BOE member's pal destroys newspapers, then brags about it in public email

Well, this is certainly an interesting development. Well, not really. It's election time and silly season is in full gear.

Cari "Mean" Gervin on some campaign shenanigans (yes this was absolutely political), and the ridiculousness that follows local elections:

You might remember the name Kristi Kristy from a couple of months ago, when she filed an ethics complaint with the Knox County Schools Board of Education because board member Mike McMillan had forwarded an email that Kristy had sent to board member Pam Trainor with instructions to send it to the entire board, which meant it then became public record -- anyway, it was a mess. Kristy eventually withdrew her complaint, which makes sense because McMillan didn't do anything wrong to begin with. Now, however, it looks like Kristy might be the one on the wrong side of ethics -- and, possibly, the law. 

You can find Cari's complete story, and - wow - it's been a talker recently, right smack here.

In addition, someone over at the hippie's blog, posted a link - right here - regarding newspaper theft and why it's not a good thing to destroy them even if they're free. And apparently - right here - you will find some federal case law regarding newspaper theft.

Some Twitter 'rules' for candidates

Cari Gervin has a hilarious primer on the etiquettes of using Twitter, particularly when running a campaign. And yes, a bunch of you need to learn how.

Click right smack here to read.

In the meantime, the mean one says:

• Don’t link to something on Facebook with no content.
• Don’t post Facebook status updates automatically to Twitter if they are more than 140 characters.
• Don’t retweet yourself. Seriously. It’s dumb. She explains why.           
• Don’t  retweet every person who mentions you!
• Do be consistent in you how you refer to yourself. Particularly lame is when you refer to yourself in the third person.
• Do understand how Twitter functions.

Anyhoo, those are Gerwin’s suggestions, but, really, you should read the piece. The examples – yes they’re real screenshots – alone are worth it.

By the way, there's some serious irony with Cari writing about what to do and not do on Twitter, but I digress.

Heh.

County cuts 'I voted' stickers

I think it was just after I voted during the August primary that I realized: What the deuce, man! Where are the “I voted” stickers?

The good folks at ballot boxes didn't know, so I made a mental note to call top dog elections guy Cliff Rodgers. And . . . then I promptly forgot.

Soooo, earlier today I'm twittin' on Twitter and up pops a blip from the Metro Pulse.

Yes, the pulse people, more than likely it was Cari “Mean” Gervin, asked Rodgers about the stickers, or lack thereof.

Rodgers told the paper that not providing them would save the county $1,512 (including shipping) for the presidential election. He noted that the money would be used to pay 25 election officials to attend a four-hour polling place operations training class.

“Simply put, I'd rather spend money on training election officials than congratulatory stickers,” he said.

(Man, and I though Knox County Mayor Tim Burchett was cheap.)

I somewhat agree with Rodgers. But, is it not the election commission's job (at least on the periphery) to encourage/promote voting? Stickers are a great advertisement and reminder.

Anyhoo, Rodgers said “reasonable people” can disagree with him. Heh.

Click right smack here for the original story.

MP's 'mean one' says KTSC is full of it

Cari “Mean” Gervin over at da Pulse is calling out the Knoxville Tourism and Sports Corp., saying it took credit for events that the non-profit had nothing to do with, like the Big Ears Festival and the Furrow Auction Company’s Great Smokey Auction, among others.

Now why doesn't that surprise me? 'Course, you can probably find bogus claims made my these types of groups throughout the state. Not that they're bogus, you know. Heh.

Anyhoo, the mean one writes:

There is no question that KTSC has brought events to town, and there is no question that those events have had an economic impact. However, there are questions over whether all the events that KTSC claims as examples of its success at driving economic impact are ones that it actually had anything to do with. Despite just picking a sampling of events at random from KTSC’s list, we found a number of organizers who say they had no assistance at all from KTSC.

Click right smack here for the story.