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FreeSpeech for 09-16-09Tue, 09/15/2009 - 3:31pm
By: The Citizen
Bost Hogg, being the loser in court on the silly recall hearing, should not only have to pay lawyer fees but also pay for the judge. And by the way, why are we taxpayers paying extra for this other judge? We have judges on salary that should have heard the case. Why we paying It is difficult to believe that Georgia law relating to recalls provides that Robert Horgan’s actions that resulted in an arrest must be connected to his official duties. Horgan was arrested for an expired tag and possession of marijuana (a misdemeanor) which occurred during Memorial Day weekend. The citizens (“We the People”) should be able to recall any elected county official for bad conduct whether or not connected to his/her official duties. Elected officials should be held to a higher standard of conduct, whether or not they are conducting official business. Possession of marijuana and driving with an expired tag are not like receiving a ticket for a single instance of improper parking or for inadvertently exceeding the speed limit by a few miles per hour, causing no harm to other people or property (although these violations should be noted and condemned, and if repetitive, they too should be treated as bad conduct). Georgia law needs to be amended so that the citizens can hold our elected officials to a higher standard. In regards to the empty Wendy’s building in Fayetteville. You need to come to Peachtree City and see all the empty buildings we have, old and new. And guess what? I wonder who is to blame, the city council or the idiots who keep re-electing these people who are running our once “a great place to live” city into the ground. Concrete median strips and traffic light islands located at intersections can be hard to see at night; especially when its raining. Could the folks responsible for roads in the cities and the county mark these obstructions with reflectors so they would be more easily seen? Thanks. To the person who complained that Gloria Furr and Grace Caldwell did not keep their promise to update Shamrock Park: Ask Grace why she wanted to use that surplus money to put more mulch in the new Veterans Park. Gloria has been the one pushing for Shamrock Park, but she can’t do it by herself. Someone needs to remind the recent venter who complained about walkers on the bike paths on Saturdays that pedestrians have the right of way. They have it every day of the week. And perhaps they crowd the paths because they’re tired of golf cart drivers of all ages not slowing down as a courtesy. This includes parents late in taking their children to school (obviously not on weekends, but the other days of the week) and golfers who don’t want to miss their tee times. When you ask cyclists (as you ride in your car next to them), “Didn’t you miss a stop sign back there?” you get that patented answer, “We have our rights and the Georgia law says we can ride on public streets.” But the Georgia law says you have to yield to ALL the signs on those streets. If you think you aren’t doing this, just come to the corner of McIntosh Trail and Peachtree Parkway any Wednesday night or any Sunday morning and watch. I’ll stand with you and for everyone that stops, I’ll give you a dollar and for everyone that runs the stop sign, you give me one. I’ll bet at the end of the day, I can take my family to one nice restaurant at your expense. I’m on your side, Mr. Cyclist, but obey the law. Peachtree City police, if you need revenues, I challenge you to come to this same location any Wednesday night or Sunday morning and make your quota. Let me give the city fathers another revenue stream. I have to buy a $15 ugly yellow sticker and put it on my $7,500 golf cart. Why doesn’t this same cyclist have to buy the same sticker and put it on his bike? I vote yes for the same $15 ugly sticker to go on that bike! And lastly, I would support an education class at McIntosh High School in golf cart etiquette. Before any student gets a golf cart stickers to drive/park at McIntosh High School, they should HAVE to complete the cart education course at the school. Those students need to learn to “give one/take one” when they come to a tunnel. My thanks to the person who can’t stand to see anyone have fun, so she complains to the city about a rope swing on Lake Peachtree near McIntosh Trail and the dam — and lives nowhere nearby. It’s so dangerous. That’ll keep those kids inside playing X-box, where they belong, instead of cooling off for a few minutes in the lake on a hot summer day. Oh, no, the burn ban is off Sept. 30. The burn ban should be permanent. I’ve got a neighbor who is obsessed with burning. I hope he wets the bed every night that he plays with matches. Seems like he burns everyday that it is not raining. The neighborhood stinks most every day. Be a good neighbor and haul your yard waste off to the recycling center every Wednesday and Saturday. Just finished reading Free Speech in regards to the poor job PTC’s new grass cutters are doing. The letter must have been from a former grass cutter. I have been complaining about the way our city employees did nothing to earn their salaries. So it really does my heart good to see the new grass service employees doing their work in an orderly and efficient manner. And I am also aware that there is always a supervisor monitoring the progress of work being performed. I have also seen the PTC Public Works Department, along with the Stormwater Department, doing what they do best on the project just north of Crosstown Road. What they do