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THE JACKSON HERALD
WEDNESDAY, MAY 12, 2010
Named the best weekly editorial page in the nation for 2007, 2008
Opinions
“Private opinion is weak, but public opinion is almost omnipotent. ”
- Henry Ward Beecher ~
Mike Buffington, editor • Email: Mike@mainstreetnews.com
our views
Greece-R-Us?
S O the Europeans
have bailed out
Greece, the Euro
is stronger and the world’s
stock markets are soaring
again.
Everything must be OK?
Not really. The deficit
spending and huge debt of
tiny Greece forced the rest of
Europe to bailout the coun
try not because they like
Greece, but to save their own
economic systems from col
lapse.
There’s something wrong
with a system where one
small partner can bring the
entire house down. But that’s
what the Euro has done for
Europe.
And it may get worse.
With the bailout, why should
Greece or any other country
worry about fiscal discipline?
The moral hazard here is
huge.
There’s a lesson for the
U.S. in all of this. Greece
is a financial mess because
of too much government
spending and borrowing.
Sound familiar? The U.S. is
following in that same path
with exploding government
spending and massive defi
cits.
The difference between the
U.S. and Greece, however,
is that there’s nobody large
enough to bailout a tumbling
U.S. economy.
It will be interesting to see
if the Greek government lives
up to its promise to reform
its financial system and cut
spending. Already thousands
of Greek citizens are march
ing in the streets because
of the austerity plans — they
don’t want their gravy train
cut off.
Neither do American citi
zens who increasingly feed
at the trough of government
largess.
In a few years, the U.S.
may look like Greece as this
country has to pay back all
those loans that are funding
government spending.
Greece-R-Us? Who will bail
us out?
The Jackson Herald
Founded 1875 • The Official Legal
Organ of Jackson County, Ga.
Mike Buffington Co-Publisher & Editor
Scott Buffington Co-Publisher &
Advertising Manager
News Department
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letters
Says county BOE Maysville should
making wrong take advantage of
decisions beautification
Dear Editor:
Congratulations to the Jackson County Board
of Education. They are effectively bleeding our
school system to death.
Certainly we needed some corrective measures.
It is as if we needed an appendectomy and rather
got a heart transplant. The measures that have
been taken are very extreme, but have been
focused in the wrong direction.
The central office needs a good housecleaning.
We are extremely top heavy in the board office
administration section. Why not let those who
are receiving retirement, plus a hefty salary go
and keep the people we really need out in the
trenches?
There’s been quite a bit of criticism of our
teachers both in print and online, that has been
unwarranted and totally unnecessary. The admin
istrators, teachers, and support staff in our schools
deserve our thanks and not our condemnation.
Quite a bit that these people do goes unnoticed
and unappreciated. Teaching is a lot more than
just six hours a day and nine months a year as
some people think.
I want to say THANK YOU to our educators and
staff and shame on you to our board. You should
reevaluate your ways of cutting the budget.
Retire the assistants to the assistants and keep
the people who are the backbone of our county
school system.
Sincerely,
Mike Stowers
Nicholson
Dear Editor:
Most all of our neighboring towns show evi
dence that their city government is taking advan
tage of the state and federal grants available for
beautification and improvement of small towns.
Braselton is adding to their walking trails and
parks thanks to a grant. Flowery Branch is using
$50,000 (in) Department of Transportation money
to plant flowers and shrubs at the entrances to the
town.
Already, Homer, Lula, Cornelia, Commerce,
Gillsville (and) Nicholson to name a few sur
rounding towns boast sidewalks and parks having
taken advantage of our state and federal taxes
(that we pay).
It is unfortunate that the city government of
Maysville cannot or will not take advantage of
these opportunities to improve our little town.
They seem more interested in trying to evict our
family doctor from the building that was built for
his use with money granted by the federal govern
ment. Wouldn’t it be a blessing to our small town
of Maysville if our city leaders had the foresight to
try to improve our town by using our tax money
to build sidewalks, parks, etc., rather than wasting
our resources on lawyers and court costs trying to
evict the town’s most valuable asset?
