Have Sex on Taxpayer's Dime, Lose Vacation Pay?

Several years ago we read one of those pop-psychology articles on theft in the workplace. It seems that those who are not faithful to their spouses are three times more likely to steal from their employers than those who walk the marital line. So how much more prone to theft would employees be that actually commit the sex act at work while on the clock…the taxpayer’s clock to make it worse?

We know that at least two who write here either work at taxpayer jobs currently or have in the past. As far as we know the majority who toil at the Shoalanda blog work in the private sector. What would happen to Shoalanda herself if she were caught in such a compromising position at work in her non-government funded job? She would d*mned well be fired within hours, we can promise you that.

So how do government employees continue to get away with boffing anyone and everyone at work? How do they still keep their taxpayer funded jobs? Are they simply irreplaceable or do they just know where the bodies are buried?

We’ve recently blogged about two local government employees who were literally caught with their pants down and still retained their jobs…at least so far. Just two days ago we were informed of a city department head who was similarly caught in a Shoals town about five or so years ago and who kept his job. Three such incidents in the past five years would indicate the moral decline of our society. The fact that the powers that be have overlooked these incidents indicates much worse.

Why are we discussing this again? It seems that the Lauderdale department head was not fired as Danny Pettus had promised. He did vote to fire the person, he has stated, but others voted to retain the person who lost all vacation pay.

We just hope the sex was worth two weeks vacation to the department head. Now please tell us how much integrity and ethics are worth to those who oversee our local governments?

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We’re about to publish an article on the Bella Club at Deshler High School and have asked for input from readers. It seems there is at least one similar club, one perhaps even more shrouded in secrecy. Who out there knows of the Deshler Fight Club? Those who reply will always remain anonymous.

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Wanda Ivey Wallace

Wanda Ivey Wallace was murdered in Tuscumbia on Sunday. Her brother Jerry was also a murder victim; from 2012:

Jerry Lewis Ivy

Father's Day 2016

What kind of father are you?

A Nurturer?

An Example?

Someone to Fall Back On?

Always There for Your Child's Mother?

We hope all the fathers out there answered yes to all!

Happy Father's Day from...

The Staff at Shoalanda Speaks

Note: If you're not familiar with our cat family, it's Chessie and her husband Peake who for years symbolized the Chessapeake Rail System. During WWII Peake entered the army, courageously serving in the South Pacific and attaining the rank of major.

Tuscumbia Municipal Elections/Katie Logan

From the Midnight Rider:

We are continuing our series of City/Town Elections. We had made the comment recently that the City of Sheffield may be the powder keg of the elections. We may have been wrong about that. Driving around the City of Sheffield, we have only seen Signs for Penny Freeman. Miss Freeman is running for District 4 for the City of Sheffield. We will be doing an article on her that will be posted soon.

Recently we spoke to two employees of the City of Tuscumbia. Both were excited about the upcoming elections. They were hoping for some change to come to that City Government. As we drive through the City of Tuscumbia, we see a lot of signs up. Most are for Cole and Underwood for Mayor. We have never met either one of the candidates. Mr. Cole is retired from the City of Tuscumbia Fire Department and Mr. Underwood is an Accountant.

Checking on Facebook, Mr. Underwood has a page for his election campaign. It appears that he started campaigning some time ago. I guess getting a jump on the competition.

The first thing listed on his webpage is his platform for the election:

-Support the school system
-Expand Tuscumbia’s boundaries
-Secure new sources of revenue
-Enforce our ordinances to keep Tuscumbia “tourist ready”
-Establish a Small Business Advisory Board
-Begin Town Hall meetings
-Establish a Park & Recreation board
-Begin a new and yet undefined advertising campaign for the city
-Establish departmental oversight and management through the mayor’s office
-Begin the process of paving and repairing the city streets

The above is a well thought out platform. We are interested to see or read how each goal is to be accomplished. We are sure there will be questions asked about each aspect by the citizens of Tuscumbia. They look like good ideas to us.

We checked Facebook for David Cole’s page. He has one there that appears to be personal. Mr. Underwood has one especially for the Election. We looked through Mr. Cole’s page to check his platform. We had to scroll through the page before I found a picture of a door tag with his election info on it. Mr. Cole, as much as some of us do not like Social Media, today’s Society uses it for everything. Build upon your page.

