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August 2006
One bad week in August
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Just weeks ago, it appeared possible that Democrats might succeed in making Nancy Pelosi Speaker of the House this November — and if all broke their way, might even succeed in taking control of the U.S. Senate, too. While I’m no expert, my gut feeling is that — in the absence of some major disaster for Republicans and for President Bush — the approaching Labor Day weekend brings promising news for the party in power.
A recent Gallup Poll indicates that the two parties are about even in voter preference. Democrats still enjoy a slight lead, 49 to 44 percent in August, but in July and August the Democrats’ lead had been 13 points. If, as has been their pattern, Democrats come up with another empty hand in November, one week in August will loom large. That’s the week of August 7th. On Tuesday the 8th, with the defeat of Joe Lieberman, the national party reconstituted along the lines of a bumper sticker I saw recently: “I’m against the next war, too.” You can’t trust people like that in leadership positions.
Just as that shift was settling in on the American electorate, word came out of Britain that jihadists were plotting to blow up a number of airliners over the Atlantic. The two events, hours apart, turned the country from its drift to pacfiism, stabilized the President’s base, and reversed the Republican slide. It’s no surprise that, when he was in Atlanta last week, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) said the Senate’s attention between now and the election will be on security, not immigration, the hot-button issue through much of this year.
Incidentally, on another subject, throughout the early days of this blog, I was struck by how much the mere hint of religion sent many of our left-of-center contributors off the deep end. This was at a time, you recall, when Ralph Reed was a candidate and, because of his background, religion and politics were intertwined. Gallup clears up the mystery, such as it was. Interviews with 5,000 registered voters over the past three months reveals that frequency of church attendance is a strong indicator among whites of whether somebody is likely to vote Democrat or Republican. Frequent church-goers, on a generic ballot, prefer Republicans by a 24 percentgage point margin. Infrequent church-goers favor the Dems by 17 points. Non-whites, church-goers or not, favor Democrats by 59 points.
Two unrelated questions from the same poll: What trends, or possible events, favor Democrats or Republicans? And are we really that polarized by religion? And why? If so, that can’t be a good sign for the country.
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Fat government, fat people
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It’s not just government that’s bloated. We are too, according to an organization that tracks obesity state-by-state.
Eventually good fiscal conservatives will get a pork-loving Congress to diet. The first step is exposing earmarks, those pet projects slipped into appropriations bills by individual senators and representatives. One step in that direction would be to give President Bush the line-item veto, or at least the weaker version of it that passed the House, 247-172.
But we may be the bigger problem. America, in one generation, has gone from having a hunger problem to having an obesity problem. Eight of the 10 states with the highest obesity rates are in the South. In Mississippi, 29.5 percent of adults are considered overweight, highest in the country.
The question here is what, if anything, government should do about it? Among the recommendations are that government fund more sidewalks, change land-use laws so that people are tempted to walk or ride bicycles to the store or to work, mandate screenings for Medicaid beneficiaries, or put programs in schools to address the problem of overweight children. Employers, according to the organization gathering the data, should offer nutrition counseling and subsidize health club memberships.
It does make sense for government to manage wellness in Medicaid, PeachCare and other taxpayer-subsidized programs. That would include entering into long-term contracts with health maintenance organizations so that they have incentive to help people lose weight, thus reducing the cost to taxpayers of health problems associated with obesity, like diabetes and hypertension. The zoning, sidewalks, school curriculm and food-cop approaches have no appeal to me, nor do mandates on employers. If the private sector determines that its medical costs are reduced by subsidizing fitness center memeberships, it should. But that’s entirely between employers and their employees. We’re fat. What, if anything, should government do?
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Roadblocks won’t deter charter school
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
When the history of education reform in Georgia is written, the valiant struggle of parents determined to have an alternative to Atlanta public schools should be noted, for it is an example of the persistence required of pioneers and reformers.
Achieve Academy, the charter school the Atlanta Board of Education sought to close in July, was given new life by Fulton Superior Court Judge Constance C. Russell after parents challenged the board’s decision. The struggle now is to find a home, to reassemble staff and to attract parents, most of whom have already enrolled their children in traditional public schools, where classes started Aug. 14.
Principal David Morgan plans to have Achieve back together and running by next Tuesday in a new location. The school board denied Achieve parents permission to lease last year’s site, the old G. B. Peterson Elementary facility near Fort McPherson, a school that closed in 2004 because of low enrollment.
“From the taxpayers’ point of view, Achieve is turning out higher-performing kids at half the cost, and that school is sitting empty and is being vandalized on a regular basis,” says Glenn A. Delk, an Atlanta attorney who represented Achieve’s parents in contesting the school board decision. School officials have said they have other uses planned for the building.
When Achieve reopens, Morgan expects to have 200 children or more for grades 5-8, even though the new location will be “our fourth building in four years,” he says. “It’s been a team juggling act, but the reason we have been able to keep the overwhelming number of parents is because of the results we have produced year after year. They will go to the ends of the earth to keep this school going.”
Achieve’s predicament is partly self-inflicted. A former board of what was then called KIPP Achieve Academy decided last November to surrender the school’s charter. A new board notified the Atlanta school board that it wished to continue operations, but the APS board voted to close it. Parents sued and won a temporary injunction allowing Achieve to remain open.
Achieve’s struggle comes on the heels of a national study by the National Center for Education Statistics that fuels the debate about charter school performance. According to the data, fourth-graders in traditional public schools in 2003 did slightly better on average in reading and math than those in charter schools.
The center looked at 2003 data from 6,764 traditional public schools and 150 charter schools. After adjusting for family characteristics, such as income, traditional school fourth-graders scored 4.2 points higher in reading and 4.7 higher in math on a 500-point scale, according to the center.
The two sides of the charter school movement read the study differently. U.S. Department of Education officials called a news conference to distance themselves from it.
Jeanne Allen, president of the Center for Education Reform in Washington, said in an interview Friday that the study “flies in the face of everything we actually know about charter school achievement state-to-state.” She continued:
“In every state where we have data, charter schools are in fact beating their traditional school counterparts by several points, sometimes 10 or more … The comparisons that were made in the recent government study are false comparisons. They were apples-to-oranges. They did not have anything to do with whether students are achieving in charter schools. They told a story about how charter school students performed on one test at one snapshot in time.”
The poverty data used to adjust scores were “seriously flawed,” Allen said in an earlier release. “The education establishment — teachers, unions, school boards associations and more —tout these flawed studies in an attempt to discredit new school opportunities for parents.” She urged parents to look at state-level assessments to “get a real picture of student achievement.”
On those, Achieve students have fared well, says Morgan, and deserve the chance to continue. “As long as we are producing results,” he said Friday, “the public will be on our side. I don’t want the public to be on our side if we are not producing results for our students. All eyes are on us and now the real work begins, producing children who are intellectually capable of competing globally.”
At Achieve, he said, “We work hard and stay in school longer and make sure what we are teaching them is what they need to know.”
Pull for them, and for the children and for their determined parents. They are pioneers struggling to survive in a harsh educational and political environment.
• Jim Wooten is associate editorial page editor. His column appears Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays.
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You rule New Orleans
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Katrina a year later. Anniversary updates fill the news. It’s another opportunity to bash Brownie. You can pretty much tell the leanings of a news organization with a Brownie meter. If Brownie — former Federal Emergency Management Agency director Michael Brown — is central to the anniversary updates, it’s of the the view that it’s President Bush’s fault and he’s an amiable dunce for the “Brownie, you’re doing a heckava job” quote.
As the New Orleans Times-Picayune reports, fault has many fathers, extending back 300 years. My candidate for most deserved blame is not Brownie, but the bumbling mayor, Ray Nagin, and the indecisive governor, Kathleen Blanco, though Brownie is fair game. But we’ve fought that war for a year and it’s hardly worth resurrecting. The federal government simply cannot be the first responder in planning, managing and reacting to disaster. With a costly war on terrorism at hand, the prospect of funding the bureaucracy, and buying and prepositioning the equipment, required to do the job of a mayor and governor in the event of disaster is mind-boggling. And, besides, it’s doomed to failure, Brownie or not.
Two questions arise as this anniversary approaches. One is how fair and balanced the news media is in telling the Katrina anniversary story. And the other question may reveal the differences in how liberals and conservatives see problems and solutions. Suppose you rule New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina and are empowered to rebuild it as an experiment in liberal or conservative governance. What are the elements?
In mine, public education is radically overhauled and reconfigured. Parents are held responsible for the financial support and conduct of their children. No more public housing projects are built. Easy loans are available for home ownership and for start-up businesses, but to prepare purchasers faith-based organizations are invited in droves to provide counseling, training and support. Homes are built above Katrina waters or not at all; those below would be required to have unsubsidized flood insurance for the full replacement value of the home or business. The state and New Orleans take responsibility for the levees. The dependent are encouraged to find jobs and stay where they fled. New Orleans is a responsible, working city composed of people who recognize a hurricane’s danger, prepare for it, and leave when their lives are at risk.
