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Che Summerville News
The Official Legal Organ of Chattooga County
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WINSTON E. ESPY TOM KIRWAN
PUBLISHER EDITOR
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Editorials
The Rock
In the last few years when the United
States was being hard-pressed by tiny
Panama to turn over title to the Panama
Canal Zone — which the U. S. had bought
and paid for — Britain was also being
pressed by Spain to return Gibraltar.
Britain had won Gibraltar in a treaty
dating back far longer than the treaty tur
ning over the Panama Canal to the
United States. But Britain stood firm —
in the face of threats, ugly incidents and
even the closing of the border between the
Spanish mainland and the narrow neck of
land stretching out to the great rock.
President Carter decided to sign a
treaty giving control of the canal in the
future to Panama and giving title of the
Zone to Panama much sooner. It was a
controversial decision but there were
Children & Discipline
In recent years, much has been heard
about the danger in saying ‘‘no’”’ to
junior, of crushing junior’s spirit, of not
allowing junior to freely develop and ex
press himself.
A generation or more of mothers and
fathers, to a degree, accepted this well
meaning advice — often with practical ap
plication.
One result has been that, beginning in
the '6os, junior turned out to be disinclin
ed to accept the restraints and ‘no’'s’" im
posed by our society's laws.
This has caused all kinds of problems,
for junior (and daughters), and for socie
Abolish Corporation Tax?
At first glance, suggestions that the
federal corporation tax be abolished seem
conservative propaganda. But a closer
look at the proposal shows it has con
siderable merit.
Corporation taxes amount to about 10
percent of Uncle Sam’s total revenue.
This tax was enacted at a time when it
was considered the only way to tax the
wealthy — at that time there was no in
come tax.
There are those today who believe that
if the corporation tax is ended, the
government will collect more money from
individuals receiving dividend checks
than it does today from corporations who
spend billions to find business expenses,
tax shelters and write-offs which avoid
the corporation tax.
How much is wasted by corporations
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financial angles and other considerations
which enabled the former president to get
congressional approval for his decision.
Carter had Democratic Party majorities
in both chambers.
Voting for that treaty cost some
members of the Senate their seats, and
helped create the dissatisfaction which
overwhelmingly defeated Carter in the
1980 presidential election.
And now, from Spain, comes word
that the Spanish Government is ready to
more or less accept the state of things at
Gibraltar as they are. After seeing that
Britain will not be intimidated or
stampeded into giving away title to the
rock, it's either that or war, and war is out
of the question. So, too would it have been
for Panama.
ty. In an over-reaction from the Victorian
patriarch, who once maintained discipline
in the home, some have abandoned prac
tically all discipline.
Looking back at earlier generations of
children, we can see that in spite of
discipline, sometimes strong, the system
was not bad, and that there is still, today,
a very real need for father's or mother’s
discipline in the home.
This translates positively in later life
into business, government and general
social behavior — and is a much needed
quality today.
in tax deductible schemes, etc., is im
possible to estimate. But it's certain that
the government would collect at a higher
percentage on dividends paid
stockholders.
Secondly, a whole army of legal and
IRS zealots would be relieved of the vast
cat-and-mouse game so long in progress
— involving finding ways to dodge taxes
on the one hand and federal checking on
all these efforts on the others.
Finally, the added profits of corpora
tions would not all be paid out in the form
of dividends. Corporations would spend
more on expansion and the creation of
new jobs. And abolition of the pre-income
tax law would answer the old argument of
those who claim that if corporations are
taxed, then dividends should not be tax
ed, again.
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O TINT
N TOM KIRWAN—
Qi Off The Newsdesk
The House and Senate have approv
ed the recodification of Georgia's
statutes. Action on the code revision
measure came early in the special ses
ston with little fanfare despite the years
of study and work by the Code Revision
Commission. Governor Busbee signed
the measure into law on Sept. 3. The
following column highlights some of
the lighter moments of code revision
while outlining the process and the ac
complishments of the Code Revision
Commission. Tom Kirwan is away on
vacation. His column will return next
week.
Did you know that janitors at the
State Capitol could arrest persons?
Until now, many strange and ap
parently outdated laws lurked within the
voluminous passages of the state
codes.
