Home > Thinking Right > Archives > 2006 > November
November 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?
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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.
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Shop at home — or else.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
In small-town Georgia this time of year downtown merchants and business leaders actively promote “shop at home” campaigns. I’m a sucker for such appeals. Even though many small town merchants charge prices that are are substantially higher than those at a Wal-mart, K-mart, Kohl or Target, I’m inclined to buy. And why? Because they support the local football teams and local fund-raising campaigns. They’re often fixtures in the community. They go out of their way often to be helpful. And the community’s stronger when storefronts are filled with something other than flea markets, antique stores and start-up churches.
What I choose to do with my own money and what government chooses to do with what it extracts from me under authority of law are entirely different. DeKalb County commissioners voted 5-1 to approve a Local Small Business Enterprise ordinace that gives a preference to contractors bidding for government work who hire a fixed percentage of local workers.
DeKalb is saying that it is willing to pay more for the services it buys, and therefore to impose a higher levy on its tax-paying residents, to reward companies for hiring locals. If it presumes to use government coercively to, in effect, force residents to “shop at home” it needs a far more compelling reason than DeKalb appears to have laid out.
It is, in any event, another example of how Big Government politicians use the authority of law to create social programs. They either set them up and administer them directly, as is the case with farm subsidies, Medicaid, welfare and the like. Or they hide them in regulation, as is the case with the DeKalb ordianance. Or they force business to absorb them and pay for them, in various kinds of health care mandates for example.
Fighting back the growth of big, coercive government is a full-time job. But let us not depart DeKalb County without saying a kind word about Commissioner Elaine Boyer, the sole member of the commission to oppose the legislation. She argued correctly that it interferes with the free market and is likely to prompt a lawsuit. The cynics amongst us wonder how democracy can take root in a place like Iraq. Well, look to the barren soil of DeKalb County, where fiscal conservativism has been beaten to the ground — and yet a free market conservative survives and keeps her sanity.
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Redistricting will never be politics-free
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Had they been a bit less clever, Democrats might still rule Georgia. But cleverness and greed caused them to overreach in drawing legislative districts, provoking a fair-minded electorate and an equal-protection court to collapse the empire.
Prior to 2002, Democrats had it all. Within two years, they’d lost it all. The system works.
A task force appointed by Gov. Sonny Perdue in April reported back after November’s elections, declaring the current system — by which horse-trading legislators draw political districts — to be faulty. Instead, the group recommended, an independent, seven-member commission appointed by the Legislature should draw congressional and state legislative districts, presumably to take the politics out of politics.
Ho-hum. An idea 10 years too late and 25 years too early. And not a great one, in any event.
As recommended by the task force, the General Assembly and the governor would appoint six of the members. The six would then pick a seventh as chairman. The panel would draw boundaries following a new census and submit its work to the Legislature for an up-or-down vote. If rejected, the commission would start work anew, repeating the process until it comes up with one that’s acceptable.
The reality is, however, that it can’t work as idealists believe. Editorialists, who love the idea, have the impression that academics without a partisan bone in their bodies will start at one corner of the state drawing boxes that, to the extent possible, follow existing city and county lines and preserve communities of interest. But that can’t happen.
One reason it can’t is the Voting Rights Act of 1965, provisions of which were just extended this year for another 25 years. Since Georgia is among the handful of states where redistricting and election law changes are subject to preclearance by the U.S. Justice Department’s civil rights division, an independent commission starts with half the Democratic seats in the General Assembly essentially off the table.
An independent commission, therefore, gets to play with every Republican seat and probably fewer than half the Democratic seats. It is working around protected districts that were created to satisfy incumbent Democrats. So they rearrange a few chairs, shift a precinct, meddle and muddle, but to what different end? None to speak of.
This assumes, of course, that the appointees will be less partisan than the elected officials. The State Elections Board is constituted about the way the proposed redistricting commission would be. It has five members, one appointed by each major political party and one each by the House and Senate. It’s chaired by the Secretary of State. There’s not a nonpartisan in the lot.
The same would be true, of course, of the redistricting commission — except that there’s no elected official to pay the price for overreaching, as was the case with Democrats in the 2002 election and thereafter. If I’m the Legislature, my appointees have demonstrated to me how they can creatively maximize my party’s advantage, while hiding behind the “independent commission” cover.
Do-gooders, bless their hearts, fall in love with concepts, such as campaign finance reform and independent commissions to take the politics out of redistricting. They rarely succeed because, as with campaign finance reform, they simply move the politics and the money to another category.
I have come to believe that the solution to campaign finance reform is full and immediate disclosure of who gives and who gets without limits imposed. As for redistricting, the solution is for the General Assembly to adopt principles to guide redistricting, agreeing, for example, to try to preserve communities of interest and to follow existing city and county lines where possible, but otherwise to be as partisan as they choose.
Voters are perfectly capable of recognizing when a party has gone too far. And the courts are perfectly capable of determining when redistricting has been jiggered so districts are unequal in design, deliberately configured to make voters unequal. In that case, aggrieved voters have an immediate remedy.
The independent commission requires a constitutional amendment, which requires two-thirds of the House and Senate. Don’t bother. It’s an idea whose time has gone — and not yet come again.
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Big Drugs, Big Government
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Once the new Congress is sworn in, a top priority for Democrats will be to authorize the federal government to negotiate drug prices for Medicare recipients. The Bush administration is strenuously opposed — and rightly so.
“Government negotiation of drug prices does not work unless you have a program completely run by the government,” the secretary of health and human services, Michael O. Leavitt, said recently in reaffirming administration opposition to one of the Democrats’ first 100-hour priorities. “Democrats say they want the government to negotiate prices. What they really want is government-run health care.”
That I believe. The Dems have never abandoned for a second the idea of government-run universal health care. One of the great political struggles in this country is the race to enshrine a marketplace system based on competition and choice or a version of Hillarycare.
Drug price negotiations allow government to set prices and politicians to dispense pills. It’s another version of the body-part by body-part health care mandates that had state legislatures practicing medicine, determining for example which procedures should be covered by medical plans and how long some patients should remain in the hospital. This is not going to bring drug costs down, except in a few showboat instances where politicians harangue drug companies to give away certain medications, the prices of which are then shifted to others — other drugs, other payers. In 10 years, the cabal will be Big Pharmaceuticals and Big Government, padding and shifting prices while building in political contributions and showboat giveaways demanded by politicians.
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Courts have no business in school funding
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The oldest and most prominent of the school finance lawsuits rolling around the country that invite judges to be legislators was resolved last week in the New York Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court.
The New York suit, filed 13 years ago, has spawned similar suits in 44 other states, including Georgia, premised on the notion that school funding is inadequate and judges should order legislators to give them more. It’s worth noting, as the New York Sun newspaper did in October, that the tiny Long Island resort town of Bridgehampton spent $51,828 per student in the 2004-05 school year, while Queensbury, a small town in the Adirondacks, spent $8,553, with little difference in results.
