Happy Bastille Day, celebrating the 236th anniversary of Bastille Day, 14 July 1789, when citizens stormed the Bastille, a prison in Paris.
On July 14, 1798, the Alien and Sedition Act became federal law.
The first three acts took aim at the rights of immigrants. The period of residency required before immigrants could apply for citizenship was extended from five to 14 years, and the president gained the power to detain and deport those he deemed enemies. President Adams never took advantage of his newfound ability to deny rights to immigrants. However, the fourth act, the Sedition Act, was put into practice and became a black mark on the nation’s reputation. In direct violation of the Constitution’s guarantee of freedom of speech, the Sedition Act permitted the prosecution of individuals who voiced or printed what the government deemed to be malicious remarks about the president or government of the United States. Fourteen Republicans, mainly journalists, were prosecuted, and some imprisoned, under the act.
On July 14, 1864, General Sherman issued Special Field Order 35, outlining the plan for the Battle of Atlanta.
On July 15, 1864, Sherman’s army began crossing the Chattahoochee River and would take the better part of three days to complete the crossing.
United State Major General George Stoneman led troops in the Battle of Atlanta, and later led raids against Confederate railroads and other infrastructure. On July 15, 1864, Stoneman wrote from camp near Villa Rica, Georgia.
As I indicated to you in my last note, we completed the bridge (Moore’s), and were ready to cross at daybreak yesterday morning, but before we essayed it a report came from Major Buck, in command of a battalion seven miles above, that the enemy had been crossing above him on a boat or a bridge, and that his pickets had been cut off.
Colonel Biddle, who was left with his brigade at Campbellton, reports the enemy quite strong at that point, with two guns of long range in each of the two redoubts on the opposite bluff, which are opened upon him whenever any of his men show themselves.
I was very anxious to strike the railroad from personal as well as other considerations, but I became convinced that to attempt it would incur risks inadequate to the results, and unless we could hold the bridge, as well as penetrate into the country, the risk of capture or dispersion, with loss of animals (as I could hear of no ford), was almost certain.
On July 15, 1870, Georgia was readmitted to the United States, with the signature by President Ulysses Grant of the “Georgia Bill” by the U.S. Congress.
On July 15, 1948, President Harry Truman was nominated at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago to run for a full term as President of the United States.
On July 15, 1964, Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater was nominated as the Republican candidate for President.
Atlanta Brave Hank Aaron hit his 500th Home Run on July 14, 1968.
On July 14, 1976, former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter won the Democratic nomination for President at the Democratic National Convention.
On July 15, 2006, a group messaging service called Twttr launched, later changing its name to Twitter. May God have mercy upon their souls.
After Williams asked the team of 14 employees to brainstorm their best ideas for the flailing startup, one of the company’s engineers, Jack Dorsey, came up with the concept of a service allowing users to share personal status updates via SMS to groups of people. By March 2006, they had a working prototype, and a name—Twttr—inspired in part by bird sounds, and adopted after some other choices (including FriendStalker) were rejected. Dorsey (@Jack) sent the first-ever tweet (“just setting up my twttr”) on March 21.
Within six months after the launch, Twttr had become Twitter. Once the service went public, its founders imposed a 140-character limit for messages, based on the maximum length of text messages at the time; this was later expanded to 280 characters.
Georgia Politics, Campaigns, and Elections
Very few Georgians will vote tomorrow in the Special Democratic Primary Runoff Election for Public Service Commission District 3. From the Capitol Beat News Service via the Valdosta Daily Times:
What if they held an election and no one came?
That was nearly the case last month when only about 2.4% of Georgia’s roughly 8.4 million registered voters cast ballots in Republican and Democratic primaries for seats on the state Public Service Commission (PSC), which regulates utilities.
The low turnout likely will be even more dismal Tuesday when Democratic primary voters return to the polls to choose the party’s nominee for the PSC’s District 3 seat. With incumbent Commissioner Tim Echols having won the Republican nod to seek reelection in District 2 in last month’s GOP primary, the Democratic contest in District 3 will be the only race on Tuesday’s runoff ballot.
