Home > Thinking Right > Archives > 2007 > April
April 2007
Politics first, then troop funding
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The veto that the anti-war left knew had the certainty of a Joe Biden talkathon is coming this week, as President Bush follows through on his promise to veto a troop-funding bill for the war that includes a withdrawal timetable from Iraq.
It was, in fact, rather amusing to read over the weekend that peanut farmers had “lost” in the process of drafting a new version of the legislation Bush will veto. Democrats had tacked $74 million in peanut storage and shipping subsidies onto the $124.2 billion troop-funding bill. They also included $650 million in funding for the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, the Georgia version of which is PeachCare, along with $400 million for low-income heating assistance and $13.2 million for avian flu research.
So how serious are Congressional Democrats about governing? First they add the timetable, knowing full well Bush will veto it, and then they attach money to cover sick children, frightened adults worried about another 1918 flu pandemic, poor people in need of heat, and farmers who can always make a convincing argument that they’re headed to the poor-house unless taxpayers step up with another subsidy.
That’s on the first bill.On the rewrite, Democrats will certainly delete the timetable requirement. It has filled its intended purpose, suggesting to the country that they have an alternative without actually requiring them to be responsible for failure, if it comes, as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) predicts. Instead of a timetable, Democrats are expected to set benchmarks that order the Iraqi goverment to achieve results in allocating oil resources and in showing evidence of broadened popular support.
The President won’t accept a bill that punishes Iraq if the government fails to meet Congressional benchmarks, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Sunday. “To begin now to tie our own hands — and to say ‘We must do this if they don’t do that’ — doesn’t allow us the flexibility and creativity that we need to move this forward,” she said.
If you ever wonder why Americans are growing more cynical and disenchanted with politics, look no farther. What you see now in Washington in the drafting, and the redrafting, of the troop funding bill is all the evidence the country needs.
Permalink | Comments (93) | Post your comment |
Perdue still can clear GOP of political shame
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Reflecting on the General Assembly just past and the special session promised, the temptation is strong to quote the famous question posed by Casey Stengel in managing the ‘62 Mets to a 40-120 record: “Can’t anybody here play this game?”
Of those Mets he said, too, “We’ve got to learn to stay out of triple plays.”
Inordinate attention to the strikes and errors, to the triple plays and serial miscalculations, overshadow more important questions. Those include whether Gov. Sonny Perdue has vetoed himself into lame-duck status, whether House Speaker Glenn Richardson (R-Hiram) has the temperament to lead the House and whether Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle can govern through his gubernatorial ambitions.
The veto was a miscalculation. Republicans, three years into full control, have failed to define themselves. Regardless of the convoluted route the House, and then the Senate, took to get to a $142 million tax cut — a pittance compared to the $1.6 billion in increased spending — it is important in symbol and in fact.
It gave form to the promises spoken by Richardson and Senate President Pro Tem Eric Johnson (R-Savannah) when Republicans took control. Those promises, while vague, conveyed specific course directions, especially to conservatives. People who aren’t conservative tend to dismiss as sloganeering the rhetoric about government and taxes, families and personal responsibility. People who are take it as a contract. It’s not a Ronald Reagan Library cafe or pub pick-up line.
If the show stopped with Cagle and the Senate acting principally, according to their implied contract, to strip pork from the supplemental budget, Cagle would have had a leg-up in the gubernatorial sweepstakes. Had the two chambers stopped the show after agreeing to cut taxes, both Richardson and Cagle would have gone home winners.
But it didn’t stop there. The pork removal was show. Added borrowings dwarfed the rebate and, furthermore, meant that it was simply added to the taxpayers’ tab.
And then Perdue vetoed. That prompted the speaker to remind voters belligerently that Perdue had started off his first term by proposing a tax increase, and resurrected grumbling among rank-and-file legislators — not heard since he first took office — that he’s still a Democrat at heart. Perdue is, of course, a mainstream Georgia Republican, but the quick revival of negative characterizations reveals a serious breach that could make Perdue an early lame duck.
Actions that followed — with much-to-do made over technicalities about whether the veto message had been “transmitted” — had all the earmarks of a Cobb or Fulton County GOP party catfight. Bad scene.
Perdue holds the cards. There is a way to recover, to embrace principle and to affirm the fiscal conservative credentials of all. It is to call the special session to address two matters: the vetoed supplemental budget and Senate Resolution 20, the proposed constitutional amendment by state Sen. Chip Rogers (R-Woodstock) to put a flexible cap on the growth of government spending. That legislation passed the Senate with bipartisan support and is now in the House. It would require excess tax collections beyond the rate of government inflation and population growth to be used for one of four purposes: debt, reserves, education or tax rebates.
Taking back the $142 million property tax rebate without committing to future spending discipline seriously erodes the credibility of a majority that promised to be guided by conservative principles.
