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BARROW JOURNAL
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2008
Opinions
“Private opinion is weak, but public opinion is almost omnipotent. ”
- Henry Ward Beecher -
Chris Bridges, editor • Email: cbridges@barrowjournal.com
our views
Judge slams
lawyers’
‘misconduct’
I T’S NOT often that you read the
words “defraud” and “misconduct”
in a judge’s order referring to the
actions of a lawyer.
But those are some of the very strong
words used by Piedmont Superior Court
Judge David Motes when he recently dis
missed a case filed by developers against
the Town of Braselton.
The case was in Barrow County
Superior Court because the Hwy. 211
property at the center of the lawsuit lies
in Barrow along the county’s gateway
to 1-85. It’s known as “Century Center
at Braselton” and involves some high-
profile land annexed several years ago
into the city limits of the town.
Therein lies the basis of this litigation.
The developers, Dick and Chris Gray
had an ongoing dispute with the city over
some of the town’s development rules
along Hwy. 211. After months of back-
and-forth negotiations, Century Center
eventually filed suit against the city in
early 2007 after the town refused to give
the project variances on several city-
required items.
In the lawsuit, Century Center claimed
its property had been annexed into
Braselton improperly. In addition to
other points, that argument was clearly
designed to move the property back
under the control of Barrow County zon
ing rather than the Town of Braselton’s
more strict overlay district. The suit
included a survey map purporting to
show a gap between the city and the
annexed property.
That’s where the real problems appar
ently began. At a hearing in April 2007,
lawyers for Century Center “knowingly
and willfully present(ed) an inaccurate
and false survey to the Court in an effort
to defraud the Court...” according to
Judge Mote’s ruling in July this year. In
addition, the judge said the lawyers used
“sleight of hand” in witness testimony to
mislead the court.
In the end, the judge ordered the devel
oper’s lawyers to pay Braselton’s attor
ney fees. They didn’t meet a payment
deadline so last month, Motes dismissed
the developer’s case against the city.
There are always lawsuits between
developers and local governments. Such
disputes are part of the system. But the
tough language in this order is highly
unusual and reflects poorly on the law
yers involved.
Whatever the original merits of the dis
agreement between the developer and
Braselton, the end result is a smarmy
mess that only reinforces the stereotypes
that lawyers are ruthless and unethical
and that developers will do just about
anything to get their way in zoning dis
putes.
Is it any wonder that citizens develop
an anti-business attitude when they see
such attempts to game the system?
The Barrow Journal
Winder, Barrow County, Ga.
www.BarrowJoumal.com
Mike Buffington Co-Publisher
Scott Buffington Co-Publisher
Chris Bridges Editor
Susan Norman Reporter & Web Editor
Susan Treadwell Advertising Manager
Susan Mobley Office Manager
Jeremy Ginn Marketing Manager
Jessica Brown Photographer
The Barrow Journal
77 East May Street
Winder, Georgia 30680
Web Site: www.BarrowJournal.com
Email: news@barrowjournal.com
Phone: 770-867-NEWS (6397)
Fax: 678-425-1435
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Out of county Senior Citizens Deduct $2
YO, BARACK,' HAVE
YOU GIVEN ANY THOUGHT
10 WHOM YOU'LL PICK FOR
SENIOR INTERN
CQORPINATDR?
Admires others’ faith during hard times
I’VE BEEN in an angry, sad, worried funk for
months now.
My husband’s out of work
after 25 years of good, gainful
employment in the homebuild-
ing industry.
For months, he’s been throw
ing his resume out there and
“working his network,” so far
to no avail. Companies he’s
worked with for years are scal
ing way back, or closing their
doors. His prospects are grim...
our money is running out.
But, not to worry! The econ
omy’s in the crapper, as well,
and predictions of recovery have us months out, as if
anyone knows what’s going to happen anyway....
After years of being firmly entrenched in the mid
dle-class, our little world is melting away around us
and I’m more than a little scared about how it will all
turn out...This kind of situation — and thinking — can
really suck you in, and bring you down....
That is why I am grateful one of my jobs is being an
emergency room social worker a couple of days each
week. If you ever want a reality check, just spend
some time in a busy ER. That’ll put your personal
problems into perspective.
