Mr. Smith goes to this week’s Calhoun City Council meeting

The Issue is still alive: I write today with decisions already made concerning the issue of changing the structure of services provided to the citizens of Calhoun.

Even though the issue is one for the City of Calhoun, it reaches out to nearly everyone in the area. It is the feeling here the issue of changing the structure of the departments providing services to the citizens of Calhoun should never have become an issue.

Because of the multiplicity of areas touching on the subject about which we are concerned, the format of this column will be changed and each item numbered. This will provide for easy reference, easier reading and comprehension.

No. 1: Before further remarks are offered, may we be reminded that the question of what person or persons brought the issue of a change in the structure, in aspects of our city government, has not been answered. A couple of weeks ago this column asked, “The question at the forefront is which Power Broker thought of this great idea? The proposition did not just appear on the table in front of the council and say ‘Here pass me’.” Some one person had to come up with the idea. Will that person go public and say, “I am the one. It was me (I) who was inspired to introduce this change.” Surely someone will answer that and explain how and why they came up with the idea. The idea did not just drop out of the sky.

No. 2: At the Calhoun City Council meeting this past Monday (Dec. 12), citizens interested in the issue filled the meeting room at the Depot. Those in attendance heard from both elected officials and spokesmen from the business area and from the community. I borrow an expression of one of the councilmen, from a previous meeting, as he stated, “We do have intelligence…,” a fact no one has denied. I, along with most attendants, consider ourselves to have intelligence (I hope we all recognize there are varying levels of intelligence and I might be far down the line in this area). Still, I listened to positions stated and I said, let me ask, have the elected officials been listening to the voice of the majority (and I emphasize the word “majority’) of the general public?

If the majority of people are in favor of the current system, it does not seem to forebode well in coming elections for those promoting the change of the structure. With that statement made it seems fitting that we move to a most impressive aspect of the meeting.

No. 4: Former Councilmember George Crowley spoke to the audience in a most eloquent manner and presented suggestions of great wisdom, which were ignored.

Mr. Crowley acknowledged the two options of action concerning the bill being discussed and suggested he was going to offer a third option. Mr. Crowley suggested that rather than make a choice immediately, that public forums be scheduled and allow citizens to gather and present questions and to offer their opinions and feelings about the matter. One had to be impressed by Mr. Crowley’s presentation. It was without expressed preference of either options; it was an appeal to hear and learn the will of the people for which the officials were elected to serve.

No. 5: An important area of intellectual dishonesty is the charges uttered that reporting by the Calhoun Times was erroneous or biased. I understand these charges are a frequent occurrence in the social media area. Asked for, but not presented, has been for those making such charges to present them. None have been forthcoming. If a statement of erroneous reporting cannot be produced, don’t make the accusation.

I will close by pointing out that Brandi Owczarz, managing editor at the Times, has labored long and painstaking hours to record and print for the reading public the exact words of the City Council meetings or interviews with specific parties. Verbatim is the word I want to use to commend Brandi’s reporting of the views and words spoken over the months.

Please: send to me the erroneous reporting. By Jay Ambrose, Tribune News Service

The presidential election has come and gone except in the hearts of a forlorn, desperate, leftist crew intent on tearing our democracy apart and instigating a maelstrom of division unseen in modern times.

Their greatest hope is to deny Donald Trump access to the White House, but, short of that, to delegitimize the election, to say it was a fraud, a travesty, that uneducated, morally challenged moron voters did this thing but actually lost.

Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, the dismayed repeatedly affirm, as if they do not quite get how the Constitution rightly works and forgetting that Trump captured most of the heartland. What’s the goal — to squeeze the East and West coasts together as a kind of peninsula of power, essentially disenfranchising those who reside in between?

These hopefuls hardly stop there. What really defeated Clinton, they say, was racism, homophobia, Islamaphobia, xenophobia, anti- Semitism, rigged voting procedures, FBI director James Comey, fake news, Fox News, voting machines gone awry and Russians. This last item is the headline of the day. Our intelligence agencies have said Russians hacked emails of the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee with the intent of electing Trump.

In that case, some reply, the Electoral College should deny him the presidency when it votes on Dec. 19. Clinton is party to this. John Podesta, her campaign chairman, has said the intelligence agencies should give the electors an evidential briefing, not so surreptitiously hoping something major comes of it.

Most onlookers say such an unprecedented turnaround would never happen. It does not require a minute’s worth of alertness to see as well that the result could be a fiery combustion keeping the country in self-destructive turmoil for heaven knows how long. The Russians would be tickled to death, of course, and the question isn’t just whether it might happen, but why any half-sane patriot would want it to happen.

First off, we do not yet have the evidence, just a pronouncement. There’s no need for congressional hearings as now contemplated. Just give the data to us, taking care, of course, not to divulge any investigative secrets of our own. For the Electoral College to make a decision on information not shared with everyone else would instigate suspicions.

The Russians almost surely did it, but understand that our intelligence agencies have been mistaken before and that it is no more disrespectful of our government to await the facts and interpretations than it is for the left to have at the FBI for its handling of the Clinton email scandal. It might not hurt at the same time to note that Russia and China have been hacking away at us for years without the Obama administration doing enough to stop it.

Russia actually once had access to President Barack Obama’s unclassified emails, and China obtained personal information on something like 20 million federal employees. Both nations have swiped our intellectual property and billions of dollars worth of trade secrets. The administration has spent billions on cybersecurity without security emerging. It has also established a policy of sanctions that do very little. When something goes amiss, Obama generally says watch that stuff and not much more.

None of us can want Russia playing games with our elections. One consequence of its information gathering, if Clinton had been elected, is that it might have had the means of blackmail. That is possible with Trump, too. But keep in mind that mainstream media did as much to distribute the material as WikiLeaks and that the vast majority of what has been disclosed appears absolutely on target. How much of a factor was it in the election? It is anyone’s guess, but a tiny speck, I would wager, compared to reports on the increasing costs of Obamacare.

The effort now should be a principled effort to forge a good future and deter the Russians, Chinese and others from digital skullduggery.