Newspaper Page Text
PAGE 4A
BARROW NEWS-JOURNAL
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 28, 2016
Opinions
“Private opinion is weak, but public opinion is almost omnipotent. ”
~ Henry Ward Beecher ~
The year that
was and the
year to come
Of all the words that could describe 2016, “tur
bulent” might be as good as any.
But with that turbulence should also be a sense
of optimism that comes with the new year, which
begins Sunday.
Many have lamented the loss of numerous
public figures, particularly in the music world,
while others have deemed our country broken
by a relentlessly bruising election.
Indeed the presidential campaign of the past
year and some months was
probably the most divisive
one and exposed some
deep rifts in our foundation.
Yet we are still standing
— wounded but hopeful
ly ready to learn from the
whole process.
Instead of drawing the
line in the sand, maybe we
could work more closely
together to build bridges.
Engage in healthy political
discourse, not shouting and
name-calling.
The latter has been a too frequently prevailing
trait among our leaders and us as the years go
on.
To quote the band Drive-By Truckers on their
most recent album, “We want our truths all fair
and balanced, as long as our notions lie within
it.”
Perhaps the overwhelming desire for stark
change that turned the political landscape upside
down this year will be realized in a productive
and substantive way that benefits the nation as
a whole.
Hopefully the incoming administration will be
an inclusive one that beholds itself only to the
public and the country’s best interests and works
with both sides of the new Congress to conduct
the people’s business.
While the same dynamic of the past few years
won’t exist since one side will control the White
House and Congress, the need for improvement
remains.
Whether you choose to pin the blame on the
Obama administration for executive overreach
or the Republican-led Congress for refusal to
compromise in the best interests of the people,
better performance from our leaders should be
demanded.
It’s time to put the political posturing aside.
The gridlock in Washington has done nothing
to get us closer to carving out a future where
so many millions of Americans have to choose
between paying a mortgage, affording health
insurance and saving money for their children’s
college education; where the American educa
tion system is once again the envy of the world;
and where we as a nation lead the rest of the
world by positive example.
Maybe then, more people will start trusting
their leaders a bit more.
Locally speaking
The upcoming year will also be a critical one
in local circles.
As citizens in Statham debate the actions of a
police officer and City Council’s and the police
department’s response to it, it’s important that, in
the end, transparency and ethics win out above
all else.
Come November, Barrow County voters may
very well be asked to OK a continuation of the
1-cent special-purpose local-option sales tax.
The tax would continue to fund various capital
improvement projects around the entire county
for another five to six years after the current
SPLOST expires in June 2018.
The measure was on track to be included
on last month’s ballot, but the county Board of
Commissioners decided against that after coun
ty and municipal officials failed to agree on the
terms of the would-be referendum.
Before any measure makes its way to the vot
ers, all local government entities should be on
the same page and the projects presented to the
public should pose a benefit to the county as a
whole.
Barrow County’s population will likely continue
to rise in the coming years, and with that the
need for smart, sustainable growth, economic
development and job creation will be paramount.
Another key to making Barrow County a more
attractive place is to address transportation
issues, particularly traffic in and around down
town Winder and along the Ga. 316 corridor.
While the county is getting much-needed sup
port from the state on the West Winder Bypass,
that project remains a ways off.
It’s incumbent on the county and city to con
tinue to engage the state and think both logically
and creatively of ways to alleviate traffic conges
tion before the numerous small businesses in
the area begin to take too many hits and before
anyone else gets seriously hurt.
Scott Thompson is editor of the Barrow News-
Journal. He can be reached at sthompson@
barrowjournal. com.
f
scott
thompson
Georgians get a most
unwanted Christmas gift
The sign outside the PSC hearing
room on Dec. 20 said this: “Merry
Christmas from the Georgia Public
Service Commission.”
Inside the hearing room, it was a
merry Christmas indeed for one of
the state’s biggest corporate
entities, the Georgia Power Co.
With scarcely enough time
for a “Ho-ho-ho,” the five PSC
members voted unanimously
to give Georgia Power one of
the most expensive yuletide
gifts an American corporation
could receive: an agreement
that lets Georgia Power almost
completely off the hook for vir
tually all of its multi-billion-dol-
lar cost overruns on two nucle
ar reactors at Plant Vogtle.
For the many Georgians who
depend on Georgia Power for their
electricity, the news was less cheery.
They’ll have to shoulder the burden of
paying for these overruns in the form
of higher rates on their monthly bills.
That’s because the PSC action effec
tively absolves the utility giant of hav
ing to eat most of those cost overruns,
no matter how many foulups have
been committed during the construc
tion of the reactors. Instead Georgia
Power can simply pass along these
increases to its ratepayers.
To get a more down-to-earth grasp
of what has been done here, look at
it this way:
Suppose you have to get some
cracks in your driveway repaired. You
hire a contractor to do the job after
you get a written estimate that he
can do get it done in three weeks for
$1,000.
Six months later, the contractor
finally finishes the repairing the drive
way and seeks you out for payment.
He informs you: “The first group
of workers didn’t know how to pour
concrete and by the time they got
finished, they messed up the job com
pletely. I had to hire a second crew,
but found out they didn’t know how
to pour concrete either, so I had to
spend two weeks showing them how
to do it. Because of all those delays
and extra workers, I’m going to have
to charge you $10,000 for the job.”
If you’re at all like me, you tell the
contractor, “Sorry, we have a written
agreement that you’ll repair the drive
way for $1,000. Here’s your payment
of $1,000.”
