GOP Bill Hurts Credit Scores
Thousands of low-income working class Georgians, already worried about losing their health insurance, now face lower credit scores.
The White House has tossed a Biden-era rule that removed medical debt from people’s credit reports. At the same time, cuts to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act in the “big, beautiful bill” will likely mean Georgians pay more for health care.
That means a single medical setback could crater a person’s credit score, if it leads to unpaid bills. Reinstating medical debt on credit reports is another example of how this administration and the Republican Party punishes the working class.
Carla Williams
Winder
A Threat to Our Republic
The phrase “threat to our democracy” has been a battle cry for so long that it has become as impactful as a morning greeting. It’s been relegated to a political slogan, a protest sign, a political identity marker. It’s become meaningless. So has the response, “America is a republic and not a democracy.”
America can’t be reduced to a one-word description. America is an intersectional phenomenon molded into existence by liberty, democracy and republic. Each element is a contributor to the U.S. Constitution, which guides, protects and codifies our nationality.
Is there an existential threat to America? What is being threatened: our liberty, our democracy, our republic or all three?
The Trump administration has engaged in some isolated incidents of curbing free speech and expression. Leveraging federal funds against antisemitism at American universities stands out.
This is certainly troubling, but it doesn’t rise to an existential threat to our liberty. Universities are free to, and have, fought back against the financial pressures.
Legacy and online media are operating without direct government interference, except for perhaps the Gulf of Mexico issue. The Associated Press’ access to the White House was restricted for referring to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, but they are fighting back. People are still lashing out at the government on social media. People are still protesting without interference. We have the right to fight for our liberty, and we’re doing just that.
There is no threat to democracy. We still vote. We still elect representation that is supposed to fairly govern the population. As long as we have the right to vote, the people have a voice in the determination of their destiny.
What’s in jeopardy is our republic—the structure and operational environment in which our democracy functions. We have a president who is taking the unitary executive theory to a dangerous place. He is issuing executive orders so fast the courts can’t keep up. With the whirl of these executive orders dangerously circumventing congressional authority, Congress is behaving as if they are too stunned to move. Lines are getting blurred among our separate branches of government, putting the system of checks and balances out of balance.
If our republic is failing to “secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity,” it may well be time for some serious changes and major adjustments. Perhaps there is no better time than now to heed the words of Thomas Jefferson, who said, “On similar ground it may be proved that no society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. The Earth belongs always to the living generation.”
Bert DeSimone
Bishop
Private Forests Deserve Public Support
I’ve spent my life around Georgia forestland. Though I worked full-time as a pharmacist for 14 years, I grew up in and around forestry and began managing timberland more directly four years ago. Forests don’t manage themselves. They survive because someone shows up, year after year, with care, investment and the freedom to make long-term decisions.
Private forests deliver huge public benefits: clean water, wildlife habitat, carbon storage and rural jobs. Yet landowners are being asked to provide all this without real support. Georgia taxes timber at 100% of market value, unlike every other real asset, which is taxed at 40%. A bill to fix Georgia’s timber severance tax, bringing us into parity with surrounding states, passed the House but stalled and ultimately failed in the Senate Finance Committee last session. Where’s the support for those keeping the land in forests?
Margins are shrinking. We earn less per ton today than in the 1980s, while facing rising regulation and certification costs. Non-native eucalyptus planted on former grasslands overseas can be certified “sustainable,” while native pine grown here often can’t access the same markets without costly certification. And most corporate “sustainability” boards don’t even include U.S. forest landowners as stakeholders.
Forest policy is backwards, and until we acknowledge this and work together, there will continue to be more friction between the environmental community and forest landowners. Stewardship shouldn’t be punished. If we want forests to endure, we need fair tax treatment, better market access, and practical incentives, not more red tape.
Drew Jones
Folkston
Trump Turns ICE Into an Army
Donald Trump and the Republican policy and tax law that just passed Congress includes a massive increase to $170 billion in funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
ICE has now launched a crash program to add up to 10,000 additional agents with recruitment on college campuses, job fairs and police organizations using images of Uncle Sam asking “patriots” to help remove “criminal illegal aliens.”
To apply, no college degree is necessary, no entrance exam is given, signing bonuses are offered and overtime is promised, with some current agents earning well over $100,000 per year plus pensions. Veterans and ex-cops bypass age limits and enter with accelerated procedures. Local police departments and jail staff are deputized in support, undergoing only four weeks of training when 22 weeks was the previous standard. Private contractors are lining up for more payouts.
All this at a time when the U.S. military continually fails to meet recruitment goals due to insufficient numbers of qualified applicants. Only about 25% of young Americans meet their standards, with the rest failing on physical, academic, mental health or moral grounds. In addition, only 13% of our nation’s police departments report they are fully staffed.