best is to take a pay check for doing as little as possible for it. Where are the supervisors who are in charge of these employees? Probably complaining about how overworked and underpaid they are. Look around you, PTC taxpayers, and see how much money is being wasted and ask your city manager what he is going to do about it besides trying to raise taxes. Why doesn’t he demand that city employees do their part and give the city an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay? I personally believe that the majority of this city’s employees do what they want to do when they want to do it. Open your eyes and look around. I hope everyone in PTC read the letter Don Haddix wrote in The Citizen a couple of weeks ago. He hit all of the important hot buttons, and I am sure that if he is elected mayor in November this fine city can look forward to the leadership and vision that we all want and deserve. Let’s all get out there, and let him know how much we support him and how willing we are to do what’s necessary to see him elected. To the Obama defenders at RSMS: You say, “Act like a citizen and show a little respect.” Obama will receive my respect when he does something to earn my respect. Demanding respect and commanding respect are mutually exclusive. It’s Leadership 101. Look it up. It’s under Good Leadership. You don’t teach children how to respect, you show them. You give them a good example to follow. What example is he setting by bowing down to foreign Muslim government leaders? The U.S. President should bow to only One, but we haven’t seen that example from him yet. Ah, September in Peachtree City. The beautiful sunsets and turning of the leaves. The rotten smell of burning damp leaves and grass. Surrounded on the paths, roadways and common areas in PTC with grass and weeds two feet tall. A place you used to love to call home. I won’t even get into discussing our city leaders. When did it become legal to make a U-turn anywhere you so choose? When did it become okay for landscapers to blow grass clippings into the street for the municipality to clean up? When did it become okay to take your child out of school anytime you wish to take a vacation? When did it become okay for the owner of a RV lot to have it look like a junk yard and then when he does not like what the governing body (City Council) tells him about how he has to make it look like he decides to run for office along with his sister-in-law. Do they not realize that they will have to recuse themselves if a decision comes up concerning their own property? Clean up your RV lot, take down your banner and put up a real sign. Have you ever heard the saying, “Play by the rules or go home”? Guess not. What is happening to our beleaguered country? I despair for any prospects of peace and social justice when I see so many right-wingers sending their children to fundamental religious schools — institutions that deny sound science (everything from evolution to global warming) and promote a narrow, self-righteous view of the world. Social Darwinism with its theories of entitlement for the “fittest” (translation: mentally and morally superior) is more dangerous than any socialist agenda that these parents might imagine is threatening our future. These are the same Neanderthals who will keep their kids home from school rather than have them be exposed to our President’s TV address regarding the value of education. (It was fine when G.H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan made similar speeches in the recent past. What is different now? Could there be a racist element in this vitriol?) These are the same “patriots” who rant and rave at tea parties, protesting the rising taxation we must all now bear due to eight years of G.W. Bush’s inept leadership, his disastrous war, and a decade of personal greed and corporate capitalism run amok. These are the same rabble-rousers who will sabotage our desperately needed healthcare reform. They have no understanding of the problems, let alone the solutions. But then it is not solutions they are after. They simply want to shout down reasonable dialogue and preserve the status quo, i.e., their own privileged position in this sick society. Where is the cure for this paranoia, the likes of which we have not seen since the good old McCarthy era? Take a tranquilizer and stop watching Fox News — that’s my first suggestion to the radical right-wingers. Sign up for some courses in world history, comparative religions, and philosophy. Do something to start stretching your narrow world view. You are threatening our very survival as a nation. To the freaked-out protesters of a public option to the private healthcare insurance system: You might want to do a little reading. Start with the history of our Post Office, for example. Read the scare tactics that were employed by private express companies prior to 1913 when domestic parcel post service was finally ushered in. (Socialism! Disastrous to private enterprise! The end of democracy as we know it!) The result, of course, was quite the opposite. Government parcel post service was a boon to business and individuals across the land. History does have a way of repeating itself . Don Haddix (aka Mr. Flintstone): I read your very long article indicating your reasons for running for mayor. Right around paragraph 7 or 8, you suggested, quite directly, that you were more qualified than Cyndi Plunkett because she was a working mother, and wouldn’t have time to do the job of mayor, even though she indicated she would quit that job (as a lawyer) should she be elected. Are you crazy? Do you not get it? You’ve