Cazual Conversation

If Florida is any example, Georgia residents are a little safer today after implemenation of a new law that allows them, like Floridians, to carry a concealed firearm if they obtain a license.

Georgia’s law is much like Florida’s, in that a license is issued to qualifying residents who apply, pass certain safety tests, and pay a nominal fee for the right to better protect themselves.

And, just as imporant, the law is written with the presumption that you qualify for it unless you prove otherwise.

They are dissenters, of course, who point to anything and everything to paint Georgia as one hair-trigger away from anarchy now.

The one thing they don’t point to, of course, is the factual experience of other states that have such laws, like Florida.

Florida made the move some 20 years ago to the same cascade of naysayers. What happened? Well, the murder rate dropped.

Crimes committed against residents dropped markedly. You don’t read about Wild West conditions brought on by the legal carriers of firearms.

The state has issued 1,346,000 permits in 20 years, and has revoked only 165 for a “crime after licensure involving a firearm,” according to Wikipedia. Less than 4,200 permits were revoked for any reason.

There’s more. During the first 15 years that the Florida law was in effect, there were more alligator attacks here than crimes committed licensed gun holders.

And many of those “crimes,” Wikipedia says, involved people accidentally carrying firearms into restricted areas, like airports.

Welcome to the club, Georgians.

Let’s start by saying this is not a slam at the Florida Freshwater Fish Commission.

I know, that line alone makes you assume that everything to follow is negative. It’s not.

Astute eyes, however, surely bulged when they noticed the “Hard times on the water” headline just a bit to the left of a story titled, “FWC OKs new rule on gear.”

The stories are not related, and the placement was not intentional. It is telling.

One story talked about the woes of charter fishermen trying to make a living off taking locals and tourists deep-sea fishing as fuel prices - most of the vessels run on diesel - spiral out of control like Pacman Jones at an open bar.

They are not doing well.

Meanwhile, the FWC (and you can subsitute any branch of government there) unleashes another regulation on fishers of the sea. Now this particular regulation, mandating tags on “passive fishing gear” like crab traps, isn’t particularly intrusive and has sound reasoning.

The traps get abandoned and clog/pollute waterways and no one knows who put them there.

It simply brought to my mind the growing conundrum we seem to face as a nation: As it grows more and more difficult to simply survive and pay the bills, government increasingly makes it more difficult with new laws, fees, taxes and fines.

One day, at this rate, there will be fishers to fine, no drivers to ticket, no capital gains to steal, and no more money for our government to sustain itself.

The thing is, that doesn’t sound too bad right now.

Donna Allen won’t be explaining herself to The News Herald any longer.

Allen, after Wednesday’s School Board meeting, told The News Herald’s Donna Vavala she is no longer speaking to the paper because she believes I have a personal vendetta against her.

It’s a shame, really, because we’d like to hear what she thinks about the latest paper magic Superintendent James McCalister has come up with to deal with the District’s budget woes.

To his credit, at the request of school board members, McCalister may have found a way to avoid closing A.D. Harris and Milliville Elementary.

Unfortunately, it involves paper and money shuffling rather than any real cuts or streamlining, which ought to begin with the District’s bloated administrative staff.

McCalister may have found a way out in new legislation that allows counties to use discretionary millage money in ways that were not intended when District’s were given the authority to levy the tax.

It was to be used for capital outlay, but now the Legislature has offered that if you can show your capital outlay needs are met for the next five years, you can petition the state to move money from there to other areas.

Yes, we’d love to hear why using tax money for unintended purposes is a better solution than rationally trimming the budget.

Better yet, we can’t wait to hear the part about how our capital outlay needs are met for the next five years. If that’s the case, why is that discretionary millage even in place?

Finally, the day that centers around us has arrived.

Usually relegated to wandering around the woods searching for deer, or to the couch to watch sports, we finally get the attention we deserve.

Father’s Day.

The boy is 4 now. If you tell him that, he’ll correct you. “I’m 4 AND A HALF!” Five is waiting around the corner, ready to snatch this special year away.

It’s hard to imagine how it could get better, but I’m told it will. I thought 3 was the best age, until he hit 4. I thought the same when he was 2 going on 3.

I harbor no such thoughts about the first year.

He’s active now, and we’re doing the things dads cherish. The trip to Disney World this year was the best yet, as he absorbed things he couldn’t comprehend the year before, like how to wait in line without whining.

He sat in a deer stand this year, quiet as a mouse for about an hour and a half while we read, drew, colored and looked for deer. There was no intention to harvest that day, at his age, but he didn’t know that and it was exciting.

I saw one deer, the boy saw dozens. Every shadow, every dip of a branch, every bark of a squirrel produced a deer alert as he brought up his blue binoculars and “spotted” deer I was too grown up to see.

He sat in my lap this year and “drove” the old blue truck inside the confines of the hunting property. His “driving” consisted of turning the steering wheel while we puttered along in first gear, my hands on the bottom of the wheel without his knowledge.

He makes more trips to the woods with me and the dog now, and is learning how to control and command our chocolate lab. He runs through the creeks and into the gulf with equal bravado.

