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THE COMMERCE NEWS
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 2016
Editorial
Views
The case for
strategic tax
abatemnts
During the spring campaigns for
the board of commissioners races in
Jackson County the subject of property
annexations received some debate—are
they good or bad for Jackson County its
taxpayers and its school systems?
Last week’s action by the Jackson
County Industrial Development Author
ity related to issuing bonds and abating
property taxes for the new Amazon fulfill
ment center in Braselton illustrates how
abatements are used to grow the tax
digest — not to mention to bring jobs to
the county. Both are missions of the IDA.
Amazon is leasing a building, into
which it will invest another $18 million.
That building, including the $18 million
addition, is not part of the abatement
plan.
The abatement covers “personal prop
erty” which in tax jargon means equip
ment. Amazon anticipates $37 million
worth of such equipment being installed,
and the agreement with the IDA calls for
an eight-year abatement (actually during
the final year there is zero abatement),
with the amount of the taxes abated
declining each year.
Had the county not offered the abate
ment, officials believe that Amazon
would have located elsewhere, given
the intense competition for industry in
Georgia and the adjoining states.
With or without Amazon, the build
ing would have gone on the tax digest
Jan. 1. Without the abatement, there is
no way of knowing what might have
eventually landed in the building, but
most distribution centers do not require
anything approaching $37 million worth
of equipment, and another company
would probably not have added another
$18 million to the value of the building. It
is highly probable that Jackson County
its fire districts and its school systems
will garner more tax money because
Amazon is in the building — even with a
tax abatement — than a typical distribu
tion center would generate in the same
building with zero tax relief.
Because it is a fulfillment center, the
Amazon facility offers more and better
jobs than an ordinary distribution cen
ter. Up to 700 jobs paying an average
of $30,000 a year is a significant boon
for Jackson County. Employees will be
vested in the company’s 401k program
immediately will be covered by medical
insurance on Day One, and Amazon
will fully fund tuition for employees going
to school for “in-demand” careers as
defined by Jackson County.
Granted, the tax benefits from any
industry would be better if there were
no abatements, but the competition for
new business and industry is so intense
— because of the potential tax revenue
and jobs—that those companies with the
most to offer can demand concessions.
The math in this case suggests that Ama
zon will contribute more in taxes with its
abatement than most other companies
likely to locate in that building would pay
without an abatement.
The taxes to help fund county schools
and services and the 700 new jobs make
Amazon’s tax abatement a good deal for
Jackson County.
Unless otherwise noted, all editorials
are written by Mark Beardsley. He can
be reached at mark@mainstreetnews.
com.
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Abandoning the landline
Like Democrats and Republicans leaving
their parties to declare themselves Indepen
dents, I finally reached the decision to aban
don my home (landline) telephone. Alas,
I can’t physically remove it due to needing
phone-line-based lousy Internet service, but
I no longer answer the home phone unless
I’m expecting an important call. Not that I get
many important calls.
By important, I do not mean notification that
I’ve won a cruise to the Bahamas, that it’s my
last chance to apply for senior benefits or that
I qualify for a home security system because
crime has increased in my neighborhood.
Rather, an “important” call is typically from
family.
Two things figured in my decision. The first
is that 95 percent of the phone calls to our
landline are robocalls soliciting donations or
trying to frighten us into buying a product or
service we don’t need, or scammers threat
ening to sue us for nonpayment of federal
income taxes we don’t owe. The other five
percent are for Barbara.
The second reason is that I finally began
keeping my cell phone on, so I can be
reached when it’s important, and with which
I have the option of taking or rejecting a call,
depending on who’s calling and my mood at
the time.
Reaching that point took several years. I’ve
always said that my cell phone was for me
to call other people, not for them to call me,
It's
Gospel
According
To Mark
By Mark Beardsley
but as I’ve used the phone more and more
to reach people I need to talk to for business,
the realization was forced on me that a lot of
the time when they call back I’m not in the
office, and if I want to get that important quote,
missing piece of information or a chewing out
for my editorial opinion, I’d best be readily
available.