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Nuclear power makes sense on all levels
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Drive through a pine thicket in rural Burke County and two markings suddenly appear, spray-painted in bright surveyor’s-tape green, a few feet apart. If all goes well, this spot of ground on 3,150 acres near Augusta will within a decade be the epicenter of a third nuclear reactor, a key element in America’s drive for energy independence.
Nearby will be a fourth — if the numbers work and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission approves the application by Southern Co.’s nuclear power subsidiary, Southern Nuclear Operating Co., to construct two reactors a short distance from the two that have operated safely at Plant Vogtle near Waynesboro for almost 20 years.
To jump-start the industry, which has been skittish for decades because of concern about regulatory obstacles and the willingness of the investment community to take risks on nuclear energy, especially when natural gas appeared to be readily available and cheap, Congress offered incentives. The first two nuclear plants constructed will be eligible for generous tax credits, loan guarantees and insurance protection against delays caused by litigation or the licensing process. The next four would qualify for lesser subsidies.
“There’s a reason there are 25 nuclear applications on the table today when there were six a year ago,” said U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) during a visit to this newspaper Wednesday. “And it is that you can do things by reducing the regulatory burden” and by offering incentives that attract private capital. “There’s no emissions, no global warming, no side effects to it, it’s equally safe and per kilowatt hour is as cheap or cheaper” than alternatives, so “capital will flow there once we reduce the regulatory burden.”
Part of the skittishness, too, is that Vogtle was under construction when the partial meltdown occurred at Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island in 1979. As a result of shutdowns, design changes prompted by new regulations and other delays, construction stretched to some 14 years and the costs ballooned to $8.87 billion. Its projected cost before Three Mile Island was $600 million. The two units at Plant Hatch near Baxley came on line in 1975 and 1979 and cost about $1 billion.
In the decades since Three Mile Island, design and technology have changed. As one example, the partial meltdown there occurred because several water coolant pumps failed, causing the reactor to overheat. Now, gravity drops the cooling water, replacing the pumping system that failed at Three Mile Island.
Design and construction now are much more standardized, and while as many as 13,000 construction workers were employed in building Vogtle, now about 30-40 percent of the proposed new facilities would be built in modules off site and shipped in, reducing the on-site work force to 1,500 to 2,000.
Safety, though, has not been a question for some time. The issue has been permanent disposal of spent fuel, which is now stored underwater on site at Vogtle. The obvious site is Yucca Mountain in Nevada, where it could be stored a thousand feet below ground. The site has been studied since 1978, and because of objections by environmentalists and politicians, it’s not scheduled to begin accepting spent fuel from the 104 operating nuclear plants until 2017.
“It’s the most studied piece of real estate known to man,” says Lou Long, technical support vice president of Southern Nuclear in Birmingham. Utilities’ customers have paid $20 billion — $90 million by Georgia Power customers alone — to develop Yucca Mountain for storage, $14 billion of which has been spent on studies.
Clearly the nation does need to move promptly to get back into the nuclear power business in a major way. In France, 78.1 percent of electricity comes from nuclear. It’s cheap, clean, safe and efficient. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Belgium gets 55.1 percent, Japan 29.3 and the United States 19.9. About three-fourths of this nation’s emission-free power generation comes from nuclear.
Georgia Power adds 40,000 customers per year, and that’s about half the new customers coming online in Georgia yearly. The two 1,200-megawatt reactors at Vogtle alone generate about 11 percent of its electric-power needs.
The nation has been timid too long. Company officials have made no decision yet on whether to add the two reactors at Vogtle. The correct decision, for Georgia and for the nation, is yes. Build.
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Neighbors, surveillance, Katrina cash
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s free-for-all Friday. Pick a topic:
• Peace is at hand. Jesse’s there. Ship in Madeleine Albright, who charmed Kim Jong-il out of his nuclear ambitions, and it’s a lock. Guys, gals, you’re coming home.
• You know the United States is weak when Fidel Castro’s brother, Raul, threatens us. This is the world we will live in if the appeasers prevail. Maybe it’s something in the water: Lebanon’s defense minister warned Hezbollah not to break the cease-fire with Israel, lest they be subject to “harsh measures,” presumably from his government.
• Bob Bruegmann, architecture historian and urban planner at the University of Illinois at Chicago, has metro Atlanta pegged perfectly: “What you’re seeing in Atlanta is the building of a new generation of downtowns. The best way to think about it is not city vs. suburbs, but a process of constant decentralization.” The ancient notion that has hampered most all thought about Cobb, for example, and Atlanta is that one is the downtown and the other is the suburb. We’re neighbors. That’s it. Not dependents. Neighbors. Not spoke-and-hub. Neighbors. Not satellites. Neighbors. Quit calling me a suburb, neighbor.
• A headline for all armies, all time: “Grumbling from Israeli soldiers.” About food and equipment.
• When I hear that a federal judge has ruled, as U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor did, that warrantless surveillance of calls from overseas by suspected terrorists is unconstitutional, my first question is: Who appointed her? Answer: Jimmy Carter. Appeal. The second question is: What’s her politics? Ah, as Judicial Watch pointed out, she’s a trustee of a foundation that gave grants to a branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, a party to the suit. Disciplinary action is warranted, before or after her decision is thrown out.
• Three reasons not to levy taxes: 1) Atlanta; 2) the federal government; 3) no care, no oversight. When given $5 million in free money to spend rehabbing houses for the handicapped, elderly or poor, Atlanta blew it. It’s not real money. It’s from the feds. Rip it off. A massive shutdown of federal spending programs is needed.
• Georgia state Sen. Don Balfour (R-Snellville) is the lone Republican among the top 10 legislators with campaign finance late-filing penalties. There’s a lesson here, young people. When you get into trouble, see who’s there with you. If they’re not what you want to be, change your behavior.
• Good for DeKalb and for CEO Vernon Jones, who proposed a $100 fine if talking on a cellphone is a contributing factor in a wreck. Commissioners upped it to $500 and passed it into law. A majority of the drivers out-of-synch with traffic are on the phone.
• Headline: “Media new front in war on terrorism.” Absolutely. Wars are won on the battlefield and lost in the translation. The administration and the military should do everything legal, moral and ethical to influence the media — here and around the world.
• About 40 percent of the $111 billion allocated for Katrina recovery has been spent. A problem? Nope. Not in the least. Some bureaucrat should stand to lose his job, and some recipient should be fined or go to jail, for misspent money. The “shovel it out the door” period is over.
• Two environmental groups want Georgia Power Co. to raise my bill to generate up to $9 million per year to fund grants and loans to groups working on renewable energy projects, such as wind and solar. The state has wisely declined. This is an example of how interest groups would use the private sector as tax collector to fund off-budget the social programs they want. Conservatives should always oppose this tax gimmick.
• Bring me some more of those little itsy-bitsy gas-nipping minicars. On second thought, not just yet. Fatalities on U.S. roadways in 2005 reached the highest level in 15 years, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reports. The biggest jump, though, was among motorcyclists, where fatalities were up 13 percent. Roll back helmet laws, as Florida, Texas and Pennsylvania have done recently, and deaths go up.
Who’s surprised? States should repeal helmet laws — only after riders sign living wills, show unsubsidized biker-pool insurance coverage adequate to cover their medical bills and vegetative-state nursing home care and produce affidavits from their spouse, parents and children renouncing any claim to taxpayer-funded survivor benefits.
• Jim Wooten is associate editorial page editor. His column runs Fridays, Sundays and Tuesdays.
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‘I can’t keep quiet on this’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It may drive his critics nuts, but to supporters who believe that no alternative exists but to win the Iraqi phase of the war on terrorism, the President’s promise this week that the U.S. won’t abandon Iraq on his watch is just the reassurance the country needs — this country and Iraq. “We’re not leaving so long as I’m the president,” he declared.
U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) brought his colleague, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) by the newspaper Wednesday to talk about Iraq and a host of issues. Frist was quizzed about the call-up of Marine reservists and the allocation of more U.S. troops in the effort to quell a high level of secretarian violence in Baghdad, which according to U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad saw 558 violence incidents in July “a 10 percent increase over the already high monthly average.” Said Frist: “I err on the more optimistic side” but “I don’t think we’ll know for another 2-3 months what the impact will be.”
Isakson, who had sat silent throughout the conversation with Frist, spoke up. ” I’m sorry, I can’t keep quiet on this,” he said. “The terrorists and those that are trying their best to attack us – and a lot of that is coming out of Iran – are concentrated on Baghdad. It’s a reflection of the success we’ve had in the majority of the country. If you confront that concentration now with the appropriate force and in conjunction with the Iraqi army and you can break its back, it has the chance to be a very optimistic result. If you turn the other way and say you’re failing, then you’ve handed them a victory. You have to remember the terrorists don’t have to beat us to win. All they have to have us do is quit and go home and they declare victory. You saw what Hezbollah did in South Lebanon.”
It is important for the country to recognize that Iraq is a phase, a front in the war. From the start, critics have attempted to draw a distinction between it and the larger war. A New York Times/CBS News poll this week indicates they’re having some success. In it, 51 percent of those surveyed say they see no link, up 10 percentage points since June; 53 percent say it was a mistake, up from 48 percent in June.