That’s how people of normal intelli
gence would handle the situation.
The Public Service Commission
members, on the other hand, would
handle this entirely differently. They
would not only agree to pay the con
tractor $10,000 for a bungled job,
they’d give him another $2,000 so
he could buy Christmas gifts for his
family.
That, in effect, is what the PSC has
just done for Georgia Power on the
Vogtle project. Except that the utili
ty’s customers are the ones who are
paying for the contractor’s ineptitude.
The Public Service Commission, in
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 sent to sthompson@barrowjournal.
com. Please put “Letter to the Editor”
in the subject line. Please include the
city of the writer.
short, just put a lump of uranium in
your Christmas stocking.
In trying to explain why they are
dumping this mess on Georgia’s con
sumers, the commissioners resorted
to out-and-out falsehoods to justify
their actions.
At one point in that
meeting, Commissioner
Stan Wise said that by
approving the Vogtle set
tlement, “We hope that
the project is completed
on time.”
No offense, Mr.
Commissioner, but
you’re either the world’s
biggest liar or the
world’s dumbest politi
cian. When you and
your colleagues gave
Georgia Power the initial go-ahead for
the Vogtle nukes, the starting date for
operation was supposed to be April
1, 2016.
That was more than eight months
ago, which means the project has
already busted its deadline. The PSC’s
experts who have been monitoring
the construction at Vogtle now esti
mate that the reactors will be some
where between 39 and 45 months
behind schedule before they final
ly begin generating electricity for
Georgia Power.
But cost overruns? Nothing to worry
about. The customers are going to
take care of that. And they’ll be taking
care of it for a long time to come.
Not everyone is unhappy with the
commission’s action, of course.
“We are pleased with today’s deci
sion by the Georgia Public Service
Commission as it illustrates the impor
tance and effectiveness of Georgia’s
regulatory structure in both protecting
customers while securing Georgia’s
energy future,” Georgia Power spokes
man John Kraft said.
He should be pleased. The Public
Service Commission just dropped a
huge wad of money in his company’s
coffers.
It’s the rest of us who don’t feel so
jolly about it.
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.BarrowJournal.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 are Ron Bridgeman and 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.
2016 was a
dangerous year
Those old enough to remember the
chaos of 1968 should be forgiven if they
felt a sense of de ja vu in 2016.
This past year was perhaps the most
unsettling for Americans since ’68 when
the Vietnam War and school integration
issues led to violence in the streets.
Over the past 12 months, the world
has become more
dangerous and
Americans more
divided.
We enter 2017
under a dark cloud.
Uncertainty runs
deep.
There are a lot of
aspects to this, but
most fall into one
of four large trends
emerging here and
around the world.
The rise of authoritarianism,
populism and nationalism
In much of the Western World, there is
a growing trend of populism and nation
alism where the public is increasingly
embracing leaders who they perceive as
being “strong.” This populism crosses
existing political party boundaries, upset
ting the political status quo in Western
Europe and the U.S.A.
The focus of these populist movements
is anti-elitist and anti-establishment in
general, and anti-immigration in particu
lar. They also have a nationalistic theme
which is anti-globalist and encourages
isolationism.
In Europe, this populist wave was seen
in the surprising “yes” Brexit vote in
England this year. The vote will lead to
England’s exiting the European Union
economic community, a move that could
upend Europe’s economy in the coming
years.
The Brexit vote was driven in part
by a reaction to economic anxiety. For
Western and developing nations, the old
industrial age growth model is fading
as a high-tech information economy is
growing. That transition is displacing
many traditional jobs in the West and cre
ating a sense of fear, especially for those
in areas where heavy manufacturing has
been the norm.
Populist leaders exploited that fear in
2016, blaming globalism and immigration
for the economic uncertainty.
While much of this is rooted in eco
nomic issues, it also has underpinnings
of cultural differences based on race,
religion and ethnic differences. Radical
Islam and the ensuing terrorism has
made all Muslims suspect in the West.
Populism, by its very nature, creates
turmoil. The whole point of populism is
to upset the status quo, to bring down
the elites and to shun “outsiders” such as
immigrants and refugees. Populism goes
hand-in-hand with nationalism where
people want to withdraw from the larg
er world and into what they perceive,
wrongly, as a protective cocoon of iso
lationism.
But turmoil creates uncertainty and
economies hate uncertainty. If this rising
nationalism goes too far — for example,
trade wars created by aggressive protec
tionist policies — then there could be
a major economic collapse as a result.
Populists may not like it, but we live in a
world-wide economic system. If Europe
has turmoil, the U.S. has turmoil.
The other aspect to this is that popu
lism has an authoritarian streak where
leaders seek to silence critics, some
times with force. That kind of thing has
been absent in much of the Western
world since the end of WWII, but there
are signs that populist leaders might
seek to abuse their power in ways that go
against Western democratic values.
The resurrection of
the Soviet Bear
The Cold War officially ended 25 years
ago with the breakup of the Soviet Union.
But under Vladimir Putin, Russia is seek
ing to reestablish itself as a regional and
world power on par with the U.S.
Putin’s strategy, an echo of the old
Soviet strategy, is to encourage and cul
tivate turmoil in other nations. Putin’s
move into the Ukraine was met with
silence by the rest of the world. And
when the U.S. balked at becoming a
force in Syria, Putin moved in. Now
Russia is more of a regional power in the
Middle East than the U.S.
Even Russia’s attempt to disrupt the
U.S. elections with its hacking and leak
ing of DNC emails was a ploy by Putin to
See Buffington on Page 6A