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PAGE 4A - THE COMMERCE (GA) NEWS, WEDNESDAY. SEPTEMBER 16, 2009
mion
Editorial Views
Immigration Reform
Another Critical Need
The closing of a Grady Memorial Hospital
outpatient dialysis clinic captures a key
element in the debate over immigration
reform.
Says the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: "The
problem is that about 60 of the clinic's
90 patients are undocumented immigrants,
who cannot collect government aid such as
Medicaid and for whom the hospital cannot
find another local medical provider."
Grady is losing $2 million to $4 million a
year on the clinic. Two-thirds of the patients
are undocumented immigrants whose treat
ment is subsidized by taxpayers. On the one
hand, we do not want to deny critical care
to anyone, but on the other, is it fair to the
taxpayers to be asked to fund care of people
in the United States illegally?
The situation resists simple answers.
Undocumented laborers do the dirty, nasty
and difficult jobs others won't take, keeping
prices lower on everything from poultry to
housing, but when they need services and
privileges that would allow them to live
decently, we note their lack of legal standing
and see them as a drain on our resources.
We need a policy that allows immigrants
to work legally under the protection of the
law while enabling us to document who,
how many and how long they stay. Tolerating
illegal immigration to get cheap labor then
being outraged when the laborers need essen
tial services serves neither the best interest of
the immigrants or those of the country.
‘Baby Steps* For
Access At Reservoir
Admit it, you never thought that the Upper
Oconee Basin Water Authority would allow
the public to launch its fishing boats at the
Bear Creek Reservoir, did you?
But last Friday, Sept. 11, seven years after the
reservoir was completed, the Jackson County
Recreation Department opened its new boat
ramp, reluctantly allowing the public partial
access to the lake. Through this month, boat
ers can access the lake four days a week. In
October through March, they'll have access
three days a week.
It's a start. The wheels of progress grind ever
so slowly in the four-county bureaucracy that
owns the lake, but eventually public pressure
may force the group to open the lake every
day so that the vast majority of citizens in
Jackson, Barrow, Oconee and Athens-Clarke
counties have the same rights of access as the
handful of residents whose property is adja
cent to the lake.
Right now, by virtue of their proximity,
those people can launch boats across the
authority's buffer zone from their property
and use the lake pretty much whenever they
want. No one has yet to explain why certain
residents are afforded greater rights than the
rest of the citizens whose tax dollars back the
bonds that built the reservoir, but that too
could change over the upcoming months and
years.
Consider the part-time boat ramp to be the
latest in a series of baby steps toward utilizing
this drinking water reservoir for recreation. At
least the lake is open Wednesdays (until Oct.
1) and weekends. It's a start.
Editorials, unless otherwise noted, are written
by Mark Beardsley. He can be reached at mark@
mainstreetnews. com
The Commerce News
ESTABLISHED IN 1875
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1672 South Broad Street
Commerce, Georgia 30529
MIKE BUFFINGTON Co-Publisher
SCOU BUFFINGTON Co-Publisher
MARK BEARDSLEY..Editor/General Manager
JUSTIN POOLE 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 Jefferson, Georgia
30549.
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□
I need to get to know the voters personally. Do
you think I should text, email, or tweet them?
My Trusty, Dusty Steed
I still catch myself
thinking of it as my
new car now and
then, but my 1990
Honda is pushing 20,
and that's in car years.
In people years, she's
just about exactly my
age. I can tell by how
much maintenance
and repair work she
needs.
We're good company for each other,
my Honda and I. We know each
other's quirks, after so many years
together. I tend to ride the clutch
unless I concentrate on not doing so,
and she has weak ankles. No, axles.
Well, CV joints, actually, I guess.
Whatever.
As you can tell, I don't know a whole
lot about the mechanics of cars. I was
appalled to learn, in a driver's educa
tion class a half-century ago, that the
combustion engine (terrible name,
don't you think? — suggestive of fire)
runs by virtue of constant small explo
sions. Talk about too much informa
tion! It was unbearable to think of
something in my car engine blowing
up over and over, even just a little
bit, so I decided not to think about it.
That was two Volkswagens, a Toyota
and the Honda ago.
This current car has had only one
previous owner, and I think he was
sorry he let her go. I expect I would
be, too, so not even a $4,000 bribe
from the government last month
could pry her out of my hands.
Instead, I spent roughly that amount
to equip her for another 20 years or
150,000 miles, whichever comes first.
(Let's not think about that, either.)
My friends introduced me to a retired
airline pilot who now tinkers seriously
with planes and foreign cars, and after
he told me that the car was not worth
Personalities
Let me start off
with an embarrassing
confession: my wife
brought home a DVD
of the Walt Disney
movie "Wall-E" from
the library the other
night and I loved it.
I didn't care that the
plot was s-o-o-o politi
cally correct: the earth
had become totally
covered in trash and
humanity had evacuated to a stel
lar cruise ship until things at home
improved. Wall-E was a trash-collector
(Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-
class) and had been doing his thing
for 700 years.
But Wall-E as a robot was fascinat
ing. He had become a scavenger and
picked up replacement parts for him
self, which is how he was able to sur
vive for so long. While scooting along,
one of his treads came loose and he
stopped and got another from a simi
lar, defunct model.
