I think it’s probable that for many of you I will be “preaching to the choir.” But, I’ve found that one of the most important differences in politics is how we deal with the concept and answer the question, “Who’s money is it?”
Is it the government’s money or yours?
Your answer depends on whether you believe that the money you have in your pocket is money that the government has decided to let you keep or if you believe that the money you have in your pocket is what we should have after we have decided what is necessary to operate our government and to do those things we cannot do ourselves.
One of the things that we cannot do for ourselves is to build and repair our road network.
One of the “myths” I have heard put forward is that the money that is scheduled to be spent on expanding Ga. highways 34 and 54 and expanding Ga. Highway 74 South, including the bridges on both roads, is “state and federal” money, not our money.
Well, I have a truth to tell those who say that. The truth is, it is all our money!
For example, when each of us purchases fuel, we pay a federal and state tax on that fuel. That is our money that is taxed by state and federal governments and it is intended to help pay for our roads.
So, if and when state and federal governments decide to spend this tax money in our area, they are in truth spending our money on our roads.
The roads that are being upgraded by the state and federal governments are now in the plan and are being upgraded because Fayette County, at long last, learned how the process works and was successful at placing our road projects into the Traffic Improvement Plan and successful at moving up construction dates.
This success was primarily due to the efforts of county staff and leadership and state legislative leadership.
Lee Hearn, head of the county road department and on the ARC Transportation Committee; Greg Dunn, County Commission Chairman and on the ARC Executive Committee and Mitch Seabaugh, state senator (Fayette was moved out of his district this year) were the individuals who put in the time to learn the process and to make the process work for our benefit and get these roads upgraded at last.
It is part of their job to do this but let’s thank them, not throw stones at them.
It is also important to understand that these leaders came to the Association of Fayette County Governments, which is made up of all the local governments: county and municipal, in our county.
When they came to the association, they asked the local elected leadership, “The ARC needs to know where we want to place our first priority for upgrading our roads.”
The association said that our top priority at the time was to upgrade two roads, 54 and 74 in Peachtree City.
People who came from all parts of our county and who understood that it was their money that was being prioritized set this priority.
They understood that if their money was spent in one location, it could not be spent in another location.
So, it is obvious. Money spent, for example, on hwys. 54 and 74 is money raised from Fayette County taxpayers for improving and upgrading their roads. It must be counted in any countywide plan.
If one says otherwise, I think they either don’t understand whose money it is and they think that the government can generate its own money or they’ve fallen for a con game or they are attempting to play their own game.
Peter Pfeifer Fayette County Commission, Post 3
Chamber’s SPLOST forum seemed a setup
[Fayette County Chamber of Commerce President Virginia] Gibbs, the last SPLOST forum was a great disappointment. Initially, the Chamber failed to seek input from the city of Peachtree City before passing the resolution in the first place.
Next, the format was completely changed with a stacked panel without any advance warning.
You previously gave me the position that the Chamber was merely giving the approval for SPLOST as a funding mechanism and not voicing approval for the county’s plan.
At the last forum, your board members were telling everyone to vote for the SPLOST. What is the Chamber’s official stance on the SPLOST again?
Andy Carden announced that the questions would be taken on a “first come, first served” basis, and my questions were the first ones handed to you as I had made them out 15 minutes prior to the meeting while sitting in the church.
At least four of us at the meeting did not get a single one of our questions answered and one woman went and retrieved her card and handed her question to Greg Dunn to answer after ComCast stopped taping.
He read the card and handed it off to someone else and walked away. It resembled more of a “fact-hiding” mission.
Several of us sat there and watched you read through the cards and pick some out of the pile, hand them up to be read (thank God for digital cameras).
It was stated that not all of the board of directors voted in favor of the Chamber’s resolution. As a Chamber member, I would like to see the results of that vote. Who voted in opposition?
Also, why did the Chamber not take the vote to the membership as a whole?
There is also a rumor going around that were several changes made to the board of directors of the Chamber. Is this true and who are the current board members, as they have disappeared from your website?
Finally, you were quoted in the newspaper as saying that we needed to dispose of the political wrangling and get on with the SPLOST. Is the equitable distribution of taxes important to our Chamber of Commerce?
Is following a new equitable state law created and approved by the Georgia Municipal Association, the Association of County Commissioners of Georgia and both houses of the legislature important to our Chamber of Commerce?
I will await your answers.
Steve Brown, mayor Peachtree City, Ga.
Racism: An ugly scene in F’ville
I am a member of Fayetteville’s Chamber of Commerce and a new resident as well as business owner (Horizon’s Boutique) in Fayetteville. I encountered a very disturbing incident last week.
