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Monday, January 26, 2009
Rush Limbaugh to Barack Obama: ‘Back at you’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Boston Herald posted this a few minutes ago:
Right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh took aim today at President Barack Obama’s warning to top Republicans that they need to quit listening to the conservative talker if they want to get along.
“Now this is the great unifier,” Limbaugh told listeners just after noon today. “This is the man who’s going to unify everybody and usher in a new era of bi-partisanship and love.”
“I think Obama wants me to fail,” Limbaugh said. “President Obama, by telling you and the elected Republicans in Washington to not listen to me because I am not how things get done in Washington, he has said that he wants me to fail.”
Last Friday, the New York Post reported that Obama — during a meeting over the economic stimulus bill — advised top GOP leaders to pay less heed to party ideologues.
“You can’t just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done,” Obama reportedly said.
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Rumor-killing in the 2010 U.S. Senate race
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Earlier this month, National Journal columnist Charlie Cook wrote a column, now posted on his web site, bemoaning the national GOP’s apparent rightward swing in the face of defeat.
Cook began with these two paragraphs:
A fellow who oversees lobbying in all 50 states for a major corporation recently told me about a certain Republican U.S. senator up for re-election in 2010, someone generally regarded as fairly conservative who might face a serious challenge from a very conservative fellow Republican. The incumbent has not been tainted by scandal, has never embarrassed himself by making a major mistake, is highly regarded in Washington, and is considered a very effective senator.
I was dumbfounded. Although it isn’t hard to see why a moderate Republican such as Pennsylvania’s Arlen Specter could face a conservative primary challenge, it is difficult to understand why a conservative Republican would be challenged from the right. This is a party in danger of cannibalizing itself.
Cook never named him, and so the vignette set off a great deal of Internet speculation surrounding the Republican senator’s identity — locally and nationally, among Republicans and Democrats.
Many political sites listed U.S. Rep. Johnny Isakson of Georgia as a possibility — along with Bob Bennett of Utah, Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, and John Thune of South Dakota.
When it came to Isakson, a discussion at Swing State Project mentioned U.S. Rep. Lynn Westmoreland as a possible challenger.
And Westmoreland does have a hard-right, grassroots appeal that has served him well so far. But he’s not about to challenge Isakson.
“Lynn’s 110 percent behind Isakson, and will be helping him every step of the way,” Chip Lake, Westmoreland’s chief of staff, said today.
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The end of an NYT marriage made in purgatory
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It doesn’t look like the marriage between neo-con Bill Kristol and the New York Times is working out.
Here’s Kristol’s lead paragraph for today’s op-ed column:
All good things must come to an end. Jan. 20, 2009, marked the end of a conservative era.
Here’s the non-Kristol note at the end:
This is William Kristol’s last column.
No word on whether the couple will engage in counseling, or whether another Grey Lady of journalism has acquired his affections.
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Listening in on the DOT board: Just ‘cause you’re paranoid don’t mean they’re not after you
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The board that governs the Georgia Department of Transportation convened itself over the phone late Friday afternoon.
And there was no mistaking, even without the help of body language, that this is an agency that feels itself under siege.
You know that a deal is brewing among Gov. Sonny Perdue, House Speaker Glenn Richardson and Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle to reorganize the myriad of state transportation agencies.
It’s the price the governor has set for his support of increased funding to address the state’s failure to address traffic congestion in metro Atlanta and elsewhere.
Details have yet to surface, but signs point to the designation of a supreme umbrella agency that would not be the semi-independent (and largely dysfunctional) GDOT — which currently receives the bulk of state and federal funding.
Through this new system, the Capitol triumvirate would assert control of transportation policy, and its billions of dollars, by diverting authority and cash away from GDOT. That could be done slowly or in one fell swoop.
Friday’s conference call focused on two pieces of Senate legislation — each involving an erosion of DOT clout.
The first was the TSPLOST proposal put forth by Senate Transportation Chairman Jeff Mullis (R-Chickamauga), which would permit groups of counties — metro Atlanta in particular — to band together to levy a one-cent sales tax to address traffic needs. (The House is working on an approach employing a statewide sales tax, to be unveiled Wednesday.)
DOT Commissioner Gena Evans informed her board that S.B. 39 and its companion measure, S.R. 44, would permit these transportation districts to choose which state agency holds their money: GDOT, the State Road and Tollway Authority, the Georgia Regional Transportation Authority — whatever.
So, little by little, GDOT could be cut out of all construction and planning. She continued:
Evans: One thing that worries me a little bit. Let’s say we have 10 of these [transportation districts]. We would set up 10 different trust funds for 10 regional programs.
That’s going to be a tremendous operational issue for us to try and work through, because needless to they’re going to be standing at our doorstep saying, here’s our local money, it’s in your trust fund, we want our projects to procede immediately.
Board member David Doss: You’re going to have GDOT, SRTA, GRTA— and anyone else, I guess — competing with one another to get that money. Let’s say there’s 10 of them around the state like you just said. GDOT’s running three of them and SRTA’s running four of them and GRTA’s running three of them. How are you going to deliver a statewide transportation system with a hodge-podge of projects and a hodge-podge of agencies, all with their finger in the pie?
Evans: That’s a good question.
Doss suggested the DOT board jump into the fray. Two other board members, Dana Lemon and Steve Farrow, warned that it would be unwise to step between the Senate and the House.
Replied a frustrated Doss: “I think if you want to stand on the sideline you ought to stay home. This sitting on our hands and saying — ‘Hey, guys, y’all do whatever you want to us, and we’ll be happy, we’ll just take whatever you give us’ — I don’t think that shows much leadership.”
Said Lemon: “That’s a bigger fight than we’re able to take on at this time, simply because of the nature of the board. At this time, I’m not sure we’’d be able to come up with a consensus on what approach would be best.”
Discussion moved on to S.B. 40, a bill sponsored Senate President pro tem Tommie Williams (R-Lyons). Williams has said the bill is intended to address private-public initiatives only.
Chris Tomlinson, the DOT’s general counsel, announced to the board that the measure “is designed to reduce the powers of the department, specificlally the board and chief engineer.”
The measure would allow the State Road and Tollway Authority to take control of “any project SRTA wanted to approve,” the DOT attorney said.
Much of the language is devoted to the conduct of public-private partnerships, he said. But the language of the bill “makes it broader than just those projects,” Tomlinson said.
Lemon, who chairs the DOT board’s legislative committee, indicated there would be no neutrality on this measure.
“I believe we’re going to have to come out with a public position on this bill, and we’re going to have to do it sooner rather than later,” she said.
