AJC.com > Talk of the town > Archives > 2007 > February
February 2007
Blame the slumlord, not the immigrant
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Which came first, the illegal immigrants or the crummy neighborhoods where they often live?
That’s the politically incorrect question local leaders are asking themselves these days as many older residential areas in suburban Atlanta deteriorate precipitously.
Some politicians have decided immigrant families are the reason for the decline. They’ve got it wrong.
The slumlords came first. If officials would target them and their properties, these neighborhoods could be revived.
Read the complete Mike King column and then tell us who’s responsible for neighborhood decline.
The PSC is not the CIA
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Georgia appears to be one of only two states that permit utilities regulators to have secret conversations with the people from the utilities they regulate. Angela Speir, one of five members of the Public Service Commission, has proposed rules that would limit such “ex parte” conversations, and it’s high time that the commission adopted them.
The rules are critical to every Georgian, because in cases that pit the interests of utilities against those of consumers, there’s no such thing as a level playing field. Read today’s editorial on the issue, and then tell us what you think:
Should commissioners conduct the public’s business out in the open?
Car exhaust beats cow exhaust
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Don’t like what comes out of a car’s tailpipe? How about what comes out of a horse’s tailpipe? University of Georgia economist Dwight R. Lee writes that we should all be grateful for the internal combustion engine, ‘cause what comes out of cars is pretty tame compared with what comes out of cows, horses and mules (including solids, liquids and gases).
Lee cites a recent report showing that livestock produce 18 percent of greenhouse gases that cause global warming — more than all forms of transportation combined. “And now we find,” he writes, “that by eliminating all those farm-yard animals, the internal combustion engine also eliminated vast amounts of methane-producing flatulence, which is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than the carbon dioxide produce by burning gasoline… . History will look kindly on the internal combustion engine as a major contributor to the steady progress toward a healthier environment.” Read the column
So what do you think? Is the gas engine the thing that saved us, the thing that is killing us, or both?
Should Genarlow Wilson be in prison?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Two years ago, Genarlow Wilson was convicted of aggravated child molestation: As a 17-year-old boy, he had had consensual oral sex with a 15-year-old girl. The conviction carried a mandatory 10-year sentence. Now, even the jurors who convicted Wilson wish they could take back the verdict, and the case has attracted national attention — most of it, but not all, focused on how to get Wilson out of prison.
Some state legislators have proposed a law that would enable the judge in Wilson’s case to reconsider the sentence, but the proposal has run into strong opposition among lawmakers who believe justice was done in the Wilson case. Read more about the case, and tell us what you think: Should Genarlow Wilson be freed from prison?
All aboard the taxpayers’ train
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Somewhere along the line, a notion took root in Georgia that it’s just plain wrong to use taxpayer money to subsidize rail service. That’s why MARTA receives no operating money from the state, and it’s also the argument trotted out by opponents of commuter rail.
Unknown to most Georgians, though, the state has quietly subsidized rail service for years, not for passenger service but for freight service in rural areas of the state. (See the special report from Sunday’s paper.) In fact, the state owns 540 miles of rail corridor, and spends millions of dollars upgrading its rail property for below-cost leasing to private rail operators.
Those state subsidies maintain freight operations that serve as lifelines for more isolated and economically struggling rural areas. But with traffic threatening to strangle Atlanta, the same could be said of state subsidies for commuter rail or extended MARTA rail service. What do you think? Are some forms of rail subsidy acceptable, while others are not? Or should all such subsidies be abolished?
All aboard?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A group of commuter rail advocates are staging a rally at the state Capitol Wednesday urging lawmakers to move forward with the Brain Train, a proposed commuter line between Atlanta and Athens. As proposed, the line would connect some of the state’s top colleges and universities, including Georgia Tech, the Atlanta University Center, Emory University, Georgia Gwinnett College and the University of Georgia.
The project has been on the drawing board for years, along with another rail line between Atlanta and Lovejoy. But a lack of support by state officials and lawmakers has so far kept the Brain Train from leaving the station.
Some Georgians think commuter rail lines are a waste of money in a region where most of us drive cars. Supporters say it’s high time for Georgia to start investing in alternative forms of transportation that can improve air quality and ease congestion.
Where do you stand? Is the Brain Train a good idea or would our transportation dollars be better spent building more roads? And, if we need to do both, how do you think we should pay for them?
Should DA accept Nichols plea deal?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard has refused to negotiate with attorneys for accused Fulton County courthouse killer Brian Nichols, who is willing to plead guilty if prosecutors will drop their plans to seek the death penalty, Nichols’ attorney say.
What do you think? Should the DA accept the plea agreement and spare taxpayers the cost of a lengthy trial? Or should prosecutors go forward to prove their case that Nichols killed a judge, court reporter, sheriff’s deputy and federal agent on March 11, 2005, and seek the death penalty.
I just don’t feel safe on MARTA
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
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Two weeks ago, after a pleasant, hassle-free trip to Hartsfield-Jackson on MARTA, I gave some thought to taking the train more often. Right now, my car is in the shop. Couldn’t I take MARTA rather than renting a car?
No, I won’t. It gets dark early, and I don’t take MARTA after the sun goes down. I don’t feel safe. It’s a rare day that I see a MARTA cop in or around a train station, and the lack of visible police leaves me feeling too vulnerable.