Sometimes the only course is to plod ahead — the course Bush has chosen Certainly the stakes are high in Baghdad, where a fifth of the Iraqi population lives. As Isakson observes, the threshold for victory for the terrorists is low, just as it was in Lebanon. Suppose we do begin, as Democrats insist, an early “redeployment” from Iraq. What are the consequences to our national security, to the policy of preemption, to our role in the Mideast, to our standing in the world? I think it would be a disaster worse than Vietnam. But others on this blog have different views. Enlighten us. What do America, the world and domestic leadership look like after an early withdrawal from Iraq?
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Can we talk about prejudice?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
In his plea for forgiveness, Andrew Young made an interesting point. “Any ethnic reference — no matter how well-intentioned or objective in its original utterance in print, on television or in our Internet blogosphere — becomes fodder for scandal and infamy.” His reference was, of course, to the remark that Jews, Koreans and Arabs had ripped off blacks in ghetto grocery stores.
Unless discussed openly somewhere, the prejudice that slipped out of Young and of Mel Gibson earlier does sit unchallenged, perhaps to be passed on from generation to generation. Of all the civil rights survivors of his era, Young was the most sophisticated, the most broadly exposed to the corporate world and therefore the one with the most balanced view of capitalism and free markets. To find that he still harbored not only the resentment but the misunderstanding of a market economy, even after taking Wal-Mart’s money, is a bit of a surprise. And the kind of thinking that presents a real obstacle to building a durable conservative majority.
I’ve been in ghetto markets. I’ve shopped there. In today’s world, you couldn’t give me one. The personal risks are enormous. They strike me as street-corner versions of the liberal resentment of corporate success, fostering still the attitude among customers that Young expressed: ethnic — or corporate — exploiters are getting rich and moving on. But, noted Kevin Young Sup Park, president of the Korean American Association of Greater Atlanta, last night, Korean and other immigrants have served in areas no one else would. “We were there. We didn’t have money to move out and open big grocery stores. We worked six or seven days a week.”
The question Young’s remarks and his apology prompt is a simple one. Is it possible to discuss prejudice or any other sensitive topic with any degree of intellectual honesty in a way that leads to resolution or at least understanding? Or is it an issue destined always to devolve into shouted epithets and slogans? I can’t get away from the Georgia Tech speech code. Is it better to force people, an Andrew Young or a Muslim fanatic included, to hold “hate speech” or prejudice in, or to get it out in the open?
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High-density growth makes knots tighter
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The development community, astute folks who know how to survive and prosper in a world of crazed no-growth activists and cost-shifting regulators, often do it by cloaking their projects in the language of their critics: smart growth, live-work-play communities and sustainable development, among others.
It all adds up to density, though — high density, like much of that now cropping up along I-285 on the Northside. It’s transportation disaster in the making. The highway capacity doesn’t exist to carry current traffic, much less that to be generated by the new spate of high-rise development: 1,200-unit condos, 12- and 18-story condo projects. Buses and trains aren’t a solution.
The fact of life in metro Atlanta is that there is no single downtown, no employment center where people are drawn in the morning and out in the evening, making public transportation a realistic option. In metro Atlanta, we move hither and yon to destinations that public transit can’t reasonably or effectively serve. The best hope for relief is to fix traffic bottlenecks, to continue building a limited-purpose rush-hour public bus system and to reconsider high-density development that exceeds highway carrying capacity.
The American Public Transport Association, an industry group, reports that gas now at $3 per gallon is increasing ridership — up 4.25 percent in the first quarter. Salt Lake City is asking public approval this fall to borrow $900 million to add 30 miles of track, one phase of a project expected to cost $1.2 billion. But for $1.2 billion, Salt Lake City connects point A to point B, serving the few who travel between those points when trains run, while doing nothing for those who travel A-to-C or C-to-G, or any other combination.
Metro Atlanta does need toll roads. It needs gas-tax money to fix the bottlenecks on a cost-benefit basis, and it needs the private sector to expand capacity — even double-decking the Downtown Connector, a perennial traffic stop. And it needs, too, what the SUV-haters call “alternatives” — buses, trains and the like — but to the extent they can be justified by honest cost-benefit comparisons.
The issue all along has not been whether the private sector should be invited to help provide congestion relief. The question has been when and where and the relationship between the public and private sectors. Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Ariel Hart took a look Sunday at what that relationship has been in other states. All provide some guidance. Two in particular offer lessons in what not to do.
One is the Chicago Skyway, a 99-year lease with Spanish and Australian companies to provide $1.8 billion in cash, at least $100 million of which went to provide social services. That is a perfect example of the kind of public-private relationship that should prompt voters to throw politicians out of office by the bus loads. “Selling” or providing 99-year leases on public assets is nothing more than a sleazy way of hiding public debt while enriching the bond lawyers.
In one sense government is not like a business. It can’t write off debt. Debt should be acquired to build the schools, fire stations and jails that will enhance the quality of life for present and future generations. But it should not tax future generations for present consumption, which is what it does when it “sells” projects taxpayers have already financed. The underlying asset — the Chicago Skyway — could have been a toothpick. It’s merely a financial transaction that allows a loan agreement to be created. Bad. Always bad. It’s why taxpayers have to be careful in policing public-private business relationships.
The other project of particular interest is California Route 91, the first example of congestion-priced lanes in the country when it opened in 1995. The private sector added express lanes with tolls parallel to existing lanes. Part of the contract, however, prevents the state from adding more lanes or streets nearby that could ease congestion. No contract the state signs here should prevent future legislators and governors from taking whatever steps necessary to keep gridlock from becoming an obstacle to growth and prosperity.
The private sector is a friend, a key element in eliminating gridlock. But once the deal is done, government essentially moves off-line. The proper time to police both the politicians attempting to build legacies on the cheap and businessmen determined to cut the best deal possible for themselves is up front.
As for high-density development, it should be held in check until we know that the carrying capacity of roads and highways is adequate to serve the added traffic. Buzzwords and feel-good marketing phrases don’t cure what ails us in metro Atlanta — and that’s traffic gridlock.
• Jim Wooten is associate editorial page editor. His column runs Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays.
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The Dixie Chick of Politics
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Once upon a distant time, oh, say, 15 years ago, no figure more noteworthy than a Dixie Chick would dared have stood on foreign soil — or chosen a foreign publication — to criticize a sitting President of the United States. Wouldn’t do it. We disagree amongst ourselves but for an American of standing, it is disloyal and disrespectful to stand on foreign soil and undermine the foreign policy of the United States of America.
That was before Jimmy Carter and the embittered anti-war evolution of his party, the “vast majority” of whom he professes to represent. Having previously spoken in opposition to President Bush abroad, the former president unloaded last week in the German magazine DER SPIEGEL. “There is no doubt that this administration has made a radical and unpressured departure from the basic policies of all previous administrations including those of both Republican and Democratic presidents,” Carter told the magazine. “Under all of its predecessors there was a commitment to peace instead of preemptive war.”
Carter, 81 years old, goes on. And on. On Israel: “I don’t think that Israel has any legal or moral justification for their massive bombing of the entire nation of Lebanon.” On Christian conservatives: “The fundamentalists believe they have a unique relationship with God, and that they and their ideas are God’s ideas and God’s premises on the particular issue. Therefore, by definition since they are speaking for God anyone who disagrees with them is inherently wrong.” And from there it goes downhill. Bad Christians. Bad administration. Evil. They bad, Carter good.
Listening to Carter is about like listening to Andrew Young, 74 years old, as he talks about the Jews, Koreans and Arabs who ran mom-and-pop stores in the ghetto. At some point you just want a respectful press corps to say: “shut off the microphone; they’re sounding really old and bitter.”
In the political rancor of the past 15 years or so, we’ve lost a great deal. In so many instances, it’s not men and women who are from Mars and Venus. It’s liberals and conservatives. At some point, the loyal opposition must reemerge as force that can oppose without becoming completely unhinged, and ex-Presidents, recognizing that they had their shot, will hold their tongue. As a reminder that conservatives and liberals exist in different worlds, in mine ex-Presidents would rather cut off their tongue than use it to criticize the sitting President abroad, especially in time of war. Today’s question about the old guys is this: Is it time to shut up and go away? And I wonder, too, whether we can ever get back to the principle that Americans of standing — entertainers and celebrities excluded — don’t criticize their country or its policies on foreign soil.
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Black middle class forges its own identity
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It’s not a promise, but if all goes well it’ll not be necessary to mention a tired, old subject — Cynthia McKinney — again. Well, until she speaks, as she did Tuesday in Augusta, insisting on an end to crossover voting and runoffs, which she considers a violation of the Voting Rights Act.
“How is it that I could win election and get kicked out, win election and get kicked out because Republicans can cross over and vote in the Democratic primary?’ she was quoted by Kate Brumback of the Associated Press as saying at an Augusta event sponsored by the Rev. Al Sharpton. “If Republicans work that hard to get rid of me, I got to be doing something good for you.”
Runoffs absolutely should be kept. They violate nothing. And it is self-delusional to believe that Republicans were anything more than spectators in what remains the most significant Georgia political story since the Democratic Party’s swift implosion, following the surprising win by Gov. Sonny Perdue four years ago. The story of a seminal event, not fully detected in advance by anybody, is of the political transformation of the black middle class.
