Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page.

PAGE 4A — THE MADISON COUNTY (GA) JOURNAL. THURSDAY. APRIL 23. 2009 Opinions Frankly Speaking frankgillispie671@msn.com By Frank Gillispie Relay holds special significance in my life It is time again for an event that holds special interest for me: The Relay for Life. Relays are scheduled in most area communities during the month of May. Here, in Madison County, the Relay is set for Friday, May 1, in Danielsville. Most of you know by now that I am a cancer sur vivor. So, naturally, I have strong reasons to support any effort to combat that far-too-common disease. The American Cancer Society through its signature program. Relay for Life, is a leader in that effort. Relay for Life is more than a fund-raiser, although your donations are important. It is a program that allows cancer patients, their families and caregiv ers a chance to come together to be entertained, informed and encouraged in their battle. The local event will start at 6 p.m. at the Madison County Recreation Department track. The Survivors' lap, in which I plan to participate, starts at 6:30. At least 17 Relay teams will then take the track for an all-night effort to log as many laps and raise as much money, as possible. At 9:15 p.m. the Luminaria Ceremony of Hope will begin. As the sun sets over campsites and darkness falls, the night is brightened by the glow of illuminated bags called luminaria, each of which has a special meaning. Some celebrate the lives of those who have battled cancer and have lived to tell their stories. Many remember the lives of those who have been lost to this disease. Announcements, presentations and various enter tainment will occupy the bandstand during the eve ning. The Holman-Autry band will play from 10 p.m. to midnight. The FIGHT BACK ceremony begins at 12:30 and games and activities will con tinue throughout the night. Closing ceremonies will begin at 6 a.m. For more information contact Katie. Cullinan@cancer.org Perhaps the best weapon we have against cancer is information. And that is one of the key goals of the American Cancer Society. Information about the causes of cancer, ways to prevent it, and most importantly the early detection programs that can save so many lives. Early detection is the key to my survival. When my colon cancer was discovered, it was still at stage two, meaning that it was treatable with surgery and chemotherapy. I had surgery in July 2007. In February 2008 I completed my course of chemotherapy. Since then, I have been checked for the presence of cancer every three months, and as of now, no cancer can be found. Other than the regular screening visits to the clinic, my life has returned to near normalcy. Had I put off the rather unpleasant test that found the cancer for another year, my chances of survival would have been greatly reduced. So my suggestion to all of you is call your doctor and schedule a cancer test. Don't be afraid of it. If you find it early, you can defeat it. Then come to Danielsville on Friday, May 1, at 6 p.m. for the Relay For Life. There will be many of us there who can talk to you about the disease and how we overcame it. And while you are there, enjoy the displays, the ceremonies and the music. Life is good. Don't let cancer bring it to an end too soon. Frank Gillispie is founder of The Madison County Journal. His e-mail address is frankgillispie671@ msn.com. His website can be accessed at http:// frankgillispie. tripod, com/ The Madison County Journal (Merged with The Danielsville Monitor and The Comer News, January 2006) P.O. Box 658 Hwy. 29 South Danielsville, Georgia 30633 Phone: 706-795-2567 Fax: 706-795-2765 Email: zach@mainstreetnews.com ZACH MITCHAM, Editor MARGIE RICHARDS, Reporter/Office Manager BEN MUNRO, Reporter/Sports Editor MIKE BUFFINGTON, Co-publisher SCOTT BUFFINGTON, Co-publisher FRANK GILLISPIE, Founder of The Journal. Jere Ayers (deceased) former owner of The Danielsville Monitor and The Comer News Periodical postage paid at Danielsville, Georgia 30633 SUBSCRIPTION RATES: Madison & surrounding counties $19.75/year State of Georgia $38.85/year Out-of-state $44.50/year Military personnel with APO address $42.50/year Senior rate $2 off all above rates College student discount rate $2 off all above rates POSTMASTER: Send address changes to: THE MADISON COUNTY JOURNAL P.O. Box 658, Danielsville, GA 30633 A publication of MainStreet Newspapers, Inc. Hard to put much stock in the stock market When I listen to money discus sions by people who seem to understand finance. I'm usually pretty intimidated. I am certainly a financial novice. I understand the basic rule of retirement plan ning, that you have to be in things for the long haul, that the market ebbs and flows and you have to bear with it despite your immedi ate anxieties. At least this is what people smarter than me have always told me. And there's a part of me that still holds on to that way of think ing. I want this to be true. I want to believe in clear rules, in the notion that long-term commit ment surely pays off. I have a sus picion that Social Security won’t be so secure by the time I need it. So I’ve put part of my check aside for the past decade into a mutual fund, hoping