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“Dead, See Trolls”: Rural Politics post-Obama and pre-Trump

Posted in African Americans, politics, tagged , , , , , on January 17, 2017| Leave a Comment »

bates2

Blogging can be a huge waste of time if nobody reads your stuff.  It’s the modern version of the adage in my community that goes “If you want to hide something from a “blank” put it in a book.”  After I have moved on to selling aluminum roofing in Thomasville, someone might discover these 700 some odd blog post like the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Bedouin shepherds discovered the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1946 in a cave in the current troubled West Bank area between Israel and Jordan.  People read blogs that include funny hooks so consider Damon Wayans knowledge deep prisoner character Oswald Bates from In Living Color.  “So, my dear brother, the Dead Sea Scrolls were like some missing extra parts of religious text found…follow this…between Is Real because we need what is real and Jordan because our community spends too much money on Jordan sneakers that don’t take us anywhere but to the poor house.”

President-Elect Trump entering the White House was foretold by some of us in and around the political arena for decades but nobody would listen.  To me, it started when public policy stop being designed by political scientists and the people and became crafted by Madison Avenue marketing experts.  Dr. Frank Luntz has a PhD in polly sci from Penn but he is the consultant/pollster who created the art of running focus groups to gauge the public and designing a few talking points that hit like bullet points.  In the 90s, he was the mastermind Newt Gingrich use to create the Contract With America.

Project Logic GA as a blog is like the Dead Sea Scrolls but rather than putting flashdrives in Mason jars and placing them in Georgia red clay next to the Flint River, these smart ideas might die in cyberspace with the plans of Michael Steele, Jon Huntsman, and Elizabeth Warren.  In those cyber Mason jars, scholars might one day find the “Dead, See Trolls.”

The Dem Party is dead…trolls, see what your mistakes have done.

Yes, there are those who sought hard to save this republic with logic and positive developments.  Public policy should start with helping the people understand the limited role of government in their lives—balance to between compassion for the needy and a desire to end poverty.  On his best days, Speaker Newt Gingrich would explain that America should be the land of equal opportunity for all…with emphasis being placed on opportunity.  If every kid has a fair shot at success, we have it right.  However, if said kid squanders those opportunities by not focusing on development, being lazy or committing crimes, he gets to live in the reality he created. We are usually our own worst enemies.

Mr. Trump becoming president started when campaign experts learn to tell the people what they wanted to hear rather than what they needed to hear.  Republicans wanted to hear in the 1990s that they were the chosen ruling class who could make decisions affecting everyone without input from anyone else. For example, the 1990s Crime Bill cost billions but crime kept growing—who got paid, their friends who owned prisons.  Since LBJ’s effort to end poverty the Democrats wanted to be the party that poured more money into efforts to help the needy.  However, some of that money should have been spent encouraging the future generations to not be “the needy.”

It’s rough when a kid never had a chance because plans for success never came their way.  Actually, the life portrayed by the Cosby Show did so much for some in my generation and the Obamas in real life have done the same.  Oh, the post White House Obamas will be so very beneficial because they can say what they really want to say to my community….hint: moderation is the key.

Could the current toxic political climate have been avoided?  Of course, you should read the “Dead, See Trolls” because reasonable people like me begged to be at the table.  Moderates can communicate with the Left and the Right and over the last two decades it was often Republican friends who saw the importance of crafting a new southern moderate movement.  The elbow-throwing Tea Party put an end to that goodwill.  The southern Democrat Party is a mess because urban liberals in Atlanta want to push a progressive agenda that doesn’t cotton well with rural conservative Blacks…we can’t win elections in cities alone…ask Hillary about that.

We  tried to tell those latte-sipping liberals from Buckhead that the D.C.-designed Democrat platform was almost as alien to us as the vitriol spewed by those who hijacked the Republican Party. But, those of us who drink sweet tea and occasionally coldbeer from Mason jars in the rural Black community were ignored in November 2016…and that’s after we saved Hillary from Bernie Sanders in the primary.  A rising rural star on the national stage is Rep. Tim Ryan from Youngstown, Ohio.  This guy says the Democrats need people who shower before work and people who shower after work.  I love it.

