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The Champion, Thursday, May 14 - 20, 2015
OPINION
Page 5A
I hear a lot of complaints
about DeKalb County. Peo
ple complain about potholes
and roads that need repav
ing. They complain about
corruption in the govern
ment. They say the county
needs to do a better job at
tracting jobs. Others say the
police don’t respond to calls
in a timely fashion. Some
believe the county needs to
be cleaner.
Sometimes we need to
put things in perspective.
Recently I spent several days
in the greater St. Louis area-
my daughter is on a robotics
team that competed in the
world championships there.
Whenever my family
travels to another city, we
enjoy seeing how the natives
live; we don’t just stick to the
touristy areas. In St. Louis
this was easily accomplished
since our hotel was 14 miles
from the Edward Jones
Dome at America’s Center
Our complaints help
Andrew Couthen
andrew@dekalbchamp.com
Managing Editor
@AndrewChampNews
where the robotics competi
tion was held.
We traveled through
several cities in the St. Louis
region, some with popula
tions less than 1,000.1 later
learned that St. Louis Coun
ty has 90 municipalities and
the city of St. Louis is not in
the county; it is an indepen
dent city, completely sepa
rate from the county. Al
though we are dealing with
a frenzy of incorporation
efforts, DeKalb probably will
never have 90 cities-15 to 20
maybe, but not 90.
In St. Louis-the county
and the city-the roads
are terrible. In areas, cars
bounce along pothole-rid
den roads. Our worst roads
are pleasant compared to
many of the roads there.
The most significant
different between St. Louis
County and DeKalb County
that I noticed was the urban
blight. Sure, most of DeKalb
County was officially la
beled a slum by our Board of
Commissioners in a urban
redevelopment plan. But
my trip to St. Louis opened
my eyes to real slums. I
can’t count the abandoned
business, industrial and
residential buildings I saw.
In one village, nearly the
whole Main Street area was
abandoned. In another city,
an abandoned apartment
building with missing win
dows had signs of homeless
people staying there.
And we went to Fer
guson. It’s just a small, un
assuming town where all
Hell broke loose in August
2014 after a Ferguson Po
lice officer fatally shot an
unarmed Black man. Riot
ing and vandalism ensued
and nine months later, the
signs of chaos are still there.
A makeshift memorial to
Michael Brown, the man
killed by the officer, remains
outside his apartment com
plex. A partially burned
Advance Auto Parts store
remains abandoned and
surrounded by a temporary
chain link fence. A nearby
TitleMax store was burned
to the ground and has relo
cated.
Another boarded-up,
burned store bears this graf
fiti epitaph: “Real people de
stroyed what is not theirs to
destroy, causing real people
to lose business and jobs.”
In DeKalb there have
been a couple of police-in
volved shootings scrutinized
by the public. But residents
protested peacefully and le
gally, not with rocks, match
es and guns.
Yes, we complain in
DeKalb County, not because
things are as bad as they are
in St. Louis and some other
communities around the na
tion, but because things are
not as we want them to be.
We have higher standards
and bigger dreams than
some communities, and our
proactive complaints and
healthy dissatisfaction help
us to continue to improve
our lot in life.
Complaints and all,
I was glad to be back in
DeKalb County after my St.
Louis visit.
ONE MAN'S OPINION
Hillary’s hill of beans
“I think if we were to just
go around this room, there
are a lot of immigrant stories.
All my grandparents, you
know, came over here, and
you know my grandfather
went to work in a lace mill in
Scranton, Penn., and worked
there until he retired at 65.
He started there when he was
a teenager and just kept go
ing. So I sit here and I think,
well, you’re talking about
the second, third genera
tion. That’s me, that’s you,”
said Presidential candidate
Hillary Rodham Clinton
during a recently videotaped
business roundtable in Iowa,
discussing the plight of un
documented immigrants
trying to work legally in the
United States.
