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The Forsyth County News
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On your payroll
CITY COUNCIL
Mayor, H. Ford Gravitt
RO. Box 3177
Cumming, GA 30028
(770)887-4342
Mayor Pro-Tem, Lewis
Ledbetter
205 Mountain Brook Drive
Cumming, GA 30040
(770)887-3019
Ralph Perry
1420 Pilgrim Road
Cumming, GA 30040
(770)887-7474
Quincy Holton
103 Hickory Ridge Drive
Cumming, GA 30040
(770)887-5279
Rupert Sexton
705 Pine Lake Drive
Cumming, GA 30040
(770)887-4332
John Pugh
10813th Street
Cumming, GA 30040
(770)887-3342 ,
COUNTY COMMISSIONERS
John Kieffer, Post 1
4403 Pine Tree Close
Cumming, GA 30041
(770)889-3255
office, (770)886-2810
David “A J.” Pritchett, Post 2
4840 Chesterfield Court
Suwanee, GA 30024
(678)898-5691
office, (770)886-2809
Michael Bennett, Post 3
4301 Post Road
Cumming, GA 30040
(770)889-4515
office, (770) 886-2807
Marcie Kreager, Post 4
9810 Kings Road
Gainesville, GA 30506
office, (770)886-2806
Eddie Taylor, Post 5
562 Lakeland Plaza, Ste. 349
Cumming, GA 30040
(770)886-2802
BOARD OF EDUCATION
Chairman Ben Benson
1265 Dahlonega Highway
Cumming, GA 30040
(770)889-9892
bbenson@forsyth.kl2.ga.ua
Paul Kreager
9810 Kings Road
Gainesville, GA 30506
(770)889-9971
pkreager @ forsyth. kl2.ga.ua
Vice Chairman
Nancy Roche
7840 Chestnut Hill Road
Cumming, GA 30041
(770)889-0229
nroche@@forsyth.kl2.ga.ua
Sherry Sagemiller
1460 Squire Lane
Cumming, GA 30040
(770)887-8388
ssagemiltef@forsyth.kl2.ga.ua
Jeffrey Stephens
RO. Box 169
Cumming, GA 30028
(770)889-1470
jstephens@fbrsyth.kl2.ga.ua
NATIONAL
LEGISLATORS
U.S.Sen.
Zell Miller
Russell Senate
Office Building
Room C-3
Washington,
D.C. 20510
Telephone:
(202)224-3643;
Fax:(202)228-2090
U.S. Sen.
Max Cleland
75 Spring Street
Suite 1700
Atlanta, GA
30303
Telephone:
(404)331-4811
Washington:
(202)224-3521
Fax:(202)224-0072
U.S. Rep.
Nathan Deal,
9th District
2437 Rayburn
House Office
Building,
Washington,
D.C. 20515
Gainesville: RO. Box 1015,
Gainesville, GA 30503
Gainesville, (770) 535-2592
Washington: (202) 225-5211
Fax:(202)225-8272
STATE LEGISLATORS
Sen. David Shafer,
48th District
State Capitol,
Suite 421,
Legislative Office
Building, Atlanta,
GA 30334
Telephone: (404)
£■/ s
656-0048
Sen. Casey Cagle,
49th District
421 State Capitol
Atlanta, GA
30334 (fax) (404)
651-6768
Telephone: (404)
656-6578
F ct
email: ccagle@ inet.legis.-
state.ga.us
Rep. Tom Knox,
28th District
Legislative
Office Building
Room 504
18 Capitol
Square
Atlanta, GA
30334
Telephone: (404) 656-0188;
Rep. Michael
Muntean,
85th District
Office infor
mation not yet
available.
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Candor doesn’t give us confidence
By Sheldon Richman
For the Forsyth County News
President Bush says he’s got the econ
omy under control. That’s supposed to
comfort us.
I’d feel better if he said he had the
federal government under control. It’s
spending wildly and it can’t blame the
“war on terrorism” for it all. That’s just
the latest spending. We are in for a feder
al soaking for as far as the eye can see.
Social Security, Medicare: those two pro
grams alone have created a $25 trillion
unfunded liability. The people hoping for
those benefits have to pray the taxpayers
will continue to be chumps. That’s how
all chain letters work.
