Senator Corker: Roane County should Pay for its Own Rape Kit

Tennessee Senator Bob Corker has just pissed me off.

Rarely does anyone try to take me for a fool in such a juvenile way as he just did. For Corker to make the statement that the people harmed by the TVA Disaster do NOT deserve to get help from the Federal government might be the most transparently asinine statement by a Tennessee politician ever…And Tennessee has set the bar higher than a Beale Street hooker when it comes to asinine statements by politicians. I don’t get it. Why would Corker make the mother of all irrational statements by a person previously thought to be coherent is beyond me, but he did.

If a utility in another state had a similar problem, "certainly I think we would expect (the utility) to deal with that," Corker said. Corker noted that many efforts have been made to make TVA a self-standing entity that runs independently and has a corporate-like board.

First of all, TVA IS in another state…Several of them in fact, but it primarily serves Tennessee, or rather it is supposed to.

Second of all...This not about TVA. It is about the people, tens of thousands of us, that TVA has harmed emotionally, physically, and economically.

At any rate, TVA is NOT a Tennessee utility. We don’t run the damned thing, Bob Corker and his fellow Senators do…And for 10 more days, George W. Bush.

Hey Bob…Take a moment and read this:

The nine-member TVA Board of Directors sets policy and strategy for TVA. The members are nominated by the President and confirmed by the U.S. Senate to serve five-year terms.

That's from the TVA Board of Directors web site.

The operations people on the ground, including CEO Tom Kilgore, are hired hands doing the bidding of the TVA Board of Directors whose appointments are blessed by Senator Corker and his fellow Senators. And you would have to be a fool to think that our Tennessee Senators didn’t sign off on the SIX new Directors created and installed by the Bush Administration, so that they take over TVA policy from the three members of the Clinton era Board. So check out who is now on the TVA Board:

Chairman William B. Sansom of Knoxville, Tenn., is chairman and chief executive officer of The H.T. Hackney Co. and has held that position since 1983. Hackney is a diversified company involved in wholesale grocery, gas and oil, and furniture manufacturing. His term expires May 18, 2009.

Howard Thrailkill of Huntsville, Ala., recently retired as president and chief operating officer of Adtran, Inc., in Huntsville, which supplies equipment for telecommunications service providers and corporate end-users. Previously, he was president and chief executive officer of the firm Floating Point Systems. His term expires May 18, 2010.

Mike Duncan of Inez, Ky., is chairman, chief executive officer, and director of Community Holding Co.; chairman, CEO, and director of Inez Deposit Bank; and Chairman of the Republican National Committee. He is a director of the regional Center for Rural Development. His term expires May 18, 2011.

There are four more Directors currently listed on TVA’s web site…There are supposed to be Six more. I don’t know why this is but it is a violation of the TVA Bylaws to have less than Nine.

I list those three Directors for a reason. The TVA Board has committees that are charged with overseeing particular phases of TVA operation, such as this one:

Operations, Environment, and Safety Committee

Howard Thrailkill, Chair
Mike Duncan
Bill Sansom

Yes, that’s right, boys and girls, the Chairman of the Republican National Committee, good old Bob Corker’s party, sits on the committee that directs TVA’s Safety and environmental actions.

The Republican National Committee Chairman also sits on the TVA ETHICS committee. I totally trust the Chairman of the Republican National Committee to make sure TVA operates in an ethical manner. Don’t you?

And…If there’s anybody in America I trust with the personal safety of my family, it’s a big time pro-corporation, anti-worker, Republican. And if there’s anybody in America I trust to do the right thing for the environment it’s a pro-global warming, pro-coal, big time Republican.

And…If there’s anybody in America directly responsible for the TVA disaster that has ruined Christmas for any number of Roane County, Tennessee families and made thousands of Roane Countians fearful of their family’s safety and preserving a healthy environment in their homes, it’s the TVA Board of Directors and the people who installed them into their positions of power with laws that also make them legally untouchable for putting a bullet in the back of Roane County Tennessee in the name of a Federally owned corporation’s enterprises.

And…If there’s anyone in America who should step up, say, “Hey, wait a minute!” Call out these people and do everything in his power to make the Federal Government correct the deep injustice it has put upon his constituents, it should be Senator Bob Corker, who is the people of Roane County’s voice in the very Federal Government that did this to us.

I hope that somewhere in Bob Corker’s head there’s a voice saying, “Hey…Wait a minute.”

Roane County took a bullet for America… We’re bleeding proof that Coal power has to be phased out. We have subsidized coal with our health, lives, and the safety of our very homes. The least we could expect of a Senator is to go to bat for us against the very people that put us in this fix, which inescapably includes Senator Corker himself.

Peace,
Steve