Dump 'Em All

I saw a Nashville news story carried by a local station over the weekend. It took a while to find it, but here it is, from WSMV.

The reporter uses Lois DeBerry's $200 gambling trip as a jumping off point to look at other legislators on the General Assembly's sham "ethic reform" committee. It's not so much the money sloshing around -- that's nothing new at all -- but the attitude of those in Nashville to accepting it. There's no sense of wrongness, no inkling that it might be improper to accept gifts from entities that have no vote but lots of money. For all that the Democrats got hit hard by the Tennessee Waltz investigation, Republicans don't come up smelling too sweet either.

My attitude is: Dump 'em all. Flush the place, scrub it out and bring in a new crop. Take the broom and beat the rug until all the bugs fall out. There is no sense (that I see, in general) of humility or public service there in Nashville. Tear it down and start over.

For heaven's sake, State Representative Ulysses Jones was approached to take a bribe for the E-Cycle legislation, but declined. He did take a "campaign contribution" and still co-sponsored their legislation! He doesn't seem to have ever reported the attempted bribe, and in news reports he seemed blase about the whole incident. That's the atmosphere those folks in Nashville live and breath in.

As Thomas Jefferson once said, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." I think it's time.