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PAGE 4A THE JACKSON HERALD WEDNESDAY, MARCH 8, 2023 Opinions “Private opinion is weak, but public opinion is almost omnipotent. Henry Ward Beecher Mike Buffington, editor • Email: Mike@mainstreetnews.com Proposed legislation on secrecy goes too far A bill is currently making its way through the Georgia Legislature that has good intentions, but is fraught with lo gistical and ethical problems. SB215 and SB 176 would require the redaction of prop erty records for law enforcement other public officials in the state if a public employee requests the records be re dacted. The intent of the legislation is noble. The idea is to prevent the crazies of the world from finding the home address of a public official they wish to harm. One of the events that led to this pro posal in Georgia, and a number of other states, was the murder of a judge’s son in New Jersey by a man who found the judge’s home address online. Here in Georgia, some state and lo cal elections officials got threats from right-wing crazies after the 2020 elec tion, which some GOP officials claimed had been a stolen election (it wasn’t.) While the concept of protecting judicial officials is good, there are a number of problems associated with hiding property records of public officials: • State law already redacts personal information for public employees, if those records identify the person as a public employee. That includes personal phone numbers, social security numbers and a slew of other kinds of per sonal information. Since property ownership records don’t identify a person by their job or title, those aren’t included under the current law exemptions. • Allowing public employees to have their names redact ed from property records would hide important informa tion, such as when a public official doesn’t pay his property taxes, or when a public official owns property that might be associated with a pending rezoning issue. In theory, the proposed legislation would allow a public official to go through the rezoning process without anyone ever knowing who owned the property in question. In addition, a public official would be able to seek special property exemptions without that being publicly disclosed. • The law would presumably only apply to home address and not other property an official owns, but that isn’t very clear and could be a loophole that would allow for other properties to be hidden behind a veil of secrecy. • The logistics of redacting public officials’ names from property records would be difficult for clerks of court to do. Property records exist in books that are used by real estate people to research property titles, etc. I'm not sure how you can have a secret deed record that doesn’t have an owner’s name, or how to keep such records secret. In New Jersey, that state’s 2020 law about this was so complex, the state legislature there had to go back and clean it up, including creating a new state agency just to oversee the exemption process. • How would redacted records come back into the public domain once a person left public office or public employ ment? People don’t stay in public office forever, nor do public employees always work in public sector employ ment. It would be a logistical nightmare to keep up with all of that in a county clerk’s office and to go back and make secret property records public again. • Some state campaign laws require candidates for public office to disclose their property ownership. This proposed law would be in direct conflict with that and with the idea of transparency for public officials and those seeking pub lic office. • Even if this law is passed, there are other ways people can locate the homes of public officials. In small towns, that kind of information is common knowledge. And with social media, there is a lot of personal information people broadcast about themselves. Making property deed records secret won’t solve any of that. • SB 176 would make it a criminal offense to disclose the home address of judicial officials or law enforcement officials if the “intent” is to cause harassment, or is done with “reckless disregard.” That means that a reporter could be charged with a crime for publishing the home address of a judicial official even if that is done within the bounds of legitimate reporting. If, for example, there were a domes tic dispute at the residence of a judge that showed up in a law enforcement incident or arrest report, disclosing the address of the incident could be used to arrest the reporter who wrote the story. • •• While everyone would agree that public officials shouldn’t be the target of harassment or harm, these pro posed bills are overly broad and would create a multitude of problems and wouldn’t solve the larger issue. Public of ficials don’t just exist at their homes, they’re also out in public and could be subject to harassment in other places — restaurants, grocery stores, and on the sidewalk. If the goal is to prevent harm or harassment of public officials, especially law enforcement or judicial officials, then legislation should focus on that regardless of where it takes place. Making property records secret for public officials is bridge too far. Mike Buffington is co-publisher of Mainstreet Newspa pers. He