Georgia has been through this before, as have other states. From 1968 to 1972, school financing formulas were challenged around the country, in Illinois, Texas, California and others. It’s been routine over the years for groups seeking more money from the state to ask judges to do the work of legislators and to give the locals more of somebody else’s money.
The New York suit contended schools in New York City were being underfunded. In Georgia, the contention by officials in 51 rural systems is that their failure to educate children is the state Legislature’s fault because it gives them too little money. That is one possible explanation, of course. The other is that their failures are the fault of poor leadership, of hiring and management decisions made by local boards and superintendents.
In the New York case, a lower court did what judges shouldn’t do. It divined that $4.7 billion more in state money would provide the chance of a sound, basic education to New York City’s nearly 1.1 million schoolchildren. The state now pays $7.1 billion, or about 45 percent of the city’s $15.4 billion school budget, according to The New York Times.
After the lower-court decision, Gov. George E. Pataki proposed a budget that would have given the system an additional $1.93 billion. The high court last week embraced that number. Judge Eugene F. Pigott Jr., who wrote the majority opinion that overturned the lower-court decision, made an important pronouncement. Said he for the majority:
“Devising a state budget is a prerogative of the Legislature and the executive. The judiciary should not usurp this power.”
One of the dissenters, Chief Judge Judith S. Kaye, objected to the $1.93 billion and declared that “a sound basic education will cost approximately $5 billion in additional annual expenditures.” She then added this editorial comment:
“I remain hopeful that, despite the court’s ruling today, the policy-makers will continue to strive to make the schools not merely adequate, but excellent, and to implement a statewide solution.”
That is, indeed, the hope of every American, an aspiration that predates even the creation of public schools. But how best to achieve that is a matter for voters and the legislators and school board members. It’s not a judicial function. Judges have no basis, other than their own arrogance, to decide whether an “adequate” education costs a dollar or a billion dollars more. They’re just picking numbers and using their judicial office to effect their personal whim.
The Business Council of New York State Inc. surveyed spending by local systems in that state and projected that spending for this school year would rise to $16,469 per pupil, an increase of nearly a third in five years, and more than 2.5 times the rate of inflation. Atlanta spends more than $11,200, tops in Georgia. The state’s largest district, Gwinnett County, for example, spends about $7,200.
These suits have been filed in 45 states. It is, first of all, an example of the courts being used as a super-legislature by activists who find it more expedient to make their case before a judge, often a judge either sympathetic to their aim or arrogant enough to seize the authority of a governor and the Legislature to set priorities for spending limited tax resources. But it is an example, too, of the same underfunding argument being made in states whose taxpayers spend vastly different sums on public schools.
States across this country have addressed the money issue. And outcomes don’t improve. The model is broken in ways that a few more dollars, or a thousand more, in per-pupil spending don’t fix.
The solution, whatever it is, falls to the General Assembly and to local school boards. The court has no business here.
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Obama fans, happy Babs, the good life
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s free-for-all Friday. Pick a topic:
• Headline: “Most 2006 hurricane predictions turned out to be nothing but hot air.”
• In the hot-air category: Two adjunct scholars for the conservative National Center for Policy Analysis, Denis Avery and Fred Singer, say in a new book that global warming is part of a 1,500-year cycle of moderate temperature swings and that human activity has little to do with it. The current warming began about 1850 and could continue for another 500 years, they say. The book is “Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years.”
• Southern employers saw their health care costs increase by 11.8 percent to $7,196 this year. Consumer prices overall are projected to increase by 2.3 percent. Americans have to have a stake in caring what services and procedures cost — and with third-party payers, we don’t.
• Who said conservatives have not grown and matured? Bill Clinton’s neighbor was shot and I don’t suspect him. But where’d you say he was that evening?
• The media are becoming Barack Obama groupies, hanging on every word while rushing him into the White House. For goodness sakes, he’s just in the second year of representing Illinois in the U.S. Senate.
• Iran and Syria are suggesting they can be of “help” in Iraq because they saw the election results — and want to talk and dance through the remaining two years of the Bush administration. As Al Gore once said, “A zebra does not change its spots.”
• Acquiring green space is a mom-and-apple-pie issue. But if it’s worth buying it’s worth everybody paying — and not just those who are buying a home or commercial space, as was the proposal rejected by the state’s voters eight years ago.
The plan was to double the real estate transfer tax from $1 to $2 per thousand. Dedicated taxes, as proposed then, are awful. All the state’s needs should compete and all taxes collected should go into one pot.
• Headline: “Elderly dying from falls more often.” More often than once?
• With Democrats in control of Congress, “my depression is over,” announces Barbra Streisand. Well then, shoot — the conservatives’ sacrifice in surrendering control was worthwhile if it lifted Babs out of her gloom.
• You get the conduct you buy. Ordinances, like Gwinnett County’s prohibiting panhandling and camping or homesteading on public property, and Cherokee County’s proposed ordinance on renting to illegals, are helpful. Both levy a cost on undesirable activity, thus encouraging conduct the community desires — respect for the common greens and for the law.
• Just when you think the culture is in total collapse, Americans rise up and shout down something vile — in this case, the O.J. book and TV interviews.
• More evidence that the problems of the homeless are quite often unrelated to housing: A New Orleans couple left homeless by Hurricane Katrina and given a $75,000 home free by members of the Temple of Deliverance Church of God in Christ in Memphis, sells it for $88,000 without moving in and returns to New Orleans.
• Wal-Mart’s agreement that leads the American Family Association to call off its boycott is actually one that every company should adopt as corporate policy: Wal-Mart agrees it “will not make corporate contributions to support or oppose highly controversial issues unless they directly relate to our ability to serve our customers,” company officials said in a statement.
• Ah, life’s good. Sitting at an IKEA table, sipping two-buck Chuck (which actually costs three bucks), making small talk about Zoo Atlanta’s panda cub or debating whether commuter rail to Athens can best be sold as the “brain train” or the “Dawg track,” and occasionally wondering aloud whether we should be more alarmed that a lawyer we never knew (Tisha R. Tallman) for an interest group most Georgians have never heard of (Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund) took a job in the private sector or that EatZi’s had closed just before Thanksgiving, forcing some Atlantans who were counting on it for their Thanksgiving meals to go hungry. Assuming, that is, they couldn’t find a Kroger.
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Don’t make me a cop.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
When police shoot and kill a 92-year-old woman, as they did Tuesday night in Atlanta, the protest contention is that cops over-reacted. It’s a tragedy, no doubt. But if they had the right house, it’s hard to think that law enforcement officers anywhere in the country would have reacted any differently, no matter their training or professionalism. When officers are taking fire, the natural and trained response is to shoot back until the firing stops.That the shooter was a 92-year-old woman who may have been frightened and confused adds to the tragedy, but — again — if police had legitimate reason to believe drugs were being sold from the house, it’s hard to find fault with their procedures.
I wouldn’t be a cop nowadays. I read stories about run-of-the-mill arguments in restaurants, night clubs and on street corners where most of those involved produce guns and marvel at how seemingly routine it’s become to carry weapons. Or I read stories like the one about the raid on three houses in Gwinnett County where agents seized $9 million in meth and coke — and three guns, including an AR-15 rapid-fire rifle. The streets are dangerous and while officers can be guilty of over-reacting or reacting inappropriately, a slow response can be deadly.
