Newspaper Page Text
PAGE 4A
BARROW NEWS-JOURNAL
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2016
Opinions
“Private opinion is weak, but public opinion is almost omnipotent. ”
~ Henry Ward Beecher ~
Lessons from the
2016 election
This column was written over the weekend prior
to Tuesday’s presidential election so it wasn’t
known who would win.
As you read this, we likely already know the
outcome — barring a repeat of Florida 2000 or a
269-269 tie in the Electoral College, which, head
ing into Tuesday, was a realistic possibility.
But while I wrote this not knowing who our 45th
president will be, there was one result that has
been known for quite some time.
The American people lost this campaign.
This never-ending election cycle unequivocal
ly proved to be the absolute worst in modern
times. It went well beyond
mudslinging and resem
bled something more like
jamming mud down one’s
throat.
The cries of corruption
had never been louder, the
suspicion never greater, the
bitterness and anger and
fear mongering never more
frightening.
Battles loaded with bar
rages of insults were waged
on Facebook and Twitter.
Practical, substantive, face-
to-face human discussions were woefully absent
in every corner of the country.
Friendships and family relationships were
strained, and sadly some were even irreparably
damaged.
Over what? Two people who hardly any of us
will ever meet and who could never fully relate
to the average American? Does family not mean
more to anyone anymore?
Previous election cycles were bad and had got
ten worse by 2012, but at least that contest had a
shred of civility to it if nothing else.
This one never rose above being a colossal train
wreck, but our eyes remained relentlessly glued
to the carnage. Even if the election is indeed over
today, I’m not sure how long it will be before we
can recover. A full recovery doesn’t seem likely.
If our next president is Hillary Clinton, the hint
of scandal, real or imagined, will be pounding
at the door for the next four or eight years. If the
Republicans have at least maintained control of
Congress, what will the dynamic of that relation
ship be?
Can we honestly expect anything productive?
How can someone whose previous judgment
has already shown her to be reckless and even
unethical gain the trust of people who aren’t wing-
nuts but have serious questions about her fitness
for office?
If our next president is Donald Trump, how do
he and Democrats possibly reach out to each
other? How does he react to the everyday criti
cisms even the most well regarded presidents face
every day? Will he exhibit signs of real leadership
or will he tweet out retaliatory 150-character mes
sages?
How can we move past things that were said
over the past year and a half and can never be
unsaid?
Last month, following the third and final pres
idential debate, I was watching a CNN panel of
analysts and political cheerleaders dissect the
night’s proceedings when Michael Smerconish
said something rather telling.
To paraphrase him, he said that, at some point,
Americans will have to pick up the pieces after the
election, put them back together and move on like
they always do.
But why do elections have to be about tearing
things and each other down? What happened to
the idea that we can exchange differing opinions,
make arguments with reason and sound logic,
show empathy for other worldviews and respect
each other at the end of the day without sacrific
ing our core principles?
Humans are not all meant to see eye to eye.
Passion is important and necessary in politics,
but are respect and cordialness merely concepts
of days gone by?
In addition to us, the people, the erosion of civil
discourse can also be blamed on the politicians
in Washington who have turned mudslinging and
hyper-partisan politics into a mega-million-dollar
industry.
I believe a good chunk of them came to their
seat with good intentions and the best interests
of their constituents in mind. But the chokehold
placed on them by special-interest groups and big
money donors has fully awakened the need for a
drastic change in direction of our political system.
The system is broken. The two-party monopoly
does not have the best interests of Americans in
mind, and we need more choices.
Expect many of the same issues and same fights
continue to be at forefront of the beltway in the
coming years. The battle lines will be drawn in
the sand and real progress and instances of action
that benefit everyday people will be few and far
between.
Last week in the final days of this campaign,
President Obama essentially told us a vote for a
third party as a form of protest or otherwise was
a waste of time.
While his intention may have been to make sure
See Thompson on Page 5A
f
scott
thompson
THINK ITS SKFE
TO PE-FPIEND MV
W3ANOW?
Why do we give
money to billionaires?
John Malone is a very wealthy man.
His net worth is estimated at $6.9
billion and he is one of this country’s
largest private landowners.