Recodification of state laws, a multi
year, multi-faceted project was included
by Governor George Busbee in the call
for the 1981 Extraordinary Legislative
Session. Although the new codes have
been approved by the State House and
Senate and signed by the Governor,
there is more to the story of Code Revi
sion than the routine endorsement of
the two chambers and the Chief Ex
ecutive.
Provided by law, janitors at the State
Capitol have the power to make arrests
in the name of providing security for
state offices under the gold dome.
Doubtless, even the janitors don't know
about that power. With the Georgia
Building Authority now depending on
its own full-time security division,
members of the Code Revision Commis
sion easily voted to remove the archaic
law from the statutes.
Just how out-of-date are some of
Georgia's laws? Read on.
Railroad conductors are required by
law to keep fuel in kerosene lamps on
passenger trains. Oddly enough,
modern day fire marshalls would pro
bably shudder at the thought of
kerosene lamps rocking back and forth
from the ceiling of a jam-packed
passenger car. Obviously, the advent of
electric generators and tungsten fila
ment bulbs has spelled doom for at
least one Georgia law.
Did you know the State of Georgia
employs a Commissioner of Immigra
tion? Members of the Code Revision
Commission found out that none other
than the State Commissioner of
Agriculture also serves as Immigration
Commissioner. Of course, the U. S. Im
migration and Naturalization Service
probably handles the bulk of immigra
tion cases throughout the nation. In
fact, they handle all of them,
And speaking of the Agriculture
Commissioner, the Georgia codes pro
hibit him from hiring more than one
secretary. That's quite a workload for
just one employee.
Countless man-hours of dedicated
toil is the price paid to complete the
recodification task. Fifteen commission
members, four attorneys, two pro
ofreaders, and several secretaries join
ed forces with more than 300 con
tributors to amass a streamlined
12,000-page bill for the State House and
Senate to consider this Special Ses
sion.
The 48-pound bill version of the
codes reorganized the current 130 code
sections into only 53 code titles. The
members did so by not only scratching
out archaic laws and unconstitutional
provisions but also combining
numerous similarities in the various
code sections.
Revision of the codes has actually
been a continuous process for more
than a decade. In 1968, for instance, the
General Assembly completed a signifi
cant revisal of the criminal code.
One of the more illustrious trimm
ings during that project was the scaling
down of the number of capital offenses.
At one point, 400 capitol offenses were
defined in the criminal code, including a
specific theft offense for almost any
item which can be stolen.
Commission members asked more
than 100,000 questions during the nuts
and bolts rewriting since 1976. What is
more remarkable — they answered
those inquiries, often with the help of
the State Law Department and the more
than 30 state departments and agen
cies.
Incongruencies in the law relative to
Federal rules and regulations are also
straightened out. According to the
statutes, any pilot flying an airplane
without a license issued by the U.S.
Department of Commerce is guilty of a
misdemeanor. But, the Commerce
Department stopped issuing pilot
licenses in 1956. ’
Most laws which have outlived
reasonable application were once ex
actly what the doctor, or in this case the
General Assembly, ordered to quell
disturbances within the citizenry.
During those ‘‘simpler days’ of
yesteryear, consideration of one's
livestock was as important as one's own
life. At that point, Justices of the Peace
possessed considerable sway over
militia districts and the inhabitants.
JPs were granted in the statutes the
power to fence-in militia districts to
keep goats within the confines of the
area. In addition, citizens were required
by law to close the goat-yard gates as a
safety precaution whenever a vehicle
passed nearby.
The final product of the Code Revi
sion Commission represents the work
of a representative cross-section within
the legal community. Included on the
commission were Lt. Gov. Zell Miller,
House Speaker Tom Murphy and four
members of both the House and Senate.
Also in the select group were five
members of the State Bar Association
of which one was a District Attorney
and another a Superior Court Judge.
Not only did these 15 citizens and
elected officials have to answer ques
tions about laws pertaining to goats but
also on some statutes on how farmers
had to build rice paddies. That's right —
rice paddies. The codes establishing
regulations for constructing dikes for
rice paddies became a moot point years
ago, however, when a dike-demolishing
hurricane washed the rice crop right out
of the fields and boiling pots. But ap
parently not out of the code books. That
was left to the Code Revision Commis
sion.
According to political observers,
reorganization and streamlining of the
state codes is a monumental task
hallmarked not because humorous
passages were removed but that state
laws (and in effect state government) is
made considerably less complicated for
everyone's benefit.