We have all seen images of ICE snatching people off the streets, often using cruel and violent tactics. Trump has said that ICE will “remove illegal criminal aliens,” but reports are that as many as 72% of the 56,000 (July 2025) now abducted have no criminal record.
Who among us is willing to aggressively pursue and jail often law-abiding immigrants at the rate of 3,000 per day as dictated by Stephen Miller, Trump’s enforcer? My guess is only Trump’s most ardent followers, a sampling of whom we saw in action on Jan. 6 as they stormed the Capital building.
Given Trump’s strongman assaults on the rule of law as he seeks “retribution” against everyone failing to demonstrate sufficient fealty, does anyone really believe that ICE will focus only on immigrants? Make no mistake, this new ICE funding is building Trump’s private army. It is no stretch to think it could one day be coming for all of us.
Rick Burt
Athens
Nonprofits Over For-Profits
Flagpole ran an article about affordable housing (City Dope, Aug. 20) that stated “getting private industry involved will be paramount” to solving the crisis in cost-manageable housing. But there are two inherent problems with public-private partnerships in this area.
First, if we’re paying private industry, some of what we’re paying goes to profits unavoidably. Second, private developments have “windows of affordability” that expire. Public nonprofit partnerships, on the other hand, can yield the same number of units at lower cost, and often with no expiration date on “affordability.”
As an example, let’s take the numbers from a public-private venture completed within the past three years in a mid-size city in Georgia, which yielded 40 moderately affordable rental units (targeted at renters earning less than 60% area median income) and another 40 deeply affordable units (aimed at renters earning less than 30% AMI). That deal comprised $11.3 million from the developer, $22.1 million in low-income housing tax credits and $54.3 million in state and local investment. But what if that $54.3 million had been granted to a nonprofit like Habitat for Humanity instead? What would we have gotten?
Well, first of all, those 40 “moderate affordability” renters could be put into owner-occupied homes for a total cost of $7 million, because while the private sector may demand $300,000 in supplements per home, a Habitat affiliate in this area can complete a 3-bedroom home for $175,000 and sell it with a no-interest mortgage. Even if we assume that construction cost per unit is the same for a nonprofit development as it is for this private development, that leaves enough funding to construct 64 permanently affordable apartment homes.
So for the same money, instead of 80 temporarily affordable rental units, we get 40 families in homes they own and 64 permanently cost-manageable apartments. But it doesn’t stop there. Those 40 mortgages and 64 leases would be paid into the Habitat affiliate’s general fund, which is used to build more housing. There is no such future payback for private ventures.
Certainly, private industry has a role in solving the housing crisis. But looking primarily to public-private partnerships may not be the best approach. If what we’re focused on is maximizing the return on investment—i.e., not paying for profits, not capping the period of
affordability, leveraging discounts and auto-generating future funding for housing—Habitat for Humanity has a proven strategy that’s been working worldwide for half a century, and for over 35 years right here in Athens.
If a slick PowerPoint presentation is what you want, private industry is definitely the way to go. But if putting more people into homes they can afford for the rest of their lives is what we’re after, nonprofits are the resource we should be looking to tap.
Charles Smith
Vice president of operations, Athens Area Habitat for Humanity
Is Seeing Believing?
We all know the old saying “seeing is believing,” that the evidence of our eyes and ears is the best guide to reality. But do we follow it?
More than 300 lawsuits against the Trump administration have resulted in nearly 200 orders finding its actions to be illegal.
President Trump sent thousands of troops into our cities alleging a non-existent crime emergency. Reports show troops picking up trash in parks. Meanwhile, the Trump administration fired experienced FBI and Department of Justice leaders and replaced them with Trump loyalists.
Trump administration cabinet level officials share one credential: blind loyalty to President Trump. Bobby Kennedy, with no relevant expertise or education, is issuing orders contrary to scientifically based best practices. The result: extreme risk to every aspect of our health, safety and well-being.
President Trump cancelled efforts to counter unprecedented carbon-emission driven fires, floods and heat waves and transition to cheaper, safer renewable energy. He is gutting federal emergency response capabilities, to boot.
President Trump and his supporters in Congress took trillions from providing vital health care and nutrition for millions of Americans and gave trillions in tax benefits to the wealthiest Americans, thereby increasing the national debt by trillions of dollars.
Do Americans understand the irresponsible and dangerous actions of President Trump and of those who support them, like Congressman Mike Collins? Do Georgians and our fellow Americans believe the evidence of their own eyes? Is “seeing believing?” President Trump is counting on all of us being blind and failing to do so.
Bruce Menke
Athens
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