Despite the session’s misplays, there were make-a-difference successes, some of major importance that would never have come had conservatives not been in charge. Education reform initiated by Cagle (charter schools) and Johnson (special needs vouchers) are major achievements, the latter made possible only because Richardson cast the deciding vote in the House. Further reform is likely next year, with the tax initiatives coming from the House.
The effort to deal responsibly with entitlement-like programs, PeachCare and indigent defense, that have an uncapped appetite for new spending, is another area where fiscal conservatives make a difference.
The way out of this debacle is to return to principle with a commitment that future legislators will have a responsible plan, fixed in the constitution if voters agree, that will conserve — or return — excess collections.
• Jim Wooten is associate editorial page editor. His column runs Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays.
Permalink | Comments (163) | Post your comment | Categories: Column
Abortion; gun laws; and HOPE
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s free-for-all Friday. Pick a topic:
• No taxpayer should ever, under any circumstances, agree to a tax that can be extended 15 years when two of three local governments agree. Most of the voters who elected to tax themselves and their guests for MARTA are dead and gone. Before it’s extended from 2031 to 2047, the living ought to have a say. The tax was approved by a 471-vote margin in Fulton and DeKalb 36 years ago. By the time this newest tax expires, the youngest voter who could have extended permission will be 94 years old.
• No alarm here that about one-third fewer students will qualify for HOPE because their grades don’t measure up. Somewhat tougher standards get the credit. The HOPE voucher is not yet an entitlement for breathing.
• The fight between two lobbyists after the end of this year’s General Assembly came about 2 in the morning. Ever notice how many bad things happen to people between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m.? Most involve booze and bad judgment. But not to worry. The governor of Virginia, Timothy Kaine, will close the “loophole” that keeps “mentally unstable” people from buying guns, including those “mentally unstable” people who have never been committed to a mental hospital. As soon as that feat is perfected, we’ll buy the software and offer it to bartenders so they can determine which boozers are a threat to us.
• Indicators that the Depression-era generation is thinning and their debt-avoidance admonitions are departing with them: The Atlanta Braves now sell partial-season tickets on a 90-days-same-as-cash basis. Home equity loans were used to finance almost 3 percent of personal consumption, according to a government study of consumer spending between 2001 and 2005.
• U.S. Sen. Harry Reid’s “War is Lost” Democrats defines, again, the difference: If there’s trouble or threat, real or brewing, in the world, put a Republican in the White House. If day care is in crisis and money is the answer, elect a Democrat.
• The Georgia State Senate, exercising its advise-and-consent authority, declines to accept Gov. Sonny Perdue’s renomination of a special interest group lobbyist to the board of the Department of Natural Resources. Said lobbyist and her soul mates are chagrined. Hmm. Should the Marlboro marketer have a designated seat on the board of the Department of Community Health? Or the road builders on the Department of Transportation board?
• I regret that any Korean or American of Korean heritage feels any explanation or apology necessary for Seung-Hui Cho.
• Now I understand why cops here work part-time jobs. It’s to pay their lawyers in the event they use their guns. Or to pay funeral expenses when they guess wrong, and don’t.
• When a union spokesman raises alarm about staffing levels, whether in schools, police departments or government agencies, the skeptical taxpayer wonders: Is this a real problem and, if so, does it require a monetary or a management fix? Too few State Patrol troopers for all-night coverage of the interstates? That’s a concern expressed by a state Fraternal Order of Police official. A problem? Not a “specific” one that various police officials can cite. Another option: Use state troopers only for interstates, round-the-clock, and ban city and county police from patrolling them.
• The insistence by liberal Democratic women that those who hold different views aren’t legitimately “women,” when deciding what “women” want is as amusing as the claim by liberal Democratic blacks that skin color confines an entire race to party and ideology. The wrath of “women” is prompted by a proposed constitutional amendment by, uh, a woman, if political correctness allows me to use that word to describe state Rep. Charlice Byrd (R-Woodstock), who is neither liberal nor Democrat. Her resolution would establish a right to life beginning at the moment of creation.
• For me, the stereotype that teen parents are irresponsible is indeed dispelled when the unmarried couple includes their child in the high school prom photos.
Permalink | Comments (290) | Post your comment | Categories: Column
Conservatives can’t be purists
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
For conservatives, there’s no perfect presidential candidate. But who can be a purist? Those 5-4 decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court, with a wobbly Anthony Kennedy as the new Sandra Day O’Conner in the crap-shoot muddle, and a “the war is lost,” Democratic majority leader who gives the bad guys a sound-bite to love, stakes are clear in the 2008 presidential election. And that’s before considering the domestic ramifications of a Hillary or Obama presidency.
Influential conservatives among Catholics and evangelicals are beginning to get pragmatic about 2008, according to a Cybercast News Service account by Kevin Mooney. Those leaders “are attaching special value to electability,” he writes.
