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PAGE 4A • THE COMMERCE (GA) NEWS, WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 12, 2007 mion Editorial Views Speaker’s Visit Left A Bad Taste About HR 900 The overriding impression Speaker of the House Glenn Richardson left on his Commerce audience last Thursday was that he is an arrogant and rude politician who doesn't care what anyone else thinks about his controversial tax scheme. Considering that he wants to change the entire structure of local school and government funding, his rude treatment of his audience and his decision to take but three questions after a 30-minute slide show promoting House Resolution 900 were insulting to his audience and to his host, Kiwanian Keith Ariail. The most galling part of Richardson's proposal is his declaration that spending by Georgia school boards has gotten out of hand. School taxes have risen, and Richardson is one of the reasons. Every year, the General Assembly funds a smaller percent age of the overall cost of educating a student than it did the previous year. Its total outlay for education continues to rise, but the state continues to reduce its commitment to the education of children. For Richardson to participate in that revenue shift and then berate boards of education because they had to increase taxes to make up the difference is a study in hypocrisy and arrogance. Georgia schools cannot refuse to educate children when state funding is cut. They remain bound by per sonnel contracts, they must provide classroom space under guidelines set by the General Assembly, they have no choice but to operate school buses regardless of the cost of fuel, and they must meet every other mandate the state (or federal) government creates but does not fund. Of course local taxes go up! When the legislature breaks the law — which it has done every year by not funding education to the level required by the Quality Basic Education Act — local taxpayers have to make up the difference. When Gov. Sonny Perdue made his "austerity" cuts, those school systems without adequate reserves had to increase taxes. When a school system encounters 500 more students one year than the last, it cannot enlarge classes, it must provide more rooms and more teachers or risk losing accreditation. Richardson's selling point is the elimination of that late-in-year property tax bill, particularly for those with substantial amounts of property — the wealthy, business and industry. To do that, he proposes more sales tax — a 62 percent increase in the rate and the elimination of all current exemptions — for grocer ies, medication, doctor's visits, professional and personal services. The poor and working class who have little property to be taxed would no longer pay property taxes, but they would be nickeled and dimed to death every time they spent money for groceries, medication, doctors' or attorneys' fees, funerals or any other necessity of life. Even then, the state would determine how much money your local school board or county commissioners could spend to provide the level of service voters say they want. And that is the worst aspect. The General Assembly will dole out the revenue to Georgia's cities, counties and schools, but members like Richardson will not be accountable if there isn't enough money to pro vide basic services. The General Assembly is already being sued by a number of school systems — includ ing Commerce's — for failure to provide the legally required level of funding for education. Now it wants to totally control not just the funding of schools, but the funding of every city and county government in Georgia with a tax that hits the poor and working class the hardest. There is nothing inherently evil about changing the state's method of taxation, but any plan to do so should be an honest attempt to create equity, rather than a raw grab for increased state power at the expense of the working class. Rep. Richardson's plan — and his character — fall well short of the mark. Editorials, unless otherwise noted, are written by Mark Beardsley. He can be reached by e-mail at mark@main- streetnews.com. The Commerce News ESTABLISHED IN 1875 USPS 125-320 1672 South Broad Street Commerce, Georgia 30529 MIKE BUFFINGTON Co-Publisher SCOTT BUFFINGTON Co-Publisher MARK BEARDSLEY Editor/General Manager BRANDON REED Sports Editor TERESA MARSHALL Office Manager MERRILL BAGWELL Cartoonist THE COMMERCE NEWS is the legal organ of the city of Commerce and is published every Wednesday by MainStreet Newspapers Inc. Periodical postage paid at Commerce, Georgia 30529. Subscription Rates Per Year: Jackson, Banks and Madison Counties $19.75; State of Georgia $38.85; out-of-state $44.50. Most rates discounted $2 for senior citizens. POSTMASTER send address changes to THE COMMERCE NEWS, P.O. Box 908, Jefferson, GA 30549. The Spirit Of Christmas Past Last Sunday was commu nion Sunday at the Methodist church, and as the congrega tion took communion, the choir sang some of the old English carols that to me are so hauntingly beautiful and even mysterious, as if they bear in their eerie and solemn harmonies all the weight and import of the past. I was sit ting there in the pew with my parents, being prayerful, I guess you could say, when I was assailed by the memory of a Christmas past, and went fly ing back in time, like Scrooge in "A Christmas Carol," to the Christmas of 1964. I'd spent the previous year going to college in Scotland, but had contrived to get home for Christmas and surprise my parents. In 1964, they returned the favor. They knew I missed my Scottish friends and espe cially my Scottish boyfriend, Robin, and since I had missed Christmas in Scotland the year before, that was their gift to me: a round-trip ticket to Edinburgh for Christmas week. I recall nothing of the flight. The first thing I remember is arriving at the flat I had shared with other foreign students for part of the year before; Robin and several of his university friends had leased it when we moved out, so it was a bit like coming home. The key was on the lintel, and I let myself in A Few Facts, A Lot Of Gossip 2 BY SUSAN HARPER and was sitting at the kitchen table when one of Robin's flat mates came back from class. "Oh, hullo, Sarah," he said absently, sorting through his mail. I'd been gone half a year, of course, but was I that forget table? "Hi, Danny," I answered, in my inescapably American accent, and then he was stam mering apologies, covered in confusion, and I understood: Robin had a new girlfriend. The shock was terrific. Why had Robin said nothing in his letters? And what could I do? On a student's budget, I couldn't afford to flounce off. My flight home was a week away. Robin's family — whom I'd never met — expected me. By the time he came in, I think maybe I'd grown up a little, just sitting there at the kitchen table. I