Today's Knoxville News-Sentinel editorial sparked one of our Brian's Blog contributors to submit the following commentary.
Let's look at their argument.
Citizens should fight for a form of government that'll be most efficient, most logical and most likely to attract quality officeholders when it's running the way it should.
Gee, stupid me always thought citizens should fight for a form of government that is most representative of them. So, I guess for the last thirty-some-odd years, I've been misreading the history of this great nation.
It's not about "taxation without representation," women's suffrage, or anything like that. It's about "efficiency."
I guess it's only about "THE PEOPLE" when Jack McElroy is trying to sell newspapers, and Richard Hollow is trying to win a lawsuit.
The executive branch should be run by the mayor, not the mayor and the barons of the sundry fiefdoms currently in place under our antiquated, rural system of multiple elected officeholders.
"Barons of the sundry fiefdoms?" Do they mean like those models of appointed leaders like superintendent Charles Lindsey, J. Wade Gilley, and John Schumaker? "Antiquated, rural system?" Democratic representation is antiquated, a thing of the past?
Wouldn't we be better off with skilled managers who get the job because of their administrative abilities?
Like at TVA and UT? Please.
And here's the part of the argument that shows the lie.
And finally, wouldn't we be better off having competition in the mayor's race?
Why, necessarily, would we have competition in the mayor's race by appointing fee office heads? Could it be because the campaign teams of the mayoral opponents would be campaigning for jobs in those fee offices? And that is so much better than what we have now, because...?
Wouldn't we be better off with skilled managers....
Again, like TVA, UT, and Knox County Schools?
Wouldn't we be better off if the mayor could trim staffs where he thought appropriate, so that, instead of clerks reading magazines at the City County Building, we could hire new teachers at many schools?
We could hire new teachers with all that money? It makes you wonder then how many teachers could be hired by the $250,000 salary that our school board members want to pay the next, appointed, superintendent.
In the same way, Knox County can't run as well as it should with a 19th-century model that, today, simply empowers political fiefdoms and inefficiency.
Lastly, if McElroy really feels this way, he's welcome to leave at any time. I guess there are no fiefdoms in the appointed offices at the federal and state levels.
That's what the KNS is saying, and as supposedly a newspaper of record that is supposed to carry fact not fiction, the editors should be run out of this town for using the worst kind of inaccurate and pseudo- news reporting to advance their own elitist, urban (not rural, God forbid!) agenda.
Let's look at their argument.
Citizens should fight for a form of government that'll be most efficient, most logical and most likely to attract quality officeholders when it's running the way it should.
Gee, stupid me always thought citizens should fight for a form of government that is most representative of them. So, I guess for the last thirty-some-odd years, I've been misreading the history of this great nation.
It's not about "taxation without representation," women's suffrage, or anything like that. It's about "efficiency."
I guess it's only about "THE PEOPLE" when Jack McElroy is trying to sell newspapers, and Richard Hollow is trying to win a lawsuit.
The executive branch should be run by the mayor, not the mayor and the barons of the sundry fiefdoms currently in place under our antiquated, rural system of multiple elected officeholders.
"Barons of the sundry fiefdoms?" Do they mean like those models of appointed leaders like superintendent Charles Lindsey, J. Wade Gilley, and John Schumaker? "Antiquated, rural system?" Democratic representation is antiquated, a thing of the past?
Wouldn't we be better off with skilled managers who get the job because of their administrative abilities?
Like at TVA and UT? Please.
And here's the part of the argument that shows the lie.
And finally, wouldn't we be better off having competition in the mayor's race?
Why, necessarily, would we have competition in the mayor's race by appointing fee office heads? Could it be because the campaign teams of the mayoral opponents would be campaigning for jobs in those fee offices? And that is so much better than what we have now, because...?
Wouldn't we be better off with skilled managers....
Again, like TVA, UT, and Knox County Schools?
Wouldn't we be better off if the mayor could trim staffs where he thought appropriate, so that, instead of clerks reading magazines at the City County Building, we could hire new teachers at many schools?
We could hire new teachers with all that money? It makes you wonder then how many teachers could be hired by the $250,000 salary that our school board members want to pay the next, appointed, superintendent.
In the same way, Knox County can't run as well as it should with a 19th-century model that, today, simply empowers political fiefdoms and inefficiency.
Lastly, if McElroy really feels this way, he's welcome to leave at any time. I guess there are no fiefdoms in the appointed offices at the federal and state levels.
That's what the KNS is saying, and as supposedly a newspaper of record that is supposed to carry fact not fiction, the editors should be run out of this town for using the worst kind of inaccurate and pseudo- news reporting to advance their own elitist, urban (not rural, God forbid!) agenda.
Ya know what I love? How KNox news has great ideas on how to make everything better. Well here is a brilliant idea. Why not shut the freaking lights off at the Knox News building that lights up the building at night! With the price of energy skyrocketing because of wasteful consumption you would think Knox news would conserve energy and not light up the outside walls of their building. Instead egotistically they put like one gigawatt of energy to needlessly light up a building. Hey all I am saying is practice what you preach
ReplyDeletedannyc