Thayer Taxpayers Association Blog

. . . but not on their site yet, a couple of interesting pieces.

First is a front-page, above-the-fold story on the trial about the mayor's little temper tantrum. It's title is "Crase not guilty." There's a pretty good quote from Bob Crase in it:

It's bad when you cannot go to City Hall to express an opinion without someone beating on you.

And it closes with Crase's account of yet another example of Thayer's good-ol-boy system in action:

Crase said he had filled out a report against Deckard two or three days following the incident at City Hall. "I went to the Thayer Police Station and filled out a report. I told them (the police) the mayor pushed me down when I wasn't looking," Crase said. He added that he was never contacted about the charges filed against the mayor.

However you feel about Bob Crase, as a citizen of Thayer, he is deserving of equal protection under the law. Yet he gets brought up on assault charges for tapping the mayor on the shoulder, and the mayor doesn't get charged for pushing him down.

Another interesting little (and I do mean little) tidbit I found was on the back page of the A section. Remember when the SMN said Gary Barton was at a city council meeting that he wasn't at? Remember that it was a fairly large, front-page story? Remember the letter I faxed to them? Well, this week, a very small, two-paragraph correction ran, buried on the back page of their A section:

CORRECTION

A March 30 South Missourian News story stated that Gary Barton was at the March 21 Thayer City Council Meeting. This was incorrect.

Barton was not at the meeting but said he had told council members in the past that electrical rates in the city would need to be increased to keep up with increases from electrical suppliers, as stated in the story.

Note that the SMN still makes no mention of the absence of the mayor.

When these stories make it to their online edition, I will post links to them, so you can read them yourself.

Update: SMN's Crase not guilty story is here. I don't see their correction in their online version anywhere.