Newspaper Page Text
4A
SATURDAY, AUGUST 11, 2007
OPINION
Daniel F. Evans
President
Editor and Publisher
Julie B. Evans Foy S. Evans
Vice President Editor Emeritus
Group Marketing
Don Moncrief
Managing Editor
Letters to the Editor
County needs other means
The Houston County Commission wishes to proclaim its
fiscal frugality by stating the latest millage rate increase
is only a slight, marginal increase and is up only 1.39
percent from last year's rate of 9.32 mills to 9.45 mills.
There is a saying to the point that you can make num
bers say anything. That being the case let me pose a
question and then provide numbers that give a differ
ent take on the Commission's slight, marginal increase.
How many families in Houston County received
Cost Of Living Allowances that average five per
cent each year over the past five years? Well, how
about six or seven percent? I strongly suspect there
were either none or less than a handful that did.
Commission Chairman Ned Sanders points out that
the Houston County Tax Digest has grown 59 per
cent in the past five years. That means that all other
things being equal property tax revenue to the county
increased 59 percent. Other revenues to the county
would have increased and would include taxes on auto
mobiles registered in the county and franchise fees
(you can see these fees on your cable television bills).
In order to receive a 59 percent return on invest
ment over five years a person would need to
receive an average of just over 9.31 percent com
pounded interest on average each of those five years.
Consider that you, the citizen, are the employer and
the county is your employee. What the previous para
graph is telling you is that you have been a most kind
and generous employer who has provided a 9.31 percent
COLA to your employee each of the past five years.
One would think that the employee would be grate
ful. In this case, the employee is not satisfied. You see
our employee has spent all his income and demands
another pay increase just as he did two years ago
when he insisted on raising millage rates by .18 mills.
While working families in our county have to survive on far
less pay increases than the county has received, the county
simply spends whatever it wishes and if it hasn't enough
of your money to satisfy its needs it simply demands more.
I do understand that costs to government have risen.
Costs to families have also risen with the differ
ence being that income to families has not increased
nearly as much as revenue to the county has risen.
County officials will be quick to point out that with the
increased population has come the need for more roads,
schools and other capital improvements. However, it must
be remembered that the citizens, out of the great good
ness of their hearts, has given the county SPLOST 2001
and SPLOST 2006 to pay for those infrastructure needs.
In my opinion, the county has been more than willing to
spend every tax dollar it can extract from the citizens.
In the final analysis, this County Commission has over
burdened the homeowners of this county enough. It is
time to seek other revenue sources and cut spending by
prioritizing and deferring expenditures just like their
constituents have.
David E. Wittenberg, Kathleen
Accurate Lee source
In a letter to the Houston Daily Journal July 31, Frank
Gadbois wrote that we learn from a recent issue of U.S.
News and World Report the real feelings of Gen. Robert
E. Lee about slavery and the Confederacy. He further
writes that Lee not only believed in slavery but was
capable of treating his own slaves cruelly.
In conducting research over the past several years on
the Confederacy and the War for Southern Independence,
I learn that Lee did not own slaves before the war began.
From this research I quote from only one of the sources:
“Lee was opposed to slavery, he felt that it had an even
more evil effect on the white people than on the Negroes.
Some years before the war he freed, by his will, the few
slaves that had been left to him.”
This quotation is from The World Book Encyclopedia.
Other publications that I’ve read just simply state that
Lee had freed the slaves, which he inherited, several
years before the war.
Now, if Mr. Gadbois wants to believe the U.S. News and
World Report rather than the Encyclopedia that’s his
right. But I have the right to believe my source of infor
mation rather than his.
Norlis C. “Skeet ” Chapman, Perry
New BOE policy wrong
I am writing to you to express my concern with a
new behavioral policy implemented in Houston County
Schools.
At the school open house last week, a policy was
explained to me about a new way that teachers will han
dle problem students at the school. It is my understand
ing that when a child has had two warnings regarding his
or her behavior, the next step is to remove the child from
the classroom. That in itself, I find very appropriate.
However, not only is the student removed, but he/she
is sent to a desk in another teacher’s classroom. That
teacher then must take time from his/her own instruc
tion time to have a discussion with the child about their
behavior and what can be done to correct it.
I strongly disagree with this policy. I see no reason that
time should be taken away from my child’s learning, that
a class should be disrupted, in order to discipline a child
from an entirely different classroom.
