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Friday, January 26, 2007
Evacuees, Iraq war plan, traffic mess
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s Friday free-for-all. Pick a topic:
• Good news is bad news: Gas prices falling. But … drivers may return to driving habits deemed to be socially undesirable.
• Speaking of “buts …” Guess the next word to follow in the first sentence of this good-news story about the deficit: “The deficit picture has improved …” And what’s the next word? You got it. There’s a “bleak reminder” that no good news is.
• Good news, bad news: You’re Time’s Person of the Year. But … it’s your fault that kidnapper Gary Steven Krist went bad again and took to cocaine smuggling. You wouldn’t let him practice medicine. He’s very mad at you.
• One thing I don’t like about programs such as American Idol: It’s cruel to exploit people for amusement, especially those who are desperate.
• A state employee who can get as excited as archivist Gregory Jarrell of Morrow was in discovering the state’s only official copy of the Declaration of Independence not only has found a treasure — but is one.
• An ethics complaint based on “common knowledge” was, and should have been dismissed, against Georgia House Speaker Glenn Richardson (R-Hiram). The Democrats who ran Georgia for 134 years surely do not want to establish “common knowledge” of “inappropriate personal” relationships as the standard for indicting either the living or the dead.
• The Georgia Lottery has the best public relations machine in the state — better even than the panda. Press releases focusing on how much money it raises “for education” are read or reported almost verbatim by most news organizations. They never say how much Georgians “lost” to state-sanctioned gambling. Of course, I don’t mind gambling when the winners are working people such as David Wayne Sharpton, a Barrow County service technician, who still works after winning almost $4 million with scratch-offs. Everything about his life, including the way he gambled and the way he managed his life after winning, is evidence of somebody who has his head screwed on straight.
• Seventeen months after Hurricane Katrina, a New Orleans evacuee in Atlanta sits in his Midtown Atlanta apartment, insisting that taxpayers, through the Federal Emergency Management Agency, owe him $6,000 in rental assistance, and waiting for his old job and a place to live. He has no plans to look for work. “The only requirement I should have is that I’m an evacuee,” he said at a gathering of Katrina evacuees. “Don’t tell me to work on somebody’s job when I’m planning to go back to New Orleans.” Seventeen months. No job. Not looking.
• AJC.com headline: “Man dead at church.” Of starvation? I’ve survived sermons that pushed me to the brink.
• Show us the way. U.S. Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.), in giving the Democratic response to the State of the Union, said President Bush should take the “right kind of action for the benefit of the American people and for the health of our relations around the world.” Those are not necessarily the same. But Webb continued: “If he does, we will join him. If he does not we will show him the way.” Starting, one supposes, with a Democratic plan to succeed in Iraq. Right now they’re looking for a face-saving way to run.
• Republicans who vote for the Democratic resolution to block an increase in troop strength in Iraq, in whatever form, should be defeated. It is a resolution that speaks directly to the enemy.
• What government touches. … China’s one-child policy to combat global warming, oops, over-population leads to too few marriageable girls. In some areas of China, 130 boys were born in 2005 for every 100 girls. Now China is considering incentives for couples having daughters and punishment for gender-driven abortions. Incentivize desirable behaviors, discriminate against undesirable.
• A Fulton Superior Court judge approves the sale of up to $200 million in tax allocation district bonds for the proposed Beltline rail line in Atlanta. Local governments should check or even halt the expansion of tax allocation districts until their impact on other property-tax payers is fully assessed. All those kids and all that traffic and all the other services have to be paid for — and for decades, mostly by taxpayers outside the district.
• President Bush asks for a 20 percent reduction in gasoline use within a decade. OK. Fix gridlock — so that traffic actually moves, thereby reducing our fuel consumption.
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