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Thursday, April 17, 2008
Hamas and Carter: Two views. Your view?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Washington Post on Thursday published an opinion column by a founder of Hamas, Mahmoud Al-Zahar, praising former President Jimmy Carter for meeting with Hamas leaders this week.
“Now, finally, we have the welcome tonic of Carter saying what any independent, uncorrupted thinker should conclude: that no “peace plan,” “road map” or “legacy” can succeed unless we are sitting at the negotiating table and without any preconditions,” writes Al-Zahar.
Yet in the same edition, The Post published an editorial harshly critical of Hamas and Carter.
“… it is one thing to communicate pragmatically, and quite another to publicly and unconditionally grant recognition and political sanction to a leader or a group that advocates terrorism, mass murder or the extinction of another state. That is what Mr. Carter is doing by lending what is left of his prestige to an avowed terrorist such as Khaled Meshal — or Mahmoud al-Zahar, writes the newspaper.
What is your view?
Atheists: Most dangerous fundamentalists?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
James Evans, a Baptist minister in Auburn, Alabama, writes about a new book, “I Don’t Believe in Atheists,” by Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges, In the book, Hedges writes about so-called “secular fundamentalists.”
Writes Evans, “The atheists Hedges has in mind are militant and even somewhat evangelistic and are busy spreading a utopian vision of what science and reason can accomplish.”
These people, Hedges concludes, are just as dangerous as religious fundamentalists. “Those who are blinded by utopian visions inevitably turn to force to make their impossible dreams and their noble ideas real”, Hedges writes.
Is atheism a form of fundamentalism? And does it pose a threat?
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Traffic to take heavy toll on metro Atlanta
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Before the recent legislative session, House Speaker Glenn Richardson joined Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle and leaders of the state Senate in pledging to find a new source of transportation funding. All parties seemed to recognize the importance of giving metro Atlanta some means of dealing with crippling traffic.
“I’m willing to do anything except continue to do nothing,” Richardson said.
“We’re going to get a funding bill out this session,” Senate Majority Leader Tommie Williams promised.
Yet they did not. And in the wake of the Legislature’s failure, you’re left with one of two conclusions: Either Georgia’s legislative leadership is simply too incompetent to get the job done, or some of them weren’t really all that sincere in supporting a transportation solution.
Personally, I lean to the second explanation. If leaders of both legislative chambers are honestly committed to achieving something, it usually gets done. But if they merely want to look like they’re trying to get something done, well, there are ways to arrange that as well.
So far, a lot of the blame for failing to act on transportation has fallen on Cagle and his Senate colleagues. On the last night of the session, while the House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly for a regional sales tax proposal, that same proposal fell three votes short in the Senate. And while Richardson gave a stirring speech in the House favoring the proposal, Cagle’s support was, shall we say, more muted.
In an interview, Cagle called that perception unfair, saying he too backed the concept of a regional transportation sales tax. But he noted that some senators did have serious concerns.
Asked whether he might have shared those concerns, Cagle declined to answer.
Looking ahead, Cagle rattled off a series of next steps, such as revising state law to allow transportation funds to be spent where the need is greatest. Under current law, much of that money is instead allocated equally among congressional districts. Reforming the dysfunctional state Department of Transportation must also be a priority, he said.
However, while both those steps are necessary, neither addresses the huge chasm between the need for new transportation capacity and the slim resources available to build it. To bridge that gap, Cagle embraces what he and others call “market-based solutions.”
In the short term, he said, HOV lanes on I-85 and I-75 should be converted as soon as possible to toll lanes, with motorists in effect buying the right to travel in less congested lanes. He also embraced the granting of concessions — allowing private companies to build new highways and recover their investments through tolls. For example, he said, such a market-based approach could be used to build an east-west connnector in North Georgia joining I-75 and I-85, resurrecting the notion of a Northern Arc.
However, those are limited and in some cases impractical solutions. Converting HOV lanes to toll lanes might speed travel for those able to pay, but it would leave everybody else still stewing in traffic. And an east-west connector would almost certainly fail to generate enough toll revenue to pay for itself.
Tellingly, Cagle didn’t volunteer transit as an option. When asked, he said, “Transit is very important. Every city the size of Atlanta has a significant transit piece.” But when I mentioned that building transit would require a tax increase, Cagle’s enthusiasm waned. “There’s some question of how that issue gets resolved,” he said.
The appeal of “market-based solutions” is obvious: Theoretically, they offer politicians a self-financing means of solving a very expensive problem. But toll-based approaches work best when commuters are a captive market and have no alternative but to pay a toll. (That’s why tunnels and bridges are so often tolled — they offer the only way to get from here to there.)
And that, in the end, may be part of the reason a regional transportation tax didn’t pass. Such a tax, and the transportation alternatives it would finance, might be viewed as a threat to those eyeing a market-based approach.
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