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PAGE 4A - THE COMMERCE (GA) NEWS. WEDNESDAY. TANUARY 2. 2008 mion Editorial Views Some Resolutions For Our Elected Officials Some New Year's Resolutions for our elected offi cials: •Resist simple-sounding solutions for complex problems. They're problems because of their com plexity, i.e. restructuring the state or federal tax codes with one "simple" flat tax. •Don't overreact to the drought. Georgia needs more reservoirs, but you can't build for a 100-year drought. The best way to get through the next drought is to learn to be more efficient with the water we have. • Consider the possibility that people in the oppo site political party can have good ideas too, and when they do, support them. No party has cornered the market on good — or goofy — ideas. Politicians whose every motive is to belittle the opposing party don't just look small, they are small. •Protect the Constitution. The Bush Administration has worked overtime to erode our rights from habeas corpus to illegal search and seizure. Thousands of Americans died to earn and protect those rights and we ought not to let this president continue to take them away. •Protect the environment. The United States should not be a bystander or an obstacle in the fight against global warming. It's a shame when states have to sue the federal government to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. • End the war in Iraq. It's an illegitimate and unjus tifiable war that has killed thousands of Americans, tens of thousands of Iraqis. It is shameful to waste the lives of our young men and women in such an immoral foreign intervention. • Balance the budget. It is also shameful to finance today's government on the backs of tomorrow's taxpayers who will pay the debt we're rapidly accru ing. It is, in effect, taxation without representation, because those who will have to pay it off had no say in the creation of the debt. Lots To Hate About Hate Crimes Legislation Legislation before the General Assembly to affix special punishment to crimes that are determined to stem from the perpetrators' hatred of the victim is a study in confusion. First, there is a legitimate argument that says the motive behind a crime is irrelevant. A murder victim is just as dead regardless of the assailant's motives. Is one reason for committing a crime deserving of more punishment than the next? If you can get past that conundrum, the major stumbling block of the legislation appears to be the determination as to which groups of people deserve protection from hate crime. Blacks, women, other minorities, Jews and Muslims are in; gays and lesbi ans are the sticking point. Conservative legislators oppose giving protection to homosexuals lest they somehow appear to compromise their belief that homosexuality is a sin. The whole exercise is governmental silliness. The punishment for assault or murder ought not to be determined by one's racial or ethnic views, but on the harm done to the victim and to the laws of the state. And what would it say about Georgia if the General Assembly — by its new hate crime legislation — were to declare that it's less offensive to commit a crime against a gay or a lesbian than against a Jew, a Muslim or a Southern Baptist? The best thing the General Assembly can do is drop the whole matter. Creating separate laws for different groups of citizens violates the fundamental principle that we are all equal under the law. 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 BEARDSFEY 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 dis counted $2 for senior citizens. POSTMASTER send address changes to THE COMMERCE NEWS, P.O. Box 908, Jefferson, GA 30549. Ralph feels that making Yew Year’s resolutions implies that one has room for improvement. Work On In 2008 I just love the turn into the new year, and welcome it annually as if I were having a whole new start in life: a clean slate, a wipeout of all past mis takes — of what the poet Robert Bly calls "the long black bag we drag behind us." Mine is too heavy to pull, at this point. I sometimes feel like the ghost of Jacob Marley, wearing "the chains I forged in life." But on New Year's Day I wake up thinking I can do better, start fresh. The very air feels like champagne, and all things are possible! (For at least a day or so.) With that in mind, I have a few things I'd like us to tackle — as humankind, I mean, and not necessarily in the following order, but just starting any where, here's the short list. Umbrellas could be better, don't you think? I am forever finding myself needing three or four hands to deal with them plus everything else I'm carrying, and even then I get wet. I appreciate the fact that the Totes people have finally made one that not only goes up at the push of a button, but comes down the same way. But I think we can do better, con sidering that umbrellas have been around for about 1,700 years. I want one I can wear as an extension of my purse — perhaps one that is activated by verbal commands. And I want it to collapse one side at a time, so I can get into my car without getting soaked. Pie plates, too, have a brighter future, I feel sure. The pie is even older than the umbrella, so by now there ought to be a way to slice and serve one of mine without having it tear up. I'm tired of being consoled with the notion that it tastes just as good when it's scat tered about the plate in pieces. I mean, maybe it does, but it doesn't look just as good. Fortunately, presentation is not everything. I'm waiting for some smart pie-loving engineer to invent a gizmo that lifts perfect pie-slices out of the pie plate. Perhaps this pie wizard could also invent sticky thread. I'm not big on sewing, so once I've hemmed something, or sewn a button on, I like it to stay sewn. The thread I'm envisioning would seem per fectly normal as you sew, but would then develop a sticky quality that would make it cling to the garment and hold things in place. So if you tore part of the hem, say, the whole thing wouldn't unravel; there would be just one little place to mend. I'd like for my car to tell me what's wrong with it, too. I don't want one that calls the dealership and tattles on me — just one that