Home > Thinking Right > Archives > 2006 > November > 30
Thursday, November 30, 2006
Buses, ports, housing, airline costs
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s Friday free-for-all. Pick a topic:
• Thank goodness for Google. Macy’s invites me to meet Christopher Radko in his exclusive appearance on Saturday. Who he?
• Nancy Pelosi’s attire never crossed this conservative’s mind. She always seems to be fully and appropriately clothed. So we have a female wire service reporter, quoting females, asking and responding to the question: “Why do we focus on the clothes of the new speaker of the House and not those of our president, or any male in Washington?” Who is “we”? This is not a guy thing.
• Without doubt, bus rapid transit, with dedicated lanes, is the rapid transit for metro Atlanta. If it succeeds, it actually helps reduce congestion. If it doesn’t, it’s not affixed to one route. The buses can move elsewhere. Trains can’t.
• Once they consent to make a baby, the father shows evidence of a willingness to support the child and a desire to marry the mother, my instincts are to help Sergio Hernandez — accused of abducting the baby and its mother — not to assume he should be jailed. Once people make babies, every bias should promote marriage.
• Yes, Utah may have fallen just 857 residents shy of the number needed for another congressman. But a proposal to give it the representation it’s not entitled to as part of an agreement to give D.C. a voting member of Congress is absurd. Attach D.C. to Maryland or keep the status quo.
• Public housing projects, except those for the elderly and disabled, should disappear from America. They breed generational passivity.
• Cities shouldn’t be in the business of building “affordable” housing — unless taxpayers capture any windfall that comes when the house is sold. It’s a way for the well-connected and the lucky to get a government-directed transfer of wealth. If I can’t afford to live in your neighborhood, it’s not government’s job to put me there — or to force other homebuyers who can to subsidize me.
• Surprise! Voters want paper evidence of how they voted. In a University of Georgia poll on Election Day, 82 percent of voters preferred to have a paper trail to electronic voting.
• Well, yes, the Port of Savannah should get the big-dollar grants that Charleston and Jacksonville get from the Department of Homeland Security, but the money does not exist to terrorist-proof every potential target. Somebody has to assess threat and put the money where the risk is greatest, which may not be ports.
• If I’m a cop, I don’t work for New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. He folds before the facts.
• Pssst! Police informants sometimes have criminal pasts. Otherwise, I suppose they’d be called witnesses, victims or tipsters.
• The Iraq Study Group — the graybeards who think deep thoughts on what to do about Iraq — are expected to recommend a gradual pullback of troops, with no timetable. Hope taxpayers paid for no expensive dinners; we could have gotten that from the breakfast club at McDonald’s. The generals are opposed. But the good news of the week is that George — you gotta love him — Bush firmly opposes premature departure and timetables. He’s the guy I want in my foxhole.
• A federal judge in D.C. rules that paper money is a discrimination against the blind. The remedy is up to Congress. This is one reason Congress and state legislatures should pass laws only as a last resort. For every law there exists a federal judge willing to render a decision no rational lawmaker ever anticipated.
• It’s an idea that should spread: Ryanair, an Ireland-based low-cost European airline, essentially gives away the seats while charging passengers for everything, item by item. When a customer sued over a $34 charge for a wheelchair, the CEO tacked a 63-cent “wheelchair levy” onto every passenger. The cost of regulations, lawsuits and mandates should be broken out on every bill that customers see.
• My ego is relatively secure. But if the “name the panda” blog draws more comments than the “Thinking Right” blog, my ego’s crushed. I’d expect a good story about a naked crack smoker being pulled from an alligator pond at 4 in the morning to draw more comment. But normal, healthy look-alike pandas?
Permalink | Comments (235) | Post your comment | Categories: Column
The end is near.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Georgians will go to the polls next Tuesday to elect a member of the Public Service Commission, the five-member body that regulates the utility companies. The runoff pits Chuck Eaton, a Republican, against incumbent David Burgess, the Democrat. A runoff is unpopular is some quarters because it’s costly and in many cases, relatively few voters bother to go back to the polls. “It costs the county and the state large amounts of money to have less than 5 percent of the electorate vote,” the director of the Muscogee County Office of Elections and Registrations told the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer newspaper.
But whatever the cost and however few voters turn out, I’d never do away with runoffs, especially in general elections. An office-holder ought to have the support of a majority of those who go to the polls. I’m also not bothered by a low turnout. If people haven’t bothered to educate themselves about the candidates or issues, I’d just as soon they stayed home.
On other elections-process fronts, we return briefly to the issues of electronic voting and photo ID. State Sen. Cecil Staton, a Macon Republican, is proposing a constitutional amendment to make clear the General Assembly’s authority to require voter ID. The outcome of a Congressional race in Ohio, finally decided this week, clarifies the need to make sure voters are legit. In the Columbus-based district in central Ohio, incumbent Rep. Deborah Pryce, a Republican, defeated Democrat Mary Jo Kilroy by 1,055 votes. The county election board in Columbus reviewed almost 21,000 provisional ballots and rejected 2,600, primarily because they were cast by voters who weren’t registered or who were voting in the wrong precinct. Pryce, a seven-term incumbent, was one of those whose race was affected by the U.S. Rep. Mark Foley fallout. She had described him as one of her best friends.
Georgia Secretary of State Cathy Cox, discussing this year’s elections as part of a Washington panel, cautioned against making the paper receipt the official ballot for electronic voting. She says they’re not always reliable because paper machines jam. I don’t distrust electronic voting. But the paper backup reassures — and as with the runoff, the cost is a small price to pay to maintain the integrity of the elections process.
.JPG)
-1.JPG)
Services »
