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
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Shannon Casas
