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Viewpoints Houston Times-Joumal P.O. Drawer M • 807 Carroll Street • Perry, Ga. 31069 Phone: (912) 987-1823 Member Georgia Press Association-National Newspaper Association Ybuf right to r*ad tMt n*w*p«p*r it prowcttd by tht Flrtt Amtndmtnt el the UMled Stetet Centtltution. Our Qoal The Houston Times-Journal is publishad proudly for tha citizans of Houston and adjoining counties by Houston Publications Inc.,Perry Qa. Our goal is to produce quality, profitable, community-oriented newspapers that you, our readers, are proud of. We will reach that goal through hard work, teamwork, loyalty, and a strong dedication towards printing the truth. Bob Tribble Daniel F. Evans Julie B. Evans Mitch Tribble President Vlce-Preeident Treasurer Secretary Our Staff Brigette Loudermllk Editor and General Manager Eddie Byrd Advertising Director News: Brenda Thompson, Pauline Lewis Sports: Veto Roley Advertising: Jimmy Simpson Composition: Stacey Shy Classified Advertising: Melanie Bullington Bookkeeping: Judy Hubert Circulation: Donnie Forehand Our Policies •Signed Letters to the editor welcomed. Please limit to 300 words and include address and phone number. •Liability for an error will not exceed the cost of space occupied by the error. •We cannot be responsible for return of pictures or material unless stamped return addressed envelope is included. The Houston Times-Journal (USPS 000471) is published semi-weekly for SIB.OO per year by Houston Publications, Inc., 807 Carroll Street, Perry, Ga. 31069. Second Class Postage paid at Perry, Ga.,POSTMASTER: Send address changes to the Houston Times-Journal, P.O. Drawer M.PerryGa. 31069. ISSN:IO7S-1874 Your Opinion Dear Editor: First let me say I felt honored to attend the JROTC Spring Fling the other week but what I witnessed lay heavily on my enthusiasm. I immediately perceived numerous outstanding representations of immaculate, well-groomed young men in every squadron except for a few in the drill team which I perceive is not totally a fault of their, own because I believe that ROTC should be conscientious enough to provide each team member with a uniform that Fits making sure the entire squad looks fantastic as well as professional. What I am unable to totally comprehend is that of all the awards given, the majority was obtained by the drill team. I fail to visualize that out of the other three squads no one met criteria to obtain an award, male or female. And what about good conduct awards or is this of most essence for JROTC? It appears to me that those ladies and gentlemen who have strived to be the best they can be without obtaining any demerits throughout the entire year should be rewarded. If this is not done then what incentive do they have to strive for the same conduct in future years if they continue in JROTC. Good conduct as well as good work must always be rewarded. I wonder if politics has already involved the lives of these fine ladies and gentlemen. If so, then maybe the JROTC should be looked into because the participants must be evaluated and not the family affiliations. I fear this display will transmit a message to future participants that the only worthy cadet must be a drill team cadet which personally, 1 find preposterous. A very concerned citizen, Vickie Little Dear Editor: I pick up the Macon Telegraph on a regular basis and for the past two years I have purchased the Houston Home Journal. I realize that the Macon paper has a much larger circulation and perhaps that attributes to the price of 35 cents per publication. I understand that your publication may have needed to increase to cover the cost of inflation, but I object to paying 50 cents for a paper which is smaller than the Kmart flyer inserted in it! Please don't take advantage of a good situation! This past weekend’s paper was meager, to say the least. I also want you to know that I miss reading the articles written by Mr. Bobby Tuggle. I always looked forward to them! Diane McDowell Dear Editor, I am writing to comment on Brenda Thompson’s article concerning The Jerry Springer Show and Cafe Erotica. Brenda, you did a good job. You said just what I wanted to say but didn't. Thank you for saying it for me and for the many others who feel the same way. I don't see how these young women who work at Cafe Erotica can hold up their heads in public. How can they look their husbands and children in the eye? Evidently money has become their God and is more important to them than anything else. And speaking of Cafe Erotica, lam so SICK of all their signs! I hate to ride up 1-75 anymore because they hit you in the face every few miles. Keep up the good work, Brenda. And thanks again for speaking up for those of us who find there are things in life more Important than MONEY! Joyce Giles Deadlines For Submitting New Articles and Photographs 5 pm Monday for Wednesday Edition, 5 pm Thursday For Saturday Edition —■THE PEAf/OT GALLE.fi Y j|| 9- m Q/lHrm Congress’ nose doesn’t belong in cable business FROM TIME to time the notes pile up pertaining to subjects that I want to express an opinion on...but not write a full column. The latest batch of notes beg to be given attention, so here goes: * * * I READ where congress has passed another law that will tell the cable television industry how much it can charge for its services. The FCC, which monitors the industry, has issued regulations that, as the story goes, run into several hundred pages. Typical bureaucratic stuff... Why do our congressmen get involved in how much cable systems charge? Isn't it a private industry? The answer is simple: Many people complain that rates being charged by the cable people are too high and since there are so many people out there using cable congressmen can hot dog it for votes by saying they are cutting cable rates while they fail miserably to cope with the budget, national debt and foreign affairs... Personally, I believe my cable service is the best bargain I have. For about 75 cents a day I have 42 channels of cable T.V. in my home 24 hours a day everyday of the month! What a bargain. How can I complain that it is too expensive? The electricity used to operate the television set on which I watch the cable shows costs me more...A friend of mine went to a new fast food restaurant in Warner Robins to try it out a few days ago and he told me it cost him more for a very mediocre meal for himself and his wife than I pay for cable T.V. for a full month! Brady ruling strikes at heart of unfunded mandates States and counties might be getting some help with unfunded mandates if a federal judge in Mon tana has his way. U.S. District Judge Charles C. Lovell ruled that the Brady Bill re quirements that local law enforce ment officials run background checks on potential handgun buyers commandeers state officials to ad minister a federal program. Lovell argued in his opinion that the law required local authorities to divert time, money