A troll is a mythical, cave dwelling being having an ugly appearance.  I hope the trolls in the Democratic Party find these Mason jars filled with ideas because their team is dead, see.  I tried to tell them that Trump was a marketing genius who was simply playing dead to win the election.  I spent a year writing/crafting a “Contract With America-like” moderate action plan called the Best Interest Initiative.

The B.I.I. is all about what our community can do to help ourselves with limited government involvement.  Remember, candidate Obama always said that the government often isn’t the answer…often it’s you.  The B.I.I. is based on JFK’s statement “ask not what this country can do for you…ask what you can do for this country.”  What you can do is start being a better you…stop being a knucklehead.  Yes, I said knucklehead.  We talk like that inside my community; we say that with love to those who would destroy our area for some money.

The trolls who run the Democratic Party spent a billion dollars on t.v. ads but rarely sought the existing networks of influence in our community.  In other words, the rich boys got their friends richer but never hit the barbers and funeral home directors.  The trolls thought they had the community because the preachers got white envelopes with Get Out The Vote Cash.  Newsflash, church folks vote anyway—that’s preaching to the choir.  The barbers, coaches and those “pay party tossing” kids are the ones who can move the crowd.

When Trump won that election, the Democrats and Republicans lost the White House because neither wanted him.  The Black community has the numbers to sway most elections in the South.  My friends and I mentioned a plan to Democrats to cultivate the Obamacrats outside Georgia’s biggest cities and they blew it off…the same likely happened in North Carolina, Florida and across the Rust Belt.

Oh, Trump was out there in the sticks.  He told them what they wanted to hear—if he can or should deliver that stuff is another subject.  The Dems trolls should learn from Trump that policy should be bottom up and not top down…it’s called grassroots.

To be honest, I am backing away from constantly watching CNN’s political coverage.  We should spend the next few years listening to the people and teaching cultural moderation to the kids.  A better DNC needs to emerge from the ashes because ignoring rural southerners will get us ghost.

I wanted to put some of my favorite blog posts in this cyber Mason jar for the trolls to find.  If they wanted to talk now, I will be waiting on my front porch with sweet tea…bring white envelopes.

https://bestinterestsinitiative.wordpress.com/

https://projectlogicga.com/2009/12/10/cease-corps/

https://projectlogicga.com/2016/07/27/southside-of-the-tracks-us-vs-them/

https://projectlogicga.com/2016/12/19/southern-rural-democrats-astroturf-vs-sod-grassroots/

https://projectlogicga.com/2016/11/21/ongoing-civil-wars-failure-to-communicatea-new-great-triumvirate/

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Two Albanys, Two Sylvesters, Two Camillas , Two Bulldog Nations/ Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Coming Home”

Posted in politics, tagged , , , , on September 23, 2015| 1 Comment »

Carlton Fletcher’s Albany Herald column about two Albanys got me thinking about two Sylvesters, two Camillas, two DCs and two Bulldog nations.  Fletcher is one of Albany State’s first non-minority football players which would actually make him a majority player at a minority school—look the dude came from Ocilla to Albany because he wanted an education and he loved playing sports.

This blog loves Fletcher because he keeps it real.  The guy once wrote about the term “bus left” from our childhood.  He is a bridge-builder and you know this blog has a metaphorical bridge as a logo.  In a recent article, Fletcher talked about the Albany downtown where he works and the northwest Albany/part Lee County where others live and spend.  This situation makes me think about the Police’s song “One World Is Enough For All of Us” in which Sting sang “we can’t sink while others float because we are all in the same big boat.”