Barbara says there’s a third reason—that
I’m becoming a grumpy old man.
Our landline does not have Caller ID, which
leaves us in sort of a communications lottery
when the phone rings — is it a call for which
answering provides a benefit (someone we
want to talk to) or the pre-digital equivalent of
spam? The line has an answering machine,
which we check dutifully so when that rare
legitimate call does come in, we can call back.
Over the past several months, the call vol
ume on the landline has increased. Before
Barbara retired, it was a rare day when I came
home from work and didn’t find the light blink
ing on the answering machine. If there were
four calls, three of them were hang-ups and
the fourth most likely would be an annoying
robocall (okay language purists, annoying and
robocall are redundant).
Right now we stand on the cusp of an infu
sion of robocalls from Georgia Republicans,
the National Rifle Association and Donald
Trump himself seeking our votes; or from Hol
lywood celebrities and the presumed future
First Man Bill Clinton, assuring us that a Trump
presidency will bring on the End Times. For
the life of me, I can’t understand why candi
dates think anyone would listen to such verbal
sludge, let alone be influenced on how to vote
by a recording, but I sure don’t want to field
such calls even for the length of time it takes to
hang up.
I’m no pioneer here. I know people without
cell phones who never answer their landline
phone without checking their Caller ID, and
it’s not exactly Top Secret that a lot of people
forego a landline altogether. The landlines,
it appears, are headed the way of the car
rier pigeon, long-distance phone bills and
Rand-McNally road atlases.
Times change. If you can’t reach me at
work, call my home phone. I may get back to
you.
Mark Beardsley is the editor of The Com
merce News. He lives in Commerce.
The hard road to happiness
My doctor just prescribed a new nasal spray
for me, and I was driving home from his office
when CVS called. A half-ounce of the spray was
going to cost $300, and my insurance wouldn’t
cover any of it.
“But your doctor can apply for prior authoriza
tion; then the insurance might cover part of it.”
I said okay. The next day my phone rang and
I heard a voice that could have etched glass.
“This is Optum,” said a robot. “We are calling
to inform you that your prior authorization has
been denied.” I suspected that the heartless,
brainless robot had handled the whole thing.
This is what’s happening nowadays. Those
life-saving EpiPens for the severely allergic
used to cost $57- already a hardship for the
45 million Americans living below the poverty
line. Then the price rocketed to $218 (and we
began seeing lavish ads for the EpiPen on TV).
Now the manufacturer has been “shamed”
into “reducing” the price to $150, which one
journalist said was like a kidnapper reducing his
ransom demand.
We face many such problems, now that
corporations run the government. It’s why the
government isn’t running much at all, and when
it does run, it tends to benefit the corporations,
while we pay the cost, both in taxes and in exor
bitant retail prices.
The philosopher Jeremy Bentham said, “The
greatest happiness of the greatest number is
the foundation of morals and legislation.” He
A Few
Facts, A
Lot of
Gossip II
By Susan Harper
was echoing our Declaration of Independence,
which ranks happiness as a value all people
have a right to pursue — for the hope of it moti
vates us to strive for survival and freedom.
The only “people” who have the ability to
pursue happiness these days seem to be the
corporations and the minions who toil in the
upper echelons of the corporations or the
government. A good many of the rest of us are
scrambling to keep body and soul together. And
the real shame, for the U.S., is in our homeless,
in the “prison industry” based on corporate
profit rather than rehabilitation, in the millions
of people (especially among the elderly or
disabled) who are increasingly unable to afford
their medications, and — in this new, cruel
America—the pockets of abject poverty unem
ployment, hunger and hopelessness where the
heroin and opioid addiction “industry” now
thrives.