If one election could be said to be the dividing line between the era of “civil rights leaders” and the world to come, in which situational leaders emerge and fade as issues dictate, it was this one in Georgia’s 4th Congressional District.
The Latino community may develop, and probably will, with individuals, or a tiny few, designated by the media as spokesmen in the same way the media once decided that certain individuals — a Jesse Jackson, an Al Sharpton or Cynthia McKinney — were to be spokesmen or women for a people who lacked the voice or forum to speak for themselves.
We see it happening already. Latinos in leadership positions, whether they’re Democrat or Republican, are expected to think alike on issues such as illegal immigration or education or government programs.
With that election, the high-profile “truth to power” celebrities, such as McKinney, Jackson, Sharpton and others of the old order, just became yesterday’s news. They have lived long enough to see the cutting edge of the new day dawning.
Like former Georgia House Speaker Tom Murphy in his waning years, they still have the potential to cause trouble or to focus attention, but the end is nigh.
It was the runoff that hastened the process. Otherwise this incumbent, any incumbent, has a material advantage against any challenger.
The incumbent generally has the largest bloc of voters, the best organization and the most money. In a crowded field, the incumbent wins. So while the majority may prefer somebody else, without the runoff an incumbent with a diehard band of followers is always advantaged.
Runoffs allow the majority to speak. Mc-Kinney led 47.1 percent to 44.4 percent in round one. She lost in the runoff, 58.8 percent to 41.2 percent. Almost 60 percent preferred somebody else. And yet, had the race been over after the first round, the majority would have been denied .
Incumbents, even the Republicans under the Gold Dome who are no fonder of opposition than are the Democrats they replaced, may very well consider eliminating the runoff. Voters should resist. It serves a purpose. It assures the election, or the nomination, of a candidate the majority supports.
Yes, it’s an additional expense. But it’s an expense easily affordable.
In her Augusta remarks, McKinney blamed her defeat as well on electronic voting. She sees in them the same evil lurking as she sees in, well, lots of stuff. Irony of ironies, it was her fellow Democrats who rushed to spend $54 million to buy the machines just before the 2002 election because their voters were having trouble following instructions on paper ballots.
And, as they saw it, they were leaving votes on the table at a time victory margins were narrowing. Sure it would have been more prudent financially to wait until machines could produce the paper trail she and I want. But this was about political advantage.
“It’s critical that you know that you have no way of being sure that your vote was counted,” she told the 200 or fewer people who attended Sharpton’s National Dialogue and Revival for Social Justice in the Black Church.
The black middle class that spoke Aug. 8 is not one that can be pigeonholed or stereotyped. It’s complex, nuanced, sophisticated with a hundred voices and altogether unlikely to see politicians as their conduit to wealth or security.
McKinney sees the world in conspiracies. They don’t. In a day and time past, her worldview and her spin might have been theirs. In a day at time past.
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Free speech, nuclear Iran, Ramsey case
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s free-for-all Friday. Pick a topic:
• Developers who default on a $6.3 million loan are going to build a $675 million amusement park, hotel, condo and retail project in south DeKalb County? Sure. Show me the money, not the drawings.
• I don’t much care when minor celebrities split, and I’d just as soon they not feel obligated to blurt out their sexual preferences, either. Some information should be parceled out on a need-to-know basis.
• Since our taxes pay for law enforcement, regardless of level, it’s hard to be too upset that Georgia Bureau of Investigation and State Patrol officers are leaving “in droves” to take jobs with the feds or local governments.
• When next we convene in the territory commonly called “suburbia,” we must wring our hands in exaggerated worry about the lack of diversity inside the beltway. Atlanta’s foreign-born population is 9 percent, half that of DeKalb and Cobb counties and a third that of Gwinnett. Y’all can’t keep living in those sterile cocoons and expect to know how to act when exposed to diversity outside the Perimeter.
• No, real conservatives don’t write laws telling high schools when it’s too hot to practice football. That’s busybodiness.
• Headline: “Perdue deal has rich potential.” Or: “Perdue deal a potential bust.” Either’s true. And is anybody surprised that Democrats who laid out the information would then demand a state and federal investigation? Put the U.N. oil-for-food investigative team on it, too.
• True, too: Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres’ assertion in Atlanta that future fighting in Lebanon is inevitable despite the current cease-fire. We all hope, as he declares, that the damage to Hezbollah is probably worse than reported. Otherwise, Hezbollah, Syria and Iran win, and it’s hard to see the Ehud Olmert government surviving. Seventy percent of Israelis oppose the cease-fire.
• Wow! McNair Middle School in DeKalb County has more than 700 serious disciplinary incidents per 100 students — those being vandalism, thefts, fights, drugs, knives and guns. Avondale High School has more than three per student, as do Columbia Middle and Bethune Middle, all in DeKalb. State prisons are bound to have fewer. But I’m torn: praise them for honesty or tell parents of the young’uns to run. Lots of lying goes on when schools are asked to report same.
• Headline: “Insults allowed at Georgia Tech.” Yes. Or free speech. Nobody designated universities to be speech police, in dorms or elsewhere. Nor have they invited a self-anointed group of lawyers and others to police speech in judicial races, as they do. Go away.
• Condos over retail is the urban rage. What’s needed, though, is condos over sanctuaries in downtown churches. Marietta City Council last week rejected a proposal for a 50,000-square-foot megachurch on eight acres near downtown. That is an awful lot of valuable space to go unused for so much of the week.
• Nope, says Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran won’t give up uranium enrichment. “We are fully mastering the nuclear fuel cycle for our peaceful atomic activities,” said he. “No one can take it away from us.”
Sooner or later, four years at the most, Iran will have to demonstrate convincingly that it’s no threat to Israel or its neighbors — or the threat will have to be dealt with. How long do we have to finish the job in Iraq? Until the day before Iran has nuclear weapons capability.
• “Sustainable” applies to development, not transportation. Or so we might surmise from the news that MARTA officials, with a once-in-a-decade surplus of $19 million, wish to spend it expanding service. Which, of course, will be cut when the inevitable hard times return. Save the surplus.
• Sandy Springs gets its parks from the county for $16,000. A fair price. A fair resolution. But as always the case with the Fulton County Commission, it couldn’t come without a dose of political hate, spite and envy.
• Is life fair? It’s indiscriminately not. Patsy Ramsey is proof. She lost a child and then endured years of entirely unwarranted suspicion. And sadly, she’s no longer here for the acknowledgment she’s due.
• Jim Wooten is the associate editorial page editor. His column runs Fridays, Sundays and Tuesdays.
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Flavored condoms recommended
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“Safer sex, condoms, dental dams and masturbation — welcome to college!” Such is the cheerful greeting parents and students arriving for fall classes at the University of Georgia from Sexual Health Coordinator Michelle Cohen. She’s available for consultation, but has some advice for the general audience: “Condoms can be used for protection during oral, vaginal and anal sex (I recommend flavored condoms for oral sex)…. Dental dams (rectacular, thin pieces of latex) can be used when performing oral-vaginal or oral-anal sex (these can be found in the Health Promotion Department)” where she works. Free condoms, too. “Remember,” she concludes, “safer sex is better sex!”.
When asked later about the reaction of parents and whether it’s appropriate for a university official to recommend flavored condoms for oral sex, Ms. Cohen said she’d received no negative reaction from parents or anybody else. “To the contrary, I have received positive feedback regarding the information I shared” in the Red & Black campus newspaper. She continued:
“According to 2005 National College Health Assessment data, 68.9 % of UGA students reported engaging in oral sex, yet only 2.8 % report using a condom the last time they did…. Promoting use of flavored condoms encourages use of condoms for oral sex.”
Actually some parents did react negatively. “I was heartsick when I saw that,” said one. “That article —written by someone who I assume is paid by taxpayer money — was so unbelievable that I wanted to just pack my child up and take her home.”
OK, I’m conservative. But I’m with the parent. Here we have at Georgia Tech a university-imposed speech code that, until it was thrown out by a federal judge this week at the behest of two conservative students, prohibited dorm conversation school officials thought “intolerant.” So at one of the state’s flagship universities, officials are highly judgmental about what students say, but at the other are entirely non-judgmental to the point of being promotional about conduct that will be far more consequential to their lives.
Most college students do engage in sex at some point and Ms. Cohen may be right about the percentage who engage in oral sex. They are, after all, of the generation that heard from the top that it’s not really sex. And yes, clinics should respond. But I really don’t want the university’s agent pushing flavored condoms for oral sex as a “welcome to college!” experience.
These are Thinking Right’s back-to-school questions: Should universities govern student speech? And how should state institutions approach issues of what students do, and the values they hold, in their personal lives?
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Civil rights’ next generation
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
An analysis of voting patterns that led to Cynthia McKinney’s defeat prompted this remark from a Tucker resident, Raymond Jenkins, who voted for winner Hank Johnson as the “more competent” candidate who would also “bring more credibility to the seat.” Then he had this to say:
“I understand this is the birthplace of the civil rights movement, but the problem is that these old civil rights leaders are not passing the torch to a new generation to fight the fight in a different way.”