can be reached at mike@mainstreetnews.com. Marjorie Taylor Greene ascends in GOP because of stupidity, not in spite of it By Jay Bookman Georgia Recorder Marjorie Taylor Greene is an idiot, and idiots, as a rule, aren’t interesting people. They aren’t interesting because their idiocy overshadows all other aspects of their per sonality. Greene is more an exemplar of that rule than an exception to it. Nonetheless, in their wisdom, the voters in Georgia’s 14th Congressional District have elected Greene as their U.S. repre sentative, and it’s probably necessary to point out that they’ve now done it twice. They made that choice in 2020 - in both a contested primary and a general election — then last fall they confirmed it, rejecting a qualified, competent challenger by almost a two-to-one margin. Very well. More than 775,000 people live in the 14th District, and if they have con cluded that Greene is the best person to rep resent that district’s interests and values, if they think she’s the best and brightest they have to offer the country, then they have the right to make that choice. As just one of 435 members of Congress, what harm could she do, right? But here’s where Greene does begin to get interesting, not in her own right but in what her existence and prominence tells us about our political culture. In her brief time in the public eye, Greene has uttered a long string of absurdities that rank among the dumbest things ever said by an elected of ficial in our nation’s history, from alleging that Jews used space lasers to start Califor nia forest fires so they could buy the land cheaply to her most recent campaign call ing for a “national divorce,” with red states separating from blue states. Such a divorce, she claims, is “a neces sary reality because of our irreconcilable differences,” and those who disagree must be “totally disconnected from real Ameri cans and how they think & feel.” She then reeled off a long list of steps that such a divorce would enable, including the ob servation that blue states would be free to eliminate the national anthem and pledge of allegiance while red states could “require every student to stand for the national an them and pledge of allegiance.” That would be the pledge that speaks of “one nation ... indivisible.” Because of such stupidity - not despite it, but actually because of it - Greene has been elevated by the Republican Party to prominent positions in the hierarchy of the party and in Congress. She now serves on the House Oversight Committee, one of the more visible platforms the party can offer, and also on the Committee on Homeland Security, where no doubt she can be most effective in her campaign to protect us from Jewish space lasers. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has gone so far as to pledge his eternal devotion to Greene, telling friends “I will never leave that woman. I will always take care of her,” and Greene herself seems to be positioning herself as a running mate to Donald Trump if he wins the Republican nomination, and even if he doesn’t. Greene’s growing prominence is further proof that the Republican Party has forfeit ed the ability to defend itself against stu pidity. It has become a party in which even its nominally brightest and best-educated, those with advanced degrees from the na tion’s most prestigious universities, must feign a level of ignorance that would get you flunked from a ninth-grade civics class. In this case, almost no one in the GOP has dared to challenge the insanity of Greene’s proposal, because confronting insanity in that party has become the pathway to irrel evance. Bad ideas that are not confronted and challenged become stronger; silence is taken as acquiescence, which in fact it is. We also see evidence of that weakness in the recent release of internal emails from Fox News that were written during the GOP’s effort to overturn the 2020 elec tion. Those emails, made public through a defamation lawsuit, make it clear that Fox personalities such as Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham knew full well that Trump’s fraud claims were not merely false but ludicrous on their face, “Sidney Powell is a bit nuts,” Ingraham said in an email to her colleagues. “Sidney Powell is lying,” Carlson said in another, calling the allegations “absurd.” Another Fox executive referred to Rudy Giuliani as “unhinged ... has been for a while. I think booze has got him.” Even Fox owner Rupert Murdoch, after watching Giuliani on a Fox show, sent an internal email describing the former may or’s allegations as “really crazy stuff.” Yet they did not dare to tell the truth - they did not dare to confront the stupidity, because for too long they had promoted the stupidity and encouraged the stupidity and profited from the stupidity. They admitted to each other in those emails that telling their viewers the truth - that Joe Biden won, and there was no evidence of voter fraud — would destroy the Fox News business mod el that was making them all rich. Out of “respect” for their audience, they told each other, they had to play along. I’m sorry. You don’t “respect” your au dience when you tell them things that you know aren’t true just so you can keep milk ing them for ratings and ad dollars. That’s like saying a con