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OPINION
®he Sftttics
gainesvilletimes.com
Midweek Edition-April 5-6, 2023
Nate McCullough Group Editor | 770-718-3431 | nmccullough@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.
Society, not
public schools,
is whats failing
When did public schools start failing? It had to
be after I graduated. I seem to recall a group of
dedicated teachers who taught me how to read
and write, add and subtract and even multiply and
divide. All these many eons later, I still remember
them: Ms. Dent, in the 3rd Grade; Ms. Bolton, in
the 5th Grade; Ms. Largin, in the 6th; Mr. Gibbons,
my high school geography
teacher; Ms. Parker, who
taught me the beauty of the
English language; Jo Will
Hearn, who made sure I
could spell; Col. L. L. Deck,
who made sure I behaved;
Mr. Gatlin, who inspired
me to write. I don’t
remember any of them or
the schools in which they
taught me as being failures.
My brother and I had
parents who came out of
the rural South where education was not valued
and schooling stopped for them at the 7th Grade.
Yet, they saw to it that we would not be deprived
of our educational opportunities.
So, how did we do? My brother, a few years
older than I, retired as president of a publishing
company in Chicago. Immodesty requires me to
say my own career wasn’t exactly chopped liver.
(Look up my bio and see for yourself.) While we
were both driven, competitive individuals, some
of our success had to be the foundation laid for us
by our teachers along with parents who made sure
we received what they had been denied.
So, what has happened in the interim? How did
public schools morph into failing institutions? Did
teachers just decide one day to sit back, browse
magazines and let students fend for themselves?
I don’t think so. I have three high school science
teachers in my family — two with Ph.D.s (one
recently retired) and one with a master’s degree.
In my conversations and observations, teach
ers and what they teach are not the problem. It is
society that’s failing, not public schools.
We seem unable to accept the fact that we can’t
magically shut the schoolhouse door on society’s
problems — transiency, parental apathy, a sense
of privilege, hunger, abuse, language barriers,
drugs, gangs — and somehow teach students the
difference between geometry and geography.
And this is public education’s fault?
Of course, our intrepid public servants have the
answer: Don’t fix the problem. Run from it. That
leads me to vouchers, which allow parents to ditch
public schools — failing or not — attend private
schools and get a tax break to boot. I strongly sus
pect that most beneficiaries are well-heeled fami
lies who could afford to send their kids to private
school without tax incentives, but we don’t know
for sure because, thanks to former state Rep. Earl
Ehrhart who authored the bill creating the Student
Scholarship Organization, the voucher program
that began it all, that information is not available
to the public — even though our tax dollars are
involved.
Another try at sweetening the voucher pot in the
just-concluded legislative session was defeated,
despite the support of Gov. Brian Kemp. That
doesn’t mean lip-sticking this pig is dead. It will
undoubtedly come up again in next year’s session
and we can start finger-pointing at failing public
schools all over again.
The bill, championed by state Sen. Greg
Dolezal, R-Cummings, which he says would have
provided $6,500 for kids in low-income areas and
“failing schools” to attend private schools where
the average tuition statewide is $11,500 and in
some cases as much as $35,000. Who makes up the
difference?
Also, who holds private schools to the same
level of accountability as public schools? Private
schools by their very nature are not answerable
to the public as are public schools. And thanks to
Ehrhart, there is no way for the public to know
what happens to the kids or to the tax dollars.
In the meantime, public school teachers are
quitting in droves. A recent study by the Profes
sional Association of Georgia Educators showed
almost a third saying they likely would not remain
another five years and 55% saying they wouldn’t
recommend teaching as a career. Who can blame
them? Yes, teachers got pay raises this year but I
think they would appreciate some respect and sup
port even more.
Teachers are beset by dysfunctional school
boards, bureaucrats at all levels of government
strangling them in red tape and special interest
groups pushing them to delve into social issues bet
ter discussed at home.
In short, It is not public schools that are fail
ing. It is our society. And no voucher scheme can
change that fact.
