On WBIR at 9:30 it was 1 politically neutral guy with Anchorman John Becker, a slew of Democrats with Jack McElroy, Billy Stair, Bill (Mr. 24% Stokes) and State Representative Joe Armstrong. The panel rounded out with State Senator Becky Massey and State Representative Ryan Haynes, the 2 token Republicans. Or actually two Republicans to 4 Democrats is actually a fair fight of IQ.
Stokes big issue was the proposal of reworking Workman’s Comp. He said it began in 1992, tweaked in 1996 and on and on. What Stokes failed to reveal in his little history of TN and Workman’s Comp is that in 1996, he was assistant and right hand to then Governor Don Sundquist. So, he was the problem to whatever is broken with Workmans Comp.
McElroy wanted to protect his turf of non partisan School Board races and appointed School Superintendents. More on both of those items later in separate posts.
On WATE, Anchorman Gene Patterson had Knox County Mayor Tim Burchett on to discuss South Knoxville and the TDOT delay of building the Henley Street Bridge. They also discussed County Commissioner Dr. Richard Briggs in challenging State Senator Stacey Campfield. Burchett voiced the same concern that many of us have. That is losing the good Dr. from County Commission. Burchett also emphasized how it will take Briggs breaking Campfield’s legs in order to beat Campfield. Because of Campfield ground game of retail politics. Visioning Dr. Briggs as Tonya Harding and Campfield as nancy Kerrigan was not a mental picture that I wanted this morning.
Patterson’s Pundit Panel was hideous. Only because George Korda was replaced by Failed Congressional Candidate from Texas Mark Harmon. He wanted to downplay the twitter gate of Democrat U.S. Congressman Steve Cohen of Memphis. You let that have been a Republican and Harmon would have been screaming and hollering.
Stokes is looking to protect his worker’s compensation defense practice, whereby comp claims are resolved in the courthouse in front of judges (not juries). True worker’s compensation reform would completely lift the dispute resolution process out of the court system and place it in front of a panel to decide the validity, merit, and award with the claim, to create some consistency in the awards rather than have the cases decided by judges who play poker with the involved attorney, judges who are hell bent on redistributing New England’s wealth around the barren corners of the South, and avoid arbitrary and capricous awards which make no sense other than the longstanding relationship between the judge and the involved attorney.
Unfortunately for a number of defense oriented attorney’s, they have realized that with true worker’s compensation reform, medical malpractice reform, and certain components of tort reform (all designed to assist businesses operating in Tennessee) that there may be a few less cases for the defense attorneys to plow around on, collecting the hourly fees they love such much.