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Declare among the nations, and publish, and set up a standard;
publish, and conceal not; Jeremiah 50:2
& EDITORIALS
2016 and 2017 winner: Editorial Page excellence
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2016 winner: Front Page excellence
2017 winner: Best Humor Column - On the Porch
ON THE PORCH by Will Davis
PEACH STATE POLITICS by Kyle Wingfield
Remember Harold
O ur sympathies are with Mike and Angie Ellis
after fire destroyed their business, Flowers by
Helen, early Tuesday morning. To happen two
weeks before Mary Persons’ prom is all the
more painful. It’s hard to fathom that one block of our
courthouse square has been struck by fire twice in the past
six years. Thankfully the re-birth of the Rose Theater and
Grits Cafe from that 2012 fire demonstrates that it can
be done. Angie was already getting offers of office space
to get her back on her feet, and that’s another reason I’m
certain Monroe County will help Angie & Co. get back on
their feet.
• ••
I already miss Harold Carlisle.
The former county commis
sion chairman may have been a
gruff former military officer, but
he had a great sense of humor.
He was also a big fan of this
newspaper, and I used to get
emails from him on Wednesday
if his paper didn’t come on time
(being in south Monroe County,
Carlisle was on a Macon route).
My family and I ran into Carl
isle at a Ted Cruz for President
rally in Perry before Georgia’s
presidential primary in 2016. “She wanted to come,”
mumbled Carlisle, pointing to his dear wife Betty. Carlisle
was more of a Trump man from the start. Way back when
Democrats controlled Monroe County, Carlisle wasn’t
afraid to stick his neck out and try to win as a Republican,
not because it was popular, but because he agreed with the
party’s principles. It paid off. He was the first member of
the GOP to be elected county commission chairman. He
would laugh if we noted that four years later, he was the
first Republican chairman to be defeated for re-election.
He will be missed. Harold Carlisle, RIP.
Yes, charter schools are public schools
C harter schools are public
schools. Charter schools
are public schools. Charter
schools are public schools.
Forgive the repetition, but for a
lot of people this simple fact doesn’t
seem to be sinking in.
The legislative session that ended
March 29 saw a number of policy
fights, but the most surprising, and
disappointing, might have been the
one waged over a bill to bring state
charter schools — one subset of one
subset of public schools — merely
up to the statewide average for per-
pupil funding.
House Bill 787 didn’t clear the
Senate until after 8 p.m. on Day 40,
more than a month after the House
passed it. In the end, it did so with
the support of a majority of both
Republicans and Democrats. In
between, however, there was much
debate and hand-wringing about
what was being done for charters as
opposed to “public schools.”
Remember: Students of state
charter schools are public-school
students, incurring the same obliga
tions as students in traditional public
schools.
With that in mind, it’s hard to
square the opposition to the bill
from some of the same lawmakers
and activists who regularly demand
more funding for schools. If more
funding is the recipe for improving
traditional public schools, as they
insist, then why should these other
public schools continue to languish
at the bottom of the funding rank
ings?
One line of thinking holds that the
state ought not to boost this small
handful of schools when dozens
of districts are also below the state
average. What, they ask, is the dif
ference?
I can think of at least
one big difference: Un
like those districts, state
charter schools don’t
have the authority to
levy taxes, and thereby
raise their own funding.
In Georgia, local taxes
make up about 40 per
cent of all school fund
ing — not including
sales taxes for educa
tion. That means overall
funding levels depend a
great deal on how much
local taxpayers pitch in.
In 2016-17, just seven of
Georgia’s 180 school districts spent
less than the overall state average
despite spending more local money
than average; most of them were
suburban districts such as Cobb,
Forsyth and Oconee counties.
The rest of the below-average
spenders simply tend to raise less
money from their local taxpayers
than their higher-spending peers.
There may be good reason for that
in some of those cases. (It’s also
one reason Gov. Nathan Deal was
right to try to change the state’s
funding formula to one that would
have favored districts with, among
other things, a greater share of poor
households. Too bad the education
establishment did little to push that
effort along.)
But the point is local districts have
the authority to change their fund
ing through taxation,
whether they choose
to use that authority
or not. State charter
schools lack that power;
only the state can boost
their funding.
