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ON THE PORCH by Will Davis
'e
WfourWe found her, she had had a rough life. But so
we of late.
family adopted our first Great Pyrenees in
17 and while we loved Asian, her puppy antics
were wearing us out.
There were destroyed blinds. Late-night barking competitions
(she always won). And she thought our hands were chew toys.
Finally our famity decided we knew what we needed. Yes,
another Great Pyrenees. But this one, we hoped, would be an older,
wiser Pyrenees, slow of motion and a sedative to our hyper puppy
whom we re-named Spaz-lan.
We found Danica in May 2018 through the Great Pyrenees
Rescue of Atlanta group. Her foster morn told us she had fostered
Pyrenees dogs for many years and Danica was the sweetest she had
ever kept. Danica was great with her small children and her other
dogs, she said. We had both as well. And she seemed to show no ill
effects of a rough background.
She was found as a stray. The
rescue group discovered that she
had metal in her teeth, an indica-
tion her former owners kept her
on a chain which she had tried to
escape, perhaps during a storm.
Rescuers also found a bad infec-
tion in her right eye, which had to
be removed. She was Popeye.
We took our five-year-old boy
to meet the five-year-old dog in
Stone Mountain. He was smitten,
and so were we. She was so laid
back we could've called her Honey
Badger. She was the manatee of
the dog world. She even got along
with Spaz-lan.
We got her in the car and as I tried to get on 1-285, she was trying
to sit in my lap. She was so affectionate. Our little boy hugged her
neck every time he passed her, sometimes in ways that looked more
like the WWF. But she always let him.
And he changed her name. Our boy started calling her Danico.
Then it became Cocoa` And that stuck.
And she did help with Asian. They would gnaw on each other
and as a result the puppy was biting us less. But after awhile Aslan
got prettyjealous. One time she took a chunk out of her back, and
poor Cocoa had to wear the Cone of Shame, the infamous lamp
shade, while her back drained and healed.
But since we moved to the country in they seemed to be
fighting less. And Cocoa was loving having more room. She had
gained 20 pounds, up to 120, under our watch, but was now losing
weight, was more energetic, and we actually saw her run for the
first lime. Sometimes I let her go with me to deliver the Reporter on
Wednesday mornings.
Last weekend we took my teenage son to North Carolina for
basketball camp and boarded the big rascals, as we had done many
times before. On the way home on Father's Da) I had stopped at
the store near Lake Oconee with just one hour left in the trip when
our veterinarian called me. A knot formed in my stomach. What
was wrong?
He told me that they had found Cocoa dead on Sunday morning.
They had, and still have, no idea what happened. No, there were
no bite marks and she was alone. Thank God for that. We couldn't
blame Aslan. Other tests were inconclusive. I was stunned.
After returning to the truck I had to teU the rest of the family. I
knew it would be hard. They bawled for the next 30 minutes.
"My heart is breaking day-da ' said little Ford from the backseat.
The vet kindly let us pick up Asian on a Sunday. She would not
eat though. Asian may have lorded over her buddy, but she missed
her.
On Tuesday, my wife called in a panic looking for the key to the
gun safe. Apparently Asian was barking furiously in the yard and
my wife discovered a four-foot rattlesnake there. Unable to find
what shells go with which gun, she simply fired her 22 pistol at the
snake with no success. I was on deadline and couldn't leave the
office. Thankfully our buddy Jarrett Hill was nearby and blasted
the rattler to smithereens. You know what we were thinking. But
our vet says that if a rattlesnake had bit Cocoa, surely she would've
shown some panting or other signs.
So we may never know what killed our Cocoa. Well put her
ashes in the creek bed behind our house because she was always
trying to get in it, where it's cool and boggy
Meanwhile, we're akeady talking to the Pyrenees rescue group
about adopting another one. It's been said that everyone thinks they
have the perfect dog and none of them are wrong. Yes, weft like to
rescue another Pyr for the dog's sake. But also for ours.
www. MyMCR.net
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Will Davis, President. Robert M. Williams Jr Vice President
Cheryl S. Williams, Secretary-Treasurer
Will Davis
Publisher/Editor
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50 N. Jackson St PO Box 795 Forsyth, GA 31029
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Deadlines noon on Friday prior to issue. Comments featured on opinion pages are the creation of
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Publication No. USPS 997-840
PEACH STATE POLITICS by Kyle Wingfield
e
e
lmost two years
have passed
since Repub-
efforts
to reform the U.S. health
insurance market were
pronounced dead. Perhaps
they were merely on life
support.