FBI crime data from September documents what our reading of the newspapers lead us to believe: violent crime is increasing. The Justice Department announced on Wednesday that it has selected 18 cities, including Atlanta, to study for clues as to why rapes, murders, robberies and aggravated assault are on the rise, up 2.2 percent from last year, and the first increase in violent crimes since 2001.
The solution? Drug treatment is certainly a part of it. But I relish the day when on matters of destructive personal behaviors, like bringing children into the world without a mother and father in the home or gun-toting and drug use, opinion leaders including the church, entertainment industry, and the media react just as they have to the problem of smoking. Meanwhile, treatment, enforcement and prisons chase the symptoms — sometimes with tragic consequences.
Does your past matter? Absolutely.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Does your past matter? Should significant transgressions of your youth — murder, robbery, theft, selling dope — disqualify you for the remainder of your life for some positions of trust? What about adulthood, and with lesser offenses, like for example, being one of seven federal judges in history to be impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives and banished from the bench by the U.S. Senate?
The answer to all is — or should be — yes. Any act committed by a person capable of rational choice, especially an act that conveys a wanton disregard for human life, carries with it a lifelong burden and is a permanent disqualifier for some positions. Armed robbers, for example, should never be allowed to handle other people’s money and I’d never want them to own weapons. Armed robbers rationalize killing innocents before they ever pull a gun on their victim. Bad people,
I feel similarly about people who violate the public trust. Few honors are more sacred in a democracy than the public trust. Those who take an oath to uphold the law, and to work for the betterment of the common good, and then enrich themselves or otherwise dishonor their oath, as former School Supt. Linda Schrenko did, as former Mayor Bill Campbell did, and as former federal judge Alcee Hastings did, should forever forfeit the privilege of holding that trust again.
After being impeached and removed from the federal bench almost 20 years ago, Hastings was elected to Congress from Florida. The charge against him was conspiring to solicit bribes from criminal defendants. He was acquitted at trial, but Congress found the charges credible and he was tossed from the bench. But, as is their right, voters elected him to Congress. Bad choice, but voters have the right to set the bar for public service as low as they choose when picking their own representative.
Hastings rises to national interest now because there’s a a real possibility that incoming Speaker Nancy Pelosi will make him head of the House Intelligence Committee. The woman who would normally be in line for the job, California Rep. Jane Harman, is insufficiently far to the left for many Democrats and, besides, she and Pelosi are political adversaries. The Black Caucus is pushing Hastings, who ranks second to Harman on the committee.
Pelosi has blown it once in backing Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania for majority leader, a pick rejected by her caucus. If she picks Hastings now — a decision will come before January — here’s a prediction: Democrats will not keep the House in 2008. The country will not tolerate an impeached federal judge as the U.S. House’s chief keeper of state secrets.
Nation losing the stomach, heart for war
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
One of the great marvels of the vast political divide into which this country has fallen is how differently the left and the right view the military.
The incoming chairman of the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee, Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.), announced his intention to reintroduce legislation to bring back the draft. The reason — and this reflects the left’s peculiar distrust of the military and those who would use it — is to burden policy-makers with a built-in protest movement.
“There’s no question in my mind that this president and this administration would never have invaded Iraq, especially on the flimsy evidence that was presented to Congress, if indeed we had a draft and members of Congress and the administration thought that their kids from their communities would be placed in harm’s way,” Rangel said on Sunday’s “Meet the Press.”
This is one of the reasons national Democrats can never be trusted to occupy the White House and run government during times when the nation’s security is threatened. They look out at the country and see a frightening imperialist impulse that has to be checked by international treaty, by the United Nations, by U.S. law and by draft dodgers and flower children who would raze prospects of American aggression in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan.
The nation should have an honest debate about the obligation each of us has to public service — and to the highest form of public service, the country’s defense. Rangel might well have offered his legislation as a vehicle that opens critical national dialogue. A draft, as desirable as I believe one to be to inculcate into every generation the understanding that freedom isn’t free, is not needed to check America’s aggressive impulses.
But given Rangel’s premise and the mind-set that slipped from John Kerry’s lips during his revealing joke-gone-bad comments to California college students, the military and policy-makers who would use it for something other than road-building and humanitarian relief to Third World countries are dangerous predators, apt to scarf up the nation’s poor and march them off to build empires abroad. What’s more, the normal give-and-take of democratic debate and biennial elections is insufficent to restrain their aggressive desires to colonize the world’s raw-material producers. Such is the America the left sees.
That thinking will never succeed in constructing a foreign policy that amounts to more than missiles-to-mud-huts, bluff and finger-wagging. But of course the world will know that behind the bluff is nothing that seriously threatens sustained combat.
More than three decades after the draft ended, the country has changed in ways that prompt serious questions about our ability to engage a persistent enemy who doesn’t march in columns in May Day parades.
Reflect on the stories that have come out of the Iraqi phase of the war on terrorism. They are, by and large, devoid of heroes and of heroic actions. They are instead of things gone wrong, such as the friendly-fire death of Pat Tillman, the NFL defensive back who turned down a multimillion- dollar contract with the Arizona Cardinals to join the Army. Soldiers are seen as fragile creatures likely to break, driven to drugs, alcohol and post-traumatic stress disorder, without getting the treatment they need.
Those are legitimate stories, of course. But the predominant accounts Americans see and hear are of broken lives and failure.
No war, however just and necessary, can long be sustained when the cause is subsumed in the suffering. The argument can certainly be made that it’s up to the president, national leaders and the generals to remind us constantly of the stakes and the cause for which casualities are suffered. That is no doubt true. But the same explanations fall weak when the casualties are immediate and memories of the threat have cooled.
America may well have lost its capacity to fight a war that extends more than a few weeks, Rangel’s draft or not. Our attention span is too short, our recall too fragmented, our resolve too relative. We have become a timid nation, frightened by the threats, but unwilling to confront them in ways that put this generation at risk. In that sense, Rangel reads us right. A draft is a national security poison pill.
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It’s morning in Georgia
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
After two weeks in the interior of Brazil, it’s great to be back home — though I must say this will be the last time I go away and leave getalife, Political Fore and other blog contributors of their persuasion in charge of elections. I left town prepared to concede the House, though even there my reading was much too optimistic. Such is the fate of the cheerful, morning-in-America conservative.
The election results nationally did send a ringing message to Republicans in Georgia to get their governing act together. Politically, the GOP has never been stronger, nor the Democrats weaker here. So clear is the field of ready Democratic contenders statewide that DeKalb CEO Vernon Jones, who is forced out of office by term limits in 2008, has hinted that he may run for the U.S. Senate. When Jimmy Carter announced for President three decades ago, the morning newspaper ran an editorial — which the writers later had to eat — with the headline, as I recall it, “He’s running for WHAT!” Thinking Right, having lived through that era and having seen the impropable realized, won’t repeat the mistake. But I will observe that Georgians don’t knowingly elect liberals and, except for disappearing pockets, DeKalb Countians don’t knowingly elect conservatives.
