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TODAY'S ISSUE
Help decide winner of Great Gwinnett Challenge cleanup
By Becky Amsden
Gwinnett Clean and Beautiful
Special to GwinnettForum.com

MAY 24, 2005 -- Groups all over Gwinnett County have been taking pride in their community during the past six weeks fixing up, cleaning up, planting, recycling, etc. as part of Keep America Beautiful's "Great American Cleanup Gwinnett Challenge."

Connie Wiggins, Gwinnett Clean and Beautiful executive director, says that "The Gwinnett Challenge gave groups an opportunity to demonstrate their community pride by getting involved to make their community safer, cleaner and healthier. These groups all did an outstanding job showing us that major improvements can happen when committed individuals unite to effect a positive change in their neighborhood."

She added: "It was difficult for our Selection Committee to select finalists from so many outstanding projects." Winners were chosen based upon the biggest transformation, use of innovation and the volunteer base that participated.

Now it's time for the overall public to get involved. You can help select the Grand Prize Winner and recipient of the $2,000 cash award. Visit Gwinnett Clean and Beautiful's website www.gwinnettcb.org between May 19 and May 27. Read about the winning projects and see before and after photos. Then, cast your vote by clicking on the picture for the project you think deserves to be the Grand Prize Winner.

Wiggins says: "We'd like to extend a special thank you to all the groups who participated in this year's Great American Cleanup Gwinnett Challenge. The contest was a special way to motivate people. We hope other individuals and groups can use these projects as examples of what can happen in their own area - it only takes a few committed individuals to join together to make a big difference in Gwinnett County.

ELLIOTT BRACK
Will South Carolina GOP tactics one day bloom in Georgia?
By Elliott Brack
Editor and Publisher
GwinnettForum.com

MAY 24, 2005 -- Statewide politics, we may have all assumed, would get a whole lot better when we had a true two party system in Georgia. At least that's been my thinking for years, as when in South Georgia, we advocated more Republicans run for local offices.

Then in Gwinnett, once after the big Republican sweep of 1984, we were advocating more Democrats run for local offices, to bring about a real two party system. In recent years there has been a crack in the solid Gwinnett Republican officials, with voters electing a few Democrats. Indications for the future see more Democrats winning election.

Now statewide, what we have is a completely turned-over power, with Republicans holding not only the governorship, but control of both houses of the Legislature. It's not unlike Democrats having complete control in previous years. From this, you might think all was hunky-dory, and the Republicans could easily push their agenda, and accomplish miracles.

Georgia's just beginning to taste the flavor of Republican control of statewide activities. So far the GOP has held off the Democrats, but one wonders how long it will be before there is squabbling within the Republican ranks.

After all, look at another state where Democrats at one time held total power, you might wonder if what is happening there could also happen in Georgia.

In South Carolina, now Republicans have been in control of both houses of the Legislature for the last few years and held the governor's office since 1986, except for four years. Judging from what we read recently, all is not well in South Carolina.

Gov. Mark Sanford, the former Congressman turned governor, is having a hard time with his own Republican Party members in the Legislature. Here's how it developed.

Sanford in his three years as governor has used the veto to try to shape the development of what is happening in South Carolina. His second year, he vetoed 106 line-items in the budget. This year Governor Sanford has vetoed 163 budget measures. He took out $96 million out of the state's $5.8 billion budget, with the result that legislators, both Republican and Democratic, are fuming. As one story put it, "they (legislators) have had enough of him playing budgetary chicken with them, so he can look like the hero of fiscal conservatism." He's said to be "politicking with the lives of South Carolinians and blaming the Legislature."

What will happen, of course, is that the Legislature will override many and probably most of the vetoes, giving the governor a "win-win" situation in the eyes of fiscal conservatives.

And if they let Sanford's vetoes ride, South Carolina will be hurt as college tuition could rise, rural workers could be denied transportation to work, and South Carolina will lose millions in federal matching and tourism funds.

Is this what South Carolina (or Georgia) wants from having one party in control of its government?

In South Carolina, the governor's tactics do much to bring together the warring legislative delegations of both parties, pitted against the governor and his unrelenting obsession favoring a one-man conservatism. It makes you wonder whether the South Carolina governor will have many legislators hoping to get him re-elected, what with his politically unpopular and difficult stances on the state budget.

So far Georgia's governor has not resorted to open war with his Republican colleagues in the Legislature. We hope that they continue to get along, though it is always a tenuous relationship with a legislature for any governor. Watching South Carolina gives an idea of what not to want in such a relationship.

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I personally think one of our greatest threats, even greater than taxes, is the growing control of banks through their high interest tactics.

AARP had an article on the high interest seniors are paying out. When we consider that millions have fallen into the credit card trap and that banks have taken over our privacy on the excuse of "better service", I fear they have the power to seize billions of dollars of property that would normally be passed on to heirs.

The first "red flag" to me is the government's failure to forbid them to suddenly raise interest rates if a customer is late with some other payment or utility bills. It is too easy for them to create the late payment by not mailing bills in a timely manner. They even state that a customer can't make a payment without the bank's "payment form", and that should be illegal for them to refuse to accept payment.

We are living in rapidly changing times where our government puts the interests of corporations ahead of private citizens. If we can't elect citizens who will
truly and honestly represent America's citizen's interests first, we will soon not have a "free" country.

