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Friday, March 2, 2007
Red-light cameras, overweight dogs and politicians
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s free-for-all Friday. Pick a topic:
➢Install red-light cameras to ticket motorists, if you wish. But eliminate the incentive for cities and counties to use them as cash cows. Either roll back property taxes by the sum of fines collected or require that they go through the state’s General Fund to support trauma care. Local governments should never have a financial incentive to decide how vigorously laws should be enforced.
➢Vince Dooley was said to be considering a race for the 10th Congressional District in a special election set for June 19. No, he declared. Just as well. The Dooley my conservative band requested, anyway, was Barbara. With all the candiates getting into the race from the Athens side of the district, advantage shifts to State Sen. Jim Whitehead (R-Evans),who represents about 26 percent of the district vote. He’s got a little age on him, though. 64. Once upon a time, the South sent them young and let them age into power. Carl Vinson, who served more than 50 years, was 30. U.S. Sen. Richard Russell was 36. U.S. Sen. Sam Nunn was 34. U.S. Sen. Herman Talmadge was old. He was 43.
➢Oh goodness, expect orchestrated leaks with dire predictions that would frighten children about the safety of the nation’s airports and air service. The National Air Traffic Controllers Association, a 14,000-member union, is locked in dispute with the Federal Aviation Administration over pay and staffing Been there. In 1981, the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization union (PATCO) struck for 17 sky-is-falling months. Ronald Reagan took decisive action. He fired them. Great man, that Reagan.
➢Agreed that TV and print ads for specific drugs do prompt consumers to ask their physicians for them and may cause them to be over-prescribed. But anything that moves consumers from passivity to active management of their health has to be good. Today paying attention to a medicine. Tomorrow paying attention to bills and to quality of care.
➢You know Americaa’s solved the hunger problem that afflicted previous generations. The Food and Drug Administration recently approved Slentrol, a drug to help dogs lose weight. When our dogs are overweight, hunger in humans is cured, except when individuals make bad choices with food stams and grocery money.
➢Headline: “Land’s explosive past vexes homeowners.” One vexed homeowner is “stunned” and “angry” that nobody told her in 27 years that her home that it was located on the former Camp Wheeler military post near Macon. Darn uncommunicative and uncurious, these neighborhoods. “Nobody told me” is an excuse that comes after due diligence. And probably sooner than 27 years.
➢The Brian Nichols trial is delayed until March 27 to allow the Legislature to deposit more money in the checking accounts of his three private lawyers, whose combined $395 per hour bills are being paid by taxpayers. We’ve seen the future: Defense lawyers and judges can repeal the death penalty by making it cost-prohibitive. Cap spending before this becomes another runaway.
➢How times have changed: I read of a “massive nationwide study of the environmental and genetic factors that make children sick” and alarm bells go off. The Congressionally-created program, projected to cost $3.5 billion, is the kind that becomes a magnet for agenda-bearers. Congress launched the study in 2000. President Bush proposed to terminate it in his 2007 budget, one of 91 programs targeted. Congress just ignored that plea and appropriated $69 miillion to keep it going.
The same story informs us that children will be followed “from their conception to their 21st birthday.” I do trust the government agent there at conception will be permitted to advise the couple that marriage is in the best interest of the just-conceived child.
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