I was amazed at how many people were shocked to discover Fayette County Commission Chairman Jack Smith was on the board of directors for the Bank of Georgia (owned by Georgia Bancshares, Inc.).

Not long ago, headed down Interstate 20, somewhere near Augusta, Ga., I saw a sight, not particularly unusual but thought-provoking, nonetheless. One detail caught my attention.

By Elizabeth Lee Vliet, M.D.

I am dismayed that recent town halls across the country have been curtailed or canceled as spineless legislators refuse to face their constituents to hear average American citizens voice their fears and worries about what may be happening to their healthcare under the current “reform” proposals from Washington.

Last month when I was flying home from another state, my flight was canceled. The cause, I was told, was the weather. There were no other flights out that day so I had to retrieve my car from the rental agency and find a place to stay for the night. Since I had an appointment I really needed to keep the next day, I reported to the airport at 0430 (4:30 a.m., half an hour before the Marines wake up at Parris Island) in order to catch the first flight of the day.

You can’t make this stuff up. First, the name of the program — Cash for Clunkers. Then the origin, the fountainhead — to wit, the U.S. Congress. Then the results: unexpected demand for participation, unanticipated shortages of cash, bureaucratic unresponsiveness, public and congressional consternation.

The knowledge kids gained while in school last year has slowly ebbed away. The three “R’s” of reading, writing, and arithmetic were replaced by the three “S’s” — swimming, swinging, and bikes.

“Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom.” We have heard that many times. What is also the price of freedom is the toleration of imperfections. If everything that is wrong with the world becomes a reason to turn more power over to some political savior, then freedom is going to erode away, while we are mindlessly repeating the catchwords of the hour, whether “change,” “universal health care” or “social justice.”

“No one has a right to harm another.” Just a little thought, along with a few examples, would demonstrate that blanket statement as pure nonsense.

“There is nothing inevitable about another depression. We have a simple choice: We can repeat the errors of the past or we can avoid them.”

It’s time to face the truth. Our local community falls short on caring for our elders.

Some of our senior citizens, widows and those on fixed incomes, are the casualties of local government policies and apathy.

Georgia’s Democratic Party is asking Georgians to sign its petition asking the state’s two senators to “support President Obama’s healthcare reform proposals, even if it means standing up to Republican leaders like Rush Limbaugh and Dick Cheney.” Pray it ain’t so.

By Sheldon Richman

It’s easy to get distracted by the details and crushing cost estimates of “healthcare reform” while losing sight of the key question: Can a handful of congressmen, most of whom probably have never even run a small business, design an entire market for medical services and insurance?

Not that I know everything. Not that I even know many things.

But I do know a few things.

And one of the most important things I have come to know in life is the necessity of controlling my thoughts so that destructive thoughts don’t control me. Having discovered a tried-and-true method for doing so, I decided to share it with a couple of friends who were obviously in need of my advice.

By Jarrett Skorup

[Editor’s note: This article first appeared through the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a research and educational institute headquartered in Midland, Mich.]

By DAVID RAYNOR

In 1912, aiming for speed and ignoring iceberg warnings was a poor strategy for the Titanic. In 2009, aiming for universal health insurance and ignoring cost warnings is equally dangerous.

A young man went into a drugstore and bought three boxes of chocolate: small, medium and large. When the pharmacist asked him about the three boxes, he said, “Well, I’m going over to a new girlfriend’s house for supper. Then we’re going out. If she only lets me hold her hand, then I’ll give her the small box. If she lets me kiss her on the cheek, then I’ll give her the medium box. But if she lets me do some serious smooching, then I’ll give her the big box.

Once in a great while, I get the sense that time is running out. For example, on Sunday and Monday of this week, I was in three churches in three cities in Georgia and Tennessee ministering, teaching, answering questions, visiting, serving Holy Communion, and, of course, traveling.

President Obama’s rhetoric last week summoned the memory of “1984,” George Orwell’s novel of a nightmarish future — where the slogan of the rulers is “War is peace; freedom is slavery; ignorance is strength.”

According to a recent poll by Political Strategies Inc./Politico, only a quarter of Americans “trust” Nancy Pelosi.

This one is for all you teachers and administrators out there who can’t write this article, but wish that you could. Our beloved governor, Sonny Perdue, in all of his infinite wisdom has suddenly discovered that there’s a budget shortfall in our state. Like every household in Georgia, our coffers are now empty. It seems Georgia is projected to be over $900 million short, and something drastic must be done.

After many a disappointment with someone, and especially after a disaster, we may be able to look back at numerous clues that should have warned us that the person we trusted did not deserve our trust.

The Honorable George “Sonny” Perdue III is closing in on the end of his term-limited tenure as governor, elected in 2002, being the first Republican to hold the office since 1868.

I well remember the many street corners in Phoenix and Tucson in the 1980s and 1990s, where thousands of homeless people and others from the Boston-to-Chicago megalopolis were given one-way tickets as part of the social agenda of “Greyhound therapy.”

Never have I been interested in estate sales or bothered to attend one. But the two-day sale of Miss Henrietta’s life caught my attention when, by chance, I happened to see it in the newspaper classifieds.

By Sheldon Richman

Barack Obama insists he does not want the government to run the medical system. He insists that he wants only to fix what’s broken while leaving what works intact.

About 300 BC, there was a Greek philosopher who posed this question: “Either God wants to abolish evil, and cannot; or he can, but does not want to. If he wants to, but cannot, he is impotent. If he can, but does not want to, he is wicked. If God can abolish evil, and God really wants to do it, why is there evil in the world?”

A few years ago, I was attending a doctoral class in Pennsylvania. One of the students was a Canadian serving as the pastor of a church in the United States.

Not that the secular world walks the floor at night worrying over the Episcopal Church and its waning influence over the minds of all decent and honorable Americans. The secular world lost this decent and honorable habit years ago and likely won’t get it back, especially with Episcopalians themselves acting more and more like members of a secular pressure group.

For parents across this county your house is peaceful until noon. The sometimes argumentative, always opinionated, eating machines commonly referred too as teenagers are still asleep. If you try to wake them, you can’t. Even the noise from vacuuming their room wouldn’t rouse them.

“How high’s the water, mama?

Two feet high and risin’...”

That old Johnny Cash song is a useful metaphor for an approaching disaster should the Obama administration’s “flood” of new programs — and spending on old ones — continue.