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Thursday, April 5, 2007
HOPE rules, Vernon Jones; the U.S. flag
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s free-for-all Friday. Pick a topic:
• Let’s reason this out. State Rep. Roberta Abdul-Salaam (D-Riverdale), who is sponsoring a resolution to hang a portrait of Coretta Scott King in the Capitol, has twice failed to show up at a scheduled committee meeting to argue her case before. Contrite? “They do not intend to honor Mrs. Coretta Scott King,” she said. “It might embarrass them. It might make them look like they have a heart. … There’s a mean spirit down here, there really is.” She fails to present herself prepared. And then turns hostile when the committee didn’t do her job. Wow!
• OK, I’m overdosed. No more stories on male parents who rape or female parents who attempt to sell a 7-year-old daughter for prostitution. I’m OD’ing on evil.
• If Brian Nichols is able to run up the tab, thus using public money and the high-cost of his defense, to force the state to agree to a plea that will avoid the death penalty, the public will have been three times robbed: Once of public servants, a second time at the public purse and the third time in corrupting public justice.
• Headline: “Taliban executes 3 accused of spying.” No. “Taliban murders 3 who exposed terrorists.” An execution is lawful.
• Amazing that those with disabilities would protest a MARTA proposal to put a 50-ride per month limit on curb-to-curb para transit service. People with disabilities are charged $3.50 per trip — less with monthly cards — for rides that cost taxpayers about $32 each. You’d think the response would be: “Thanks, taxpayers; we can certainly arrange our lives and trips to stay under 50.” Instead it’s entitlement-anger.
• Any parent who stood in line at desired schools to sign up their children for pre-k can’t possible object to school vouchers. Vouchers allow parents to decide what’s best for their children and to buy those services from the provider of choice — just what parents who stood outside Sunshine House in Duluth and elsewhere were doing. Every parent should have that option in k-12 as well.
• The problem now with a sensible middle-ground compromise, like the one U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) proposes on stem cell research using flawed embryos that can’t survive in the womb, is that we do live in a slippery-slope world and in one where ironclad guarantees are never that.
• You knew it was coming. House Democrats, in unveiling their budget proposal, intend to let the tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 expire in 2010. “The tax cuts haven’t starved the government of money,” U.S. Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-Ga.) said. “Last year, the federal treasury received the largest amount of revenue in history.” This is why Republicans have to stand for something and act boldly. Or else what they stand for is swept away in one Congress.
• New Century Financial Corp., the nation’s second-largest provider of high-risk subprime mortgages, files for bankruptcy and fires 3,200 people, half its work force. The marketplace has been brutal to lenders who stupidly failed to verify income, who loaned more money than buyers could repay when interest rates rose or who put people into homes they couldn’t actually afford with little or no down payment. Subprime borrowers paid high interest rates for one good reason: They’re bad credit risks.
• This should be the standard for every public official seeking higher office. The author is Ruenell Grier, a protester at the maybe-kickoff of the U.S. Senate campaign of DeKalb CEO Vernon Jones. Said Grier: “I don’t know how he could do anything Senate-wise if he can’t do anything county-wise.” Henceforth, those who can’t do anything legislator-wise don’t get considered for anything governor-wise.
• If the state had $10 billion in reserves for HOPE stipends, it still should have adopted reforms, and even tougher ones than those in 2004 that put controls on spending for books and fees and slightly stiffened academic requirements. At the time, 57 percent of high school graduates qualified as “scholars.” The data are now being gathered to gauge the impact.
• “I thank the border guards who bravely protect our borders and also arrested the violators, and I grant them the bravery medal to their commander,” Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said of those who took 15 British sailors and marines hostage. The Brits lost big. They looked and sounded weak. They just bought themselves more terrorism on the home-front.
• Writing on an American flag is offensive because it’s cheap emotionalism and not art. Painting the Mona Lisa on the American flag would be offensive, too, but it would be art.
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Two years, two governments
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
More evidence that dual control in Washington mean a two-year dysfunctional national government came Wednesday when President George W. Bush gave Sam Fox a recess appointment as U.S. ambassador to Belgium..
It was clear that Democrats had no intention of confirming the 77-year-old Fox, a St. Louis businessman who has raised millions for Republican candidates and causes over the past two decades. But it was his $50,000 donation to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth during the 2004 presidential campaign that kept the Senate Foreign Relations and Sen.John Kerry from approving his appointment. The veterans group, composed of those who had served with Kerry in Vietnam and those who had served on Swift Boats, was incredibly effective in challenging “reporting for duty” John Kerry’s Vietnam service, and probably cost him the presidency.
Aware that Fox could not be confirmed, Bush withdrew his nomination and gave him the recess appointment, which means he can serve as ambassador for essentially the remainder of the Bush presidency. “It’s sad but not surprising that this White House would abuse the power of the presidency to reward a donor over the objections of the Senate,” said Kerry.
Bush also gave a recess appointment to Andrew Biggs asdeputy director of Social Security. Biggs, a strong advocate of partially privatizing Social Security, was nixed by Senate Democrats in February. Bush so far has made 171 recess appointments. Bill Clinton made 140 and Ronald Reagan, 243.
Fox, founder of the Harbour Group in Clayton, Mo., and national chairman of the Jewish Republican Coalition, raised at least $200,000 for Bush in 2004.
More evidence that Washington has two governments came Wednesday with the visit by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Damascus and an audience with President Bashar Assad,, a trip former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney denounced as outrageous. “Washington is a broken place right now, dysfunctional in some respects, which has been evidenced by the trip by Nancy Pelosi to Syria, but also evidenced by the failure to deal with overspending,” said Romney.
Two governments, two years. By early next year, Americans will be sick of the two-year presidential campaign. Long before then, they’ll grow sick of the two governments and two domestic and foreign policies in Washington. By 2008, voters may got nuts at the polls — and throw all the bums out.
