About The Georgia post. (Knoxville, Crawford County, Ga.) 19??-current | View Entire Issue (April 18, 2013)
PAGE 4 - THURSDAY, APRIL 18, 2013 Opinions expressed by writers on this page are their own and not necessarily those of The Georgia Post CODE OF ETHICS: Seek Truth & Report It - Minimize Harm - Act Independently - Be Accountable. Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe. - Thomas Jefferson Letter To The Editor Will We Prepare For Future? Editor, The Georgia Post: My last letter addressed where we as a county rated in the Georgia Trends Maga zine. I want to continue by thinking about where we will be in the 2020 census and beyond. This letter will hopefully start us to looking at the future. What will fu ture generations have to say about the choices we made? One article I read said that the earth’s population is ex pected to almost double by 2050, from over 6 to over 10 billion. As we all can guess not every city, county, state or country will experience such a population growth. Anyone hazard a guess as to what the population of Crawford County will be. If we continue to grow at 0.1% we will have a county population of approxi mately 12,683± in 2020 and 13,034± in 2050. It may not be a big problem for us to absorb these 130 to 481 citi zens into our county. What if we were to double in popula tion by 2050? Where will the 12,553 additional people find to live, work, shop receive their education and find the other essentials of life. We should not have a problem with finding a place to house the newcomers to Crawford County. We have lots of open land and many developers are willing to de velop the next subdivision or mini farm. We grow plenty of pine trees for the lumber; we have plenty sand from Atlanta Sand for the cement, and Arriscraft would love to produce the exterior siding. Housing does not seem to be Something on your mind? Write A Letter To The Editor a big problem. A huge question is where will these people find work? Will most of them continue to go outside of our county for employment? What hap pens if some round of BRAC were to close RAFB? Will there be some future Craw ford County citizen that will have the entrepreneur sprit that allows him/her to cre ate a business that will hire hundreds or thousands? Will our surrounding counties continue in their growth and allow our citizens to work at their places of business? Some may look at the last statement and wonder where I am coming from. All you have to do is read the story of how that Georgia sup ported Volkswagen in their choosing Chattanooga, Tennessee as a location for their new plant in 2008.1 am sure that our elected officials thought for sure that some of our North Georgia citizens would find employment in the factory. The last report I read was 100% of all the employees were Tennes see citizens. Not one of the employees had a Georgia address. What if in the future something allows one of our neighboring counties to say a new employer locat ing there, “we will give you land, tax concessions, and etc., but for this, all of your employees must come from our city/county.” It sounds farfetched but is it possible? Look at some of the recent laws that have come from Atlanta and Washington and make a guess. The question for us, the citizens of Crawford County in 2013 is, “What will we do to prepare for the next 10 to 40 years?” Some of us may never live to see 2020 much less 2050. What will our children and grandchil dren do for employment in the next 7 to 37 years? Will we prepare a way for them to enjoy the success and the financial security we may have enjoyed? Paul Chapman Crawford County Commissioner uotable Quote ~ The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens un necessarily laid upon them by their governments. George Washington Ironies In Todays World The world we live in today is so ironic and just plain does not make sense. If you sit down and try to make sense of it all, you will lose your mind. If it were not true, some things might be laughable but unfortunately it happens to be the whole truth. For example, you can get arrested for not having a hunting or fishing license but not for being an illegal immigrant. We can have bibles in pris on but they are not allowed in schools. Perhaps if they were in school, there would not be so many people in prison. Our Constitution gives us certain inalienable right such as freedom of religion and the right to bear arms. Inalienable means that it can not be given or taken away by the possessor. Yet, politicians want to take away those rights and legislate our rights and Christians are more persecuted in America today than other religions and therefore that freedom is also slipping away. We have homeless and hun gry people right here in our country, even in our county and yet our nation sends billions of dollars to other countries. Charity should start at home. We are not supposed to be double taxed but we are taxed on every front and more taxes may be forth coming soon. We can fund things which I do not consider tasteful, yet our veterans and military are cut back. Politicians wanted to give us educational reforms which would be better for our children. Yet it has become all about test scores, not what our children are really learning. So as test scores go up, real learning goes down. Ironic. I say this because standardized test scores are only a constrictive view about real learning. We place blame sometimes on teachers and accuse them of being greedy without looking at the whole pic ture. They are there on the front lines working with our students and trying to meet mandated requirements. We should be blaming those responsible for our current education system downfall. The powers that be are not putting our students first as they would have you to believe and with emphasis on scores, data, common standards and assessments, value-added models, and standardized curricula it is hard for teachers to have time to put students first as