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OPINION
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gainesvilletimes.com
Wednesday, December 5, 2018
Shannon Casas Editor in Chief | 770-718-3417
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scasas@gainesvilletimes.com
The First Amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right
of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
LITERS
President not
blameless in
tariff spat
I subscribe to several online newspapers and
find posted comments interesting. The comments
concerning the announced closures of several GM
plants demonstrated several misunderstandings
about our economy.
Most of the posts blamed President Trump for
the entire situation. I believe this is a simplifica
tion of the situation.
At least some of these closures were going to
happen with or without Trump. Ford and Fiat
Chrysler have already cut sedan models from
future offerings. Americans are not buying as
many sedans. Before Monday’s announcement,
the Lordstown, Ohio, plant had already eliminated
two shifts and 3,000 jobs. It was only a matter of
time before the plant was shut.
Though the macroeconomic trends are not
favorable for segments of the American auto
industry, some of the blame for the rapidity of
these changes can be attributed to President
Trump’s policies. He is not blameless.
Protective tariffs for U.S. steel and aluminum
have raised the cost of building vehicles here. U.S.
steel is now the most expensive steel in the world.
Protective tariffs make foreign steel more expen
sive and the intention of those tariffs is to encour
age American industries to purchase American
steel and aluminum.
American producers raised their prices
because those tariffs made imported steel expen
sive. There was no benefit to the consumer or the
auto industry. In addition, China has retaliated
with 25 percent protective tariffs on U.S.-built
vehicles.
The result of those tariffs meant that building
vehicles in the United States became more expen
sive and it also meant that these expensive vehi
cles would be taxed 25 percent when exported to
China, which is the largest vehicle market in the
world.
In 2017, China produced 25 million passenger
cars. By comparison the United States produced
3,033,216 passenger cars.
In short, American auto companies have to shift
production to China. The market is larger than
ours and that is where the profits are.
The economic forces at play are complicated
and cannot be totally explained in a short letter.
My hope is that this letter encourages others to
research this topic. We need informed citizens and
we need our government to make better decisions.
Lesson one is that trade wars are not easy to
win.
Jimmy O’Neill
Cleveland
Be constructive rather than
placing blame for losing elections
When things don’t go our way, it is human
nature to look around for someone or something
to blame other than ourselves. That is exactly
what is happening now following our recent gov
ernor’s election.
How about the losers making some constructive
criticisms to improve the process for next time
rather than throwing sour grapes at the winners
or the process.
Jim Waldrep
Lula
Your government officials
What’s strange in one area might
be going on somewhere else, too
After all the talk of voter
fraud and ballot integrity
before this election, the race
for the last seat in Congress has
indeed come down to charges
of election tampering.
The figures at the center of
this controversy are not shad
owy illegal immigrants, but a
Baptist preacher and the vice
chair of the Bladen County,
N.C., Soil and Water Conserva
tion District board.
The preacher, and past
president of the North Carolina Baptist
State Convention, is Republican Mark Har
ris. He ran for the U.S. Senate in 2014, then
set his sights on an incumbent Republican
congressman, Robert Pittinger.
In 2016, he lost his primary challenge by
134 votes, and earlier this year defeated
Pittinger by 828 votes. He appeared to be
a 905-vote winner in the general election
over Democrat Dan McCready last month.
But last week the state elections board,
which is divided evenly among four Demo
crats, four Republicans and one indepen
dent, unanimously refused to certify the
election. The board cited potential voter
fraud in the absentee ballots from Bladen
and Robeson counties, on the eastern side
of the 9th Congressional District, which
runs along the state line with South Caro
lina all the way to the Charlotte suburbs.
The board plans to hold an evidentiary
hearing by Dec. 21, and has the power to
call another election if warranted.
The vice-chair is a Bladen County
politico named McCrae Dowless, who has
managed voter turnout operations for sev
eral campaigns, including Harris this year.
In 2016, Dowless accused a
Democratic group of a “blatant
scheme” to influence the elec
tion through the manipulation
of absentee ballots. Republican
Gov. Pat McCrary, who was in
the process of losing his own
election, quickly publicized the
charges as evidence of “a mas
sive voting fraud scheme.”
Two years later, Dowless —
who has served a brief prison
sentence for life insurance
fraud — is linked in some of
the affidavits gathered by Democrats to an
operation in which hired campaign work
ers went door to door handing out absentee
ballots and offering to complete them for
voters.
