by design | May 30, 2023 | Columnist, Duncan
By John J. Duncan Jr. duncanj@knoxfocus.com During my entire 30 years in Washington, I saw two things over and over: 1) The easiest thing in the world to do is to spend other peoples’ money, and 2) It was impossible to satisfy the government’s appetite for money –...
by design | May 22, 2023 | Columnist, Duncan
By John J. Duncan Jr. duncanj@knoxfocus.com My father passed away in 1988, but I still think of him at some point almost every day. I once described him in an article in the News Sentinel as the “sweetest, kindest, toughest, hardest-working man I ever knew.” I put the...
by design | May 15, 2023 | Columnist, Duncan
By John J. Duncan Jr. duncanj@knoxfocus.com The very corrupt World Health Organization declared a few days ago that the coronavirus pandemic was officially over. It was a virus that was exaggerated and blown way out of proportion and in that way became a very cruel...
by design | May 8, 2023 | Columnist, Duncan
By John J. Duncan Jr. duncanj@knoxfocus.com Regular readers of my column know that my wife, Vickie, and I got married last May 20th after we both had lost our previous spouses to very serious illnesses – her husband to Lou Gehrig’s Disease, and my wife to strokes and...
by design | May 1, 2023 | Columnist, Duncan
By John J. Duncan Jr. duncanj@knoxfocus.com In 2002, I received a call in my Washington, D.C., office from a man who identified himself as Robin Naysmith, head of the Scottish Section of the British Embassy. He said they had done some research and found that I had...
by design | Apr 24, 2023 | Columnist, Duncan
By John J. Duncan Jr. duncanj@knoxfocus.com When my fellow Focus columnist, Tom Mattingly, wrote recently about Ben Byrd, the longtime sports editor for the Knoxville Journal, it brought back some memories for me, too. I knew Ben well from being around...