About The times. (Gainesville, Ga.) 1972-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 19, 2020)
OPINION Sttnes gainesvilletimes.com Wednesday, February 19, 2020 Shannon Casas Editor in Chief | 770-718-3417 | scasas@gainesvilletimes.com Submit a letter: letters@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 Yes, Gainesville Middle is a safe school As the father of an eighth grade daughter at Gainesville Middle School, I was disappointed in The Times article from Sunday, Feb. 9, titled, “Is Gainesville Middle School safe?” I’ll start by answering what a lot of parents thought was an inciteful headline with an enthu siastic “yes, it is safe.” I could introduce you to a hundred GMS parents that would tell of their posi tive experience. The entire article seemed to be based on a few out of context stats and comments from anony mous sources. The article referenced 167 fights, but most of these incidents are minor occurrences common among adolescents, the large number simply a factor of GMS being a large school. Sug gesting that this is indicative of systematic issues is inconsistent with the experiences of my family and most of the families I know. A few paragraphs after citing the troubling number of reported incidents at GMS, the article then proceeds to accuse GMS of not reporting incidents. This inconsistency suggests that the direction of the story was pre-decided and then “evidence” sought that would hopefully lead read ers to that pre-determined narrative. Fights and bullying occur at GMS, just like fights and bullying occur at every middle school. We need to continue to improve, but I think the suggestion of systematic issues that don’t exist at other schools is inaccurate. I do know that the increased number of reported incidents in recent years that was cited is due to the school being much more aggressive in reporting even minor incidents in an effort to make the school better. It was also disappointing that much of the arti cle was based on comments from a few anony mous teachers at a school with a couple hundred faculty members. Most of my daughter’s teachers have been great, and I know it is hard to work with middle schoolers all day. But if there are problems to be solved, we need everyone to work together to deal with them head on. People making anony mous and hard to substantiate accusations to the newspaper seems to fall under the category of “do you want to be part of the solution or just part of the problem?” In our experience, GMS administrators have always been responsive and willing to do what ever it takes to serve students and teachers. I look forward to continuing to work with our parents, teachers and administrators to keep GMS a fantas tic place for our young people to learn and grow. Proud Gainesville Middle School parent, Doug Terry Gainesville Let’s pay attention to money wasted by government The stock market has been great for those invested in it. Many Americans are on fixed incomes or are working hard to make ends meet. All should be concerned with wasteful govern ment spending, in our city, county, state and nation. Contrary to what President Trump pledged in his campaign, the annual deficit has exploded to $1 trillion and the national debt has increased to $23 trillion. The administration and Congress seem not to care. Several Trump cabinet members abused spend ing, are now gone, but other waste continues. One relatively small example of wasteful spending is on travel. All presidents need and deserve time away from the office. Trump, as a candidate, criticized President Obama for being lazy and spending too much time on the golf courses with friends and said he should be working more. Trump promised to rarely leave the White House, work harder and cut back on wasteful travel. Here are some data: Since taking office, Trump has made over 50 visits to his properties, according to a Washington Post article, and has spent almost 250 of his days at his golf courses, according to trumpgolfcount.com. During his entire eight years, Obama spent a total $96 million on travel, an average of $12 mil lion/year, according to the Post — a lot of money but modest in comparison with other presidents. He golfed on mostly public and military bases. In just one month in 2017, Trump spent almost $14 million for travel, according to the Intelli gencer. With over 24 trips to Mar-A-Lago, at an average cost of $3.4 million, according to an NPR report of a Government Accountability Office document, the cost is more than $80 million so far — but is still a small fraction of the total Trump travel cost. Additional local security costs in Florida alone have already approached $14 million, according to the Palm Beach Post. Travel costs to all golf courses have been esti mated at over $125 million as of late 2019, accord ing to trumpgolfcount.com; golf cart rentals alone were about $600,000. Trump added $60 million to his travel budget in 2019. Extrapolated to eight years, these costs would be in the range of $350 million, over 31/2 times that of Obama’s. Most of these trips are to his own properties, so Trump is further enriching himself with