Meet Dequan Jackson. Back when he was 13,
he accidentally banged into a teacher when he
was horsing around in his school’s hallway. The
teacher charged him with battery. He agreed
to plead guilty and accepted a year’s proba
tion, with strict rules, so that at the end of the
probation period the charge could be reduced
to a misdemeanor. He followed the rules assid
uously did community service in a food bank,
observed the 8:00 pm curfew, etc., but at the
end of the 12 months, he and his mom could
not come up with the $200 for court costs. They
barely had money for food. So his probation
was extended for another 14 months and the
costs rose to $868.
This is what our “systems” can end up
doing. “You feel like you’re drowning and
you’re trying to get some air,” Dequan says,
“but people are just pouring more water into
the pool.” It’s part of the reason Donald Trump
has such outsize popularity: desperate people
feel that someone is finally listening to them.
Dequan, now 16, is an honor student and a
star linebacker. He was lucky: somebody lis
tened. Perhaps we all need to listen as hard as
we can, and aim to create a country in which
more people can thrive.
Susan Harper is a retired editor, lecturer,
and local library director who currently
serves on the Jackson County and Piedmont
Regional library boards.
The book from 1912
I have a book that was published in 1912. It
was a limited edition of 750 copies, of which
“only 250 are offered for sale.” I have no idea
what was intended for the remaining five
hundred.
The book is a collection of poems-but-
not-poems. That is, these selections were
originally written in verse, in Bengali, but were
translated into English prose by the author.
The book is entitled Gitanjali (“Song Offer
ings”) by Rabindra Nath Tagore.
Tagore, who was the first non-Western-
er to win the Nobel Prize in literature (in
1913), died in 1941. Well, everyone who was
involved with this particular book has died by
now. Even the owner of the book has died.
I happen to know who that was, by the way,
because she inscribed her name in it: Cecily
Reddoch. And furthermore, I know a few
personal things about her. She was a grown
woman, not a child. Her signature is firm
(but not arrogant). She underlined it with a
flourish. She was not old: her handwriting is
gracefully smooth. Furthermore, I think she
bought this book in the spring and probably
read it while sitting in her garden. How do I
know that?
The sixth stanza of Tagore’s poem begins
thus:
“Pluck this little flower and take it, delay not!
I fear lest it droop and drop into the dust....”
And tucked into the book at that page is a
small dried flower. It is sort of cream-colored
with dark veins on the petals. I think it is a
white violet. So -1 know that Cecily was a
sensitive person who was moved enough
to follow the poet’s injunction and pluck a
flower, just as he asked. The book’s covers
are moderately soiled, so I think the book
has passed through many hands. But every
reader, when coming upon that flower, has
been careful not to let it fall out. Thus, Ceci
ly’s little token of sympathy with the poet has
remained intact for over a century.
(It’s funny what people insert into their
books. I have an edition of Casanova’s Mem-
oires that contains a newspaper clipping
about pumpkin pie.)
Tagore was a poet, an artist and a musi
cian. He was profoundly popular in India and
is certainly not unknown in the West. He was
a religious mystic and, although non-Chris
tian, his religious longings resonate perfectly
with anyone who believes in - or wishes for -
a god. That is the thesis of his book, his long
ing for God. He portrays himself as a singer,
hired to sing to the master of the house. He
hopes that when his performance is finished
he may be allowed to linger and at least see
his host. But he has waited all his life and, as
he says (#13) “The song that I came to sing
remains unsung to this day. I have spent my
days in stringing and in unstringing my instru
ment...”
Haven’t we all felt that way, always prepar
ing for our big moment, but never quite ready
when it comes?
Would you enjoy this book? I don’t know:
This is the voice from another time, another
culture, another continent. Tagore handled
the family estate for several years and yet he
found time to withdraw from the hurly-burly
of daily life and listen quietly to whatever God
had to say to him. Few of us can manage
that. There is never time to sit and contem
plate God, the universe or ourselves. This is
Tagore’s response to that complaint: “The
butterfly counts not months but moments,
and has time enough.”
Willis Cook is a retired electrical engineer
who was born in New Orleans and grew up
in the Mississippi Delta. He lives in Franklin
County.