About The times. (Gainesville, Ga.) 1972-current | View Entire Issue (May 13, 2020)
12A OPINION ®he £ntics gainesvilletimes.com Midweek Edition - May 13-14, 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 Today, serving our country looks like staying home, wearing masks when out Headlines seeking to grab our attention over the months of 2019 framed COVID-19 as an invisible enemy, our generation’s great war or Vietnam, naming this event as one for the ages. The mysterious enemy is attacking and invading our lives with results reminiscent of earlier invasions, crisscrossing the U.S., wounding us and claim ing lives in full onslaughts or rogue skirmishes. National and local leaders are struggling to determine the best response to these attacks and garner support for a strategy, but, as in the midst of any battle that feels overwhelming and uncontrollable, the masses are only as committed to a strategy as they believe their lead ers are. Public health officials clamor for strategies to reduce exposure to this enemy and slow the spreading disease and death. Working folks and business owners clamor for strategies that keep cash flowing and their lives stable. Politicians struggle to articulate strategies that will slow the spread, avoid exhausting resources while providing treatments and sustain enough economic energy to please those across the financial spectrum. For the first 200 years of our country, enlisting the masses to fight back an enemy in times of crisis was normative. Conscription was employed from the Revo lutionary War through Vietnam to raise standing armies. Those too young, too old or ill-suited for other reasons were given work on the home front creating needed materials and keeping supply lines filled for the battle. In the Great Wars, enlistment papers indicated the length of service as “three or four years or for the dura tion.” Enlistment was understood to last until the enemy was suppressed. Strategies for vanquishing this enemy include encour agements for staying at home, practicing social distanc ing, wearing masks in public and practicing high levels of hygiene. These encouraged adjustments to our behaviors could be today’s version of conscription, but many are reject ing them as impositions on their freedom rather than understanding them as requirements for it. Conscription was once a price citizens paid for the common good of their country. Four decades after its official dissolution, the sentiment of many now is that service to country is only acceptable when it is voluntary and does not interfere with individual desires. David Barnett Gainesville Eminent domain process should be more reasonable for residents This is in response to the eminent domain concern ing the pink buildings in Gainesville. There is more to the eminent domain than just agreeing on a price for the property. My husband and I have been under eminent domain since 2011, when Hall County drew the arrows at the end of our driveway so they could take aerial views of our property that is included in the widening of Spouts Springs Road. We absolutely want a fair price for our property, and we are not fighting the taking of our property by the county for the better of the road. In fact, the truth be known, the road should have been finished by now. We are very concerned about the way the process is being done. Anyone whose property has been placed under eminent domain deserves to get fair market value for their property, they deserve to get fairness in the time in which the property is bought and fairness in the time that they have to get out of the property. My husband was 7 0 years old when all of this began for us. He is now 80 years old, and we haven’t received the “official letter” from the county. The county led us to believe our property would be bought out in 2015,2017 and 2019, and we are still here. Condemnation laws need to be changed. I believe the homeowner and property owner should be contacted by the federal, state or county governments once all the planning takes place. I believe people should be given a reasonable date of when the property will be taken, within five years. No one should have to put their lives on hold for almost 10 years. There are many life changes that take place in a decade, and if you are under eminent domain, the gov ernment has you in a bind. You cannot sell your property if you live in the house that is on it. Who wants to buy a house that is going to be torn down? The repairs to the property keep adding up, but the county doesn’t give any guarantees you will be reim bursed for them. Recently, we had to buy a refrigerator and washing machine. We can only hope they will fit in the new place. My husband and I both have experienced the many changes that take place during your late 70s and 80s. Our day-to-day living is getting more difficult living in a home that physically should have been out of five years ago. I do believe as this county grows more, property own ers are going to find out the hard way the nightmare of being