Again, we do not know either candidate so at this point, we are not endorsing either. Do your homework. This will be your chance to get your voice heard. Remember to come out and vote.

Katie Logan For District 1 Election

We had planned on writing the above article and had been making notes. One day, we saw a Katie Logan Election Sign. She is running for District 1 City Council for the City of Tuscumbia. Let me lay this out there. We have never met Mrs. Logan. All we know about her is she is married to Tuscumbia Police Chief Tony Logan. We read that she recently opened a business in Tuscumbia.

As we continued on driving, we started thinking about her running for a place in the City. She owns a business in the City of Tuscumbia. She is young so she would bring young views to the table per say. Contrary to popular belief, young people do vote. She knows how the City of Tuscumbia operates by being married to Chief Logan.

I could see her opponents saying that she would have a conflict of interest. I disagree with that. If she votes on a subject that has to do with the Police Department, there are several other members of the City Council that can overrule or vote against her. She can always recuse herself from the vote. To me, that sounds like the Checks and Balance System that this great Country was founded on. So with that being said, “You go girl.” We think a fresh, young view could help the City.

Until next time,

I am and always will be, the Midnight Rider...

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From L. Stone:

Great quote from Tom Gresham - I saw a movie where only the police and military had guns. It was called "Schindler's List."

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Both L. Stone and J. Redmon have sent us some salient info on the latest gun controversy. We'll have both up early next week. Plus, we have a guest blog on the Deshler High Bella Club and a great new article for Shoals Crime also scheduled. Remember, we always welcome guest blogs and comments.

Doing the Time?/Tell Us What's Cooking

Yesterday we linked an article about John James Common’s arrest in Franklin County. Common, known as J.J., was supposedly in state prison for attempting to burn down the Colbert County Jail a few years ago…only for some reason he wasn’t. Of all our bad boys, J.J. has the longest rap sheet and easily earned his place in our sociopaths' hall of fame.

Our Bad Boys

But of course those who know and love J.J. protest that he means well and is simply misunderstood. Right. Shooting the Russellville football player mid game, raping the 12 year old mentally deficient girl, and setting fire to the Colbert County Jail were just minor blips in an otherwise spotless life.

A reader sent us links to two FB pages connected to Common. There’s his own under the unassuming name of “Humble Nobility” where he claims God is “for him” and one belonging to one of his many girlfriends who’s using the hash tag “freebae.”

We’re pretty sure J.J. has been freed too many times to start with.

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Now a FB inspired question from another reader; it seems someone is making posts in Holland Elkins’ account. Our reader wanted to know if Elkins is now out or if he has access to the Internet while in the Lauderdale Detention Center.

First, according to detention center sources, Elkins is very much still incarcerated and will be until his July probation revocation hearing. Does he have some sort of smart phone in the jail? We doubt it.

We looked at the posts made allegedly by Elkins and all of them are liking or otherwise singing the praises of new photos of his “beautiful” baby mama or their offspring. Yes, it’s sad, but maybe that explains why the young woman feels she has to have him in her life.

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We’re sure at least some of our readers remember high school. Shoalanda herself can vaguely remember the latter half of the 19th Century when she faithfully attended that one room schoolhouse. Many things have changed, but even back in the day there were social clubs.

Murder on the Lake

It was standard knowledge that these clubs were not condoned, but merely tolerated by the school administration. Has that changed a great deal in the past few years?

We’ll inject here that most of the complaints we receive concern Muscle Shoals High School, followed by Sheffield, Florence, and Deshler bringing up the rear with the fewest. Now we’ve been presented with a serious complaint about a so-called social club at Deshler.

We have a lot of information on file concerning this club and know that even if the administration doesn’t claim the club, it’s still mentioned in the school’s annual. Insert a big “Oh, oh” here.

Before we present any blogs on Deshler clubs, we want to give students and parents time to contact us. Tell us what you think—as always, you will be anonymous.

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We’ve been sent some excellent material on the pros and cons of “No Buy” gun restrictions and will be presenting these articles in the next few days. Feel free to send your opinions and join in.

Just What is Going on at the Lauderdale 911 Office?

The late humorist Lewis Grizzard once said he didn’t care who in the NFL took illicit drugs; he just wanted to be sure his dentist wasn’t hooked up to the nitrous oxide. So do you care if, when you ask to see the loan officer at your bank, his secretary says you’ll have to wait ten minutes until he finishes a little slap and tickle with the new teller in the vault? Probably not—at least it has very little effect on you.