looked up at him but didn't move, and he knew that something was amiss. Danny said, "Cat's out of the bag, I'm afraid, old man," and I watched Robin cover the same mental territory I had. There was no decent escape route for either of us. Robin's family welcomed me warmly into their small home and simple village life. We went for walks on the hills above the ocean, our eyes stinging from the cold wind; we ate porridge for breakfast, winter vegetables from the garden for lunch, and squirrel stew for supper; and on Christmas Eve we split up and ran around to the shops to buy a few small gifts, try ing not to run into each other. I felt as if I had taken up residence in a Currier & Ives painting. At night Robin's sister and I shared secrets and talked into the darkness, and then lay quietly, listening to their father play "Once in Royal David's City" on his cello. I had one of the loveliest Christmases of my life that year, and when it was over I got on a train back to Edinburgh, alone, and never saw Robin or his family again. But they have lived in my heart from that day to this, and grateful memories of them, and of my parents' generosity, well up in me whenever I hear that fine old carol. I was given the gift of Christmas itself, and perhaps there's no better gift. Susan Harper is director of the Commerce Public Library. The Zen Of Noodles This Thanksgiving, as we have done for every Thanksgiving I can remember, we had homemade noodles. Prometheus gave us fire, Newton gave us calculus, but my grandmother gave us noodles, and I would rate her the highest. And not only are they delicious, the philosophy of noodles holds the secret of contentment. Noodle-making is a two-day affair and a two-person job. You start by mixing up a batch of dough (made of ordinary dough-stuff, I believe) into two tennis-ball size blobs. Each one has to be rolled out into a very thin sheet, about 15 by 15. The paterfamilias has to do that part; that is the man's job. It is like making ice-cream: you do it until you can't do it any lon ger and then it is ready. Then the Mom rolls up each sheet into a little tube and cuts across the tube about a million times to cut out the individual noodles. (This step teaches you Views In Rotation BY WILLIS COOK attention to detail, and also patience.) When all the noo dles are cut, each one has to be unrolled. So, at the end of an hour of the most tedious work imaginable, you have a platter of long, loose noodles. The noodles have to dry, so normally the above steps are a day ahead of time. It used to be that the traditional dry ing place was on top of the refrigerator, but our refrigera tor blows the hot air out the bottom so my wife dries the noodles in the oven with the light on. (Besides, years ago when the noodles were on the refrigerator, the cat discovered them and thought she was in cat-heaven. Fortunately I was the one to find her there and quietly put her out and smoothed out the trampled noodles. I didn't tell anyone until Thanksgiving dinner was over.) The next step encompasses the great secret of noodles: one batch of them is boiled and one batch butter-fried. The boiled ones are just noodles, but the fried ones are to die for. There is nothing like crunchy fried noodles drip ping with butter. Every year we asked our Mom to fry the whole batch and every year she refused, but she agreed to fry more than she boiled. Since the fried ones are so good it seems like they would be bet ter all fried, but that is not so. I guess the boiled ones, by being so bland, make the fried ones that much better. This is the Please Turn To Page 5A It's Gospel According To Mark BY MARK BEARDSLEY Going ‘Green’ Not Necessarily A Simple Matter I decided to decrease my footprint. No, I'm not planning surgery to reduce my size 13 clodhoppers to a more reasonable 11. I thought I should be the good steward and do what I can to reduce my "carbon footprint" in regard to global warm ing. It's the "in" thing now. You know the drill. Get the best mileage from your car, recycle what you can, conserve electricity and water. Live cheaply, you might say. I'd say, frugally — do your part to use a little less of the world's resources. Philosophically, those things are right up my ally. I've talked about (but not yet acted upon) acquiring a rain barrel. We cut our household water usage down to 2,600 gallons last month. I turn off lights when I leave the room. My garden is (was) pretty much organic. I recycle news papers. Alas, it's not that simple. Take recycling newspapers. At some point, the recycling bin is full to overflowing, and the Plant Manager of the Beardsley household issues an order. "Get rid of the papers." So, I bundle them up and take them to the recycling bin at Lanier Tech on South Broad Street. Unfortunately, the drive to Lanier Tech creates more greenhouse gases than I save through recycling. I'm losing ground — unless I drop the newspapers there on the way to somewhere else. I've made three trips to look at rain barrels. Given that the capacity of the barrels runs from 50 to 65 gallons, my contribution to the preservation of the city reservoir — assuming I eventually acquire a barrel — is lim ited to probably 500 gallons at the most over the next growing season. The trade-off in emissions, not to mention the water used to refine oil into gasoline for finding the barrel is not going to win me the Nobel Prize for conservation. I could build my own, but the savings in raw materials from recycling an existing container is more than offset by the ugliness of a 55-gallon drum on the back patio. Paper or plastic? Is the saving of our forests in using plastic instead of paper bags negated by amount of Iranian oil used to make a plastic bag? Does it take more water to make a paper bag or plastic? Personally, I have to factor in the satisfaction of knowing that paper will at least rot, but you get the idea. In business, systems are analyzed to see if they're cost-effective. If I apply that to my personal stewardship, the need for adjustments is apparent. Let the newspapers pile up until I'm heading toward the recycling bin anyway. Refuse bags when possible, make efficiency a paramount criteri on when buying appliances, vehicles, light bulbs or plumbing fixtures, mulch all plants ... there are a mil lion tiny ways to be a little less inef ficient and either a little less wasteful of the earth's resources or a tad less of a contributor toward global warm ing or reservoir depletion. Being a good steward is a process that requires patience, practice and a philosophical commitment. It hap pens incrementally; a change of habit here, a little effort there and maybe even some inconvenience. It all starts with wanting to be a good steward, but it takes a lot more effort than you'd think. Mark Beardsley is editor of The Commerce News. He can be reached at mark@main- streetnews.com.