When is the next election?
Sincerely,
H.A. “Bud” Dyer
Maysville
"Pi+y the humans, son...
They don’t know enough not to foul their own nest!"
Georgia’s congressmen say, ‘keep drilling’
GEORGIA has never been an oil-producing
state, but its congressmen have always been the
most enthusiastic supporters anywhere of explor
ing every conceivable location where black gold
might be located.
When Zell Miller was still in the U.S. Senate, he
and Saxby Chambliss called for oil drilling in the
Arctic Natural Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in Alaska.
During the summer of 2008, Georgia’s cur
rent and former members of Congress were
among the loudest voices
demanding that America’s
coastlines be opened up
to oil exploration.
Reps. Tom Price
of Roswell and Lynn
Westmoreland of
Sharpsburg participated in
mock sessions of the U.S.
House where Republicans
denounced Speaker Nancy
Pelosi and chanted, “Drill,
baby, drill!” Former House
speaker Newt Gringrich
wrote a book with the pro
vocative title, “Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less.”
In recent weeks, of course, TV news programs
have shown us compelling images of what hap
pens when offshore oil drilling goes wrong.
The explosion and collapse of British Petroleum’s
Deepwater Horizon rig has caused the release of
more than 200,000 gallons of oil per day into the
Gulf of Mexico, with a huge black slick threaten
ing the coastal areas of the gulf states. Scientists
have also raised the alarming possibility that the
oil slick could move around the southern tip of
Florida and be carried by ocean currents up the
East Coast.
Has the oil spill caused any second thoughts
for Georgia politicians who have been such
determined advocates of offshore drilling?
That does not appear to be the case. Their
support remains strong, even as the oily slick
edges closer to the Louisiana marshlands.
“The answer to the crisis in the Gulf is not
to move backward by halting new American
offshore energy production,” Gingrich said.
Ryan Murphy the communications director for
Tom Price, said the congressman “believes we
need an ‘all of the above’ energy plan - offshore
exploration is one component of that. This is
a tragedy, it needs to be addressed, lessons
need to be learned, but that’s no reason for
Americans to abandon the search for energy.”
Westmoreland’s media spokesman, Justin Stokes,
said there has been “no change in the congress
man’s position. He still supports an ‘all of the
above’ energy policy, and that includes offshore
drilling.”
Rep. John Linder of Gwinnett County, who is
retiring later this year as the 7th District congress
man, told a reporter: “I support exploring and
drilling anywhere we can. We need to explore
everywhere we think there might be any recover
able oil.”
A Democratic congressman who has sup
ported oil exploration off the coasts and in
the Alaska wilderness has been Rep. Jim
Marshall of Macon, who wrote a newspaper
column two years ago arguing that “virtual
ly all general drilling bans should be lifted.”
Marshall spokesman Doug Moore said the con
gressman is “a combination of frustrated and dis
appointed” by the events surrounding the oil spill.
“I don’t know if he has fully changed his mind on
this or how it might affect drilling off the Georgia
coast,” Moore said. “We have talked about it, but
haven’t gotten to the point of, ‘have you changed
your position?”’
Another political figure caught short by the oil
spill is President Barack Obama. He announced
on March 31, just three weeks before the
Deepwater Horizon blowup, that his proposed
energy plan would open up the coastal waters of
Georgia and other Atlantic Coast states to offshore
oil exploration.
Obama’s Interior Department has now ordered
a halt to all new offshore drilling permits until at
least the end May.
While our congressional representatives contin
ue to support offshore exploration, the events in the
Gulf of Mexico have raised red flags in other quarters.
Tom Barton, a conservative columnist with the
Savannah Morning News, opined that “The mas
sive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, which is threat
ening the coastal areas of Louisiana, Mississippi,
Alabama and Florida, is Exhibit A for those who
doubt the wisdom of sinking wells off the Atlantic
coast... Unfortunately, some of the slick that’s now
the size of West Virginia could wind up near here.”
