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publish, and conceal not; Jeremiah 50:2
& EDITORIALS
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2017 winner: Best Humor Column - On the Porch
ON THE PORCH by Will Davis
PEACH STATE POLITICS by Kyle Wingfield
1 left Bibb County’
M ost people move to Monroe County to get away
from the crime, dysfunction, high taxes and poor
schools that exist in big cities like Macon and
Atlanta.
The challenge for families new to Monroe County is this:
Once you get here, how do you crank up the draw bridge to
keep those things from following you here?
And that’s why Monday night’s debate at the county zoning
meeting was so interesting. As you can read on the front page,
Vantage Development wants to build 72 low-income apart
ments in a nice residential area in south Monroe County.
I can see why 200 residents showed up, one of the biggest
crowds in my 11 years in Forsyth, to oppose it.
When my grandparents moved to the Beaver Ruin Road area
in Norcross in the 1970s, they located in a quiet subdivision of
ranch-style homes full of families and quiet shady lanes. With
granddaddy retiring as the principal at Norcross High, it would
be a great place for them to retire and enjoy their golden years.
Twenty years later, developers threw up a large apartment
complex behind them. By the 2000s, Gwinnett County had
exploded all around them and they were in essence trapped.
Crime was rising. English was a second language at most of the
stores in their area When they passed away in 2010, the family
could only sell the home for a fraction of what it had been
worth.
So Stuart Hammock, who lives on Hunters Court near the
proposed apartments in south Monroe County, probably had
the right idea when he told Vantage on Monday night to find a
place to build their complex in Bibb County.
“Bibb County, they love to do low-income housing,” Ham
mock said. ‘And that’s why people
are leaving Bibb County. I left Bibb
County nine years ago, and I’m not
going back”
But those worried about those
apartments can’t blame the devel
oper alone. By its own admission,
the developer intentionally sought
out a nice area to build its low-
income housing because the state
offers tax credits for it to do so.
“It’s a nice area,” Vantage’s Jordan
Whiteside said of South Monroe.
“So one thing the state tries to do
is not put tax-credit developments
where they normally go. We try to
put them in higher-end areas.”
Chew on that for a minute. Your state government, which
your taxes fund, is pushing for the construction of low-income
housing in your neighborhood to harm your economic well
being. All for their utopian dreams.
And it’s not just the state government These decrees come
down from the master planners and the do-gooders in the
federal bureaucracy in Washington. Not surprisingly, one of
former President Obamas top agenda items was his well-pub
licized plan to destroy the American suburbs by offering such
incentives to get low-income housing into nice neighborhoods.
It brings to mind the old saying: You may not care about
politics, but politics “cares” about you. And more often than
not, it seeks to harm you.
Take any problem today: Bad Common Core-style curricu
lum in our public schools, lack of economic opportunity, illegal
aliens bringing crime into our communities (see our arrests
on a given week) and yes, subsidized housing trying to bring
down neighborhoods, and the root problem is almost always
liberal, big-government busybodies getting their filthy hands
involved in our daily lives.
Our friend Tammy Rafferzeder of Habitat for Humanity
rightly notes in a letter on page 5A that wealthier neighbor
hoods have problems just like poor ones. And others have
noted recently on these pages that there isn’t enough housing
for middle-income families in Monroe County. All true. But
the Habitat for Humanity model has been much more success
ful at lifting families out of poverty than large-scale, govern
ment-subsidized apartments. Habitat builds or renovates nice
single-family homes in existing neighborhoods and requires
homeowners to contribute heavily to the home. That’s what
we should support. But county residents do not want a critical
mass of low-income housing all together bringing down sur
rounding areas. And our bet is that when county commission
ers meet next Tuesday, we’ll find out that neither do they.
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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50 N. Jackson St. • Forsyth, GA 31029
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U'T
Crisis shows healthcare needs freedom
T he contract dispute be
tween Piedmont Health
care and Blue Cross and
Blue Shield appears to be
over: The two parties this past week
confirmed a “handshake deal” at the
urging of Gov. Nathan Deal.
Georgians who seek care via both
companies - not just in Atlanta, but
from Columbus to Athens, Blairs-
ville to Elberton - were caught in the
middle when the contract expired
April 1. They can breathe a bit easier
now, but this is no way to run a
health-care market.
