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Friday, November 9, 2007
And now from the right…
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Rep. Jim Marshall, a Macon Democrat, took considerable heat from the political left after voting against an expansion of national program that provides health insurance to poor kids, including Georgia’s PeachCare.
Now he’s under fire from the political right for the same reason.
Catholics United will be running a radio ad in Marshall’s district on Christian radio stations saying that Marshall betrayed his pro-life position on abortion by voting against legislation that helps children.
Listen to the ad here.
The ad will air in a dozen other congressional districts nationwide, though all of the others are Republican incumbents. Marshall is the only Democrat to vote twice against the expansion of the States Children’s Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP, the parent program of Georgia’s PeachCare.
In the ad, a woman who identifies herself as a mother of three says, “I believe that protecting the lives of our children must be our nation’s No. 1 priority.”
“Congressman Marshall says he’s pro-life,” she says, “but for the second time in a month he’s voting against health care for kids. That’s not pro-life. That’s not pro-family.” Listeners are asked to contact Marshall.
The ad, directed at church-goers, could hurt in a toss-up district as conservative as Marshall’s. But Doug Moore, Marshall’s spokesman, said that despite the public criticism from the right and the left, “There are some folks who are pleased with what he’s doing.”
The ad will run Monday through Thursday on WFSH in Atlanta and on WDDO and WMCA in Macon to pressure lawmakers before Congress acts on SCHIP by Friday, when the temporary funding measure that has kept SCHIP open since Oct. 1 runs out.
Marshall said he voted against a $35 billion, five-year expansion of SCHIP because of the cost, the fact that it would rely on a higher tobacco tax to fund it and because the program has strayed from its original intention of helping the neediest children.
Catholics United ran similar ads after the first SCHIP vote a few months ago after which one of its targeted congressmen, Rep. Gene Taylor of Mississippi, the only other Democrat to vote against the measure, reversed positions on the second version of the bill.
Feds say Georgia misrepresenting drought
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Two federal agencies working on Georgia’s unprecedented drought let state officials know Thursday that they didn’t appreciate the way Georgia portrayed the regional water shortage as a fight between endangered mussels and the people of Atlanta.
There’s plenty of water for both man and mussel and Atlanta knows it, they said.
The first words out of the mouth of Earl Stockdale, the Army Corps of Engineers’ top lawyer, were blunt. Gov. Sonny Perdue’s public declaration that Atlanta had only 90 days of water left was just plain wrong, he said.
“Atlanta’s water,” he said, “is not in imminent - and I emphasize ‘imminent’ - danger of running out,” he said, though no one had asked him.
Meanwhile Sam Hamilton, the southeast regional director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife, said that the amount of water flowing out of Lake Lanier to Alabama and Florida, Georgia’s top concern, has nothing to do with preserving the mussels - as Georgia officials insist.
“That (flow level) was established before anything was listed” as endangered, Hamilton said.
Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, a Grantville Republican who set up the “roundtable discussion” for lawmakers from Georgia, Alabama and Florida, shot back that the lawsuit-wary Corps has done little to help resolve the 20-year-old, tri-state dispute over water sharing. It just doles out “pretty generic” information, he said.
In the briefest moment of cooperation between the states, Rep. Bud Cramer, an Alabama Democrat, indicated that he shared Westmoreland’s frustration.
“I believe the Corps is dedicated to driving us crazy,” Cramer said.
