\nBarely a month ago, you might recall, Gov. Nathan Deal welcomed the
\nTV cameras into his office as he proudly signed HB 87 into law. Two
\nweeks later, with farmers howling, a scrambling Deal ordered a hasty
\ninvestigation into the impact of the law he had just signed, as if all
\nthis had come as quite a surprise to him.<\/p>\n
\nThe results of that investigation have now been released. According to
\nsurvey of 230 Georgia farmers conducted by Agriculture Commissioner Gary
\nBlack, farmers expect to need more than 11,000 workers at some point
\nover the rest of the season, a number that probably underestimates the
\nreal need, since not every farmer in the state responded to the survey.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nThe pain this is causing is real. People are going to lose their crops,
\nand in some cases their farms. The small-town businesses that supply
\nthose farms with goods and services are going to suffer as well. For
\neconomically embattled rural Georgia, this could be a major blow.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Maybe people in south Georgia should demand the state repeal HB 87.<\/p>\n
\nWe don’t need a private prison in Lowndes County, Georgia, to profit
\nCCA at the expense of south Georgia farmers and taxpayers.
\nSpend that tax money on rehabilitation and education instead.<\/p>\n
\n-jsq<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Who could have forseen this? Well, other than anyone who actually knows Georgia farmers. And the VDT becomes thought leader to the world: “Maybe this should have been prepared for, with farmers’ input. Maybe the state should have discussed the ramifications with those directly affected. Maybe the immigration issue is not as easy as &lquo;send […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[97,202,1113,48,40,72,1292,21,22,133,178],"tags":[8750,1011,4093,8701,2002,8830,8730,8710,7,46,929,215,6,8742],"class_list":["post-1846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-agriculture","category-cca","category-code-enforcement","category-community","category-incarceration","category-indigenous","category-planning","category-politics","category-vdt","category-vlcia","tag-agriculture","tag-ajc","tag-farm","tag-georgia","tag-hb-87","tag-immigration","tag-incarceration","tag-law","tag-lowndes-county","tag-nathan-deal","tag-republicans","tag-south-georgia","tag-valdosta","tag-vdt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1846"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1846\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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