Neither former Atlanta City Councilwoman Keisha Sean Waites nor clean-energy advocate Peter Hubbard won a majority of the vote in last month’s three-way Democratic primary in District 3, which covers Fulton, DeKalb, and Clayton counties, forcing the runoff. Former utility regulator and technology executive Robert Jones finished third and was eliminated.
Waites and Hubbard differ more in their career backgrounds than in their positions on issues facing the PSC. Waites served three terms in the Georgia House of Representatives before being elected to the Atlanta City Council in 2021. Before entering city and state politics, she spent 15 years working in the federal government, with the Small Business Administration and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Hubbard has worked on energy issues from outside of government circles as an advocate for the nonprofit Georgia Center for Energy Solutions. In that role, he has served as an intervenor calling for reducing the use of fossil fuels in the production of electricity, which is expensive, pollutes the air and harms human health.
Both candidates have criticized the five-member commission – all Republicans – as a rubber stamp for Atlanta-based Georgia Power, signing off on a series of rate increases in recent years without sufficiently considering the impacts of rising monthly bills on the company’s residential and small business customers.
“Georgia Power has brought in record profits,” Waites said. “I don’t have a problem with Georgia Power making money. I just don’t want them to do it on the backs of consumers.”
Hubbard said members of the PSC have stood by while Georgia Power increases its profits by building more electric generating capacity using fossil fuels.
“With Georgia Power, the more you build, the more you earn,” he said. “We’re just keeping [coal and gas plants] for reliability purposes. But I say renewable energy technology has reached a point where those sources have become reliable.”
Waites said Georgia Power could do more to increase its use of solar energy, given the Peach State ranks seventh in the nation in solar power generating capacity. If elected, she said she support increasing the cap the PSC has imposed limiting its rooftop solar program to no more than 5,000 homeowners.
“Georgia Power has no incentive to push that because it messes with their profits,” she said.
Hubbard said solar, wind, and batteries accounted for 90% of the new power generation in the U.S. last year.
“With solar, you build it once and there’s no fuel costs,” he said.
The winner of the Democratic primary between Hubbard and Waites will challenge incumbent Republican Commissioner Fitz Johnson in November.
Early voting ends on Friday, and polls across Georgia will open on Tuesday from 7 a.m. until 7 p.m.
Dalton Board of Education members lowered their property tax millage rate, but it will still be treated as a tax increase, according to the Dalton Daily Citizen.
Following three public hearings on the 2024 property tax rate, members of the Dalton Board of Education unanimously voted to set the final millage rate at 8.0 mills on Monday, July 7.
Board Chair Matt Evans said the decision was made by the board to agree on 8.0 mills instead of the tentative millage rate of 8.25 mills, which would have been an increase of 1.945 mills and would have required an increase in property taxes by 30.85%.
With the approved reduction to 8.0 mills, Dalton Public Schools’ Chief of Finance Theresa Perry said the increase in property taxes would now be “a few percentage (points) less.”
“I think we have to understand there’s just some tensions that we’re trying to manage, including the uncertainty in the local digest, but also the reality of our constituents and our taxpayers that this is a massive increase in their assessed property values, which correlates to an increase in their property taxes,” Evans said. “So, I think we needed to fund our budget, our priorities and our initiatives, but at the same time we needed to give some taxpayer relief. And I think we struck a ground where we can do that by dipping into our fund balance, going back and reassessing some things and looking for additional savings.”
With the approved rate of 8.0 mills, the ending fund balance for Dalton Public Schools’ final approved budget for FY26 decreases from $20.2 million to $17.7 million.
“We’re hoping it’s a win-win for our community and for our kids that weren’t here to speak for themselves,” Evans said. “We have to think about their needs. We have a diverse student population and our job is to give them the best education possible so they can reach their God-given potential. And hopefully we were able to achieve that through the millage rate that we set and also give some taxpayer relief.”
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