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Batesville says: Si puede

An interesting little story has been playing out in the print edition of the Times. Leslie Peacock stumbled recently across a Batesville Chamber of Commerce Twitter page, in which chamber director Jonah Shumate distributed links to an "I Want Obama to Fail" page and other Republican-oriented messaging.

Turns out there are quite a few Democrats in Batesville who weren't the least bit happy about this bit of news. Some resigned from the Chamber. We went to press with an Insider on that for this week's edition and also reported that the Chamber board was meeting on the matter last night.

The Insider is already out of date.

Shumate resigned this morning as chamber director. My Batesville correspondent  says Eddie Mabry, a retired John Deere executive, will serve as acting director.

Also: The Twitter site is defunct.

Comments

Chambers of Commerce are Republican groups. I've never understood why Democrats join them. They should start their own groups.


I wonder why taxpayers are required to fund Chambers of commerce? At least they do in my
neck of the woods.

I cannot find a decent thing the Chickenopolis Chamber has done. It pushed the the taxpayer
funded minor league baseball stadium 3 years ago. Now that's been shown to not even be a break-even for the city. They let Jesus Jim Holt drive off Sam's Wholesale Club a few years back
without a squeak of protest..Sam's was the city's largest sales tax generator because it served several counties.

.

Shumate idolizes Reagan, Limbaugh, Rove, and Bush. He loved Bush's bail out plan but lobbied against Obama's stimulus plan. He found out the hard way that his radical right wing views do not represent Batesville.

The local paper mentions nothing of the reason why he resigned. Just that he's the third in five years. Guess we don't want the truth out there!

Maybe the local paper is embarrassed to be scooped by the AT, Roger. They should have picked up on this days ago

eLwood - The Batesville Chamber receives no public money.

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