In July
2017, Sen.
John Mc-
Cain sur-
prised many
observers
by vot-
ing against
the GOP's
"skinny
repeal" of the
Affordable
Care Act. His
rejection left
the bill with
just 49 votes,
the closest
Republicans have come
to repealing the law they
had by then spent almost
eight years deriding as
"Obamacare"
There was one more
short-lived effort to
repeal and replace the
law, but since then
Republicans have lost
their majority in the
U.S. House - and their
nerve. "Shell-shocked" is
how D.C. denizens still
describe congressional
Republicans who spent
years promising to repeal
and replace the ACA,
only to fall short.
The White House pub-
licly moved on to other
matters. But all the while,
the Trump administra-
tion worked on a trio of
reforms that wouldn't re-
quire a vote in Congress.
Two of them debuted last
year: a report on various
ways to boost competi-
tion and choice in the
healthcare marketplace,
and an outline of four
new ways states could
reform their
insurance
markets to
help indi-
viduals and
small busi-
nesses.
Unlike
some Hol-
lywood trilo-
gies, this one
didn't run
out of steam
- in the third
iteration. In
fact, the ad-
ministration
may have saved its best
episode for last.
Earlier this month, the
administration unveiled
a new rule governing the
way employers subsidize
their workers' health
insurance. It amounts
to an innovation akin to
the 401(k) account for
retirement. It expands
employers' ability to
fund an account known
as a Health Reimburse-
ment Arrangement, with
which their employees
can purchase their own
health insurance.
Why is this important?
For decades, employer-
sponsored insurance
received more generous
tax treatment than plans
bought by individuals.
That meant most people
offered insurance by their
employer took it - even
if they were offered only
one plan, and even if that
plan ate up a large chunk
of their paycheck. Buying
insurance any other way
was bound to be even
more expensive.
Under the new rule for
HRAs, employers can
continue to offer tradi-
tional insurance plans
or, instead, offer workers
a flat, untaxed stipend
to buy their own plans.
Think of it like the differ-
ence between a defined-
benefit retirement benefit
(i.e a pension) and a
defined-contribution
benefit (such as a 401(k)
plan).
This change gives the
many employers who
don't offer health insur-
ance a new way to help
subsidize a plan for
their workers. Accord-
ing to the Kaiser Family
Foundation, just 58.4%
of working-age Ameri-
cans were offered a plan
by their employer in
2017 - up from a low of
55.6% in 2011, but still
well below the 67.3% of
Americans covered by an
employer plan in 1999.
The Trump adminis-
tration projects the new
arrangement will reduce
the number of uninsured
Americans by about
800,000, with a total of
11 million Americans
getting their coverage in
this way.
Like many reforms, this
one is no panacea. But
along with moderately
increasing the number of
insured Americans, the
HRA reform could finally
put some downward
pressure on insurance
rates. How? By giving
workers more options for
obtaining their coverage.
Of the employers that
offer insurance coverage,
about 80% have just one
plan. With an HRA un-
der the new rule, workers
get to choose from other
insurers and products.
This change could be
turbo-charged in Geor-
gia: As Gov. Brian Kemp
seeks federal flexibility
for how Georgia admin-
isters the subsidies for
private coverage on the
HealthCare.gov ex-
change, an increase in
the number of Georgians
with tax-free dollars
shopping for insurance
would help.
Combine this with
more flexibility in the
types of plans that can be
bought with subsidies on
the exchange, along with
a reinsurance program
to more directly subsi-
dize the sickest patients
seeking coverage, and
Georgia could soon see
a much healthier market
for individual coverage.
The president and CEO
of the Georgia Public
Policy Foundation, Kyle
Wingfield's column runs
in papers around the state
of Georgia.