You can reach Dick Yarbrough at dick@
dickyarbrough.com; at P.0. Box 725373, Atlanta, GA
31139; online at dickyarbrough.com or on Facebook
at www.facebook.com/dickyarb.
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I material will be rejected. Letters and other
commentary express the opinions of the
authors and not of The Times.
DICK YARBROUGH
dick@
dickyarbrough.com
Soros proves $32B can make
a lot of difference, enemies
George Soros’ name gets
dropped a lot in Georgia,
but seldom with much
elaboration.
For Republicans, like those
in the General Assembly pro
moting the new law banning
outside groups from contrib
uting any money to help fund
local elections, Florida Gov.
Ron DeSantis, or former U.S.
Sen. David Perdue, just the
words “Soros-backed” evoke
an ominous effort by shad
owy outsiders to control voters’ lives. For
Democrats, the mention of Soros’ name
amounts automatically to an anti-Semitic
insinuation, linking the 92-year-old Holo
caust survivor with a host of conspiracy
theories.
That, pretty much, is the end of the
discussion, or at least the intelligent part
of the discussion. You seldom see much
serious examination of what the impact
of Soros’ massive spending has been, or
how his investing philosophy relates to
his political beliefs.
One indisputable fact about Soros is
that he has made an enormous amount
of money and has not been shy about
spending it on his beliefs. Much of the
$32 billion he has contributed through
his Open Society Foundations has been
spent in the Eastern European nations
left after the breakup of the Soviet Union
and the Warsaw Pact, on a wide variety
of programs intended to promote democ
racy and openness. Even Hungarian
Prime Minister Victor Orban, who would
become Soros’ nemesis and the source
of much of the anti-Semitic mania sur
rounding him, attended Oxford Univer
sity on an Open Society grant.
Republicans might well
point out that Democrats rou
tinely invoked the name of
the Koch brothers for years
when they were talking about
the malign effect of money
in politics. Soros has, in fact,
spent big in U.S. politics, quite
separately from the activities
in Europe which made him a
Jewish target of pro-Russian,
anti-Democratic regimes
there. But that separation
is hard to maintain when
American conservatives hold up Orban
himself as a model.
In Europe, Soros has been portrayed
as a master manipulator, fomenting
the pro-Western takeovers in Ukraine
and the other Georgia. Politicians in
the United States have aimed some
of the same rhetoric at him, with less
justification.
By any standard, the Koch brothers
made the most effective use of personal
fortunes for political purposes in the
modern era. By focusing their efforts
and their considerable fortune on state
legislatures, the Koch brothers gave
Republicans an enormous advantage in
the redistricting process which deter
mines the balance of power in Congress
and did more than any other individuals
to erode the power of unions in this coun
try. By the end of his life, Charles Koch
publicly regretted his role in increasing
political divisions in this country. But no
one can say that he and his brother spent
their money heedlessly.
Soros, on the other hand, has spread
a lot of money around on causes, cam
paigns and candidates with mixed
results. As an investor he hasn’t been
afraid to make big bets against con
ventional wisdom, as he did in his most
famous trade, shorting the Bank of
England for a profit of a billion dollars.
He’s followed a similar philosophy in his
political contributions. He gave more
than $1.2 million to U.S. Sen. Raphael
Warnock’s campaign, which could be
considered expensive but effective. He
gave $3.5 million to Stacey Abrams’ cam
paign, which could not be rated as wise
an investment.
Should a private individual be able
to circumvent spending limits to fun
nel that kind of money into campaigns
through dark money loopholes? No.
But the guard rails aimed at preventing
this kind of excess were removed by a
conservative-leaning Supreme Court and
endorsed by Republicans in Congress.
Soros is routinely being condemned in
conservative circles for playing by the
rules his critics made.
By the way, now that local election
offices have been protected from being
unduly influenced by a free-spending
liberal fat cat willing to help them pay
their expenses, how do we plan to meet
the increasing costs of holding elections?
This week brings the news from Axis that
Cobb County election director Janine
Eveler is retiring, joining the directors in
Fulton, Gwinnett, DeKalb, Macon-Bibb
and Augusta-Richmond counties who
have left within the past two years. We’d
better wake up, quickly, to the problems
that are making these jobs harder to fill.