How about if you have to wait five or ten minutes for your 911 call to go through because Officer Bubba Bilious from Bug Tussle is doing one of the dispatchers? Aha, now we have your attention.

We understand Lauderdale County Commissioner Danny Pettus has said there’s about to be a shake up at Lauderdale 911. We’ll have more on this later, but we have to ask why any employee would think a bit of the other was acceptable behavior while on the clock?

Stay tuned…

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In case you haven’t heard, the ACLU and the NRA are on the same side…yes, really. They both oppose using the “No Fly” list to ban gun purchases. The ACLU says why not add cell phones if we’re that worried about terrorism? 

Comparing a cell phone to a gun is extremely similar to comparing a gun to a jet that can be used as a weapon. Poppy cock! Phones and jets have reasonable uses other than to kill or maim. We support the Second Amendment, but if U.S. security is worried enough about a person to ban him/her from flying in this country, we’re pretty sure giving these people guns is not the best choice.

Doing the Hanky Panky on Your Dime?

Several weeks ago we reported on an appointed official being caught in an extremely compromising position with another city employee. The female employee was terminated, but the appointed official kept his job. Both these individuals were on the clock in a local city; in other words, they were makin’ whoopee while the citizens of that town paid them to be working for the betterment of the community. From what we’ve been told, there was never even a tut-tut from the town’s mayor. Well, good ol’ boys do got to stick together, don’t they?

Now at least one law suit is threatening to blow the lid off a sex scandal in another Shoals town/county. Were there attempts at intimidation? Was there a perfunctory investigation? Was there a little hand-slapping but nothing more? In short, was there an attempted cover up as our informant suggests?

Stay tuned…

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After the tragic events this past weekend in Orlando, it’s only natural to ask if all area SWAT teams remain fully staffed. Enough snipers and all that?

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So Lynn Greer, our Republican representative from Rogersville, wants to be the new speaker of the house. Pols from north Alabama are almost universally overlooked for such positions in Montgomery, but miracles do happen.

If Greer wants the continued, or renewed, support of local voters, he really needs to tell us exactly what happened to his proposed legislation to overhaul the state’s certificate of need laws. Remember this from almost two years ago?

The Guns of Sheffield/Protecting Their Man?

Yesterday, the Midnight Rider mentioned a man in Sheffield who sells guns out of his vehicle in the Town Plaza parking lot on weekends. We've seen readers express the idea that small time vendors shouldn't be regulated, but just what is "small time?" We then asked about liability for the town of Sheffield.

From L. Stone:

If the person at the Sheffield Flea Market is in the firearms business then he has to have a Federal Firearms License and has to follow the rules about background checks. I wonder if he has a stack of form 4473 for his sales?

As far as the liability if a gun is later used in a crime, federal law prevents liability for sellers if a gun is later misused if the sale is done lawfully. An illegal sale is a different matter.

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We mentioned recently the crime reports in the TimesDaily and asked if our readers noticed just how many guns were stolen in the course of the average week. Another interesting read comes from arrest charges--not that they aren't interesting for other reasons as well. Ever notice how many are charged with being in the possession of a gun illegally? Wanna bet these weren't guns the perps owned before their felony conviction?

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After we blogged about a young woman proclaiming her lover's total lack of violence toward her...despite having signed a police report on an incident in which he left her with injuries serious enough to require an ER visit, a local news magazine told us a similar story.

It seems a Lawrenceburg fast food manager attacked the mother of his three children, leaving her in need of medical attention at the ER. A few weeks later, this woman wrote the news source and told them their story was a bunch of bull, despite it being taken from police reports. When the news magazine pointed this out, she faded into the woodwork.

Fast forward over a year later, the fast food manager himself wrote the news site requesting the old article be taken down. He was having trouble finding a job and the case against him had been dismissed. When asked why the case was dismissed, the man wrote a clipped and angry reply and also faded into the woodwork. Wanna bet his baby mama refused to testify against him?

So just what happens, legally that is, to the these women? They either lied in the police report (and medical records show that they didn't) or they're lying when they later tell authorities the whole thing didn't happen. Are they charged with perjury or filing a false police report? Or are they simply allowed to go on their merry way until their next beating/choking/violent assault?

Related: Mother Shoalanda