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Friday, September 29, 2006
Beltline deal, Wal-Mart, state schools
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s Friday free-for-all. Pick a topic:
• Bin Laden dead? The answer’s only marginally important. The death that matters is that of the last radical jihadist who is willing to act on a desire to kill Americans.
• You gotta hand it to Atlanta City Hall. Its proposal to take-by-gift Gwinnett County developer Wayne Mason’s 66 acres along the proposed Beltline and give him “development rights” to land he’d have to buy elsewhere is audacious. That’s about like seizing my car and giving me “riding rights” on the city bus (if I pay the fare).
• Uh, Vinings, if cityhood is an anti-density move, look around. Density’s done.
• One reason to be optimistic about education: Thousands of Georgia children who would have been promoted to higher grades, where they would have fallen further and further behind because they weren’t learning reading and math, are now screened by competency tests and held back. One reason to be pessimistic: About half will be promoted anyway if parents insist. Advancing children who can’t read out of the third grade is cruel.
• Should parents be allowed to edit movies to make them family-friendly? Absolutely. Technology exists, though a federal judge ruled that companies can’t sell DVDs edited to remove objectionable material.
Parents have a right to control everything that flows through their doors. Movie-makers are free to create any product, but their freedom of artistic expression shouldn't control my use. A car is an artistic statement, too, but we're free to customize as many as the marketplace chooses for personal use. The original is the artistic statement.
• Just as Wal-Mart revolutionized retailing, it may do the same with health care. Four dollars for a 30-day supply of 129 generics, including six of the 10 most popular. And now it’ll offer health savings accounts and low-premium, high-deductible coverage for new workers starting Jan. 1. Health insurance premiums for employer-sponsored plans rose at twice the rate of inflation last year. At some point soon we’ll need a law requiring people to have health insurance. Works for autos.
• The school workplace union, the Georgia Association of Educators - a union, not a teacher “group, ” the Georgia affiliate of the National Education Association, which consistently sends one of the largest delegate blocs to the Democratic National Convention — has endorsed the Democrat for governor and lieutenant governor in Georgia. Any Republican who has the support of the GAE, with one exception, is suspect. The exception is when they endorse an incumbent (Kathy Cox) because there’s no chance of defeating him/her.
• Sales tax exemptions, like the one for food, do need to be reassessed, as some academics suggest. But if reassessment is the stalking horse for spreading the sales tax to services, long the dream-child of those who wish to expand government’s revenue base, taxpayers should beware. Unless the state shifts from taxing earnings to taxing consumption, no proposed sales tax on services should get a minute’s consideration.
• Two election-related issues - electronic voting and photo IDs — get more hilarious by the hour. Tamper-proof driver’s licenses are coming by 2008, and even the libs have embraced photo IDs for voting. Just not right now. Comes now U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer, liberal California Democrat, pushing legislation to reimburse states and counties that permit voters to choose paper ballots instead of electronic voting machines.
Electronic voting came because some voters couldn’t read well enough to follow instructions and didn’t follow through on down-ballot races. Democrats thought they lost votes — hence the premature rush to electronic voting. Conservatives, take heed: Always run pilot projects first before spending $75 million, as Georgia has, to buy the machines.
• Journalists are used by partisans who leak and interpret documents for political advantage, especially as President Bush noted, when an election nears. There’s no good remedy. I’m from the “Loose Lips Sink Ships” school, and if I believe a leaked document puts troops at risk or aids the enemy, I don’t publish. If not clear-cut and sensitive material is published, it should come without hype or spin — which are often payoffs to the partisan leaker. That does appear to have been the case with the selective leaks from the National Intelligence Estimate.
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