TAKING A LIKENS TO YOU by Dale Likens
lbert and Alberta, my
older brother and sister,
were twins. Alberta told
recently
that Albert could sit
in class and solve a
math problem before
the teacher finished
writing the problem
on the blackboard.
He later became an
elementary school
principal and she be-
came a special educa-
tion teacher. My other
sister, Shirley, who
was one year older
than they, also becamee
an elementary school
teacher. My brother
Earl loved to draw and design
bridges and buildings so he spent
40 years as a well-respected drafts-
man for a company in Warren,
Ohio. Billy, my younger brother,
became a fine insurance salesman
in the Trumbull County area.
My desire was to become the
greatest third baseman for the
Cleveland Indians and since that
was a lost cause I, too, became an
elementary school teacher. My
older brother, Jim, spent a couple
years fighting his way in and out
of jail for minor infractions and
finally settled for becoming a full-
time Methodist minister. My old-
est brother, Gene, had little formal
education because he had muscu-
lar dystrophy and spent very little
time in public school. Still, Gene
was by far the wisest of all eight
children in my family. It was he
that we all went to for advice and
a common sense view on all our
decisions.
For a few years of our lives we
children grew up in an old, rented,
rundown house with no electricity,
no running water and an outhouse
that sat 100 feet from our house.
Our nearest neighbors were a
quarter of a mile from us on either
side of our house. Though our
father worked the midnight shift
at a factory in town, he was often
in and out of the hospital
with a slipped disc in
his back. We had little,
but somehow we sur-
vived. We had wonder-
ful friends and relatives
who visited us often and
shared in the fun and
laughter that permeated
from our country home.
We never accepted
government handouts.
We studied by the light
of kerosene lamps each
evening after we finished
our farming chores and
basketball games against
the side of our barn or our softball
games in the field behind our barn.
We planted fields of sweet corn,
snapping beans, sweet peas, car-
rots, cabbage, onions, turnips,
watermelon, muskmelon, etc. My
mother and my two sisters canned
over a hundred quarts of all that
could be canned each year. Our
cellar was full of quart jars.
Five of us children worked our
way through college with no
government loans and no assis-
tance from friends or relatives. Jim
and Earl found their interests in
other fields and moved on in great
professions without the help of a
college degree.
It was early in my teaching career
that I realized I had a deep desire
to tell people of all ages about my
wonderful years of growing up in
rural America. It was also dur-
ing these that my wonderful wife,
Karen, supported every desire I
had to better our lives. I began
telling my fourth, fifth and sixth
grade students about my exciting
life on a lonely, dusty road many
years ago. "You need to write a
book about your life, Mr. Likens.
You lived a very interesting life"
they often told me. I could see it in
their eyes.
It was then I realized college had
not prepared me for my newest ad-
venture. I began buying books that
taught me how to become a good
writer, how to make the reader
taste and feel what I was tasting
and feeling. I learned how to bring
similes and metaphors into my
writing and describe each charac-
ter as someone every reader could
feel he or she knew personally.
It matters little today how suc-
cessful my novels may have served.
I have been blessed with a wonder-
ful life. Only in America can one
be offered the opportunity to give
it your best. Only in America do
we possess the opportunity to live
truly under the power of our God
and our first amendment.
Today my two sisters are ada-
mant Democrats. My only surviv-
ing brother, Bill, and I are unwav-
ering conservatives. We all still
understand each other and still
have a deep love for our past lives
together. That's the America I grew
up in] That's the America I love
and defend.
My wife and I pray for the com-
ing election. Will America remain
the America we once grew up in;
whether controlled by a Demo-
cratic Party or a Conservative
party? Will America become the
America where we all have an
equal opportunity to become the
best we can be? Let us not become
a nation of free handouts. Let us
proudly work for what we receive.
Let us not give our freedom to
vote as citizens to those who are
not citizens of America. Let us
put God back into our schools,
our government and our per-
sonal lives. And may our churches
become strong and vocal as they
once were in years gone by. God
bless!
Dale Likens is an author who lives
in Monroe County.
