptilian) political ooze/disinfo-gunk, suffocating our warmonger consumer robot “civilization.” OK?
Joe Acree
Knoxville
Vandals are Mindless
If you’d rather not have your car keyed, refrain from putting any kind of political sticker on your car. While at Autumn on the Square, my car was keyed. I was parked on Union, between Gay and State. A $250 vandalism insurance deductible and about $1,000 is what I will pay for the privilege of showing my political colors. Never again.
Fair warning. I don’t know what this city, or this country, for that matter, is coming to when people think that shooting up a political headquarters and keying cars are part of the process. Have we lost our minds?
I’m absolutely disgusted.
Chuck Morris
Knoxville
October 21, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 43
© 2004 Metro Pulse
|
| 