Albany

People now make money in Albany then cross Ledo Road (literally Lee Dougherty line) to eat, shop and sleep away from….you know.  It’s sometimes called White flight but there is a lot of Blacks doing the same.  Hey, you can’t blame someone from running from rough stats about the inter-city but I happen to love downtown areas more than strips of national food chains with little character. The solution for downtown Albany will come when hundreds of college students, Marines and young professionals actually live in lofts downtown….high ceilings, exposed bricks, old wooden floors, walk home after partying.  When I was an intern in the downtown development office, I told them that in 1988 but it never happened.

http://www.albanyherald.com/news/2015/sep/19/carlton-fletcher-coming-face-to-face-with-two/

Sylvester

Small towns like Sylvester have been traditionally separated by a train track and if you came up on the wrong side of that track, you might want to catch a train heading anywhere else.  In 1981, there was a movie called “The Night the Lights When out in Georgia” and at the end, Kristy McNichol’s character said, “I am not sure where I am going but I am in a hurry to get there.”

I was never in a hurry to get out of Sylvester, the town that turned the swimming pool into a tennis court to keep us from swimming.  I have been playing tennis on those courts for 40 years…so there.  With all the ugliness in the world, the calmness of the hometown sounds pretty good and with high speed internet, many professionals can do their jobs from anywhere.  Forrest Gump brought his money home and so should others.  Donald Trump is right in stating that we don’t make anything in America anymore and the Sylvester of my youth was about making crops and textiles.  To me, current Sylvester is a bedroom community of Tifton and Albany and that’s fine.

The Mayor of Sylvester is Bill Yearta and he sat in my den (under the framed pictures of my daddy and President Obama) and politely listened to every gripe I had about Sylvester dating back to that swimming pool drama.  Yearta took that heat for hours like current congressman Sanford Bishop and former congressman Jack Kingston like taking heat from people who they know aren’t going to vote for them.

I didn’t vote for Yearta but he gain tons of respect for listening to my explanation…hell, he should be a congressman.  Elected officials and public servants execute their official duties but they have unofficial roles that some don’t understand.  Does Bill Yearta do a good job on his official administrative oversight duties?  Yes, he is likely the best mayor in this town’s history in that regard.  Unofficially, you sometimes need a mayor who can encourage the citizens in aspects of life that aren’t directly about government i.e. pull up your pants, get off the corners, congrats on being a clean-cut kid, let’s not refight the Civil War.

Another old friend ran against Yearta twice and I jokingly called him the unofficial mayor of south Sylvester because he was a tireless advocate for this side of the tracks.  I was wrong for that because there is one Sylvester and Bill Yearta is the properly elected mayor.  There is one America and Obama is the president.  Some folks don’t seem to know that.

Camilla

Rufus Davis is running for mayor of Camilla.  Davis and I go back before 8-track and this citizen of the world came home.  Correction, while he has worn out several passports living all over the world, he was always rooted in Camilla and the life lessons of his parents.  I remember a college cookout when someone joked that NAACP stood for “Negroes aint acting like color people” and Davis was like NO, you’ll aren’t allow to play like that because my mother wouldn’t like that after the numerous improvements that organization has made for this nation.  We were like “chill, man….it’s a cookout” but Davis stood strong.

At the time, Rufus Davis and Dr. Carl Gordon were the only Black Republicans this pol sci major knew.  Yes, Davis was a pro-business, pro-growth, do-for-self conservative during the Reagan years but we know that Davis nor Reagan could be a Republican today because the party of Lincoln has been pulled too far right.  While I was partying in grad school, Rufus started a successful magazine in downtown Albany.

The current mayor of Camilla seems like a nice person and reading about him reminds me of Bill Yearta.   Camilla shouldn’t be two Camillas or Camilla vs. Mitchell County.  In many rural Georgia communities, people have moved from the city to the country for homestead living.  However, those same people seek to still control and offer commentary about town.

Rufus Davis might have been born to bridge the divide and to encourage One Camilla.  Rufus’s candidacy seems like a baby Obama situation…overkill.  If a mayor needs to bring jobs from corporations, Rufus has serious experience from working in multimillion dollar operations in New York.  If jobs need to come back from overseas, he knows global business.  How many small cities have an attorney as mayor when it comes to crossing the t’s and dotting the i’s?  If elected, I bet Davis will flip that drama on the news about the block party into a city wide festival series that highlights every culture that makes up their community…from hip hop to blues to bluegrass to Motown.  I look forward to coming to town for some of that.