I think that this gives unnecessary attention to a child
who is often acting out to receive attention to begin with.
I think that it will only reinforce negative behaviors and
could disrupt an otherwise orderly classroom. I don’t feel
that it is unreasonable to expect my child’s teacher to
spend the school day teaching my child and her fellow
classmates.
I would also like to express my concern about another
Houston County school policy. It seems that there are
pizza and ice cream parties for completing the most
See LETTER, page fA
Dog days bring back
The temperature in my home
has climbed to 74 degrees, four
degrees higher than I normally
keep it. Outside I see men working in
the oppressive heat that rose over 100
degrees with a heat index reading of
115.
How do they do it? How do they sur
vive? They do because they have condi
tioned themselves to the heat by work
ing outside year round. Their tolerance
for the heat brings back memories of
the days before we had air conditioning
and all of us endured and suffered the
blistering heat and Georgia’s uncom
promising humidity.
Suffering the heat was normal. You
don’t miss something until you have it,
and we had no relief from the heat.
I enjoyed air conditioning for the
first time in early 1953. I was 34 years
old. Prior to that I did not know that
air conditioning existed and did not
know better than to believe that suf
fering through Georgia’s hot summers
was just fine. At least, It was normal
and all we knew.
I remember those hot nights when I
sweated so profusely that the bed lin
ens and pillows were soaked. We tried
everything to get relief. Which includ
ed window fans that gave very little
relief, sleeping with windows open and
indulging in an inordinate amount of
cold water.
Air conditioning changed all of our
lives. We became creatures of comfort.
We live from air conditioned space to
another air conditioned space. From an
air conditioned home to an air condi
tioned car to an air conditioned build
ing. The heat hits us like a hammer as
...N©vtoix> (X«TOIENO%M£DOOTN&LE! ASiS?
C 2007 CREATORS SYNDICATE. INC 181 CHUCK.
Going through winter soldier syndrome
The tale of Army Private Scott
Thomas Beauchamp, the discred
ited “Baghdad Diarist” for the
discredited New Republic magazine, is
an old tale: Self-aggrandizing soldier*
recounts war atrocities. Media outlets
disseminate soldier’s tales uncritically.
Military folks smell a rat and poke
holes in tales too good (or rather, bad)
to be true. Soldier’s ideological spon
sors blame the messengers for expos
ing anti-war fraud.
Beauchamp belongs in the same ward
as John F. Kerry, the original infectious
agent of the toxic American disease
known as Winter Soldier Syndrome.
The ward is filling up.
U.S. military investigators concluded
this week that Beauchamp concocted
allegations of troop misconduct in a
series of essays for The New Republic.
“The investigation is complete and the
allegations from PVT Beauchamp are
false,” Maj. Steven Lamb, a spokesman
for Multi National Division-Baghdad,
told USA Today. The New Republic is
standing by Beauchamp’s work. But
Michael Goldfarb, online editor and
blogger at The Weekly Standard who
first challenged Beauchamp’s writing,
reported Monday that Beauchamp had
“signed a sworn statement admitting
that all three articles he published in
the New Republic were exaggerations
and falsehoods - fabrications contain
ing only ‘a smidgen of truth,’ in the
words of our source.”
To illustrate the soul-deaden
ing impact of war, Beauchamp had
described sitting in a mess hall in
Iraq mocking a female civilian con
tractor whose face had “melted” after
an IED explosion. “I love chicks that
have been intimate - with lEDs,” Pvt.
Beauchamp claimed he said out loud
in her earshot. “It really turns me on
- melted skin, missing limbs, plastic
noses.” Beauchamp recounted vividly:
“My friend was practically falling out
of his chair laughing. The disfigured
OPINION
Foy
Evans
Columnist
loyevansl9@cox.net
we dash from air conditioned space to
another and we complain.
Again I look at the workers out there
mowing my lawn and those across the
street working at a building site and
admire their endurance and resistance
to the heat. As I grew up we endured
the same, but I believe that our bodies
accepted the heat more readily because
we never enjoyed the cooling benefit of
air conditioning. Even today’s outdoor
workers seek the comfort of air condi
tioning at night.
We’re well into what we used to call
Dog Days and we can expect only mini
mal relief for several more weeks.
Meanwhile, most of us will enjoy the
comfort of wonderful air conditioning
while others bear up under conditions
that would kill most of us today. It is
expensive but I cool my whole home
24 hours a day for about the same
amount of money that a single meal at
a restaurant costs. Which is the better
bargain?
