I voted for Barack Obama, but after reading the garbage from Virgil Fludd and the NAACP, I’m starting to think I was wrong. The whole assault on Fayette County DFACS started when a DFACS big boss beat her child black and blue, and was called to answer for her crime. Mary Dean Harvey, a corrupt, incompetent crony of B.J. Walker (head of DHR), tried to force the local department to ignore the child abuse. Ms. Harvey was told protection of the county’s children was more important than protecting some carpet-bagging child abuser from Chicago. So, phony charges of racism against Fayette DFACS were ginned up and the NAACP recruited to put the hammer down. I am tired of racial politics. I am particularly tired of black politicians using race as a club to beat up people who are just trying to do their jobs in a very tough environment. If Virgil Fludd cared at all about the children of Georgia, he would fight tooth and nail to secure adequate funding for DFACS. And he would make sure that pressure was brought to bear in removing B.J. Walker from DHR. But B.J. Walker happens to be black, so the fact that she is incompetent and Republican is trumped by race. Or so it appears to many. Virgil Fludd and the NAACP are working diligently to alienate white voters while pandering to their black constituents. They are blowing the biggest opportunity for a real change in American politics on race. They are hurting Obama badly with their antics. I guess they just don’t realize that if Obama secures the nomination and loses the election in a year when the Democrats can only blow the election, not lose it, no black person, no matter how qualified, will ever be given that opportunity again. Its a shame, a real shame.

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Representative (Elmer Fudd) Fludd is, at best, nothing but a mouthpiece for the NAACP. First, it was his continuing efforts to force district voting on the folks of Fayette County, even though the vast majority like it the way it is, period. Now he is carrying water for the NAACP in their efforts to punish the Fayette County DFCS for pressing child cruelty charges against a high level DFCS employee who is a political crony of former state DFCS chief Mary Dean Harvey. Harvey resigned when her efforts to cover up the whole mess became public knowledge. Before her resignation, Harvey is alleged to have made some threats against the local DFCS officials as well as disparaging comments about the county judge handling the case. Both Harvey and the other DFCS official accused of child cruelty worked for Georgia Department of Human Resources chief B.J. Walker. Now Fludd has convinced Walker to investigate the Fayette County DFCS office over alleged “rate they take minority children and remove them from their homes — for safety or other reason.” If you believe this, then I have an ocean-front lot in Fayetteville that I would like to sell you. The reason for the investigation is as simple as it looks: This is B.J. Walker’s and Harvey’s way to settle the score with the local office for doing their job. (Harvey was placed in her job by Walker.) This investigation smells to high heaven and has all the looks of a kangaroo court, and it is being facilitated by Fludd. Next election, folks in Fayette County need to find us someone who will represent the great majority and who will stay out of personal vendettas. Shame on you, Fludd. ( Let me add, I do not work for DFCS and don’t personally know anyone who does, but I can smell an open sewer when I get near it, and that is about where the state DFCS office is right now.)

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Mr. Brown, our former mayor, loves playing the role of provocateur having the perspicacity to write letters condemning the shortcomings of our local naughty Republicans. Oh, God forbid we demand our political charlatans in local garb to discharge their duties in the sunshine for public consumption. Mr. Brown’s atypical approach of demanding that his conservatives live up to their philosophical attitudes – almost a form of torture — is freakishly profound. Nonetheless, he’s barking at a shallow Fayette Republican pool where the oxygen levels are fading. While Mr. Ramsey is capable of moderate bursts of intelligence any given week, he’s no match for someone demanding the truth. Veritas vos liberabit. As a libertarian, I thank you, Mr. Brown, for providing a fresh alternative to senseless government.

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Lauren Burk, white female, murdered at Auburn. Eve Carson, white female, murdered at UNC. Both killed by black males. Any person with good sense will agree that, almost certainly, race was not the reason these two tragic events occurred. However, if you reverse the races on the victims and the perpetrators, it would be an entirely different scenario. The news media and the minority community would be falling all over themselves alleging racism. Threats would be made about burning the community down if these guys weren’t quickly found guilty. The main point here is with the current situation at Auburn and UNC, watch the news media and the community NOT play the race card. We would ask that, in the future, others not cry racism in situations where it clearly is not relevant.

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To the parties who have written about the slow traffic light in Peachtree City and the ticketing of the young girl who proceeded through the light after a long wait: Why does it surprise anyone in the city that the PTC PD and our wonderful Judge Ott would do anything other than supplement the city’s budget by refusing to dismiss bogus tickets? Do not forget that the city chooses the traffic court judge based on “lowest bid.” It looks like we got what we paid for: The “best” judge money can buy. The judge is not an impartial party; he is in cahoots with the police department not to overturn their citations. I have personally seen cases where officers have told half-truths and stretched the facts and circumstances to make a ticket stick. I even heard one senior officer state that in the over 9,000 tickets he had issued in his years on the force he had never made a mistake. Lets nominate him for the Nobel Prize for perfection. Another officer arrested a “driver” for an alleged DUI when she never even saw the driver operate the car. (I was the jury foreman on this case — a waste of three days of my and the other jurors’ time). Let’s all hope that the new chief of police sets an example for the force to follow and focus on real crime and not some poor teenage girl who went through the slow traffic light at 3 a.m.

