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Column
By
Mark Beardsley
The Commerce News
November 28, 2001
 Shopping Doesn't Have To Be All That Difficult
The day after Thanksgiving is the official starting point for
the Christmas season and for shopping in particular. Inasmuch
as newspapers are expected to provide public service and since
most of you guys probably would normally wait until Dec. 20 to
start shopping, I offer a few hints to make your holiday shopping
easier.
First, organize. What are your goals? To spend as little money
as possible? To suck up to someone, be it boss, spouse or significant
other? Or, like me, to get it over with so you can move on to
more fun matters, like re-grouting the shower?
Having decided your priorities, create the list. Information
should include the item, its price and the store at which it
can be purchased: A list is essential; success is measured on
the number of items crossed out.
Plan your outing. The goal is to get it all done at once, whether
you go to Atlanta or downtown Commerce. To look at it from another
view, the goal is to avoid having to go to even one more store
than is necessary and to spend not one more minute than you must.
Men, you must do this alone. The most inefficient shopping occurs
when you take someone else with you, especially your wife. Even
another guy can make it more difficult, however; you'll end up
at a Bass Pro Shop and you don't want to buy your wife's gifts
there.
Cash or charge? I prefer to use cash, but sometimes I resort
to VISA in the hope that once the transaction is made the paperwork
will mysteriously disappear. The item itself may dictate strategy,
particularly if your wife sees the credit card receipts, in which
case expensive purchases should be charged so she can see how
much you care, and inexpensive gifts should be bought with cash
so she can't.
A few of you will be tempted to shop online. Forget it. The Internet
is a passing fancy invented by Al Gore, also a passing fancy.
Besides, you want to see what you're buying first and get it
wrapped for free, right?
Don't forget to visit your hardware and auto parts stores, which
always have gifts for the ladies, although it takes a special
woman to appreciate the gift of a power washer or a case of 20W-40.
And while those stores don't offer gift-wrapping, here's a hint:
take your purchase out to Tanger II, where the Sarepta Baptist
Association will wrap them for free. Don't tell them I sent you.
Be careful what you buy. Generally speaking, the following are
not good gift ideas: camouflage clothing, Dale Earnhardt paraphernalia,
detergent, home pregnancy test kits, gift certificates from Weight
Watchers, any mounted fish or animal that sings, perfume for
under $9 per pint, duct tape, wine bottled in Mason jars and
generic cigarettes.
And if you were at all inclined toward buying any of those items,
it's probably best that you not attempt to purchase clothing
for your spouse or girlfriend. However, if you must, here's a
crucial bit of advice. Surreptitiously find her dress size and
make sure any clothing you purchase is at least one, preferably,
two, sizes smaller. She'll be flattered by your estimation of
her small size and will get to exchange your selection for something
decent.
OK guys, get going and good luck.
Editorial
The Jackson Herald
November 28, 2001
Roads are
a solution, not the problem
To hear the anti-suburban environmentalists tell it, roads are
the bane of all evil. Roads bring development and development
breeds sprawl and sprawl is, well, the antithesis of the elitists
who never saw a suburb that shouldn't be turned back into a field.
But roads are not the problem. Indeed, the biggest complaint
you hear about growth is the impact on traffic. We all hate to
sit in traffic.
It is the lack of sufficient roads that causes traffic problems.
You simply can't continue to add cars without also adding new
roads designed to move traffic.
That's increasingly clear in the metro Atlanta area where politics
has stymied efforts to build new roads, the result being too
many cars on too little pavement.
But this lack of road infrastructure is also becoming apparent
in rural areas like Jackson County. While some progress is being
made with the Jefferson bypass, that alone won't solve the traffic
congestion in the central and western parts of Jackson County.
It's time for our county and city leaders to have a working summit
on road transportation in Jackson County. Traffic projections
and long-term state projects should be outlined so that our officials
can make plans for new local projects to fill in the pavement
gaps.
This won't be an easy task and it will require a new sense of
working together that has not previously existed in this county.
It will also take a long-term commitment to funding new road
projects.
But to not plan now for the growth in traffic will lead only
to more problems in the future.
Now is the time to act. The question is, who will lead this effort?
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Column
By
Mike Buffington
The Jackson Herald
November 28, 2001
 Time to stop Lasseter-bashing
Good grief! How much more are we going to have to hear about
Michael Shane Lasseter?
You remember Lasseter, the Gainesville man who in a single bound
shut down airports across the nation a couple of weeks ago. Now
AirTran has filed a federal lawsuit against Lasseter, as if some
pending criminal charges weren't enough.