DC

When I was in DC, delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton pointed out that Washington policemen and firefighters were living in Virginia and Maryland.  While they have a right to live where they want, having public safety personnel on your street is like having a police or fire sub station there.  There are two DCs and the big DC is controlled by Blacks.  One group making decisions without input from everyone is wrong.

Bulldog Nations

While this blog post is too long, I want to finish by remembering the divide created when Hershel Walker left the University of Georgia for the USFL’s New Jersey Generals.  How could Hershel do that to us?  I had my room assignment in Creswell Hall and looked forward to being a junior transfer student about to experience winning a national championship as a sports fan.  But, Bulldog Nation got so ugly when that young man decided that he wanted to secure his family’s financial future by turning pro.  Black folks understood because Stanford stadium seems like a plantation and I looked side-eye when Walker said, “I can carry the ball a bunch of times a game….it ain’t heavy”  Really?

We should remember that Walker’s exit was arranged by Donald Trump, the owner of the New Jersey Generals.  Trump burnt Georgia like Sherman.  While watching a recent PBS documentary on General William Tecumseh Sherman, I learned that the general who burned Atlanta became friends with several Confederate generals.  Southern General Joseph E. Johnston was a pallbearer at Sherman’s funeral.  The UGA family loves Hershel today; he is one of the school’s favorite graduates but can those people vote for Trump after he cost us a second national championship.

Summary: From politics to football back to politics, a house divided cannot stand.  I use to think Abraham Lincoln wrote that before the Civil War but when I started reading the Bible more I learned Mark 3:25 says “And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand.”  Elected officials should seek to bring people together and find reasonable solutions rather than inadvertently dividing us.

Comin’ Home

You know Georgia is open for business—always has been.  Remember, during the roughest parts of the Civil Rights Movement, Black and White leaders in Atlanta would quietly meet and resolved issues with money and economic development in mind.  Refighting the Civil War seems like fun to some until they realize that new industry doesn’t want to locate in a place with social disorder.

Atlanta’s Lewis Grizzard wrote that once he got back to Georgia he was going to nail his feet to the ground.  Brother, I have been there and it usually involved a messed up stomach in the developing world.  You don’t miss ole Georgia until you are somewhere else.  When altitude sickness had my head spinning in Manta, Ecuador, I thought about Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Coming Home.”  Yea, those confederate flag-loving southern rockers are my homeboys too. Their “Gold & Platinum” greatest hit cd is one of my all-time favorites behind Thriller, the Police’s Synchronicity and the Gentler Side of John Coltrane.

Problem-solvers listen to all sides of the issue and seek a common ground.  Listen.  Who knew that in Sweet Home Alabama, Lynyrd Skynyrd sang “in Birmingham, they loved the governor…boo boo boo.”  So this Florida band was booing George Wallace….well, dam.

Anyway south Georgia is open for business and all those classmates who had successful careers elsewhere can retire to the warmth of the southern sun.  Luke Bryan can romanticize in song about south Georgia and we do ride in trucks but the next generation seems a little aimless at times.  Rather than talking about them, let’s talk with them because they could be heading backwards.

At the end of the day, I hope candidates for local, state and national offices read and take something positive from this blog’s Best Interest Initiative.  Those nine blog post are deep.

https://projectlogicga.com/best-interests-initiative/

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Voter Suppression Weasels: On Both Sides

Posted in politics, tagged , , , , , , , , , on July 28, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Weasels are hard at work planning to win the November elections with voter apathy and non-voter confusion.  As we say in my neighborhood, “you didn’t have that to do.”  Nixon would have won anyway back in the day if he left well enough alone but dark forces on his side got some bright ideas and he didn’t stop them.

