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PAGE 4A
BARROW NEWS-JOURNAL
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 15, 2017
Opinions
“Private opinion is weak, but public opinion is almost omnipotent. ”
~ Henry Ward Beecher ~
The generosity
in the world
I don’t typically like to write about myself, but an
experience I had last Thursday was one of those
that helped put life in a healthy perspective.
I have been absent from this space the past
couple of weeks. First, I missed an entire week
with a wicked combination of a flu-like virus and
pneumonia, and then last week I was limited
because my wife was hospitalized for three days
with pneumonia and bronchitis.
Late Thursday afternoon in the midst of all this,
I left Piedmont Athens Regional Medical Center
to go pick up our 2-year-old
son at his daycare in Bogart.
On the way, I stopped to
get gas but when 1 tried to
crank my Ford Escape up, it
wouldn’t start.
Admittedly, my battery
light had started going on
and off Wednesday evening,
but I was trying to make it to
Friday when I would have
more time to get it checked
out at a mechanic.
I was able to get my father-
in-law to the gas station to
help me jump the vehicle off and I made it to the
daycare to get my son. But less than a mile down
the road from the daycare, the vehicle shut down
again.
Two people stopped by to help me before I
was finally able to get the vehicle charged up and
attempt to make the roughly five-mile drive home.
But no more than a mile later, it died again in a
left-hand turn lane.
At this point, I was exasperated when a mid
dle-aged couple pulled up and helped jump me
off.
I made it a quarter of a mile down the next road
when the vehicle died again, this time in the turn
lane to a private drive and a cabinet shop.
I got the Escape 10 years ago as an 18th-birthday
present and it has served me well, ushering me all
over Georgia and South Carolina.
But my uncle, who has always had an affinity for
Chevrolet, may have been on to something years
ago when he told me Ford stood for “Found on
Road Dead.”
The same couple pulled in behind me on the
side of the road and after we decided it was clear
the vehicle wasn’t making it home, they offered
my son and me, the beyond stressed out father,
the short five-minute ride home.
They weren’t from Athens, but from Washington
County — right at the line of Sandersville and
Tennille — and they happened to be visiting their
son and grandchildren.
I don’t recall them ever mentioning their names
— of course they may have and I was just too
exhausted and defeated to remember — but
Sandersville is not far away from my hometown
of Dublin and even closer to my mother’s native
Wrightsville.
They knew quite a lot of people with her maiden
name and chances are at least some of them are
distant relatives, even though I didn’t recognize all
of the names right off the bat.
I spend most of my time in this space writing
about politics and often the shortcomings of our
leaders.
There is no shortage of selfishness and self-serv
ing people in Washington, Atlanta and other posi
tions of authority.
People have shown the ability to win votes
based on exploitation of anger, prejudices and
fear.
The constituents who elect our leaders are often
times left in the dark by their representatives once
they’re in office.
Many of those become beholden to their polit
ical parties and voting a specific way so they can
get the special-interest money and keep winning
elections.
Less and less of them put country above party.
But this doesn’t happen into a vacuum. As long
as there are selfish, ignorant people out there,
selfish and ignorant politicians will be elected.
It’s easy to be depressed about this.
But then along comes the good-hearted couple
from Washington County who helps a newspaper
editor with a wife in the hospital and a hungry and
tired toddler get home.
In a time where the good deeds of people all
over the country are often buried in the news, I
couldn’t let the story of their generosity go untold.
They helped make it possible for me to get a
“Get Well, Mommy” card my son made with the
help of his teachers to my wife before visiting
hours were over Thursday night.
She got out of the hospital the next day. I got my
car back Monday with a new alternator. Hopefully,
it gives me at least a couple more good years.
And after a long, tough year for our country and
an age where the darker sides of humanity are
often brought to the forefront of our conscience,
my faith in people was vigorously renewed.
I’ll stack the good people and generosity in this
world up against the misguided people and self
ishness in it any day of the week.
Scott Thompson is editor of the Barrow News-
Journal. He can be reached at sthompson@bar-
rownewsjournal. com.
I
t
scott
thompson
Will the speaker
run for governor?
David Ralston is now being men
tioned as a possible candidate for
governor in 2018, which leads to an
obvious question.
Why would someone want to run
for governor when they’re already the
speaker of the Georgia House?
The speaker is one of the
most powerful persons in state
government.
Thanks to the generosity of
lobbyists, he can eat and drink
without ever paying for it and
even get a free trip to Europe.
House speakers are not
term-limited, either.
As long as your caucus sup
ports what you’re doing and
remains in control of the
House, you can be speaker
for as long as you like (Tom
Murphy managed to hold on to the
job for more than 28 years).
The events of the past week, how
ever, lead me to believe there may
be something to the rumors after
Ralston’s candidacy.
He delivered a luncheon speech
before one of the state’s largest media
organizations, the Atlanta Press Club,
and was asked whether he wanted to
run for governor.
He could have put any speculation
to rest with a simple answer of no.
Instead, he gave such coy replies as,
“I don’t think it’s appropriate to think
or talk about that particularly during
a legislative session. I mean, we have
enough distractions as it is.”
And there was this variation on the
old chestnut: “The job I have now I’m
incredibly honored to have, so I’m
happy to die in this office. Some days
I think I’m pretty close to it.”
In addition to his refusal to say no,
Ralston is also getting out in front of
some serious policy issues.
Normally, speakers of the House
don’t take a leading role on policy
initiatives.
