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PAGE 4A —THE MADISON COUNTY (GA) JOURNAL. THURSDAY. AUGUST 6. 2009
Frankly
Speaking
frankgillispie671@msn.com
By Frank Gillispie
Idea of states’
rights lives on
And old political concept is experiencing a
rebirth of sorts. That is the idea of state sover
eignty. The final paragraph of the United States’
Declaration of Independence claims sovereignty
for the several states, not for the states as a single
union: “We, therefore, the representatives of the
United States of America — solemnly publish
and declare that these united colonies are, and
of right ought to be free and independent states
— and as free and independent states they have
the full power — to do all other acts and things
which independent states may of right do.”
The Constitution and the Bill of Rights were
designed to protect the rights of the states. The
federal government was intended to be a tool
of the states for them to use for coordinated
actions, especially the common defense.
We fought and lost one major military war in
an effort to preserve the concept of state sov
ereignty. Now we are in a social and political
battle to preserve what few rights the states and
the people have left. The battle lines are gradu
ally being drawn around the nation.
Most of the efforts are centered around the
tenth amendment which clearly states that the
federal government is limited to those pow
ers assigned it by the Constitution and all
other powers are reserved for the states or the
people.
Numerous states have legislation in progress
to declare state sovereignty, although none have
passed at this time. Most of these proposed bills
have to do with unfunded federal mandates
that would require states to spend money for
federal governments. A bill currently moving
through the Arizona legislature says “That this
resolution serves as notice and demand to the
federal government, as our agent, to cease and
desist, effective immediately, mandates that
are beyond the scope of these constitutionally
delegated powers.’’
A bill has been introduced into the Georgia
House of Representatives (House Resolution
280) that lists a series of causes for state action
and concludes: “Now, therefore, be it resolved
by the Georgia General Assembly: that the State
of Georgia hereby claims sovereignty under the
Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the
United States over all powers not otherwise
enumerated and granted to the federal govern
ment by the Constitution of the United States.’’
Ray McBerry, a Republican candidate for
governor in 2010, makes this concept the cen
terpiece of his campaign. He has named his
campaign “Georgia First.’’
The Libertarian Party of Georgia, which
claims to be the third largest of the state’s
political parties, has included this in their plat
form: “We recognize that the federal govern
ment often blackmails states with the threat to
withhold federal funds when states refuse to
enact many types of laws under discussion. We
applaud all cases in which the State of Georgia
refuses to be so coerced. Further, we urge the
State of Georgia to resist such federal blackmail
in any and all cases where the result of complic
ity in such programs would be the undermining
of individual rights in Georgia.’’
Several new groups centered around the
10 th amendment have emerged in Georgia and
around the nation. The “Tea Party’’ movement
that drew thousands of protesters on April 15 th
has had the largest impact so far.
The people of this nation are becoming more
and more concerned by efforts to expand the
power of the federal government at the expense
of state and local authority. It will be interesting
to see how this effort impacts the 2010 elec
tions.
Frank Gillispie is founder of The Madison
County Journal. His e-mail address is frank-
gillispie671@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)
SUBSCRIPTION RATES:
Madison & surrounding counties $19.75/year
State of Georgia $38.85/year
Out-of-state $44.50/year
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POSTMASTER: Send address changes to:
THE MADISON COUNTY JOURNAL
P.O. Box 658, Danielsville, GA 30633
A publication of MainStreet Newspapers, Inc.
Wish I could find that old spark for baseball
I’ve been a part of one street
mob.
It was not political, but sports
related. It was 1992. And Sid
Bream slid safely into home to
give the Braves the National
League pennant.
A huge mob of college kids
marched around College, Clayton
and Broad streets in Athens, doing
the Tomahawk chop in unison and
bellowing out the familiar Braves’
chant. I had followed the Braves
closely for years and had hit the
door of my University Gardens
apartment off Baxter Street in near
sprint after Francisco Cabrera’s
two-run single to left. My feet
repeatedly left the parking lot
asphalt, the sad vertical leap sud
denly boosted with adrenaline.
When I think of sports and why I
love them, this moment is near the
top. That joy is an illogical thing.
Why should I care so much? So
one group of highly paid strang
ers from a city relatively close by
defeated another group of highly
paid strangers from a city much
farther away. Can you really jus
tify the passion for that? Maybe
not, but it’s there for many. As a
kid, I never decided to love base
ball. I just did.