under eminent domain. Veronica deKozan Flowery Branch Poverty kills slowly, indifferently I heard this song about how it’s getting real in the Whole Foods parking lot. It’s a strange thing that I don’t understand, but it seems to be getting real in all the communities. We’re stressed. We have contradictory statements from federal leadership. We have state level action that negated local level action. We have political actors giv ing medical and scientific advice. I’m on the side of science, medicine and life. I’ve been poor. As bad as it was, it could have been worse and it was for others. Now, it might get horrible for many already battling and those who have been strug gling. We might see looting and riots and small gangs. I’m going to get real. I’m saying it straight. Poverty kills far more slowly than COVID-19 and far less often than the flu. It does kill slowly, especially hope. It doesn’t cure diseases or pay for health care. It doesn’t provide three balanced meals per day. It is far more damning in its indifference than almost any disease. It’s poverty. It’s real. We’re going to see a lot more of it no matter when the pandemic releases us. Mike Parker Flowery Branch Economic efforts poorly done What kind of economy is it, exactly, that we’ll be try ing to jumpstart back to life in the coming months? The pandemic has churned up some surprising answers to that question. The Commerce Depart ment reported last month that the nation’s Gross Domestic Product declined by 4.8% in the first quar ter of this year, the worst contraction since the 2008 recession. Given the obvious economic damage, a bad number had been expected. But there was quite a surprise within that number. Nearly half the decline in the economy came from the laid-off dental assistants, the cash- strapped specialty clinics and struggling hospitals of the health care sector. As much as the health care system has been pictured in the news this year, we have largely glossed over the impor tance to the larger economy of all the elective surgeries, regular checkups, annual cleanings and dentist appoint ments that have been put on hold. Hos pitals and their satellites have become, in effect, the automobile plants of the 21st century economy. If this had been understood earlier, it would have made reopening the economy a lot smoother. Suppose that Gov. Brian Kemp had announced that the first wave of reopenings in Georgia would be elec tive surgeries and other routine health care activities, and that the opening of hair salons, tattoo parlors and gyms had been put off to a slightly later date, as was the case with restaurants and bars. Whatever the medical advisability of this would have been, it would have saved Kemp a lot of political pain, without making a lot of difference economically. Starting with its name, the Payroll Protection Program offers several examples of how a misunderstanding of what the economy was before the pandemic has hampered efforts to restart it. This part of the Coronavi- rus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act was sold as a program of loans to help small business stay afloat during the pandemic shutdown and keep their employees on the payroll for eight weeks. This revealed the fuzziness of an expression used widely in political arguments over the economy: “small business.” As a result, every kind of enterprise from public companies to nonprofit organizations, mom-and-pop cafes to a homeowner’s association in South Carolina, were thrown in the same, too-shallow pool to thrash around for money. There was a modest uproar when Ruth’s Chris got $20 million, the Kiawah Island Community Association got $1 million, and thousands of struggling small business owners are still waiting for their lifeline. Both the restaurant chain and the homeowner’s group have agreed to give back the money after a lot of public shaming, but they weren’t doing anything worse than the big and well-connected fish usually do to the smaller and more marginal fish. They were playing by the rules when they applied for loans — a very imprecisely drawn set of rules. Some businesses have received loans and been unable to open because their states are still under lockdown. That has led some to keep their higher paid employees and pay their holiday bonuses early, so they can reach the required 75% of their loan spent on payroll and use the remainder to pay their rent and other expenses. This seems like the opposite of the effect the bill was intended to have, but again it reflects a misunderstanding of the economy the program was intended to fix. I said “modest uproar,” because there are striking differences between the outrage over the $831 billion bailout in 2009 and the $2 trillion (so far) bail out happening now. Some of the same conservative groups involved in the tea party movement have helped orga nize the protests against stay-at-home orders, but this time around the protests center on social issues, not primarily economic ones. Nobody’s marching against the CARES Act, in part