for modest gains over the years, hoping blind faith in those people smarter than me, who set up and manage the mutual fund, will pay off in the long run. Of course, that fund recently took a severe nosedive like many others. Still, I have time to recover. If I do retire, it will be many years down the road. Trouble is, right now, it’s pretty hard not to think of the stock market as some red-faced, huge- bellied country club guy, an In the Meantime zach@ mainstreet news.com By Zach Mitcham I-know-better-than-you fellow, who drinks too much, smashes up the clubhouse, then collapses in a bathroom stall, before bellowing out for help. According to common invest ment wisdom, I’m supposed to witness this, help the guy off the floor, then continue giving him part of my paycheck for the next 30 years, pretending his drunken fiasco didn’t happen, while blind ly accepting that he is wiser than I understand and that he won’t go on a bender again later. Surely that sounds bitter to some. But that’s not my intent. Actually, I’m pretty mellow about my retirement account these days. There are far greater things to worry about. And there are many people with much greater trou bles. Any whining I do about an IRA ought to come with that acknowledgement. I’m just coming to a new accep tance. Right now, I have a hard time seeing my IRA mutual fund as much more than a glorified game of blackjack, given that it's only good if you win enough over time and then step away from the table before folks get rowdy and flip the table upside down. I say this because we’ve seen so many people who played by the old rules, who were faithful to the basic tenet of working hard and investing in a low-risk diversified way, who were severely burned. Many are now trying to mend their wounds while they search for post-retirement work. Of course, there are all sorts of numbers thrown around these days regarding the economy — the unemployment rates, the bail out figures, the national debt. Many numbers are eye-open ing. But one significant figure that hasn’t gotten a lot of attention is 41. It’s the percentage of U.S. corporate profits that came from the financial sector this decade. Prior to 1985, that percentage had never gone over 16. So over the past two decades, as manufacturing dwindled, Wall Street more than doubled in size. With the flow of easy credit, there were more and more ways to reshuffle that paper, more ways to create a huge stack of poker chips without really building much of anything to back them up. Both political parties supported the ballooning of the financial sec tor. The easy credit for housing was like coal for that growing machine. And financial novices, me included, kept putting their chips on the table, blind to the hot air that filled the balloon. In recent years. I’d ride down the road, wondering how we could see economic growth if we weren't really making much of anything besides houses, content to just buy stuff made overseas. Now, most everyone can agree that the best economic medicine will be a heavy dose of at-home manufacturing, something clearly visible from the roadside, not just tricky number manipulations in a finance netherworld. Until that happens. I'll try to stay calm, take the good with the bad and save as much as pos sible. These days, I pretty much ignore the stock market, pretending it is like a wildly moody acquaintance best left alone. He's giddy one day, grumpy the next. Go figure. All I know is I wish he’d get some counseling and appropriate medications. Zach Mitcham is editor of The Madison County Journal. Letters to the Editor Support Ga. farmers, eat a peanut butter sandwich Dear Editor: The recent salmonella out break that has been traced back to peanut butter made by the Peanut Corporation of America (PCA) has left many consumers questioning the safety of peanut products. The deaths and illness es caused by this outbreak are disturbing and regrettable. The reported sanitation conditions at the processing facility that led to the outbreak should not be tolerated. I’m a farmer, but I’m also a consumer. My family and Dear Editor: The annual Ham 'n' Egg Supper March 6 at the Eloise McCurley Madison County Senior Center was I eat peanut butter and peanut products, just like you. The peanut butter affected by the recall was sold in bulk by PCA to other food manufactur ers who used the peanut butter in their food products. Many companies did have to recall products that contained PCA peanut butter, but the good news is, according to the National Peanut Board, PCA is estimated to have produced less than three percent of all peanuts and pea nut butter sold in the United States each year. This means there are many peanut products not affected by the recall that are safe to eat. Peanuts are grown in 80 Georgia counties. Georgia farm ers grow almost half of the pea nuts produced in the U.S. More than 50,000 jobs in Georgia exist because of our peanut indus try according to the University of Georgia. These jobs include farmers, people who work in peanut-related agribusinesses such as shelling plants, facto ries that roast peanuts or make peanut products. The farm gate value of the 2007 peanut croj was almost $382 million. I can’ think of a better way to