The Trustees of the Georgia colony learned on April 17, 1737 that Spain had 4000 soliders and two warships in Havana, Cuba and was planning on invading Georgia or South Carolina. Thus began the rivalry between then-Spanish occupied Florida and Georgia. Floridians would have to wait until after the 1873 invention of blue jeans by Levi Strauss to develop their modern uniform of jean shorts.
On April 18, 1775, Paul Revere and William Dawes mounted up on horseback to warn of British troops on their way to confiscate American arms and to warn patriots Samuel Adams and John Hancock, who the British sought to capture.
By 1775, tensions between the American colonies and the British government had approached the breaking point, especially in Massachusetts, where Patriot leaders formed a shadow revolutionary government and trained militias to prepare for armed conflict with the British troops occupying Boston. In the spring of 1775, General Thomas Gage, the British governor of Massachusetts, received instructions from Great Britain to seize all stores of weapons and gunpowder accessible to the American insurgents. On April 18, he ordered British troops to march against Concord and Lexington.
The Boston Patriots had been preparing for such a British military action for some time, and, upon learning of the British plan, Revere and Dawes set off across the Massachusetts countryside. They took separate routes in case one of them was captured….
About 5 a.m. on April 19, 700 British troops under Major John Pitcairn arrived at the town to find a 77-man-strong colonial militia under Captain John Parker waiting for them on Lexington’s common green. Pitcairn ordered the outnumbered Patriots to disperse, and after a moment’s hesitation, the Americans began to drift off the green. Suddenly, the “shot heard around the world” was fired from an undetermined gun, and a cloud of musket smoke soon covered the green. When the brief Battle of Lexington ended, eight Americans lay dead and 10 others were wounded; only one British soldier was injured. The American Revolution had begun.
On April 19, 1775, British troops entered Lexington, Massachusetts, encountering 77 armed Minute Men.
British Major John Pitcairn ordered the outnumbered Patriots to disperse, and after a moment’s hesitation the Americans began to drift off the green. Suddenly, the “shot heard around the world” was fired from an undetermined gun, and a cloud of musket smoke soon covered the green. When the brief Battle of Lexington ended, eight Americans lay dead or dying and 10 others were wounded. Only one British soldier was injured, but the American Revolution had begun.
Two hours later, another confrontation between the British and American patriots took place in Concord, Massachusetts.
On April 19, 1861, President Abraham Lincoln ordered the blockade of ports in “Rebellious States.”
Whereas an insurrection against the Government of the United States has broken out in the States of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, and the laws of the United States for the collection of the revenue can not be effectually executed therein conformably to that provision of the Constitution which requires duties to be uniform throughout the United States; and
….
Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, with a view to the same purposes before mentioned and to the protection of the public peace and the lives and property of quiet and orderly citizens pursuing their lawful occupations until Congress shall have assembled and deliberated on the said unlawful proceedings or until the same shall have ceased, have further deemed it advisable to set on foot a blockade of the ports within the States aforesaid, in pursuance of the laws of the United States and of the law of nations in such case provided. For this purpose a competent force will be posted so as to prevent entrance and exit of vessels from the ports aforesaid.
Union forces skirmished against The Worrill Grays, a Georgia Reserve Militia, at the Battle of Culloden, 30 miles west of Macon on a date generally believed to have been April 19, 1865, though it may have occurred later.
On April 17, 1944, a fifteen-year old Martin Luther King, Jr., a junior at Booker T. Washington High School in Atlanta, traveled to Dublin, Georgia to give a speech in a contest sponsored by the local black Elks club. During the bus ride to Dublin, King and his teacher had to give up their seats to white riders and stand for much of the ride. King won the contest, delivering his oration, “The Negro and the Constitution.”
On April 17, 1950, the United States Supreme Court dismissed South v. Peters, a complaint against Georgia’s County Unit System of elections.
Each county is allotted a number of unit votes, ranging from six for the eight most populous counties, to two for most of the counties. The candidate who receives the highest popular vote in the county is awarded the appropriate number of unit votes. Appellants, residents of the most populous county in the State, contend that their votes and those of all other voters in that county have on the average but one-tenth the weight of those in the other counties. Urging that this amounts to an unconstitutional discrimination against them, appellants brought this suit to restrain adherence to the statute in the forthcoming Democratic Party primary for United States Senator, Governor and other state offices. The court below dismissed appellants’ petition. We affirm.