and employees to the federal program. That, he said, could cause state and local of ficials to increase budgets or de crease spending on other areas. The forcing of state officials to administer federal programs violates constitutional limits on federal power, ruled Lovell. While this ruling was on the Brady Bill, and while the ruling is currently limited to the district presided over by Lovell, it could have widespread implications for local governments. Local governments are con stantly bombarded by federal re quirements to do this or that. While many of these federal requirements come with money, many do not. The national government, faced with special interests demanding ac tion on one hand, and a ever in creasing budget deficit on the other, has increasingly relied on unfunded mandates to meet needs. Some local Houston Times-Journal * # * MY COLUMN of a few weeks ago in which I wrote "The lesson that you cannot buy friendship, loyalty or respect should sink in with our leaders someday" brought some interesting reaction...A friend pointed out that this is a lesson each person should learn, too, and the earlier in life the better... Long ago I said that if a person has one true friend in this life he or she is lucky. I have been blessed with several real friends (the kind that ask for nothing in return), most of them now dead...A lesson I learned late in life is how little gratitude there is in this world and too often the people you have done the most for have a way of forgetting...lt is a bitter lesson better learned early than late. * * * A NEWS item said that one of the candidates for governor of Georgia had an adjusted gross income of more than SI million last year yet paid only about $126,000 income taxes-about 12 percent...lt would be nice if they would print his tax return so all of us can see how to pay so little on so.much-legally, of course! Very few working people pay that small a percentage of their adjusted gross income. * * * THE AIR Force has made it pretty plain that when the next base closings occur at least one, if not two. Air Logistics Centers will be closed... Yet construction at all five of the ALCs goes on unabated... Here and at all the others...hundreds of millions of governments spend up to a third of their budgets on federally mandated programs. The United States was founded as a federal system. Our founders shared a profound distrust of strong central government, giving states and people many powers. To preclude the central govern ment from taking powers that were not mentioned by name, they in cluded the Tenth Amendment in the Bill of Rights: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States, respectively, or to the peo ple." And, in case the federal govern ment did not recognize the Tenth Amendment, there was the Ninth Amendment, "The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." We are not a nation like France or England where the central gov ernment has strong control over the outlying provinces. Our national system is built on foundation of cal and state governments. Wednesday, May 25 1994 -Houston Times-Journal Page 4A dollars in new construction on at least one base, and maybe more, that will get the axe...l'm not the best businessman in the world, but if I owned a business that might close within two years I don't believe I would spend more money on construction until I knew...l'm surprised that Senator Sam and others in congress who control the purse strings haven't stopped all new construction at all military bases subject to closing until the axe has fallen. * * * I'M NOT one of those people who takes delight in bashing postal employees. I really believe the people who work for the post office here do their dead level best to provide us good service. The lady who delivers my mail at my home in Warner Robins is courteous, considerate, pleasant and goes out of her way to be accomodating...Yet something is wrong with the postal service... For example, two weeks ago I received two copies of a weekly newspaper mailed less than a mile from where I live the same day. One issue was dated the same week I received it. The other issue was dated three weeks earlier. Sometimes I receive a full month (4 copies) of the newspaper in the same mail...lt seems to me that when they started routing local mail through the regional centers (Macon in this instance) dependable delivery declined... Because of this, the Postmaster General is proposing that different rates be charged for one or two day delivery of first So strong was the tear ot a strong central government, that our founders acted under a confederation system of government for almost a decade after independence. It was only when that form of government proved inadequate to protect internal trade and protect against external enemies did we strengthen our na tional government. Although we gave the national government several new powers with the Constitution, we did not make the states subservient to the national government. Rather, they were given certain co-govemmental rights. There were even powers re served to the states, and forbidden to *Welc<yme& *7(o4* Aette* 7* 74e Sdttwi. 'PfazA# ftclcOieAA, Editor Houston Times-Joumal P.O. Drawer M Perry, GA, 31069 class mail... His reasoning seems to be that if service isn't what it used to be, admit it and charge extra for what we used to take for granted. * * * I WORRY about this country's national debt. You get the impression about every four years that our president and members of congress do. Like indigestion, their worries go away after a lot of talk and doing nothing about it. The debt continues to soar. Pretty close to $4 trillion now. And growing rapidly... Higher interest rates are in the news. Just a one percent increase in interest on the national debt will cost us something like S4OO million a year in additional interest on the debt... Already interes payments on the national debt are approaching half the annual federal budget... How long before interest will equal the entire income of the federal government? Before President Clinton ends his present term in office an additional $1 trillion will be added to the national debt. How long before this will force the nation into bankruptcy? Will something be done to turn it around? Since in Washington where most politicians are concerned only with the next election the answer has to be no. the national government. We have lost a lot of the sovereignty of local governments, particularly through recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions. Now, the U.S. Congress has decided to ride roughshod over the rights of states to decide their own destinies and priorities, and force them to fund federal programs and priorities. In order for our system of gov ernment to work, the federal gov ernment must respect the sovereignty of local government. Unfunded mandates show no such respect Let’s hope the ruling sticks through the appeals process.