One of my duties is to gather the family when a
patient is dying and to be with them as the process
unfolds. Serious, daunting, humbling work, this. No
matter how many times I am with a family through
this, it amazes me how sad, and real, and life-altering
each death is for every family.
The other day, a very elderly man came in, having
collapsed, after a few days of a “real bad headache.”
His family found him down when they returned from
taking his wife to a doctor’s appointment.
“He was alright when we left,” his son said. “He
had a headache, but he’d had that for a few days.”
“When I found him, I shook him and asked if he
was alright,” the son said. “’I recken,’ daddy said...
Turns out those were his last words.”
The man was very old and pretty sick and had a lot
of medical problems. Yet, his death — as all deaths —
came as a terrible shock to his family.
They gathered, cried and prayed and laughed and
remembered him at his best, strongest, and most
stubborn.
They stood gathered around his bedside, talking to
him, stroking his forehead, patting his chest, watch
ing him slowly fade away...
The hardest part of being with a family through
this is watching the wife-now-widow sit next to the
bedside, holding her husband’s hand, wondering,
how, after all these years, to let that hand go and tell
him, “Good bye?”
These elderly widows are proud and strong. They
hold their heads high and dab the tears from the
corners of their eyes with dignity and poise. They sit,
not seeming to hear what their children are saying
around them, studying the face of the man they’ve
shared some 50-60-70 years with.
They know he’s gone, but, they don’t believe it.
They realize life from here on out will be very differ
ent...
Many of these families don’t look like they have
much. Their clothes and their faces tell stories of
hard work and long hours for a lot of years.
Many of them don’t believe much in doctors, or
medicines, or anything except a good hard day’s
work with some time spent with the family at the end
of it. Their families seem close. Their faith seems
strong. Somehow, you get the sense that faith and the
closeness of their family will see them through.
I admire their faith and closeness even as I cling to
my own. I try, once again, to turn my worried, rattled
thoughts to, as the Bible says, “...things (that) are
true... honest... just... pure... lovely... (and) of good
report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any
praise, think on these things.”
It beats listening to those bleak economic forecasts,
anyway.
Lorin Sinn-Clark is a columnist for the Barrow
Journal. She can be reached at lorin@barrowjour-
nal.com.
Law of unintended consequences strikes again
THERE IS a longstanding tradition in Georgia that
the political party controlling state government will
try to give itself an advantage over the opposition by
fiddling with the election laws.
Every time a party messes
with the election code, how
ever, the law of unintended
consequences always seems
to backfire on them. The lat
est victim was the Republican
Party and Sen. Saxby
Chambliss, who now has to
worry about losing a Dec. 2
runoff election to Democratic
challenger Jim Martin.
This whole mess start
ed decades ago when the
Democrats were in power and
enacted a law that required a
candidate to get at least 50
percent of the vote to win an election. If the first-place
finisher had less than 50 percent, a runoff election
was required.
The 50 percent mle was intended to prevent black
candidates from winning primary elections with a
plurality of the votes. The thinking was that if you
could force a black candidate into a runoff, white vot
ers would team up to defeat him.
That worked fine for the Democrats until 1992,
when U.S. Sen. Wyche Fowler was mnning for
reelection against Republican Paul Coverdell. Fowler
finished first in the general election but the presence
of a Libertarian candidate in the race held him just
below 50 percent of the vote. That required a run
off election in which Coverdell narrowly defeated
Fowler to win the Senate seat.
Democrats decided they would fix that problem by
changing the law so that a runoff was not required if
the first-place finisher received at least 45 percent of
the votes. That change allowed Republican Linda
Schrenko to win reelection as state school super
intendent in 1998 even though she received just 49
percent of the vote. This turned out to be a disaster
for Georgia’s public schools not because Schrenko
was a Republican but because she was a crook.
Schrenko was subsequently indicted and is now
serving a prison sentence for stealing federal educa
tion funds and converting them to her own personal
use. We might have been spared that embarrassment
if the Democrats hadn’t tinkered with the election
laws.
When Republicans gained control of the governor’s
office and the Legislature several years ago, one of
their first initiatives was - you guessed it - to try to rig
the election laws in their favor, just as Democrats had
done for years.