Through some kind of genetic
defect, my wife has absolutely no
interest in robots. She doesn't even
want a Roomba, the automatic vacu
um cleaner. I think it is Wall-E's func
tionalism that make him so attractive,
well and his Disney-cute-personality.
the cost of the repairs,
and I said I knew that
(well, what I actually
said was, "Just wait —
in 20 more years she'll
be a classic car!" and
he smiled at me with
something like pity),
he went right to work.
She already had a new
radiator; now she has
a rebuilt clutch, new
rotors (whatever that means), nice
tires and a whole bunch of stuff with
multiple-word names. My favorite is
"sway bar links." I love the idea of
driving around in a car that has its
own sway bar, which sounds to me
like a pub in the tropics. Picture it:
palms swaying gently in an ocean
breeze; cool drinks, warm nights, the
sky a sea of stars.
When I went to pick my car up
from the pilot's foreign-car spa, I was
astonished. She drove like a new car.
I'd made a good decision after all!
She had so many new parts, there was
nothing left to break down, right?
Eager to feel the wind in my hair
again, I let down all the windows and
enjoyed the drive home, down a coun
try road. Then it began to rain, and —
uh-oh — one of the windows wouldn't
go back up.
So now I've started a new repair
list, beginning with the window, and
going on to the window-washer bottle,
which apparently has a hole in it, and,
well, you get the idea. But she's got
a bigger piece of my heart than ever,
this car of mine, so I guess we'll keep
traveling down those country roads
together for as long as both of us hold
up. Wish us luck!
Susan Harper is the former director of
the Commerce Public Library. She lives
in Commerce.
Of Robots
It's funny about
robots — they seem to
have a national char
acter. The Japanese
have long been inno
vators in robotics and
many of the industrial
models you see in
plants are Japanese.
But the Japanese have
a penchant for mak
ing robots that look
and act like humans.
That's all they do — they sit there and
act like humans. There is a famous
model, "HRP-4C" that looks exactly
like a young Japanese woman. All she
does is sit and kind of sway back and
forth. Well, she can walk, but she does
so like someone with a severe hemor
rhoid flair-up. She has scores of tiny
motors to make her eyes move, eyelids
flutter, cheeks and jaws move back
and forth, but basically she is useless.
The Japanese have produced another
robot that does nothing but laugh.
It is an extremely complex machine
with artificial vocal cords, a huge bel
lows that takes the place of lungs, and
a rubberized mouth that opens and
closes. And all it does is rear back, fill
ing its bellows with air, and then lurch
Please Turn to Page 5A
A Few
Facts t A
Lot Of
Gossip 2
BY SUSAN HARPER
Viewpoints
In
Rotation
BY WILLIS COOK
It's
Gospel
According
To Mark
BY MARK BEARDSLEY
Time To
Start Electing
Independents
It will be interesting to see
if President Obama's Sept. 10
speech changes the playing field
in the debate over health care
reform, but I hope he holds to
his threat to "call out" those
who have blatantly lied about
what is in or out of the plan.
That works both ways, of
course. A "call out" may be a
big lie itself, and it would be
naive to suggest that all of the
misinformation rests with one
side or the other in this debate.
But the health care system
is broken. The problem in fix
ing it is that too many people
are more interested in seeing
Obama fail, some for political
reasons and others because they
profit from a broken system.
It's almost impossible to filter
through the information put
forth by those for or against
health care legislation to decide
whether ideas in reform legisla
tion are beneficial or harmful.
Obama's speech was an
attempt to re-frame the debate,
which has been framed by the
anti-reform movement lead by
the insurance industry. (It is dis
couraging to realize how much
of the rhetoric in any major
debate is crafted by one group
— as if our politicians cannot
think for themselves or are
totally corrupted by lobbyists.
When you see virtually every
one on one side using the same
words and phrases — "death
panels," "government takeover,"
"rationing" —you realize some
one has scripted the debate.)
Given our highly politicized
society, we're all too willing to
parrot what we hear as if it were
gospel. We're suckers for snake
oil salesmen if what they sell
appears to match our ideology.
I am fortunate enough to
work for a company that pro
vides health insurance, but it
is easy to see a day coming
when, if there is no meaningful
change, small companies will
not be able to offer that benefit,
or when employees will not be
able to afford their part of the
cost or ever increasing deduct
ibles. What good is insurance if
you can't afford it?
We can't reform the indus
try unless there's good-faith
negotiation among Democrats
and Republicans and a genuine
desire for reform, and I'm not
seeing that. Voters have del
egated critical thinking to the
talking heads, and members of
Congress have outsourced study
of the issues to the lobbyists.
We're not going to make
meaningful progress on health
care reform, fiscal reform,
global warming or any of the
many critical issues before us
until both parties sober up and
cease their scorched-earth prac
tices against each other and quit
relying on corporate lobbyists
for their information, position
papers and rhetoric.
It's going to get worse before
it gets better. Maybe it's time to
begin electing independent can
didates and leave both political
parties to their own destructive
devices.
Mark Beardsley is editor of The
Commerce News. He can be reached
at mark@mainstreetnews.com