says, "Yo, Susan! My frattersnatter needs chang ing, and I could use a lube job this week or next." As for world peace, I'd like for all heads of state to be required to attend Ruler School once a year, take intensive courses, do lab work and pass an exam. And we citizens could all become bilingual, skilled in our own language and in a universal language like Esperanto that would belong to no one and every one. Well, as I said, this is the short list. Happy New Year! Susan Harper is executive director of the Commerce Public Library. BY SUSAN HARPER A Few Facts, A Lot Of Gossip 2 Keeping A Promise To Herself In this season usually dedicat ed to making resolutions, my thoughts go back to resolutions I have made either formally or informally, and if they have been kept. The formal resolu tions or promises made at the time of marriage, confirmation, allegiance to my country, and the baptism of my children, I have done my best to keep. The others, except for one, I do not recall or have chosen to forget because I failed so miser ably to keep them. The one exception was a promise I made to myself when I was 6 years old. I was so enthralled with the idea of learning that I promised myself I would be a teacher when I grew up. I never wavered from that promise, although the route taken to reach that goal was a circuitous 30-year trip. The trip began in Rhode Island, in a one-room school- house built in 1877. It had out door plumbing, a wood stove for heating, two cloak rooms (one for boys, one for girls), two entrances (one for boys, one for girls), no lunch facili- Views if Nk At In Rotation n BY CLAIR GAUS ties, and four grades in that one room with one teacher. It also had the best education under the best teacher I have ever had, Miss Foley. If some of you have had occa sion to speak to me, you might have noticed my dialect is not that of the South, particularly Georgia. Blame Miss Foley for that. She was a young, dedicat ed teacher who found herself with a freckled, non-English speaking first grade student. I was not alone. Our small com munity was made up of many first-generation American stu dents. Some parents came as refu gees from Poland and the Ukraine. Some parents had been left by the fishing fleets from Portugal when the fish ing for cod went bad. Some parents came from French Canada to work in the mills of New England. None of us at that time could speak English well, but we all knew enough of each other's languages to run from household to house hold and have conversations with members of the families in Polish, Slavic, Portuguese, French or English. If this seems incredulous, remember that the time was The Depression; there was limited access to radio, no television, and pock ets of nationalities with their own newspapers, churches and cultural organizations. Therefore, it was entirely pos sible for a child who had heard only one language spoken in the home to go school not knowing English. Enter Miss Foley. She took it upon herself to have all of us learn to speak Yankee English. Not Yankee as in the North and Please Turn To Page 5A It’s Gospel According To Mark BY MARK BEARDSLEY Some Headlines To Be Written During New Year It is a tradition for all-wise journal ists to peer into their crystal balls at this time of the year to make predic tions about what the year will bring. My crystal doesn't work half the time, and when it does, it's wrong, so instead of trying to convince you I know what's going to happen, I'll give you the headlines and stories for 2008 that I'd like to write: • State Climatologist Admits Being Wrong About Drought: After record rainfall for the first four months of the year and mandates by the EPD requiring outdoor water ing every day, State Climatologist David Stooksbury concedes that the drought of 2007 did not, as he predicted, carry over into 2008. "It turned out we had El Nino, not La Nina," he said. "My bad." Asked to comment, Gov. Sonny Perdue stated: "Take a longer shower." • Drunk Driver Admits Having Three Beers: Commerce police were stunned to pull over a driver for weaving in the road and driving the wrong way on South Elm Street who actually admitted to having more than two beers. "I'm sloshed," he said. "No contest." • New Tax Assessments Go Out Friday: The Jackson County Board of Tax Assessors will send out new assessments this week, reflecting a 9.4 percent reduction in prop erty values due to the mortgage crisis. The Jackson County Board of Commissioners announced that it will lower its tax rate accordingly. • First Painless Tattoo Remover Deployed At BJC: Local medical officials say the device, which can remove formerly permanent tattoos painlessly and safely, is the only one of its kind in the country. The hospi tal already reports a backlog of 489- procedures, which cost $3,000 a pop. • Missing Water Found: The Jackson County Water and Sewerage Authority located more than 500 million gallons of "lost and unac counted for water" that had been on its books for years. "It was in Arcade all along," an embarrassed Chairman Hunter Bicknell explained. "We've got it all back now, with interest." • Public Boat Ramp Opens At Reservoir: The Upper Oconee Basin Water Authority held a ribbon-cut ting ceremony at its boat ramp, erect ed after three years of discussion at a cost of only $1.2 million. Fishermen must apply for launching privileges, and must be cleared individually on each visit by the Operations and Recreation committees, as well as by EPD and Homeland Security. "We keep our promises," said Chairman Melvin Davis. • Skateboard Festival Planned For Downtown: Hasco Craver, executive director of the Downtown Development Authority, announced the three-day event, during which pedestrians will be banned from the downtown sidewalks. • Cops Confiscate $4 Million On 1-85: Commerce Police Chief John Gaissert announced the seizure of a Brinks truck during a routine traffic stop. "The tag decal was obscured, so the officer pulled him over." The driver expressed dismay about the sacks of cash found in the back of the truck during a search subsequent to arrest. Whatever the stories are, I'm sure 2008 will be an interesting year. Mark Beardsley is editor of The Commerce News. He can be reached at mark@mainstreetnews. com.