The purpose here really, though, is to say that Republicans under the Gold Dome should use their advantage to explain, promote and enact conservative principles. Stand for something or go home. Contain the growth of government. Cut taxes and don’t play hide-the-tax-increase games. Turn as much of government as possible over to the private sector, but write strong and clear laws governing performace; build walls that guarantee accountability between government and the private sector; and make it all open from the first day so that we’re not simply governmentizing the private sector and putting the potential abuses beyond elections. Cost-benefit analysis of programs, spending and proposed regulations, always. Bring competition to education, too. Be bold. Try new things. But explain, keeping in mind that Georgians are suspicious of government and want clear and forthright explanations of what elected officials are doing and why.
Time is of the essence. Conservatives don’t have 40 years to change government. The GOP nationally had a dozen years. In the state, the GOP can do essentially nothing and survive a decade. If they want more time, they’ll have to do something constructive that actually makes a difference.
On a personal note, it’s good to be back home. Thanks to all who offered contributions of substance and relevance in my absence. My fear was that the trolls would sink the ship, but the regulars here did a superb job, as usual, of declining to engage them. You have my appreciation.
Nancy, Whitney and happy conservatives
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right´s Friday free-for-all. Pick a topic:
How could a conservative be unhappy? The two Republicans vying for leadership sound the same themes. “Republicans need to get back to our core principles and rededicate ourselves to the reform mindset that put us in the majority 12 years ago,” said Majority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio). The GOP drifted from principles, noted conservative challenger Mike Pence of Indiana. “We are in the wilderness because we walked away from limited-goverment principles that minted the Republican Congress.” Music. Pure music.
Whoa, Nancy! Pelosi is saved from her own bad judgment in endorsing and vigorously campaigning for John Murtha of Pennsylvania to be the next Majority Leader. Murtha is significant only because he´s a decorated veteran who gave cover to liberal Democrats opposing the administration in Iraq. Otherwise, he´s a pork-barreler who was caught on FBI tape a quarter-century ago. When offered $50,000 from a supposed Arab shiek looking to gain residency and seeking investment opportunities, Murtha replied, “I´m not interested…at this point.” He wasn´t charged. The caucus wisely chose Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, an old Pelosi adversary.
Get used to it: The proposed commuter rail line to Lovejoy is $11 million over budget. It´s now projected to cost $120 million. And this grates, too: Taxpayers will spend $54 million to upgrade Norfolk-Southern´s rail. We´ll “own” the improvements; N-S will own the rail. Or, they own the pig, but the squeal belongs to taxpayers.
What´s the big deal about the Cobb County Commissioners agreeing to let MARTA provide roundtrip service from Atlanta to downtown Cobb — that being the Cobb Community Transit bus station near Cumberland Mall? Again, it´s not MARTA that´s the problem. It´s the MARTA-union contract and the MARTA board politics that I don´t want merged into Cobb. No problem here with the vehicles or drivers.
A country that´s serious about addressing the problem of illegals will employ any number of approaches that send the message that we don´t wink and look the other way. A proposed ordinance in Cherokee County that would fine landlords for renting to illegals is one of those. The U.S. sent a thousand messages that we welcomed illegals. Now send those that say we don´t. No mass roundups. Messages. Over time, they work.
Gutsy move by U.S. Air to acquire Delta. The hope here is that it´s unsuccessful. Coke, Delta and Rich´s were Atlanta.
I´ve been away from Atlanta for two weeks. I haven´t missed anything important in the lives of the Pandas at the Atlanta zoo, have I? Or Whitney and Bobby?
I´m going to be sick. Fox plans to give airtime to OJ to tell how he would have done it had he done it. I think the world knows the answer already.
San Francisco´s board of education votes 4-2 to get rid of Junior ROTC programs in the city´s high schools over the next two years to protest the military´s “don´t ask, don´t tell” policy. That policy violates the system´s equal rights policy for gays, school officials say. Cut ém off. Not a dime in federal money to the San Francisco school system. This is one of the problems Democrats have with Nancy Pelosi as the future Speaker of the U.S. House. San Francisco´s politics get nationalized.
Milton Friedman, the economic guru whose work shaped the thinking of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, and whose efforts to introduce competition will revolutionize public education, is dead. “His writings and ideas have transformed the minds of U.S. Presidents, world leaders, entrepreneurs and freshmen economic majors alike,” the Milton and Rose D. Friedman Foundation said in a statement. “Even at 94, he kept fighting to bring educational equality to all of America’s children,” work the foundation will continue.
A new guy on the Chamblee City Council wants a quote by President Bush removed from the wall at City Hall. The quote is this: “We will not waver; we will not tire; we will not falter; and we will not fail. Peace and freedom will prevail.” Here´s an idea: Let´s go through Metro Atlanta removing the names of insignificant figures, most of them politicians, from buildings, rooms, roads and bridges. And when we get done, let´s all gather at Chamblee City Hall and remove insignificant ones there.
Blue Dogs win; Pelosi Democrats lose
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
As expected, the two Georgia Congressmen in competitive districts — Jim Marshall in the 8th and John Barrow in the 12th — survived recounts announced Wednesday. Marshall won by 1,752 votes in the Middle Georgia district and Barrow won by 864 in the East Georgia district. Former U.S. Rep. Max Burns of Sylvania was an exceptional challenger; the 12th District shouldn’t be seriously competitive for Republican. The Macon-based 8th was more competitive than expected. Marshall seemed before Nov. 7th to be the rising star of the state Democratic Party. After Lt. Gov. Mark Taylor and Secretary of State Cathy Cox, Marshall was the Democrat with the best chance of appealing statewide. The closeness of his race with former U.S. Rep. Mac Collins in a year that belonged to Democrats nationally suggests, however, that in a Presidential year, Marshall could be very vulnerable.
His vulnerablity could be sharply increased depending on the agenda and tone set in the U.S. House by Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi. Democrats like John Lewis, Hank Johnson and David Scott are free to swing as far to the left as they choose. Others, however, like Marshall, Barrow and U.S. Rep. Sanford Bishop had best be careful. Georgia Republicans have established their competence in raising money and turning out the vote. Right candidate, right issue and those three seats could go Republican in 2008.
All of which brings up the issue of the “Blue Dog” Democrats who are now in the process of organizing in the U.S. House. Those are the Democrats, many of whom represent districts like those served by Marshall and Barrow that are far more moderate than Pelosi’s San Francisco, who want Congress to focus on issues like a balanced budget, the national debt, Social Security funding and others that appeal to fiscal and social conservatives. The coalition, led by U.S. Rep. Allen Boyd (D-Fla.) so far includes 44 Democrats. Boyd, incidentally, is a native Georgian, born in Valdosta, who now represents the Florida panhandle, including Tallahassee and Panama City.
The Blue Dog-GOP conservative coalition should be the voice and it should materially influence the agenda in the new Congress. If Southern Democrats are to survive and prosper, it is in following the Blue Dog lead. Marshall, Barrow and Bishop can survive as Blue Dogs. They can’t as Pelosi Democrats.
