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Columns

  • The Balancing act of governing

    By RON WOODY
    Roane County Executive
    As citizens, we often ask — and even demand — certain services of our government and then are reluctant when it comes to paying for them.

    Your local government is the government closest to the people, and this government, whether it be a county or a city, often struggles with balancing the funding requirements of one group of citizens’ needs or desires with other groups’ needs and desires. All this pushing and pulling could be called lobbying.

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  • Allow me to reintroduce myself

    For those of you who know me well, seeing my name appear in the Roane County News is no surprise. It’s a move many of you knew was coming.

    The rest of you,  however, probably have no idea who I am, but I’m taking going to take up several of today’s valuable column inches to clear that up.

    My name is Bradley Keith Stringfield, and, effective Dec . 29, I became the sports editor at the Roane County News.

    Don’t stop reading now. It gets better.

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  • First Amendment has leading role

    By GENE POLICINSKI
    First Amendment Center
    Who knew the 45 words of the First Amendment came with buttered popcorn?

    Entering 2014, it’s safe to say that none of us could have envisioned that one of the year’s biggest global collisions between freedom of expression and tyrannical suppression of speech would revolve around a lightweight movie comedy, “The Interview.”

    What lessons does “The Interview” have for all of us?

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  • Planning our future: Changing government by research, study, and analysis

    By RON WOODY
    Roane County Executive
    This is the first in a series of article about your local government.

    In 1973, Mike Hayes, a new teacher at Midway Junior and Senior High School assigned our seventh-grade class a civics project to create a city on a poster board.  

    Each of us had to name our city, and I chose the name “Tomorrowville.”

    The purpose of the project was not to have a creative drawing but to think through a process of planning and simple civil engineering.  

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  • A VIEW from LICK SKILLET: ‘Solid South’ promises painful future

    In the days of our youth, there were two expressions that one quite frequently heard, one was “The Solid South”, and the other was,” The South Will Rise Again!”

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  • OFF the CUFF: Rep. Fincher, we deserve to hear from you

    I was incensed when I saw the headline Saturday afternoon.

    “GOP staffer posts, apologizes,” it said. “Obama daughters showed no class at turkey pardon.”

    How disgusting, I thought. Who would go after children? No class, indeed.

    Then I read the article and became outraged. Not only was this a staffer, this was a communications director.

    An experienced communications director. And the part that made me angriest: her employer was one of Tennessee’s own.

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  • A VIEW from LICK SKILLET: What we ate, and how we fixed it, way back then

    Gentle reader, in this season of Thanksgiving, marked by indulgence, even over indulgence in eating, we thought it might be a good time to remark upon some of the items which Americans consumed in an earlier day which are virtually, if not completely, unknown to the modern American, and how we fixed our food back then.

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  • GUEST OPINION: College — where religious freedom goes to die

    In the Orwellian world of many college and university campuses, all faiths are welcome — but some faiths are more welcome than others.

    Just this month, for example, California State University “derecognized” InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, an evangelical student organization with more than 900 chapters at colleges and universities across the country.

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  • A VIEW from LICK SKILLET: Supreme Ct. action on Atty. Gen. disappoints

    As a brief preamble to this week’s piece, we would remind old readers, and inform newer readers, that we received our bachelor of laws degree from the College of Law at the University of Tennessee in the winter of 1958, which will soon be 56 years ago, and we have been observing the Supreme Court of the state since our first appearance before that tribunal early in 1959. 

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  • A VIEW from LICK SKILLET: Use great care before incurring student debt

     

    Gentle reader, in 17 days we will, Lord willing, achieve another birthday, and complete 79 years of experience of life in these United States. 

    During that span of years we have observed many things, including almost revolutionary changes in so many things. But probably the most basic and most revolutionary changes we have observed have been the increased role of money, and the decreased role of individual independence.

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