They promptly moved the election requirement
back to 50 percent of the votes. They also adopted
a law requiring voters to show government-issued
photo identification on election day and they greatly
expanded early voting by allowing citizens to cast
a no-excuses absentee ballot up to 45 days prior
to election day. The belief was that these changes
would benefit Republican candidates in future elec
tion cycles.
Once again, the law of unintended consequences
reared its head in this year’s general election.
African Americans who wanted to vote for Barack
Obama lined up in record numbers during the early
voting period in Georgia - they accounted for nearly
700,000 of the two million ballots cast prior to elec
tion day.
The 50 percent requirement also trapped Chambliss,
one of the most prominent Republican officials in the
state.
Chambliss finished 109,000 votes ahead of Martin
and garnered 49.8 percent of the vote. In almost
every other state, that would have sent him back to
Washington for another six-year term. In Georgia, it
forced him into a high-risk mnoff election on Dec. 2.
If you go by past voting patterns, Chambliss would
ordinarily be the favorite to win that election because
there is usually a heavier dropoff in voting by blacks
than by whites in runoffs. But this has been one of
those election years where the conventional wisdom,
in many ways, has been overturned. If Martin goes
against the conventional wisdom and wins the runoff,
Republicans will have lost one of their most presti
gious political posts in Georgia.
It’s simply another illustration of why legislators
should not tamper with election laws to try to obtain
a temporary political advantage.
Evidently, it’s a lesson that has yet to hit home here
in the Peach State. Republican legislators are already
talking about changing the election laws yet again to
cut down on the early voting period, if not eliminate
it entirely, and to drop that 50 percent requirement
back to 45 percent.
When will they ever learn?
Tom Crawford is the editor of Capitol Impact's
Georgia Report. He can be reached at tcrawford@
caDitolimDact.net.
It’s never too
early to think
about 2012
S arah Palin. Newt
Gingrich. Haley Barbour.
Mike Huckabee. Bobby
Jindal. John Thune. Tim Pawlenty.
Charlie
Crist.
What do
the people
in this list
of names
have in
common?
Each one
has already
been men
tioned as
a potential
candidate
for the Republican nomina
tion for president in 2012.
While some of you have
just dropped your newspaper
on the floor after reading that
statement, believe it or not
presidential politics, and more
specifically presidential cam
paigning, never really ends.
As soon as the Barack Obama
was declared the winner at 11
p.m. Eastern time on Nov. 4,
potential Republican candidates
began jockeying for position
for the next go around in 2012.
While 2012 certainly seems a
long way in the future, it’s really
not when you consider how
much time goes into a seri
ous run at the White House.
Today, even statewide can
didates who mount serious
efforts at office declare up to
two years in advance. Already
in our state, candidates are on
the trail for the 2010 elections
where we have a full slate of
statewide offices up for grabs.
On the national front, Iowa
is already receiving attention
as news stories have described
how interested candidates are
already making visits to the state
or in the process of doing so
soon. Yes, it seems early and
our newly elected president
has yet to be sworn it, but this
is how it works in politics.
Some of the names in the list
at the beginning of this column
you no doubt have heard of.
Some you have not although
you may be hearing more about
them in coming months and
years. Republicans are still lick
ing their wounds from taking
a rather one-sided defeat in
the presidential race this year
and are still debating just how
Obama and the Democrats got
the best of them nationally.
(Even in Georgia, one of
the reddest of the red states,
McCain only defeated Obama
by a 52-47 percent margin.
Incumbent Senator Saxby
Chambliss is fighting for his
political life in a runoff with Jim
Martin, something many didn’t
think possible at one time.)
No doubt those who are
road weary of the nightly talk of
presidential politics will scoff at
the notion that the 2012 race is
already underway I remember
several years ago CSPAN (one of
my favorite networks) was criti
cized for beginning their “Road
to the White House” Series only
a few months after the previous
election had ended. Personally, I
was all for it. Political junkies like
myself can never get enough.
So splash some water on your
face, drink some coffee and get
ready to go again because the
countdown to the 2012 presi
dential election is on. I realize
not many people are paying
attention right now, but the die-
hards like myself will be glad to
keep track and help keep you
in the loop until you decide to
start paying closer attention.
For me, it’s a big part of what
makes this country great.
chris
bridges
Chris Bridges is editor of
the Barrow Journal. He can
be reached at cbridges@
barrowjournal. com.