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Wednesday May 30 2018 2o!7 winn H mor Cdum, - Onthe Porch
ON THE PORCH by Will Davis
What are we creating?
aise your hand is you're NOT rmming for Monroe
County sheriff this year.
. Six candidates have now tossed their Stetsons
binto the ring and there may be more.
Competition is good, and giving Monroe County citizens
a lot of choices means we'll emerge with a better sheriff
than we would without competition. There's always a con-
cern that sheriff's office employees who don't win won't be
able to keep their jobs. That's because the winning candi-
date is usually not inclined to keep employees who op-
posed them. But the number of MCSO employees running
for sheriff may mean the winner will HAVE to keep some
of them employed lest he be forced to re-staff the entire
department.
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Wereported last week that there's a new industry coming
to the IDI industrial park on Rumble Road which may
bring as many as 250 jobs to town. We don't have many
more details yet, but we do know that the company has
withdrawn its request to rezone the property from indus-
trial to commercial. Development authority president Bo
Gregory said he told the company that there's no reason to
seek a more restrictive zoning classification (commercial)
when industrial will suffice for the distribution center now
underway.
But the biggest need for almost any industry is not good
zoning, but good employees.
Talk to any employer and they'll tell you it's very hard to
find qualified workers these days. Some of that is thanks to
a good economy, where unemployment has dropped to 4
percent. Fewer people need jobs
when that happens.
The other problem is our
generous welfare and disability
payments, which sometimes
make not working more profit-
able than working.
But another problem pointed
out by development author-
ity member Greg Head is that
our schools are urging so many
students to go to college rather
than training for good-paying
vocational jobs like welding,
auto mechanic or, for Head's
business, heating and air.
Head said even offering strong
pay, $15-$20, he has a very hard time hiring good techni-
cians, and he's made the lack of vocational training a big
part of his so-far successful run for school board.
I thought of Head on Tuesday when I was talking to the
owner of the press plant where we publish the Reporter. He
was explaining that he had bought a sophisticated piece of
equipment to insert sales paper into newspapers but that
his employees couldn't figure it out and he's having to l uy
an older piece of equipment to accommodate his employ-
ees' lack of technical skills.
That led to a broader discussion of hiring problems. He
told me that he had scores of employees lay out this Me-
morial Day weekend, without giving notice, forcing him to
go to the local homeless shelter to find people willing to do
the rush jobs a press must handle.
It's not a new complaint, finding good help is always hard.
But it doesn't seem to be getting better.
Monroe County chief deputy A1 Shackelford has his own
theory about we can improve how we raise youngsters.
He recalled going to his grandchild's Kindergarten gradu-
ation recently and watching the children march in caps
and gowns as if they had. achieved great honor by finishing
Kindergarten. Many of them were given awards for various
things.
"I remember when I reminded my parents that I was
graduating from high school on Friday night" recalled
Shackelford. "My dad said, 'Well son, what's the big deal,
isn't that what you're SUPPOSED to do?"
Maybe we could teach the generation that endured "
the Depression and fought World War 2 a little bit about
showing love and affection. But maybe they could teach us
something about raising hard workers who aren't wimps
and snowflakes too.
the Monroe C~oumry
www. MyMCR.net
is published every week by The Monroe County Reporter Inc
Will Davis, President Robert M. Williams Jr, Vice President
Cheryl S, Williams, SecretaryTreasurer
STAFF
Will Davis
Publisher/Editor ] ]~
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Community Editor
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Official Organ of Monroe County. and the City of Forsyth
50 N. Jackson St. Forsyth, GA 31029
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Publication No. USPS 997-840
PEACH STATE POLITICS by Kyle Wingfield
O
O
O
probably don't spend a
lot of time thinking about
utility poles, but the pepple
shaping the furore do.
Much of what we envision for the
years to come - from digital educa-
tion to telemedicine to autonomous
vehicles - will require internet
service that is faster, more reliable
and more ubiquitous. That future
may not be as distant as some people
think. To get there will require agree-
ment about how to attach futuristic
antennae to the same kind of wood-
en poles first used 200 years ago.
Telecoms are abuzz about the
impending roll-out of 5G (fifth-
generation) wireless technology. The
jump from the current 4G technol-
ogy is said to be dramatic: Speeds
could be anywhere from 10 to 100
times faster, with near-instantaneous
response time between networks
and connected devices.