On April 17, 1964, the Ford Mustang debuted at the World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows, New York. The world has been a better, if somewhat louder, place ever since.
Also present at the 1964 World’s Fair was the Coca-Cola Pavilion, which included a 610-bell electric carillon that would later be installed at Stone Mountain Park in Georgia, where it can be heard most days.
The honeybee was recognized as the official state insect of Georgia on April 18, 1975.
On April 19, 1995, Governor Zell Miller signed legislation declaring the peanut the Official State Crop.
On April 18, 2006, Governor Sonny Perdue signed legislation establishing February 6 of each year as “Ronald Reagan Day” in Georgia and celebrating the date of President Reagan’s birth.
The Georgia Historical Society is collecting first-hand accounts of life under Covid 19, according to the Rome News Tribune.
The Georgia Historical Society is creating a collection of primary sources from across Georgia relating to COVID-19 and the resulting pandemic of 2020.
“Primary sources from earlier crises, like the 1918 flu pandemic, are invaluable tools and resources that help historians, scholars, and individuals understand how our nation met the challenges like those we are facing now,” said W. Todd Groce, the society’s president and CEO.
“We want to preserve the stories of how our lives were disrupted and transformed by both the virus and the economic fallout and we’re asking for your help as we chronicle and collect Georgia’s experience,” he said.
Contributions can be submitted using an online form at https://georgiahistory.com/covid-19-in-georgia-collecting-the-stories-of-georgians-during-the-pandemic-of-2020.
“Think of how your life has changed and how you and your family have adapted,” said Communications Director Pattye Meagher. “If you are documenting life during the current pandemic through photographs, written records, audio recordings, videos, or other records, we would like for you to share it with us.”
Poems, journals, witness accounts of acts of kindness and heroism in a community, experiences of medical professionals and business owners — all are of potential interest to future generations, Meagher said.
“The list is endless, but in sharing these stories of struggle, triumph, and creativity you will help GHS to fulfill our mission and become a part of the recorded history of this pandemic,” she said.
The COVID-19 Collection will be a permanent collection and made available to researchers. Some items may be used now and in the future for online exhibits and social media campaigns.
Georgia Politics, Campaigns, and Elections
Governor Brian Kemp said yesterday that reopening Georgia will depend on progress against Covid 19, according to WSB-TV.
Kemp, who took part in President Donald Trump’s conference call Thursday with all governors from around the country, said the bottom line is it remains unclear when the state could start reopening.
“I do believe there are ways we can start easing back into the economy,” Kemp said. “I think we just have to be smart about how we do that. Whether I extend the order, we have a new order or it completely goes away.”
During the conference call, the president told Kemp and other governors from around the country he would let them “call their own shots” on when to reopen their states.
“The thing we have in Georgia is that our so-called peak when it gets here keeps moving further away,” Kemp said.
Aides to the governor acknowledged Thursday that Kemp has consulted with Georgia business and political leaders about how soon he should ease restrictions that have devastated the state’s economy while attempting to curb the virus’ spread.
These discussions are in their early stages, the aides said. But they reflect Kemp’s eagerness to move past a public health crisis that has, so far, left hundreds of Georgians dead and thousands more sickened.
In a statement released by his office late Thursday, Kemp said Georgia will follow federal guidelines and collaborate with health and emergency management officials to “develop a plan for safely returning to more routine operations.”
“In the coming days,” the statement quoted Kemp as saying, “I will outline how Georgia will move forward. Many Georgians are ready to get back to work, and the fundamentals of our economy remain strong. I am confident that we will successfully rebound from this public health emergency.”
More robust testing will be key to the decision to reopen, according to the AJC.
Georgia must perform diagnostic testing on as many people as it takes to keep deaths at the lowest rate possible, said Dr. Howard Koh, a former U.S. Health and Human Services assistant secretary under President Barack Obama. He previously ran Massachusetts’ public health department.
