We've spent a little time admiring the web site for the City of Harriman, and we like it.

Imagine having web sites for the Police and fire Departments, and posting the minutes to the meetings online where everybody can read them.

The link is on the right in the Government block. Go for a visit, why don'cha?

They blocked Highway 27 and had all those official vehicles and officers and the guy had stolen pieces of pipe?

Surely there's more to it than that, although taking anything from a nuclear facility is not to be tolerated. They had this guy painted out to be a terrorist or selling stuff to terrorists, and he was just a two bit workplace thief.

Actually, it didn't say where exactly he caught them, but he killed one of them with a pair of scissors and tried to kill the other one...His girlfriend and mother of his child. So he got mad...and that made it manslaughter and not murder?

And then I read this:

If he follows the stipulations and stays out of trouble, the charges could be expunged — cleared from his record.

(thanks to RH)

The Smoking ban in public places starts October 1, 2007.

Here's a summary of the provisions of the law.

Doncha just love it when somebody "in authority" says, "Sure - I don't care."... and you find out it was a lie?

RB
(link...) Classified.jpg
Buy My Bike.... PLEASE!

I realize this is not exactly local news, but it puts our current political situation in perspective:

The Man who ran incredibly disparaging and dishonest ads against Max Cleland became a Senator so that he could vote to condem the explicitly honest one run by MoveOn.org.

(And doesn't this post underscore why we need Broadband for the People?)

I realize there are other expenses involved and I'm not meaning to be sensationalist about this, but the information we have gotten from news reports indicates that Roane County is spending 2.5 million dollars to buy a third of 1100 acres in other counties for an industrial park. My little calculator tells me that's roughly $6800 an acre.

News articles point out that it was recently Bowater land. Isn't that a bit high?

And could our County Commission or County Mayor issue some bit of information filling in the blanks as to how this is such a good deal for Roane County?

Troy? Mike? Anyone?

Or so this "ghost" story seems to be saying.

Ghost stories can be fun as long as we remember that they are simply stories and nothing more. Science explains every one of them away as mere irrational misinterpretations of rational occurences by the imperfect human brain.

Even knowing all that, you can still get goose bumps. I'll bet that this "ghost" tour will be fun...but could we find out who gets the money?

In Tennessee, Hillary Clinton would defeat both Mitt Romney and Rudolph Giuliani if the election were held today.

Freddie Thompson, who simply will not get the Republican nomination, is the only Republican who would defeat Hillary. Freddie's name, which actually is Freddie, is being floated as a Vice Presidential candidate, since he's unlikely to make the top spot.

Tennessee Politics Blog

This is fun to take and the results may make you laugh. It picked someone for me who surprised me.

Here's a little calculator to help you pick your presidential candidate. Play around with it and see what you get:

(link...)

"Resourcefulness vs. power" is illustrated in an amusing animation. See: (link...)

Are we going to get an equal share of the tax revenue for this new Industrial park that doesn't have a single acre in Roane County?

We'll commit to spend millions supporting the bonds in a year when the County can't even provide stop gap spending for schools.

How many jobs for Roane County has the last new industrial park generated and what are the projections for this one?

Have we got a cost to job ratio projected? I'm not saying this is a bad deal, but we should have ready answers to these and other questions about how this deal benefits Roane County tax payers.

I was listening to a friend speak about Ahmadhinijad's talk at Columbia University and thought about how most people simply miss the point of Free Speech in America. Not my friend, though.

That big round thing is the Moon...Nice isn't it?

Now aren't you glad you went outside?

One of my two best sons called me a while back and said, "I'm in the line...How many Dylan tickets do you want?"

Stunned...I said Four, and he said, "'K" and he hung up.

The good folks at SOCM have a web page that informs us on issues that affect the quality of life in East Tennessee.

Smaller and distributed instead of big and centrally controlled are usually better for a lot of reasons: freedom, choice, scalability, security. Historically, concentrations of people and power are not always beneficial and are often very difficult to break up.