There’s a strange sense of imperma
nence surrounding this story.
The state elections board has been
declared unconstitutional in a suit brought
by Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, and
is being held together by the legislature
only because it’s in the middle of this
controversy.
The Democratic chair of the board
resigned over the weekend to avoid contro
versy over some tweets he’d written about
President Trump. The current map for the
9th District has also been ruled unconstitu
tional, but was allowed by a federal court
to remain in place through the November
election. Dowless’ name doesn’t appear on
Harris’ financial reports because he was
an independent contractor for the Red
Dome Group, which according to one story
has been dissolved by the North Carolina
secretary of state.
What is solid are the numbers, and they
don’t add up. Michael Bitzer, a Catawba
College professor, ran the numbers and
found that to get the absentee vote he got
out of Bladen County, Harris would have to
have received the votes of all the Repub
licans, nearly all the unaffiliated and
even some of the Democrats. There were
other statistical irregularities as well. The
percentage of unreturned ballots issued to
minorities in Bladen and Robeson counties
was far higher than the state average.
Harris and other Republicans have
argued there are not enough votes
involved in the allegations to change the
outcome of the election. But this was a
razor-thin vote, and it has brought absentee
voting, which has gotten short shrift in
the larger debate over voter fraud, into
sharper focus.
On closer inspection, some of the same
statistical irregularities have shown up in
the numbers from Harris’ primary victory
over Pittinger earlier this year, and even in
their 2016 race. Pittinger has said his cam
paign was “fully aware” there were “unsa
vory people” in Bladen County. Joshua
Malcolm, the Democratic vice-chair of the
election board who lives in the district, said
the fraudulent activity “has been ongoing
for a number of years... has been repeat
edly referred to the United States attorney
and district attorneys to take action and
clean it up. In my opinion those things have
not taken place.”
If something like this has been going on
in one corner of North Carolina for years,
it’s likely to have been going on elsewhere.
Tom Baxter is a veteran Georgia journal
ist who writes for The Saporta Report.
TOM BAXTER
tom@saporta
report.com
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U.S. government
President Donald Trump, The White House, 1600
Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20500,
202-456-1111,202-456-1414, fax, 202-456-
2461; www.whitehouse.gov
Sen. Johnny Isakson, 131 Russell Senate Office
Building, Washington, DC 20510,202-224-3643,
fax, 202-228-0724; One Overton Park, 3625
Cumberland Blvd., Suite 970, Atlanta 30339, 770-
661-0999, fax, 770-661-0768; isakson.senate.gov
Sen. David Perdue, 383 Russell Senate Office
Building, Washington, DC 20510,202-224-
3521, fax 202-228-1031; 3280 Peachtree Road
NE Suite 2640, Atlanta 30303, 404-865-0087,
fax 404-865-0311; perdue.senate.gov.
U.S. Rep. Doug Collins, 1504 Longworth House Office
Building, Washington, DC 20515,202-225-9893;
210 Washington St. NW, Suite 202, Gainesville
30501.770- 297-3388; dougcollins.house.gov
U.S. Rep Rob Woodall, 1725 Longworth House
Office Building, Washington, DC 20515, 202-
225-4272, fax 202-225-4696; 75 Langley Drive,
Lawrenceville 30045, 770-232-3005, fax 770-
232-2909; woodall.house.gov
Hall County government
Board of Commissioners, 2875 Browns Bridge
Road, Gainesville, P.O. Drawer 1435, Gainesville
30503.770- 535-8288, www.hallcounty.org.
Chairman Richard Higgins, rhiggins@hallcounty.
org; District 1, Kathy Cooper, kcooper@hallcounty.
org; District 2, Billy Powell, bpowell@hallcounty.
org; District 3, Scott Gibbs, sgibbs@hallcounty.
org; District 4, Jeff Stowe, jstowe@hallcounty.org.
County Administrator, Jock Connell, jconnell@
hallcounty.org
Planning Commission, 2875 Browns Bridge Road,
Gainesville, 770-531-6809.
Tax Commissioner’s Office, 2875 Browns Bridge
Road, P.O. Box 1579, Gainesville 30503, 770-
531 -6950, taxcommissioner@hallcounty.org
Tax Assessor’s Office, 2875 Browns Bridge Road,
Gainesville 30504, rswatson@hallcounty.org.
