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OPINION
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gainesvilletimes.com
Thursday, December 6, 2018
Shannon Casas Editor in Chief | 770-718-3417 | scasas@gainesvilletimes.com
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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
Here we go
again with ‘he
said, she said’
Tom Baxter’s editorial Wednesday went on in
detail about voting issues in NC.
He quoted the Democratic vice-chairman of
Bladen County saying “... has been repeatedly
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.”
Finally Baxter concludes, “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.”
Well, here we go again. Yes, his information
from the Democrats, if correct, looks like it is a
bit messy at best up there. Not as bad as Broward
County, Florida, of course.
The problem is no one has been charged with
anything despite being “repeatedly referred”
for investigation. Maybe there was not much to
investigate.
Mr. Baxter does not stop there of course, he
goes on to use the accusations made to “con
clude” that it is going on elsewhere.
So, if Republicans accuse Democrats of help
ing people fill out their ballots in some backwater
county, then we conclude the Democrats are
doing it elsewhere?
What the heck ever happened to let’s get the
charges at least before we declare guilt. Better
yet, wait for the trial to end.
David Long
Gainesville
Heed scientist warnings before
it’s too late for us all, please
The fourth National Climate Assessment was
just released, and it issued dire warnings about
climate change.
The report is mandated by law every few
years. Hundreds of scientists and officials from
13 government agencies wrote the report based
on the best scientific evidence.
The report emphasizes that climate change is
due to humans causing an increase in greenhouse
gases. The report says that without greenhouse
gases, natural forces — such as changes in
energy from the sun — would be slightly cooling
Earth.
The report warns that, by the end of this cen
tury, temperatures are expected to warm about
8.2 degrees F if we take no action. It also says
that, without rapid action, we will have heavier
precipitation events, a marked increase in sea
levels with high tide flooding events along the
U.S. coastline, ocean acidification and warming,
crop loss, and an increase in forest fires in the
western United States and Alaska. All this will
result in economic losses in the hundreds of bil
lions of dollars annually by 2100 with up to a 10
percent decrease in our GDP.
Yes, this is very dangerous to us and even
more so to future generations — those are your
children and my children and our grandchildren.
And yes, it is due to the burning of fossil fuels,
despite what others may claim. It seems to me
that, if our government ordered an exhaustive
test to understand climate change, we should
heed its warnings while there is still time.
The good news is that we actually can solve
this problem. Economic studies show that a
national revenue neutral carbon fee and divi
dend plan will actually grow our economy and
put more money back into the average Ameri
can’s pocketbook while at the same time being
the best means to combat climate change.
The Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend
Act, H.R. 7173, was just introduced in Congress.
This bill, with joint Republican and Democratic
sponsorship, will do just that. This represents
America’s best chance to change the course of
history and control climate change. I hope and
pray that we will heed the warnings of our best
scientists and do the morally right thing.
Vernon Dixon
Hiawassee
Your government officials
Hall County government
Board of Commissioners, 2875 Browns Bridge
Road, Gainesville, RO. 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
Marshal’s Office, P.O. Drawer 1435, Gainesville,
770-531-6762
Elections Office, 2875 Browns Bridge Road,
Gainesville, 770-531-6945, elections®
hallcounty.org
Sheriff’s Office, Sheriff Gerald Couch, 610
Main St., Gainesville, 770-531 -6885, www.
hallcountysheriffsoffice.org
Fire Department, 470 Crescent Drive, Gainesville,
770-531 -6838, www.hallcounty.org/fireservices
The media wants the public s
trust — they have to earn it
At lunch the other day, a
friend — an old Marine who
will soon turn 80 — informed
me that originality is dead.
“Nothing is new,” he said.
“Everything that’s happening
now has happened before. ”
At the intersection of politics
and media, he has a point. The
alarmist anti-Trump media
likes to say that things have
never been this bad.
You know what’s bad? Peo
ple’s memories. It’s Groundhog
Day in America. It feels like we’ve been
here before — even if neither party admits
it. When a politician on your team comes
up with an idea, we declare that no one
has ever come up with anything this good.
When a politician on the rival team does
anything, we insist that no one has ever
been this bad.
You know what else is bad? The media’s
reputation. In the Trump era, not many
folks in my line of work are known for
their fairness and objectivity. The media
could restore much of the public’s trust
by admitting that much of what they find
shocking is actually quite familiar.
For example, when reporting on a new
trade deal with Canada and Mexico that
looks a lot like the old trade deal with
Canada and Mexico, why can’t reporters
make that point — but then follow up by
pointing out that repacking policy initia
tives is hardly new.
They could mention that President
Barack Obama did the same thing when
he essentially Xeroxed many of President
George W. Bush’s policies for combating
terrorism? In fact, federal judges would
scratch their heads over the fact that — in
defending domestic surveil
lance — the briefs from the
Obama Justice Department so
closely resembled those of the
Bush Justice Department.
And, if the claim is that
Trump simply re-branded the
North American Free Trade
Agreement without changing
much of the content, then why
not mention that Obama did
much the same thing when he
scuttled the educational law,
“No Child Left Behind” — and
replaced it with his own educational ini
tiative, “Race to the Top?” There wasn’t
much of a difference. The former pushed
accountability by threatening to close
underperforming schools, while the latter
pushed accountability by offering financial
initiatives to over-performing ones.