It shrinks Enron and World Com back
into perspective, doesn’t it? The govern
ment wrote the book on cooking the
books. The politicians talk the talk, but
they never seem to walk the perp walk.
That’s because unlike businessmen,
politicians first legalize their crimes. To
appropriate Mel Brooks’s great movie
line, “It’s good to be the president or con
gressman.”
Incidentally, the businessmen forced
to take the perp walk on national televi
sion are only accused, not convicted, and
they are pleading not guilty. We know the
politicians are guilty.
Mr. Bush can make his outrageous
statement because we Americans have
been indoctrinated into believing that the
president is supposed to control the econ
omy. That’s free enterprise! I’m waiting
for the Chamber of Commerce and
National Association of Manufacturers to
politely object, but I will not be holding
No third rail likely for GOP’s platform
WASHINGTON Rep.
Tom Davis deserves plaudits
as the superb congressional
campaign chairman who led
Republicans to mid-term
gains, but he might ponder
one serious mistake. Davis
advised candidates to avoid
saying anything about Social
Security. In fact. Republicans
who ignored him prospered
last Tuesday.
Victories by candidates
who vigorously endorsed indi
vidual private retirement
accounts shattered a tenet of
American political folklore:
Social Security is the third rail
for Republicans; touch it, and
you will die. This year, almost
all brave enough to touch it
survived. Some who did not
were losers, raising suspicion
that they should have taken the
risk.
The issue did not herd pan
icky Social Security recipients
into the Democratic pen. A
Public Opinion Strategies
study shows a 12-percentage
point Republican advantage
among senior citizens Tues
day. But will a Republican
White House inclined toward
caution about radical domestic
proposals truly embrace the
issue? Conservative activists
attending a closed-door meet
ing Wednesday morning were
stunned to hear Bush policy
aide Barry Jackson spend 15
minutes extolling Social
Security reform, and this is
not a White House whose
staffers free-lance.
The third rail’s failure to
my breath. We’re all socialists now.
OK, not socialists in the sense of
nationalizing all the means of production.
That’s where Marx and his ilk blew it.
Those dolts thought they had to run the
entire economy. As a result, the govern
ments they favored spread themselves too
thin, and it was only a matter of time
before they collapsed.
Savvier socialists understand that, as
with so many things in life, less is more.
To engineer a society, you don’t need to
run everything just hold a few key
command posts. The top three posts are
the money supply, people’s incomes, and
education. Hence, we have the Federal
Reserve System, the income tax, and the
so-called public schools. There may be
others worth seizing, but these get you a
good distance toward running virtually
every aspect of society.
Here’s the Fed’s legacy: what you
could buy for a dollar in 1913, when the
Fed was created, would cost about 18
dollars today. By inflating the money
supply, the government can manipulate
the economy for political gain and secret
ly tax us in the process. In theory, of
course, the Fed is independent. But in
fact presidents have often been able to
lean on the Fed chairman to get their
way. An infusion of freshly created
money can bring an economic boom in
time for a reelection campaign.
Unfortunately, busts follow booms. The
economic business cycle is really a politi
cal business cycle. Presidents get the Fed
chairman to cooperate by telling him that
failure to do so might jeopardize his inde
pendence. Orwell lives.
Tk —I
Robert
Novak
work did not result from lack
of Democratic trying. Cookie
cutter campaigns were waged
coast-to-coast, accusing Rep
ublicans of threatening elders
with reckless schemes. No
body was more aggressive
than Jack Conway, a telegenic
young hope of Kentucky
Democrats seeking to unseat
three-term Republican Rep.
Anne Northrup in Louisville’s
traditionally Democratic 3rd
District (carried comfortably
by Al Gore against George W.
Bush). Northrup was made a
prime Democratic target
nationally.
At one senior citizens rally,
Conway displayed a chart
showing slumping stock prices
and asked: “Would you like
your privatized Social Sec
urity investment account to
look this?”
Northrup did not take Tom
Davis’ advice and retreat,
while Conway betrayed the
inexperience of a 33-year-old
by admitting the alternative to
private accounts.
