Cooper: Of Erlanger, water and politics

Democratic presidential candidate and South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg picked up the endorsement of Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke on Wednesday and also broke his silence on the discovery on 2,200 fetuses discovered last week in the home of a South Bend abortionist.
Democratic presidential candidate and South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg picked up the endorsement of Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke on Wednesday and also broke his silence on the discovery on 2,200 fetuses discovered last week in the home of a South Bend abortionist.

- Dr. William Jackson, the man given a one-year contract to run Erlanger Health System Wednesday, in his previous position as chief medical officer, oversaw hospital quality, safety, physician services, and inpatient and outpatient care delivery, among other things.

A letter sent by Erlanger's Medical Executive Committee to Board of Trustees Chairman Mike Griffin in May expressed "no confidence in the structure of the current Executive Leadership to ensure quality and safety of patient care" provided in the hospital's downtown emergency department.

Are we to assume the committee wasn't including Jackson in its indictment?

Last week, Erlanger CEO Kevin Spiegel resigned. At a special called meeting of the hospital board Wednesday, members voted to award Spiegel a year's salary in severance and the cash equivalent of continuing health care benefits for him, the largest severance package ever given a departing Erlanger CEO.

The board will discuss Jackson's compensation next week.

- Tennessee American Water Company ended its silence about details of the Chattanooga water main break last week that left more than 35,000 area residents without water for up to three days, saying it "is the largest main break and resulting service interruption in recent history."

Since the company said it had served Chattanooga for 132 years, and longtime residents said they'd never experienced such an outage, we wonder what they mean by "recent history."

As for what caused the break and the class-action lawsuit that has been filed over the break, the company said "it will take time to conclude [the] evaluation process."

Several local governments, numerous businesses and at least 35,000 people will be awaiting the conclusion of that process.

- Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke on Wednesday endorsed South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg as the 2020 Democratic nominee for president, calling him "honest, sincere and inclusive" and saying "no one better understands the obstacles people face and how the federal government can help improve their lives."

Coincidentally on Wednesday, Buttigieg broke his silence on the discovery last week of 2,246 medically preserved aborted fetuses in the home of the late South Bend abortionist Ulrich Klopfer.

The South Bend mayor said the incident was "disturbing" and the incident should be "fully investigated," and in words most Democrats would applaud said, "I also hope it doesn't get caught up in politics at a time when women need access to health care," meaning abortion.

Buttigieg does not support any restrictions on third-trimester abortions, even using the Bible to falsely support his position, saying, "There's part of the Bible that talks about how life begins with breath."

- Former President Jimmy Carter on Tuesday showed how far he has strayed beyond the moderate Democrat he strove to be while in office from 1977 to 1981. Speaking at a Carter Center update on the center's work, he repeated that he'd voted for U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, in the 2016 Democratic presidential primary.

No one expected the 94-year-old former Georgia governor to be supportive of then-candidate Donald Trump or vote for a Republican, but the self-proclaimed democratic socialist stands for many things the former president never did - abortion, much higher taxes, distribution of wealth, unfettered immigration and the elimination of nuclear energy.

To be fair, Carter never had a good relationship with Hillary Clinton, the party's ultimate 2016 nominee, or Bill Clinton. Over the years, he has criticized both, and in 2008 he endorsed then-U.S. Sen. Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination. Meanwhile, Bill Clinton blamed Carter for his defeat in the Arkansas governor's race of 1980, and the Carters were snubbed at Bill Clinton's 1993 presidential inauguration.

- U.S. Rep. Joe Kennedy III, D-Massachusetts, the grandson of assassinated 1968 Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, is expected to make a formal announcement Saturday he will challenge fellow Democrat U.S. Sen. Ed Markey in next year's primary election.

Both are in the far left of their party and hold similar positions on almost every issue.

Markey is 73 and Kennedy is 38.

It was a little different when Kennedy's great uncle, John F. Kennedy, first ran for his congressional seat. At least in that race, Kennedy's father, Joe, strongly urged the current congressman, James Michael Curley, to vacate his position and run for mayor of Boston (and apparently paid off some of his debts) so the future President Kennedy could be elected.

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