This morning, the monthly meeting of the Boyd Cloud Democrat Club met and Former Knox County Commissioner Robert Bratton was the Speaker. He was asked to speak about the recent Metro Pulse story concerning the question Are we better off than we were 20 years ago when the Knox County Commission approved a 1993 Resolution that encouraged the United State Senators from TN (at the time) not to vote to amend the 1964 Civil Rights Act to include homosexuals as a protected class.
Bratton said it was a right vote then and a right vote now to not encourage the changing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to protect homosexuals because as a class they do not met the criteria for a protected class.
Bratton was asked what if any votes on Commission were disappointments. One was the Rural/Metro contract back years ago. Rural/Metro had admitted that they lied about response times. A constituent of his testified (in tears) that they had not made it to her home in a timely manner. They voted to postpone and when they came back, the Commission voted Rural/Metro in.
Another vote was when the County had not been performing underage stings and they did a whole bunch of them. They suspended a bunch of licenses for 30 days. But Commissioner Pat Medley made a motion that the Pilot convenience stores be suspended until the end of the month. The Law Director asked her if she released that would only be a two day suspension and she said yes. They majority voted for Pilot to only have a 2 day suspension.
I stipulated that I had read the Metro Pulse article and viewed the three hours of video that has been archived of the meeting in one setting. I believed that the Metro Pulse article was slanted to a conclusion. As individuals with differing opinions like Bratton were not interviewed or included in the article. I asked Bratton of his impression. He said that “Betty Bean is a gifted writer. However, there are two ways to write an article. One is to take the facts and let the article make it’s conclusion. Or take a conclusion and let the facts meet a pre determined article. He believed that in this case, Bean had done that latter.”
Somehow, the question and answer session wound up on racial equality. Bratton telling a story about his grandfather and something his grandfather had said upset Knox County Democrat Party First Chair Cameron Brooks and he began yelling at Bratton. Club President Gayle Alley intervened and quickly moved the discussion away from racial equality and back to the original discussion.
In Democrat news, September 27, 2013 the Knox County Democrat Party will hold their annual Truman Day Dinner at the Foundry on the Worlds Fair site. Festivities began at 6 p.m.
Additionally, a majority of the club members are supporting Councilman and Former Knoxville Mayor Dan Brown for reelection to the City Council seat that he currently occupies. His opponent Charles “Pete” Drew it was pointed out had changed political parties from a Democrat to a REPUBLICAN while serving in the TN House of Representatives. From the discussion it seems that a majority of the club members are supporting Fourth District City Councilman Nick DellaVolpe‘s opponent Rick Staples.
Yesterday, I received a call about a possible 2014 candidacy of Harry Tindell for Knox County Trustee on the Democrat side. No one mentioned that prospect this morning at the Boyd Cloud Meeting.
During the question and answer period, City Councilman Marshall Stair asked about a County Commission Ordinance that the Commission approved on First Reading in June and will consider on Second Reading in July that will prohibit discrimination of gays in hiring and awarding of contracts. He challenged Bratton if he would support it. Bratton said he was 99.9% sure he would because he is opposed to ANY discrimination. The 99.9% qualifier is because no one had the exact verbiage of the Ordinance at the meeting.
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