Their job is to preside over the
House and keep the legislative pro
cess moving in a prescribed manner.
There really isn’t much time to get
involved in serious policy leadership.
But Ralston has created a rural
policy advisory council and made a
show of appearing before the House
Economic Development Committee
last week to talk about it.
He is appointing 15 House members
to this special committee and they will
spend the next 20 months developing
ideas for how to bring more jobs to
economically stressed rural Georgia.
“The bright light of economic devel
opment and growth is not shining on
every part of our state,” Ralston said
in his Press Club speech.
“We have talked about this divide for
too long.”
Ralston also set up a new House
subcommittee earlier this year that is
focusing on how to generate funding
for transportation infrastructure, espe
cially mass transit.
“Transportation now is an increas
ingly big deal, as it should be,” Ralston
Write a Letter to the Editor:
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said just before the session started.
“Transit’s an important part of that. I
think we have to recognize that transit
is not only part of congestion mitiga
tion, it’s economic development.”
He is taking a hands-on approach to
the issues that are sure
to be part of the next
governor’s race, when
voters will be choos
ing a replacement for
the termed-out Nathan
Deal. It seems highly
likely that a person tak
ing on that sort of role is
thinking seriously about
running for the office
himself.
What sort of record
would a candidate
Ralston have to offer?
He can justifiably claim that he helped
clean up the mess in the House of
Representatives when the former
speaker, Glenn Richardson, was
enmeshed in scandal.
On the other hand, after he was
elected speaker, Ralston was slow
to recognize that lobbyist spending
on legislators, including himself, was
getting out of hand.
He only grudgingly came around to
support legislation that placed a few
limits on what lobbyists could spend
to influence lawmakers.
If Ralston decides to run for gov
ernor, he will have to contend with
a crowded field in the Republican
primary.
Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle has essentially
spent the last eight years preparing to
run for governor, as has Secretary of
State Brian Kemp.
Former congressman Lynn
Westmoreland is still hinting that he
might jump into the race as well.
The doors are wide open on this
one.
Ralston has made no definitive
statement yet on what his plans are
for 2018.
If he does indeed enter the gov
ernor’s race, it shouldn’t be a huge
surprise to anyone.
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
Scott Buffington
Co-Publisher
Co-Publisher
Scott Thompson
Editor
Jessica Brown
Photographer
Susan Treadwell
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Office & Recorder
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mike
buffington
Views on
health debate
have shifted
Hardcore political ideology has never
caught on with most Americans.
That’s to the dismay of ideologues on
both the political left and political right
whose focus is often more about theory
than reality.
Ideologues on
the left believe in
expansive govern
ment and a multi
tude of social wel
fare benefits.
Those on the
right believe the
opposite, that gov
ernment is more of
a problem than a
solution.
The one thing that
both sides have in
common is a dogmatic view that they,
and only they, are right.
But most Americans have, for 225 years,
avoided rigid ideological political chains.
We are a nation of moderates who stand
somewhere between the extremes.
That balance is now being tested in the
very contentious debate over plans to
repeal or fix Obamacare. While there are
hundreds of fine points in that debate,
the core issue revolves around how we
perceive government’s role in health
care.
We’ve had this kind of debate before.
After Democratic President FDR created
Social Security for retirement in 1935,
Republicans tried to have it repealed.
And after Medicaid and Medicare were
created in 1965 under Democratic
President LBJ, some Republicans grum
bled about the government’s entry into
providing health coverage.
Today, any talk of “reform” of Social
Security, Medicare or Medicaid is met
with furious public resistance. Those
programs, flaws and all, have become a
permanent part of our social and polit
ical landscape. Once people receive a
benefit, it’s very difficult to end it.
That’s what’s happening with the
Republican plans to “repeal and replace”
Obamacare. Despite its flaws, a lot of
people — millions — have benefited from
Obamacare. Yanking that away now is
going to be difficult, if not impossible.
There are basically five different views
of Obamacare:
1. Far right Republicans known as the
Freedom Caucus want to totally abolish
all parts of Obamacare and let the free
market sort out the pieces. This group
opposes any government intervention
into health insurance or healthcare sys
tem. Ideologically, this group believes
that if left alone, healthcare costs would
come down through market competition.
(This same group would also like to pri
vatize Social Security and force people
to save for their own retirement through
401 k’s, etc.)
2. Another faction of Republicans want
to abolish Obamacare, but not because
of ideological market forces. This group
wants to kill it simply to make a politi
cal statement against former President
Obama and to fulfill the Republicans
political promise of doing away with the
program. They dislike Obamacare for
political, not ideological reasons.
3. The third group of Republicans
are the moderates who want to
change Obamacare, but not repeal it.
This group recognizes that large num
bers of Americans like some parts of
Obamacare — the pre-existing condi
tions mandate, having adult children
on parents’ insurance until age 26, the
expanded Medicare for poor people and
the subsidized insurance for moderate
income workers via the exchanges. This
is the group that has introduced the
Obamacare replacement plan now being
debated in the House and which is very
unpopular with the other two groups of
Republicans.
4. Mainstream Democrats are going to
oppose any move to dramatically change
or dilute existing Obamacare mandates.
They believe that while it has some flaws,
Obamacare is about the only way to regu
late health insurance.
5. Far left Democrats also oppose
Republican plans to change Obamacare,
but they’re focused on extending
Obamacare to become some form of
socialized medicine in the country.
This group views Obamacare as having
See Buffington on Page 6A