I am admittedly no great
fan of former U.S. Secretary
of State and Sen. Hillary
Clinton. I do believe that the
United States has long been
ready for a woman to hold
the position of president or
vice president. And person
ally, I don’t see favoring one
of these positions and op
posing the other as being in
conflict. I will leave that call
to our readers.
Politicians, candidates
and even some journalists
will occasionally bend a fact,
or stretch the truth to the
bill.csicrane@gmail.com
Columnist
point of breaking to make a
strong point or better tell a
story. Ask Brian Williams.
That said, in this Internet
age, it runs not only counter
to conventional wisdom, but
it simply does not compute
to begin new and easily
disavowed outright lies to
win a political point or en
gender support from a new
demographic group. I will
leave alone migrating policy
perspectives, as one man’s
flip flop is another’s wisdom
developed from an evolving
perspective.
But some facts, such as
one’s date of birth, schools
or degrees held are easily
verifiable and simply not
smart to attempt to alter his
tory about.
This brings me to a re
cent informal chat by can
didate Clinton with a small
group of Iowa farmers and
businessmen, while on the
campaign trail talking with
“real Americans.” Clinton is
making family and the mid
dle class the centerpieces of
her campaign, which causes
one to believe that she might
consider brushing up on her
own family history.
Clinton’s father was con
sidered a Taft Republican,
and later a staunch support
er of Barry Goldwater. Her
paternal grandfather was of
English descent and a long
time textile worker, and her
paternal grandmother was
born in Scranton, Penn, of
Welsh descent from a fam
ily of coal miners. Clinton’s
father followed his father’s
experience with lace into
a custom drapery busi
ness. Despite all that, Hill
ary Clinton’s memories of
what and whom may be a
bit cloudy, but they are not
so easily swept behind a
curtain. A review of records
on Ancestry.com and other
public documents quickly
demonstrates the true lin
eage of her family tree, un
less, of course, it might be
more politically expedient to
say otherwise.
Seven of eight of Mrs.
Clinton’s great-grandparents
(three generations back),
were born overseas into
working-class families. But
only her paternal grandfa
ther, Hugh Rodham Sr., was
born in England and her
other three grandparents are
all native-born Americans. It
is, of course, possible that
Clinton occasionally confus
es generations in her family,
in much the same way she
confused being fired upon
by Bosnian snipers at an
earlier stage during her 2008
campaign for the White
House, which focused more
on her competency and
experience, being ready for
the job on day one. Unfortu
nately for then Sen. Clinton,
there were video cameras
present in Bosnia to capture
the actually peaceful land
ing and welcome of the First
Lady of the United States.
U.S. Senator Marco
Rubio (R-FL) and another
presidential aspirant, experi
enced considerable political
fire in his home state and
elsewhere for referring to
his parents, on more than
one occasion, as Cuban
exiles. Though both of his
parents are natives of Cuba,
and both came to America
as immigrants; the term
“Cuban exile” is generally re
served for those forced from
the island or who fled in
the immediate aftermath of
the fall of Cuban President
Fulgencio Batista in Janu
ary 1959, followed by the
takeover of Cuba’s govern
ment by Fidel Castro. Ru
bio’s parents left three years
earlier, in 1956, during the
revolution, but before the
government fell. And yet,
some label Rubio as a liar as
a result.
The supposedly nonbi-
ased and nonpartisan folks
at Politifact.com are now
labeling Clinton’s com
ments about all eight of her
great-grandparents as im
migrants as false. Though
this doesn’t rise to the level
of the Birthers’ ongoing con
test to find Barack Obama’s
birth certificate, I’m going to
have to give Hillary the even
higher liar rating of “pant
suit on fire.”
Bill Crane also serves
as a political analyst and
commentator for Channel
2’s Action News, WSB-AM
News/Talk 750 and now 95.5
FM, as well as a columnist
for The Champion, Cham
pion Free Press and Georgia
Trend. Crane is a DeKalb
native and business owner,
living in Scottdale. You can
reach him or comment on
a column at bill.csicrane@
gmail.com.