Trouble Here in Paradise…

Opinion

Opinion by George McClellan:Gilmer County, Georgia is a beautiful natural treasure sitting as it does in the foothills of the Southern Appalachian mountains. People who come here want to stay here. But, what is here to keep our young people? Gilmer is a recreational and an agricultural county focusing on apples, poultry and hay for beasts and it has a small mining and timber industry. The only new agricultural startups I have seen here in the past sixteen years is Cartecay Winery and a new one on Round Top Road. Other acres have since been planted in grapes for wine making, but not enough jobs are created there to employ our youths so that they would want to remain here.

Gilmer County apparently is bereft of any plan for economic sustainment, industrial encouragement or independent living through good employment. What values are we leaving our youngsters when time comes for them to graduate and enter the work force? The biggest asset Gilmer County can boast, apart from its beauty, is its high level of volunteerism, but mostly by retired folks. Their is no tax base in volunteerism!

Gilmer’s plight is summed up in a report by the Georgia’s Region 1, Department of Commercial Development that classifies Gilmer as a “distressed county”. Why should that be? Economic development committee’s have been created and have done nothing. When ever an idea or a plan has been advanced, its been ignored, defeated or killed by apathy or pettiness. Where are the ball fields promised five years ago? Why does our river still look like a backwater junk yard? Why can’t we act like San Antonio, Texas? Blue Ridge has a Railroad. We have a river. Why isn’t it developed? Why is the county in the golf business instead of the tax creating business?

We all (conservative, constitutional believing Republicans) delight in the belief that Gilmer County, Ga. stands as a bastion of conservative thought and a stronghold of Republican leadership within the third strongest conservative congressional district in the nation, Georgia’s 9th, at least at the grass roots level. Under present circumstances I can see a demographic change coming sooner rather than later. When ever I attend a political event designed to sustain those conservative principles, 90% of attendees are seniors and we discuss the same things, but see little action and less results from our elected officials who tell us they are conservatives but somehow don’t show it.

Yes, we do have young adult members who understand the politics of what’s happening to America under Obama’s Progressivism but there are not enough of them to stem the tide that will soon destroy us. What do our children have to look forward to? At what point do we wonder just what will our children think, how and why? Obama is giving them easy choices: food stamps, free phones, welfare, abortions on demand, gay marriage, multiculturalism, one size fits all, the unaffordable no care act, just about everything needed to economically enslave them and turn them into, gasp, democrats. They are being taught everything except work skills, critical thinking, or an understanding of what made America exceptional. It’s long past time to do some massive house cleaning of our pretend conservative politicians. We need some new blood up there. Remember freedom is the goal, the Constitution is the way. Now, go get ‘em! (5 April 2014)

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