To many Capitol Hill onlookers,
recodification and the simplification of
law represents another in the continu
ing efforts to make government less
mind-boggling.
And, whatever it means to the
average citizen, it's nice to know that
native American Indians can, as of two
years ago, make a will and legally testify
in a court of law.
s
Facing South
A Syndicated Column
Voices Of Tradition
In A Changing Region
CHERYL McCOMBS: “1 WANT
MY CHILDREN EDUCATED”
MOBILE, Ala. — “I'm nobody in particular,” says
Cheryl McCombs, 28, the mother of three public school
children, “but I think our schools need more money to
educate our children, and all I can do as a conscien
tious citizen and taxpayer is to let my
legislators know about it.”
Late this spring, Ms. McCombs
began a letter-writing campaign, to -~ =
““make sure the legislators know I'm ki
asking.” As a result, she and other T
like-minded Mobilians who joined her &
delivered more than 1,000 letters to
the Mobile legislative delegation. In
August, they organized a group of 50
men and women to attend a special =
session of the Alabama Legislature meeting in Mon
tgomery to decide the state’s education budget.
McCombs wants the Mobile County school system
and other elementary and secondary schools in
Alabama to receive a larger piece of the education
budget pie. Although Alabama ranks 14th in the nation
for the amount of money appropriated for each college
and university student, the state ranks 47th in the
amount appropriated for children in elementary and
secondary schools. A high student-teacher ratio, run
down school buildings and a shortage of basic
classroom supplies are chronic problems that
students, teachers and parents face each school year.
“I'm not an organization, I don't represent anybody.
I'm just a concerned parent as I think everybody should
be,”” McCombs says. She began last spring by contac
ting the principals and/or PTA presidents of all 81
schools in the Mobile County school system, urging
them to organize letter-writing campaigns to the
Mobile legislative delegation.
McCombs conducted her own campaign at Mertz
School, where her daughter Jennifer and son Walter at
tend and where her youngest, Scott, will begin
kindergarten this fall. Of the more than 1,000 letters
delivered to Mobile legislators, 303 were from Mertz
parents.
The reactions of two legislators to the campaign
underlined McCombs’ feelings on the importance of
speaking out. ““When I spoke to representatives Mary
Zoghby and Ann Bedsole, they told me that they
seldom heard from people, they seldom got letters, and
that if they didn’t hear from anybody on a particular bill,
then they figured citizens didn’t care.”
The Legislature met in August and acted quickly on
basic appropriations in the education budget, ap
propriating less for elementary and secondary schools
than McCombs had hoped. The quick action caused
McCombs’ group to cancel their planned trip to Mon
tgomery, but they had anticipated this by sending
another batch of letters. *‘A lobbyist there told me that
legislators sure knew about the people in Mobile,”” Mc-
Combs says. She plans to continue her efforts during
the general session which starts in February.
In her letter-writing campaign this spring, Mc-
Combs urged not only parents but “‘anybody’’ to let
their legislators know their opinion. ‘A lot of people in
my neighborhood don’t have children in public schools
and they don’t consider this their concern. Well, I'd tell
those people to keep in mind that Mobile’s public
schoql children of today will be reading gas meters,
working in banks and in hospital emergency rooms in
the future. The quality of education in this state affects
everyone's life.”
The way the public has joined in her once isolated
effor;t has left McCombs slightly amazed by her own ef
fectiveness, and she says her experience has been
good for her children as well. ‘I think my kids have
learned from watching me do this to act and choose
and make statements for themselves. And that's pretty
darn important.”’
McCombs emphasizes that she's not trying to cut
off the funding of Alabama's post-secondary institu
tions. But she does feel that the state-supported col
leges and universities aren’t doing enough belt tighten
ing. “Some Alabama colleges don't charge out-of-state
fees. I think they should. It doesn’t seem fair to me that
a student can get a good elementary and secondary
education in another state and then come to a state
?upporhtued co&legle K:I d::labama without paying an extra
ee, while school children in this s n’
theylneed for the basics. Ie e e
"I want my kids to go to college too. But what good
will it do if they don't get the basigci;? Give my daugghter
nine more years and she’ll be eligible to vote; she'll
have my fate in her hands, and I want her educated.”’