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Confirm Bolton, judicial nominees now
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
With Democrats due to take control of the U.S. Senate in January, President Bush has two options — three really — for handling his judicial nominees. He can use the lame-duck session to fight for confirmation of five stalled appellate court nominees who are ready for a Senate vote, including one, federal district court judge Terrance Boyle of North Carolina, who was first nominated to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond 14 years ago by the president’s father. Or he can consider that, as far as the judiciary is concerned, his administration is over.
There are now 16 vacancies among the 179 judges who sit on 13 federal appeals courts. It’s unilkely that after January Bush will be able to gain confirmation of any conservative with a record that can be twisted, as has been the custom among liberals. “Don’t send us political extremists,” warned U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) after this month’s GOP “thumping.” A political extremist, of course, is one suspected of holding conservative views.
Confirming United Nations Ambassador John Bolton in the lame-duck session is vital. But the President should fight, too, for the confirmation of the stalled judicial nominees who are suspected of being conservative. It’s not going to happen after January, nor to be honest, should conservatives expect action then. In the final two years of the Clinton Administration, Republicans sat on 16 of his appeals court nominees.
For President Bush and the stalled nominees, it’s now or never. Go for it.
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No timetable on Iraq
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
If avoiding a commitment to withdraw prematurely from Iraq was the price President Bush had to pay for his party’s control of Congress, so be it The loss of the Senate hurts because of the possibility that a vacancy could occur on the U. S. Supreme Court. But otherwise, the harm is that the President may feel hamstrung in dealing with Iraq, Iran and the war on terrorism.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is right to be be concerned that last week’s elections could weaken or soften the U.S. negotiating position on Iran’s nuclear program. The reality is, election or not, the world and especially Israel cannot live with an adversary armed with nuclear weapons that’s determined “ultimately [to] wipe Israel off the map.” Said Olmert in understatement, “If Iran had nuclear weapons, it would be terribly destabilizing.” Bush agrees, of course, and is urging the world to isolate Iran until it abandons its nuclear ambitions.
The greater concern at the moment, however, is U.S. policy on Iraq. U.S. Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), who will be chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee when Democrats take over in January advocates withdrawal starting in 4-6 months. He believes “we’re getting deeper and deeper into a hole in Iraq.”
There’s certainly a limit as to how far Bush can press the war and the goal of getting Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions. Terrorists and the world read election results, too. The U.S. presidential election is two years away. Settle in. Mayhem and delay will be the strategy of terrorists and Iran, too.
Regardless of the rhetoric from Levin and others, Bush should not declare or set a timetable for withdrawal. If the new Congress objects, it has the power of the purse to effect its will — and an election in two years to sell its plan to the American people.
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Blogging real
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Something about blogging is like an in-flight conversation with a person you’ll never again see. It invites confessions. Herewith, then, are some about blogging and me.
After six months, I am struck by how much of it is improvisational theater. People play roles. Often I think contributors, and liberals in particular, are effecting the voices they despise, projecting themselves to be bigots or religious fanatics, for example, because to their ear that’s the way conservatives talk, especially social conseratives. We aren’t and we don’t. Southerners, though, having heard the accent-in-parody throughout our lives, develop a finely-tuned ear — and eye —for the real deal. The gay marriage debate produced an unusually heavy volume of pretenders.
A lot of name-calling occurs in the blogosphere, too. I’ll admit that some of it is pretty creative and entertaining — invective the way it used to be before political correctness de-flowered public people of originality, lest they trip up and say somthing like “handicapped” instead of “disabled” or “differently abled.” Anyway, it’s hard for today’s blogosphere invective to top some of history’s masters. Who could forget reading about Virginian John B. Randolph’s characterization of his fellow Congressman, Henry Clay of Kentucky: “This being, so brilliant yet so corrupt, which, like a rotten mackerel by moonlight, shined and stunk.” A duel followed. (Disallowed on this blog, or flowing from exchanges on it.) Or earlier, British politician John Wilkes’ response to the Earl of Sandwich’s prediction that Wilkes would die on the gallows or of venereal disease. “That depends, my lord,” replied Wilkes, “whether I embrace your principles or your mistress.” (The exchange is also attributed to others; Thinking Right can’t even know for certain who posts now, much less who tossed an original barb then.)
As for the names liberals call me here and elsewhere — wingnut, right-wing loon, goose-stepping fascist and the like —have no worry. I have an older and bigger brother who was both inventive with names and positioned to apply them by brute force. And I’ve been married for the better part of 40 years, so all of my shortcomings have been noted with great insight, comprehensive analysis, and all subjected to a strictly supervised rehabilitation regimen. So flail away. But don’t expect “do-do head” to send me to therapy or convert me to liberalism. My brother started there.
Today’s questions, housekeeping of sorts, has to do with the blog, the conversation and the tone. What do you look for here? What would you like to lose? And do the games others play amuse or turn you off?
Post-election, Rumsfeld, cookbooks
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s free-for-all Friday. Pick a topic:
• The president’s right. It was a thumping. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. It hurts. But I am old enough to remember the gloom that descended on Georgia in the days after Lester Maddox was elected governor. And those were the darkest. He was a decent governor. Georgia survived. Conservatives will, too.
• Dark days for Republicans nationally, dark for Democrats in Georgia. Republicans won state House and Senate seats they should have lost, and made others — including the congressional seats held by Jim Marshall in the 8th and John Barrow in the 12th — far closer than they should have been.
• History, and military historians, will be kind to Donald Rumsfeld. While Rumsfeld and his generals might, in retrospect, have made different decisions here and there, including Fallujah, his strategy was sound, his insistence that the United States not prepare to be an “occupation” army was wise, and his leadership was just what a nation at war needs.
• Republicans now rule the roost under the Gold Dome. The lesson of this election: Stand for something. Think big and do it. Cut taxes, don´t raise them. The GOP in Congress had 12 years to make a difference. The Georgia GOP can’t count on any more.
• October was the year’s best month for stocks. But. Strategists wary. But fewer than half of Americans own stocks. Gas may be cheaper. But. Could go back up. Wages and benefits July-September rose at the fastest pace in two years. But. Consumer confidence slips. Unemployment fell to a five-year low of 4.4 percent last month. But. Housing’s slumping. Jim’s happy he’s on vacation. But. The mosquitoes could be biting. Oh, woe.
• New attention to two cookbook classics — Mrs. Dull’s 1941 “Southern Cooking,” just reprinted by the University of Georgia Press and “Joy of Cooking,” a new version of which hit the bookstores this week — evoke memories of a Southern childhood. A new bride got pots and pans and Mrs. Dull’s. Anybody who showed promise with Mrs. Dull’s was a candidate for “Joy of Cooking.”
• The U.S. Supreme Court takes a Georgia case overdue for resolution. At issue is whether police can use deadly force against a fleeing motorist who is suspected only of speeding or driving recklessly. No, they shouldn’t.
