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The history of moonshining, especially in the mountains of Appalachia, is often related as a colorful part of our culture, overalled barefooted hillbillies minding their hidden stills and eluding revenooers, federal revenue officers out to put them out of business.

There were violent episodes, however, with people on both sides losing their livelihoods and sometimes their lives.

In 1877, a Lt. McIntyre, a federal agent, died while on a mission to arrest moonshiners and put a thriving bootleg operation out of business in a remote section of Fannin County. He and other law enforcement officers had raided the home of Ayres Jones in the far backwoods so isolated that the nearest neighbors were miles apart.

The federal agents had burst through the door of Joness home only to find his wife and several children there. McIntyre waited. At some point, shots were fired into the home, and McIntyre was struck. The shooter or shooters fled into the woods, and the feds either lost them or gave up their pursuit so they could look after their lieutenant. Although it was said the shots were fired into the house, McIntyres body was found in the backyard.

Ayres Jones was the suspected shooter and became the target of an intensive manhunt. Federal agents and members of the military days later again invaded the Fannin County mountains where they suspected Jones was hiding. More than 50 strong, they again burst into his home with only Joness wife and children present. They also entered other homes in the area to see if friends were hiding the suspect.

The troops made no bones they were on a mission for revenge, and those who were arrested claimed they were treated badly, cursed, roughed up and targets of serious threats. They also said they saw no warrants for entering their homes or for arrest.

Most of those arrested were taken to Cartersville, then to Atlanta to wait in jail for trial. One woman testified she was made to walk 80 miles to Cartersville.

A judge in Atlanta, however, released most, if not all, of those taken into custody.

That didnt keep the Feds from remembering the murder of Lt. McIntyre, nor his suspected killer, Ayres Jones.

Three years later, a young Gainesville man, J.B. Gaston, a U.S. deputy marshal, set out to find and prosecute Jones. So determined was Gaston that he and another federal agent, James Findley of Gainesville, rode horseback three days to the Frogtown section of Fannin County, where their suspect lived. When they could ride horses no farther, the agents began to walk seven miles through rugged terrain to Joness home, arriving at 10 oclock at night.

They feared a barking dog would arouse the suspect, so they broke down his door and pulled him from bed. Joness sons and daughters also were in the house, and one of the sons escaped into the woods. Gaston and Findley also arrested Joe Whitt in addition to Jones.

The agents with their prisoners in tow immediately began their long trek through the thickly wooded mountains to where they had left their horses. They feared the son who had escaped or other friends of Jones would attempt a rescue, but it never happened.

The suspects were later taken to Atlanta, where they were prosecuted for the murder of Lt. McIntyre.

That Gaston-got-his-man success apparently jump-started J.B. Gastons career and made him a hero in the eyes of homefolks in Hall and other North Georgia counties.

He became U.S. commissioner for North Georgia, serving 32 years. That was a little unusual because he was a prominent Republican in an era when Democrats dominated politics. Republicans werent too popular as they were responsible for enforcing Reconstruction rules in the South after the Civil War.

Born in Lumpkin County in 1849, Gaston moved to Hall County in 1871. He became active in politics, and was elected 9th District delegate to the Republican convention. Gainesvillians admired him so much they elected him mayor twice. During his terms as mayor, a new City Hall was built, as well as the towns waterworks.

Judge Gaston became influential in state Republican politics. In 1908, he was credited with carrying the 9th District for presidential nominee William Howard Taft, who defeated the Democratic nominee, William Jennings Bryan. Heavily Democratic Hall County was shocked Bryan won the county by only 78 votes.

Gaston died in June 1916 after suffering a brain hemorrhage while attending yet another Republican convention in Chicago. At the time he was chair of the Gainesville School Board. His funeral was at First Baptist Church, where he had been active for many years. His wife and eight children survived. He is buried under a large magnolia tree in Alta Vista Cemetery.

Watch for more local history in this column next Sunday.

Johnny Vardeman is retired editor of The Times. He can be reached at 2183 Pine Tree Circle NE; 770-532-2326; johnny.peggy@gmail.com. or vardeman1956@att.net

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This is the story of the Republican from Gainesville who finally caught an infamous moonshiner - Gainesville Times

SALT LAKE CITY (KUTV)

The race for the Republican nomination in Utahs hotly contested 4th Congressional District looks to be a wide-open affair, but former radio host Jay McFarland and former NFL player Burgess Owens have a slight lead on the rest of the field according to a new poll.

The same poll shows Democrat Ben McAdams seems almost certain to fend off an intra-party challenge.

The Utah Political Trends survey from UtahPolicy.com and KUTV 2 News conducted by Y2 Analytics shows McFarland with 31 percent support among likely Republican primary voters, while Owens gets 22 percent.

GOP activist Kathleen Anderson and State Representative Kim Coleman are tied with 17 percent support. Chris Biesinger and Trent Christensen each get 6 percent, while Cindy Thompson sits at 1 percent.

