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Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Because fat kids must play their part in the economy
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine on Wednesday will air a television ad in Atlanta targeting U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss because, the group says, Chambliss is responsible for fat school children.
The ad, called “Dirty Little Secrets,” plays out not in a field of waving grain but in a public men’s room, spoofing the arrest of Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho), a member of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on agriculture, on charges that Craig solicited gay sex in an airport restroom.
“Secrets” is aimed at members of the Senate Agriculture Committee and the 2007 farm bill they drafted. The bill, Physicians Committee said, benefits corporations that produce fatty foods like ‘burgers and bacon that the government then buys and distributes to public schools and government assistance programs. In exchange, senators rake in fatty amounts of campaign cash from those corporations.
“Companies get rich, kids get fat,” the ad’s narrator intones.
But before “Secret” even aired on television the Physicians Committee came under a withering attack by the Center for Consumer Freedom as a fake public-health interest group that is really a front for the animal-rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA.
The Physicians Committee isn’t pro-kids, CCF said. It’s anti-meat!
CCF director David Martosko called the Physicians Committee “a bunch of chicken-saving extremists” and its ad “deceptive propaganda.”
“The phony Physicians Committee certainly chose a subject it knows something about: people who hide their true nature from the public,” Martosko said.
Walking and chewing gum at the same time: Speaker says yes, Senate leaders say probably not
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The two top leaders of the Senate on Thursday said that House Speaker Glenn Richardson’s proposal to eliminate property taxes in Georgia will probably swamp any talk of a new sales tax for fixing metro Atlanta’s transportation woes during next year’s session of the Legislature.
“There’s no question that the speaker’s proposal will dominate the session. And it could very well overshadow this issue of funding,” Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle said after addressing a House-Senate committee looking at transportation issues.
Senate President pro tem Eric Johnson said much the same thing a few hours later.
Richardson’s proposal, though the details have yet to be revealed, would eliminate property taxes levied by the state, local governments, and school systems in exchange for a single sales tax.
Piling on an additional sales tax, whether statewide or just in metro Atlanta, to address traffic woes, would be too much for lawmakers to tolerate — or so goes the thinking. Richardson disagrees.
He said the Legislature was entirely capable of walking and chewing gum.
“Surely we’re smart enough in this state to do more than one thing at a time. I hope we are. If we aren’t, we’ve got more problems than I thought,” Richardson said, after attending the same legislative committee meeting. “I think the Legislature is big enough and has enough backbone to take on more than one issue and put it out there for Georgians.”
Otherwise, Cagle and Richardson continued their unusual, hand-in-hand walk toward a reorganization of the way the state of Georgia approaches transportation — into territory usually reserved for governors.
Sonny Perdue addressed the group on Monday.
On Tuesday, both Cagle and Richardson dropped broad hints of big changes. Among Cagle’s points:
— “The thing that we have lacked is a vision,” he said.
— Federal cash for Georgia roads is currently divided equally among congressional districts. He wants that changed, with the implication that more money needs to be sent into metro Atlanta.
— “We cannot let a funding formula and a bureaucracy determine our needs,” he said.
Both Richardson and Cagle spoke up forcefully for low-cost HOT lanes — interstate lanes capable of taking traffic in either direction, depending on demand.
Richard’s statement to the joint legislative committee was shorter, and to the point. He was tired of proposals and counterproposals and counter-counter proposals.
“I do not intend to study transportation anymore,” the speaker said. “We’ve got to do something, even if it’s wrong.”
Richardson’s spokeswoman later called to make sure that reporters understood that he was using humor to make a point — that he’s frustrated by the lack of progress on transportation, and was not advocating the use of square wheels.
For transit insiders, the most important news may have come from Tommie Williams (R-Lyons), the Senate majority leader. Williams said he wants a reorganization of the state Department of Transportation — to create a more powerful head of the state road agency.
Currently, a legislatively appointed DOT board names a commissioner — as well as a chief engineer and treasurer. All four entities often have different and competing agendas.
Williams wants a transportation CEO, appointed by a DOT board. The CEO would name a chief financial officer, and a chief operating officer.
“I don’t know of any CEO that can function when he doesn’t have control of his subordinates,” Williams said. “Somebody needs to be riding herd there.”
‘Just thinking out loud, we ought to look at — what if Grady ceased to exist?’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
You knew the effort to rescue Grady Memorial Hospital was going too smoothly. Someone in the State Capitol needed to suggest that perhaps it wouldn’t be a bad thing to let the charity hospital just disappear.
“I think this whole thing of we can’t let Grady go under — we ought to think out loud about that,” said Senate President pro tem Eric Johnson of Savannah, the No. 2 ranking Republican in that chamber. “Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if it did go under. Maybe the phoenix that would rise in its place would be better than the hospital that’s there now.”
Johnson (R-Savannah) called a Tuesday afternoon press conference for the specific purpose of floating that thought. (Conspiracy theorists note: State Sen. David Shafer (R-Duluth), who has been digging into Grady’s contract with Emory University School of Medicine, left Johnson’s office just as reporters began to wander in.)
We’ll apologize in advance for the poor quality, but you can listen to a four-minute audio clip here.