artist “respects” his vic tim. Those emails reveal the Fox stars as venal as Greene is stupid, which is about the worst thing you could say about people on both sides of that equation. Jay Bookman covered Georgia and na tional politics for nearly 30 years for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, earning nu merous national, regional and state jour nalism awards. He has been awarded the National Headliner Award and the Walker Stone Award for outstanding editorial writ ing, and is the only two-time winner of the Pulliam Fellowship granted by the Society of Professional Journalists. He is also the author of “Caught in the Current,” pub lished by St. Martin’s Press. Ronnie Green’s Gift By Ronda Rich A few days ago, I went by the hos pital to visit with a close friend, whose mother was ailing something terrible. That particular hospital has grown into quite a monstrosity since I was born there when it was a small three-story square hospital. I cost $96 and still have the receipt - paid in full - and the little identification band from my tiny wrist. That was costly to Mama and Dad dy when you consider the price of their births in the mountains. Doctors were a long distance away on a mule and, with no telephones, they couldn’t be called. Both were delivered by self-taught midwives and paid with what the folks had. Mama cost a sack of fresh ly dug potatoes. Daddy’s midwife re ceived two jars of blackberry jelly. In hospitals today, naming rights - for a great deal of money - are embla zoned across cancer units, libraries, chapels, auditoriums and anything that can be named. That day, I stopped at a nurses’ station in the center of a floor to ask direction. Five nurses were busy, checking charting, typing into com puters and making calls. I asked for the room number and as the nice woman clicked the keys on her device, I looked over to the wall and saw the names of two men whom I knew for years before they died about 10 years apart. Nice men who had given a lot to their community and, apparently, had been generous to the hospital. For this particular story, I will change the name to prevent any feelings from be ing hurt. “George Garrison,” I said, reading off the name. “Wonderful man. Do you know who he was?" The young woman shook her head. The other staff stopped to listen. “Do y’all?” Not one did. “He made a lot of money as an attor ney then used it to help others.” I then told the story - because Southerners can never stop with one remark - that Tink and I were in Baton Rouge, LA where he was filming a television se ries when I read that George had died. Just all a’sudden. I called the news paper and asked, “What happened to George Garrison?” The sweet reporter, who had writ ten the front-page story, said shyly, “I don’t know. When I talked to the fam ily, I didn’t want to intrude.” Seriously. But she was genuinely kind about it. I called my beauty shop and asked Sandy, “What happened to George Garrison?” “His heart,” she replied, giving a summary of his final days. I called the writer back with my detailed report. “If you need to know anything else, call the beauty shop.” Now, I stood at the nurses’ station where they looked at his name every day but no one had questioned who he was and why a wing was named after him. Here’s another person - real name - who I hope is never forgotten. Ron nie Green, an only child who never married, worked for his parents’ tiny grocery story. Short, bald-headed and kind, he always wore a butcher’s apron because he worked the meat counter. He doubled as the delivery guy and, many times, I passed the store as he was taking a woman’s gro ceries to the car as he chatted merrily. In his early 50s, the much-loved Ronnie succumbed to a heart attack. In the aftermath of grief and shock, his parents discovered that Ronnie played the stock market and had amassed a few million dollars. This was about 30 years ago. They donated it to the hospital to build a much-needed cardiac unit. They wanted to spare others a simi lar profound loss. Some of the finest cardiac specialists were engaged. Countless lives have been saved at the Ronnie Green Heart Center. May Ronnie Green never be for gotten. A butcher who doubled as a bag boy is responsible for thousands of lives saved and many more made better. From a simple, humble man came life-changing moments for masses. Isn’t that wonderful? Ronda Rich is the best-selling au thor of What Southern Women Know (That Every Woman Should). Visit www.rondarich.com to sign up for her free newsletter. Your one- ® stop site to E search your community's ^ public notices as well as other notices from across L the state. GEORGIA NOTICE.COM The Jackson Herald Founded 1875 Merged with The Commerce News 2017 The Official Legal Organ of Jackson County, Ga. Herman Buffington, Publisher 1965-2005 Mike Buffington Scott Buffington. Alex Buffington. Hannah Barron... Taylor Heam Co-Publisher Co-Publisher .News Editor Reporter Sports Editor Postmaster: Send Address Changes To: MainStreet Newspapers, Inc. PO Box 908 Jefferson, Georgia 30549-0908 Web Site: www.JacksonHeraldTODAY.com Email: mike@mainstreetnews.com Voice: 706.367.5233 Fax:708.621.4117 (news) Periodical Postage paid at Jefferson, GA 30549 (SCED 271980) Yearly Subscriptions: $45 / $40 for seniors
