Archive for the ‘Smith county jail debate’ tag
The Debate on the Smith County Jail Debate
You can call a pig a cow, but it still smells like pork when it’s cooking. Is it a debate or not? I guess that depends on what your definition of is, is! The Smith county jail “Yes” committee at first refused to debate the jail issue, but has now decided that it will participate in a forum of some sort, not a debate. I think I heard a cow oink!
As far as I can tell, the “yes” people are right! When it comes to this issue, there really is no debate! There is no defensible rationale for building this jail to begin with. The idea is so outrageous that it almost defies words.
The initial “no debate” response is the one we have come to expect. What else could we expect from a group of people who made their plans in secret, somehow hoping that people would vote for the proposition with no information about it, and no real reason for it. The issue here is trust. The county officials who devised this scheme don’t trust us to make the decision they want us to make if we have the information. The logical extension to this is that it is not needed to begin with, and that they are trying to cover that fact. That is known as arrogance! Not only do they not trust us, they think that we are ignorant enough to not see through it!
October 13 at 6:00 PM is the time, the Tyler Public Library is the place, for the Un-Debate.
Curtis Declines Smith Jail Debate
KTBB AM 600 ran this story a little earlier this morning:
“Battle Lines Drawn on Jail Bond Proposal
TYLER — Both sides are squaring off in the debate over a new Smith County Jail. “The “Finally! A Jail Plan We Can Afford” Committee supports the $59.6 million November bond proposal. Supporters and opponents of last fall’s failed $125 million plan teamed up on the new one, which the committee’s Bobby Curtis calls an affordable, no-frills package.”
The problem is, that there is no squaring off in the debate, really, no debate at all, as you will see from the rest of the story:
“But the “What Part of No Don’t You Understand” Committee insists that now is not the time to build a jail, citing such concerns as the state of the economy and objections to how the plan was put together. And now they’re challenging the supporters to a debate — which Curtis is so far declining. The opposition group’s Ken Good says a debate would offer citizens a “vigorous discussion” of the topic. But Curtis says the issues are clear, the county’s under a state mandate to upgrade jail facilities, and he doesn’t know what there is to debate.”
Yes, the county is under a mandate, no, it is not necessary to build a new facility to meet that mandate. One has to wonder if the newly formed committee is afraid that this truth would become common knowledge if the debate was brought into the public arena.
