The Baker County Press Baker County's Circulation Leader

It’s all political theater — and bad theater at that.

The idea that Washington, both the legislative and executive branches, expect the taxpaying public to take them seriously when they drone on about the necessity of “cutting spending” is absurd on its face.

These are the people who, over the past 100 years (next month) since Woodrow Wilson was elected president, have brought us to where our federal agencies spend at least a trillion dollars more every year than the government takes in.

And now they’re out there this week braying about how $85 billion in spending cuts next fiscal year will be the death of us all. That’s $85 billion in a $3.8 trillion budget, $1 trillion of which we’ll have to borrow from the Chinese or other sources purchasing our treasury bills backed by money that the federal government is printing and pumping into the market.

Get that?

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The BCMS Lady Bobcats softball team opened conference play on February 19 with an impressive 17-0 rout of Richardson Middle School. The game was called after three innings on the mercy rule.

The girls had a much harder time with Suwannee Middle, beating the team in Live Oak 2-0 on February 21. Macy Jackson led the way for the Bobcats with a strong performance on the mound.

“Everyone on defense played phenomenal,” said Coach Jon Mobley. “We were able to muster enough offense against their good defense to score two runs.”

The Bobcats were led by Tori Richardson who went 3 for 4

BCMS beat Callahan 8-1 at home on February 21 behind the outstanding offensive play of Hayleigh Mulkey, who hit a three-run homer to break open the game.

The homers just kept coming for the Bobcats with Jackson and Emma Gipson collecting four baggers.

The Bobcats are 7-0 overall.

“We just have to keep our focus and intensity high if we want to maintain this level of success,” commented Coach Mobley.

The Bobcats host Hilliard on Thursday, February 28, at 4 pm.

Sheriff Joey Dobson recently reopened the nearly three-decades-old murder case of a young man bludgeoned to death and dumped in the woods south of Macclenny.

The victim’s mother, Marty Green Wallace of Tennessee and formerly a nursing supervisor at the Fraser emergency room in the 1980s, contacted the sheriff in January and requested the case be reexamined.

Ms. Wallace said she’s finally ready to talk publicly about the murder of her 19-year-old son, Arthur Lewis Green, Jr., and revisit perhaps the most tragic event in her life.

Mr. Green moved from his father’s home in Albany, GA to live with his sister, Donna Cooper Pullem, on West Ivey Street in Macclenny. He worked at a gas station at South 6th Street and US 90, known as the Direct Oil station.

About a month after he went missing — not returning home or showing up for work — a couple collecting aluminum cans found Mr. Green’s remains in a logging road ditch in the woods between SR 121 and CR 125 about 5 miles south of Macclenny the evening of September 30, 1983.

“After a few weeks, there wasn’t much left,” Ms. Wallace, 69, said of the remains. “He was covered by a large truck or heavy equipment tire.”

The victim’s bones were found among those of a cow carcass as well.

Physical evidence from the scene, including a red hatchet and other items, were in the custody of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement last week.

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A circuit judge on February 19 sentenced a Macclenny man to two years in state prison for sending obscene images to a 15-year-old girl during a period of several days in July of last year.

The state dropped a charge of obscene communication against Buddy Duane Champion Jr. in return for his no contest plea. Judge Mark Moseley also ordered the defendant to serve two years on probation following release and gave him credit for 124 days in county jail.

Mr. Champion, 23, will also be subject to a psycho-sexual evaluation based on his actions during a more than two week period during which he engaged in lewd communication with the girl via text and also transmitted lewd photos of himself.

He has a criminal record that includes theft, burglary and resisting police.

In other cases that court session, Judge Moseley ordered Chester Hadley, 25, of Sanderson to prison for 15 months for failure to register a change of address. Mr. Hadley is a sexual offender with a past offense of lewd conduct with a female under 17 years old, and thus is required to apprise authorities of his place of residence.

The state dropped a companion charge of failure to register in the county as a sex offender.

For more crime and punishment news, see this week’s print edition or subscribe to the e-edition here.