McKinney, of course, is not into torch-passing. Speaking Tuesday in Augusta, she blamed her loss on crossovers and on electronic voting machines, which she believes blacks should oppose. She said, too, that she considers herself “a black political paramedic” though the “black body politic is near comatose.” Whatever.
Paramedic or not, I think it’s a misnomer to refer to present-day celebrities of color as “civil rights” leaders simply because they are activists for liberal causes, some of which may interest a segment of the black community. Some like Jesse Jackson were, but for decades now have been garden variety liberals using race to gain partisan advantage for leftwing causes.
Rising political figures like Hank Johnson, U.S. Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, U.S. Rep. Harold Ford who is attempting to succeed U.S. Sen. Bill Frist in Tennessee, and Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin all differ in style and interests from the old-line activists who, like Cynthia McKinney the politician, could never adjust outlook or rhetoric to the diversity of modern America.
Blacks are now a minority within a minority. Hispanics are 14.5 percent of the population, compared to 12.8 for blacks. Whatever leaders are called, the 4th District voter has presented an interesting question: How and when does the torch pass? And what, precisely, would be “fighting the fight” in a different way? What issues of particular concern to blacks should leaders be addressing? Hint from the right: Marriage and out-of-wedlock births.
Leave Iraq and deaths lose meaning
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Before reality intervened — a terrorist plot to down 10 airliners over the Atlantic — national Democrats were coalescing on the fringe as the anti-war party, insisting on early “redeployment” from Iraq while celebrating the primary defeat of U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) to a one-trick pony running as the darling of The New York Times and the anti-war left.
After a discreet silence brought on by the chilling reminder to the world that Islamic fascist evil is unappeasable, the Redeploy Democrats will return, searching anew for the marketing phrase that will give cut-and-run an appealing respectability. This is, in fact, the cycle since Sept. 11, 2001, when for a few weeks or months, the visceral pacifism of the left was briefly suppressed, partly because of shock and partly for the practical political reason that the country was in no mood for surrender, however packaged.
The cycle, then, is to remain quiet when horrors lurk, then gradually expand the criticism, nipping at the edges of the Bush administration until they perceive sufficient weakness to attack directly.
The pattern for the left is the same as that of al-Qaida terrorists — which is not to equate criticism with terrorism or even with a lack of patriotism, but merely to note that the strategy for success, military or political, is to find and exploit the opponent’s weaknesses.
When President Bush is strong, the left carps among themselves. When America is strong, its enemies stew, but don’t strike.
This war is about staying the course. It simply, plainly, unequivocally is.
The American poet Archibald MacLeish, who served in World War I and later as Librarian of Congress, wrote a poem that expresses clearly the stakes for this generation in Iraq. It’s called “The Young Dead Soldiers.” The poem:
The young dead soldiers do not speak.
Nevertheless, they are heard in the still houses: who has not heard them?
They have a silence that speaks for them at night and when the clock counts.
They say: We were young. We have died. Remember us.
They say: We have done what we could but until it is finished it is not done.
They say: We have given our lives but until it is finished no one can know what our lives gave.
They say: Our deaths are not ours; they are yours; they will mean what you make them.
They say: Whether our lives and our deaths were for peace and a new hope or for nothing we cannot say; it is you who must say this.
They say: We leave you our deaths. Give them their meaning.
We were young, they say. We have died. Remember us.
Three images of abandonment haunt. One is that of desperate Vietnamese clinging to helicopter skids as Saigon fell in 1975. Another was the failed Iranian hostage rescue mission in 1980 when the bodies of eight service members were left on the desert floor. And Mogadishu, 1993.
Their deaths mean what we make them. Those who drive the intellectual and political engine of the Democratic Party’s drift to pacifism and appeasement define Vietnam’s deaths as the product of misdirected adventurism. Abandon Iraq now and the lives of young dead soldiers are debris on the desert floor, for the worth of their sacrifice will be defined, as Vietnam was, as misguided adventurism or worse, the product of lies.
This is not a party— the one that coalesced in this nation in the days leading up to last Tuesday — that can be allowed to succeed.
No matter the marketing terminology, no matter the soothing reasonableness of their assurance that they are advocating something other than surrender, no matter their blissful assurance (for they believe it sincerely) that diplomacy and understanding can satisfy the dragon, the policies they advocate keep this nation at risk.
This is a party that professes to support the troops while opposing the mission. That is disingenuous; self-delusional perhaps, but disingenuous.
One soldier’s death is too many if, when the cause for which it is given is done, it has no meaning to us. “They say: We have given our lives but until it’s finished no one can know what our lives gave.
“They say: Our deaths are not ours; they are yours; they will mean what you make them.”
They will mean freedom for Iraqis. They will mean freedom from fear for our grandchildren.
They will mean what the victors write.
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Profiling criminals, terrorists
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The gods of political correctness long ago determined that profiling criminals, terrorists and other perpetrators of evil is a really bad thing because it subjects innocents who fit the profile to more intense scrutiny than, say, grandma or the mom with three kids in tow. This PC ban on profiling is an example of the liberal view that the masses of ordinary people are not to be trusted. If allowed to think that practicing Muslims who are male, between the ages of 17 and 40 and who are of Arab or Middle Eastern descent fit the terrorist profile, well, the unwashed might think badly of all young men who fit that profile.
The reality is, though, that those who do fit it have a track record: the murders of 11 Israeli athletes at Munich in 1972, the murder of 241 U.S. servicemen in the bombing of Marine barracks in Beruit in 1983, the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the attack on the USS Cole in 2000 that killed 17 sailors, 9/11, a series of bombings across Europe, and the most recent plot that was, thank God and British counter-terrorism efforts, thwarted before thousands of bodies were rained over the Atlantic Ocean.
Connect the dots. Clearly there is a group that should be subjected to higher scrutiny. We are after all fighting a war against terrorism, and a specific variety of terrorism, as President Bush said. “This nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom, to hurt our nation.” A former Israeli security officer with El Al, the national airline, Leo Gleser, said “In Israel we use profiling. That means you learn your enemy, learn the way he is going to attack you, and once you know that, you build up your system.”
Profiling is a must. It’s pointless to give equal scrutiny to grandma. Inspection time and secruity personnel are limited. Yes, we should apologize in advance to the innocents who are inconvenienced by the attention that comes with profiling. The profiling no-no came originally with race and even there the PC prohibition has come to mean that when a guy robs a bank, we frequenly are given all manner of description of the suspect — height, weight, how he was dressed — but not the obvious, whether we’re looking for a white guy in a red shirt or a black guy in a red shirt.
Apologize, if need be. But profile. When slim, handsome, middle-age white guy conservatives start blowing up planes, I’ll cheerfully go to the airport an hour early and submit to strip-search if necessary to calm fellow passengers and to discourage potential bombers.
Hearings hold the key to laws for immigrants
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Plain-spoken Republican U.S. Rep. Charlie Norwood of Augusta pulls no punches.
About the immigration bill passed by the Senate, he has these observations:
• “That bill is absolutely terrible. It’s the worst piece of legislation I have seen in the 12 years I have been in Congress.”
• “This bill in the Senate is a joke. It is a Democratic bill sponsored by rogue Republicans like McCain” that being, of course, the rogue Republican U.S. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). “It is a Kennedy bill that McCain has got Republicans to vote for.” That being Ted Kennedy, the Democratic senior senator from Massachusetts, who joined with McCain and U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) in writing the Senate bill.
• “They passed a bill so bad that you could throw out half of it, and you still couldn’t go to conference with it.” Conference will be the House-Senate meeting to resolve differences between the two bills.
When might that be? “We usually need to have a cleansing and that usually occurs in November,” says Norwood. Agreement could come before then, but only about 15 working days exist before the elections. Norwood’s prediction is that the lame-duck Congress, meeting between Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve, with voters having just spoken, may be when the gaping differences between the secure-borders-first House bill and the more comprehensive Senate bill are resolved.
On Monday in Gainesville and Tuesday in Dalton, House members will hold public hearings to examine consequential and under-publicized provisions of the Senate bill.
The hearings are “to shed greater light on as many of the provisions of the Senate bill as possible and to provide some background as to the consequences if we were to move forward with it in any serious way,” says U.S. Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), speaking Friday from El Paso, Texas, where he had gone with other members of the House to inspect border security.
Price is convinced that “once the American public appreciates and understands what is in the Senate bill, they will speak even louder than they have about their desire to have the House version.”
Monday’s hearing will focus on a provision that Price and Norwood say came late to the Senate bill. It’s one of those Big Labor provisions that inflates the cost to taxpayers of all federal buildings and other construction projects.
At issue in Gainesville, says Price, is the Davis-Bacon language inserted in the Senate bill “which states that illegals will be required to be paid more than legal U.S. citizens in the State of Georgia for any job they do. It’s so confounding because if they’re illegal, they should not be getting any benefits at all. Anybody hired could tell their employer that they are here illegally, and the employer would be required to pay them the highest prevailing wage.”