because of those $1,200 checks they got. But when the eight weeks of payroll on the PPP loans start to run out and the government booster check has been long spent, at an astounding cost to those future genera tions everybody was so worried about back in 2009, the mood could get pretty ugly. Tom Baxter is a veteran Georgia journalist who writes for The Saporta Report. TOM BAXTER tom@saporta report.com HOW SOCIAL DISTANCING WORKS. JIM POWELL I For The Times America, politics, the virus and more A flag-waving salute to the United States Air Force’s Thunderbirds and the Navy’s Blue Angels who roared across Georgia’s skies in tandem last week, paying tribute to our state’s heroic first responders. The event was an example of everything that is good about this great country. Hopefully, we stopped being intransigent politi cal partisans for a brief moment and became Americans. ■ Meanwhile, back on the ground, COVID-19 rages on. Good people are being taken from us on a daily, almost hourly, basis, but the virus seems to have skipped the idiots driving 100 miles an hour on our freeways. If the virus doesn’t get them, hopefully the police will. ■ On the other hand, have you seen the pictures of the crystal clear skies in places like Los Angeles and New Delhi and the deep blue waters of the perpetually muddy canals in Venice? It is too bad that it takes a pandemic for us to see how we have mucked up the environment. ■ It looks like the Soybean Queen squishes from one cow patty to another. The New York Times has reported our newly minted senator, Kelly Loeffler, got a nice going-away pres ent from her former employer, the Intercontinental Exchange, which is headed by her husband, Jeff Sprecher. Even though she had resigned from the company months earlier to accept Gov. Brian Kemp’s appointment to the U.S. Senate seat held by Johnny Isakson, who retired due to ill health, the company rejiggered her compensa tion package to allow her to cash in her stock options and walk away with an additional $9 million. This, after trying to explain away stock transac tions made on her behalf in the immediate aftermath of a senators-only meeting on the status of the COVID- 19 pandemic. I get the feeling gazillion- aires play by different rules than do We the Unwashed. ■ It will be interesting to see if wom en’s groups show the same level of righteous indignation about the sexual assault charges that have been lev eled against Democratic presidential contender Joe Biden as they did when Brett Kavanaugh was nominated for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. Don’t hold your breath. If they turned a blind eye to Bill Clinton’s zipper rippers, you can bet they will see no evil in Joe Biden’s purported peccadilloes. ■ On a personal note, a good man passed away recently. John L. Clen- denin was chairman and CEO of BellSouth Corp. from the company’s inception in 1984 until his retirement in 1996. He promoted me to vice presi dent and then made sure I earned the job every day. He was not an easy man to work for, but he made me a better person for the experience. John Clendenin was a man of the utmost integrity, proving that you could run a big public company and do it the right way. ■ Watching Donald Trump and the national media go at it reminds me of my fly fishing days. It wasn’t hard to spot the trout. The trick was to get them to take the bait. You could float it by them 10 times and on the 11th try, they would finally bite. So it is with Trump and the Inside-the- Beltway media. They seem less interested in gath ering the facts than in goading the president into a diatribe. It may take several confrontational questions to get him to bite, but when he does, that becomes the news. I find the whole thing tiresome. The media need to quit goading and Trump needs to quit biting. Take your fight to the schoolyard playground, boys and girls. We have a pandemic going on. ■ Finally, among the fan mail I received last week was one castigating me for my less than complimentary opinion of that noted statesman and philosopher, Colick Kaperdoodle, and another one informing me that he deliberately ignores my writings but knows for a fact that I am an ardent supporter of (naughty word) Biden. (How does he know that if he ignores my writing? It is probably wise that I not ask.) Even worse, an emigre from the land where it snows 10 months a year and all their buildings are rusted thinks I am humor-impaired. That’s like being called ugly by a warthog. Strong opinions begat strong reactions and no pandemic can change that fact, thank goodness. Please stay safe and stay well and keep those cards and letters coming. Dick Yarbrough is a North Georgia resident whose column publishes Wednesdays. Contact him at P.0. Box 725373, Atlanta, GA 31139; online at dickyarbrough.com; or on Facebook. DICK YARBROUGH dick@ dickyarbrough.com (The Srtnes Founded Jan. 26,1947 345 Green St., Gainesville, GA 30501 gainesvilletimes.com General Manager Norman Baggs EDITORIAL BOARD Editor in Chief Shannon Casas