A number of poker hands are being called here — the largest held by Georgia’s health care community, whose representatives have said that closing Grady would place an unbearable burden on other hospitals in the area.
Says Johnson:
“This view that ambulances are going to be driving the streets of Atlanta, trying to find a place to put a patient, isn’t right. Federal law requires any hospital to take whoever walks into their emergency room.
“Just thinking out loud, we ought to look at — what if Grady ceased to exist? Maybe something better would come along. I think the burden’s on them to convince those that they want to receive funding from, that the problems are being resolved. Otherwise, we might just test the capacity of other health care providers in the region.
Johnson spoke of “fixing the unfair contracts” that Grady has tied itself to — giving specific mention to the city of Atlanta and Emory University.
“Everybody agrees that restructuring is part of the solution. But who goes on the board, and who appoints the board, and whether that board is going to have Grady’s best interests in mind, has yet to be determined,” Johnson said.
More specifically, the Republican senator said, “Just going to a non-for-profit hospital that’s run by the same people isn’t going to save Grady.”
And? “The CTCA option to me is ….very viable,” Johnson said. CTCA is Cancer Treatment Centers of America was an outfit that decided it wanted to the state’s hospital licensing process waived last year so that it could build a private cancer-treatment hospital that would compete with major medical institutions in Atlanta, including Emory.
Translation: Johnson is suggesting that it might be time to think about privatizing the entire Grady operation. Under something other than Grady.
ADDENDUM: On Friday evening, Johnson sent this e-mail in an effort to clarify:
“I didn’t mean to claim that CTCA could take over Grady. They do cancer only. HCA or Tenant or others can manage it in a privatized manner. I was simply referring to CTCA as an example of ‘new’ partners who could help create a ‘New Grady’ - someone who could improve the image and attract paying patients.”
SCHIP invaded by illegal immigrants? House votes today
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
With the House set to vote today to reauthorize the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP, Rep. Nathan Deal (R-Ga.) has found a new reason to hate the bill. Illegal immigrants.
All of Georgia’s Republican congressmen voted against a similar bill in August that would have added at least $35 billion to the program, known locally as PeachCare, despite the program’s success and popularity at home. The vote today is on a compromise bill worked out by House and Senate negotiators
Taking their lead from President Bush, Georgia GOPers argue that SCHIP is a first step toward socialized medicine, a wild expansion of governmental powers and no longer doing what it was designed to do a decade ago.
Just hours before the House vote Tuesday, however, Deal warned his fellow congressmen in a “Dear Colleague” letter that the “deeply flawed” Democratic SCHIP bill would allow illegal immigrants to enroll in SCHIP and Medicaid at the cost of $3.7 billion over the next decade.
How would these illegal immigrants get into the program? Simple. A provision in the bill allows potential enrollees to show only a Social Security card - not documents proving citizenship - when they apply at the state level to get in the programs.
“While I am a strong supporter of the SCHIP program, I simply cannot vote for a bill that flagrantly encourages illegal aliens to break our immigration laws and fraudulently enroll in taxpayer-funded public assistance programs,” Deal wrote.
Meet Sonny Perdue: Rebel Republican
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Gov. Sonny Perdue is the star of an article in The Politico, which details a Perdue-led effort by the Republican Governors Association to seize the redefinition of the GOP from Washington types.
“I want to dispel you of the notion that I call this a re-branding campaign,” he told the reporter. “I’m calling mine a ‘Do what you say you are going to do’ campaign.”
“A small group of governors” will gather in Atlanta next month to look at new policy positions on energy, conservation, education and health care.
The article notes that the push from governors comes at the same time that the White House and Republicans in Congress are positioning themselves for budget confrontations with Democrats — particularly over health care.
Says Perdue: “People don’t want fights. They want people to solve problems with them. My simple philosophy is, people want good schools, safe streets, to feel protected and the opportunity for a good job. Then they want us to get out of their way. I believe that is a Republican message. I don’t believe that message has been repudiated.”
This explains why Perdue will be front and present with Newt Gingrich at the Cobb Galleria on Thursday, when the former U.S. House speaker launches what he calls an unprecedented, solution-oriented dialogue to confront the nation’s problems.
Gingrich has been invited to the October, small group meeting that Perdue his hosting in Atlanta. Other expected attendees include Govs. Mark Sanford of South Carolina, Charlie Crist of Florida, and Matt Blunt of Missouri.
Somebody go to a construction site and find out how to say ‘red tape’ in Spanish
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Remember how Gov. Sonny Perdue ditched a $1.6 million program to see that foreign languages are taught in a limited number of Georgia elementary schools? Instead, he decided that a $1,200 check for the same purpose should be sent to every elementary school in the state.
Except that, according to the Augusta Chronicle, the checks aren’t in the mail yet — even though the school year is well underway. And next year, they may disappear entirely.
“The money has not gone out because there is still kind of a dispute between the governor’s office and the Legislature about how that money should be assigned. Once they’ve resolved their differences, we will distribute that money in some method,” the newspaper quotes Dana Tofig, a state Department of Education spokesman, as saying.
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