Real estate property, P.O. Box 2895, Gainesville
30503, 770-531-6720; personal property, P.O.
Box 1780, Gainesville 30503, 770-531 -6749
Public Works, 2875 Browns Bridge Road,
Gainesville, 770-531-6800, krearden@hallcounty.
org
Much can be learned from George H.W. Bush
There are a few movie
scenes guaranteed to put a
lump in my throat every time.
Near the top of the list is the
end of “Saving Private Ryan,”
Steven Spielberg’s World War
II masterpiece.
Earlier, in a climactic
battle scene, a dying Capt.
Miller (Tom Hanks) tells Pvt.
Ryan (Matt Damon) to “earn
this, earn it.” Translation:
Live a life worthy of the sacrifice
so many made for you.
In the final scene, decades later, an
elderly Ryan visits Miller’s grave in Nor
mandy, France, and tells the headstone
that he’s remembered Miller’s plea every
day since. “I hope that at least in your
eyes, I’ve earned what all of you have
done for me. ” He then turns to his wife and
beseeches her, “Tell me I’m a good man.”
The scene keeps coming to mind since
the news of George H.W. Bush’s death at
the age of 94.
Bush, who enlisted right after high
school, was at one time the youngest Navy
pilot in World War II. He was shot down,
losing comrades in the process.
He didn’t like to talk about the experi
ence. Even when it would have helped
him politically, as when he was running
against an Arkansas governor who assid
uously avoided the draft, or when elite
journalists described him as a “wimp.”
Bush told his speechwriters to leave out
the details of his own war stories, partly
because he didn’t want to seem boastful,
but mostly because he didn’t want to cry.
Bush was surely a good man before he
enlisted, but he spent the rest of his life
as if he were trying to earn the sacrifice
others made.
The author David Brooks
has written a lot about dif
ferences between “resume
virtues” and “eulogy virtues.”
The former is what you put on
your professional bio, Linke-
dln page or CV; the latter is
what you hope people who
knew you will say about you
when you’re gone.
For understandable reasons,
much coverage of the former
president has focused on his resume: pilot,
Yalie, oilman, congressman, ambassador
to the United Nations and China, head of
the CIA, vice president and president.
But if you listened to those who knew
him best, they tended to eulogize him.
Former aides described him as the best
person they knew, a man who made
everyone around him want to be better
by following his example.
American presidents tend to fit two
molds: transformative leaders and tran
sitional ones.
Transformative presidents seek to
radically alter the status quo, either out
of political necessity or psychological
ambition. They prefer to keep the out
box on their desk full.
Transitional presidents see them
selves as stewards of stability. They
greet the challenges that pile up in their
inbox as they materialize, rather than
looking for systemic reforms.
Ronald Reagan was a transformative
president. Ideologically he was much
more conservative than Bush.
But temperamentally, Bush was more
conservative. Much like George Washing
ton and Calvin Coolidge, Bush viewed the
presidency primarily as an august mana
gerial position in a system where leaders
inspire by example, not by rhetoric.
“No president, no government can
teach us to remember what is best in what
we are,” Bush declared in his inaugural
address. His job was to encourage Ameri
cans to be their best selves in service to
each other, and to lead by example.
This is why Bush was so well-suited
to being Reagan’s successor. If the Gip-
per was the battering ram, Bush was the
clean-up operation. He fixed the savings
and loan crisis, signed the Clean Air Act,
cleared Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait
and put a bow on the dangerously messy
aftermath of the Cold War.
On election night 1988, he was at a
party in Houston, watching the returns.
As Fox News’ Brit Hume recounts, when
the news arrived that Bush won, having
recovered from a 17-point deficit, Bush’s
motorcade was waiting outside to take
him to a victory celebration. The first
thing Bush did? Help clean the dishes.
Bush lost his re-election bid for many
reasons. But the most important factor
was that the American people, liberated
from the Cold War, had a hunger for trans
formation. Bill Clinton vowed sweeping
change, even though he fell back into tran
sitional mode when it suited his interests.
Our hunger for transformative presi
dents, for “outsiders” to save America,
has only intensified. The sad irony is that
if salvation is what we need, it will come
only when Americans themselves take to
heart the example of this good man.
Jonah Goldberg is an editor-at-large of
National Review Online and a visiting fellow
at the American Enterprise Institute.
JONAH GOLDBERG
goldbergcolumn@
gmail.com
She Stines
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