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[On CNN,] two police officers drag an 80-year-old woman from her car, handcuff her and haul her off to jail because she made an “improper lane change.” What on earth do we have running loose on our streets wearing uniforms and carrying guns legally?

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To the parents/owners of a golf cart with tag number 08164: Your daughter is not driving the golf cart responsibly or safely. She almost ran me down in the Publix parking lot as I was walking to my car. She had a golf cart overloaded with friends, and music was blaring. You may also want to remind her that if she drives a golf cart that fast in a parking lot and has a showdown with a car, she and her friends will come out the losers.

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To the Fayetteville business owner complaining about the big retail shops coming to downtown, it’s sad you’re just now waking up to the disaster being created by our City Council. I guess you can see now they don’t give a darn what happens to our traffic. They’re too busy building more shopping centers everywhere to pay attention to the growing crisis with traffic.

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I’m eagerly awaiting my letter from the Fayette Tax Assessors saying they have taken back the ridiculous assessment increase last year on my 10-year-old house and lot. Now that we’re finally getting the long-overdue “correction” in our real estate market, surely they will be as aggressive on the downside as they have been on the upside, you think? Maybe we can even look forward to a severe thinning of the ranks of our imported eager-beaver developers, builders, Realtors, and their corps of Mexican invaders as a bonus. No such luck on the overpopulation of lawyers, I suppose, since they can always chase a few more ambulances if their closings have fallen off too much.

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The naked man running down the street near the Rite Aid was protesting Mayor Logsdon’s Soviet era government accounting system. The mayor keeps raising taxes and fees on the commoners while he gets a 100 percent pay increase and the developers get paid off. Pretty soon we’ll all be running naked outside because our credit scores will be around 375. Who needs sub-prime mortgages when you have Mayor Harold Logsdon?

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Hey, Morallion Hills, sorry you feel that way; maybe it was a kid. I don’t think it’s worth the cops’ time and effort, really, I just wanted my sign back. With your plethora of knowledge about the neighborhood, specifically my house, I’m surprised you don’t know who took it. As for the sprinkler, it was unintentional. The wiring got run over by some equipment a week or so ago, and when repairs were made, the system was left on by mistake. It is now off. Thank you kindly for your vigilance. Feel free to sleep in.

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I went to Shamrock Park in Tyrone on Friday and was shocked at the destruction that has taken place around the lake. It is simply sickening as to what has happened. Not only have several large trees been removed, but the entire area has been cleared of all the vegetation. No longer can you go there to see birds or other small animals in their natural habitat. Nesting areas that were used for years by many birds are gone. The shade for the lake life no longer exists, along with the protective cover for small fish. Why was this done? Was it to show off that pitiful fountain? Is this what the council considers restoration? Hopefully some federal or state agency will get involved and hold the parties responsible for this mess accountable. I no longer want to go to that park and am sure many other citizens will feel the same way when they see what has happened.

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Rapid rail in Fayette? It will be the first step towards an inevitable dash to bringing MARTA into Tyrone, PTC and Senoia. Once the rapid rail is set up at I-85 and South Fulton, it will not be long before they run the rail down the Ga. Highway 74 right of way (which is state-owned, so Tyrone and PTC have no voice). Soon The Avenue will look like Lenox on a Saturday night. And the Publix at Tyrone on Hwy. 74? Aw, never mind.

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Mayor Logsdon said the big box junk on Ga. Highway 54 was a win-win deal. How is selling city streets so a developer can build THREE big boxes a win-win deal for the local residents? And for the love of Pete, we don’t need another traffic signal over there. Both of the new councilmen have been true to their word and tried to fight that stuff, but we’re missing a third sane councilman to win the battle on behalf of the people.

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I laughed out loud after reading the argument for personal gun rights, written by an author who selected only the last 14 words of the Second Amendment for print. Here is it in all its entirety and simplicity, the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” There now, was that so hard?

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It is a sad day in Fayette County when an eighth grade teacher at the middle school on Hwy. 85 South duct-tapes a student’s mouth shut (with red duct tape), then parades that student around from classroom to classroom claiming that “the student is on display.” Regardless of the events that led up to this teacher’s outrageous actions, this is an unacceptable disciplinary practice which should be recognized and admonished by the school administration. Had this been my own child, Fayette County would be currently facing legal action.

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Thanks to an extremely unorganized individual in the Girl Scouts annual cookie drive, I just paid $14 for two boxes of cookies. I pre-paid. In case that isn’t clear enough, let me break it down. I order. I pay before I receive my merchandise. You deliver. I eat and enjoy. Don’t send your child in to do your dirty work. If it weren’t for the poor thing looking so confused (and she remembered I prepaid), I would have been more aggressive. It wasn’t her fault that things were poorly recorded and poorly organized. I have sent in a complaint to the Girl Scouts of America and I feel it no longer necessary to support this organization. And no, I didn’t eat the cookies. I gave them away. I want nothing further to do with the GSofA.