And the Braves were the team
on mute before my grandfather’s
In the
Meantime
zach@
mainstreet
news.com
By Zach Mitcham
recliner. Granddaddy wore a
hearing aid and usually watched
without sound. I remember sit
ting there in silence, watching
Homer, Murphy, Niekro. When
I think of 80s Braves, I think of
the man watching them in that
green chair in Monroe. In many
families, sports offer some com
mon ground between generations,
something to break the silence or
to make the silence more comfort
able.
A lot of people shared that con
nection with “America’s team,”
despite the Braves’ long struggles.
And the early ‘90s successes were
a glorious release for those who
had endured the team’s long futil
ity. It certainly wasn’t just college
kids in Athens jumping for joy
in 1992. No, Georgia shook that
night.
Of course, that Sid Bream
moment was followed by the
‘95 World Series title against
Cleveland. Then the Yankees ulti
mately deflated the postseason
heroics, taking the ‘96 and ‘99
titles from Atlanta. Over the next
few years, the Braves were peren
nially good, not great. They were
known for the postseason letdown.
And when it came to the Braves,
fan complacency slowly set in.
Yells became yawns. Everybody
saw this. I felt it, too.
In the meantime, the game was
horribly tarnished by widespread
drug use. I recall evenings in the
early 90s sitting up with a couple
of baseball fanatic college buddies
looking up old-time stats in a base
ball encyclopedia, with questions
like “What was Jimmy Foxx’s
greatest one-year RBI total?” Or,
“what was Sandy Koufax’s lowest
ERA?” We’d quiz each other on
this stuff.
The marathon baseball season is
slow, but it carries a real weight in
that it measures performance over
considerable time. That’s why the
numbers matter. The slowness of
the game, of the season, they have
a major payoff in accumulated
history, more so than any other
sport. And as a kid, I always
loved the weekly stat sheet in my
hometown paper that carried each
player’s numbers for the year. I
spent many weekend mornings
studying those numbers as if
some pop quiz loomed at school
on Monday. But I can’t muster
that old numbers mystique. To
seek that in the steroid era makes
me feel too gullible. That old thrill
is gone for me.
Now, the major league season
just seems long and slow. For
me, it’s just something to endure
until college football gets here. I
haven’t chosen to dislike major
league baseball, any more than I
chose to love it as a kid. But in
my heart, I’m spiteful toward the
game for the widespread cheating
that tarnished its historical power.
Yes, that mob of ‘92 seems like
so long ago. There were thousands
of manically happy young folks,
chanting in unison and making
chopping arm gestures. I remem
ber thinking how frightening the
scene could be under different
circumstances.
But it was certainly a lot more
fun to cheer like that for major
league baseball, than to sneer like
I do now. I’d like to let go of those
bad feelings, find that old spark
again, feel the hair on my arms
stand up, like when Skip Carey
cried, “Braves win. Braves win,
Braves win!”
Zach Mitcham is editor of The
Madison County Journal.
Is Madison County in a rain shadow?
That was the question asked
for most of last month by resi
dents of Madison County as
storm after storm failed to make
it into the county.
Except for the last two days of
the month, we seemed to be in
a kind of dry hole while coun
ties to our west, north and east
kept getting raked by frequent
storms. We were kind of like the
hole in the Swiss cheese, if you
please; rain all around, but not
here. I really believe that most
of our missed rain opportunities
last month were just plain bad
timing.
The most glaring example
occurred on the eighth of the
month when numerous slow-
moving storms developed to our
west and north. These strong
storms weakened and collapsed,
sending out a burst of cooler air
that blew through the county
which then formed new storms
Weather
wise
By Mark Jenkins
in Elbert and Oglethorpe coun
ties. These “outflow boundar
ies” are common causes of the
gaps that occur in rainfall in
the summer. The rain shadow is
another question. It is true that if
storms or storm systems blow in
from a northwest direction they
are coming over the Blue Ridge
mountains of north Georgia.
As the air comes over the
ridge tops, the air compresses,
warms and usually dries out.
This is another common occur
rence in the summer as storms
often form in the mountains,
make a dive toward us here in
the Piedmont, but usually run
out of gas before they get here.
This phenomenon occurred at
least once during this past June
as the storm track was trying to
bring rain to us from Tennessee.
The one to two inches that fell
over most of the county in July
was less than half the normal. It
was also very dry in Clarke and
Oglethorpe counties in July, but
not in every section. Franklin,
Hart and Elbert counties had a
generally decent month for rain,
but even in those counties some
areas ended the month below
average.
