By Elliott Brack
Editor and Publisher, GwinnettForum
May 16, 2023 | Listed below are winners of the 12th annual Movers and Shakers awards of Partnership Gwinnett, awarded on May 4.
Most Valuable Provider Award: Garrard Group, Duluth, a construction services provider.
Corporate Citizen Award: Mitsubishi Electric Trane HVAC US, Suwanee, a variable refrigerant flow systems provider
Supply Chain Pioneer Award:
- Small: Skipper Logistics, Lawrenceville, logistics outsourcing and transportation company;
- Large: Eclipse Gaming Systems, Duluth, a slot game designer and manufacturer.
Manufacturer of the Year Award:
- Small; ePac Atlanta, a global technology-driven custom flexible packaging company;
- Medium; AdEdge, Duluth a water treatment solution provider; and
- Large: Price Industries, Suwanee, a critical controls and noise control products manufacturer and supplier.
You say taxes are too high? Many Georgia taxpayers will be getting a check from the State of Georgia soon, since the state collected more than it spent last year.Want taxes cut more? If you really are in for cutting taxes, look to the federal government. Its planned budget for fiscal 2023 is $5.8 trillion (no telling how many zeros in a trillion). This budget will have with it a $1.2 trillion deficit. The budget is huge, with 63 percent listed for “mandatory spending.”
Caring for Social Security takes up 19 percent of our budget, and 15 percent goes for health. Both national defense and Medicare account for 12 percent.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon’s proposed 2024 budget is the largest peacetime budget in our history. It’s about $25 billion more than the $816 billion budget Congress approved for 2023. Of that defense budget, $145 billion is for research and development purposes.
New reader: We have a new reader in Bovey, Minnesota. That’s about 81 miles northwest of Duluth, Minn. Larry Parks has been corresponding with us since finding an article online.
He writes of his winters in rural Minnesota: “The town I live in has no traffic lights, only stop signs, and not many of them. The winters up here are cold, but it is easy to dress for it, and I get to do magic: I turn boiling water into snow instantly. Simply take a gallon of boiling water and throw it into the air on a 40 below day. It is snow by the time it hits your belt height. I have more bears for neighbors than humans.”
It’s amazing to us in the South that he can create instant snow in winter, except for the fact he doesn’t need to do it with so much snow around him in Minnesota. But, people have to have a way to have fun during those cold spells! Attaboy, Larry!
Mentioning Social Security, did you know of its origins? Those of us who get such a check each month owe it to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who on Aug. 14, 1935 saw passed his original Social Security Act . It was part of Roosevelt’s New Deal and it was first intended to help keep senior citizens out of poverty, which it still does.
Those Social Security numbers were introduced in 1936 for keeping track of taxes paid into the system. These days people usually fill out their child’s Social Security application along with the child’s birth certificate. That makes Social Security numbers the de facto identification number of everyone born or working in America.
- Have a comment? Send to: elliott@brack.net
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