About Lake Oconee news. (Greensboro, GA) 199?-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 13, 2017)
Friday, January 13,2017 Lake Oconee News Page A5 Letters to the Editor Letters must be signed and include your full address and phone number for verification; only name and town are printed. Submissions may be edited for content and length. The deadline is 1 p.m. Monday. Send to news@lakeoconeenews.us Blind leading the blind Puzzling pick by a peculiar president A few words regarding the nomination hearings for Cabinet posts: The nomination of Steve Mnuchin to be United States Secretary of the Treasury lays bare one of many “politics makes strange bed-fellows” memes which run through out the president elect’s pics. Evangelical Christians support the billionaire real estate developer and a very large number of this group back Israel. The strong support for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and antipathy toward Iran is paramount in this Christian World view. However, a large portion of the President-elect’s sup porters are anti-Semitic and another element voted Republican because they feel economically disen franchised, left out. The “World Order” trope of Jewish financiers controlling world’s economy comes to the fore. The heading on one Trump website reads, “Trump picks Jew for Treasury.” Indeed, Steve Mnuchin is a poster boy for the Goldman Sachs, Wall Street elite, bil lionaire club that cares ab solutely nothing for working class stiffs trying to just “make it.” Mnuchin literally made hundreds of millions foreclosing on homeown ers and businesses during the real estate meltdown. Ha-Donald thinks “Steve’s a winner, big time, really big, one of the biggest.” The would-be home owners are “losers.” Gary Cohn, the COO of Goldman Sachs is coming on board and this just in: The first son-in-law is going to be White House senior advisor. Yes Jared Kushner and Ivank will be leaving Manhattan; they already have a house and a syna gogue picked out. Ivanka converted to Judaism and took the name Yael. This could be fitting, because ha-Donald could do to the United States what Yael did to Sisera. Bill Scholly Buckhead There is something you can do to help underpaid law enforcement I live in a fine community where it is quite common for citizens to approach me and ask what they can do to help us. I know police officers don’t always have such a rela tionship with the people they serve and I am most grateful for support like this, espe cially these days. I am about to ask you to help me and all the deputy sheriffs and city police in this state. My career in law enforce ment has now spanned 43 years, and I began my sixth term in office as the sheriff of Putnam County two days ago. I have seen and been part of phenomenal changes in this profession over the years, but I regretfully now clearly recognize that we have reached a crisis point for law enforcement in our country of which the average citizen is just unaware. In 2016 there were 140 law enforcement officers who lost lives in the line of duty in this country. Of these deaths, 10 6 men and women were local city/county police and deputy sheriffs, 19 were state officers, six were federal officers, and the remaining nine were territory, college or transit officers. The loss of 140 officers’ lives in a year is unfortunate ly not that unusual. What is different is the fact that 65 of those officers died as a result of gunfire, which represents a 69 percent increase in such cases from 2015. This is not something that is just occur ring in the big cities. In the last two months alone there have been nine officers shot within 100 miles of where I’m sitting and five of them were killed. Georgia ended 2016 ranking fourth in the nation in line of duty deaths. Even more unusual this year are the occurrences of officers being ambushed simply because they are the police. Of the 65 killed by gunmen last year, 21 of the officers were ambushed. This is the first time in my career that I can ever remember officers being shot as they sat in their cars or fired upon when they arrived on the scene of a bogus call. This is genuinely unprecedented in our history, and everyone in our profession is on edge and worried as never before. As a sheriff, my single biggest difficulty has been the inability to hire and retain qualified officers. This is not unique to Putnam County, but a systemic problem throughout Georgia law enforcement. Our very best officers almost always leave local law enforcement agencies after a few years and go on to better pay and benefits with state and federal agencies. The Georgia Sheriffs Association did a survey last November with 76 of the 159 sheriffs reporting that they had lost more than 500 of their Howard Sills Putnam County Sheriff deputies to state law enforce ment agencies over the last 10 years. I remind you those figures came from less than half of the sheriffs and didn’t include the number of officers who left for state jobs. City and county law enforcement agencies have truly become the training grounds for our state law enforcement agencies. The constant cost associated with this turnover and training can hardly be quantified, and it is patently unfair for the local taxpayers to repeatedly foot this bill. Our plight of hiring and retaining personnel was exponentially exacerbat ed last September when Governor Deal announced that all state law enforce ment personnel would be re ceiving a 20 percent increase in pay. Let me be very clear here, I absolutely support those officers getting a raise and think they deserve it. On the other hand though, if the state officers deserve a 20 percent increase, local city and county officers deserve the same increase if not more. With these new increases in pay a Georgia State Patrol Officer after completing his/her basic training now makes $46,422.00 per year. I remind you that this is their beginning pay level. There are three pay levels of “Trooper” that go up to $61,825 per year before even being promoted to the rank of corporal. The average compensation of a Georgia deputy sheriff after completing basic training is only $29,900 per year. These state officers are being paid by you the taxpayer, and we need to be able to explain to your local law enforcement officers just why they are worth so much less. These state agencies are support agencies and virtually all of them close their offices at 5 p.m. every day and very few of them regularly work on weekends, holidays or nights. The dangers of the job and such disparities in pay have led to the crisis situa tion local law enforcement agencies find themselves in today. We simply have no way to compete with the state, not to mention federal agencies, anymore, and we absolutely cannot afford to lose anymore of our person nel. Georgia sheriffs are going to be seeking the enactment of legislation this year