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THE JACKSON HERALD
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 2, 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
Time to end
Jefferson
speed traps
I T’S time to tone down the
Jefferson speed traps. In an
apparent bid to raise rev
enue, Jefferson cops have report
edly been pressured by superiors
to write more tickets.
If that sounds like an echo, it is.
Small towns in and around Jackson
County have been struggling with
their budgets for months. The result
has been increasing pressure on
departments to move beyond pub
lic safety and into fund-raising by
fining more and more people for
speeding and other, sometimes
petty, offenses.
But as some towns have dis
covered — think Pendergrass,
Hoschton and Arcade — it costs
more to run a police department
than it can raise in fine revenue.
Hoschton’s department has been
shut down. Arcade, once notorious
as the area’s most aggressive speed
trap, has changed direction and is
now a small, community-oriented
department. Even Pendergrass,
the state’s worst offender of raising
money by stopping motorists for
petty offenses, has cut back some
on its overbearing enforcement.
But Jefferson has, if anything, only
gotten more aggressive. Although
mostly focused on the bypass area,
the JPD is also stopping drivers in-
town. Many of those stops are for
speeding, but one suspects that has
more to do with raising funds than
public safety. In fact, some of those
being stopped are openly told by
JPD officers that their ticket won’t
be reported to the state, an action
that would hurt their insurance and
driver’s license points.
Of course the JPD doesn’t want
to report all its speeding tickets to
the state — that would raise a red
flag on just how many tickets are
being written by the town.
Cities and police agencies often
get very defensive when questioned
about their fines: “It’s just for public
safety,” they claim.
Yeah, right.
The truth is, local governments
are guilty of abuse when they sub
tly, or often openly, demand that
police departments write more
fines. It’s putting men with guns on
public roads to extract money from
motorists, often for very minor and
petty infractions.
But towns destroy their reputa
tions with their own citizens and
across the state when they seek
to raise money from fines. Their
actions are transparent—everybody
knows the game being played.
Does Jefferson want to be the
next Arcade or Pendergrass?
We hope not.
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
Angela Gary Associate Editor
Jana Adams Mitcham Features Editor
Brandon Reed Sports Editor
Kerri Testement Reporter
Sharon Hogan Reporter
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letters
Concerned with action by Congress
that impacts manufacturing companies
Dear Editor,
As the president of a textile manufacturing
company, Buhler Quality Yarns Corp., I want to
alert members of this community to an issue in
Congress that is hurting companies like mine
and that will eventually lead to more plant
closures and job losses if it is not fixed. The
Miscellaneous Tariff Bill or MTB eliminates
tariffs, i.e. taxes, on foreign inputs that are not
made in the
United States. This helps U.S. manufacturers
to continue producing goods in the U.S. and
stay competitive in the global marketplace.
On December 31, 2009, however, hundreds
of these tariff suspensions expired, leaving
companies like mine facing increased taxes on
inputs critical to our manufacturing.
Typically, Congress passes an MTB every
three years, but recent developments in the
House of Representatives have placed its pas
sage in serious jeopardy.
Early in 2009, House Democratic leadership
issued a series of legislative rule changes, which
included reclassifying these tariff suspension
requests as earmarks. To complicate matters,
last month, the House Republican Conference
decided to oppose all forms of earmarks in leg
islation throughout the remainder of the year.
This combination of actions has put the MTB
in jeopardy as well as the tens of thousands of
manufacturing jobs that it supports.
Failure to pass the MTB is a missed oppor
tunity to create jobs in the United States. Each
day these tariffs remain in place, American
manufacturers lose.
Sincerely
Werner Bieri
President & CEO
Buhler Quality Yarns Corp
Jefferson
Georgia schools face a class struggle
One by one, the mem
bers of the state Board of
Education voted last week
to decide one of the most
important issues they will
ever face as they make
policy for Georgia’s pub
lic education system.
After discussing the
matter for half an hour
during a conference call,
the board members voted
9-2 to eliminate all restric
tions on the number of
students that can be put
into one classroom. For at least the next
school year, and probably for several years
after that, local school boards can put 35, 40
or 50 students in a class if they choose.
“We wouldn’t have the authority to tell
them no,” state school Supt. Kathy Cox
conceded.
Cox proposed the elimination of maximum
limits on class size as a response to the mas
sive spending reductions for public schools.
Education funding has been reduced by
more than $900 million in the state budget
for the upcoming fiscal year. Over the past
six years, the combined cutbacks in state
funding to local school systems totals nearly
$3 billion.
“We don’t have any choice - we didn’t give
them enough money,” Cox told the board
members. “We only are giving school sys
tems enough money to operate for 147 days
and telling them they have to operate 180
days. There’s got to be some give here.”
Cox won’t have to live with the conse
quences of her recommendation to expand
class sizes. She is quitting her job June 30
to work for a private education organization
in Washington, D.C.
The board’s vote, more than anything else,
represented a final victory for Gov. Sonny
Perdue in his long-running political feud
with Roy Barnes, the man Perdue defeated
in the 2002 governor’s race.
During his one term as governor, Barnes
signed an education reform package that
was based on the premise that reducing
class sizes would gradually improve the per
formance of Georgia’s students and teach
ers.
Perdue disagreed with that notion and
has said that smaller class sizes may help
students in grades K-3, but don’t have much
impact at the higher grade levels. Since he
took office in 2003, Perdue has proposed and
the Legislature has passed several bills that
delayed the implementation of the smaller
class sizes required by the education reform
act.