Arthur Blank is also a very wealthy
man. His net worth is estimated
at $3.1 billion, largely from
money he made as one of the
founders of Home Depot.
Tony Ressler isn’t quite as
wealthy as Malone and Blank,
but he’s close. His net worth is
estimated at $1.4 billion.
These three billionaires have
two things in common. For one,
they own major league sports
franchises (Malone’s compa
ny owns the Atlanta Braves,
Blank the Atlanta Falcons, and
Ressler the Atlanta Hawks).
For another, they are being
showered with tax money from state
and local governments - a combined
total of nearly one billion dollars.
Cobb County agreed three years to
put up $400 million to build a new sta
dium for the Braves, which persuaded
Malone’s company to move the team
out of downtown Atlanta.
The City of Atlanta is using hotel-mo
tel tax revenues to put up $200 million
to help build a new stadium for the
Falcons. That tax source will also pro
vide funds to pay the operation and
maintenance costs of Blank’s stadi
um, which will amount to an estimat
ed $200 million to $250 million. The
state kicked in $40 million to build a
new parking deck for Blank.
Ressler is not being ignored. Atlanta
Mayor Kasim Reed announced last
week that the city will spend $142.5
million to renovate Philips Arena, a
basketball venue that was built just 17
years ago for the Hawks.
A rational person would ask why
so much tax money is being show
ered upon billionaires at a time when
the state’s middle-income and low-in-
come families have so many unmet
needs.
There are 127 public schools that
are so bad, Gov. Nathan Deal says the
state should take them over.
Rural hospitals are shutting down
because they don’t have enough
funds to stay in operation. Georgia
has one of the highest percentages
of people without health insurance in
the nation.
Atlanta, in particular, has the largest
number of schools on that failing
school list, and there are streets in
the city that are so pockmarked with
potholes you would think you’re driv
ing on a highway through war-torn
Somalia.
Why isn’t Reed spending Atlanta’s
tax funds on these very fundamental
needs instead of diverting the money
to build sports palaces for billionaires?
Reed, like every other politician who
has ever participated in these give
aways to the wealthy, has the misguid
ed idea that these sports venues will
be the key to all sorts of economic
development.
He called the Philips project “anoth
er stake in the ground” that will “trans
form” downtown Atlanta and sup-
Write a Letter to the Editor:
Let us know your thoughts: Send
Letters to Editor, The Barrow
News-Journal, 77 E. May Street,
Winder, Ga. 30680. Letters can also
be emailed to sthompson@main-
streetnews.com Please put “Letter to
the Editor” in the subject line. Please
include the city of the writer.
posedly bring in $1.5 billion in new
development.
History tells us that he is wrong.
Economists have done study after
study of the economic impact of new
stadiums and have found that they
almost never live up
to what their boosters
promise.
“Most evidence sug
gests that sports subsi
dies cannot be justified
on the grounds of local
economic development,
income growth, or job
creation,” said Alex Gold
and Ted Gayer of the
Brookings Institution.
“In fact, after 20 years of
academic research on
the topic, peer reviewed
economics journals contain almost
no evidence that sports stadiums or
franchises measurably improve local
economies.”
If you want proof of this, look no
farther north than Gwinnett County,
where the county commission
ers agreed a decade ago to build a
minor league baseball stadium for the
Atlanta Braves organization.
They said the stadium would draw
large crowds and be the spark for
new commercial development in the
adjoining areas.
Instead, the attendance declined
over the years and the promises of
new development were never fulfilled.
Tim Lee, the county commission
chairman who engineered the Cobb
County deal with the Braves, was
thrown out of office by irate voters.
Reed won’t have to worry about that
because he can’t run for another
term.
But it really doesn’t matter.
When Lee and Reed have departed
from the political scene, there will
still be politicians who will insist that
we give millions of tax dollars to
billionaires who already have plenty
of money so that they can build stadi
ums that aren’t needed.
It’s the American way.
Tom Crawford is editor of The
Georgia Report, an internet news ser
vice at gareport.com that reports on
state government and politics. He can
be reached at tcrawford@gareport.
com.
