Good Government

There just ain't nothing going right in my little world today. On top of all my woes, it is now snowing. Just life though, I suppose.
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I did manage to get a couple decent icicle shots before the wind ran me back inside. I must think about getting myself a coat someday. Icicles photograph a lot differently on a cloudy or partially cloudy day. On top of that, they were beginning to refreeze as I was shooting them, and it all made for interesting light and patterns.
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Is it my computer and internet connection or has Flickr been royally screwed up off and on for the past few days? Slow, "hiccups", features like "view on black" are intermittent.
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Looks like Obama can't find an honest person in Washington DC to help him run the executive branch of our government. If he or someone on his staff would take time to read some blogs such as this one and many others putting forth the thoughts of the people with the most to lose from high-up screw-ups, he wouldn't be picking good-old-boy Representatives and Senators for these important jobs in the first place. He's just like all the rest of our politicians; he has the DC mindset and won't admit it. Congress can be tamed, but it will take a man or woman with moxie to get the job done, and Obama is not the right person. Instead of picking "one of his and their kind" to help him plead, beg, and promise his way through Congress, he needs to keep his case constantly in front of the people. The legislators are scared about the 2010 elections, and the president needs to keep their feet to the fire of public opinion. The populace has already opinionated that they want change, and someone is going to have to have the courage to make the changes.

Why the hell does Tom Daschle need a chauffeur? Because we are willing to pay him a big salary for screwing us and he can well afford it.
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If I can't do anything but gripe, I may as well shut up.
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Rumblings

y

Arcade Barber Shop 1981 ... now demolished


What a gloriously frigid day, and tomorrow promises to be more than glorious with daytime temps staying in the twenties and Friday will be a piece of Heaven with a high of twenty-two degrees. Hit me with your best shot Old Man Winter 'cause I know Spring is nipping at your heels!
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Ah! There is a wonderful cat fight going on in the Tennessee legislature. The Republican majority isn't getting its way and is in a snit! I love it!
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Rumor says the city's only K-Mart Super Center is closing its doors. It was built in 1994, and Carolyn did construction cleanup there before it opened.
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The old Snap-On Tools building has been purchased by a Michigan company and will be used primarily for distribution of marble counter-top products manufactured up north. Few locals will be employed.
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Here is another negative side to living in a small city: Ritz Camera has closed its doors in the JC Mall. Hopefully it will relocate to one of the strip malls, but it is doubtful. There are no other dedicated photography stores in the area as far as I know.
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The Johnson City Development Authority (JCDA) is looking for more tax payer money to waste on "revitalizing" downtown. They are up in arms and saying downtown has a reputation of being an unsavory place for people to visit and shop.

A few thoughts:

• JCDA has had decades and plenty of dollars to address this "problem"
• Why would anyone want to visit downtown ... there is little to see and even less to do
  
• Some of the most historic and interesting buildings (the Arcade building and the Majestic Theater) have been demolished to get rid of "undesirables"
• JCDA cannot seem to finish any project in a timely manner
• The projects JCDA does finish were useless from conception to completion and wind up unused or underused
• JCDA's crowning glory is the gaudy public library and it needed to be built a lot less extravagantly and in another location
• The core problems that JCDA was created to address have been given little consideration except for a lot of money wasted on "studies"
• JCDA hires many outside consultants but ignores all but the ones that tell them what they want to hear
  
• JCDA's highest priority is making nothing from something
  
• JCDA is downtown's and the city-in-general's biggest problem

Carolyn has a couple of accounts downtown, and one of them has been with her for 11 years. She or one-or-more of her employees are in downtown five nights each week, and over all these years, she has had no serious problems. They once heard a gunshot; they were once approached by a panhandler, and one time they saw a man taking a leak outside a tavern. Gun shots can be heard in any part of any town at just about anytime; I've been approaced by panhandlers in front of the mall and elsewhere; external tavern walls make wonderful urinals; it is life!

JCDA needs to be done away with, and the city needs to either make a commitment to fixing what is left of downtown, or to bulldozing it under.

Amen
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