just alienated 50 percent of the constituency by suggesting that women cannot perform adequately if they are also mothers. We can work harder, smarter, faster and more efficiently than many. We are in tune with our families, our community and our workplaces. Please return to your spaceship immediately and transport back to Bedrock where you belong. When is the county going to wake up at the corruption going on at Whitewater High School? Two teachers arrested in a prostitution sting. Previously, a teacher was arrested for inappropriate contact (via texting) with a student, an assistant principal arrested for DUI on a golf cart, and a coach accused of housing out of county students in order to play football. What’s going on, Mr. Stillions? Maybe you should pay more attention to the quality of staff you have at your school rather than on your complete focus on your football team’s record. I am a junior at Fayette County High School, and as anyone with a student in Fayette County schools will know, I have many friends at other schools, specifically Whitewater High. I’m well aware of the story concerning the two teachers being arrested, and the controversy surrounding it. I’ve heard nothing but praise for these people, and what genuine, caring teachers they seem to be. Many have expressed that these two should be returned to their jobs and allowed to continue inspiring our young adults through music, but the fact is that they made a decision that has tarnished their reputations. As students, our lives have been filled with teachers telling us to be responsible for our actions and accept the consequences. For example; a student writes a note in class, gets caught, and has a detention. The student acted, and now must face the consequences. The student may earn straight A’s, be a tutor, be president of the French club, and have already earned all of their Beta Club hours, but that does not affect the fact that they must serve this detention. I do not personally know these teachers, but I respect their willingness to cooperate with the law. The law is a strict teacher. The radio pundits, the tea partiers, the grand old partiers and everyday citizens in Fayette County have collectively decided not to accept our duly elected president simply because he is a black man. It is obvious that the “Don’t tread on Me-ers,” the protesters who cry, “Too much government, too many liberal policies, don’t talk to my children in school,” are driven by the same mean sentiments about our president. Namely that he is “too black” to govern them, too black to respect, (ergo, he is always referred as Obama, never President Obama and idiots in Congress insult him from the floor of the house), too black to be commander in chief of the military, too black to be a real American citizen, too black to know how to lead this country. So small-minded people turn to radio heads for their direction and leadership. The world is watching and planning and plotting — what next in the U.S., a coup? Will you people just continue to refuse to accept this leader and secede? Will South Carolina and Georgia lead the way? Will anarchy become the new rule of the land? Get over it! The Honorable Barack Obama is the President of the United States and as such deserves your respect and loyalty. Admit it, he has not done anything to cause you not to respect him, except be born black. It is no wonder that many of our youth today have no respect for authority. Their parents and political leaders have no respect for authority. The action taken by schools concerning the president of the United States talking to youth about education was frightening. The action of the Republicans while the president was talking was embarrassing. Your prejudice is showing loud and clear. Your actions scream, “No black man will tell my children what to do.” How sad for most of you wear that Christianity on your sleeves. You wouldn’t miss church on Sunday and certainly not on Wednesday. You are christians. Not in my book. I am a white female and it appears we are back in the ‘60s here in Fayette County. God help you; you certainly need it. Where can I find one of those brown shirts everybody is talking about? It seems that the whining liberals have bought them all up to wear to their pity parties. They must be OIC — Obama Issued Clothing. I was very surprised that there was no mention in the paper last week about the president’s speech to students. No matter what your thoughts, it seemed newsworthy. But I must say that I was completely amazed at Sarah Harp Elementary School’s handling of it. This school informs you every time someone sneezes. There is a highly stressed parent-school connection. They give you every opportunity to inspect all the year’s curriculum and you have to sign a permission slip for everything. Yet at a time when all news outlets are covering the controversy surrounding the speech and 20 percent of U.S. school districts chose not to show the address at all while a majority offered a permission slip and alternate activity, SHES chose for the viewing to be mandatory. It was reported that Fayette County schools were sending home a permission slip. That didn’t happen at my children’s schools. This is a highly conservative state, voting district, and community with massive Tea Party activities, and everything considered, you would think that FCBOE would recognize that some may wish their students to be opted out as many others aacrossthe nation had. When money becomes worthless and jobs become thin,/ Some will still have their desire to win./Ten years will pass like a leaf in the wind./Intelligence