Now, it’s also true
that charter schools are
intended in part to be
experiments on many
levels. That includes the
idea public education
could be more finan
cially efficient. More
money isn’t necessarily
the answer. There’s no
reason to lift charters to the very top
tier of funding, and in any case that’s
far from what HB 787 did.
But nor is there a good reason to
keep their funding artificially low,
particularly not in the name of being
“fair” to “public schools.”
Kyle Wingfield, president and CEO
of the free-market think tank Geor
gia Public Policy Foundation (www.
georgiapolicy.org), writes a regular
column in several Georgia newspa
pers.
DEVELOP
Continued from Front
part of the increase came
after learning that the
property will require a
16-foot retaining wall, at
a cost of $300,000, around
almost the entire tract.
Salvador said the wall
will take more than two
months to build and is
required in order to keep
the tract level and easily
accessible for the build
ings and parking lot.
Authority chairman
Tom Baugh said the
project is a win-win for
everyone.
“It’s great thing to
get this piece of prop
erty turned around,” said
Baugh. “I think it’s gonna
rejuvenate that whole area
and it’s gonna generate a
lot of sales tax. It’s kind of
a win-win for the people
of the county.”
Patel will own the gas
station with a Papa John’s
inside and its eight gas
pumps, as well as the
adjoining Huddle House.
Patel will also own a car
wash he plans to build
behind the convenience
store. Zaxby’s franchiser
Steven Stembridge is ex
pected to build and own
the Zaxby’s, which will be
closest to the interstate
and will be built by a crew
that travels the country
building Zaxby’s. Patel,
meanwhile, has gotten
permission to offer deliv
ery with his Papa John’s.
Gregory said he did get
one visit from a current
restaurant owner asking
why they weren’t offered
such a loan.
Gregory answered that
there were three reasons:
One, the owner didn’t ask,
and two, the owner had
already built his project,
and three, that the owner’s
property was not in the
blighted area, which is re
quired for the authority to
offer that particular loan.
Baugh said the loan will
be repaid and the project
will eventually be a boon
for everyone.
“I love to do things that
benefit everybody and
don’t cost us anything.”
is published every week by The Monroe County Reporter Inc.
Will Davis, President • Robert M. Williams Jr., Vice President
Cheryl S. Williams, Secretary-Treasurer
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Publication No. USPS 997-840
JUST THE WAY IT IS by Sloan Oliver
Mueller admits: No Russian collusion
O h, the Humanity! After a
year of the special coun
sel investigation and 18
months of media and
Democrat (I repeat myself) accusa
tions of Trump - Russia collusion, the
entire Russia investigation is going
down in flames ala the Hindenburg.
Last week, special counsel and former
FBI Director, Robert Mueller admitted
that there is no evidence of any crimi
nal wrongdoing in regards to Trump
and the 2016 election. Liberals tell us
that child molesters and ISIS terrorists
are innocent until proven guilty. Yet,
these same liberals convicted President
Trump of treason without having a
shred of evidence. Yes, liberals and
Democrats are dishonest to the point
where no crime was committed in
the Trump campaign, but that didn’t
matter. They hate Trump; they hate his
supporters, and that makes him guilty
of something. Now that Mueller has
admitted that President Trump didn’t
commit any crime, perhaps liberals
will finally accept that Trump is presi
dent and Hillary isn’t.
SPEAKING OF the Mueller inves
tigation, the crimes committed during
the 2016 election will go down as the
biggest scandal in U.S. history. How
ever, Donald Trump is not the guilty
party. The guilty parties are Obama,
Hillary, the Democrat National
Committee (DNC), the FBI, and the
Department of Justice (DOJ). Every
single accusation leveled at Trump
was in fact committed by his accusers.
Trump was accused of colluding and
“hacking” emails to steal the elec
tion. Fact is, the Obama cabal col
luded between the DNC and various
government agencies (to include the
FBI and the DOJ) to steaJ the election.