Tom Baxter is a veteran Georgia journalist
who writes for The Saporta Report,
saportareport.com.
TOM BAXTER
tom@saporta
report.com
PHIL HANDS I Tribune News Service
LITERS
LGBTQ+ people live in
Gainesville, too, and we
will continue to thrive
My name is Mateo Penado and I’m a
22-year old transgender man. Although
I’m born and raised in Gainesville, I’ve
had to commute to Atlanta for medi
cal care as well as to find safe affirm
ing spaces. But as the Transgender &
LGBTQ+ Youth Autonomy Rally we
held at the Square on Friday clearly
showed, there is a beautiful, amaz
ing, and present LGBTQ+ community
already here in town.
I started hormones once I turned 18
and no longer had any more suicidal
thoughts. Gender-affirming care has
been quite literally life-saving for me. A
study by the Trevor Project found that
among trans children under 18 receiv
ing gender-affirming care hormone-
replacement therapy, nearly 40% had
lower odds of having had a suicide
attempt in the past year.
I was heartbroken when I saw that
SB140 passed, but I was distraught
when high schoolers reached out to
me worried about the worsening anti-
trans legislation in our state and if they
would live long enough to see 22 like me
because of it.
Trans youth deserve to be able to
be happy kids that then grow up to be
thriving adults, then elders. I deserve
to grow old, just like any other person
within our community.
What we lack in Gainesville is not
community. Clearly we have LGBTQ+
people living here. What we lack are
physical safe spaces and material
resources. March 31 was the first step
to that. We handed out local resource
lists and started to build a community
of care. But we also celebrated trans
joy. Considering the large gathering
and how well our TDOV action went, it
has barely made much news coverage
at all. But we trans folk are aware of the
support we have. (It would be great if
our local news and city could at least
acknowledge our existence and actions
as well.)
We will continue to carve out our own
spaces and make it so trans and other
LGBTQ+ people here in Gainesville
don’t just survive, but thrive as well.
Mateo Penado
Gainesville
Your government officials
U.S. government
President Joseph Biden, The White
House, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW,
Washington, DC 20500, comments 202-
456-1111, switchboard 202-456-1414,
fax 202-456-2461; www.whitehouse.gov
Sen. Jon Ossoff, Hart Senate Office
Building, Suite 825 B&C, Washington,
DC 20510,202-224-3521, fax, 202-224-
2575; 3280 Peachtree Rd. NE, Suite
2640, Atlanta 30305,470-786-7800, fax
404-949-0912; www.ossoff.senate.gov.
Sen. Raphael Warnock, Dirksen Senate
Office Building, Suite B40D, Washington,
DC 20510, 202-224-3643; One Overton
Park, 3625 Cumberland Boulevard, Suite
970, Atlanta 30339, 770-694-7828, fax
770-612-2471; www.warnock.senate.
gov.
U.S. Rep. Andrew Clyde, 521 Cannon
House Office Building, Washington, DC
20515, 202-225-9893, fax 202-226-
1224; 210 Washington St. NW, Suite 202,
Gainesville 30501,470-768-6520; www.
clyde.house.gov.
Georgia state government
Gov. Brian Kemp, 206 Washington Street,
Suite 203, State Capitol, Atlanta 30334;
404 656-1776; www.gov.georgia.gov.
Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, 240 State Capitol,
Atlanta 30334, 404-656-5030; www.
ltgov.ga.gov
Secretary of State Brett Raffensperger, 214
State Capitol, Atlanta 30334, 404-656-
2881, fax 404-656-0513; www.sos.state,
ga.us; Elections Division, 2 MLK Jr. Drive
SE, Suite 802, Floyd West Tower, Atlanta
30334,404-656-2871, fax, 404-463-
5231
Attorney General Chris Carr, 40 Capitol
Square SW, Atlanta 30334; 404-458-
3600; www.law.ga.gov.
(The glftnes
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EDITORIAL BOARD
Group Editor
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