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Monday, February 5, 2007
Post and riposte: More about that PeachCare letter
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
You know the one — written by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Details are a couple items down.
They demanded that President Bush come up with the roughly $1 billion needed to fill in Georgia’s PeachCare program, and the shortfalls in more than a dozen other states.
We ran into a Republican who knows Washington a bit. He says this is bad news. If Pelosi and Reid thought the money was there, there’s no way they’d demand that Bush come up with the funds — and thus win all the credit.
That letter was an assignation of blame, our friend said.
Suddenly, PeachCare gets wrapped up in the Iraq debate
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The $131 million hole in Georgia’s insurance program for kids may have just been tied to funding for the war in Iraq. How tightly, we don’t know yet.
You’ll recall that Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue, a Republican, last Thursday showed up before a U.S. Senate committee hearing to plead for continuation for the program — and said that the deficiency is on the federal side of the program. It’s a hole big enough to stop the Legislature in its tracks today, so that budget writers can sort out contingencies.
The same shortage exists in 17 other states, with a total cost approaching $1 billion.
We’ve already told you that Democrats who now control Congress are kind of miffed at Republicans, who they think dropped the whole thing into their lap.
On Friday, one day after Perdue’s visit to Washington, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi threw the hot potato to President Bush. They fired off a letter to the White House, alluding to the $100 billion emergency appropriation bill for Iraq that Bush is to send Congress’ way this month.
“As you consider the emergency needs of our nation, we respectfully request that you not forget the millions of low-income Americans who are insured under the State Children’s Health Insurance Program … We ask that you submit a separate spending proposal to cover shortfalls …which have been estimated to be $745 million,” the letter states.
Here’s the knife: “The governor of Georgia has written to us stating that ‘It is vitally important to our most needy citizens that Congress act expeditiously.’
“At the end of the last Congress, we were successful in including a provision to avert a similar crisis, but unfortunately, we are again in need of another short-term solution. While we plan to work in Congress later this year to reauthorize [the insurance program] and address longer-term issues, it is essential that you work with us to again provide a short-term fix. The cost of filling the funding shortfall is minor in comparison to your other emergency requests. [Emphasis ours.]
Things are getting complicated, and fast.
Blogwatch: A whiff of Obamamania
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jane Kidd, the new chairman of the state Democratic party, went to her first Democratic National Committee event this weekend, in D.C., and ran into that senator from Illinois that everyone’s talking about.
She invited him to the party’s annual fund-raiser, the Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner, on March 24. He said he hoped it would work into his schedule, says Blog for Democracy.
Barack Obama has been paying a great deal of attention to Georgia lately. We talked to one African-American political figure last Friday. He’d received two calls from Obama that day, trying to persuade him not to commit to Hillary Clinton.
If he should come, Obama might not be the only potential candidate to appear at th Dems biggest fund-raiser of the year. Spokesman Emil Runge said “several invitations” were in the mail.
Rumblings of boycott from the sports world
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
When sportswriters in Philadelphia encourage protests on the steps of the state Capitol in Atlanta, an issue has reached critical mass. Outside of Georgia, anyway.
Sunday’s editions of the Philadelphia Inquirer took note of a blog entry authored by Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks.
Cuban declared that he was boycotting Georgia - save for a March 25 meeting between his team and the Atlanta Hawks - until the state freed 20-year-old Genarlow Wilson.
Wilson is the star football player from a Douglas County high school, who at age 17, had consensual oral sex with a 15-year-old girl. A jury convicted him of aggravated child molestation, and a judge sentenced him to the maximum 10 years in prison. Wilson was one of six arrested after a night of partying.
Over the winter, Wilson has become a national cause celebre in the sports world. ESPN in particular has given the case much attention.
Many have drawn parallels between Wilson’s case and that of Marcus Dixon, an 18-year-old from Rome who spent 15 months in prison after being convicted of aggravated child molestation and statutory rape before the Georgia Supreme Court overturned his sentence.
“Genarlow Wilson was sentenced to 10 years in jail for doing something every 17-year old I knew, including me, tried to do. He is two years into this nightmare that only makes the state of Georgia a poster child for mistrust in government,” Cuban wrote. “There is no chance I do business in the state of Georgia beyond the commitment the Mavs have to play the Hawks until Genarlow is out of jail.”
But the sportswriter in Philadelphia noted that - except for the Mavs - the team owner has few other business interests in Georgia, making his threat rather empty.
“To the point, why not have the Mavs boycott the Hawks game to show how serious he was about standing up for Wilson?” the writer wrote. “To our surprise, Cuban e-mailed back that he’d ‘look into it.’”
Not that it’s likely to happen, discipline being so strict in the NBA. However, the paper had some other suggestions: “Have the players on both teams donate their game check amounts to help Wilson’s family pay its numerous legal bills. Have them go to the Georgia State House together before the game to show public solidarity for Wilson.”
State Sen. Emanuel Jones (D-Decatur) has dropped S.B. 37, a measure that would allow Wilson’s sentence to be shortened or suspended by a judge.
Talk about this amongst yourselves. We’ll pick out the most thoughtful responses and wrap them into separate posting late this afternoon.
