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To the Editor:
I received an email from the office manager of the City of Elizabethton’s Finance Department today, reassuring me that they are taking “the safety of our citizens and staff very seriously” as they reopen the lobby at Elizabethton Electric.
To paraphrase Helen Keller, safety is mostly a superstition.
Nothing has ever been safe.
Elizabethton’s Finance Department “takes the safety of our citizens and staff very seriously” only as long as everybody pays their bills on time.
I reject the patronizing notion that anyone “cares” otherwise. If anyone in Elizabethton’s city government truly cared about the citizens of Elizabethton, they would be asking the executives at TVA what is really happening with all the money we pay to light and heat our homes in Carter County, and why those bills keep increasing. They would ask why Tennessee residents pay, on average, $100 a month more for utilities than residents of Washington, D.C.
If I were guessing, I would say it may have something to do with the fact that the CEO, the CFO, the Executive Vice President, the COO, the General Counsel, and other higher-ups in the TVA continue to get multimillion dollar raises and payouts year after year.
It could also have something to do with the two private Cessna jets TVA bought with ratepayers’ money in 2015 and 2017. In three years, the former CEO reportedly used the jets for 31 personal flights, including jaunts to his second home in Raleigh.
In the movie, “The Hobbit,” Galadriel, Lady of Lothlórien, confronts the evil Sauron with the ominous charge, “You are nameless, faceless, formless. Go back to the void from whence you came.”
Someone ran into the front right side of my car a few months ago while it was parked downtown in Elizabethton. They didn’t leave a note. That nameless, faceless, formless evil went back to the void from whence he or she came, so I will never know who did it.
I don’t personally know anyone who runs TVA, but they are not nameless, faceless, or formless. Individually, they are humans. Collectively, they rule us from a tower as dark as Barad-dûr. Until we find a way to send this beast into the void (or at least tame it a bit), TVA will just keep running into the sides of our bank accounts with their Cessna Jets, while we stand helplessly watching our utility bills skyrocket.
And I really wish government officials and employees would stop saying they care about me, because it simply isn’t true.

Sincerely,
Jt Oaks
Elizabethton