Testing is central to the Trump administration’s new road map to reopening the country. Places with declining infections and strong testing would begin a three-phase gradual reopening of businesses and schools.
State officials have yet to describe publicly any short- or long-term testing strategy, or disclose what factors they’re considering as they shape one. But members of Gov. Kemp’s coronavirus task force said such discussions are taking place.
Georgia has improved its position in the past week from 45th to 42nd nationally in tests per capita, but New York, Louisiana and Rhode Island have tested its residents at rates four times Georgia’s, an AJC analysis of data through Thursday found. Yet the nation as a whole lags behind South Korea and other nations that are setting the global standard for testing.
Gov. Kemp toured the Georgia World Congress Center, which is being setup as overflow hospital beds, according to the Gwinnett Daily Post.
The facility has been designed to hold 200 people at once, but its capacity can be increased to hold as many as 400 patients, said Ryan Loke, health care adviser to Gov. Brian Kemp.
Loke said the temporary hospital would cost about $21.5 million. Nick Visconti of PAE, the firm handling construction, said about a third of the total cost went to construction with the rest being used to pay for the site’s 200-plus medical personnel.
Gov. Brian Kemp and members of his staff toured the hospital Thursday afternoon. It is meant to accept coronavirus patients should hospitals run out of room in the weeks ahead, when the number of people infected with the virus is expected to peak.
At a press conference after the tour, Kemp said there is only one hospital in Georgia that is currently at capacity: Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital in Albany.
“We have a super-spreader issue down there, there’s as many fatalities or more in Albany, Georgia, than Atlanta —nobody would have ever thought that,” he said. “And that is the only place that I’m aware of in the state that has had a bed capacity issue. Everybody else, believe it or not — many of them are below capacity. Even though their COVID patients are going up slightly, their demand for bed space is continuing to go down a little bit.”
The governor said Georgians would have to be ready to continue social distancing for the foreseeable future — even if his shelter in place order expires and businesses are allowed to reopen.
“People are going to have to continue to social distance,” he said. “They’re going to have to be comfortable wearing a mask in facilities like this when there’s a lot of people or if they’re going to the grocery store and public places. … We’re probably not going to need to have large gatherings in the near term.”
State legislators are considering how to reopen the legislative session, according to the AJC.
House Speaker David Ralston appointed a committee Thursday to make recommendations and review protocols for when the General Assembly reconvenes.
The legislative session has been suspended since March 13, leaving the state’s 2021 budget and hundreds of other bills pending.
“None of us can know what the remainder of the session will look like,” wrote Ralston, a Republican from Blue Ridge, in a memo to House members. “All we can know is that how we conduct our business will be significantly different than when we suspended the session.”
Georgia State University economists report that state tax income may fall short by a billion dollars or more, according to the AJC.
State officials say it’s still too early to say how bad the economic fallout will be for state finances, although House Speaker David Ralston, R-Blue Ridge, said lawmakers are likely to approve an austere budget for the upcoming fiscal year when they return to the Capitol later this spring.
Peter Bluestone and Robert Buschman of GSU’s Fiscal Research Center looked at the economic impact of the pandemic and the shutdown on several key areas of the state economy, such as airlines and restaurants.
“Our conclusions are limited to the near-term depth of the economic and revenue impacts from cutbacks in these specific sectors and to plausible short- and extended-duration scenarios for the remainder of the calendar year,” the researchers write in their report.
The researchers said cutbacks in the key sectors they studied would cost state and local governments between $729 million and $1.27 billion in lost sales tax revenue.
The report said other areas of state revenue will also likely be affected, such as alcohol and motor fuels taxes and the fees Georgians pay when they buy cars. Fewer people are driving during the lockdown, so less gas is being sold. Fewer Georgians are also buying cars.
In both cases, if there is a severe recession and unemployment remains high, collections will continue to be lower than last year, when the state’s economy was strong.
The state gets most of its funding from income taxes and sales taxes.
From the Capitol Beat News Service via The Brunswick News:
Meanwhile, the state’s gross domestic product (GDP) – a key indicator of economic health – could shrink between 2.4% and 4.1%, with several major industries in the state like airlines, hospitality, food services and entertainment taking on big losses.