The U.S. Labor Department determines the prevailing wage, not the labor market in any state or community. It is, therefore, considerably higher than local wage rates. “These prevailing wage rates are usually equivalent to union wages and are typically well above market rates,” writes Heritage Foundation policy analyst James Sherk. “In California, for example, prevailing wages are 35 [percent] to 55 percent above market rates. Carpenters in Los Angeles earn $21.56 an hour in the market but $31.71 an hour under Davis-Bacon.”
Davis-Bacon is a Depression-era law written initially to protect unionists from cheap black labor. As revised over the years, it also includes fringe benefits to be calculated into prevailing wage. The GOP has long opposed Davis-Bacon as a cost-padder on federal contracts.
The difference between Davis-Bacon as it exists, and as written into the Senate version of the immigration bill, as Price notes, is that in one instance the higher costs are borne by taxpayers across the country. In the other, in ordering coverage for illegals, the higher costs are passed through to individuals, home-buyers for example.
What’s more, illegal immigrants would be paid government-set wages while the native-born carpenter or plumber next to them could be paid real market-rate wages.
The hearings, while dismissed by some critics as a House publicity stunt, have real merit. Because some of a bill’s most consequential provisions slide in at the last minute, a breather that allows both sides an opportunity to argue specifics should be a requirement before final language is drafted.
There should be no surprises, no phony promises. Bring ‘em on. Explain it all. Plain, clear and open.
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Voter ID, Trump towers and poker
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s free-for-all Friday. Pick a topic:
• Oh goodness. Donald Trump’s building in Atlanta. Just as soon as one oversized ego — Bill Campbell — heads to prison in 10 days, another comes to fill the void.
• So it was a four-flush phony? The list of 676,000 voters who allegedly lacked either a driver’s license or state ID card included a member of the State Elections Board, the father of one and the wife of another. That’s 3 of 5 elections board members who could swear to an error. The list was never anything but a campaign prop in a Democratic effort to block Georgia’s voter ID requirement.
• States, including Tennessee, that eschew runoffs should look to U.S. Rep. Harold Ford’s congressional seat in the Memphis area. A white guy won with 30 percent of the primary vote in a 60 percent black district where 15 Democrats were vying, 12 of them black. Did a majority get the candidate of their choice? No.
• Cousins purchase of the 191 Peachtree tower in downtown Atlanta is evidence that those with vision and money can sometimes steal a deal. That’s a high-class building sold cheap.
• Good show for U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.), getting an extension for Delta and Northwest airlines to fully fund pensions. Without it, the companies said they’d have to scuttle the plans and turn them over to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., which caps benefits at about $47,000. They said it. I believe it.
• I may be an athlete after all. The World Series of Poker is covered as a sport. Does buying a scratch-off lottery ticket make me an athlete? Silly me, I assumed some physical exertion was required.
• What is with these colleges — Duke and now Morehouse — driven into a paroxysm of angst by news that one or more of their current or former students may have been involved in a crime? Universities ain’t their mommas and daddies. They don’t commit crimes. They don’t teach them, or unteach them, core values. So quit the hand-wringing about the obvious: It’s not the university’s fault. It’s a university’s fault when they exit dumb, not when they exit bad.
• If the U.S. soldiers raped and murdered a 14-year-old Iraqi girl, and killed her parents and sister, as alleged, they deserve death.
• Cherokee County developers planning a 54-acre swim and tennis community will run background checks to make certain potential buyers aren’t registered sex offenders. That’s important to know, of course. But there’s no evidence the Alpharetta man accused of exposing his daughters to Internet gawkers or that the Gwinnett County man accused of shopping a 12-year-old to Internet predators would have failed the developers’ test. This smacks of a PR stunt.
• It’s darn cruel of Cobb police officials to fire an entire class of recruits for cheating on an exam. Recruits, having resolved that nobody would fail, undoubtedly thought of it as “team-building.” They are ahead of their time. A natural extension of schools promoting self-esteem over learning is that the unlearned would group-test so that nobody fails and all feel good. Such is modern team-building.
• From the “believe me or your lyin’ eyes” department: Reuters, the British-based news service, pulled 920 photos after bloggers revealed that a Lebanese freelance photographer had doctored at least two involving Israeli airplanes — one to add smoke after an airstrike and another to add a third flare to the two the plane actually dropped. Once a joke, it’s now a reality: You can’t always believe your lyin’ eyes.
• Katrina may be the greatest thing that ever happened to public education in New Orleans. It has a chance to start over.
• Barnesville Herald-Gazette Publisher Walter Geiger reports from Tybee Beach that on a brief walk “I saw more tattoos than our armed forces went ashore with on D-Day.” Not one, he writes, “complemented the body onto which it was affixed.” My 10-Year Rule applies to tattoos: If you haven’t changed your mind about anything in 10 years, or if you expect to be dead within 10, get a tattoo. Any size, any place. If you have or don’t, tattooing’s a bad decision.
• My 20-Year Rule applies to T-shirts bearing a politician’s likeness or campaign slogan. If you’re over 20 and still wearing one, it’s probably time to get a real job.
• Jim Wooten is associate editorial page editor. His column appears Fridays, Sundays and Tuesdays.
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Do-nothing Congress?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The rumblings rise from the hinterlands. It’s the sound of discontent, say the pollsters. The public is in a foul mood with barely three months to go before the November elections, a situation pundits and prognosticators liken to the months before the Gingrich Revolution swept Democrats from power a dozen years ago.
According to a Washington Post-ABC News poll released this week, 53 percent of the 1,002 randomly selected adults are anti-incumbent while 29 percent are inclined to reelect “almost precisely the same percentages as in June 1994,” the Post reports. While numbers would seem to favor Democrats (52-39), those surveyed were split down the middle on whether Democrats represent a clear difference.
Two problems with the 1994-again scenario: One is that the Contract with America spelled out clearly what the out-of-power GOP represented; this out-of-party power, as the poll revealed, stands for mush. Oh, they hate the war — 81 percent of Democrats say its not worth fighting — but that’s not enough to build a winning majority. The other problem is that redistricting leaves relatively few competitive Congressional districts. In Georgia, the two most in play — the 3d and the 12th — are held by Democrats. No Republican Congressman in this state will lose in November.
While some have called this a do-nothing Congress, House Republicans point to a long list of accomplishments, ranging from tough border security to a 37 percent reduction in earmarks, or $7.8 billion. They cite, too, House passage of a version of the line item veto, death tax repeal, health savings accounts, reauthorization of the Patriot Act, prescription drug, a 401(k) tax-deferred savings account for kids and various other initiatives, though all have not made it into law.
Lots of the disgruntled conservatives are upset about spending. But what’s the alternative? Bigger spenders? Not likely. It’s worth asking: Is this a do-nothing Congress and, if so, how do you intend to respond to it?
Frankly, I don’t want or expect that much. Secure borders, tax relief, a reduction in pork-barrel spending and support for the war on terrorism — that just about covers what I want out of Congress. Confirmation of judicial nominees is about all I want out of the Senate.
Mr. McGovern, your party is waiting
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Well, they got him. The crazies of the anti-war left, a rising force within the national Democratic Party, got Joe Lieberman last night. But saner Democrats in Georgia’s 4th Congressional District got Cynthia McKinney, too. It was a night of mixed blessings.
I view Connecticut Democratic politics and the party’s voters the same as I do Episcopalians, Presbyterians and Unitarians: What they do amongst themselves — whatever rules, rituals and rites they wish to rally ‘round — is none of my business. But ol’ Joe. Dang. It’s hard to envision a party that swore by him just six years ago, that vouched to the American people that he was White House material, and Tuesday they dumped him. Out in the hinterlands, dumping Joe over Iraq suggests that the McGovernites are back.
The other race of national interest was McKinney’s. It’s an amazing fall from power, evidence that middle and upper class blacks in her district had grown weary of the volatile confrontationalist who on a bad day could find racism and conspiracy in a bowl of breakfast ceral. The old rabble-rousing street rhetoric that had worked so many times before failed to move the Lexus crowd. The district changed. She didn’t. She lost fair, square and decisively.
Lieberman is not finished, by any means — though McKinney is either at the end of her career or at the beginning of a long process of easing from the edge to center-left before she is again capable of winning any significant political office. Lieberman will most likely win his fourth term in the U.S. Senate in November running as an Independent. His defeat Tuesday does fix the national Democratic Party ideologically. It is now the McGovern party.
For newcomers to this earth who are below the U.S. median age of 35.3 years old, that’s the virulently anti-war party of George McGovern. The message of his 1972 campaign was a rip-roaring success. In Massachusetts and the District of Columbia, that is, for those were the only two electoral-vote producers McGovern carried.
Republicans lost big in Georgia onTuesday. One of their biggest recruiters bit the dust. But they won bigger in Connecticut, where the party of the angry and unelectable McGovern Democrats was reborn to lose again.
‘Here, government, take Jimmy’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Achieve Academy’s fight for survival, and indeed the plight of any single charter school in any system, rarely arouses passion outside the district. But the larger issue of school reform does.