Barton is understandably concerned about the
effects of gooey, black oil washing up on the
beaches around his city. I would guess he’s not
the only coastal resident who’s worried.
Tom Crawford is the editor of The Georgia
Report. He can be reached at tcrawford@caDito-
limpact.net.
BOE sends message
to administration
I T MAY have been subtle, but an earthquake
took place in Jackson County Monday
night. When the Jackson County Board of
Education voted 3-2 to disallow three teachers
to retire, then work part-time next year, it was a
strong message from the BOE to the system’s
administrators —change things, or we will.
The action was
especially notable
because it came on
the heels of a recent
decision by the
board to allow assis
tant principal Bmce
Yates to continue to
work part-time while
drawing retirement
and while he is also
serving as a county
commissioner.
That decision
was not popular in
many circles. Why
should someone get
to double-dip taxpayer
funds when the system is also laying off a slew
of teachers? (If you count his income from the
BOC position, Yates is actually a triple-dipper at
the public trough.)
With that background, under the leadership
of chairman Kathy Wilbanks, the BOE reversed
itself and drew a line Monday night when it
voted to overturn Superintendent Shannon
Adams recommendation on those three posi
tions.
While it’s not unheard of for a BOE to
disapprove a superintendent’s hiring recom
mendations, it’s a rare event. In effect, the BOE
asserted its authority over the school system’s
administrators for the first time in many years.
That is a shock in the county school system
where administrators have done pretty much
what they wanted to do for years while the BOE
meekly went along.
But the BOE really only has a handful of pow
ers: to choose school site locations; to set the
tax rate; to hire the superintendent; approve
textbooks; and to disapprove hiring recommen
dations of the superintendent. Beyond those
things, BOEs are mostly impotent.
So when a BOE flexes its limited authority, it’s
no small matter. While the three positions were
the focus of Monday night’s vote, the real mes
sage was much larger and broader. The BOE
was, in effect, telling Adams and other central
office staff they have to stop protecting their
own with insider hiring deals and start making
changes.
That’s a message the central office staff has
been deaf to for months. Since the system went
into a deficit over $900,000 last year, the BOE
has been trying to make changes in the system,
changes that have often been stymied by an
administration locked into the past and which
is wedded to the status quo. Instead, county
school leaders have circled the wagons and tried
to change as little as possible.
Much of this problem comes from a messed-
up education system where educators rise
through the ranks to become administrators. But
the qualifications to be a good teacher and those
needed to be a good manager of people and
finances are different. That’s why so many edu
cators who rise to administration positions fail;
they can’t manage people or money. (School
administrative positions should be open to non
educators who have both proven management
and financial skills...but that’s an argument for
later.)
Another problem is that the education sys
tem retirement plan allows too-generous early
retirement benefits. Why shouldn’t public sector
employees, including educators, have to work
until age 62 or 65 to retire just like most of the
private sector?
There are some exceptions to this retirement
and part-time work. Teachers who have specific
or exceptional skill sets may be a huge asset to
a school by working part-time after retirement.
But those situations aren’t the norm; mostly, it’s
an insider’s game designed to boost the pay of
associates.
The BOE has the public on its side in this
issue. Patrons of the county school system have
long gmmbled about insider relationships that
appear too cozy in the system. They have long
complained about the administrative “clique”
that mns the system, a clique that in today’s
financial crisis has reacted like a deer caught in
headlights. And they have complained about the
general culture of the school system where per
sonal relationships seem to tmmp public respon
sibility to students, parents and taxpayers.
Monday night, the county BOE challenged
that clique and its insider culture by sending this
message: Either listen to us and change the sta
tus quo, or we will do it for you.
‘Bout damn time.
Mike Buffington is editor of The Jackson
Herald. He can be reached at mike@mainstreet-
news.com.