The Board of Education members who
voted to do away with all restrictions on
class size were all appointed to the board by
Perdue during his tenure as governor.
Barnes, who’s running for governor again
this year, lamented the board’s decision.
“They should be ashamed,” Barnes said.
“Furloughing and laying off teachers and
allowing the drastic increases in class sizes
while providing funding for special interest
tax breaks and fishing initiatives is not just
a failure in leadership, it is a failure in the
basic responsibility of state government.”
Class size is like the minimum wage issue.
You can find academic experts who will
assert that smaller class sizes are a good
thing, just as you can find experts who will
swear that exactly the opposite is true. The
argument over class sizes will go on for
years among our political factions.
Simple arithmetic does tell us this. Take
a teacher who is normally responsible for
28 students in a classroom. Have the local
school board raise that number of students
to 35 by voting for larger class sizes.
That teacher now has 25 percent more stu
dents to teach, which means that he or she
has 25 percent less time to devote to each
student who has a question or problem that
requires extra attention. That teacher has 25
percent more tests to grade and 25 percent
more homework assignments to check.
That teacher will also be getting a zero per
cent pay raise for handling this 25 percent
increase in the daily workload.
“Finances are one thing, but at some
point you’ve got to say, enough’s enough,”
said Jeff Hubbard, president of the Georgia
Association of Educators (GAE). “If you put
35, 36, 38 students together in one class
room, you’re going to have some kids fall
through the cracks.”
Who knows? Maybe Perdue is correct
and class size really doesn’t matter when it
comes to educating our students. We will
have a chance to test this proposition during
the upcoming school year.
Tom Crawford is the editor of The Georgia
Report, an Internet news service at www.
gareport.com that covers government and
politics in Georgia. He can be reached at
tcrawford@capitolimpact.net.
Stop the ‘blame
America first’ games
A MONG the anti-Obama folks, it’s
widely held that the president is
ashamed of the U.S. and is not patri
otic when it comes to the nation he leads.
That’s difficult to fathom — that a president
would be unpatriotic.
I’m not certain that his having talked about
America’s shortcomings is equivalent to being
unpatriotic. After all, this nation isn’t perfect
today, or historically. Our ancestors did treat
native American
Indians horribly (I
had people on both
sides of that issue);
and our abuse of
slavery and later,
Jim Crow laws, was
wrong.
Still, the presi
dent’s tone and
obvious worshipping
of European-style
collectivism does
put him in a light
of being less than
proud about the
individualistic aspects
of the American Ideal. The president likes big
government, centralized control, unions and
other institutions that favor the collective over
individual decision-making.
And there is, among the more radical political
Left that has undoubtedly influenced the presi
dent, a real belief that the U.S. is the source of
the world’s major problems.
In the elite Left circles, we are blamed for
terrorism since we “don’t understand” their
beliefs. The fringe Left also decries environ
mental problems and blames the U.S. for the
majority of world environmental issues (even as
some of those people fly on their own jets from
place to place.)
OK, we get it. America isn’t perfect.
But for all of those who have a blame-
America-first mentality consider this: To what
nation does the world look in times of crisis and
turmoil?
Don’t like U.S. politics? Then take a hike
across the border to Mexico and wave to all
those people struggling to get across going the
other direction. Cast your lot with Mexican poli
tics and let’s see if that suits you better. Or how
about China? Travel there and set up your little
blog about all those “radical right wingers” and
let’s see how long the Chinese government lets
you operate.
Think the U.S. needs to “understand” those
Muslim nations better? Ok, go right on over to
Saudi Arabia or any other conservative Muslim
state and do whatever you want. A woman?
Be prepared to cover your body in a carpet so
that no man ever looks at you again, except
for those who are allowed to rape you at will.
And don’t get too excited about education; in
some places, women aren’t allowed to attend
school. And if you’re a man, draw a picture of
Mohammed and see how long you live.
And in health issues, you don’t think
ObamaCare goes far enough? OK, jump on a
jet for London and make an appointment. Call
home when you finally get to see a doctor.
You don’t like all the fats and sugar and
chemicals and obesity and hate what fast food
represents? Fine, go to Africa and live among
those who eat dirt and die from a variety of
diseases.
You hate the McMansions of the suburbs and
think they reflect all that is shallow and wrong
with America? OK, go to the president’s father’s
home country of Kenya and seek out a Maasi
hut made of sticks and cow dung.
And you don’t like the American media, espe
cially that awful right-wing FOX news which you
hold in such contempt? OK, go to Russia where
the government controls the press and where
journalists are often killed when they begin to
expose corruption in local government.
No, America isn’t a perfect nation. Our histo
ry is rife with stupidity our politics is self-serving
and our culture is often shallow.
But it’s better than 90 percent of the rest of
the world where people live in fear; the fear of
starvation, the fear of natural disasters, the fear
of no knowledge and the fear of death if they
speak their minds or move outside the rigid
social rules under which they must live.
I don’t know how the president really feels
about the U.S. and its role in the world.
But for once, I’d like to see him stand up to
Iran and Mexico and China and the European
nations, all of whom whine and moan about
U.S. policies and politics, and defend our ideals
with strong words; tell those other nations that
from now on, they can solve their own prob
lems, protect their own borders, feed their own
people, recover from their own disasters and
save their own miserable economies.
The U.S. is flawed, but damn if I’m not tired of
how the rest of the world blames us for all their
problems, too.
Mike Buffington is editor of The Jackson Herald.
He can be reached at mike@mainstreetnews.com.
mike
buffington