It’s not likely to be a major topic of debate this election year. Most politicians, when running for office, choose to limit their conversations with the public on reform to such inanities as which candidate is likely to be the more vigilent in protecting the HOPE stipend from assault by those non-existent evil doers who would undermine its benefits. HOPE, incidentally, has become Georgia’s Social Security — a sacred cow that no responsible politician dares touch, except to raise benefits, until it reaches the brink of financial crisis. Frankly, for my money, HOPE eligibility standards should be raised. But that’s the kind of suggestion that politicians are promising to resist.
School reform matters especially in Atlanta. The city may or may not be in the midst of a return-to-the-city movement. Certainly, condos and apartments are going up everywhere. But until the problem of a laggardly school system is cured, people with children won’t return, unless they have alternatives. Atlanta’s revival will be limited to the childless and to retiring baby boomers. I think that means, of course, some program of vouchers or tax credits that encourages new schools to be created by the private sector or by groups of educators starting their own.
It’s always necessary to try to improve the existing school system for parents who will always prefer to let government do it, who will choose to be uninvolved and are perfectly happy to hand Jimmy over at age 5 and check him back out at age 18, hoping he’s educated enough to get out of the house. The question for conservatives, though, is whether that’s enough. Can the model designed for a farm economy be fixed so that it serves most everybody? And if you’re open to reform, what’s the boldest reform you’d support?
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End the car tax?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Georgia’s economy gins up big money for the tax collector — up 9.3 percent in the fiscal year ending June 30. That’s undoubtedly more of a boost in income than most working people got this year or can expect next. Most all of those excess collections will go into savings or to education.
The trick in bad times is to cut the blubber. In good, it’s to avoid spending the newfound “free” money. Ideally, two things will happen. One is that Gov. Sonny Perdue will continue to look for ways to make government more efficient. The other is that legislators will stop the excess collections, while avoiding the temptation to create new spending programs.
The President Pro Tem in the House, State Rep. Mark Burkhalter (R-Alpharetta), wades into those waters Monday night. A study committee he heads will gather at 7 p.m. at the Alpharetta Mariott Hotel to further explore an idea he and others advanced during the General Assembly: Get rid of the ad valorem tax on personal vehicles. “It’s a tax that everybody feels very tangibly and its a very onerous tax at the same time,” said Burkhalter “And by virtue of the fact that you pay it on your birthday, it’s something you notice.”
Getting rid of it would allow motorists to keep about $500 million per year they now pay to counties. Burkhalter’s proposal would reimburse counties for the lost revenues from the state’s excess collections. Other committees are looking at overhauling the tax code and at business incentives. A tax “reform” in general is tricky. The government-needs-more crowd lusts after a sales tax on services, like dry cleaning and hair care.
Clearly, politicians have no discipline. If the money’s there, it’ll be spent. There’s talk in some quarters already of new healthcare spending programs.
My preference would be to do away with Georgia’s corporate income tax — and couple that with the elimination of tax incentives to corporations relocating to Georgia. The corporate income tax generated $556 million last year and $732 million this. Corporate income taxes are just passed along to us, anyway, as higher prices.
A question here to start the week: Should the car tax be eliminated — or something else? And what about “tax holidays” like the one for computers, school supplies and other items this weekend? What about special tax breaks for old folks? I’d favor a ceiling on how much government could collect limited to, say, population growth plus the rate of inflation, except in emergencies. How would you discipline goverment and where would you cut — or raise — taxes?
Democrats’ soul on line in two races
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Republicans don’t have a dog in either fight, but two nationally significant races on Tuesday’s ballot will tell us a great deal about the mood of the country — and the future of two-party politics.
The one, of course, is Georgia’s 4th Congressional District, where incumbent Rep. Cynthia McKinney is in the final stages of her political career. But for an out-of-district white guy who sapped 5,253 votes, most of which otherwise would have gone to challenger Hank Johnson, she would be walking around in stunned defeat now. Johnson may not beat her Tuesday, but the end is near. Her political salvation — and it is only remotely possible that she is psychologically equipped to do it — is to move from the fringe.
In this contest, Republicans and conservatives have nothing to gain from her defeat and a fair amount to lose. On legislation, Johnson and McKinney will vote the same. They’re both liberal Democrats. The difference is that Johnson is less likely to do and say things that strike reasonable people as nutty. That’s not a good swap for Republicans.
The more significant race nationally is in the Democratic primary in Connecticut, where three-term U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman, the party’s 2000 vice presidential nominee, is headed to defeat at the hands of anti-war activists who are waging their own jihad for the soul of the national Democratic Party. A July 20 poll by Quinnipiac University gave Lieberman’s challenger, cable TV mogul Ned Lamont, a 51-47 lead among likely primary voters. By Thursday that lead had grown to 54-41, according to Quinnipiac’s sampling.
Said poll director Douglas Schwartz, “Sen. Lieberman’s campaign bus seems to be stuck in reverse. Despite visits from former President Bill Clinton and other big-name Democrats, Lieberman has not been able to stem the tide to Lamont.”
The Lieberman-Lamont race, as Schwartz notes, is a testament to the growing power of the blogs, which emerged as a political force in Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential campaign. “Three months ago,” said Schwartz, “Lamont was virtually unheard of, except perhaps on the blogs.”
Blogs, for the uninitiated, are Internet Web sites — Thinking Right is one — where people gather to debate or discuss issues of the day.
Lamont, like Johnson in DeKalb County, offers a prospective voting record that’s likely to be indistinguishable from the incumbent he’s trying to beat. In that sense, then, neither holds much interest for conservatives.
The only interest in both is what they will tell us about the direction of the party here and nationally. If McKinney loses this cycle as opposed to next, it’ll be because the black middle class finds her style slightly embarrassing.
She’s the black middle class’s Confederate battle flag. They may be drawn to her emotionally and see her confrontational style as a part of their valued heritage, but she’s become a symbol of a bygone era.
Maybe “bygone” was last week. Maybe before the war, Maybe before people came to think seriously about the divisions, which have grown more pronounced.
This runoff, then, says more about the perspective of the black middle class than it does about partisan or racial politics. The district is 59 percent black and just 33 percent white — and a fair portion of that 33 percent includes Republicans who have primary runoff interests of their own.
This is a pure play for black Democrats. They’ll be the ones to decide whether she stays or goes. This year. But if she remains the fringe Cynthia, the mainstream black middle class — somebody like DeKalb CEO Vernon Jones — will take her out.
Lieberman is a sad case. Except to speak moderately on the Iraqi phase of the war on terrorism, much as Southern Democrats once did with the nation at war, and precisely as Southern Democrat Jim Marshall, the Macon congressman who represents Georgia’s 3rd District, still does, Lieberman has committed no offense against the left.
As with the 4th District’s black middle class, a Lieberman defeat would tell us volumes — in Lieberman’s case, about the rise to dominance of the anti-war left within the national Democratic Party. His is the proxy contest. A Lamont win Tuesday fixes the party in Congress and probably for the 2008 election as well.
Republicans and conservatives have no dog in these fights. But on Wednesday morning the country will have a lot clearer idea of where the national Democratic Party’s soul has landed.
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School choice, Guantanamo, McKinney
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s free-for-all Friday. Pick a topic:
You know you’re in a down-home, Southern fried county when, as the headline writer declares, “DeKalb under orders to boil.” Eggs, yes. But most everything else should be fried.
PR exec Joe Ledlie’s candidate for the most abused word is “hero.” It’s up there. If you have occasion to use the word more than, say, three or four times a year, you’re probably abusing it.
Polarization is good. Or so we might surmise from Andrew Young’s endorsement of U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.). “Congress needs controversy,” said the enabler of the endorsee.
Yes, that was our Fred Rheney who died last Friday in Smyrna. “Our” meaning that The Atlanta Journal never had a more devoted reader or better-informed letter-writer than Rheney, a 33-year Grady High School teacher, who peppered the Journal editorial pages with his incisive, to-the-point commentary for more than 40 years. His last letter, published in January 2001, celebrated Bill Clinton’s departure from the White House.
When parents are clamoring to put their children in a Catholic high school in a Duluth office park, doubling enrollment to 400 in one year, what does it tell us about the hunger for public school alternatives? Notre Dame Academy’s tuition of up to $8,800, depending on the grade, is within voucher-program range, and less than public schools annually spend per pupil.
Surely teachers are not complaining that the $100 handed them by taxpayers this year to buy school supplies and incidentals is not enough. Last year it was zero.
Gunshots were fired at a Jermaine Dupri party after one man tried to steal another man’s gold necklace. I’m there. Come after my high heels and we’re gonna fight.
I’d vote against a politician who continued to charge me for “boutique” gas when it’s selling for $3 per gallon — but of course you can’t find one responsible. Buy $3 gas in Fulton and the direct and indirect tax amounts to about 70 cents per gallon. The special “clean air” formulation “tax” levied by the Environmental Protection Agency adds five to 12 cents per gallon, while local, state and federal taxes amount to 58.9 cents per gallon. So the oil company takes a dime in profit and government takes seven times as much. Boutique gas requirements should be waived until sufficient refining capacity exists to support the different-city requirements.
Hey, morticians, keep your clothes on. No beefcake calendars. Preachers, too. And educators. Those who serve the mourning should not make themselves distractions. Don’t wear funny hats, dress in purple suits or take off your clothes. Brides and corpses should have no competition.
