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publish, and conceal not; Jeremiah 50:2
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ON THE PORCH by Will Davis
Boring debate? No
“I went to the debate in Bibb County, and this one was much
better” one spectator told me after Monday nights political
debate at Alderman Hall. “It was awesome.”
Lets be honest, most political debates are booooorring.
Typical moderator questions might include:
“Mr. Smith, would you share your ideas for making the com
munity safer?” or
“Mrs. Rogers, what do you think of the proposal to make
RFRA more in line with HIPPA to correlate with our RESA and
theEPA?”
7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,.
Political debates can be boring because government is boring,
because many moderators are chickens, and because candidates
are afraid to say what they really think.
But the Reporters debates are usually, well, maybe not awe
some, but at least somewhat interesting. Were not afraid to ask
tough questions. We used to co-host debates with our friends at
the chamber of commerce. Former chamber president Tiffany
Andrews used to roll her eyes at the debates we did together.
“You didn’t have to ask that,” shad complain. “You were picking
on ” The chamber got funding from the govern
ments that were being debated, so it was probably best we parted
ways on that. Now, we host the debate, and the chamber hosts a
separate social hour hob-nob, and everyone is somewhat happy.
Monday night’s debate might be one of my favorites. People
had been telling me for weeks that Alderman Hall wasn’t big
enough for the expected crowd. With 11 candidates invited, I
was told we needed to move it to a larger venue, maybe even the
1,200 seat Fine Arts Center.
“Ifwe have standing room only’ I replied, “it will be the first
time, and it will be fantastic.”
Well we did. And it was. If we had been in a large venue, the
crowd would’ve seemed pathetic.
But because we crammed into
little Alderman Hall, it seemed like
a good old-fashioned Town Hall
H meeting, like the one in the movie
“Hoosiers” where they debate
whether the troubled coach, played
by Gene Hackman, should be fired.
The intimacy of small town citizens
gathering to hash out their disputes,
with all the human emotions such
disputes engender, is what self-
governing people should do. It’s
American.
The dispute got quite real when
our friend, local sign Nazi John
Ricketson, a Todd Tolbert support
er, demanded that Tolbert’s opponent, Dale Washburn, explain
from six feet away why he was breaking the law by putting signs
in the right-of-way.
I don’t really recall what happened from there but Ricketson
called him a liar and they began yelling over each other and
Washburn, passion rising, began to head toward Ricketson.
Thankfully I had plunked down my blue cooler of waters for the
candidates right in front of Ricketson, which blocked their paths
and prevented a face-to-face showdown. I quickly decided it was
time for me to grab another water to help keep them apart.
Washburn, who’s normally very gentlemanly, later apologized
for losing his cool but said he’s tired of Ricketson badgering him
about signs.
Ricketson’s wasn’t the only tough question.
We asked Tolbert why he posted on Facebook that opponent
Shane Mobley had “evil in his heart” and was an “idiot” We
asked former Bibb County commissioner and school board
member Gary Bechtel about his outstanding fines for failing to
file paperwork from past campaigns, about his role in working
with disgraced former superintendent Romain Dallemand (he
didn’t vote to hire him and sued him) and about his role as a
commissioner as Bibb County finances have cratered. We asked
Shane Mobley what he’s doing with funds raised for his race for
insurance commissioner before switching to House District 141.
We asked candidates how they’ll vote on the 1-percent trans
portation tax on the May 22 ballot. Only Mobley committed to
oppose the tax hike. All say theyd undo the state tax credit that
a developer claims motivated them to try to put low-income
apartments next to the affluent Cross Creek subdivision on New
Forsyth Road.
Asking tough questions submitted by our readers helped mine
valuable information from the candidates for the voters.
The school board debate was equally useful. We asked Greg
See ON THE PORCH . Page 5A
m. ‘ M
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Cheryl S. Williams, Secretary-Treasurer
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Publication No. USPS 997-840
PEACH STATE POLITICS by Kyle Wingfield
Charter schools closing the gap
A s students know all too
well, spring isn’t just the
time when baseball re
turns and flowers bloom.
‘Tis also the season for testing.
It’s important to know if students
are learning as they should, and to
hold schools accountable if not. But
since the No Child Left Behind Act
became law in 2002, ushering in an
era of “high-stakes testing,” students
and parents as well as teachers and
administrators have wondered: Are
these tests telling us anything accu
rate about student performance?
The short answer is, yes - but it’s
worth parsing the numbers to un
derstand them better.
