Atomictumor

Oak Ridger:

Allegations against Oak Ridge teacher under investigation

According to the paper, Chief Beams is investigating Montgomery Koons for inappropriate contact with a student at Jefferson Middle from June until this month.

A quick Google search on the guy indicates a 47 year old Montgomery Koons was arrested in November of 2003 for “unspecified capias”, which is legaleeze, evidently, for ’some reason’. I’m sure the Oak Ridger is on top of that, tho.

Lets hope this is another Powell situation, where it’s going to clear up, and hopefully not result in a lawsuit against the school system, because lord knows, they don’t have the money for this kinda crap.

However, if it is a real situation, well, lets wish an ugly fate for people who take advantage of kids.

Yes, Scott West is going down, because he took the hippie mentality of his shops to a unrealistic extent, or maybe because he didn’t have enough of a leash on his situation. I usually tend to look down my nose at Knoxville doings, but I have a hard time thinking that Scott West and family are hardened criminals. By the same token, they knew what they were doing…

Yesterday ol’ Scott dropped a guilty plea, as expected, and, with any luck, will catch a “safety valve” sentence of 87 to 108 months in prison. Does the punishment fit the crime?
What they were doing, to me, was a victimless crime, which are the dumbest kind of all. Agreed, its illegal, but dammit, when are things going to change about ol’ Marijuana? Isn’t it time that the aging children of the sixties start acting to their former principles (and experiences), pull a Canada, and start moving towards decriminalizing the stuff? Its not dangerous, and people who tell you it is
a) are lying - or
b) are uninformed
I mean, geez, if Tennessee can tax it, how the hell isn’t that sanctioning it?

Anyway, the Wests got too big. They don’t seem to have intended any harm, and theres been no evidence that they pulled any Scarface tactics along the way, so slap that wrist and let ‘em go. They took that money and pumped it right into the community. Knoxville needs all the damn visionaries they can get, and UT probably needs all of the West product that it can get.

So the Oak Ridger and AnotherThing2 have popped up with news that the exiting trustee may have been involved in the swindling of damn near $20,000, and the coverup of the same.

The alleged criminal, Patsy Stair-Lomeli’s granddaughter Deputy Trustee Katie P. Davis reportedly did the stealing to work off a king hell addiction to pain pills. Patsy gave her the choice of paying back the green with interest, or criminal charges.

Thats right, the Stair family, which has long been Trustee of Anderson County, and just missed continuing that legacy, is responsible for ripping off your taxes and operating, apparently, as a bank.

Everybody seems to be saying they hate to see Patsy involved. Hell with that. I say charge both of them, Katie with the harshest theft charge you can throw down, Patsy with criminal conspiracy if it turns out that she did indeed cover up criminal misuse of tax dollars, and run em both out on a rail. Taking advantage of family to get a cushy government job is bad enough, but to go further into stealing from my taxes, well thats pretty deplorable.

As a return to the post previously (and to put the words “go to hell” on the Rocky Top Brigade board), a quick update on my ever exciting quest for higher education.

After the setback of yesterday eve, I endeavoured to send a quick “pleeeease, pleeeease lemme have some financial aid” letter to the Veep of Financial Aid, but as of the noon deadline today had not heard anything.  I drove down to Roane State to try a little face to face charm, of which I am all up ons.

Unfortunately, they weren’t having it.  Although the admissions girl was into my “damn, wasn’t I dumb?  now lemme have some aid” jive, the financial aid battleaxe had none of it.  However, she did let slip that it isn’t a Regents thing, or federal, or state of Tennessee thing that folks on financial aid suspension have no recourse but to whore themselves out for school mone, but rather a unique quirk to Roane State.

Thats right folks.  Withdraw from classes at Roane State when you’re getting financial aid, EVEN IF THE GOVERNMENT GETS ITS MONEY BACK, you’re cut off for 5 hours, or about 700 bucks.  Now, I’m not going to be the one to call that embezzlement (because it technically isn’t), but I’ll sign up to say that its a dickheaded thing to do.

Lucky for the kid, its not the only game in town!  No, with one day left to enroll, thanks to the impeccable timing of Roane States F.U. department, I’m off to Pellissippi, the soon to be alma mater of my lovely wife.  Its a shame, because Roane State, well, I can look out my window and see it, but who said the path to higher learning was easy?

Seriously, Google it.  Tell me, because I want to kick them square in the balls.

And I’ll tell you one other thing, readers.  If I do get into this, and I do start school again, this is going to totally kick off a new line of bitching on Atomictumor.com, which is the AT thinks that the entire college system is screwed up and in serious need of an asswhooping.  If I’m paying (well, technically, if all works well the federal .gov is paying) for college then by DAMN I expect to graduate.  If a teacher has an entire class fail, his ass needs to be FIRED for not doing his damn job.  If I’m running an IT department, and my computers all explode, I’m not going to get away by saying that “well, they were dells, see”.  Nope, it’d be my ASS.

So, there you go.  In summation:

1) Roane State hates the poor.
2) I’m a last minute person
2) Roane State sucks donkey balls.
3) Yes, those were both twos.
4) Who the hell was it that said that higher education was easy?

I believe in freedom of speech, both as a believer in basic rights as an American citizen and as a dirty liberal Bolshevik hippie. Every one of us, even the most spiteful, hateful son of a bitch has the right to his or her opinions, and a right to voice them in a public forum.

But atomictumor.com is not quite a public forum. Sure, it’s public, and sure, it’s a forum (when you people decide to say something.) But it’s privately owned(ish) and operated, thus making it and any content herein subject to our scrutiny and censorship.

But even considering that, I have a hard time rationalizing the censorship of any person who deigns to grace us with their presence on the ol’ ‘tumor. Without contrarian ideas, how would we be challenged in our own thinking? Without public discourse, open to a wide variety of people, how would we come to understand opposing viewpoints? The short answer is we wouldn’t.

But. But. There are times, aren’t there, when censorship is appropriate? Spam is an easy and obvious answer. What about comments or commenters who cannot seem to stay on topic? They may come into a thread and write one or two sentences about said topic, and then veer off into some random and distant idea of their own. Because, by God, Oak Ridge needs a senior center.

What about commenters who might be on topic, but their inane ramblings are so convoluted and hard to follow that you just can’t be sure? Should we let them use our webspace to propound upon their paranoid delusions? It can be entertaining, so sure, let them talk about the power of the time cube.

What about assholes? What about assholes? I’m not talking about some guy that comes in to makes a comment and does it in a snarky, rude way. I’m talking about people who are mean for mean’s sake. They resort to name calling and belittling instead of making any valid points. Why do they come? Probably because they have no friends and nothing better to do. And a small penis.

What about the willfully stupid? These are people who refuse to be enlightened. They ask a question when the answer is readily available to them. Then they ignore it in favor of asking more stupid questions and blaming other people for not providing the answers fast enough. Even though the answers are right there. Nothing pisses me off more than a willfully stupid person. They can’t be responsible for their own education and edification. They rely and insist on others spoon-feeding them knowledge. I have no time and no sympathy for these people. If you are unwilling to do a little fact checking on your own and to develop intelligent, fully-formed ideas, then I have no time for you. Bugger off.

So what about censorship?  Do the Ann Coulters and Fred Phelps of the world deserve their time on the soap box?  You’re damn right they do.  Do they deserve an audience?  Absolutely not.  In the case of these examples, and countless others like them, it isn’t by the grace of their unwavering fans that they maintain a place in the public eye.  It’s because people keep bitching about them and giving them an arena in which to spew their hate.

Will atomictumor.com censor again?  I’d like to think we won’t, but I know better than to make a blanket statement like that.