Romney is a good guy according to one of my best friends who worked with him in Salt Lake City but he should say more against the sinister strategies of diabolical nerds. We remember that John McCain took the microphone from that lady at his rally who said Obama was an Arab—she did even get the part of the  world right as she was being wrong.  The same John McCain recently stood up against conservative witch-hunters who are sullying the names of Huma Abedin (Hillary Clinton’s right hand) and other federal public servants because their family members might have known someone who knew someone decades ago.  Romney is silent on this Muslim related matter but my friend who worked with him has always been quickly to point out positive aspects Romney’s faith. 

If the witch-hunters logic is correct, I must confess that I broke bread at many a congressional receptions in the 90s with Senator Strom Thurmond and others who were segregationists in the 60s.  Clearly, these fine southerner gentlemen were once associated with Klansmen and Citizen Council members. 

Oh, I have finally discovered why I can get employment in the federal bureaucracy.  It’s because I talked about neckties with the senior senator from South Carolina back in the day and said hello once or twice a week to Rep G.V. Sonny Montgomery of Mississippi in the cafeteria at breakfast.  Montgomery, as in the Montgomery G.I. Bill, was avoiding the member’s dining room because it was fully of members and he was friendlier to lowly staffers that most of the Congressional Black Caucus was.    

I am not writing about voter suppression because one must be registered to be a voter and these weasel-like efforts are based on people not registering because the process takes a little enough and time.  Someone recently changed the driver’s license process in Georgia to require four or five forms of identification—weasels at work with voting in mind.  To combat a weasel or other pest, we must think like them.  These weasels are the same people who privately joke that if you want to hide something from “certain people” you put it in a book.  I am sure they are thinking that a more involved registration process will turn away millions (I can see those naughty nerds smirking and rubbing their hands together.)

The weasels know that the same young people who will stand in line to get in the club will not spend half that time to register and vote.  Look here, rich folks will be fine if Obama or Romney wins but regular people feel presidential and congressional decisions harder.  When I voted Friday in the primary election, a young poll worker looked over my shoulder the whole time.  I wanted to tell the brother that I was voting years before he was born  but he was well-intended.  My mind turned to the hip hop group Third Base and the line from their classic “Pop Goes the Weasel” that goes “I have got a strong mind.. it dosen’t have to be   spoon-fed…I can read, it doesn’t have to be read.”  These rap purists who dreamed about beating up M.C. Hammer and Vanilla Ice, who they saw as sellouts for commercializing rap.

Well, we shouldn’t beat-up the weasels who are playing games with the important right to vote because they can only do what weak people allow them to do.  The margin of victory for McCain over Obama in 2008 in many states could have been erased easily by young people.  So, the real weasels included those who acknowledge Obama’s effort yet won’t get their facebook friends to vote. 

Finally, registering to vote isn’t about Romney and Obama; voting is a long-term powerful action.  If the GOP will be running the South for the rest of our live, we should (at times) select a one of their candidates who is the better or best among their field.  As we can see from the witch hunters, we could do worse than Georgia’s two GOP senators and my new congressman (Austin Scott.)  I can’t help but believe that these three guys privately are telling the nutty elements on their team to cut it out and dial it down.

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Southern Politics and Faith: Covenants, Oaths, and Pledges

Posted in African Americans, Georgia, politics, tagged , , , , on April 21, 2010| Leave a Comment »

In elementary school, my classmates who attended the Kingdom Hall made me proud when they stood by their faith by not standing and pledging alliance to the flag.  I love the flag and the republic “for which it stands” but I also learned tolerance, diversity and understanding from watching and appreciating others.  At the Methodist church, we studied Moses and his brother Aaron, the goldsmith who fashioned the golden calf while Moses was away receiving the Ten Commandments.

“You shall not make for yourself an idol…”

“You shall not bow down to them or worship them for I the Lord your God am a jealous God.”

“Take care not to make covenant with the inhabitants of the land to which you are going.”