“With many Georgians not currently working and most rarely leaving their homes for now, GDP will necessarily fall sharply in the second quarter,” the researchers write. “However, massive government assistance programs for individuals and businesses will, hopefully, limit the immediate damage and enable the economy to at least enjoy a U-shaped recovery later this year.”
“How soon, however, depends on science,” the report adds.
State lawmakers have already signaled they will need to overhaul Georgia’s budget after approving mid-year spending amounts for state agencies last month, shortly before suspending the 2020 legislative session. They will need to meet again before July 1 to hash out the 2021 fiscal year budget.
The Georgia Department of Labor sounds like its underwater, according to the Dalton Daily Citizen News.
About 1,000 employees are trying to field upwards of 80,000 calls a day — working 10 to 14 hours a day, sometimes seven days a week, to meet the demand, he said.
Since March 14, the department has processed more than 861,000 unemployment claims.
The coronavirus outbreak in the U.S. that has sickened more than 600,000 people and killed close to 25,000, has put millions out of work. The U.S. Department of Labor reported that over the last four weeks, 22 million Americans filed for unemployment.
“We have compacted the worst year of the recession in less than four weeks,” Butler said.
The mass filings have left state labor departments attempting to keep up with claims while scrambling to institute new policies signed into law under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act. Per new provisions in the federal act, a surge of even new unemployment filings was added this week after the state began accepting claims from self-employed and gig workers.
Since mid-March, the department has paid out $509 million in state and federal benefits. Last week alone, 290,600 Georgians received unemployment payments — two times the amount of people who received benefits throughout the entirety of last year.
“You’ve got the federal government — Congress — in the CARES Act, passing a lot of these new programs. Some of which have never ever been done before,” he said. “They threw those in our lap and now we’ve got to create capacity in systems that didn’t exist before. And they want us to do it in a few weeks.”
Butler said changes which were portrayed as simple add-ons, are not. To verify self-employed and gig workers incomes, states are left building new systems from scratch that include contacting the Department of Revenue to sign-off on listed earnings — a crucial step in ruling out fraud.
“A lot of the stuff is an extremely heavy lift over a very short period of time,” he said. “In today’s world where you can order something online and show up on your doorstep tomorrow, everybody thinks that’s how everything should work.”
“It’s almost an impossible situation,” he said. “But we’re doing it every day. We’re working on it every day.”
Glynn County Commissioners are less optimistic about a Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax referendum, according to The Brunswick News.
In a Tuesday interview with The News, county manager Alan Ours, working with local economists, predicted a drop of as much as $2 million in annual revenue from the Local Option Sales Tax as a result of the shutdown.
What’s true for LOST is true for the special-purpose version, and that’s put some commissioners off of the idea of moving ahead with SPLOST 2020 — a five-year 1 percent sales tax the commission planned to put on the November ballot to pay for $110 million in road, drainage, bridge and sidewalk projects as well as new construction.
“I fear there’s quite a few folks who will be without jobs in November,” said commission chairman Mike Browning. “There’s going to be quite a few companies that have folded up and gone bankrupt. I’m not sure that’s going to be a good time to get the SPLOST passed.”
Ours said the economy could bounce back to normal by the final quarter of the year, but some commissioners aren’t so sure and are cooling to the idea of asking county residents to shoulder one cent more in taxes.
“It’s not time to overburden citizens,” said commissioner Wayne Neal. “I don’t believe in panic decisions, though I may be guilty of some, but we just have to weigh it.”
Great America PAC, chaired by Ed Rollins, will support Congressman Doug Collins (R-Gainesville) for the United States Senate seat currently held by Senator Kelly Loeffler, according to the Savannah Morning News.
Loeffler took her seat in the Senate in January after being appointed by Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp to fill the seat of Sen. Johnny Isakson, who stepped down due to deteriorating health. A political newcomer, Loeffler soon drew opposition from within her own party from Collins, a four-term congressman who had actively sought the appointment to Isakson’s former seat.