The Bush Administration has proposed environmental disaster in the form of mining law changes that would destroy much of the hills and streams of East Tennessee. The last time they tried this, the public comments were vast and vehemently opposed. Now they plan to cut the public out of the process.

It's not about you, America.

It's about our business partners, and the public welfare be damned!

Roane County has long borne the brunt of environmental stupidity

Here's your chance to tell everybody about your favorite meal in town...Or outside of town, for that matter. (There's some great sandwiches to be had in the little known country store deli's in Roane County)

Let's hear it! What and Where is your favorite Roane County meal?

Is it a Mama Mia special pizza? A Bob's Burger with everything? Lemon grass soup with coconut milk at Sam's? The Tenderloin at Wayne's? Is it the barbecue sandwich with the special brain melt hot sauce at the Roadside cafe? Let the world know!

Comment Now!

So now it's out in the open...Harriman and Kingston will do battle over the tax revenue available in the corpse of tiny town, Midtown.

All of this would be easily solved if we simply did away with Harriman, Kingston, and Rockwood and made one good municipality out of them. The new town could be justly proud of the new HighSchool built at Roane state, and the only real question would be...What do you call the new City?

Harkinrock doesn't have all that good a ring to it on first hearing it.

Rockingman?

To broaden the horizons of Roane County Citizens, we hereby present the recent thoughts of the most penetrating and deep thinkers of our time...

The Cartoonists of America! (Ok, the often ignored but very intuitive political cartoonists of America. But it really sounded good the other way)

Near as I can tell...We've had just under 5000 views in the last week and that's not bad for a web site that's only two weeks old.

If RoaneViews is a success, it will be due to the folks who use it as a place for their voice about what goes on in our community.

I hope everyone is enjoying what we have to talk about.

We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

It's the agreement each of us is supposed to make with every other being in this country.

Wouldn't it be nice if we actually adhered to it?

The "Blessings of Liberty"...has a nice ring to it!

A group of us exalted moral characters went to lunch in Harriman at the "Utopia Cafe" (as shown up top in the RoaneViews banner)...and had a wonderful meal.

Best thing about it was that nobody seems to know about it and we only had to share it with six or seven other folks, two of whom are old friends who snuck up the road from Rockwood.

So bottom line, we have an orbit of lunch eateries and find Utopia worthy to join Sam's Thai, The Common Ground, and a very few others.

The headline for this one puts the wrong spin on the fact that the City of Harriman has been taking the tax revenue for businesses that are in Roane County and not Harriman.

Now Harriman has to pay it back. That's as it should be, but what will the County do with the revenue? How about allocating it straight to the Schools?

You know, one of the listed businesses was the Harriman Utility board location. Don't they know where they are located?

Web @ Kingston Girls

What is going on in Tennessee? We're getting beat by Florida...And Georgia and Louisianna...No, those aren't UT football predictions...I'm talking about the annual list of most corrupt members of Congress:

We can't get a Senator or Representative on this list? I'm thinking the competition must be pretty steep if that's the case.

Getting over the fact that someone, anyone, in Roane County government wants to know what we actually think...

Tyler Overstreet posted this elsewhere and I thought it was important enough to elevate it to the front page:

I'd like to use this medium to ask for some simple feedback.

Reference the Sept. 19 edition of the RCNews where Comm. Harmon suggests one large High School for our Kingston, Harriman and Rockwood students. He suggested the location beside the Roane State campus.

What was not included in the article that may also be of significant benefit is the increased level of academics offered, like AP classes, dual credit at Roane State, vocational offerings, that type of stuff.

We are seeing rather straight forward evidence that our two senators hate our freedoms, with their lock step vote against restoring every American's right to Habeus Corpus...you know, your right to have your day in court if George W. Bush decides he doesn't like you for some reason.

But now it has become even more evident that our republican Senators don't support our troops, either.

Will our Military survive this President's administration? Not with Alexander and Corker helping out.