Covenants, oaths, and pledges have always created fuzzy areas.  In college, some students were uncomfortable bowing and pledging their loyalty to fraternal organizations in ceremonies that seems religious or sacrilegious because they were based on ancient cultures.  Others saw swearing membership as joining the most noble knights or groups that defended the Christian faith like the Crusaders and the Knights Templar who secured the holy relics—I watch too much History Channel.

Ray Boyd, a candidate for Georgia Governor, recently declined taking a short loyal oath to the Republican Party–Democrats don’t have a similar oath.  The discussion with my friends quickly turned to what is higher in a person’s commitment: God, family, state, nation, political party, race, gender, Georgia Bulldogs.  Don’t answer that. 

On matters of governance, GOP members puts party higher that the less-ridged Dems.  The Red Team is always leery of anyone who hasn’t taken a blood oath in the basement of their meeting hall or a purity test.  These tests are good news for the political middle because people push or prodded out are welcomed in the center and bring a fiscal fitness element to every discussion.    

In the South, one of the most famous personal allegiance battles was General Robert E. Lee decision to turndown the command of the Army of the Potomac and side with his beloved Virginia.  As a kid, I wondered how Black Vietnam vets must have felt when they returned to hometowns where their mothers could not drink from certain public water fountains and their kids could not swim in public pools.  “My country tis of thee…Sweet land of liberty.”  In my community, we favor the federal government over the state government for obvious historic reasons and angry talks of states’ right is naturally unsettling. 

How far does one take a political party oath?  If the members of the other party have valid legislative initiates, do you fight each and every provision for party sake or be fair for country sake? 

In Israel earlier this year, it was clear that their faith was priority one and the same could be said for members of their faith living around the world.  With Jewish history, that is understandable.  How do people in America reconcile the mandates of their faith with the broader views of our nation?  When followers of Islam attempt to create Muslim-based theocracy in the Middle East, we in the West get nervous but what happens when members of my faith attempt to do the same thing here.  Those founding fathers could have made life easier by declaring a national religion.

And if you join a new political party, there will be a 12 month waiting period to ensure that you are not a mole, plant or spy.  When I worked on Capitol Hill, we did not view Republicans as those who should be converted to our party.  We respected their points of view because they represented a segment of our state.  On the other hand, many on the Right govern by ignoring every other standpoint.  That’s not cool or healthy.

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Death and the Jacksons: Andrew, Stonewall and Mahalia

Posted in politics, tagged , , , on April 17, 2010| Leave a Comment »

A recent PBS documentary on President Andrew Jackson fascinated me.  Jackson was a strong president who shaped this youth nation.  We know his views on slavery and his actions toward Native Americans make my head drop.  Who knew that his final words on his deathbed were “Oh do not cry. Be good children, and we shall all meet in Heaven..I want to meet you all, White and Black, in Heaven.”

A slave who was at Jackson bedside asked another slave if she thought he made it into heaven.  The slave responded that she could not imagine them keeping him out.  I wonder what position or role Jackson thought Blacks would play in heaven.  My homeboys would joke that Jackson assumed Blacks would be there since servants would be needed.  There is a song from my childhood called “If Heaven ain’t A lot Like Dixie..Then I Don’t Want To Go.”  Hank Williams Jr. got me thinking but I better leave that alone.   

On his deathbed, General Stonewall Jackson’s last words were “Let us cross over the river, and rest under the shade of the trees.”  After the battles of this life, rest can be sweet relief. 

One more Jackson comes to mind, Mrs. Mahalia Jackson’s classic “Trouble of the World” from the film Imitation of Life.  Mrs. Jackson is the Queen of Gospel music but some people don’t know that she prompted Dr. Martin Luther King to end his March on Washington speech with parts of a speech she had heard him give in the past.  She said, “Tell them about the dream, Martin” and the rest is history.

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Have a Punitive Holiday

Posted in Georgia, politics, tagged , , , , on December 22, 2008| 1 Comment »

To the victor go the spoils…

No southerners in the new cabinet proves that President-Elect Obama is about putting the right people in the right position rather than filling quotas—which is what we want anyway, right. 