and hard work will be your friend./The have-its now will have it again./The have-nots now will not have it then. To the residents of Shawville Lane off Braelinn Road in Peachtree City: As those of you who live on the side that abuts the cart path already know, there is NO dumping of yard waste into the greenspace across the cart path along the creek there. Seems that you just feel, also, that you have every right to do it. So, like good little boys, you can pack up your lawn mower clippings and compost them or take that big trip to the recycling center, just like the rest of us do, along with the rest of the debris you throw there in broad daylight and under cover of darkness. Your laziness is not going to be tolerated anymore. My mother is getting a 21 percent increase in the cost of her property taxes this year. Her home is valued at just below $150,000. I know the governor had to do away with the homeowner tax relief grant. But, for an 82-year-old woman, this is a devastating financial burden. Georgia will soon lose its appeal to senior property owners, who create so little tax burden on state and local services. Costs need to be reined in everywhere. If Starr’s Mill football parents would just shut up and let the coaches coach, they might be happy with their season’s outcome. Don’t you think a coach is a coach because he knows what he is doing and you don’t? Give them the free rein they deserve and just see what happens. Stop whining about every little thing that does not go your kid’s way. They won their first game didn’t they? I live in Starr’s Mill district and hear it all, and I don’t work at The Mill. I am a teacher at one of Fayette’s high schools and kids are used to clean the cafeteria at a lot of schools, not just RSMS. It is what it is; most of them have detention for screwing up and this may be a punishment. Or they are limited special needs kids who have a “job.” But most important, it is because there is no money to hire the people who will clean up after the kids who make a huge mess. If you think cleaning the cafeteria is bad, wait until they decide to use the kids to clean the bathrooms that are so filthy the kids won’t even use them. I have used the restroom in many schools around this county and I can say that almost all except elementary schools are filthy. The health department would not even approve them. I agree with the senior/senior parent from SMHS. Apparently this is not only a SMHS rule but a FCBOE rule. It is absurd that the school system is now telling the seniors where they have to get their senior pictures made. As expensive as it is to get pictures made, it certainly should be the choice of each individual as to who takes the pictures. I understand that a picture will be taken for free for the yearbook. However, it is a default picture (not one chosen by the student or parent). Senior portraits should be unique, not “cookie cutter” like the rest of the yearbook pictures. If that is the way SMHS and FCBOE wants it to be, they should have their “picture taker” (they are not professional photographers) come to the schools and take the pictures just like they do for all of the other classes. We plan to stand firm just as the other family has chosen to do. Too bad SMHS is willing to have a yearbook with only a partial senior class represented. POW/MIA Recognition Day is this Friday, Sept. 18, designated as a national day to observe and remember the plight of servicemen and women still considered as missing in action or held as a prisoner of war from our recent conflicts. The unique black and white POW/MIA Flag is required by Congress to be flown at federal installations on six specific days each year: Armed Forces Day, Memorial Day, Flag Day, Independence Day, Veterans Day and POW/MIA Recognition Day. Here in Fayette County, you should see the flag flying at all our post offices and the National Weather Service Office at Falcon Field. The flag also currently flies year round at The American Legion Post 105 Log Cabin, Alan Vigil Ford, the Holiday-Dorsey-Fife House and the Peachtree City Flag Court at City Hall. The search for our missing continues to this day and paid off with the recent recovery of Navy pilot, Lt. Michael Scott Speicher, shot down 18 years ago and missing in action since the first Gulf War. The search continues. We must not forget. So our government has decided we senior citizens do not need a cost of living increase in our meager Social Security because the cost of products have gone down? Will someone please give me an example of a product that has gone down in price? I see a rise in prices almost daily in every commodity necessary to sustain life, especially food. The overpaid bureaucrats, who have never worked for a weekly paycheck in their lives, that make these decisions are out of touch with reality. While they dine on steak and lobster every day, we seniors who worked 40 or more years are lucky to have beans and taters and now they want us to cut out the taters so they will have more of our hard-earned money to dole out to illegal immigrants. Torture: Do you favor “waterboarding”? Tell ya what: You volunteer to be waterboarded, and I’ll volunteer to be water boy, carrying five-gallon buckets of water. How would you feel if one of our own military personnel were captured, and then waterboarded? The only torture I would favor would be to put the prisoner in a room with Cheney, and have Cheney dressed in full hunting attire. Or, let the prisoner run through the woods, with Sarah Palen flying over in a helicopter. login to post comments
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