What's the difference? Here's how
Bob Davis, vice president of govern-
ment relations for Verizon, put it in
a recent presentation to legislators
when talking about how the new
technology would work with driver-
less cars:
"If you use the current, 4G technol-
ogy to try to stop a car it would
take about 10 seconds;' he said. "So
obviously that would not worL With
the 5G, high-band spectrum, it's mil-
liseconds:'
That's truly the difference between
life and death
Davis was speaking at a meeting,
of the House Rural Development
Council in Blue Ridge on May 16.
Two days earlier, at a Metro Atlanta
Chamber event, industry representa-
tives als0 talked about the impor-
tance of 5G to Georgigs biggest city.
When one idea resonates in both
rural and urban Georgia, it's worth
paying attention.
What brought those two crowds
together, though, wasn't
just the technology it-
self. It was the challenge
of deploying it across a
state with 159 different
counties, even more cit-
ies, and all their various
approaches to regulating
and permitting.
To reiterate, 5G
technology will require
lots of small antennae,
known as small cells.
They may be attached to
buildings in some cases,
but more often they'll
be perched atop utility
poles, lampposts, traffic
signals, all sorts of things that are
elevated - and, the vast majority of
time, owned by someone other than
the company with the antenna.
Most of the time it will be a.utility
pole owned by a city, a county or a
power company (Georgia Power or
an electric membership corporation)
and standing in public right-of-way
managed by any of those or, in some
cases, the state DOT.
The various parties have spent
months and months talking to one
another. As of today, though, they
have not settled on a standard way
of handling permit requests for these
small cells.
The scope of this work is huge: At
least initially, small cells will need to
be within 250 to 750 feet of each oth-
er, since one trade-off for the faster
speeds and lower latency is shorter
range. That, plus the aforementioned
need for ubiquity, means some
regulatory streamlining is
in order. Nineteen states,
including Florida, North
Carolina and Tennes-
see, have passed bills to
provide that streamlining
as well as cap the fees
that pole owners can
charge for access. They
are better-positioned
than Georgia to garner
early investment in this
technology.
"This is a competitive
industry" Davis told
legislators. "Cost is a
significant factor" in
where a company such
as Verizon spends its limited capital.
Georgia's legislators seem reluctant
to intervene in the negotiations un-
less they absolutely must. It needn't
come to that. The local communities
and utilities that own these poles
would benefit from having 5G every
bit as much as the telecoms would
from providing it. They can and
should work this out on their own.
The president and CEO of the
Georgia Public Policy Foundation,
Kyle Wingfield's column appears in
newspapers around the state.
JUST THE WAY IT IS by SIoan Olive '
Tow? Just when the Rus- the Russians infdtratm& trying to gain establishment and to question authority
/ siancoll, usioninvestiga-acc,e,trying to gain leverage and influ- because it was the establishment that 4
tion cant get any more ence. Then, Clapper had the audadty mntheFBI,theDepartmentofDe-
bizarre, it does. Recall to say that Trump should be happy that fense, and other government agendes.
March 2017, President Trump tweeted
that he and his campaign had been
wiretapped in 2016. That "wiretap"
tweet caused the media and the Demo-
crats (I repeat myself) to go berserL
"How dare Trump accuse the most
worshipful Obama of wiretapping the
Trump campaign ' they screame& The
media accused Trump of lying about
being wiretapped. They mocked him
for daring to accuse their messiah of
rising nefarious means against a politi-
cal opponent. Tunas out that Trump
was correct The FBI and the NSA,
no doubt with Obam approval, did
wiretap Trump and surveilled several
members of his campaign staff. The
Obama regime used methods that Len-
in, Stalin, and Hitler would be proud of
They lied to a FISA (Foreign Intelli-
gence Surveillance Act) judge to obtain
a warrant to conduct surveillance on
Trump staffers to obtain information
on Trump himself Then, the FBI used
information obtained from the likely,
illegal FISA warrants to justify the entire
Russia-collusion investigation and the
special counsel We've known all this for
a year. So, what's new you ask? Spying is
what's new.
his campaign was spied upon became
the FBI was trying to "protect" his cam-
paign. George Orwell warned us about
government bureaucrats like James
Clapper. Clapper is a LIAR - he lied
to Congress under oath when he said
the NSA and the FBI doesn't conduct
domestic surveillance (for you liberals -
domestic means here in the U.S.) Then
when caught in the lie, he admitted
that the FBI spied upon Trump but had
the temerity to say that Trump should
be happy that his campaign was spied
upon. This is how sick and warped
liberals have become. At one time, the
FBI spied on the mafia and on danger-
ous street gangs; now, the
FBI spies upon Obama's
political opponents.