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There was an interesting one-sentence question in The Citizen’s March 12 Free Speech section: “What is the real reason that the Courtside Cafe in Peachtree City Tennis Center was closed down?” That is only one of several restaurant tries at that facility that has bit the dust. However, this closing spurred me to ask whether or not our Tennis Center is actually paying for itself in membership, court time revenues, pro shop profits, and other tennis or non-tennis related income sources. Do these income sources cover the management and administrative and other labor and maintenance costs involved in running and maintaining the tennis facilities? Are these revenues also paying for the long-term annual bond principal and interest obligations which are coming mostly out of non-tennis participant Peachtree City taxpayers’ pockets? Are we taxpayers footing any of these expenses above and beyond true tennis center revenues? I note that there are other ways in PTC to accommodate the PTC tennis marketplace. The Canongate Golf Clubs appear to have an excellent and busy program going on at the three PTC golf clubs — Planterra Ridge, Flat Creek and Braelinn. Also there is a tennis program for its citizens through the Peachtree City Recreation Department during the year. Recent articles in The Citizen newspaper indicate that our city is running into some pretty severe fiscal situations with the Police Department fiasco and other surprises seemingly cropping up every few months. I suggest that the city Tourism Authority be made to justify, if this is currently the case, the deficit spending in order to continue operating our quality Tennis Center, or, show the City Council and the concerned citizens of PTC that the center is actually paying its way.

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Bravo to the Fayette County High Select Chorus! The show was wonderful and what a group of talented kids. This show is always one of the highlights for spring, and this year Mr. Prouty and the Select kids did not disappoint. My kids go to a rival school, but we would never miss the variety show. Once again, bravo!

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Did anyone else notice the cheerleading ad in this week’s paper? There were four young girls (looked like they were pre-teens) who were dressed in “shirts” baring their midriffs and shorts so short they could pass for underwear. It gives me a sick feeling in my stomach to think that we are allowing our little girls to dress like this. What kind of messages are we sending them? Cheerleading is a great sport to participate in, but do our little girls have to dress in this type attire at such a young age? Plus, with all of the news lately about child sex offenders, do we really want to subject our little girls to the eyes of these people? Please, let’s empower our little girls to build a healthy self-confidence and positive body image in a better way.

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As a cyclist I travel the backroads of Fayette County towards Brooks and Spalding County, and from all the beer cans I observe on the sides of the roads, I can tell the Sheriff’s Department where to find the drivers who are drinking while driving.

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With all the prisoners we have in Fayette County, there should not be a piece of trash anywhere on the ground in the county.

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My family would like to say a great big thank you to the gentleman we have seen picking up trash on Braelinn Road in PTC. He usually wears a bright red jacket and a baseball cap. We have spotted him around 8 a.m. picking up trash alongside the road. We really appreciate the wonderful example he is setting. He is an excellent example of a good citizen. My children are seeing a good deed in action. Thank you again. Braelinn Road looks nicer because of you.

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My husband and I were eating at a local Fayette restaurant recently, enjoying our meal and service. There was a family seated next to us, and our waitress gave them the same excellent service she was giving us. Not only was the service good, this young lady was a warm and friendly person who treated her customers with respect. We were taking our time with dinner, in no hurry to be any place, so the family beside us left before we left. I could not help notice the shocked look on the young lady’s face who had served them when she came by and picked up the check they had left on the table. It was obvious that these people had either left her very little or no tip at all. I felt mad for this young lady who had made dinning out such an enjoyable evening for us and this family. Even though it was none of my business, I could not help but ask her the next time she refilled our drinks if they had stiffed her on her tip. She politely told me, “It’s OK, maybe dinner cost them more than they expected to pay,” smiled and left it at that. I was very upset for this young lady. I have been there myself at one time as a single mother trying to support myself and my child, waitressing at nights to help make ends meet. I know how hard a job it is to wait on people and give them good service. In case people don’t know, restaurants do not pay minimum wage. Servers rely on tips to earn money. Servers pay taxes on a percentage of their sales. If they do not make enough in tips to cover their taxes, it comes out of their so-called paycheck, which is very small to begin with. In larger restaurants where there are bartenders, food runners, bus boys and hostesses, waitress have to give them a percentage of their tips at the end of their shift for the help they provided in serving you, the customer. So if you left no tip to a server who had to tip out the rest of the staff and pay taxes on the sale she made to you, then in reality it cost her money to serve you. I know many people argue that it should not be up to them to pay a waitress’s salary. True, but think how much that dinner would cost you if restaurants paid servers even $8 dollars an hour or so; there would be a lot of people eating at home and a lot of restaurants out of business.

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Since we’re getting absurd accusations made about our presidential candidates, particularly about Barack Obama, let me add another ridiculous one. I heard John McCain quote Mao Tse-Tung recently. Obviously, he had to have been brainwashed by the North Vietnamese while he was a prisoner of war and thus is the 2008 “Manchurian Candidate.”