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Page 4 — Wednesday, January 21,2009, The Millen News
yours and ours
Opinions,
The Chatter Box
By Deborah Bennett
It is official. I am now a member of the “Grandma Club.”
Little Jaylee was bom safe and healthy last Tuesday to our son
Jason and wife Kim. and she is about the closest thing to perfect
that I have seen since her daddy was born. Of course. I am just a
little bit prejudiced.
She looks like a little angel when she smiles in her sleep, but
the first time I saw her. she was screaming her head off. And the
first time I held her. she had her first messy diaper. I am sure
these are just a few of the “firsts” that will be encountered. I look
forward to each and every one!
The other set of grandparents. Don and Susan Godbee. are
experienced at the job!
“Hats off’ to all involved in the organization of the Martin
Luther King Jr. Day parade on Monday. There were plenty of
floats and other entries by local churches and civic groups, in
cluding the Jenkins County High School band and Millen Better
Hometown.
It was a nice highlight activity for the local celebration, and
for once, the weather cooperated.
The poll question on our website last week was, "Which news
source do you consider to be the most fair and accurate?”
Responses, as of Monday morning, were: Television - 9; News
papers - 6; Radio - 3; On line news services - 12.
To participate in this week’s poll, go to http://
www.themillennews.com.
Happy birthday this week to: Anna Griffin Herrington, Valerie
Hall, Georgia Lee Dudley, Jackie Burke. Lisa Williams, Dallas
Washburn, Daniel Rhodes, Mike Reeves, Sarah Moncrief, Dale
Wiggins, Jodi Thomas, Nathan Johnson, Edgar Miller and Stanley
Thompson.
Celebrating wedding anniversaries this week are: Mr. and Mrs.
Grady Joiner, Mr. and Mrs. Ray Miller, Mr. and Mrs. Ivy Reid
and Mr. and Mrs. J.D. Kent.
Military Active Duty List: E-4 Sr. Airman Roy Davis, U.S.
Air Force, RAF Molesworth, United Kingdom; Lance Cpl.
Patrick Barnette, U.S. Marines, Twenty Nine Palms, CA; Sgt.
Adam Demshar, 44th Signal Battalion, Baghdad, Iraq; Cpl. Lee
Ogden, U.S. Marines, Camp Pendleton, CA; E5 Petty Officer
2 nd Class Eric B. Kelsey, U.S. Navy, NSA Naples, Italy; Air
man First Class Charles F. Woods, Moody Air Force Base,
Valdosta, GA; Stuart Burrus, U.S. Air Force, Barksdale AFB,
Bossier, LA; SPC 4 Travis D. Motes, 1 st Calvary Division, T.
Hood, Texas; Capt. Donald Slade Burke, 735th Air Mobility
Squadron Detachment 1 Commander, Richmond Royal Austra
lian AFB, Richmond, Australia; Staff Sgt. Gilbert C. Sheppard
III, 48th Brigade, 118th Field Artillery, Iraq; Petty Officer 3rd
Class Jamie A. Yager, U.S. Navy, Marine Corps Base Hawaii;
Petty Chief Officer Andy D. Crosby, U.S. Navy, Elroy Destroyer,
Norfolk, Va.; Stephanie Crosby, R.N., U.S. Navy, Lafayette
Destroyer; Jimmy Cooper, U.S. Army National Guard, 878th
Engineering Battalion-Augusta, Persian Gulf; 1st Lt. J.R. Tay
lor, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division, Iraq; SPC.
Daniel Stuart, 18th MEDCOM, 121 General Hospital, Seoul,
Korea; Jeffrey Sweat, U.S. Navy, USS Kauffman, MM3 59/E-
Division, A-Gang, Norfolk, Va.; Cpl. Larry Lamont Clark, U.S.
Marine Corp, 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Lejeune,
N.C. Bagdad, Iraq; Khan Young, U.S. Navy, U.S.S. Kitty Hawk,
Persian Gulf; Robert Milton Jr., E-3, U.S. Army, Ft. Stewart,
Hinesville, Ga., Mission Kuwait; Arnold R. Mosley, 2nd Lt.,
U.S. Air Force, Randolph AFB, Texas; and Debra A. Mosley,
Tech. Sgt., U.S. Air Force, Randolph AFB, Texas; and SPC
Charles “C.J.” Amerson, U.S. Army, Camp Adder, Iraq.
Letters policy
Letters to the editor of The Millen News are welcomed and
encouraged. These are pages of opinions, yours and ours.