Great America PAC calls itself as a “leading pro-Trump super PAC,” but Loeffler spokesman Stephen Lawson questioned the group’s connection to the president.
“Doug Collins is actively touting support from a group that President Trump and his representatives have denounced?” Lawson said in an email. “That’s a typical Washington politician for you.”
Top Democrats in the race include Raphael Warnock, pastor of the Atlanta church where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. preached; Ed Tarver, a former federal prosecutor who was U.S. attorney for Georgia’s Southern District under President Barack Obama; and Matt Lieberman, a former educator and the son of former vice presidential candidate Joe Lieberman.
A Stanford University study suggests mail-in voting will not benefit either partly, according to The Hill.
Several states, including Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington and Utah, have mail-in voting as an option, while California gives individual counties the option to implement it. With public health experts recommending against large gatherings during the coronavirus pandemic, advocates have called for the expansion of mail-in voting.
As most states phased the system in on a county-by-county basis, researchers compared results in counties that adopted a program to those within the same state that did not. They did not measure any partisan effect.
“By comparing counties that adopt a vote-by-mail program to counties within the same state that do not adopt the program, we are able to compare the election outcomes and turnout behavior of voters who have different vote-by-mail accessibility but who have the same set of candidates on the ballot for statewide races,” they wrote.
“Vote-by-mail causes around a 2-percentage-point increase (estimates range from 1.9 to 2.4 percentage points) in the share of the voting-age population that turns out to vote,” the study says.
Georgia Governor Stacey Abrams said she would accept the Democratic nomination for Vice President, according to Elle.com.
Stacey Abrams does not give the expected answer when I ask if she would accept an offer from former vice president Joe Biden to serve as his 2020 running mate. “Yes. I would be honored,” Abrams says. “I would be an excellent running mate. I have the capacity to attract voters by motivating typically ignored communities. I have a strong history of executive and management experience in the private, public, and nonprofit sectors. I’ve spent 25 years in independent study of foreign policy. I am ready to help advance an agenda of restoring America’s place in the world. If I am selected, I am prepared and excited to serve.”
Stamina undoubtedly will be necessary for Abrams if she is tapped to serve as Biden’s running mate. She describes Biden as having a “truly sincere sense of humor” and marvels at his heartfelt enjoyment of interacting with the American people. “When you’re in politics, you learn the difference between those who simply tolerate others and those who genuinely love people,” she says. “As an introvert, I find it fascinating. His charming gregariousness isn’t just an affect.”
Albany and Dougherty County will receive federal funding for coronavirus relief, according to the Albany Herald.
Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital, Albany State University and Albany Technical College are among local institutions that have been awarded grants for economic recovery grants to deal with the impact of COVID-19.
The allocations under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act include $8.6 million for Phoebe, $5.13 million for Albany State and $2.45 million for Albany Tech, as well as $3.89 million for urban transit.
For Albany Tech, half of the funding will go toward assisting students dealing with the disruption caused by the coronavirus crisis and half will help the college maintain operations, college President Anthony Parker said.
U.S. Rep. Sanford Bishop was instrumental in including Albany and Dougherty County in the relief package, said Wendy Howell, public information officer for the Dougherty County Board of Commissioners.
Georgia Power is reducing the construction workforce at Plant Vogtle, according to the Augusta Chronicle.
In a Thursday release, spokesperson John Kraft said project management has asked for an approximate 20% reduction to the craft workforce through a self-selection process. A number of workers have already chosen to stay off-site during the pandemic.
Vogtle 3 and 4 is currently the largest jobs-producing construction project in Georgia, and had more than 9,000 workers on site, and more than 800 permanent jobs available once the units begin operating.
Georgia Power, a subsidiary of Southern Co., and has the largest ownership share in Vogtle, said last month the project was approximately 84% complete.
Related Posts
Georgia tea party groups on opposite sides of solar power | jacksonville.com
Georgia Politics, Campaigns, and Elections for June 29, 2026- Facebook’s Zuckerberg to Meet With GOP House Leaders
Benefits for Macon-Bibb government workers coming soon | Politics | Macon.com
Georgia Politics, Campaigns, and Elections for March 19, 2019
Comments ( 0 )