I went to Sally’s Beauty supply (near Kroger’s) and while in the store, heard some loud verbal exchange. I began listening intently. It was an exchange between two customers, one white and one black.
The white woman had entered the store and asked, “Is this a nigger hair store?” The comment was addressed to the store employee (who happened to be white).
The black woman who was within earshot responded (without using profanity) and addressed that the woman’s comments were inappropriate and bigoted.
The white woman insisted that it was a free country and she could say whatever she pleased.
The black woman was upset, but never attacked the white woman verbally or physically.
The white woman was accompanied by three children. Two were teens and one was a small child.
The store clerk was apologetic when both the black woman and I approached the checkout counter.
Then, another (white) store clerk came around an aisle and caught a glimpse of one of the teens. It seemed that the teen must have been using a brush from the store to brush her hair.
The clerk told her, “If you use a brush, you’ll need to buy it.”
The older white woman responded, “She didn’t do anything wrong. The little black heifer just got everybody all stirred up,”
Again, the black woman responded to the ignorant comment without attacking the woman.
I am outraged at this behavior. I have seen people come to my place of business and turn around when they see that I am a black woman.
What is being done in Fayetteville to attack and stamp out racism? I hope this isn’t the “way it is” here!
America has had to pay too high a price for one evil man (Saddam) who was not even close to our most dangerous enemy. Instead of getting bin Laden we lost him as we pulled key operatives away from the bin Laden hideout. We dropped the ball and lost a critical opportunity to rid the world of bin Laden.
This error in judgment was obvious from the start. What were they thinking? This was a very serious mistake and shows that the present administration does not have what it takes.
I hope that Americans can now see that this arrogant man in the White House is severely handicapped and emotionally ill-equipped to have this important job. He has duped the American people.
He has used his professed Christianity as his political tool to keep himself and his party in control.
Instead of making us more secure from acts of terror we have opened the door for more and more hate, and we have not made progress in fighting terror by our invasion of Iraq.
Yes, they had an evil leader but this issue should be resolved by their country. We had and still have far more important issues to take care of, the protection of our home land.
And now we have more responsibility (Iraq) and less resources to do the job. It looks as if Bush does not care how he spends our resources.
Bush’s personal life has given him access and power to make reckless decisions without consequence; so he has just brought this forward to his public life. Hard to believe, isn’t it?
Where is the accountability? It goes to show that if you don’t think financial responsibility is important you may not have very good judgment in others areas as well.
Nancy Howell Tyrone, Ga.
Blame Bush for health care crisis
My family, like many others in Fayette County, has medical coverage with Delta Airlines. We have seen a dramatic increase in our health care cost.
It would be very easy to blame Delta but the truth is George Bush’s health care policies have failed and has taken our country in the wrong direction.
Since George Bush took office, families are paying a record 64 percent more on health insurance premiums.
Deductibles have increased by nearly two-thirds and prescription drug co-pays have increased by more than 50 percent.
I believe it is important that all Americans have affordable health care coverage.
That is why I am voting for John Kerry.
Al LaMothe Peachtree City, Ga.
[LaMothe is a member of the Fayette County Board of Elections.]
Should ’Nam vets have kept quiet?
Apparently Les Dyer has as much of a proclaimed distaste for words as he does for reason.
If proximity to an event or object gives one exceptional insight, the 9/11 Commission wasted their time interviewing anyone but eyewitnesses to the attacks.
Exactly what Dyer gleaned from the window of his B-52, except that it was a particularly dangerous place to be at that time, rather escapes me.
As for Kerry’s testimony, it lasted for almost two hours and yet all Dyer chooses to remember is his opening statement.
Dyer didn’t witness the testimony given by the veterans at the Winter Soldier meeting, and neither did I.
I can assume, though, that it must have been a fairly wrenching experience. If we further assume that Kerry believed in their veracity, then we would have to expect that such testimony would have affected him in some way, as it would have affected the other 1,000 members of the VVAW for whom Kerry spoke.
Further, Kerry had come to the conclusion that the war had not been well-thought-out and was being conducted in a manner that would lead to no result resembling victory.
His testimony mentions the war’s impact on the Vietnamese people, on the soldiers, and on the United States, none of that impact being positive.
Is it Dyer’s reasoning then that fighting men who have left the military best keep the faith by ignoring the reality of a fruitless and costly venture?
Should everyone have just “shut up” and let the carnage continue?
I just can’t buy that thought process. It is the duty of citizens to petition their government for redress when the government is doing wrong.
