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Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Because nothing eases a tense situation like a bottle of water and a coonskin cap
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Finally, Tennessee is cracking a smile.
Over the last few weeks, that state has reacted to Georgia’s call for moving their shared border a smidge north with a distinct lack of humor.
“Ill-conceived” and a “heinous assault on the sovereignty of Tennessee” was the wording of a resolution introduced Monday into that state’s legislature, according to the Chattanooga Times Free Press.
But today, the mayor of Chattanooga — portions of which would be gobbled up by Georgia were the southern state to get its way — decided to give ridicule a try.
Chattanoogan.com is reporting this:
The city of Chattanooga, facing a possible Georgia land grab as part of an effort to get access to the Tennessee River, is sending a truck load of bottled water to Atlanta.
Mayor Ron Littlefield said the water will be delivered on Wednesday by his aide Matt Lea wearing a coonskin cap.
The mayor has officially proclaimed Feb. 27, 2008, as “Give our Georgia Friends a Drink Day…..”
“Please know that we are willing to help our neighbors to the south with this complimentary truck load of water,” said Mayor Littlefield. “And along with this water, we want to send Georgia legislators a message that focusing on conservation efforts would be much more productive than an ill-conceived land and water grab.”
The water is being donated by the Chattanooga Choo Choo and others. The truck is on loan from a local automobile dealership.
Obviously, this must be dismissed as a publicity stunt. Serious diplomacy would include several cases of Tennessee whiskey to go with the water.
Also, we’ve come across a letter that state Sen. David Shafer (R-Duluth), sponsor of the border legislation, has sent to Ron Ramsey, lieutenant governor of Tennessee.
Ramsey had been quoted as saying that any border change would require approval of Congress and the legislatures of the two states — which the lieutenant governor called an impossibility.
Wrote Shafer:
“You may misunderstand the application of that requirement in this case. Neither the United States Congress nor the Georgia General Assembly has ever given approval to changing the border from the 35th parallel of northern latitude.”
No matter where he’s gone, Lewis hasn’t been able to escape the pressure
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
No doubt you’ve seen the report on ajc.com, in which the Rev. Joe Lowery says that U.S. Rep. John Lewis is ready to switch his allegiance to Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, and will announce it soon.
It’s impossible to imagine the pressure that Lewis has been under, but one of our AJC colleagues, Dan Chapman, caught a glimpse of it last Saturday at the Rev. James Orange’s funeral at the King International Chapel at Morehouse College.
Two hours into a five-hour service for the civil rights pioneer, Lowery was at the pulpit and wandered into the topic of Obama. He observed that most people in the chapel were eager to see a black American become president of the United States.
Then Lowery turned and smiled at Lewis, who was sitting behind him. Lowery remained silent for several seconds until the crowd got the joke, and began to applaud.
It was at the Orange funeral, Lowery said, that Lewis told him he’d move from Hillary Clinton to Obama.
Sonny Perdue on SCHIP: ‘Give us more money, but don’t expand past health care for kids’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Sonny Perdue was one of several governors to appear before Congress on Tuesday, to urge changes in the State Children’s Health Insurance Program — known as SCHIP nationally and PeachCare here.
Based on his prepared remarks, his was a mixed message. On one hand, Perdue said the funding formula for the program punishes success:
“Georgia has done well in implementing SCHIP. We’ve done too well - in fact, we’ve been penalized for it. We’ve enrolled so many kids in SCHIP that our percentage of uninsured children has dropped dramatically. As a state we’ve grown by over 1.5 million citizens since the inception of the program, however we’ve cut the number of uninsured children by over 22 percent.
“And because of a flawed funding model that partially bases states’ allotments on the number of uninsured children, Georgia, along with our neighbors like Mississippi and North Carolina, are facing growing shortfalls.
“The better you are at implementing SCHIP, the less funding you receive. If a state was 100 percent successful and reached all eligible uninsured children, its funding the next year would be drastically cut - because no children would be uninsured.”
But Perdue also condemned an expansion of the SCHIP program to adults — with all the passion of someone on a list of potential Republican vice presidential candidates:
“It is a grave mistake to expand taxpayer funded insurance to a level that undermines personal responsibility for those who are able to purchase private insurance on their own. By focusing funding and enrollment efforts on low income children, we are reaching those most in need, those who have no other options.
“It is not the role of government to provide health insurance for each and every citizen. Our role is to facilitate personal responsibility. We do this by giving people the information they need to make educated health care choices, and by creating tiers of options that help individuals graduate from public plans.
Vanity plates for out-of-state schools might be grandfathered, permanently
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Never let it be said that the state Capitol is indifferent to an angry constituency.
After some heated protests from voters who like to use their car tags to advertise their out-of-state college ties, we’ve picked up the first signs of some alterations to H.B. 1165.
We asked Jack Murphy (R-Cumming), chairman of the Senate Public Safety Committee about a possible Thursday hearing on the bill, which could bar vanity plates for out-of-state university alumni if neighboring states don’t make it easier for Georgia grads in their territory to do the same.
Murphy said details of the hearing are still being worked out. But he mentioned some changes that the bill’s two sponsors, state Rep. Barry Fleming (R-Harlem) and Senate President pro tem Eric Johnson (R-Savannah) are contemplating.
Should the bill pass as now written, out-of-state alumni would eventually lose their vanity plates once new ones are required. Johnson and Fleming are contemplating language that would grandfather in current plateholders, permanently.
Murphy acknowledged a heated lobbying effort at work, saying his office had been inundated with phone calls and e-mails.
Because beer is a Sunday tradition — but only if it’s surrounded by a stadium
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A bill to permit a new minor league baseball stadium in Gwinnett County to sell beer on Sundays is No. 6 on the Senate’s order of business today.
Look for its sponsors to immediately move to engross S.B. 454 — and thus prevent advocates of Sunday sales of beer and wine in retail outlets from expanding the measure through amendments on the floor.
On Monday, we ran into one lobbyist for the latter, who argued that — regardless of whether they win that technical battle — theirs is a win-win situation.
Even if S.B. 454 remains as narrow as it currently is, this lobbyist argued, the retailers will have this current crop of senators on record as supporting the sale of alcohol on the Christian Sabbath.
Speaking of which: We haven’t heard anything from religious groups on the Gwinnett stadium bill. But, supposing baseball to be akin to religion, some might consider a Sunday beer as a kind of sacrament.