It should be emphasized that
most other sections of north
Georgia ended July within an
inch or two of average. While
the drought has not officially
returned as of this writing, we
are in a large swath of “abnor
mally dry” conditions that
stretches across most of north
Georgia and northern South
Carolina. The other story was
the coolness. A new all-time
record low of 56 was set on the
morning of the 19th. The month
ended 2.6 degrees cooler than
average, and ranked tied for the
fifth coolest July since 1982. If
we missed out on a lot of rain,
at least we avoided the extreme
heat that often goes along with
the dryness.
Weather averages for July
2009: Avg. low: 66. Avg. high:
89. Lowest: 56. Highest: 95.
Mean: 77.3 (-2.6). Total rain
fall: 1.47” (-3.49”). Total rain
fall for 2009 to July 31: 27.20”
(-3.41”).
Mark Jenkins is the coop
erative weather observer for
Madison County. He provides a
monthly weather column to The
Madison County Journal.
Both parties could be hurt by jobless numbers
Will there ever be a light at the
end of tunnel for all of the unem
ployed workers in Georgia? If
the latest numbers are an indica
tion, it won’t be anytime soon.
Labor Department officials
recently announced the state’s
unemployment rate reached the
level of 10.1 percent, the first
time in many years that the job
less number hit double digits. To
put that into perspective, a 10.1
percent jobless rate means that
nearly half a million Georgians
are unemployed and looking for
work.
The employment picture isn’t
much brighter on the national
level either. If the recession
continues to drag us down and
people keep getting thrown out
of work, who will pay the price
politically?
It won’t be good news for
President Barack Obama. His
approval numbers have already
been slipping in recent weeks,
although they are still above the
50 percent level.
That’s not a surprise. All new
presidents typically start with a
high approval level at the time
of their inauguration and see that
number go downhill after they’ve
been in office a few months.
Obama can also argue that
when he took office he inher
ited the worst economic down
turn since the Great Depression,
a problem that cannot be fixed
The Capitol
Report
tcrawford@
capitol
impact.net.
By Tom Crawford
overnight.
But the American people aren’t
very patient - they tend to have
a limited attention span. With
all the money that Obama and
Congress have put into the eco
nomic stimulus packages, both
Republicans and Democrats alike
are starting to wonder why the
jobs haven’t shown up.
“Quite frankly, we want to
know where all the money is
going,” state Sen. Valencia Seay
(D-Riverdale) said during a legis
lative hearing last week. “People
all over the state are hurting.”
There was some good news
for the president in the large
numbers of people who used the
“cash for clunkers” program to
trade in their old cars for more
fuel-efficient vehicles. That fed
eral program helped financially
distressed auto dealers sell thou
sands of new cars, but it may not
have made a dent in the unem
ployment numbers.
Nationally, Obama and
the Democratic majorities in
Congress have the most to lose
if the job picture does not start
improving.
At the state level, Gov. Sonny
Perdue may be feeling a little
uncomfortable as well. Back in
January, he unveiled a $1.2 bil
lion package of state bonds for
a wide range of projects such as
schools, college buildings, roads,
and libraries. This bond money,
Perdue vowed, would jumpstart
the economy and create 20,000
construction jobs within the
state.
An unemployment rate of 10.1
percent suggests that those jobs
haven’t materialized, not even
when you add in the $931 mil
lion Georgia is receiving in fed
eral stimulus funds for highway
projects.
Republicans in the General
Assembly may also start feeling
the heat as the jobless rate climbs
into the stratosphere.
Since the GOP took control of
the Legislature in 2005, one of
their priorities has been the adop
tion of numerous tax cuts for cor
porations and special interests.
When each of these tax breaks
was debated, Republican support
ers promised they would generate
all sorts of economic develop
ment and turn the state into a
job-creation machine.
That doesn’t seem to have
worked either. In the period since
January 2005, Georgia’s monthly
unemployment rate has exceed
ed the national unemployment
rate for more than half of those
months.
There’s no question that the
recession has destroyed jobs in
every state. But the legislative
leadership - along with Perdue
- claimed that the tax breaks the
state has been granting would
result in thousands of new jobs.
If those claims were true, you
would think that Georgia’s unem
ployment rate would at least be a
little better than the national rate.
According to Labor Department
figures, our unemployment rate
has been higher than the national
rate for 20 consecutive months.
What’s more, all of these cor
porate tax breaks have drained
the state’s coffers of millions of
dollars that could have been spent
on schools, highways, and medi
cal care for people without health
insurance.
These inconvenient facts
could cause some problems for
Republicans in the 2010 race for
governor.
The Democratic nominee will
probably say at every opportu
nity: “You gave away the state
treasury to your lobbyist friends
and said we’d get all these new
— See ‘Crawford” on 5A