celebrate the Georgia peanut than to eai a peanut butter and jelly sand wich or some roasted peanuts We appreciate your support ol Georgia agriculture and Georgia farmers. Sincerely, Terry Stephenson President, Madison Count) Farm Bureau Says Ham ‘n’ Egg supper was a success the most successful ever. Thanks to everyone who purchased tickets and thanks to those who helped prepare and serve the meals. A really big thanks to all of you who Sincerely, enjoyed the ham ‘n’ egg supper. We Joe Dudley will do this again for you the first and the senior week in March next year. center staff Cagle opens the door for a tidal wave of candidates Just when you thought you had the next governor's race all fig ured out, Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle decides to mess everything up. Cagle had been the early front runner for governor and was still considered the man to beat, even after he failed to broker a deal in the General Assembly for a transportation funding tax. He consistently ran ahead of the other Republican hopefuls in the early polls and he would have been favored over the Democratic nominee. Nothing in life or politics ever works out quite that neatly, how ever, and so it was with Cagle. He abruptly announced last week that because of “back problems” he was dropping out of the gov ernor's race, although insisting he would still run for another term as lieutenant governor. The Cagle pullout probably ensures that former governor Roy Barnes, who still hasn't made a public announcement of his plans, will finalize his inten tions to run again. More impor tantly, Barnes could get a mone tary boost from business leaders fed up with the Republicans’ inability to pass a transporta tion funding mechanism - they could see Barnes as the best bet for getting something done, even if he does happen to be a Democrat. Cagle’s departure also leaves room for at least two or three The Capitol Report tcrawford@ capitol impact.net. By Tom Crawford additional candidates in the GOP primary. The leading names under discussion are Cobb County Commission Chairman Sam Olens, House Speaker Pro Tem Mark Burkhalter, state Sen. Eric Johnson (who’s running for lieutenant governor but could easily switch races) and mem bers of the state’s congressional delegation (Lynn Westmoreland or Jack Kingston). It will be a big field of candi dates, each of them with their own vulnerabilities that leave them open to attack. Barnes has been traveling around the state to talk up his candidacy and he is being told by party activists that they won’t support him unless he cuts his ties with political mastermind Bobby Kahn, who is blamed for the 2002 loss to Sonny Perdue and the subsequent collapse of the Georgia Democratic Party. Would Barnes actually do such a thing? More importantly, would Bobby allow him to do it? Attorney General Thurbert Baker would be considered the most serious challenger to Barnes in the Democratic pri mary, but after 12 years in office it would be difficult for the average voter to tell you who Baker is or what he ever accomplished. Baker rarely took a stand on anything, which doesn’t leave him with much of a platform to run on. Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine becomes, for the moment, the poll leader on the Republican side, but the man they call “The Ox” will have to spend a lot of time explaining to voters why he wrecked so many state vehicles and why the attor ney general’s office forced him to turn off his “blue light.” Secretary of State Karen Handel is the GOP candidate with the backing of Gov. Sonny Perdue, who sees her as the best choice to continue the “accom plishments,” such as they are, of his administration. Handel has devoted most of her energies as the state's chief elections officer to pushing for legisla tion that makes it more dif ficult for blacks and Latinos to vote. That won't do her much good now that the U.S. Justice Department is controlled by Democrats who frown upon such voter suppression tech niques - and have the authority under the Voting Rights Act to do something about it. Sam Olens is probably the most intelligent, best-qualified candidate of anyone running in the Republican primary, but he has a couple of handicaps that will hurt him among GOP voters. He holds three college degrees and is also a Jewish can didate in a party dominated by its anti-intellectual, Christian- right voting base. Olens is run ning in the wrong state with the wrong party. Rep. Austin Scott (R-Tifton) has a similar problem to Olens. He has displayed an admirable independent streak during his years in the state House, sup porting the new state flag in 2001 and expressing sympa thy for the problems faced by Georgia’s immigrant communi ty. Those political stands would be okay if he were running in the Democratic primary - but he’s a Republican. There will be a lot of people who qualify for the governor’s race next year - but nobody is a guaranteed winner. That ensures it will be one of the craziest, most wide-open cam paigns we've ever seen. Tom Crawford is the editor of Capitol Impact’s Georgia Report, an Internet news service at www.gareport.com that cov ers government and politics in Georgia. He can be reached at tcrawford@capitolimpact.net.