 

When you ask southern Republicans where they stand on “Black issues,” they loving saying that all issues are Black, White, Brown, Red, Yellow issues.  The same logic might hold true for regions—but a son or daughter of the South would have been sweet as a Georgia peach.  With that in mind, I could accept Team Obama’s selections better if the West and Midwest weren’t so heavily represented. 

 

Obama is a man of his word and he always said, “I might be skinny but I am tough…I came up in Chicago politics.”  In tough politics, you don’t saying untrue and insulting things about someone for years and expect them to do for you before doing for those who had your back. 

 

The word is punitive.

 

I think that Sanford Bishop would have been Ag Sec if the Sarah Palin Tour in support of Saxby for Senate during the runoff did not end the honeymoon in record time (I told you to vote for Saxby in the general).  It makes you think about Robert E. Lee being torn between Lincoln offering him the command of the Army of Northern Virginia and his love for departing Virginia—the rest is history. 

 

Obama’s nature won’t let him be ugly toward our region; he could get all of the cabinet from western Idaho if that would help solve what is the matter.

 

Let me pull out my crystal ball and predict the future: most of the rural southern local courthouses and municipal buildings with nice framed pictures of President Bush won’t request new presidential pictures after January.  And we wonder what’s up with the cold shoulder for the sunny South. 

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Bridge the Divide

Posted in Georgia, politics, tagged , , , , , , on December 6, 2008| 1 Comment »

talmadge-bridge

We created Project Logic Ga (P.L.Ga) during the 2008 election season as a blog for African Americans to discuss political and policy issues in an effort to foster political diversity for our community.

 

P.L.Ga evolved into a meeting place for anyone (regardless of race) to debate and interact on these matters.  In short, the topics were unique and new to people in Georgia and the South with an interest in hearing and learning what is on Black moderates’ minds. 

 

Government functions better when leaders and policymakers take the time of become familiar with the whole community—not just their “base”- because our system of government is design for all voices to be heard.  Americans are impressed with leaders who know all sides of the issues and recognize that every group has many sub-groups. 

 

Our focus has been pushing the fact that African-Americans in the South are more moderate and conservative than the nation might think.

 

P.L.Ga will spend the next year posting only one or two new post a week.  Our aim is gradually discussing federal, state and local matters so our readers will develop a deep knowledge and insight over time.  Also, the range of topics might seem unrelated to public policy at times but the goal is to address indirect and direct concerns and solutions.

 

We have a new administration in the White House; our nation is in a period of transition. An African-America President with mid-western roots will have plenty to say to every community about choices, decisions and consequences.  Contributors on this blog will analysis his actions with the same fair, constructive approach we have given previous presidents and congresses. 

 

The ultimate goal for reasonable Americans is a better America.  It is not the government’s role to fix every problem in everyone’s’ lives.  Good Americans always want the country to function soundly and those who hope for failure of any leaders so their party can make political gains are misguided. 

 

When the current President Bush was Governor of Texas, he operated with a consensus-building technique that should have been the model for his federal administration—I don’t know what happen.  Clearly, President-elect Obama is trying to “bridge the divide” and this blog will support him as we would have supported President McCain’s efforts to do the same.  Yes, some people have unrealistic anticipation and some campaign ideas won’t pan out but know this: this new young president is a respectful listener and the country wants more of that. 

 

Readers of this blog will gain a better understand of the southern African American community so future debates and dialog will be based on facts and reason rather than hastily conceived misinformation.   The core principles of conservatism are needed in every community on some level; the presentation and political techniques current employed my some could use improvement. 

 

If you want to function in the southern political arena which includes our community, reading this blog could be beneficial to your research efforts and growth—get prepared because talking nonsense makes our great region appear backwards and justifies economic opportunities going elsewhere.   “Moving the company or plant south would be sunny and affordable, but what we see on T.V. makes us question the traditional divisions there and the social livability.”

 

In the future, I will work on brevity—first New Year’s resolution. 

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