Deal, who was in Congress when
Democrats passed Obamacare,
surely reminded both companies the
only beneficiaries of these fights are
those pushing the next government
centric step of single-payer health
care. And this wasn’t even the worst
recent fight of this kind: Piedmont
and Aetna came within hours of
their contract expiring in January
2014, but Blue Cross and the Grady
Health System went more than four
months without an in-network
agreement in 2014-15.
The only real preventive medicine
for consumers is to make the market
freer.
Start with price transparency, the
lack of which is a big reason health
care doesn’t perform like a real
market. Price is the vital signal be
tween the array of producers on one
side and consumers on the other.
Without it, neither side behaves as it
normally would.
Yet, as the Piedmont-Blue Cross
dispute shows, the price signal in
health care has been reduced to
negotiations between each provider
and insurer. That’s why price, from
the consumer’s perspective, emerges
as if from a black box - with no
context or means of comparison
between providers or insurers.
If we’re going to have mandates in
health care, lawmakers could require
providers to offer clear,
upfront prices for their
services. It may be
compfrcated to do so in
emergency situations,
but not for the vast
majority of routine ser
vices or care for chronic
illnesses.
Between the exist
ing opacity and the
way third-party payer
arrangements insulate
consumers from the
true price of health
services, it’s no wonder
costs keep soaring.
Patients have neither the means nor
the motivation to subject providers
to any kind of market discipline.
That’s instead left to insurers. Rath
er than providing true insurance,
protecting against an unbearable
cost in an unlikely circumstance,
it’s become a method of pre-paying
for health care one may or may not
consume. That won’t change until
consumers have attractive alterna
tives - such as contracting on their
own with physicians though direct
primary care - that restore health
insurance to its proper role.
Easing the state’s certificate-of-
need laws, which restrict providers’
ability to open new facilities, may
be one of the measures Deal would
have taken had Piedmont and Blue
Cross not worked out their differ
ences before his deadline. That must
also be part of any market-driven
solution.
Congress will have to step up, too.
Tools such as Health
Savings Accounts are
too restrictive to help
to most people. If
HSAs are expanded,
more Americans could
personally take charge
of their health-related
finances. And we
need not dive into the
havoc Obamacare has
wrought on the indi
vidual market, except
to say the next round of
insurers’ rate requests
this summer will renew
the pressure on Con
gress and President Trump to repeal
and replace that law
If freeing up the health-care mar
ket seems daunting or unlike other,
simpler markets, that’s because we
have let too many distortions pile
up. It’s time we start removing those
and seeing what kind of health-care
market we could be enjoying.
A columnist whose work appears
in newspapers around the state, Kyle
Wingfield is president and CEO of the
Georgia Public Policy Foundation:
www.georgiapolicy. org.
JUST THE WAY IT IS by Sloan Oliver
Macon violence affects us all
L ast month, my wife and I were
working in the yard when a
middle-aged couple drove up
and asked if we knew of any
houses for sale in the area Their ques
tion generated a few of our own, the
most significant being where are they
moving from. They answered; they live
in Macon-Bibb and want to “get out”
of that county My next question was
“why?” I knew the answer but wanted
to hear it from them. “Macon has
too many thuggie, gang bangers who
don’t give a flip about anything except
themselves.”
PROOF OF their words is found
daily in pages of the Macon Telegraph
and in the weekend crime reports. For
example, the weekend of April 14-15,
Macon had 6 shootings resulting in 3
murders and several armed robberies
of convenience/dollar stores. Two of
the murdered victims were bystanders
caught in the line of fire during a shoot
out The most unfortunate victim was
Ann Leonard, 75, killed by a stray bullet
from an AK-47 that travelled over 300
yards, passed through a window and
struck her in the chest while standing
in her kitchen. That’s the kind violence
the Macon couple wants to flee. (Don’t
be surprised if Monroe County starts
seeing the same if our Planning and
Zoning Board approves the low-
income housing being requested in
Bolingbroke.)