which will mandate that any full time, certified peace officer be paid at least the begin ning salary of a Georgia State Patrol officer. Critics of this effort are going to shout loudly that this is simply a local matter and shouldn’t be addressed with a state law. Sheriffs will first counter that by saying that even though local taxpayers are the ones who foot the bill for our own salaries, it’s state law that mandates the minimum salary for all sheriffs in Georgia. Many years ago our General Assembly recog nized that our local school systems had a similar problem acquiring and re taining qualified teachers. To cure that problem it enacted legislation that mandated a statewide minimum pay scale, insur ance and retirement system commensurate with educa tion and experience for all of our local educators. Had those laws not been passed, the disparities in ed ucation from one county to another would be profound today. Surely our deputies and city officers, the men and women who go headlong into harm’s way every day, deserve to be treated sim ilarly as our teachers have been. The pay increases we are proposing will need some sort of tax increase for funding, and we believe it to be blatantly unfair to place the burden of it on the property owning taxpayer. I certainly don’t enjoy paying taxes, and all law enforce ment officers pay taxes just like you do. We believe the only way funding for the in creases we are proposing can be equitably accomplished is through an additional penny of sales tax which would be solely dedicated and re stricted to fund only local city and county law enforce ment officers’ salaries and benefits. Did you know that you are paying the rent of convicts who are released from prison for three months (http://www.dca. state, ga.us/housing/specialneeds/ programs/rph.asp)? Did you also know that you were giving tax credit incentives to hire convicted felons (http://www.georgia.org/ competitive-advantages/ tax-credits/work-opportu- nity-tax-credits/ - http:// georgiaopportunity.org/ assets/2014/10/GCO-Re- port-workforce-web.pdf)? It seems to me that we are making great efforts to help criminals, and it seems we could in turn provide a minimum salary to those who are risking their lives every day to apprehend them. It has become incredibly hard to hire an officer, and if this crisis isn’t addressed in some manner very soon, there will be dire results to the safety of the public. We never close, and when you call 911 it’s a local deputy or city officer who will be re sponding to your call. I am asking you to write, email or call your state senators and representatives and tell them to support and vote for legislation that will require your local officers be paid at least the starting pay of a state trooper. If you don’t know who or how to contact your legislators, please contact me, and I will personally provide you with their contact information. Your local officers need your help and support now more than ever, and I implore you help them in the same manner your state officers have been helped. Howard Sills is the sheriff of Putnam County. His email address is sheriffsills@ putnamcountysheriff.org. Last week’s article touched on a defect in humanity that spurs a tiny minority to use violence to achieve their ends. This week the focus will be on a similar defect that spurs a different minority to use deception as its tool of choice. I suppose I’d rather be duped than threatened (at least I have a chance of seeing through the deception and walking away) but it is neverthe less an unsavory side of humanity. The power of the Internet has given rise to a new class of conman, the FUD (fear, uncertain ty, doubt) peddler. They are like an Infomercial that doesn’t disclose it’s an Infomercial. These peddlers extend a helping hand, claiming they have access to special, secret knowledge that “they” don’t want you to know about - and they offer it to you all for free! As the saying goes in the Internet era - if the product is free, you’re the product. That’s not always a bad thing (witness Facebook) but it should raise your BS radar when someone is trying to steer you toward or away from certain products. A healthy dose of skepticism is always warranted. One of the biggest of these Internet phenome nons is the “Food Babe.” Although she has no background in chemistry or biology she speaks and publishes as though she is an authority on those subjects. Her success makes sense: a) we all eat food, b) we all want to be safe and c) nearly none of us has the requisite knowl edge base to separate the wheat from the chaff of her information flow (see, I made a food pun there). By way of example, she recently published an article on the “dangers” of cottonseed oil. Not that hydrogenated oils are par ticularly healthy in and of themselves (irrespective of their source) but her ar guments here are just silly and betray her chemical ignorance. Hydrogenated oil is hydrogenated oil, it doesn’t matter where it comes from. Trying to impugn it because the source in this case is ‘not food’ (cotton) is chemically laughable. It’s like saying- mined salt from the ground is dirty because we know there is dirt in the ground Greg Morin Guest Columnist but salt extracted from the ocean is pure and clean because water is clean. Her argument is incoherent, jumping back and forth between GMOs are bad to pesticides are bad. Well which is it? GMOs allow fewer pesticides to be used. There are ancillary nega tives surrounding GMOs (seed patents, government strong arm tactics on behalf of Monsanto, etc.) but those are merely policy issues. GMOs themselves are biologically a non-is sue. Those that fear them just don’t understand how chemistry or biology work...and then they peddle that fear to gain followers and links. This article was simply a for mulaic anti-GMO screed with cottonseed oil as the vehicle for that screed, she could have written the same article using any GMO crop. Unless you have a degree in chemistry or biology you’d be hard pressed to spot the BS she is shovel ing. I have a degree (Ph.D.) in chemistry. My BS radar immediately went off reading the article. People like her succeed because the general public does not have the time or skillset to uncover the truth, so rather than take a chance they go along with whoever appears to be an “authority.” It’s the same technique politicians use to get elected; an uninformed electorate goes along with whomever sounds best or seems trustworthy. And so in both cases we end up with bad advice and bad policy. Trusting what our fellow man tells us is an admirable trait, it is unfortunate that it is so often abused by those have figured out how to exploit it. Constructive comments a re welcomed to this paper or at gregmorin.com. Follow me at @gregtmorin Finding Senior Housing can be complex, but it doesn’t have to be. aPlace/drMom, (800) 929-3014