I suppose if Dyer had used more paragraphs he could have told us what he believes was politically right with the Vietnam war and those things he thinks were right with the senior military’s reliance on body counts, agent orange, taking territory and giving it back, harassment interdiction fire, and a host of other absolutely wasteful tactics.
Perhaps he could have told us why the ARVN folded so quickly, despite the massive amount of arms we gave them, or exactly what we would have gained by extending the war another 10 years.
I can’t fault any American POW for feeling betrayed by the anti-war effort in general, and Kerry’s testimony in particular.
The North Vietnamese were particularly brutal, and those men were prepared to, and often did pay with their lives. They operated under a different set of rules both statutory and implied.
Kerry’s well-publicized testimony would have been thrown back in their faces and after all they had suffered, it must have been a bitter pill.
We cannot, however, still dissent, nor should we later hold it against the dissenters if they were right, and I believe Kerry was right.
Personally I would not have testified the same way he did, but I wasn’t at the Winter Soldiers meeting, used my high school deferment to avoid Vietnam, and have the benefit of 30 years of hindsight and study.
As for the unwashed, unread conservatives, to paraphrase Albert Einstein, it’s not the knowing, but the understanding. And the soul of brevity seems to be simple answers for complex questions.
Timothy J. Parker Peachtree City, Ga.
Cancer mom has some tips
Just last week, Jacob, Dylan, Sara, Katja, Carter, and many other special children earned their angel wings way too early because of childhood cancer.
I am the mother of a 3-year-old surviving cancer. Specifically, acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Three-hundred-seventy-five days ago our lives were normal. I am now 374 days into being a cancer mom. Now I am another year wiser; that is, 374 days more callous and 374 days more thankful. I have earned my Cancer Mom Badge.
How do you get one? You get your badge after it is certified that:
• Your SUV has cheerleading bags and barf bags inside.
• You have a bumper sticker that reads, “Cancer sucks!”
• You squirt Purell waterless soap on everyone who comes within a three-foot radius.
• You’ve waited more hours in clinic in one day than you have slept in a week.
• You have to ask, not the date, but the year when you write a check.
• The lab technician asks if you are a nurse when you ask for a breakdown of the white blood cell count from the last set of labs.
• You call your health insurance and remind them that your co-payment is waived when you are admitted through the ER so you are not paying the bill.
• Kids with hair look “funny.”
• You can’t remember how long you’ve been married but you know there are 99 weeks left of treatment after Monday.
• You learn to wear your badge proudly and hope to bring a greater awareness to childhood cancer.
• You want everyone to know that every school day in the U.S., 46 children are diagnosed with cancer. That’s two Georgia classrooms. Every day!
• You want everyone to know that 30 years ago 10 percent of children survived cancer. Today 77 percent of kids survive, but what is the long-term impact on these kids’ endocrine, heart and cognitive functions?
• You need everyone to think about the effects of chemotherapy and radiation on these kids.
• You want everyone to know that cancer is the number one killer of children under 15.
But just wearing my cancer mom badge is not enough to promote the cause. September is National Childhood Cancer Awareness month. There is a lot of work to be done. Together as a community we can fight this horrible disease. There are ways you can help right now:
• Donate blood to the American Red Cross. There is always a shortage and children with cancer need it often.
• Register to be on the National Bone Marrow Registry (www.marrow.org). You might just save someone’s life someday.
• Play for the cause. Cattle Barons Ball for the American Cancer Society is coming up in November in Fayetteville. Contact Sheri Waynick at 770-460-8920 to see how you or your business can help.
Oct. 4 is our local Texas Hold ‘Em Poker Tournament to benefit the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (in honor of Jacob Murphy and in memory of Roger Mundy). Call Entertainment Productions at 770-632-4475 for more information.
Be interested, be involved, and live strong.
And for the record, Frank, without you I don’t know if I would have been strong enough for the fight. Jordan, you are the wisest and most special 6-year-old princess I have ever known. Jacob, if a mom’s tears could heal cancer you’d be cured.
Tiffany Murphy Peachtree City, Ga. www.caringbridge.org/ga/jacobm
Hurricanes, global warming and Bush
It’s ironic that President Bush trumpets hurricane disaster assistance when he’s done nothing to stop global warming, which is making these hurricanes worse.
Floridians are feeling the brunt right now. Scientists agree pollution from oil and gas is warming the climate, making extreme storms even stronger. And we all know warmer oceans cause stronger hurricane winds, more rain and flooding; plus, global warming is already causing sea level to rise.
It doesn’t take a NASA scientist to know that Floridians should be concerned about global warming more than anybody.
Yet here is our president, who tries to drill for more oil off our coast, tears up the Kyoto treaty that would have cut global warming pollution, and protects the big polluters instead.