Take the National Assessment
of Educational Progress, or NAEP,
dubbed the “nation’s report card.”
Between 2003 (the first year the
NAEP was mandatory nationwide)
and 2017 (the most recent year for
which data are available), Geor
gia’s scores have risen. But we have
improved only barely when ranked
among all states: from 38th to 35th
on fourth-grade math, and from
39th to 32nd on fourth-grade read
ing. The gains were somewhat better
in the other benchmark year, eighth-
grade: up 11 spots in math and 14 in
reading. Yet our eighth-graders still
ranked in the bottom half nationally
That’s for all students tested. But
we know certain groups tend to per
form more poorly on standardized
tests than others, especially those
from low-income families and some
racial and ethnic minorities. (For
obvious but bad historical reasons,
there’s a lot of overlap between those
two groups.)
The Urban Institute adjusts each
state’s NAEP scores for a variety of
factors, including race and low-
income status. Taking those factors
into account, Georgia actually ranks
13th in fourth-grade math - 22 spots
higher than the unadjusted rank
ing. Our fourth-graders
rank ninth in reading,
and our eighth-graders
rank sixth in both math
and reading.
That’s a much dif
ferent picture. What it
shows is Georgia is do
ing fairly well at educat
ing some students who
traditionally are hard
to educate; we just have
more hard-to-educate
students than a lot of
other states.
Of course, that’s of
little comfort given
the importance of a well-educated
work force to our future economy
Employers won’t give Georgia extra
credit for having a different popula
tion mix than, say, Colorado. We
must lift all of our students to a high
level. But how?
Happily, another long-running
study points to one crucial solution:
charter schools.
Stanford University’s Center for
Research on Educational Outcomes
(CREDO) consistently finds charter
schools are narrowing the achieve
ment gap for racial minorities and
poor students. The 2013 CREDO
study (the most recent of its kind)
found being in a charter school is
“especially helpful” for “students in
poverty, black students, and English
language learners ... For students
with multiple designations (such
as being black and in poverty), the
impacts of charter schooling are
especially positive and noteworthy’
In other words,
exactly the groups of
students Georgia must
raise up if our state is to
remain competitive.
There’s more. A 2015
CREDO study found
even larger gains for
urban charter students.
The study found these
students receive “the
equivalent of roughly 40
days of additional learn
ing per year in math
and 28 additional days
of learning per year in
reading.” Once again,
minorities and poor students - and
especially poor minorities - received
the biggest benefits of being in char
ter schools. The longer students have
been in a charter, the better they
perform.
If Georgia is to make the grade
in the long run, lifting up all of our
students is vital. And that means
ensuring they are in the education
that best fits their needs.
Kyle Wingfields columns run
in newspapers around the state of
Georgia. He is president and CEO of
the Georgia Public Policy Foundation:
www.georgiapolicy. org.
JUST THE WAY IT IS by Sloan Oliver
Liberalism causes mental derangement
T |iere are many undeniable
truths. These truths include
things like - God created the
universe, the earth revolves
around the sun, water is wet, and
liberalism is a mental disorder. Most
of these truths are self-evident and
require no proof, as even people with
limited mental capacity know them to
be so. However, liberals don’t realize
that liberalism reduces one’s ability to
rationalize and to think clearly and thus
some proof is required.
REFERRING TO liberalism and its
leftist ideology, I wrote “the leftist cabal
does, says, and writes so much that is
dishonest and ridiculous that it’s dif
ficult to winnow out the extraordinarily
stupid from the average stupid.” In the
following paragraphs, I’ll discuss the
“extraordinarily stupid” to prove that
liberalism is not only a mental disorder
but, also, to show the idiotic, stupid, and
vileness of liberalism and of the leftist
cabal.
LAST MONTH, a Canadian youth
hockey team was involved in an ac
cident that killed 15 players and coaches
and injured another 14. In response to
this horrible tragedy, Nora Loreto, an
extremely liberal, Canadian journal
ist wrote, “Fm trying to not get cyni
cal about what is a totally devastating
tragedy but the maleness, the youthful
ness and the whiteness of the victims
are, of course, playing a significant role.”
Imagine the outcry if a similar accident
happened to a black basketball team
and someone denigrated the players
for their “maleness, youthfulness, and
blackness?” Yes, Loreto is full of hate.
Then again, she’s part of the leftist cabal.
