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Friday, March 30, 2007
Sunday booze, jurors refuse, Harland blues
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s free-for-all Friday. Pick a topic:
• Get a Post-it Note for the refrigerator. Buy booze on Saturday. The disproportionate anger of those who want Sunday sales is an example of the “me-centered” universe. We’re angry about any rule or law that won’t let us park four vehicles in the driveway or that doesn’t let us buy booze when we want. Me, me, me.
• Lynn Turner, convicted of killing her husband and then her boyfriend for their insurance, gets the mushy-middle’s version of capital punishment. Life without parole. The jury wants her dead, but they don’t want any role in her execution. So they sentence her to die in prison.
• The shrillness of the PeachCare debate should remind every fiscal conservative that no more government, nor any social program, should be created that they don’t intend to grow. Once created, politicians can never cut back without the Chicken Littles insisting that the sickest, neediest and most vulnerable are being denied essentials, true or not.
• I hate connecting laws that connect fees and fines to a specific program, when it’s not a genuine user fee, such as those golfers pay to maintain public courses. Adding $200 to the fines imposed for driving more than 85 mph anywhere, or 75 mph on two-lane roads, is an example. It’s created to help fund a statewide trauma network. Henceforth, a shooter in Atlanta or a knifer in Savannah should be fined an extra $500. Or do we tax guns, knives, ladders and automobiles?
• The changing world, Part 1: President Bush quotes two Iraqi bloggers who wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on reasons for optimism.
• The changing world, Part 2: “Even Bob and I do online banking,” Margaret Reiser, the sole grandchild of check printer John H. Harland, told AJC columnist Maria Saporta. Bob is her husband. John H. Harland Co., an Atlanta institution and a Wall Street darling, churned out profits for 84 years. It’s being sold to a New York-based company.
• If British sailors weren’t in Iranian waters, as Iran claims, and as Global Positioning System coordinates refute, Iran has committed an act of war. Not that Britain can do anything but wait them out. You can’t be weak in a mean world. And Britain is.
• Call me to testify on anything this Congress is “investigating” and I’m taking the Fifth. And so, too, should officials of the Bush administration. Expect one witch hunt after another for two more years. Phony election-advantage political investigations breed cynicism, and destroy the credibility Congress needs for the real scandals.
• Ho hum. Another spelling bee. Another home-schooled winner. Shoman Kasbekar of Macon.
• Voters who lived 36 years ago in Fulton and DeKalb gave their consent to impose a one-cent transportation tax and to use it to buy bus and train service, as opposed to, say, improving roads or adding capacity. Other counties chose the latter. MARTA now wants to extend the tax from 2032 to 2047. The youngest voter granting permission in 1971 will be 79 years old when the tax expires in 25 years. Of course, without question, voters should be asked whether to extend it 15 years beyond that.
• Here’s a shocker: The National Organization for Women political action committee endorses Hillary Rodham Clinton. Wonder how they knew Condoleezza Rice wouldn’t get into the race. Danged premature, I say.
• A state law aimed at curtailing illegal immigration requires large contracting firms with public contracts to verify that potential employees are here legally. To which the president of the Associated Builders and Contractors of Georgia, Bill Anderson, responds: “Finding quality craft tradespeople has been a challenge for many, many years, and anything that could potentially affect that number causes great concern.” To get this straight: A law that forces contractors to hire only those who are lawfully here “could potentially affect” the pool of quality craft tradespeople?
• Don’t believe I would admit that: Circuit City will cut costs by laying off salespeople who earn above average for their assignments, including 80 in Atlanta, and replacing them with cheaper hires. This is every working American’s fear. Methinks the company has a public relations disaster on its hands.
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