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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 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. 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