This is Viewpoints for Thursday, June 16, 2016

Here all year

It’s difficult to understand local media. They will give free air time to professional athletes, entertainers and other nationally known personalities who come to the community once a year and do camps. They don’t need publicity or funds, which is what small organizations always need and is hard to get when many in the communities don’t know all the things small organizations are doing. Many smaller organizations put on events the entire year mostly for our youth, struggling for funds. Most media outlets won’t give them three minutes of air time.

It’s commendable what big-name personalities do once a year — but they should. To whom much is given much is required. But if you give them free air time, why can’t you give three minutes to smaller organizations? After all, we support the communities all the time. So does a once-a-year event have more impact on our youth when compared with events being put on all year?

Freedom at what cost?

America is a great place to live and call home. Many have flocked to the shores of this country to participate in our way of life, assimilate into our culture and customs and embrace the ideas embedded in the concept of freedom. We are a nation of law and order, a nation that thrives off the perception of liberty and freedom. However, the chief law enforcement agents of the nation, the FBI, had the recent mass murderer in Orlando, Florida, on their radar/watch list, but apparently did nothing to curtail his ability to acquire a weapon and to be licensed as a security guard.

What went wrong in the so called vetting process? We are at war right here in the USA, whether we acknowledge it or not. We are sitting ducks, highly susceptible to indefensible attacks. If any man or woman, for whatever reason, winds up on the FBI radar, special security protocols should be put into place to prevent the reccurrence of another senseless mass murder. Is this a fair, tolerable cost of freedom?

Change of heart

Wow! State Sen. Renee Unterman, R-Ga., who is chair of the state’s health committee, and who almost single-handedly ended any hope for Medicaid expansion in our state in the recent past, may have changed her mind.

She was quoted this week by the Associated Press saying: “Times have changed, and we’ve seen the effect of the state’s health crisis.” She is now looking for sustainability and is wondering, “how long can we keep giving state dollars away?”

Sen. Unterman is concerned about many rural hospitals shutting down or cutting services. Last year 1.5 million residents of our state didn’t have health insurance, including 600,000 who don’t qualify for federal insurance subsidies through Obamacare.

Gov. Deal recently stated that he is open to the expansion of Medicaid and “talk about and look at something the state could do.” Miracles might happen.

Rep. Austin Scott, R-Ga., doesn’t believe in government-run health care. He believes any rural hospital closures and reductions of services are caused by the health insurance companies raising their deductibles on policies, not by much greater use of emergency rooms by our uninsured who don’t pay for their use.

Hire the right people

The Constitution establishes the relationships among the three branches of government. The Constitution of the United States of America was not written to tell you what to do. It tells the government what it may and what it cannot do. That is the Constitution’s entire purpose. The government may not restrict your speech. The government may not tell you how to pray. The government may not do a lot of the things that it is somehow doing and getting away with. The government is a lot better at taking things away than it is at giving stuff back to us. But most of all, the government does not empower you. You empower the government.

Ours is a government of the people. We are not people of the government. When we vote on various candidates for government positions — on any level — we will not be electing masters. We will be choosing employees, servants of our will, guardians of our rights. Those employees do not tell us what to do. We tell them what to do. They work for us. It is not those employees’ job to take our money and give it back or give it to others. It is their job to take what money they must have to protect and serve us and to do that job as simply and efficiently as possible.

Government service may be an important duty and a great responsibility, but it is not supposed to be a get-rich scheme for the few and their friends, while becoming a political blessing for those who serve. It is our government servants who are supposed to sacrifice for us, not you and me who are made to sacrifice for them. We hire them to do the things that we cannot easily do for ourselves, to protect us. Our government servants should not ask for much more than our respect because they know that government service is important, because they are supposed to care about us — not themselves or their political friends and contributors. They are us. But you and I know that not all government employees are like that, and it’s not their fault. It’s our fault. If we do not demand the best, we will not get the best. If we do not give the right measure of power to the right kind of people, then the wrong people will take more power than they need and will use it any way they want.

Many of you operate your own businesses and you hire people to work for you. Even more of you own your own homes and sometimes you hire plumbers, electricians and carpenters to work for you. You try to hire the right people for the work because you pay for that work and you want it done right. When your child is sick you try to pick the best physician. You pay attention to what that doctor does and how well he or she does it. Why? Because there is nothing more important to you than the life of your child.

America is also your child. America is a country forever young. America needs the right people to look after her. It is our job to pick the right people, regardless of party, or race, or gender or anything other than talent, experience and integrity. I cannot and I will not tell you which candidate merits your vote. God gave you free will. If we fail to exercise our will intelligently, then we have betrayed ourselves and our country.

This story was originally published June 15, 2016 at 9:00 PM with the headline "This is Viewpoints for Thursday, June 16, 2016."