■ ■■
If you have been suffering under the
delusion that there is only one national
language in our country forget about
it. The next debate among Democratic
OBAMA FOB, SHERIFF
Michelle
woman slammed her cup down and ran
out of the chow hall.”
It wasn’t true. After active-duty
troops, veterans, embedded journalists
and bloggers raised pointed questions
about the veracity of the anecdote,
Beauchamp confessed to The New
Republic’s meticulous fact-checkers
that the mocking had taken place in
Kuwait - before he had set foot in
Iraq to experience the soul-deadening
impact of war.
Military officials in Kuwait tried to
verify the incident and called it an
“urban legend or myth.” Beauchamp’s
essays are filled with similarly spun
tales. How much of a bull-slinger was
Beauchamp, an aspiring creative writ
er who crowed on his personal blog
that he would “return to America an
author” after serving (which he told
friends and family would “add a legiti
macy to EVERYTHING I do after
wards”)? The very first line of his essay
“Shock Troops,” which opened with
the melted-face mockery, was this: “I
saw her nearly every time I went to
dinner in the chow hall at my base in
Iraq.”
“Nearly every time.” At “my base in
Iraq.” Complete and utter bull.
Defenders of The New Republic,
a left-leaning magazine infamously
duped by another young and ambi
tious fabulist, Stephen Glass, say the
Beauchamp saga has been 1) blown out
of proportion; 2) perpetuated by sloppy,
rumor-mongering bloggers; 3) used as
a distraction from the troubles in Iraq;
and 4) exploited by “chickenhawks”
HOUSTON DAILY JOURNAL
memories
presidential hopefuls will be held in
Miami Sept. 10 and 11 and it will be
in Spanish.
■ ■■
Another indication that the America
most of us grew up in is rapidly going
the way of the Model T Ford is news
that there now are some parts of the
country in which whites are the minor
ity and within a few years will be
a minority throughout the country.
Unproductiv6 people who fled other
backward countries for the bounties
offered by the United States soon will
be in charge. Frightening. Isn’t it?
■ ■■
Our weird income tax laws have
made the man who caught Barry
Bond’s record-breaking home run in
San Francisco liable to the Internal
Revenue Service for $200,000 in taxes.
Inconceivable? It should be, but when
he caught the ball, with an estimated
value of $1 million he became liable
for income tax on it. Congress has a
special talent to write lousy laws that
can ruin someone’s life.
■ ■■
Speaking of tax liability: Few people
realize that contestants on television
shows where they win prizes find IRS
agents waiting in the wings to collect
income taxes based on the retail value
of the prizes. It doesn’t sound right,
but that is the law. Sometimes it pays
to look a gift horse in the mouth.
who deny that war atrocities happen.
But the truth is, you won’t find a
single Bush Kool-Aid drinker among
the military bloggers, embedded inde
pendent journalists and active-duty
troops who prominently questioned
the Beauchamp sham. They know it
ain’t all going swimmingly overseas.
But unlike Pvt. Beauchamp, they’re
committed to telling the whole truth
about the war, not just approximations
and embellishments that will score
easy magazine gigs and future book
deals with elite New York City pub
lishers. The doubters of Scott Thomas
know atrocities when they see them.
But, unlike the TNR editors, they
know steaming bull dung when they
smell it.
Ever since John Kerry sat in front
of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee and accused American sol
diers of wantonly razing villages “in
fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan,”
the Left has embraced a small cadre of
self-loathing soldiers and soldier wan
nabes willing to sell their deadened
souls for the anti-war cause. Think
Jimmy Massey, the unhinged Marine
who falsely accused his unit of engaging
in mass genocide against Iraqis. Think
Jesse Macßeth and Micah Wright, anti
war Army Rangers who weren’t Army
Rangers.
Winter Soldier Syndrome will only
be cured when the costs of slander
ing the troops outweigh the benefits.
Exposing Scott Thomas Beauchamp
and his brethren matters because the
truth matters.
The honor of the military matters.
The credibility of the media matters.
Think it doesn’t make a difference?
Imagine where Sen. John Kerry would
be now if the Internet had been around
in 1971.
Michelle Malkin is author of
"Unhinged: Exposing Liberals
Gone Wild. ” Her e-mail address is
malkinblog@gmail.com.