We should give George W. Bush a piece of our mind when he comes to visit our hurricane disaster areas. Three hurricanes in a month? It’s The Climate, Stupid.
Allison Obershaw Peachtree City, Ga.
Simplistic argument melts in face of scientific facts
News loves hurricanes. They usually form far, far away, providing at least a week of stories. And they often start with a bang.
Down in the tropical Atlantic, young ones bomb out to amazingly low barometric pressures and outrageous sustained winds. Hurricane Ivan’s lowest pressure, for example, would cause the needle on you home barometer to spin around twice. The resultant “eyewall” winds were a 20-mile wide tornado.
It’s incredible stuff. But they usually weaken considerably by the time they get to the states, owing to our more northerly latitude and the fact that hurricanes don’t do well when much of their circulation is over land, which has to happen when they approach North America.
That doesn’t stop the hype machine. While we like to count up property damage and losses, no one mentions the fantastic revenue that these storms generate for the media, or that the constant drumbeat of Charley-Frances-Ivan, Charley-Frances-Ivan must have political repercussions.
And so, Tony Blair was just in Washington to visit John Kerry, where he conflated Hurricane Ivan with dreaded global warming.
I like just about everything about Tony Blair. He’s smart, affable, and a real friend to a nation that needs some. But he’s way off on global warming, and advising Kerry to bail out his campaign with apocalyptic climate hype invites a grilling by the climate truth squad, a rather large body of weather nerds in a weather-fixated country.
Blair’s problem is that he listens to his science adviser, Sir David King, who is one of the most ill-informed hawks on climate change on this greening planet.
King actually pronounced the goofy global warming flick “The Day After Tomorrow” as scientifically plausible, which should have completely blown away his credibility. Now he claims that this year’s hurricane activity is a product of global warming and that warming will make hurricanes worse.
Here’s the simplistic argument. Hurricanes require warm water. Global warming means more of that. Therefore, more hurricanes.
The fact is that there’s plenty of warm water for hurricanes every year. Virtually the entire tropical ocean is hot enough, and yet there are only about 10 per year in the Atlantic.
The real research question on these storms is not why there are so many but, rather, why there are so few, given the massive expanse of warm water available to them?
And here’s the real scientific inconvenience in Blair’s story. The planet warmed slightly, much less than forecast by people like King, in the last half of the last century, but while that happened, maximum winds in Atlantic hurricanes DECLINED significantly.
Yep. As shown by scientist Chris Landsea of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, maximum winds measured by hurricane-hunter aircraft over the last 50 years have declined significantly.
Further, there’s a logical (if lawyerly) argument that pins this salutary change on global warming. It goes like this: Atlantic hurricanes are much more delicate than their destruction suggests. One thing they cannot tolerate is a west wind blowing into them because it wrecks their symmetry. As a result, their maximum winds decline.
El Nino, another climate hype machine, generates precisely this type of wind over the Atlantic. That’s why, in El Nino years, the forecast is for a weak hurricane season.
In the latter part of the last century, there were an unusual number of El Nino years compared to previous decades. Some scientists (like David King) claim that global warming is increasing the frequency of El Nino. But if that’s the case, then global warming would be responsible for the decline in maximum hurricane winds.
How much could that be worth? The decline has been about 15 mph since 1950. That’s not a small number because the force of a hurricane’s wind goes up with the square of the velocity. In the high Category Three/low Four range, this change reduces the power by 25 percent.
Given that the U.S. experiences about 15 strong hurricanes every decade, and that the average cost is now about $5 billion for one of those hits, you could, if you buy the El Nino argument (I don’t but some others do), thank global warming saving about $13 billion per decade.
These numbers won’t stop the hype machine on hurricanes. But you’d think that Great Britain’s science adviser would have been sufficiently well informed that he would have kept his prime minister from asking John Kerry to sow the whirlwind.
Patrick J. Michaels senior fellow in environmental studies The Cato Institute (www.cato.org)
[Michaels is the author of “Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians, and the Media,” to be released in October.]
Duchess: Build a fire under mayor
I saw my deceased third husband’s best friend, former Peachtree City Mayor Ralph Jones, while having my Studebaker serviced at his Valvoline oil change place last week.
The girls in the bridge club have always admired Ralph and were concerned about his health after recent surgery. It was good to see that Ralph looks healthy and strong as an ox.
He and his friend Handsome Roy will take two young bitches on an excursion to Montana in October. Before Wife Brownie’s friends get upset, let me say it is a pheasant hunting trip and their companions are of the canine variety: bird dogs!