well. We want privacy yet we allow all kinds of social media to collect our personal information. We have been given gov ernment healthcare which they want us to believe is better in the long run, yet our elderly are being denied some tests and procedures which could prolong their life. Others on medicare, are having to change medi cations because of the cost driven up by Obamacare. And, it has been reported that the slush fund in the program is helping to subsi dize retirement benefits for employees of the some of the richest companies, top paid university personnel and large media outlets. This fund is reported to be $5 billion. (You can check out who received payments here: http://cciio.cms.gov/resourc- es/files/Files2/02172012/ errp-posting_feb2012.pdf) We all want a cure for cancer and donate money to charities working on that cure. However, most of them do not fund or conduct alternative research and I personaly believe there is a cure, perhaps more. Instead we would rather poison bod ies with chemo. We all want to get healthier and strive to eat better, yet, we do not really think that deep about what is in the food we eat. Things like hor- Pay at a Time Victoria ’’Vicky” Simmons vsimmonsS4@gmail.com mones and other additives which contribute to poor health, not better health. Our government, through the FDA, approves pills which do not cure any ailment only cover it up, yet they want to squelch any other natural supplements or cures which would put a dent in money going to big pharmaceutical companies. We are guaranteed freedom of the press, however, some major large mainstream media, is being bought to not report things and to focus on smaller matters so much that the larger issues are drowned out. People complain about the government on a daily basis. Yet, we do little else but complain and there fore, have only ourselves to blame. The White House has been closed to public tours, how ever, the White House actu ally belongs to the people, not the elected President who is allowed to live there during term of office. Many people complain about the smallest thing, yet let the bigger things go by unnoticed. The statement was made in our office this week that if people would turn all the negatives they complain about into posi tives, then our world would be much improved and quite wonderful. Sure wish I could figure out how to make this happen. Wishing you a blessed week. X YOU SURE IT'S > WISET0 REMODEL NOW WHEN THE ECONOMY IS X SOSLUGGlSH? > X WE HAVE NO X if CHOICE-WE NEED f MORE ROOM FOR ALL \ THEPERMITSAND LICENSES! y Springtime Was Here Do you remember back in school when you would sit at a desk and scrawled across the top was, “John Wuz Here,” or “Mary and John 4-Ever.” The wood top desk (or as in my high school days, plastic top desk) would hold that piece of vandalism for as long as it took the school jani tor to scrub it off, unless of course, the vandal scratched the graffiti into the desktop making it a permanent ad dition. I was thinking about that on the way to work today, as the markings of spring passed me on the road. Bright flowers, green leaves and the wet concrete of the road, all signs saying, “Spring was here!” The birds chirping and singing happily, even in the heart of our small town. Sure signs that spring has definitely sprung! Of course, in our neck of the woods, spring will not last very long. The stifling Georgia summer heat will be upon us sooner than we know. As the April showers bring on the May flowers, it also brings in the lovely humidity that makes your hair frizz and the sweat roll down the back of your neck. Soon we will give up the soft pastels of our Easter dresses and spring short- sleeved shirts, for the bright colors of summer tank tops and bathing suits. Splashing in mud puddles in rubber boots and raincoats will be traded for swimming pools, creeks and big beach blankets. We complain as the winter comes to a close. It holds out as long as it can, making us eye our springtime attire, waiting for the warmth to come. Then it is here, in all its glory, warm days, cool nights, the joy of a spring time day abounding around you, but here in Georgia it is usually very short lived. Our springs don’t last very long in Middle Georgia. We have mild winters that ran their course all the way until the end of March, when spring jumps out at us bring ing with it rain and wind and an abundance of sweet smelling flowers. Give it until the end of May and all that mild, sweet weather is gone! The sum mer heat begins to set in and spring mild temperatures (which are in the 70’s and 80’s here) give way to the soaring temperatures of summer (with heat indexes of almost 120). The signs of spring still linger. Flowers hanging onto stems, nearly wilted, From Moo To You Abigail ”Abby” Adams abbyadams@pstel.net grass still struggling to stay green, but drying to a brittle brown, thirsting for the rain, the faded reminder of when “Spring was here,” slowly being scrubbed away by the janitor that is summertime. So, for now, we will enjoy the mild weather and the spring showers. Spring is scrawling its name all across Georgia right now and though sometimes she will scratch her name across the dirty surface (via springtime tornado), the signs of spring will only last a little while. Soon it will be summertime again. published every week by Crawford Publishing, LLC. Our Staff Floyd Buford - President Victoria ’Vicky” Simmons - GM/Publisher vsimmons54@gmaiLcom or byronbuzz@pstel.net Abigail Adams - News Reporter/Editor’s Assistant Office Assistant - Michael Fleming Kelli Johnson- Marketing Executive Robbie Robertson - Distribution Carey Lee - Sports Photography Trenesia Y. Stubbs, Charles Cook, Nancy Gibbs, Billy Powell, Angie Carr, Jeff Cook, Wade Yoder, Dan Gatlyn, James Earnhardt Robert Tharpe, Rev. James Snyder, Spencer Price - Contributing Columnists Our Policies Deadlines are Noon on Friday prior to issue. 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