The unsigned editorials generally appearing on the left side of
the editorial page represent the opinion of the newspaper and not
that of any one person on our staff. Personal columns represent
the opinions of the writers whose names appear on them and are
not to be considered the opinion of this newspaper, its manage
ment or owners. Letters to the editor voice the opinions of the
newspaper’s readers.
The Millen News reserves the right to edit any and all portions
of a letter. Unsigned letters will not be published. Letters must
include the signature, address and phone number of the writer to
allow our staff to authenticate its origin. Letters should be lim
ited to 400 words.
The deadline for letters is Friday at 5 p.m. You can email let
ters to themillennews@yahoo.com.
Bill Shipp
PERDUE’S $21
Talk about being out of touch:
• The American economy is in collapse mode.
• The Georgia budget is running more than $2 billion in the
red.
• State unemployment has hit a new high, and so have bank
ruptcies and foreclosures.
• We have just inaugurated a president whom we don’t know
much about. The alternative was a candidate whom we knew
too much about.
In the meantime, Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue must come
up with $21 million by March 1 to pay off a secretive and
private loan on his “small” personal business. Perdue refuses
to say why he needs such a large sum.
On an unrelated note, the Legislative Black Caucus and
the state NAACP want the General Assembly to apologize
for slavery. Say what? Where have you guys been, and what
have you been doing? Don’t you know booze is not allowed
in the Statehouse? We have several clear and present crises
on our hands.
Chicken Little may finally be right. The sky is falling. And
while it is, Purdue’s personal penury and apologies for the
abomination of slavery just aren’t at the tops of many people’s
worry lists right now.
If we’re getting into the apology business, though, the
Georgia House needs first to say they are sorry for electing
and then re-electing Glenn “Pay-to-Play” Richardson as its
speaker. In fact, both the House and Senate owe all of us an
apology for even allowing Romeo to enter the Capitol in any
capacity, except perhaps as a visitor.
Everyone who voted for Sonny for the state’s top job prob
ably needs to apologize too.
As an enlightening news item, Perdue’s private loan beats
all. The AJC’s Alan Judd, reporting the $21 million loan, wrote
in the Sunday newspaper, “The lender - a farm credit bank
based in Perry - allowed Perdue to put up collateral worth
less than 20 percent of the loan’s value.”
Such a deal.
Perdue’s immediate predecessors as governor - Roy Barnes,
Zell Miller and Joe Frank Harris - placed their financial hold-
MILLION LOAN
ings into blind trusts to avoid any appearance of conflicts of
interest while they were in office.
Perdue declined to follow their lead. During one of
Georgia’s most turbulent economic eras. Perdue continues to
run his private enterprises, selling and buying real estate and
operating his grain and fertilizer business in Houston County.
“Most people don’t appreciate that [being governor] is a
full-time job and your personal affairs suffer,” Perdue once
said in response to a question about his lack of a blind trust.
Well, Governor, your predecessors somehow seem to have
appreciated that once they were in the mansion on West Paces,
being governor was their sole responsibility.
But not ol’ Sonny. At one point, the governor even blocked
the state from acquiring a public hunting preserve, Oaky
Woods in Houston County. Letting Oaky Woods go public
would have interfered with one of Perdue’s real estate deals.
Perdue is a lucky fellow, sort of the Tim Geitner of Geor
gia. Geitner is President Obama’s nominee for secretary of
the Treasury, who has a few tax problems. Never mind that
Treasury runs the IRS. Congress has shrugged. Down here,
we depend on folks like Common Cause of Georgia to scream
bloody murder when possible public crookedness is outed.
When Georgia Common Cause’s Bill Bozarth was informed
of some of Perdue’s problems, the public watchdog wagged
his tail and said, “It was probably just an oversight. I have
no reason to believe he has deliberately tried to hide any
thing.”
When asked about Perdue’s pending secret $21 million loan,
Bozarth said, "He’s within the law not to discuss it.” Sur
prise! Bozarth contributed money to Perdue’s gubernatorial
campaign.
I suppose there’s no use grumbling about Perdue or his bud
dies. The governor is a short-timer. If he gets into a squeeze
over that big loan, he can just apply for a TARP bailout and
probably get it. Better hurry, though, Guv. Your March 1 due
date will be here before you know it.
You can reach Bill Shipp at P.O. Box 2520, Kennesaw, GA
30156, e-mail: shippl@bellsouth.net, or Web address:
billshipponline.com.
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