Peachtree City was broke when Ralph Jones became mayor and he stepped up to the plate and signed a personal note to purchase the city’s first fire truck.
Compare that level of commitment to current Mayor Mud Flap Brown and the Politburo’s steadfast refusal to fund the fire department at a responsible level.
The reasoning is that slower response times and inadequate services will scare the public into being more safety conscious, thus reducing the need for services.
Tell that to the poor guy who has cardiac arrest while watching his house burn down!
Ralph’s trip reminds me of when another one of my former husbands, his friend, Butterball Bailey from Panasonic, and a former City Council member, went on elk hunting trips to Colorado for several years running.
Their trips came to an abrupt stop when Butterball’s wife and I learned that none of the three had ever owned a gun. We suspected they were hunting “dear” and not elk.
While on the topic of former mayors, the Garden Club will poke a lot of fun at Fred Brown and his sidekick Iola Snow in future columns but this is not the time to distract them from a great project.
They are organizing the 2004 Alzheimer’s Memory Walk in Peachtree City. Readers of this silly column can help sponsor Fred Brown in the Memory Walk by sending checks payable to The Alzheimer’s Association, c/o Fred Brown, 104 Brooksong Way, Peachtree City, GA 30269.
After all, Fred Brown is the best “Mayor Brown” Peachtree City has ever elected.
Enough said!
Duchess Andrea of Aberdeen Village
Unhappy campers at Gathering Place
Epistle to the Editor
It looked like Stuart “Difficult Last Name” K. had a rough City Council meeting. He started off by verbally abusing our elder villagers and called them a special interest group. No tax breaks for the poor old ladies.
It’s amazing that the “In-DIRECT PAC” candidate that’s locked into the old “Non-Development Authority” members is calling a group of low-income seniors a special interest group. Let’s just say that the sounds coming from The Gathering Place were not happy ones. If the elder villagers had some handguns the hapless councilman wouldn’t stand a chance.
The Chamber of Commerce SPLOST forum was a real hoot. Fred “Developer’s Buddy” Brown, Jim “I Make Money Off of Government” Pace, Andy “I Work For Emperor Dunn” Carden, and Randy “County Developer” Hayes were all asked a bunch of lighthearted questions from a Chamber guy.
You’ve got to love a bunch of guys that hold a meeting in the Peachy City and won’t allow the local elected officials to ask a question.
Their hype has come to the light of day and they are desperately trying the cram the SPLOST through even if it means outright deception.
Even the crowd at the Publix deli in T-Town know that the only thing necessary for “Emperor Dunn” to triumph over the Peachy City and T-Town is for the villagers and townies to do nothing!
Now the sulking Duchess was a wee bit confused when she mentioned “Keystone” Chamber Chairman Vicki “Wrong” Turner’s husband and his affiliation with the Peachy tennis center.
He was doing business with Jim “I Make Money Off of Government” Pace and getting a free membership from Virgil “It Wasn’t Me” Christian at the Peachy tennis center. Tate “Run Out of Town” Godfrey worked for Pace’s Group VI while he was the chairman of the old “Non-Development” Authority.
It was fellow “Non-Development” Authority officer Tom “Banker” Farr that worked for the Peachy “Embarrassing” Bank and made all of those convenient loans every year to the “Non-Development” Authority.
The only thing that Peachy “Embarrassing” Bank’s and Jim “I Make Money Off of Government” Pace can say to the Peachy taxpayers is that their proposed massive tax increase to pay off the dishonest financial activity will taste better if taken with a handful of Prozac.
The villagers at the barber shop on Ga. Highway 54 are comparing these nagging guys to their ex-wives. A wife lasts only for the length of the marriage, but an ex-wife is there for the rest of your life.
The funny part about the whole thing is that only defense that the “Emperor” Dunn and the old “Non-Development” Authority boys have is that Mayor “Cheery” Brown is “being unreasonable” by holding them accountable to the village taxpayers and he is actually going to making them follow state law.
Bad old Mayor “Cheery” Brown! God help the man that asks all the little boys and girls to play by the rules.
The rumor going around the Braelinn Kroger parking lot is that the new “Non-Development” Authority members are going to side with the Peachy “Embarrassing” Bank and Group VI.
Apparently the pressure has been so strong from Bob “I Own This City” Lenox and his “Keystone” Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors that the new boys on the authority are caving in and going against the village taxpayers.
They got rid of their old authority attorney, Mark “I Only Did What They Told Me To Do” Oldenburg and they have hired attorney Bill Campbell to represent them. Apparently Mr. Campbell is an expert in that kind of law.
This is enough to make Judi “Hyphenated” Rutherford smile. And you thought the Lutherans were being persecuted!
