The People Laugh

Wow, hasn’t this last year been a wild ride? Jackson County has had more sewage spills polluting the Tuckaseigee River engineered by TWSA’s incompetence and ineptitude; our county commissioners have given hundreds of thousands of dollars to Jackson Paper despite them attempting to abscond to Georgia; the pay raise scandal of the uppermost county employee “fat-cats” has angered thousands; and the never-ending EDC/JDC debacle continues to fester as the attorney general’s interest grows.

Recently, the Smoky Mountain News hung the “Albatross Award” around the county commissioner’s necks for not having satisfactorily resolved quite a few important issues. Commissioners, you’ve had four years to remove a lot of these “albatrosses.” Why haven’t you done so? Is it because that you believe that the citizens of Jackson County will just forget about these issues? Or, do you only care about power and control and your eventual re-election that the good old boy patronage system almost guarantees?

Recently, questions have been raised about contradictions between what Gabler-Mollis has said, what you Mr. Chairman (and at least one other commissioner) have said, what the county manager and the county finance director are saying; and, what JAG has learned. Somebody is lying. The time to come clean about the down and dirty double dealings regarding the Jackson County Economic Commission and the Jackson Development Corporation is before Roy Cooper starts subpoenaing people. Hurry now, special immunity deals with the North Carolina Attorney General ending soon!

Carl Sandburg wrote about the people laughing at “lying politicians, lying labor skates, lying racketeers of business, lying newspapers, lying ads.” The people laugh “until a day when the laughter changes key and tone and has something it didn’t have.” The laughter of the people “foretokening of revolt carries fear to those who wonder how far it will go and where to block it.”

Commissioners, the laughter of the people changed tone long ago. The lack of honest, open government in Jackson County is appalling. Those are our seats you’re sitting in. Resolve these issues before the May primary or else don’t bother us with another sad joke on election day in November.