First, the DNC and Hillary stole the
Democratic nomination from Bernie
Sanders. Then, in May 2016, the DNC
said their email servers were hacked
and information stolen. Turns out,
the hacking was actually a Democrat
insider, disgusted at the dishonest
tactics used by Hillary and the DNC,
who downloaded months of emails to
prove DNC corruption. Evidence of
DNC corruption was contained in the
stolen emails, and that’s why the DNC
never allowed the FBI to examine
the computers they claimed were
“hacked.”
NEXT, WE have the entire Russia-
Trump collusion fable that was
generated by the completely fake Steele
dossier. This dossier was produced by
a foreign intelligence agency with ties
to Russia and paid for by the Hillary
campaign. The dossier was a collection
of false accusations and innuendos
about Trump - the sole purpose being
to discredit him, discredit the elec
tion, and generate a special counsel
investigation, should he manage to
win. Every accusation in the dossier
has been discredited, and the year
long investigation has produced zero
evidence that any Trump staffer com
mitted any election crime whatsoever.
Oh, and Obama, Hillary, and the
DNC conspired on the dossier, and
then used the upper echelons of both
the FBI and DOJ (incJuding former
Director Comey, Assistant Director
Andrew McCabe, and Attorney Gen
eral Loretta Lynch) to spread lies and
direct investigations where needed in
order to frame Trump. Specifically, the
FBI and DOJ used the
dossier to open a FISA
investigation against
people tied to the Trump
campaign in order to spy
on the Trump campaign.
That’s correct; Obama
used the full power of the
government to spy on a
political opponent dur
ing an election.
OBAMA, HILL
ARY, and the FBI fully
expected her to win. If
she had won, we never
would have known
any of these Hillary/Obama crimes.
But she didn’t. Trump won, and the
Obama cabal went into full panic
mode. They did a “lull court press”
pushing a collusion story. By now,
everyone, Democrats and Republicans
alike, know there was no Trump-
Russia collusion, but Hillary, Obama,
the media, and the DNC have nothing
else. They continue to scream “Russia,
Russia” hoping it just might come true.
Sorry Dems, it’s much more likely that
Hillary will go to prison - not Trump.
If you’re a liberal, I doubt that you’ve
heard any of this Obama/Hillary collu
sion and conspiracy because CNN and
MSNBC refuse to report any of it. If
that’s the case, refer back to my article
from last week and broaden your
sources of information.
ANYONE RECALL Obama’s tactics
used to win the 2012 presidential
election? In case you forgot, Obama
was called brilliant for gathering and
harvesting the analytic data of millions
of Facebook users. The media and
Democrats (I repeat myself) couldn’t
get enough of Obama’s superior intel
ligence of tapping into and using this
“new” source of information. So, in
2016, the Trump campaign used a
similar strategy and used Facebook’s
analytic data to reach his target audi
ence. Suddenly, the media and Demo
crats (I repeat myself) were furious
that Facebook allowed analytic data to
be used to target voters. Hypocrites?
You decide.
THE PRESIDENT made the
following statement about illegal
aliens, ‘All Americans, not only in
the states most heavily affected but in
everyplace in this country are rightly
disturbed by the large numbers of
illegal aliens entering our country. The
jobs they hold might otherwise be
held by citizens or legal immigrants.
The public services they
use impose burdens on
our taxpayers. That’s
why our administration
has moved aggressively
to secure our borders
more, by hiring a record
number of new border
guards, by deporting
twice as many criminal
aliens as ever before,
by cracking down on
illegal hiring, by barring
welfare benefits to il
legal aliens. We will try
to do more to speed the
deportation of illegal
aliens who are arrested for crimes. It
is wrong and ultimately self-defeating
for a nation of immigrants to permit
the kind of abuse of our immigration
laws we have seen in recent years, and
we must do more to stop it.” For these
words the President was lauded and
praised because they were made by
Bill Clinton back in 1995. Since then,
the illegal alien problem has gotten
much worse. Now, President Trump
is holding true to his word of making
the U.S.-Mexican border more secure
by deploying thousands of National
Guard soldiers to border states. In
response, Trump is being called - wait
for it - he’s being called “a racist.”
WEEKLY Quote: “Without double
standards, Liberals would have no
standards at all.” - Donald Trump
Sloan Oliver is a retired Army officer.
He lives in Bolingbroke with his wife
Sandra. Email him at sloanoliver@
earthlink.net.