“We’re going to have to
look at the retirement age,”
said Conway.
“We’re going to have to
look at benefit levels.” He
later took those options off the
table, but it was too late.
Rep. Pat Toomey, a leader
FORSYTH COUNTY NEWS Friday, November 15,200? I
in pressing for private acc
ounts, increased his victory
margin to 57 percent in his
Democratic-leaning Penn
sylvania district. Reps. Clay
Shaw of Florida and Shelley
Moore Capito of West Vir
ginia, who in 2000 narrowly
won districts containing lots
of pensioners, each reached 60
percent Tuesday after cam
paigning for private accounts.
That was the position of 40-
year-old corporate CEO Chris
Chocola, who upset a sea
soned Democratic campaigner
attacking him on Social Sec
urity, former Rep. Jill Long
Thompson, in traditionally
Democratic South Bend, Ind.
Another reformer, John Kline,
defeated Democratic Rep. Bill
Luther on his third try in
Minnesota.
Bush’s private investment
plan was backed by winners of
key races that recaptured the
Senate for Republicans: Lind
sey Graham in South Carolina,
Norm Coleman in Minnesota,
Saxby Chambliss in Georgia,
John E. Sununu in New
Hampshire and, especially,
Elizabeth Dole in North
Carolina. Erskine Bowles, Bill
Clinton’s White House chief
of staff, hammered Dole on
Social Security. She respond
ed by exhibiting a blank piece
of paper labeled: “Bowles
Social Security Plan.” The
only losing Republican re
formist was Sen. Tim Hutch
inson in Arkansas, and he suf
fered from family values
rather than retirement issues.
If you’re wondering why the stock
market has been so bad in recent years
(“greed” is presumably a constant), take a
look at the Fed’s money-growth figures.
Alan Greenspan and his colleagues creat
ed money like mad in the late 19905. All
binges end.
The income tax gives the government
unlimited access to our wealth. It’s
doubtful so much money could be raised
with a sales tax. There were only two rea
sons for passing the income tax in 1913:
envy and the politicians’ lust for money.
In recent years some politicians have
learned that tax rates above a certain level
are counterproductive and revenues fall.
So we’ve had modest tax-rate cuts.
Nevertheless, the government sucks up a
record percentage of our wealth, not
counting the levels reached during the
world wars.
Finally, the government runs the
schools mainly to assure we don’t object
to the other two interventions and to
make us believe it’s protecting us
rather than itself when it goes to war.
Public schools began local, but note how
federal “influence” has accelerated for
decades. This lets Washington set the
agenda.
The upshot is that when Mr. Bush
says he has the economy under control,
he’s given us a rare moment of candor.
But we shouldn’t be calmed.
Sheldon Richman is senior fellow at
The Future of Freedom Foundation
(www.fff.org) in Fairfax, Va., author of
Tethered Citizens: Time to Repeal the
Welfare State, and editor of Ideas on
Liberty magazine.a
Not all Republicans were
steadfast. Jim Talent backed
away in Missouri and barely
won his Senate seat. South
Dakota’s Republican candi
dates in close races Gov.
Bill Janklow for the House
and Rep. John Thune for the
Senate retreated; Janklow
won handily while Thune lost
narrowly. Ten-term, 72-year
old Rep. George Gekas of
Pennsylvania came out against
private accounts; he was the
only Republican loser in the
nation’s four Republican-vs.-
Democrat pairings of two
incumbents caused by redis
tricting.
The object lesson came in
New Jersey, where neophyte
Republican Senate candidate
Doug Forrester was pounded
for wanting to “privatize”
Social Security. He responded
by pledging never to touch the
system, and then lost badly to
old-fashioned liberal Frank
Lautenberg.
House Democratic Leader
Richard Gephardt and his
House campaign chairman,
Rep. Nita Lowey, had publicly
declared the 2002 election a
“referendum on Social Sec
urity.” The verdict was deliv
ered Wednesday by the mod
erate Democratic Leadership
Council, which pointed out
the futility of “attacking Re
publicans on Social Security”
as a “silver bullet” and losing
four straight elections.
Robert Novak is a nation
ally syndicated columnist and
political commentator.
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