Observations On The Day: Idiocy Reigns Supreme
The decapitated head of a soldier statue which is part
of the Confederate Soldiers monument in downtown
Reidsville, North Carolina. (Nelson Kepley)
Americans are a doomed people for many reasons. One reason is that they are disunited and at one another’s throats and, thus, cannot stand up the tyranny issuing from Washington.
For example, the governments of Georgia, Alabama, and Florida, states that share borders, have been fighting for more than two decades over the water in Georgia’s Lake Lanier, located a few miles northeast of Atlanta. In 2009 a federal district judge ruled that it is illegal for water to be drawn from the lake to meet the needs of Atlanta’s three million residents. The judge stipulated that the three states had until July 2011 to reach an agreement, failing which Atlanta would be restricted to the amount of water it received in the mid-1970s, when its population was less than one-third of its present size.
Obviously, the ruling was a major incentive to Alabama and Florida not to compromise.
Either the judge gave no thought to this fact or he was unconcerned that three million Atlantans would find themselves in drought circumstances.
At the last moment on June 28, with two days to go before Atlanta was cut off from its water supply, a federal appeals court ruled that the district court judge’s decision was incorrect and gave the US Corps of Engineers one year to make a final decision concerning the allocation of Lake Lanier’s water to the three states.
The state of Alabama, displaying total callousness to its 3 million fellow American citizens in Atlanta, has announced that it is appealing the ruling, and Florida is "studying the ruling," no doubt looking for a way to get Atlanta’s share of the water.
Quite clearly, this is not a United States. Even the old Confederacy cannot stand together. For more than two decades the three states have not sat down to make a fair deal. Instead, they have been suing in federal courts, each seeking advantage.