Now I'm not an "air warrior" who flies around the country
every week. At most, I'll fly four or five times during the year,
enough to know my way around an airport and to experience the
hassles of this "convenient" mode of travel. I've been
delayed, bumped and sat on runways for a couple of hours. I've
been de-iced, flown over hurricanes and once flew with smugglers
at midnight in a foreign country in a plane that had no seats.
But in all of that, I've never threatened to kill anyone for
delaying a flight. But Lasseter has gotten so many death threats
that he's had to leave his Gainesville home for an "undisclosed
location."
Let's call this episode what it really was - a massive overreaction
by Hartsfield authorities that needlessly created an atmosphere
of panic. There was no cause to shut down Hartsfield, or the
roads around the airport.
This type of public panic is exactly the goal of terrorism. Terrorists
do not have the support or weapons to overthrow a government
or destroy a country. Rather, terrorism attempts to erode the
backbone of a nation from within by creating fear and panic.
For airports to be prudent in their security is, of course, expected.
No one wants a repeat of Sept. 11. But should we confiscate nail
clippers because they could be weapons? A little common sense
would be welcome.
I don't know Michael Lasseter. But I do know the feeling of misplacing
a camera bag in a public place and of dashing through an airport
to catch a flight. And while I've never run up a down escalator,
it's easy to understand how someone in a rush might take such
a shortcut.
But to have shut down an airport over that action, without any
other evidence of a threat, was just stupidity on the part of
Atlanta officials.
It's time to leave Michael Lasseter along, the poor schmuck.
If you see O.J. Simpson running through an airport, you might
wonder if anyone just got their throat cut and should call security.
But if you see a middle-aged, balding guy who looks like a small-town
banker on vacation dashing up the down stairs, he's probably
not a terrorist.
That's not rocket science, that's just common sense.
Mike Buffington is editor of The Jackson Herald.
Editorial
The Commerce News
November 28, 2001
Commission Needs
To
Let Manager Manage
Having decided that its first choice for county manager didn't
work out, the Jackson County Board of Commissioners is in the
process of hiring its second. Some 30 potential managers have
submitted applications.
While the commissioners are studying the qualifications of Skip
Nalley's potential successors, they should spend a little time
considering their own shortcomings. If the next county manager
is to succeed in Jackson County, he or she will need a lot more
support and cohesiveness than Nalley received.
The commissioners appear to be more interested in running things
themselves than delegating work to a manager or to others. They
are headed to showdowns with the Jackson County Planning Commission
over zoning issues, which probably accounts for much of planning
director David Clabo's interest in the Jefferson city manager's
job, and with the Jackson County Water and Sewerage Authority
over how the authority should build water lines. They're hostile
toward some members of both the planning commission and the water
and sewerage authority and one commissioner has suggested that
the county airport authority be abolished. The interest in dominating
authorities created to de-politicize important government operations
suggests that the commissioners are collectively unable or unwilling
to delegate authority. That, in turn, bodes ill for a county
manager and the county manager form of government in Jackson
County.
In theory, a county manager is apolitical. The manager recommends
policies and practices to best serve the county as a whole, guided
by goals set by the board of commissioners. But until the commissioners
become disciplined enough to let the county manager and the various
authorities do the jobs with which they are charged, no county
manager is going to succeed in this county.
Get The Word Out
Following this week's arrest of a variety of drug suspects, Commerce
police chief John Gaissert said his message to those in the drug
community is: "If you buy or sell drugs in Commerce, plan
on going to jail."
That is no doubt the goal of most every law enforcement agency
for its jurisdiction. Now, if only those in the drug business,
or those young people contemplating being in that business, could
understand what awaits them.
There are two parts to the equation. The retail drug trade is
centered in Commerce's black community. The customers for those
drug dealers are black, white and hispanic, and the drug of choice
for both groups is crack cocaine.
Smart young people should realize the futility of using or selling
cocaine. Ideally, the damage of an addictive drug would warn
people away; but failing that, the weekly list of people arrested
for drug use or drug sales should be a warning.
Perhaps some people have no fear of going to jail, but surely
most do. The message must be taken to young people that their
actions as drug users or drug dealers will result in their going
to jail, losing any respect the community might have held for
them and hastening their slide into a cycle of crime, incarceration
and the danger of a life on the streets.
The message our young people need to understand is that life
as a drug dealer means constant fear of arrest, if not of the
danger of drug deals gone bad. It means potentially losing personal
freedom for months or years at a time. What those who would use
drugs need to know is that in addition to the horrors of addiction,
drug use will also land them in jail, cost them their jobs and
humiliate them.
The message is clear; the difficulty is getting the people to
hear it.
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