He sleeps in his first real “big-boy” bed, a bunkbed with a firetruck frame and cover, complete with ladder. That’s all  he asked Santa for, a big-boy bed and a ladder.

He completed his first year of real school, pre-k 3. He suffered through several episodes of strep, and at times prefers some alone time to work on a puzzle or examine an ant mound.

He prefers eating at home to eating out, which makes me feel good.

He told me last week that he doesn’t want to be a daddy, he’d rather be a pirate when he grows up.

He thinks his daddy is stronger than anyone outside of God, Batman, Superman, Spiderman and Power Rangers.

Father’s Day isn’t automatically any more special than any other Sunday, really. But if, when I roll out of bed that day, I slow down and give thanks for what I’ve been given, odds are a special day will be in the making.

 March 25, The News Herald, S. Brady Calhoun

As nasty fires go, fighting a blaze in solid waste at an incinerator comes in second, just behind a landfill fire, said Mark Bowen, Bay County’s emergency operations chief, on Tuesday.

“It’s certainly not pleasant,” he added.

Bay County firefighters spent most of Tuesday putting out a blaze at the county’s incinerator off U.S. 231 and making sure a new one did not erupt. The blaze was first noticed at about 2 a.m.

More than 30 firefighters responded to the scene and got the blaze under control in about an hour. However, mountains of trash in the tipping room made it difficult for firefighters to get at the source, local officials said.

Workers used heavy equipment to move the trash under spray from fire hoses.

“That process is just a lengthy one,” Bowen said.

Fire crews still were moving the waste and watering it down Tuesday evening.

Until that work is done, incinerator officials will not know the extent of the damage to the structure that houses mountains of garbage, said Joe Tannehill Jr., the owner of Engen LLC, the company that runs the incinerator.

“We need to check that and we will do that after it is safe to go inside,” Tannehill said. However, that building, known as the tipping room, was in rough shape before Tuesday’s fire.

“It’s a dirty building. It’s not in great condition - the roof is in bad shape, the siding is in bad shape - just from 21 years of use,” Tannehill said.

He added Tuesday’s fire was a classic case of “spontaneous combustion.”

“Basically, this garbage is organic in nature. It decays over time. It can chemically change and produce a condition that can unite with oxygen,” Tannehill said. “Fire happens frequently in the refuse area where garbage is stored.”

Bowen said he had “no earthly idea” what started the fire and doubted anyone would ever definitively know.

“It could have been any number of sources,” Bowen said. “We have experienced fires in the back of garbage trucks that started with a cigarette butt smoldering for several days.”

Mountains of trash filled up the tipping room because the incinerator has been down for maintenance, Bowen said.

“It’s hard to look through that and find any clues,” Bowen said, adding that fires have broken out in the past when the incinerator was down.

“They continue to collect municipal solid waste and there is more in there than normal,” Bowen said.

Tannehill said incinerator workers followed their normal procedures before the fire broke out. When the fire is over, incinerator officials will “go through this whole event” looking for mistakes or ongoing problems that could have contributed to the blaze.

Officials will “make sure we are using the best practices possible,” Tannehill said.

If a publisher guaranteed Donna Allen $100,000 for her first book, no matter the length, it would be as follows:

“Book of things for which School Board Chairwoman Donna Allen apologizes”

Chapter 1: I’m not sorry

The End

She’d pocket the money and be on her way.

 And, really, that’s all you can say about that.

 We do know about the things for which she won’t apologize, like the hugely inappropriate move of renting-to-own a Bay Point home from the contractor for whom she helped secure millions of dollars in District business without making any disclosure.

Heck, to apologize, she’d have to recognize that what she did was in poor judgment, and to that all she could come up with is, “It never entered my mind,” and, “how dare” anyone question it.

Now, as another School Board 3-2 vote - this one to borrow $50 million last year to build two new schools despite a flagging economy - implodes around Allen, she has this to say of the decision:
“I’m not sorry that those students are not going to be in portables. I’m not sorry that we did the best thing for students out there at that beach. I”m not sorry. I’d do it again.”
It begs the question, just what exactly has she done in her political life for which she is sorry?

It would be like asking me, “Are you sorry about anything you’ve ever written about Donna Allen, even the part where you mistakenly said her home had a pool?” 

And getting a response of, “I’m not sorry that Donna Allen lives in a house most of us could never afford and only pays $1,600 a month rent. I’m not sorry that she’s not living in a cardboard box. I’m not sorry I made my point the best way I could but the Google map was wrong. I’m not sorry. I’d do it again.”

The fact is, I was sorry I wrote she had a pool, and I said as much in a follow-up column.

Answering your critics can defrock them if the criticisms are off-base. Not answering them gives them credibility.

It is a bold politician who dons the crown of arrogance in these economic times, and while that might not be Allen’s intent, it is the perception.

The boy has come of age.

As we rumbled/navigated U.S. (Business) 98 this morning in the weekend-redneck Mazda pick’emup truck, he uttered the words that only those native to the area learn so young.

“I smell the paper mill, daddy,” he said.

“Smells like money to me, son,” I replied.

“Nuh, uh, it stinks,” he corrected.

He’ll learn.