ON SUNDAY, April 15, David Buck-
el, a leftist, gay rights, environmentalist
lawyer, immolated himself in Central
Park, New York. Buckel doused himself
with gasoline and set himself on fire.
His charred body was discovered by
joggers. A suicide note, found nearby,
stated that he was protesting mankind’s
use of fossil fuels. He wrote, “I am
David Buckel and I just killed myself by
fire as a protest suicide. My early death
by fossil fuel reflects what we are doing
to ourselves.” Oh, did I mention he was
a liberal.
PERHAPS THE most mentally
deranged person in the country is
the ultra-leftist Cassie King, a vegan
student at UC-Berkeley and an animal
rights activist. Six weeks ago, King
conducted a protest in which she had
herself covered with animal manure
while laying on a sidewalk in front of
a San Francisco, Trader Joe’s grocery
store. The dung was piJed to completely
cover her body, including her face, to
protest the conditions at the egg farms
from which Trader Joe’s buys its eggs.
King is a member of the radical animal
rights group - Direct Action Every
where (DxE). DxE is an activist group
that steals and releases farm animals
and then claims the animals have been
“liberated.” DxE says that meat is not
food but “the torment and suffering
of billions of our friends.” Who thinks
this way? Answer - liberals, leftists, and
Democrats.
IF YOU thought
that liberal craziness is
isolated to individuals,
think again. Beginning
last year, the city of Los
Angeles decided to com
bat global warming by
painting their 6,000 miles
of asphalt streets “white.” I
kid you not; Los Angeles
city leaders have decided
to spend $40,000 per mile
to paint the streets white.
Consider the miniscule
area of the planet covered
by LA city streets and the
infinitesimally small con
tributions those streets
might make to global warming, and
then you realize the lunacy of spending
a quarter of a billion, taxpayer dollars
on an idiotic attempt to thwart some
thing that is unproven. This insane
expenditure of taxpayer dollars is being
done in a city where crime is out of con
trol and there are tens of thousands of
homeless in tent cities scattered around
town. Nero fiddled while Rome burned
and liberals paint the streets while Los
Angeles collapses. This is collective
liberalism at its worst.
AS YOU know, Syria has chemical
weapons and has used them on its
citizens. So, what did the United Na
tions (UN) do? Later this month, Syria
is scheduled to assume the chairman
ship of a UN forum on disarmament
of chemical weapons. Hillel Neuer,
executive director of United Nations
Watch (an organization that tracks the
UN), said, “Having the Syrian regime
of Bashar al-Assad preside over global
chemical and nuclear weapons disar-
Slo&n OliVefi-
mament would be like putting a serial
rapist in charge of a women’s shelter!’
Neuer added, “The Assad regime’s
documented use of chemical weapons
remains the most serious violation of
the Chemical Weapons Convention in
the treaty’s 20 year history!’ Appoint
ing Syria as chairman of this forum is
stupidity raised to the infinite degree.
As expected, several nations are protest
ing and Syria’s chairmanship might be
overturned. However, the mere fact
that the UN would consider putting
Syria in charge of a chemical weapons
disarmament forum shows the absolute
stupidity of the UN. Yet, liberals fawn
all over this leftist organization, and
demand that the United States adhere
to its dictates.
ABOVE ARE five
examples of mental
disorders among liberals.
Every day we are exposed
to other examples -
gender is a choice, open
borders are good, police
are out to kill unarmed
blacks, the U.S. is a racist
nation, etc., etc. I don’t be
lieve that every liberal is as
crazy as these examples,
but I do believe that these
examples highlight that
wacky liberalism is not an
outlier - they are not “one
offs.” The above examples
show a disturbing pattern
of mental disorder among liberals.
Enough liberals, on college campuses,
in the media, in politics, and in society
exhibit abnormal thought and abnor
mal behavior such that what was once
called abnormal has now become the
norm among liberals. What’s troubling
is that no liberal ever calls out another.
The crazier the idea, the more it seems
to be accepted among liberals. It is
evident that liberalism is irrational; thus,
Undeniable Truth #1 - liberalism is a
mental disorder has been proven to be
true.
WEEKLY QUOTE: “The conven
tional viewpoint says we need a jobs
program and we need to cut welfare.
Just the opposite! We need more wel
fare and fewer jobs. I’m talking about
welfare for all.” - Jerry Brown, governor
of California.
Shan Oliver is a retired Army officer.
He lives in Bolingbroke with his wife
Sandra. Email him at sloanoliver@
earthlink.net.