YOU MIGHT think that 6 shoot
ings and 3 murders would cause a stir
or create some angst within the black
community However, that’s not the
case. Fm sad to say that black-on-black
shootings and murders are such com
monplace that they don’t even make
front page news. If you recall, that
weekend’s social media outrage was
about the 71 year-old, white woman
who slapped a pregnant, black woman
in an argument over a parking spot
The liberal narrative is that crime,
education, and poverty are not the
biggest problems facing black America;
no, the biggest problem is racism and
a 71-year-old, white woman’s slap was
proof. The outrage in Macon was a
hand-slap, not the three murders. All I
can do is SMH.
ANN LEONARD was bom and
raised in Macon. She was educated
in the black, public schools. Leonard
graduated from Ballard Hudson HS
and earned her college degree at Fort
Valley State. After college, she spent
40+ years as an educator in the Bibb
County Public Schools. By all accounts,
Ms. Leonard was highly regarded in the
black community - as an educator, as a
disciplinarian, and as a role model. All
who knew her called her a friend. She
lived her entire life in the Vining Circle
neighborhood - until she was gunned
down.
I DIDN’T know her,
but I went to Ms. Leon
ard’s funeral. You might
ask why I went. I went
because I want the black
community to know that
I care. I want the black
community to know
that white people care
about what is happening
in the black neighbor
hoods. It’s not OK to go
around shooting up your
neighborhood or to go
around killing innocent
people. I’m saddened that the black
community isn’t more outraged and
isn’t marching through every single
neighborhood demanding an end to
this senseless violence. What the heck
is going on? How much more violence
needs to occur before the black com
munity screams - “NO MORE?” Last
October, 16-year old Jayvon Sherman
was murdered while walking to high
school. Before that it was pizza delivery
woman, Brooklyn Rouse - shot in the
face by a thuggie trying to rob her. And
before that, 14-year-old Tashuntis Rob
erts was killed when thuggies shot up
her house, in a dispute with her brother.
In between the murders of Roberts and
Ms. Leonard there have been dozens of
murders in the black community
WHETHER YOU Eve in the black
community or white, rich community
or poor, Bibb County or Monroe, the
violence and murders affect every one
of us. First, the greatest and most tragic
is that a life is ended decades before it
should. Loved ones and friends mourn
the devastating loss. The victim will
never have children, the parents will
never have grandchildren, a brother
is lost, a son is lost, or a mother is lost.
It’s impossible to put into words the
tragedy, the pain, the suffering, and the
utter waste caused by each one of these
murders.
WHILE VIOLENCE has an emo
tional impact, it has a monetary impact,
as weU. First, the victim and the killer
will never again contribute to society
Instead, the kiEer will go to prison and
cost us around $30,000 per year to
keep incarcerated. AdditionaUy, there
are costs associated with increased law
enforcement. Then, how do we mea
sure the costs associated with decreased
property values when
people start moving
away from crime-ridden
neighborhoods? How
do we measure the
economic costs of busi
nesses NOT started in a
community? And what
are the psychological
costs of seniors afraid to
leave their homes or of
children not allowed to
play outdoors for fear of
violence? FinaUy, while
I have no sympathy
for the kiEer, his family
suffers tremendously.
For all intents and purposes, a murder
destroys two families - the victim’s and
the kiEer’s. And for what end? It’s so
senseless.
AS A MIDDLE-CLASS white guy,
I wish I could stop the violence. But
what can I do? I can point it out and say
I hate it But that does nothing to stop
it Outside the black community, what
can any of us do? We can pray for the
victims and their families, we can start
midnight basketbaU programs, and
the pohce can initiate stop-and-frisk
programs. But who thinks any of those
will do any good? Stop-and-frisk might
keep some criminals from carrying
guns, and that would be good. And if
midnight basketbaU worked, wad see
it aU over the country. However, the
answer lies, not on the basketbaU courts,
but in the hearts of the Idlers.
FINAL COMMENT: Meanwhile,
former Macon mayor, C. Jack ElEs is
trying to convince us that the problems
in the black community are due to
Confederate monuments and is de
manding the monuments in Macon be
removed. Please, someone teU C. Jack
that he’s embarrassing.
Sloan Oliver is a retired Army officer.
He lives in Bolingbroke with his wife
Sandra. Email him at sloanoliver@
earthiink.net.
S/gO/i 0/iVe.f