Bennett cartoon outrageous
As a past resident of Signal Mountain for almost 20 years and co-founder of the Signal Mountain Athletic Club, I totally understand the outrage that has been expressed regarding Clay Bennett’s cartoon of the Signal Mountain boozer team. I am sure that if an inner-city school with largely minority athletes were to suffer such a horrible indignation, the people of Signal Mountain would rise up and demand that such an awful thing be put right.
FRED GREESON
Guild, Tenn.
Give Harold Coker credit he deserves
I would like to clear up two things.
First, no one has given Harold Coker the credit he deserves for his role in getting the 6,000 acres from the Army for VW and our other economic development enterprises.
When we had Marilyn Lloyd and Jim Sasser, I worked with them, but when Republicans Zach Wamp and Fred Thompson took their places, we needed a high Republican person to keep the project going. Harold had been the local chairman of the Republican Party, and he volunteered to make the contacts. He did the job very well and spent a lot of time on it. I do appreciate Harold for this and apologize that I never said it in my several columns and speeches.
The second thing is to explain the headline on my column about politics and business being similar. I said in that column, “There is absolutely no difference in a good business person and a politician,” but I was talking about the fact that both hopefully invest the money under their control for maximum benefit to the people. A politician invests in infrastructure that will create jobs or other things that benefit the people.
DALTON ROBERTS
Interview process should be open
As a conservative, I often disagree with the positions taken on the Times side of the Times Free Press editorial page. But Wednesday morning’s Times editorial (Dec. 15) calling out the County Commission for refusing to hold open interviews for the position of mayor is spot on!
I can think of no conceivable reason why the interview process should be held in secret. To do so does indeed reveal a contempt for the voters that is most unbecoming of those we have elected to this responsibility. Surely they know better.
Since the established procedure requires that they are the ones who will ultimately make the choice, what do they have to lose by at least letting us in on the same information they have on each of the candidates?
Compounding the arrogance of the decision is their refusal, so far, to even explain why they insist on doing this. Commissioners, just because you legally can do it this way doesn’t mean you should. We are smart enough to make that distinction. Are you?
This is disappointing. If the decision is not reversed and the commission goes ahead with private interviews, there should be political consequences down the road.
RAY MINNER
Collegedale