Putting all this on the table provides con
text. In the bygone days of what we used
to call journalism, it was considered tell
ing the whole story. It was fair. But it was
also closer to the only thing journalists are
meant to chase: the truth.
Context changes a minor story from
what one president is doing wrong into a
major story about what’s wrong with our
political system.
In a more recent example, anti-Trump
forces heaped criticism on the Fox News
morning show “Fox & Friends” after
it emerged that the show’s producers
choreographed interviews with former
Environmental Protection Agency admin
istrator Scott Pruitt. Pruitt was often given
the questions ahead of time, allowed to
choose the topics, and even given script
approval.
We learned all this from emails
revealed in a Freedom of Information Act
request by the Sierra Club and confirmed
by The Daily Beast.
It was an egregious breach of journal
istic ethics. Thankfully, Pruitt is now out
of office. But still, all those interviews are
now tainted.
Yet the stunt was not exactly original.
We’ve seen this movie before, where
journalists get too cozy and give away the
store to folks they’re interviewing. They go
from doing the public good to doing public
relations.
If the media is really bothered by
what the Fox producers did with regard
to Pruitt, then they should have been
just as bothered at what came out from
WikiLeaks, in October 2016, about how
Glenn Thrush — then a reporter for Polit
ico — likewise broke the rules in cozying
up to John Podesta. According to emails
between the two men, Thrush shared a
story pre-publication with Podesta and
then begged the campaign chairman for
Hillary Clinton not to tell anyone about it.
He even called himself a “hack.”
There wasn’t much of an outcry over
that earlier sin against journalism. Why
not? You know why not.
Fox News Channel says that it is “disci
plining” the producers who coddled Pruitt.
Thrush wasn’t disciplined for coddling
Podesta; he went on to a prestigious report
ing job at The New York Times, which
was jeopardized when female reporters
claimed he had acted improperly at differ
ent points in his career.
No wonder the public has so little faith
in us. What have we done to earn it?
Ruben Navarrette writes for The
Washington Post Writers Group.
RUBEN
NAVARRETTE
ruben@
rubennavarrette.com
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Thinking about what’s right in America
Amid this holiday season
of reflection, I’m thinking
about America’s future.
A new poll from Gallup
serves up some sobering data
regarding how young Ameri
cans feel about their country.
Gallup asked the question,
“Do you think the U.S. has a
unique character that makes
it the greatest country in the
world, or don’t you think so?”
Eighty percent said “yes,” America is
the greatest country, in 2010 and 78 per
cent said yes in 2018.
However, among 18- to 34-year-olds, 80
percent said yes in 2010 but this dropped
by 18 percentage points in 2018 to 62
percent.
It’s troubling to think that now 4 out
of 10 young Americans do not see their
nation as exceptional and the greatest in
the world.
Maybe there is a sense creeping into
our youth that America is no longer the
land of opportunity that it once was.
In a 2017 Pew Research Global Atti
tudes and Trends survey, only 37 percent
of Americans said they believed so when
asked, “When children today grow up, will
they be better off financially than their
parents?” This compared with 82 percent
in China (in 2016), 69 percent in Chile and
50 percent in Israel.
According to recent data from the
Brookings Institution, just 50
percent of those born in 1984
earn more than their parents,
compared with 61 percent of
those born in 1970 and 79 per
cent of those born in 1950.
But if America’s youth
are losing a sense that this
is a land of dreams, this
sentiment doesn’t seem to be
shared by the million immi
grants who arrive in the U.S.
every year.
According to a new study by the
National Foundation for American Policy,
55 percent of privately held startup com
panies in the U.S. now worth more than a
billion dollars were started by immigrants
from 25 different countries.
The study reports that the collective
value of these firms founded by immi
grants is $248 billion and each company
employs an average of 1,200 people.
Most of these immigrant entrepreneurs
came to the U.S. to study as international
students and chose to stay and become cit
izens. However, some arrived as refugees
and were sponsored by family members.
This all tells me that America is still a
land of dreams and opportunity. Are there
things wrong with this country? Certainly.
But there still is plenty that is right.
Those who choose to uproot from
nations all over the world to come here
and start their lives anew are interested in
what is right, not what is wrong.
I like this quote from former TV person
ality Art Linkletter, who observed, “Things
turn out the best for the people who make
the best of the way things turn out. ”
There’s an important point here. Suc
cess is not just about one’s circumstances,
but also what is happening inside of each
individual — one’s character.
The holidays are a good time to think
about this.
I suggest two things. First, let’s look at
what is right about America. And second,
let every American ask themselves if they
truly believe they are the best they can be,
and if not, why not?
Let’s each take personal responsibil
ity to make ourselves and our country as
great as possible and stop thinking that it’s
others and circumstances that block our
path.
I think the nation would soar, even with
the things that are wrong, if all Americans
got out of bed each morning with the sense
that what happens to them is not because
of anything but what they themselves
choose to do. And, if at the same time, we
related to ourselves and everyone else as
created in the image of God.
We all would discover how much power
each of us has and we all would discover
how great America is, because it is free.
Star Parker is an author and president of the
Center for Urban Renewal and Education and
a columnist for Creators.
STAR PARKER
www.urbancure.org
She Stines
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