If I were a guy, I might feel differently. Call me paranoid, but as a female city dweller, I take a lot of precautions. (I lock my car doors before I crank up.) I need to see more police, around the stations and on the trains, before I take the risk of riding MARTA after dark.
Am I the only woman in Atlanta who feels that way? Let’s hear from men, too. Do you think MARTA is safe? What experiences have influenced your opinion?
(In today’s AJC: MARTA crime numbers show that someone is robbed or beaten up twice a week on MARTA property. )
Jay Bookman: Iraq, U.S. face catastrophe
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
By Jay Bookman
After years of silence, there’s finally serious debate in Washington over surging troop levels and nonbinding resolutions and benchmarks and tactics and everything else that has to do with Iraq.
But none of it matters, because it comes too late to make a difference.
After almost four years of war, the situation in Iraq has deteriorated to such an extent that it doesn’t matter anymore what is said or done in Washington. The best we can try to do is contain the chaos and minimize the coming tragedy, and we’ll be very lucky if we can pull even that off.
Unfortunately, leaders of neither party seem ready to think in those terms. While President Bush and his dwindling band of supporters can’t bring themselves to accept the true historic scale of their blunder, his critics still talk in simple terms of pulling out and coming home, themselves not fully comprehending the enormity of what we have done.
Here’s one likely consequence of our invasion: Regardless of who wins the current standoff in Washington, within 10 years and more likely within five years, U.S. forces will be back in the Middle East, fighting in numbers so large that only a draft will generate the necessary manpower. If that prediction proves accurate, we will remember Iraq as the rather tame prelude to the much larger and bloodier war that followed.
Here’s another likely consequence: Within the next 10 years, and more likely within five, the chaos touched off by our invasion of Iraq will choke off the flow of oil from the Middle East, which has roughly 57 percent of the world’s proven reserves. Such an event will have global economic and political repercussions that we can only imagine, perhaps touching off wars elsewhere around the world as well.
Slowly, reluctantly, intelligence analysts and experts are beginning to broach these realities with our political leadership. You can find hints of it, for example, between the lines of the Iraq Study Group’s report.
President Bush and other critics of the ISG report were correct — it did not offer a “path to victory” in Iraq. While the report does not say so explicity, ISG members clearly did not think victory is possible, and so they moved on to a larger goal: Finding a way to avoid the larger conflagration that they clearly fear is looming. All of their recommendations — from initiating talks with Iran and Syria to withdrawing to bases along Iraq’s borders — are meant to contain the chaos within Iraq, not achieve victory.
Otherwise, the ISG report warns, “Turkey could send troops into northern Iraq. … Iran could send in troops to restore stability in southern Iraq and perhaps gain control of oil fields.” It warned of “the distinct possibility of Sunni-Shia clashes across the Islamic world,” producing “a drop in oil production and exports [that] could lead to a sharp increase in the price of oil.”
The muted desperation that marks the ISG report is more explicit in a recent report from the well-respected Brookings Institution, written by Daniel Byman and Ken Pollack, who was once a prominent advocate of the Iraq invasion.
The report’s title is foreboding — “Things Fall Apart: Containing the Spillover from an Iraqi Civil War” — and its contents even more so.
As they began to study the situation in Iraq, write Byman and Pollack, they drafted a list of signs that would warn them that things had passed the point of no return. They then watched in horror as “indicator after indicator went from our drawing boards to Iraq’s daily reality.”
They now believe that all-out civil war is likely, and if it comes, “the only rational course of action … is to abandon Iraq’s population centers and refocus American efforts from preventing civil war to containing it.”
Even that limited goal may be unattainable, they warn. In their survey of recent civil wars, Byman and Pollack found a poor record of success in containing spillover into other countries. And unfortunately, “Iraq appears to possess most, if not all, of the factors that would make spillover worse rather than better.”
“Not planning now for containing the Iraqi civil war could lead its devastation to become even greater, engulfing not only Iraq but also much of the surrounding region and gravely threatening U.S. interests,” Byman and Pollack conclude.
Late last week, the U.S. intelligence community weighed in with its own equally stark report, called the National Intelligence Estimate. According to the declassified version of the NIE, Iraq is now embroiled in a civil war, although the NIE also points out that the term “civil war” is inadequate to describe the war of all against all now under way.
The only things that could alter the trajectory toward chaos are Sunni acceptance of their minority status, accompanied by significant concessions by Iraq’s Shiite majority, and both are judged by the NIE as unlikely to happen.
For four years now, U.S. decision-makers have been designing policies for an Iraq they saw in their fantasies. They have never been able to bring themselves to see that country as it exists and will exist tomorrow, and to make decisions on that basis. For the sake of a generation, that has to change.
Obama in the mainstream?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Cynthia Tucker’s Sunday column explores the many subtexts in Sen. Joe Biden’s recent remark about Barack Obama: “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”
Like so much of what spills out of our mouths when we’re not thinking, Tucker writes, Biden’s remarks illuminate something too long hidden — the tripwires and flash points around issues of race and class. Forget “clean.” Never mind “nice-looking.” The most intriguing word the Delaware senator used in describing Obama was “mainstream.”
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