• In the “No Duh” Department, Aisle 1: A Syracuse University professor, Arthur C. Brooks, reveals in a forthcoming book that religious conservatives, regardless of income, donate substantially more than secular liberals to charity. “In the book, to be released next month,” reports the Syracuse Post-Standard, “he cites extensive data analysis to demonstrate that values advocated by conservatives — from church attendance to two-parent families to the Protestant work ethic and a distaste for government-funded social services — make conservatives more generous than liberals.” Actually, liberals give more. Government’s their vehicle.
• Regional department stores disappear. The Christmas shopping season approaches without Chicago’s Marshall Field’s, latest to go. On reflection, it’s amazing how little department stores seemed to matter after Rich’s, and especially the downtown store, disappeared. Marshall Field’s was a part of Chicago’s flavor. The demise of locally owned department stores distresses. And takes all the fun out of being a last-minute Christmas shopper who could find something appropriate.
• Toll lanes for buses and trucks, proposed for parts of I-285 and I-75, are the way to go. When congestion-relief needs are far greater than available money, as is the case in metro Atlanta, it just makes sense to farm out part of the solution to the private sector. The trick is to make certain tax money “saved” is not then spent on frivolous transportation buys.
• See above for the prime reason Statehouse Republicans need to retool government. The private sector has a vital service-delivery role. The public sector’s job is to set priorities and performance standards, guarantee that the work is performed at a fair price — and police the contracts without getting too cozy with companies.
• More than half of the transportation projects scheduled for this year in metro Atlanta got under way. All types were delayed, but bicycle and pedestrian projects were delayed more, with 73 percent delayed and 5 percent getting dropped altogether. That is as it should be. Both are primarily for leisure, not getting there.
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What behaviors do we buy?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
While testifying recently before a Georgia State Senate study committee, former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Newt Gingrich, argued for revolutionary shifts in the nation’s healthcare system to one that promotes wellness and healthier lifestyles. As he noted, we’ve gone in just a few decades from a nation with chronic hunger problems to one that suffers chronic obesity.
At the core of the debate is a challenge to conservatives: How do we use government, or the bully-pulpit it presents, to change behaviors? One of my favorite examples of an inappropriate use of government is the Georgia Lottery and state lotteries everywhere. The fact that a public housing project maintenance man from Bainbridge recently won $66 million — his take of an advertised $163 million jackpot — along with the feel-good stories that surface periodically about how much the lottery “contributes” to education, make for swell public relations.
But as conservatives who would recast government, a first consideration always when proposing new programs is what behaviors we’ re buying. With the lottery, we’re “buying” these:
- We’re encouraging the poor to spend money their children may need for necessities.
- We’re tempting the weak to succumb to a possible addiction.
- We’re telling families that it’s not really necessary to save or plan for college for their children because the state will do that for them.
- We’re encouraging teachers and school officials to inflate grades to make marginal students eligible for government financial assistance.
- We’re inviting the young to think that riches come by chance, not by hard work and thrift.
On the plus side: A few people do get rich, For most of us, the lottery is affordable entertainment, disposable income that goes to gambling as opposed to a big order of fries. And some kids do get to go to college, or to a more desirable college.
For conservatives in government, two questions should always precede legislation and regulation: One is “what behaviors are we buying?” The second is: “Can it be justified on a cost-benefit basis?”
What does it all mean?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A vacationing Jim is counting on you to analyze the election results and tell the rest of us what really happened Tuesday, what voters were saying.
What do the election results mean for Georgia, for George W. Bush and for the Iraqi phase of the war on terrorism? It’s an easy assigment. Go for it.
Book a loving look at South that’s gone
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
In a world that bulldozes its history and has an attention span that likely could be measured in milliseconds, a most remarkable reminder that the pleasures of time and place are to be savored has just come to life in an ambitious book called “The Paper Boy.”
Its author is Smyrna native and City Councilman Pete Wood, who with Lillie, his wife of 46 years, has undertaken a project so ambitious and unique that it’s a wonder anybody ever had the time or discipline to take it on.
The book’s appeal is, in the larger sense, limited to families whose roots are in a city where, as a young boy, he delivered The Atlanta Constitution, starting during World War II.
What Wood’s done in “The Paper Boy” is mentally walk the streets he traveled as a boy and talk about the lives of the people who occupied the houses he passed. As he talks, reflecting first on a boy’s memories and then on the lives and the directions he came to know over the next six decades, we are introduced to the mosaic of lives and relationships that gives meaning to time and place.
The result is a book that is of historical and genealogical interest first. But in the detail, and in the interconnection of lives, Wood presents a different and fuller picture of a Georgia that was one that I suspect Atlantans and even Southerners of this generation will never know.
It is so rare in metro Atlanta, or increasingly anywhere in the South, that people stay put in one place long enough to know their neighbors well, much less to know the lives of their parents and children, that it simply boggles the mind to imagine that somebody could do this for a whole town.
Wood focuses primarily on families who lived in Smyrna between 1938, his earliest memory of people and place, and 1951, when he graduated from high school. The 1940 census put its population at 1,440, about the current size of the farming communities of Rochelle, Broxton or Tennile, and half the size of the city of Adairsville. Smyrna’s 2005 population was 45,755.
Researchers at the Atlanta Regional Commission have gathered data from census reports that provide a glimpse of our mobility. Among a 2000 population of 38,266 in Smyrna, 24,850 had lived in a different house five years earlier — 13,960 in a different county in Georgia and 8,565 in a different state. It’s the same throughout metro Atlanta.
As the region changes, the center moves and so does our orientation, so that we come to think of place as teams and brands. Mobility engenders rootlessness, family lives as snapshots with no beginning or end.
That is a real change for the South, a region where families were attached to land and neighbors were each other’s family historians because their lives and families were woven together over generations. It was nothing, therefore, to talk of the living and the dead as part of the same story, and to fix the events in their lives to houses, seasons, work or to the landscape, creeks, rivers or other distinguishing landmarks.
That world is mostly gone everywhere. Atlanta, and the small communities around it, were once such a place. Now, however, most of the reference-point places, like the one-room schoolhouses in rural Georgia that have gone back to nature, are given over to change, to skyscrapers and condos and Wal-Marts. The paperboys, too, see homes but not people — and when they see people, they make no connections to families or place.
Every community and every passing generation should have the opportunity to see itself, as Wood saw and writes about, one tiny sliver of metro Atlanta. He saw it as a paperboy learning people and the skills necessary to succeed in life.
Over the decades, as a banker, as a founding trustee of the hospital authority that built Cobb General and as a founding trustee of what is now WellStar Health Systems, and as a city councilman and member of First Baptist Church of Smyrna for more than 70 years, he saw the same families through joys and hardships, through wars and good times. From those vantage points, paperboy to community leader, he saw the richness and the detail of a people and place that one day will exist as high-rises and mini-mansions, with the new designed to look old.
The old place has gone, but Wood has kept their stories.
The first house on the north side of Bank Street? Oh, that was occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Talmadge Pharr Westbrook. Let me tell you where they came from, what happened in their lives and what happened to their children. The paperboy knows.