While that 9-point gap may seem like a big lead, the survey has a margin of error +/- 9.3 percentage points, so the race is technically a statistical tie among the top four candidates. McFarland seemingly has a big lead, but given the wide margin of error, any of the top four candidates can lay a partial claim to the status of a frontrunner in the race.

So far, McFarland, Owens and Christensen have qualified for the June primary ballot by gathering signatures while Anderson, Coleman, Biesinger and Thompson are hoping to book a trip to the June primary through next weeks GOP state convention. Depending on the results from the convention, its possible that three, four or five of the seven Republicans in the field will appear on the primary ballot.

The lead in the survey by McFarland and Owens can likely be chalked up to their relatively high name recognition among voters. McFarland was a longtime host of a daytime talk show on local radio while Owens has consistently appeared as a guest on conservative media outlets, primarily Fox News Channel.

McFarlands electoral strength lies mostly with voters in the middle of the ideological center, with 34 percent of moderate Republicans, 31 percent of voters who are middle of the road in their politics and 57 percent of moderate liberals backing him.

Owens, McFarland, Anderson and Coleman are splitting up support from the right-wing of the party. Owens gets 28 percent from strong conservatives, McFarland is supported by 22 percent, Coleman is backed by 21 percent and Anderson gets 20 percent from that group.

Incumbent Democrat Ben McAdams is facing a longshot convention challenge from Daniel Beckstrand next week. If McAdams does not secure the support of at least 60 percent of the delegates at the convention, he would be forced into a primary election.

If Beckstrand does somehow make it to the June primary, the survey suggests McAdams would win in a landslide, with 97 percent of likely primary election voters saying they would cast a ballot for McAdams.

KUTV 2News is partnering with Utah Policy.com and Y2 Analytics and will be providing polling results on a regular basis throughout the election season. You can sign up for UtahPolicy.coms daily email newsletter here.

Link:
Poll suggests Republican race in 4th District looks to be a wide-open contest - KJZZ

Anyone who pays passing attention to politics is probably familiar with former Rahm Emanuels suggestion that you never want a serious crisis to go to waste. Though to my knowledge rarely so explicitly stated before, it surprised no armchair geneticists who have learned how embedded in the DNA of Democrats are desires to control the lives of others.

Unfortunately, too many Republicans are vulnerable to the same. Thats likely why San Antonio Express-News Smart Money columnist Michael Taylor believes a universal basic income (UBI) is imminent.

A UBI is when government sends every citizen a regular cash payment. Mr. Taylor humorously declared Andrew Yang, who campaigned on the issue, the winner of the 2020 democratic presidential nomination, even though he dropped out in February.

Mr. Taylor trips up a bit however in making his case.

The vessel by which he thinks this new strain of welfare will become reality is the direct payment made to some families via the $2 trillion stimulus passed into law to mitigate the financial fallout resulting from the coronavirus-induced shutdowns.

Mr. Taylor asserts that such a cash transfer is a previously untried solution to alleviating the effects of a recession.

To the contrary, Uncle Sam did just that in response to the dot.com bust and the financial crisis. Neither proved effective when judged against the intent of their respective passages, the vast majority having been saved or used for debt reduction instead of being spent.

To be sure, were in a different situation now, with government literally cutting off peoples means of supporting themselves and their families. By the same token, it informs Mr. Taylors prediction. Nevertheless, its depressing that he can imagine the oncoming recession lasting through the summer.

When did faith in a free societys enterprising market system give way to self-fulfilling prophecies of doom? Whats more, why are so many conservatives joining this chorus? Mr. Taylor cites Arkansas senator Tom Cotton, who proposed sending $1,000 to Americans, through either unemployment insurance or tax rebates, for the duration of the crisis.

Coincidentally, one of the more prominent selling points of a UBI is that we live in a world akin to that of the Terminator movie franchise, in which Cyberdine Systems Skynet is going to take over and flood society with Terminators. BOO! ROBOTS!

Mr. Taylor errs again when he attempts to buttress his prediction by citing Alaskas Permanent Fund dividend. As he alludes, this fund is tied to revenue from the states #1 industry, oil and gas. The comparison suffers however, from the same flaws that trip up proponents of socialism: scale and federalism.

Theres a silly meme floating around stating that, while were sending our folks a one-time payment, England and Denmark are paying a certain percentage of their citizens salaries, and Canada is sending their people a couple grand every month. I responded with the numbers 327, 56, 6 and 38.

Those are the populations (in the millions) of those countries, respectively. This is the pertinent bit that seems to elude BernBots.

Alaska is our third-least populous state. Like the Scandanavian countries socialists drool over, their population pales in comparison with the US. This is where we benefit from the federalist system set up by the Founding Fathers. States can enact almost whatever policy they want without foisting their failures on the rest, though the latter are free to mimic successes.