your money. Do you know that taxpayers also pay for his sons’ many business trips overseas, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars each? It’s no wonder then that his administration is fighting public disclosure of his travel expenses. Quibble with the numbers if you wish, the cen tral message remains: He is a hypocrite and is spending multiple times what Obama did on travel. He has been out of office more hours and days than just about all presidents preceding him. He rarely comes to his office prior to 11 a.m.; he watches TV and sends tweets rather than read national secu rity briefs. Is this a good use of your tax dollars? Michael R Egolf Dahlonega A case for maintaining the CDC Reflecting a complicated history, the Centers for Dis ease Control and Prevention — the CDC, as everybody in Atlanta knows it — has gone through several name changes and adjustments. Its World War II predeces sor was the Office of Malaria Control in War Areas. That’s a clue as to how the CDC came to be here. With military bases mushrooming across the South, the office tasked with eradicating this endemic disease was opened on Peachtree Street. When its mission was expanded after the war, it became the Communicable Disease Center and later the Center for Disease Control. As the science became more complicated it became the “Cen ters” and as the approach to public health became more sophisticated, “Pre vention” got tacked on. Over the years, the CDC has been the nation’s first line of defense against diseases from polio to Ebola, and it has been embroiled in controversies from the Tuskegee syphilis experiment to the reporting of statistics on gun violence. It may be the case that the CDC has never been more vital to the country’s secu rity than it is now, while the agency has never been in more peril. We don’t know with complete cer tainty whether COVID-19 (for “corona- virus disease 2019”) will spread widely outside China, or what its impact will be on us. Some of the predictions are mighty scary. Credible experts, studying the current “attack rate” have estimated that anywhere from 40 % to 80% of the world’s popula tion may be infected with the new respiratory disease within a year, according to The Guardian. The current death rate is about 2%, which means that in the next year 1 out of 50 of the people you know — or maybe you — could die from it, if the virus spreads that quickly. What we do know is that in an increasingly interconnected world, COVID-19 isn’t going to be the last epidemic, or the only health threat, the nation is likely to face. That should make a rock solid case for maintaining the CDC, but the Trump administration’s 2021 budget proposal calls for a nearly 20% cut in the CDC’s budget, including a 13% percent cut in programs dealing with infectious diseases like COVID-19, according to Ars Technica. Like those of the past couple of years, this budget proposal is more a small-gov ernment wish list than a working docu ment for the coming year. But it’s an indication of more than the president’s frictions with the agency. It reflects an attitude about science in general that has hardened within his base from skepti cism to hostility. The CDC has staffed up a COVID-19 war room and begun taking steps to ensure an adequate supply of medical supplies like the space suits and face masks we’ve seen in coverage from China. In a conference call last week, Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, said that despite the virtual lockdown in China, the CDC “can and should be prepared for this new virus to gain a foothold in the U.S.” The CDC’s goals so far have been to “slow the introduction and impact of this disease in the United States,” but at some point, controlling the epidemic “will require the effort of all levels of Govern ment, the public health system and our communities as we face these challenges together.” In this election year and its aftermath, that’s a dicier proposition than it would have been. Speaking at a rally in New Hampshire last week, President Trump expressed confidence that Chinese President Xi Jinping is getting the emergency in China under control. “And by the way, the virus, they’re working hard, looks like by April, you know in theory when it gets a little warmer it miraculously goes away,” Trump said. “I hope that’s true.” So should we all. Beyond Xi’s assur ances to Trump, scientists in the U.S. have expressed frustration at the lack of information about the outbreak that China is sharing with the world. One characteristic of the leadership style Xi has exhibited in this emergency is a tendency to pass the blame down to local officials. That should be a strong motivation, in coming months, for the CDC to watch its collective back. Tom Baxter is a veteran Georgia journalist who writes for The Saporta Report. TOM BAXTER tom@saporta report.com M What? You never seen a budget being worked on before?" JIM POWELL I For The Times ANDY MARLETTE I Creators Syndicate (The Slimes Founded Jan. 26,1947 345 Green St., Gainesville, GA 30501 gainesvilletimes.com General Manager Norman Baggs EDITORIAL BOARD Editor in Chief Shannon Casas