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Hunting, stem cell research and preferences
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Around the country on Tuesday voters will be choosing among the usual assortment of candidates. But they’ll also be amending state constitutions and implementing laws. Here are some of the ballot questions. Good ideas or not? You decide:
Eight states propose to define marriage as one man, one woman. Colorodo asks two questions: Whether to define marriage as one man, one woman, but also whether to permit domestic partnerships with the benefits of marriage.
Georgia offers a constitutional amendment to protect hunting and fishing. State Sen. Eric Johnson, the president pro tem of the State Senate, explains: “For years, animal rights extremists have been systematically campaigning against hunting and fishing throughout the country. It is only a matter of time before they set their sights on Georgia. For those who do not think our right to hunt and fish is under serious threat, they need to know that extremist organizations like PETA are lurking in the background. PETA supporters testified against this amendment in Committee…. The main purpose of Amendment 2 is to assure that all Georgians, urban and rural, will have the opportunity to share family traditions with their children and grandchildren.”
Arizona proposes to require that pigs during pregnancy and callves raised for veal be given enough space to turn around, lie down and fully extend when tethered.
California proposes a $4 billion tax on oil to be given for research on alternative energy sources, and prohibits them from passing the tax on to consumers.
Michigan proposes to ban race, gender and other preferences in public employment, contracting or school admissions.
Arizona would ban in-state student status at colleges for illegal immigrants.
Missouri has an amendment that one side says would protect and promote embryonic stem-cell research and the other says would permit cloning.
Rice outlines positive signs for U.S. in Iraq
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
En route to their goal of making Tuesday’s election a referendum on President Bush and Iraq, without any visible indication that they have any workable ideas or plans for handling the war on terrorism themselves, national Democrats had a nasty little diversion last week.
Those darn ’60s and that darn 2004 nightmare emerged again last week, giving the nation another look at the ghosts of a haunting past that the party on the outs simply cannot shake.
It started with U.S. Sen. John Kerry’s assertion to students in California that “If you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.”
A quick apology would have abbreviated the damage. But Kerry can’t get past that era and the Swift Boat veterans, so he stumbled through a series of “I’m-sorry-you’re-stupid” efforts that destroyed in days his prospects of ever being on a major party ticket again. The Swift Boat veterans thus have thus beaten him twice.
It was a distraction that interrupted Democrats, who were determined to convert the national angst about the Iraqi phase of the war on terrorism into a free ride to control of the U.S. House and Senate. On national security and Iraq, the party out of power offers no appealing alternative. Americans may be frustrated, but they don’t want to exit on any timetable or in any way that makes our children’s world less secure.
The opportunity arose last week to speak to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who responded to questions about Iraq and measures of success there. She is, incidentally, an example of the calm, clearheaded leader the country needs in time of stress.
“I certainly think the president is capable of mobilizing the America people and mobilizing the system to support a policy that is really, when you think about it, very much where most Americans are,” said Rice. “Very few Americans want us to simply pick up and leave. They recognize the stakes. They know it is important. They want to know that it is possible to have a good outcome.
“So I think the real goal for the administration has to be to talk about how that outcome comes into being, how . . . the Iraqis get to a place they can defend themselves and govern themselves,” Rice continued. “There are a lot of challenges because of the violence, particularly the sectarian violence, but this is also a political system in Iraq that’s maturing and in which the Iraqis are determined to take more control . . . We have a government that really wants the reins, and that’s a very positive development.
“I think most people understand that we are not going to leave prematurely; we’re also going to make the critical adjustments that have to be made as circumstances dictate and as conditions on the ground change, and we’ve made some of those. . . . There’s been a significant recalculation of how to structure the Iraqi security forces — increase the number of army forces, for instance, because the army is emerging as an institution that does have national support, rather than the police. Most people see [the police] as more local and therefore more sectarian. . . .
“Of course, the goal is to make the adjustments that are necessary, but to keep very firmly in mind the goal, which is to get this job done.”
The task now is to convey indicators of success to Americans and Iraqis. “That is really the challenge because we had some very big indicators early on.” Rice mentions the elections, the constitution, the new government. “Now you’re into, at some level, a more routine sense of governing, which makes it harder to show progress, but that is one reason that I think the Iraqis themselves . . . have set out these goals, benchmarks, objectives, like the passage of a hydrocarbons law, which would demonstrate that the oil wealth is going to be shared in the country, the passage of a law on demobilization of militias, the passage of a law on de-Baathification, which would show how people that were once associated with the Baath Party would be treated.
“They will have provincial elections, so there are important political milestones that will be coming up, and I think showing that they are putting those forward and meeting them will be very important to the American people, but also to the Iraqi people,” Rice said.
Measures of success, yes. But premature withdrawal at our children’s peril.
Jim Wooten is associate editorial page editor. His column appears Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays.
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Bus terminal, no MegaFest, Kerry apology
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s free-for-all Friday. Pick a topic:
• A Floridian uses “part of a home equity loan” to pay $2,952 for a pair of Barbra Streisand tickets, and then spends $325 more on T-shirts and other merchandise. Can you imagine trying to design a government capable of building safety nets under a population that heaps debt on personal homes to afford a concert? Gotta be a liberal.
• The Georgia Regional Transportation Authority is designing a $93 million bus terminal on I-75, just inside I-285. Two points: With projects like this, nobody in state government can be accused of failing to boldly consider “alternatives” to more road capacity. Some alternatives make dollar sense; some don’t. Commuter rail is in the “don’t make sense” category. And two: Don’t use up all that space above the expressways. At some point soon the private sector needs to double-deck the Downtown Connector.
• Some 360 students at Woodland Elementary Charter School in Sandy Springs voted this week in a mock election. An 8-year-old third-grader voted for Mark Taylor, though she’s not certain what a governor does. “I think the governor is the one who gets all the money from the people and then gives them a paycheck.” And who said the Democratic Party had no farm team?
• Feeling the pressure, former JonBenet suspect John Mark Karr flees. Check the bus to Albuquerque.
• “If the science is right, the consequences for our planet are literally disastrous,” said British Prime Minister Tony Blair, as his government releases a report on climate changes and appoints former VP Al Gore as its “global warming” adviser. If. Scholars at the American Enterprise Institute declared of the report: “Risk estimates are based not on extrapolation of existing trends, but on computer models that are only as good as the assumptions fed in.”
• Last year, global warming caused a bad hurricane season in the Atlantic. But that was last year. This year’s below normal. If.
• Meanwhile, my worry time goes to a still-mutating strain of bird flu. This is the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention at its finest. Planning. Researching. Coordinating. Preparing for a possible pandemic.
• “Sometimes our government goes too far, and I think this is one of those cases,” said DeKalb CEO Vernon Jones in vetoing a proposed ban on smoking in bars in unincorporated parts of the county. Ordinances such as this are evidence that politicians have too much time, too few ideas and too many laws already — so they’re reduced to kindergarten busy work, doodling and coloring in the legal code.
• Coke announces a wholesale price increase of as much as 25 percent for its orange juice brands. Whew! Finally a price increase we can avoid. Oil, we’re prisoners. OJ, not.