While he teases the reason some conservatives find a UBI appealing, that it would not require giant bureaucracies of the welfare programs it would ideally replace, to label it a small-government idea because of its simplicity is woefully off the mark.

There is nothing small-government about any state program that requires for its existence the taxation of resources, particularly in our convoluted way, from the productive private sector.

And thats to say nothing of what French political economist Frederic Bastiat would have called the not seen innovations that never happened due to such confiscation.

Alas, politicians have little incentive to worry about such tradeoffs. They need not be bothered about the negative consequences of putting taxpayer revenue at stake for something that polls well in focus groups. This includes Republicans like Sen. Cotton.

The Wall Street Journal recently reminded readers that conservatives regularly fight an uphill battle against Democrats who define their lives through politics. They have to be more politician-y in order to counter the lefts brazen appeal to peoples base instincts, those that need to be coddled, and assured that their struggles are not their fault, but rather that of The Man.

Moreover, the envy that consumes the left inoculates them from any moral compunction against commandeering the earnings of productive citizens.

The GOP has a handful of principled members for sure, and some whose experience in business no doubt instilled in them an aversion to treating resources willy-nilly, and assuming that government is a benevolent partner.

There are others however, whose background consists of nothing but government, or law, or academia.

Their experience dealing with scarce resources is nearly non-existent. Theyve never had to create value, best their competitors, on a limited budget, under the threat of losing it all. Theyve either ridden piggyback on businesses via lawsuits, or fallen back on taxpayers.

That makes them more susceptible to snake oil like a UBI.

Incidentally, the aforementioned editorial was a salute to Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn on the news of his retirement in 2014. The Journal ran it again in memoriam, as Dr. Coburn succumbed to prostate cancer.

Few elected officials respected the taxpayer more, holding his colleagues feet to the fire regarding their profligate ways. We need more folks like him who have the ability to say one of the simplest words in the English language.

No.

Read this article:
Selling the Republican Soul for a UBI - Foundation for Economic Education

WASHINGTON (NEXSTAR) The Small Business Administration says its run out of money and cannot accept any new applications for a loan program to help small businesses through the coronavirus crisis.

I dont want a small West Virginia business having the door shut on their face because we ran out of money, West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito said of the Paycheck Protection Program.

Capito says small businesses are key to our recovery.

Because this is whats going to really get our economy moving once we get the green light, Capito said.

But Senate Democrats have so far blocked a $250 billion addition to the loan program. West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin says the blame lies with Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell.

Mitch is not talking and conferring at all with anybody in the Democratic party, and leadership, or any of us that basically want to work with him, Manchin said.

Democrats say they want Republicans to increase funding for others who need immediate help fighting the pandemic.

Were going to have to be thoughtful about how to advance the agenda for families, for workers, for small business and of course for those front line heroes who are out there every day, Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey said.

But House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy says Democrats should take a look at the latest unemployment numbers.

I dont know what more that it takes. You got five million reasons today, you got 22 million reasons for this month, McCarthy said.

McCarthy says Democrats should vote to expand the loan program now and come back to the other issues later. Democrats say theyre willing to compromise if Republicans meet them in the middle.

Read more:
Democrats and Republicans divided on extra Paycheck Protection Program funding - KLBK | KAMC | EverythingLubbock.com

For indispensable reporting on the coronavirus crisis and more, subscribe to Mother Jones' newsletters.

In the middle of March, as millions of people across the country started to practice social distancing measures to stem the spread of the coronavirus, Floridas Spring Breakers did the opposite. Thousands of people, seemingly unfazed by the pandemic, took to the states coastline after the Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, decided not to order the beaches closed.

DeSantis still hasnt enacted statewide stay-at-home orders, garnering plenty of criticism from local leaders and public health officials. The governors resistance probably isnt just about the number of cases of the virus in his state. A new white paper shows that states with Republican governors, along with states with higher number of supporters of President Donald Trump, were slower to adopt social distancing policiesand those delays are likely to produce significant ongoing harm to public health.

The biggest influence in how states acted was not the number of confirmed cases, but rather politics, according to new research by a group of professors at the University of Washington. They focused on five measures taken directly from state government websites: restrictions on gatherings, school closures, restaurant restrictions, non-essential business closures, and stay-at-home orders. Trump initially downplayed the threat of the virus, and numerous surveys have found significant partisan divides in public opinion about the severity of the coronavirus threat, the researchers point out.

Their research showed that states with Republican governors and more Trump voters introduced social distancing policies 2.7 days later than more liberal states. Does a 2.7 day delay matter? the researchers write, concluding: Given the quick doubling time of COVID-19, these delays have the potential to cause a dramatic increase in the peak volume of cases.

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New Research Shows States With Republican Governors Were Slower to Adopt Social Distancing Policies - Mother Jones