I liked some of what Marshall Miller, a seemingly staunch Republican, said in his letter to the Forum Friday, May 20. It's a good start but as an American having both "liberal" and "conservative" viewpoints, I feel compelled to hold all those who ever voted for Bush responsible for putting him in the White House along with the Democratic leadership. I was hoping for more of the guy from 1971.I never knew that Bush was a liberal, though.

With respect Mr. Marshall, Jesus was a liberal. Liberal simply means a person who is open to new ideas and not tied to traditions. Sort of like Jesus when he discussed his new ideas with those in the Sanhedrin.

Most of which President Bush does not practice in his foreign policy. The Bush administration clearly authorized the use of torture with regard to "enemy combatants," not Newsweek. This administration also chose to create intelligence to fit their policy of pre-emptive war (not very Christian sounding is it?) and while not one American network is covering the Downing Street memo, Tony Blair refuses to deny its authenticity.

Iraq, like Vietnam is supposed to be a quagmire. Our military-industrial killing machine of an economy requires these quagmires. Now we have a perpetual 'war on terror' for Lockheed, Bechtel, Halliburton, et al. It is comparable to a feeding frenzy of sharks frankly, with Iraqi & American children the fodder.

While we follow along daftly arguing over liberal and conservative or any other divisive label, the wealthy men who finance the campaigns of those who write the laws to justify these wars for their profit, go to the bank all day. Until the money is totally removed from campaigns and ballot access opened up to more than the two parties killing this nation we will not see much change.

The 43-piece U.S. Air Force Reserve Concert Band will offer up a stirring and fitting start to the Memorial Day weekend when it performs at Suwanee Town Center Park at 7:30 p.m. Friday, May 27. The band's varied repertoire includes classical overtures, Sousa marches, Broadway show tunes, popular music, movie themes, and patriotic favorites.

The concert band's performance is free and open to the public. Free tickets are not required but are recommended; tickets are available from 8 a.m.-5 p.m. at Suwanee City Hall, 373 Buford Highway.

Bring blankets and lawn chairs, neighbors and friends, and picnic dinners, but no alcohol please. Food also will be available for purchase.

This concert is sponsored by the Gwinnett Daily Post. For more information, visit www.suwanee.com or call the City of Suwanee at 770/945-8996.

"Red Gwinnett" offers introduction to Hispanic community

Gwinnett's Chamber of Commerce has a new networking program in place that targets the Hispanic business community. It's called Red Gwinnett, and meets the second and fourth Tuesday of each month from 6-7:30 p.m. at the Gwinnett Chamber of Commerce on Sugarloaf Parkway. Admission is free.

If you are looking for new leads in the Hispanic business world, Red Gwinnett is the networking event for you. The format is similar to our popular Network Gwinnett with the advantage to converse and engage in Spanish. Participants will have the opportunity to speak before the crowd and network 'one-on-one' in a comfortable and casual atmosphere. Please join us to build relationships, obtain leads, close more deals and further leadership within Gwinnett.

For additional information, contact Rodrigo Infante at (770) 232-8813 or
e-mail to: rodrigo@gwinnetchamber.org.

ENCYCLOPEDIA TIDBIT
5/24: Georgia's Aiken major poet in USA, state poet laureate

Over a period of nearly 50 years Conrad Aiken published poems, essays, short stories, novels, and literary criticism. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1930 for Selected Poems (1929) and a National Book Award for Collected Poems (1953). His literary autobiography, Ushant, reveals the international nature of his complex life and literary career.

Conrad Potter Aiken was born in Savannah, Georgia, on August 5, 1889. The author's mother, Anna, was the daughter of a prominent Massachusetts Unitarian minister. When Aiken was 11, Aiken's father killed his wife and then shot himself-without any warning. The young Aiken was sent to live with an aunt in Cambridge, Mass. He later attended Harvard University, where he met the young T. S. Eliot, who became a lifelong friend and literary associate.

Aiken married Jessie McDonald in 1912. They had three children but divorced in the late 1920s, after they had settled in England. Aiken's earliest poetry was written partly under the influence of a beloved teacher at Harvard, the philosopher George Santayana. This association shaped Aiken as a poet who was deeply musical in his approach and, at the same time, philosophical in seeking answers to his own problems and the problems of the modern world.

At the beginning of World War II, Conrad Aiken returned to America to settle in a house on Cape Cod in the small town of West Brewster, Mass. He no longer sought his chief inspiration in Great Britain, Spain, and France, though he continued to have readers in those countries. With new poems about his native country's past and present, he at last gained an American audience.

Aiken and his wife Mary became significant figures in the life of Savannah. They entertained many visitors, including a number of scholars and authors who sought out Aiken and talked with him at great length. When T. S. Eliot died in 1965, Aiken wrote a memorable article in Life magazine about his friend's place in modern literature. Aiken's final book, a collection of religious poems, entitled ,Thee, deals in part with his own literary and religious pilgrimage.

Six months before Aiken's death on August 17, 1973, Governor Jimmy Carter appointed him poet laureate of the state of Georgia. In front of the house on Oglethorpe Avenue, a historical marker describes Conrad Aiken's life and work

THOUGHT OF THE DAY
What allowing righteousness does to religion and politics

"Religion and politics have always been strange bedfellows. The introduction of righteousness is what makes it dangerous."

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