The Barrow News-Journal
Winder, Barrow County, Ga.
www.BarrowJoumal.com
Mike Buffington
Co-Publisher
Scott Buffington
Co-Publisher
Scott Thompson
Editor
Jessica Brown
Photographer
Susan Treadwell
Advertising
Sharon Hogan
Office & Reporter
Also covering beats is Alex Pace.
POSTMASTER:
Send address changes to:
The Barrow News-Journal
77 East May Street
Winder, Georgia 30680
Published 52 times per year by
Mainstreet Newspapers, Inc.
Periodicals postage paid at
Winder, Georgia 30680
(USPS 025-132)
Email: chris@mainstreetnews.com
Phone: 770-867-NEWS (6397)
SUBSCRIPTIONS:
$25.00/yr.
It’s time for
America to heal
mike
buffington
The election is over.
Now Americans have a choice: We can
either lay down our political guns and
move forward as a country, or we can
continue the awful tone of the last year and
tear this nation apart even more.
Much of that will be up to President
Elect Donald Trump who won a historic
and stunning victory this week. Trump’s
populist demagogu
ery on the cam
paign trail that railed
against Hispanics,
immigrants, Muslims
and other minority
groups was largely
responsible for the
divisive tone of this
election. His conces
sion speech early
Wednesday morning
was perhaps a hope
ful sign that maybe
he is ready to move
beyond that rhetoric. Time will tell.
Meanwhile, let’s give the man his due:
He tapped into something that had been
seething in the political shadows for years.
He cobbled together, from pure instinct, a
winning coalition that derailed one of the
most powerful political machines in mod
ern American history.
It’s pretty clear who elected Trump —
angry rural and exurban white voters who
came out in record numbers and swamped
the more diverse metropolitan areas.
Their anger wasn’t just about the lengthy
list of Hillary Clinton’s shortcomings as
the alternative candidate. True, there were
some who disliked Trump, but voted for
him anyway because they hated Hillary
more.
But this Trump revolt runs deeper. Just
as much as Tuesday’s results repudiated
Clinton, it was also a rejection of the last
eight years of the Obama Administration.
From a feckless foreign policy to the failing
Obamacare system, many voters didn’t
want another four or eight-year exten
sion of Obama priorities. Voters wanted
to swing the political pendulum a different
direction and Trump gave voice to that
movement.
More broadly, many of Trump’s older
white voters also wanted to reject the last
50 years of government growth and cultur
al changes. They fear the changing demo
graphics they’re seeing, hence the fear of
immigrants, Muslims, etc. And they’re tired
of the nation’s cultural changes that has
elevated political correctness to absurd
levels, especially on college campuses.
If there is one single thing that appears
to have sparked Trump’s strongest white
voter backlash it was the rise over the last
two years of the Black Lives Matter move
ment and its ongoing protests.
Many white voters, especially those old
enough to remember real segregation in
the country, seethed bitterly about BLM.
They hate the BLM focus on blaming cops
for problems in black communities while
at the same time ignoring the massive
amount of black-on-black crimes in the
nation. These white voters asked, if black
lives matter, then why aren’t they talking
about black-on-black shootings, too?
Insecurity also played a big part in
Trump’s appeal to many white voters,
especially blue collar workers in the old
Rust Belt states. Because of economic
changes over the last 20 years, many of
these people have seen older manufac
turing jobs disappear. Trump gave them
a simplistic answer for that — bad trade
agreements — and he promised to bring
manufacturing jobs back to the U.S. from
China and other countries.
The problem is, those economic chang
es and loss of jobs are more complex than
a simple answer. The shift from an indus
trial economy to an information economy,
robotics and other issues play a much larg
er role than trade agreements. Still, Trump
tapped into that economic insecurity and
gave an answer many white blue collar
workers wanted to hear — it’s not your fault
and I’m going to change it. That moved a
lot of traditionally Democratic voters into
Trump’s camp.
While Trump won by tapping into that
white angst and backlash, problems
remain.
For one thing, Trump’s followers of
angry whites does nothing to adapt the
Republican Party to the demographic
changes taking place. White voters domi
nated this election, but in the coming years
white voters will become a smaller and
smaller part of the nation’s population. By
2045 or so, the nation will be minority white
as Hispanic, black, Asian and other ethnic
See Buffington on Page 6A