Publisher’s Positions
City Voters: Vote NO On Amendment 2
Those voting inside the City of Knoxville need to remember there is a very important referendum question at the end of the ballot for consideration. The city government is proposing to change its method of electing the six district representatives on the city council. Presently, there are three members of the Knoxville City Council elected at-large, meaning they run citywide both in the primary and general elections. Councilman Andrew Roberto sponsored the referendum to deny city voters the right to select their own district representatives. Roberto, a lawyer by profession, has reimagined the way of electing district representatives by giving them a new name – “regional” representatives – to allow the people of West Knoxville to select the council members from Lonsdale, South Knoxville and Whittle Springs.
Roberto and his allies naturally cloak their motives in sweet words, claiming electing every member of the city council at large would promote unity and have a citywide point of view. No, it wouldn’t. It would be a bonanza for the special interests who provide the money for the far more costly citywide campaigns. It costs far more to run all across the city than it does inside a district. It ensures that those running citywide kowtow to the mayor and the special interests instead of the people they supposedly represent.
Electing the council members citywide is not a new trick; quite the contrary, it is a mighty old rabbit they pulled from the hat, which was used to try and keep Blacks off the city council back in the day. Roberto and his cohorts don’t want to see any Republicans or populists on the Council; they don’t want to see any representatives of the working people. Candidates running at large have to try and run where the votes are and West Knoxville outvotes South Knoxville, Vestal, Lonsdale, and even Fountain City.
The very foundation of the American form of government is based upon district representation. The people’s House, the House of Representatives, is elected by district. Andrew Roberto would be for electing the congressman from Tennessee on a “regional” basis meaning statewide. The very same perpetrators of this farce, including Indya Kincannon, Debbie Helsley, Seema Singh, Roberto, etc., are against at-large members for the school board and county commission, yet the very same arguments can be made. All of them cry they are for democracy, but they want to kill it in Knoxville. A body made up entirely of at-large members is NOT truly representative of the city, county or state. District representation is used in virtually every city in America because it represents the most fundamentally democratic form of government.
Why does development run rampant over neighborhoods? Because your representatives don’t have to protect your neighborhood, because there are more votes in the affluent areas where the apartments and subsidized housing is sparse or nonexistent. Get out and vote AGAINST Amendment 2 to protect your neighborhood, to give yourself a voice that will be heard by a city councilman more interested in you than people across town. Put yourself before dollar signs and politicians playing politics with your lives. Vote NO on the Charter Amendment.
Kamala Continues To Flounder
A candidate for dog catcher would be laughed at by voters who either couldn’t or wouldn’t answer a simple question. Frankly, one should be asking a question as to why that candidate won’t answer a question. Kamala’s belated “town hall” event on CNN proved to be something less than ideal. David Axelrod, the Obama campaign strategist, said Kamala visits “word salad city” when she doesn’t want to answer a question. Kamala couldn’t possibly have hoped for a friendlier and more biased forum than CNN and yet she failed to impress, at least in a positive way. Even fellow Democrats panned her town hall event for her failure to answer the questions asked. Even activist-“journalist” Van Jones was critical of Kamala’s failure to answer questions about public policy.
Of course, one of the biggest and most vexing questions being asked was whether the Biden–Harris administration’s open border policy is a mistake. Harris routinely pivots to a bill sponsored this year – – – 3 ½ years after they took office – – – as having been shot down by Republicans at Trump’s insistence. It is a lame answer as Republicans objected to the 2 million illegals allowed to come across our southern border annually and the House was NEVER going to approve the bill, period. It also ignores the attitude of the Biden–Harris administration who invited the illegals to come and stay. Miriam Jordan, a reporter for the New York Times, summed it up, saying, “It is not just because they believe they will be able to make it across the 2,000-mile southern frontier. They are also certain that once they make it to the United States they will be able to stay. Forever. And by and large, they are not wrong.”
Housing, feeding and caring for perhaps as many as 20 million illegals crossing the border affects every aspect of our society, making our infrastructure obsolete overnight in many instances, pressing the welfare state to bursting, and the already insolvent Medicare and Social Security systems being expected to pay out to people who never paid a penny into it is a recipe for a fiscal apocalypse.
It was a stupid thing to do at the time and it’s still stupid today. Kamala can’t or won’t say it was a mistake and move on, which is a very good reason for voters not to trust her.
There is something fundamentally wrong with the very idea of rewarding someone for illegally coming across our border. Americans dislike the idea of breaking our own laws and rewarding those who break them. A poll by CBS in June indicated that 62% of voters supported “starting a new national program to deport all undocumented immigrants currently living in the US illegally.” That also included 47% of Blacks, 58% of Whites, and 53% of Hispanics.
When a candidate will not tell you where he/she stands, you have a very good reason to suspect they are hiding something from you because otherwise, you wouldn’t vote for them. Don’t be fooled. You get what you vote for, one way or another.