America’s resolve in the war on terror should be that of Cuban exiles on Fidel Castro. For almost 50 years the Cuban community has held fast, no matter the political and cultural winds, a fine example for a free world gone to accommodation and relativism.
About three times a week, guards at Guantanamo are attacked by detainees. One example: A prisoner faked a suicide attempt; others slicked the floors with human waste, hoping to overpower guards who slipped while coming to the prisoner’s aid. As in the entire war on terrorism, rules apply to one side only.
MARTA reports an $18.5 million surplus for the fiscal year ended June 30. What to do? The correct answer, mixed among those of the candy-store kids, is offered by Richard McCrillis, interim general manager. Save it for the bad times, says he. (Fire this guy. He’s obviously a kook.)
Fidel bad. Raul worse. But he’s not Fidel and in a decade Cuba will be a hotspot of capitalism. One drop breaks the dam.
For the first month ever, Toyota outsold Ford in July in the United States, it is sadly noted here. No guilt here for driving a foreign car, nor any belief that government should come to the rescue in any way whatsoever. Just the sadness that comes with seeing Rich’s go away, Delta under stress and an American icon experiencing hard times.
A fellow dies at 85 in 2006. His family attributes the death to asbestos exposure while working at the Brooklyn Navy Yard during World War II. Such is the place-blame world he departs. When I go, even if I’m 110 at the time, sue the pork producers. Or the DDT manufacturer. Or my parents for forming an inferior gene pool.
Jim Wooten is associate editorial page editor. His column appears Fridays, Sundays and Tuesdays.
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Immigration: love us or leave us
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The temporary lull in the national debate over illegal immigration ramps up and moves South in coming weeks. Debate includes a series of hearings, two of which are in Georgia. The push to see whether distinctly different House and Senate bills can be reconciled starts today in Mission, Texas, where President Bush is expected to make a strong pitch for a temporary worker program.
I spoke Tuesday with U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), who’ll be one of the conferees when the House and Senate start negotiating. Like the President, he strongly favors temporary work permits. “I always come down on the side of border security,” said Chambliss. “That obviously has to be the number one priority.” But temporary work permits should be distinct from any pathway to citizenship, Chambliss said, so that workers can come and go as needed.
For those in Congress, “this is one of those issues where we’re going to make a lot of people mad regardless of what we do. It is the most emotionally charged and sensitive issue that I have ever seen.” Getting a bill by November may not be possible, he said, but it’s essential that voters see by Election Day that a bill is at hand.
Germany began a guest worker program recruiting Turkish workers, albeit without a citizenship option, in 1961. It ended in 1973. More than 30 years later, Germany has 2.5 million Turks who entered as temporary workers and never left, most of whom chose not to opt for citizenship when Germany changed its laws to permit it six years ago. And, as the AJC’s Eunice Moscoso reports, “many remain on the margins of German society, living in ethnic enclaves where unemployment, poverty and youth crime rates are high.”
That’s what we don’t want. Certainly, after the President can certify that borders are secure, a path to citizenship that doesn’t include amnesty or reward illgals should be spelled out. And, just as certainly, it should be easy for documented workers to come here for limited times and go home.
The hearings, though clearly political, are important because they will explore ramifications of the more comprehensive Senate version and will, ideally, allow a national consensus to develop. The 1986 version turned out to be amnesty and not much more.
I’d welcome a compromise that secures borders, that doesn’t put illegals in citizenship line ahead of those who played by the rules, and that establishes a distinction between those whose first loyalties are to their homeland and those who intend to cast their lot with the USA. We’re a global economy, but uncompromised loyalty can be to but one nation.
Drill, drill, drill.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It’s not energy independence, but it’s a start. The U.S. Senate voted Tuesday to open 8.3 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico to oil and gas exploration, an area projected to yield 1.2 billion barrels of oil and 6 trillion cubic feet of natural gas — or enough to heat 6 million homes for 15 years.
For Texas, Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana, it would be a windfall. Under the Senate bill, they’d collect 37.5 percent of royalties. Now they get about 2. The bulk of the royalties, which are expected to amount to $1.2 billion per year within a decade, would go to Louisiana. Voters there will consider a constitutional amendment that would dedicate all new offshore revenues to rebuilding wetlands and to hurricane protection. Florida beaches would be protected with a no-drill zone extending 125 to 300 miles from shore.
The U.S. House had earlier passed a version that allows drilling that is no closer than 50 miles from the shore of all coastal states. State legislatures could extend that to 100 miles. Some in the Senate oppose the House bill as a threat to New England, California and the Pacific Northwest. It’s not certain a bill will pass this year.
Meanwhile, another bill introduced last week in the House, co-authored by a California Democrat and a Republican, and co-sponsored by U.S. Rep. Jack Kingston, (R-Georgia), would open 2,000 acres of the nearly 20-million acre Artic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to exploration. The royalties and lease payments, estimated at $39 billion over 30 years, would be put into a trust fund, which could only be used to fund clean-energy alternatives, like biomass, solar, hydrogen fuel cells, coal-to-liquid and other alternatives. ANWR, incidentally, is believed to have 10.4 billion barrels of recoverable oil.
Even without the trust fund, I’d open the 2,000 acres of ANWR in a flash. And yes, promising areas offshore, too. Clean energy, other than nuclear, is modestly promising — though I’d be strongly disinclined to create a trust fund that turns alternative energy into a 30-year spending boondoggle.
Clearly, though, some measure of energy independence is a necessity in mounting the war on terrorism.
Complacency won’t subdue ruthless foe
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Hezbollah and its Iranian and Syrian puppet-masters have won the moment. In provoking Israel to bomb a village, killing 37 children and at least 20 adults, terrorists willing to use civilians as human shields have found the leverage they need to win.
They can’t win on the battlefield. Not al-Qaida, not the Baathists in Iraq, not Hezbollah, not Hamas, nor Syria, nor Iran nor any other assemblage of jihadists.
Civilian deaths, and especially the deaths of children, are useful to terrorists. They influence world opinion and arm the anti-war left in America with powerful images of the suffering war inflicts on innocents. Those compelling images can shift battlefield advantage, one example of which is Israel’s 48-hour suspension of air attacks in southern Lebanon.
It’s unfathomable cruelty to use civilians as shields, as Hezbollah does, but that is the nature of this enemy. Every death that weakens Israeli or U.S. resolve, and every death that tilts world opinion against the United States and Israel, is of military value.
And if Hezbollah fires rockets from civilian areas and draws retaliation killing civilians, it can hope, too, that the attack will encourage the Lebanese to identify with Hezbollah. The deaths of women and children are all-around victories for terrorists.
And yet, despite the risk, Israel can’t sit back and do nothing — and no matter the consequences, if any, for the November elections in this country, the Bush administration should not lean on Israel to stop pursuing Hezbollah until it’s rendered militarily inert.
We are in a long war, both the United States and Israel, and if world and domestic opinion shapes the battlefield, we lose.
Europeans and Americans have lived for decades without having to commit, as the Israelis do daily, to the life-or-death question of which siege, which provocation, which round of suicide bombings is an immediate threat to their survival, and which can be suffered, lest retaliation evoke the disapproval of a “neutral” world quick to judge as “disproportionate” any response unintentionally harming anybody not certified as a credentialed, card-carrying terrorist.
Peace, or the illusion of it, combined in this country with a volunteer army that frees all citizens of the obligation that prior generations shared to put themselves at risk, has nurtured a detachment that carries consequences.
One disturbing consequence is that, just as members of the U.S. Supreme Court think it useful to look to international law for guidance when interpreting the U.S. Constitution, some Americans, and a sizable chunk of the left, now see themselves as arbiters of international disputes.
To the liberal mind, as it has evolved through decades of the tenured professors who took their anti-war, anti-Vietnam radicalism to campus, no nation or culture is inherently superior, except militarily and economically.
The United States does not enter any dispute with moral advantage or intent presumed to be noble. To the left, this country — but for world opinion and international bodies positioned to temper democracy’s predatory impulses, military and economic — would abuse and exploit, conducting wars for oil simply to avoid the cost and inconvenience of energy independence.
Unlike the Israelis, Americans are now free, as referees in a sporting contest, to sit out conflicts that don’t meet their test of worthiness, that happen not to fit in with their lifestyles, that fall on the watch of a president they dislike or that aren’t predetermined to be essential to the survival of this country or to the free world.
We are a nation seriously complacent, far too susceptible to photos and to emotion to sustain a war on terrorism against an enemy given to butchery, to suicide as a weapon, and to treating civilian innocents, including women and children, as soldiers on the battlefield.
We are a compassionate people who simply cannot imagine any human inviting an enemy to kill women and children. But that is the face of the evil that we encounter and that Israel encounters in the war on terrorism.
We can recoil in horror. We can pretend that if the militants saw our compassionate side, knew us as we know ourselves, they’d see too, as our anti-war left does, that war is not the answer.
But when confronted with an enemy willing to serve up children, war is the answer. And until Hezbollah is defeated, we should not try to persuade Israel otherwise.
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