LETME get this
straight: According to
Clapper and the FBI, the
Russians were suspected
of trying to influence the
2016 election, and the
Russians favored Trump
over Hillar . Also, the FBI
suspected several Trump
staffers of having ties to
the Russians. So to protect
Trumps campaign, the
FBI's only choice was to
The FBI did surveillance on Martin
Luther King and on anti-war protest-
ers; the DoD drafted students and sent
them off to Vietnam; andhw enforce-
ment agencies quelled the anti-war
protests. The establishment was the FBI,
the CIA, the DOJ, and the DoD. They
were "The Maff' and the protesters
were against the "Man? The Man was
the enemy and Was not to be trusted.
That period was the birth ofthe hippie
movement where it was cool to "turn
on, tune in, drop-out? Smoke some pot,
drop some acid, groove to some music,
live in some commune, and violently
protest all authority were identifying
traits of the hippie era
LAST WEEK, Trump tweeted that
Obama and the FBI spied on his dec-
NOW, THOSE hippies
are 65+ years old and
have become the "Man."
They are in charge of
academia, the media, and
government bureaucracy.
They worship an ever ex-
panding and increasingly
powerful authoritarian
government. At one time
they would have fought
government agencies
conducting surveillance
on U.S. dtizens. Now,
theylre OK with a sitting
president spying on a political rival
Imagine the outrage if, in 2008, Presi-
dent Bush had used illegal warrants to
wiretap, surveil, and spy on Obama s
campaign. That's exactly what Obama
and the Deep State did to Trump. The
truth about Obam illegal wiretaps
and illegal spying is slowly emerging.
As it does, it is being strongly res' ted by
Democrats, the media, and the Deep
State. We need a second special counsel
to investigate the illegal activities of the
Obama administration and the illegal
activities of the FBI and the Depart-
ment of Justice. Just like the 1960's, the
upper echelons of the FBI and the DOJ
are no longer trustworthy.
tion campaign. Like Trump's wiretap wiretap, surveil, and embed a spy (pos-
accusation, the media and the Demo- sibly several) into Tramp's campaign
crats (I repeat myself) Went "How to see what the Russians were doing.
dare Trump accuse the most worshipful
Obama of spying on the Trump cam-
paign;' they screamed. The media ac-
cused Trump of!ying about being spied
upon. They mocked him for daring to
accuse their messiah of using nefarious '
means against a political opponent. Like
before, Trump was correct. The FBI, no
doubt with Obam approval, did spy
on Trumps campaign. Once again, the
Obama regime used methods similar to
Lenin and Stalin by using spies against
the Trump campaign. ]ames Clapper,
Obam@ Director of National Intel-
ligence, actually admitted to the spying
when he appeared on "The View".
ON MAY 22, Clapper appeared on
ABC'S The View. Co-host, Joy(less)
Behar asked him, "Was the FBI spy-
ing on Trumps campaign?" Clapper
responded, "No they were not, they
were spying on what the Russians were
doing. Trying to understand - were
That's what the Democrats, Obama, the
FBI, and the media want us to believe.
If that were the case, riddle me this;
Why didn't the FBI simply warn Trump
that he had hired several "questionable"
staffers who had possible ties to Russia?
And why didn't the FBI spy and wiretap
Hillary's campaign, if she was, in fact,
the target of Russian interference? The
answers are obvious - the FBI, the
Democrats, Obama, Hillar and the
Deep State wanted to entrap Trump as
their "insurance" policy should he win
the election.
ACTUALLY, IN a broader sense,
Trump has exposed liberals for the dan-
gerous leftists that they have become.
They have become the very people they
wamed us about. The current crop of
leftist, liberal elites got the'tr start during
the days ofthe anti-war protests of
the late 1960's and early 1970's. Back
then, it was "cool" and 'Trip" to be anti-
WEEKLY QUOTE: "By any means
necessary;' - The left's mantra, legal or
illegal, toachieve their ends.
Sloan Oliver is a mired Army office .
He lives in Bolingtroke with his wife
San&a. Email him at sloanoliver@
earthlinkwet.
