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Thursday, July 27, 2006
Redistricting, immigration, football bowl
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s Friday free-for-all. Pick a topic:
• The front-page headline writer confirms in three words what conservatives have long recognized: “McKinney’s grip weakens.”
• With the 25-year extension of the Voting Rights Act’s preclearance provision affecting Georgia and 15 other states, the idea of an independent commission to take the politics out of redistricting is, or should be, down the tube. Here’s the deal: Democratic districts are protected. The GOPs are available for nonpartisan redistricting. Sure. Some Republicans are dumb. But they’re not that dumb.
• Lottery sales increased from $2.92 billion to $3.17 billion in the fiscal year ending June 30. With bread costing $1.69 per loaf, that translates into 187 million loaves that poor folks and others didn’t eat last year.
• The Atlanta school board votes to revoke the charter of charter school Achieve Academy, which has about 170 students in grades 5-7. The board sided with a deputy superintendent’s opinion that the school lacked a sound curriculum, facility and financial plan. When my band of conservatives takes over, traditional public schools that fail to produce desired outcomes will suffer the same fate.
• Georgia ended the fiscal year by collecting $580 million too much. Of that, $400 million will be added to reserves. Good. The problem with running a surplus is that the temptation’s to spend it — on, say, a new social program, as Lt. Gov. Mark Taylor proposes.
• Oprah’s coming to Cobb County? Oh, opera. Dang.
• Toll roads are fine. With one condition: That the public’s gas-tax money not go to fund projects that can’t be justified on an honest cost-benefit basis. The temptation is to let the private sector relieve congestion while the public sector boondoggles.
• Cherokee Commission Chairman Mike Byrd expresses surprise that 62 percent of those who voted rejected tax allocation districts, like the one used to fund the Beltline in Atlanta. Exit polls showed voter concern about eminent domain and higher taxes. “Most of those [who voted no] didn’t know what they were doing,” said Byrd. Maybe they did. TADs should be used rarely and the ramifications to other property owners explained fully.
• Izzy was the ATL of its day.
• We don’t need Saddam Hussein. We have Howard Dean. Writes the former: “I see that officials of your administration are still lying to you and they still do not give you a true explanation for the reasons that motivated them to rush on the road of aggression against Iraq.” Give Saddam TV and he’ll see. There’s nothing he can say that’s not already being said here.
• I don’t get it. Somebody with a car lives in densely packed high- rise developments. Somebody with a car lives on a quarter-acre somewhere else. The former is supposedly a smarter choice for dealing with traffic congestion. Yet all those folks pour out and head in every direction — not in one, to downtown Atlanta, as they did eons ago, when buses and trains were a solution. Denser development equals more congestion.
• A question for liberals wrestling with whether there’s any threat, short of actual invasion, that would prompt them to take up arms: Do you believe the world is at war? If so, where are you? Neutral until after 2008?
• Surely the Republican majority in the U.S. House and Senate that stalled over immigration can now agree to a proposal that would create a temporary worker program and a path to citizenship — after President Bush certifies that borders are secure. That’s essentially the argument advanced unsuccessfully by U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) during Senate debate. As we all know by now, anything that smacks of amnesty won’t fly in the House.
• A new college football bowl may be in the offing. It would pit the eighth bowl-eligible team in the ACC against some other also-ran in the Big Ten. This is a joke, right? Where’s the punch line?
• Endorsement headline: “Crooks the better candidate for Cobb schools.” Shouldn’t “candidate” be plural? And isn’t the phrase “for Cobb schools” too limiting? One suspects he may have heard these name-play routines before.
• Jim Wooten is the associate editorial page editor. His column appears Fridays, Sundays and Tuesdays.
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Your war, not mine
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Throughout the war on terrorism and the most recent phase of Israel’s fight for survival, I’ve been struck by how difficult it is to develop national consensus — or even understanding — of what threats are so grave, or actions so reprehensible, that liberals would consider taking up arms.
It’s evident that liberals and conservatives don’t talk the same language. We see the same events differently. To conservatives, 9/11 was an act of war. To liberals, 9/11 was a criminal offense. We see Guantanamo detainees as terrorists who should be treated humanely but held until they no longer pose us danger. Liberals see them as suspects awaiting trial for ill-defined offenses that may be criminal. So it goes.
My sense of why liberals see the whole war on terrorism differently is that 1) it diverts resources and attention from the domestic issues they think more important, like global warming and auto gas mileage standards and universal health care and 2) it seems to be near impossible for liberals to frame any threat or circumstance, short of an invading army at the Port of Savannah, that would induce them to take up arms. They simply can’t.
In yesterday’s discussion, a few made half-hearted attempts to define that line-in-the-sand. One, rarringt, took a productive stab: peacekeeping actions for humanitarian reasons, defensive actions if an ally were threatened, offensive action if the U.S. came under direct assault or was threatened “by clear and convincing action.”
The majority of Americans have lived with peace so long, or unlike the Israelis have been able to sit out conflicts that didn’t fit with their lifestyles or value-judgments, that different languages and cultures have evolved, nurturing complacency, relativism and a remoteness that renders us incapable ot assessing threats. It’s no wonder that port security and container inspections, for example, are judged by some to be equally important and less threatening than, say, monitoring domestic calls from overseas terrorists.
For me, though, the quest goes on. It’s an important starting point in closing the gap between liberals and conservatives on the use of national power: What, precisely and clearly, other than a invasion of this country — all agree we’d fight back — would cause a liberal to take up arms? It’s not a test of patriotism. It’s not a trick question or one framed to provoke. And the answer, to be useful, can’t be historical. Give this nation something we can apply in the future.
