Home > Jay Bookman > Archives > 2008 > September > 09
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Metro Atlanta getting sMARTA
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I ride MARTA everyday, so I had already seen the impact of traffic and soaring gas prices on transit ridership. The trains are more crowded, the parking lots more packed.
Still, the numbers are rather impressive. According to new data released by the American Public Transportation Association, Americans took 140 million more transit rides in the second quarter of 2008 than in the same time frame a year earlier.
“In the second quarter of 2008, public transportation continued to climb and rose by 5.2 percent. In contrast, the Federal Highway Administration has reported that the vehicle miles traveled on our nation’s roads declined by 3.3 percent in the second quarter,” APTA reports.
More locally, MARTA train ridership was up 15.6 percent in the second quarter, one of largest gains in the country.
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Palin lies could lead to Bridge to Oblivion
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Sarah Palin is out on the campaign trail, this time in Ohio, still repeating the lie that she rejected federal funding for that infamous bridge in Alaska.
“I told Congress, ‘Thanks but no thanks’ for that Bridge to Nowhere up in Alaska,” she said in a speech today. “If our state wanted a bridge, we were gonna built it ourselves.”
Yet even today’s Wall Street Journal, that bastion of liberal, pro-terrorist, anti-American ideology, reaches the only conclusion possible on the facts available:
“Despite significant evidence to the contrary, the McCain campaign continues to assert that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin told the federal government ‘thanks but no thanks’ to the now-famous bridge to an island in her home state….,” the Journal states.
The Journal also makes clear that Palin only abandoned the project AFTER Congress had killed federal funding for it, and that “she did not return the federal money. She just allocated it elsewhere.” As late as last September, Palin was complaining that criticism of the project had been unfair, claiming that “much of the public’s attitude toward Alaska bridges is based on inaccurate portrayals of the projects here.”
In other words, it was never “thanks, but no thanks.” It was “thank you very much, and now give me some more.”
As the McCain campaign points out, both Barack Obama and Joe Biden have requested earmarks and voted for earmarks. Neither is anything close to pure on this issue. But neither Democrat is claiming otherwise. They aren’t trying to deny reality. Nor are they trying to construct their entire political identity on that falsehood.
Palin — with the full backing and support of the McCain campaign — is doing herself longterm political damage with this ploy. The American people are watching her repeatedly lie to them, day after day, and watching her do so with no apparent compunction. This is her introduction to the national scene; this is when her image is being cemented into the public mind.
And her image is increasingly that of a guiltless liar.
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Where’s the beef, Sen. McCain?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
With 75 to 80 percent of Americans saying the country is headed in the wrong direction, John McCain has joined Barack Obama in arguing that it’s time to change that direction.
But what exactly would McCain change? Yes, he has tried to separate himself from the unpopular President Bush, but that’s a move of purely symbolic importance.
On foreign policy, McCain advocates an approach very much like that of the early President Bush, motivated by an instinct to seek military solutions first and other approaches later. On economic matters, I see no difference whatsoever between the approaches of Bush and McCain, and the same is true on social issues as well, including the issue of abortion.
Just as importantly, a McCain administration would draw from the same pool of GOP political appointees as the Bush administration, meaning that little or nothing would change in agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Justice Department, which just this week proposed an approach to anti-trust law that basically protects monopolies and tells consumers tough luck.
So where’s the change? Step up and point out particular places where a President McCain would alter the direction of this country, Republicans.
