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Friday, February 16, 2007
Townships, Iran, Norwood, PeachCare
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s free-for-all Friday. Pick a topic:
• OK, this is it: The last first. Harvard University has named its first female president, Drew Gilpin Faust. Such a tired old story. Must we go through another generation of First This and First That.
• Any Georgia Republican or Democrat who supports the House resolution opposing the deployment of additional troops to Iraq should be defeated. For most Democrats in the delegation, it’s a free-ride, a no-consequence vote. At the voting booth, anyway.
• You become an old-timer around Atlanta when you can remember the plan that preceded the latest announcement of a grand vision to save/revitalize Peachtree Street, Underground, Fairlie-Poplar or Auburn Avenue. No old fogy stuck in the past here, I’ve been for them all — including the just-announced $1 billion, 20-year plan to put streetcars back on Peachtree Street. Unless, of course, they tax me for their fantasies.
• If Fulton County Sheriff Myron Freeman inspired just a little bit more confidence, I’d be completely in his corner in demanding that U.S. District Court Judge Marvin Shoob’s agent at the county jail be withdrawn. Georgia law needs to change so that county commissions, and not judges, take over jails when sheriffs fail. Judges have no expertise and no business running them.
• Townships, a government form common elsewhere, is being proposed for Georgia by state Sen. David Adelman (D-Decatur). His zoning-only concept of local control may be too limited, but the key is to give people the ability to control their communities.
All of this drive to incorporate and to break away got started because Fulton commissioners treated north Fulton like dirt, taking their money while completely disregarding their concerns about density and development. We can love and identify with the brand Atlanta, but need to relate to a government with which we can connect.
• Wasn’t it important to honor the living and the dead figures of the civil rights era when Democrats controlled the Statehouse? Odd that the package deal was never mentioned then. Or maybe not. The Statehouse is the place of politics.
• Uh, Mr. Sims, Mr. Chuck Sims, state representative from Coffee County, your attention please. You’re a Republican now. The proposal to raise taxes on food to pay for PeachCare is your Democratic impulse reasserting itself. Switching parties sometimes requires switching perspectives.
• Bills providing opportunities to raise our transportation-related taxes have been introduced, too. Without big-name sponsors. That’s a clue as to their future. Don’t tax me any more until we see the thrust and scope of tax revision proposals next year.
• Yes! State Rep. Earl Ehrhart (R-Powder Springs), chairman of the House Rules Committee, offers legislation to allow individuals and corporations to get a significant tax credit for contributions that allow low-income or disabled children to attend private schools. Love this new Big Idea Legislature. They’re talking about things that matter — in addition, of course, to the usual things that don’t.
• Home-school students who score in the top 10 percent on a national test, such as the SAT, could get HOPE in their freshman year of college under a bill proposed by state Rep. John Lunsford (R-McDonough). Do it. How and where they prepare for college doesn’t matter, if they demonstrate they can do the work.
• This president won’t be the one to launch war against Iran — and not because the public has lost confidence on Iraq, as suggested by U.S. Rep. Jim Marshall (D-Macon) — but because Iraq should be far more settled before the United States acts decisively to counter the nuclear threat that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad represents. The United States cannot leave the region, however, with Iran and Syria emboldened.
“There are weapons in Iraq that are harming U.S. troops because of [Iran’s] Quds Force,” the president said Wednesday, “and I intend to do something about it.” That’s a declaration of intent, not war. Sealing borders is a start.
• Only two things would have kept voters in the 10th Congressional District from returning Charlie Norwood to Congress: This and his name not being on the ballot. Only one thing would have kept them from choosing him again: His name not being on the ballot. He knew his mind and spoke it.
• Jim Wooten is the associate editorial page editor. His column appears Fridays, Sundays and Tuesdays.
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