• Looking to start a new business? Here’s one sorely needed: An apology school. John Kerry’s “Of course I’m sorry about a botched joke. You think I love botched jokes?” hardly qualifies. The second round was not much better. John Kerry, stuck in dumbspeak.
• If Congress listened to fiscal conservatives such as U.S. Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-Ga.) of Sharpsburg in the 3rd Congressional District, and outed earmarks, as U.S. Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.) of Roswell insisted, we’d not have to worry that the U.S. House may be taken over by Nancy Pelosi Democrats. Good men, both, and good fits for their districts.
• Taxpayers would be well served if every Statehouse committee chair put in the hours and offered the kind of leadership that state Rep. Jill Chambers (R-Atlanta) does in overseeing MARTA’s finances, operations and performance. Republican majorities in both houses have a brief window to challenge the status quo before they own it. She’s in a tough race in DeKalb.
• When liberals say that George W. Bush and Sonny Perdue are not leaders, what they really mean is that the two are not leading in the direction liberals want to go.
• The free market works. Bishop T.D. Jakes cancels MegaFest, one of Atlanta’s biggest religious events, for next year. Attendance had dipped from 500,000 the first year to under 100,000 because of the high cost of four days in Atlanta. The thousands of people dressed in their Sunday best will be missed on the streets here. Next to the Olympic crowds, it’s Atlanta’s most interesting gathering of people from elsewhere.
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Condi on Latin America
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The blog speaks. Earlier this week, when I had a chance to interview Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, a leader I’d love to see with Florida Gov. Jeb Bush on the Republican ticket in 2008, I had a chance to ask questions, or variations of them, suggested by contributors to the Thinking Right blog. Tuesday’s question on North Korea, and whether some outsiders like Jimmy Carter should be brought in, was offered by CJ.
Mid-South Philosopher, Southern Democrat and Dusty posed questions related to policies affecting this hemisphere and I asked a variation of those, focusing specifically on Sunday’s election in Nicarauga, which has an awful lot of those on the Right worried about a return of the disastrous 11-year regime of Sandinista ruler Daniel Ortega, a friend of Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez. While he’s not been able previously to garner majority support, the Constitution has been changed to permit him to win the presidency without a runoff if he gets more than 35 percent of the vote and has a 5-point lead over the nearest opponent. Since he’s running against four opponents, two of them favored by the U.S. who will split the vote, Ortega could win without a runoff. That prospect worries conservatives like U.S. Rep. Pete Hoekstra of Michigan, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and U.S. Rep. Ed Royce, chairman of its subcommittee on terrorism, who have written the State Department to express concern and to ask that assistance to Nicaragua be reviewed.
I asked Rice about the upcoming election and whether U.S. influence in the Western Hemisphere is on the wane. Here’s her response:
“First of all, we’ll wait and see what happens in the election…. The Nicaraguan people have not spoken and obviously if the election is free and fair, which is what we are going to concentrate on and what the international system is concentrating on, then we’ll respect its decision, but this hasn’t happened yet. We’ll see what the policies of the next Nicarauguan government will be. I think it’s going to be hard not to have policies that respond to the need for open markets and for free trade and to get into a situation in which the Nicarauguan economy is isolated. I think that would be very difficult policy choice.
“But as to the influence of the United States, I would just remind you that if you look at the last sets of elections and what’s happening in Latin America, this is not about the influence of the United States. It’s about the influences of policies that while they may elect candidates from the Left – and the United States has no problem dealing with candidates, with governments on the Left: Chile, Brazil; it doesn’t matter where you come from — what matters is: Are you devoted to open markets and investment and trade and investing in people? And whether it is the government of [center-left] President [Tabaré Ramón ]Vázquez [Rosas ] in Uruguay, which has very good relations with the United States, or the victory of Felipe Calderon in Mexico [over populist Andrés Manuel López Obrador], or the victory of [Alan] Garcia in Peru [over the leftist Ollanta Humala] or the failure of [left-wing economist Rafael] Correa [a friend of Venezuala’s Hugo Chavez] to win in Ecuador [without a Nov. 26 runoff], it looks to me like things have been going the other way.”
I ask her about the decision by another friend of Chavez, Bolivian President Evo Morales, to renationalize the oil and gas industry, and what that says about free trade. Her reply:
” Well, that is a a contrary case and it is unfortunate – I think it is mostly unfortunate for Bolivia, but you know the biggest rift has not been with the United States, it’s been with Brazil. And so, I think we have to be careful not to simplify what are very complicated sets of relations in Latin America because when that happened in Bolivia, it has been principally with Brazil that there’s been a problem.” And then: ” Jim, I’m afraid I’m going to have to go, if that’s helpful.”
Your questions were asked. One or two more are forthcoming. Now planned for Sunday is her response to questions raised by jbmlaw and Political Fore, among others, about Iraq. She spoke, too, to Iran’s nuclear weapons program, an issue we’ll visit next week.
She’s tremendously impressive. Presidential material for sure. She’s said previously, on numerous occasions, that she’ll not be a candidate in 2008. Too bad. She’d be a hard one for Hillary to beat.
Study hard, avoid Iraq
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
On the eve of the Democrats’ anticipated celebration at having taken over the U.S. House of Representatives, their former nominee for President of the United States delivered a body-slam to queued-up celebrants. Speaking Monday to students at Pasadena City College in California, U.S. Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, admonished them to keep their nose to the grindstone. “If you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.”
President George W. Bush, campaigning in Middle Georgia for former Congressman Mac Collins, who is trying for a comeback against U.S. Rep. Jim Marshall (D-Macon), called Kerry’s remarks “insulting” and “shameful.” Said the President to boos for Kerry and cheers for the sentiment: “The members of the United States military are plenty smart and they are plenty brave and the senator from Massachusetts owes them an apology.”
The reference, Kerry said later in declining to render an apology, was meant to apply to Bush, not the troops. “I’m sick and tired of a bunch of despicable Republicans who will not debate real policy, who won’t take responsibility for their own mistakes, standing up and trying to make other people the butt of those mistakes,” said Kerry.. “It disgusts me that a bunch of these Republican hacks who’ve never worn the uniform of our country are willing to lie about those who did.”
Among those who called on Kerry to apologize was U.S. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) who did wear the uniform. “The suggestion that only the least educated Americans would agree to serve in the military and fight in Iraq is an insult to every soldier serving in combat today.”
McCain is right. There is in the mind of many liberal elitists a belief, I do believe, that slips out, a belief that those who join the military are either driven there by an inability to find a better-paying job or because they are closet reactionaries who otherwise would be building encampments in the hills of Idaho, or are over-zealous patriots acting out their frustrations.
Maybe Kerry was clumsily phrasing his anti-Bush humor, attempting to say in elitist arrogrance that had President Bush been smarter and studied harder, the U.S. wouldn’t now be “stuck in Iraq, ” ha, ha. If that was his intention — and who knows? — he blew it, slandering those who wear and who wore the uniform. The Republicans had their Foley moment leading up to next Tuesday’s election. Now the Democrats have their Kerry moment, which will go on longer than warranted because his arrogance and tin ear won’t allow him to apologize.
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