He quotes Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, as saying that “social conservatives are going into this campaign with some degree of reservation, if not trepidation. But when push comes to shove, there is a day and night difference” between leading Republican and Democratic candiates. He continues:
“The problem with the pro-life movement is that some people are purist, and as far as I’m concerned, they’re detrimental to the cause. It’s important to be principled, but it’s also important to be prudential.”
There’s no question Donohue is right. Mitt Romney’s religion or questions about his willingness to change positions, the multiple marriages of Rudy Giuliani or Newt Gingrich, or the various doubts about some aspects of the style or views of others in the field, make the Republican nomination a wide-open race.
It’s time to get practical, though. Any national Democrat capable of getting the nomination is not somebody you want leading this nation in time of war. Too, until another strict constructionist is appointed to the Supreme Court, that body is aimlessly adrift. And for those who bear the burden, higher taxes are a certainty with a Democrat in the White House.
The message comes early: The stakes are far too high in 2008 to sulk over the absence of a perfect conservative. The difference that matters is electability.
Permalink | Comments (132) | Post your comment |
Lynch, Tillman and Truth
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
This is not a liberal or conservative issue, but the anti-war Democrats in Congress are attempting to make political hay with suggestions that the brass lied about the valor under fire of Jessica Lynch in Iraq and the death of Pat Tillman in Afghanistan.
This is one of those stories where that segment of the nation that sees the war as a series of missteps, blunders and disasters, with lies as the unifying theme, will immediately conclude that moral corruption determined what the world saw in the Jessica Lynch saga or Pat Tilman’s friendly-fire death.
Was she a hero, blazing away as the bad guys closed in and took her captive? No. Was it villainous to exaggerate or glorify her actions under enemy fire — or, had the truth been immediately known, to lie? To lie, yes. To glorify? That’s less clear-cut. Certainly the country loved, and the media repeated often, “the story of the little girl Rambo from the hills who went down fighting,” as she phrased it in Congressional testimony Tuesday. Did the Bush administration deliberately and intentionally use her glorified story for propaganda purposes to build public support for an unpopular war? The antiwar left will say yes. I think it unlikely. Neither of us can know — and this Congress certainly can’t be trusted to offer balance or truth.
As for the tragic death of Tillman, was it morally wrong or politically motivated not to tell his brother, Kevin, in a nearby convoy, the suspected cause of his death? Here again, the antiwar left jumps to one conclusion. The family just wants answers — answers they certainly should have gotten earlier than three months after he was declared a hero and awarded the Silver Star. Here again, two people look at the same facts and draw different conclusions. Until the full truth was known, the suspected cause should have been kept private. Somebody obviously did make the decision to declare him a hero. Was it to build support for the war, as the antiwar left believes, or was it some lower-level decision makers who wanted to honor a high-profile life given for the country. That would be a well-meaning “lie,” and not the first one in the history of this nation’s wars, or any other country’s. It was clear from testimony Tuesday that once the President knew the circumstances of Tillman’s death were in doubt, he did not advance the “hero” angle.
The family, and the nation, should have gotten answers sooner. But the family’s motives are pure while the motives of those who would use these two stories as material for their antiwar propaganda are not.
Permalink | Comments (128) | Post your comment |
School choice welcome in today’s world
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Watching the final hours of legislative debate, when the Georgia House considers a bill that represents one of the most significant education reforms in ages, the stark contrast between two views of the role of government could not be clearer.
At issue was Senate Bill 10, legislation that would give a handful of Georgia parents of special-needs children a voucher that could be used to buy education services from private schools or from other public school districts. No matter your belief system or your impression of the job public schools are doing, SB 10 is nothing to freak out over.
It’s an evolutionary change, glacial really, in the relationship of parents to their government.
The great-grandparents of generations living today desperately needed government to gather up our children and educate them. The masses of farmers and factory workers lived hand-to-mouth and had neither the time, the money nor the education to school their children. They lived in isolation, on farms, in urban tenements and in mountain hollows. They needed schooling decisions made for them.
The problem with politics is the perpetual existence of one reality of representative democracy. That reality is that most elected officials — and editorialists, too, for that matter — are forever making assumptions based on the world as it existed during their childhood or formative years. New information is reinterpreted to fit the worldview we hold.
The consequence is that legislators are most always legislating for yesterday. In the case of education, that means they’re completely unmindful of the culture, of lifestyles, of the education marketplace that has evolved. Consequently, they keep trying to reconfigure the model, convinced as they are that if the class size is smaller, or if more money is made available for teacher salaries, or nicer buildings or newer books, the problems that existed a few generations ago would be cured. And they might. If this was then.
Reality is, however, that many children reach school with far more needs and far less appreciation for learning. Their families are often never formed, transient, overly litigious, demanding and altogether unreasonable.
Children, regardless of need or potential, are thrown together, sometime for no other reason than to achieve political correctness. And the teacher monopoly on talented women vanished decades ago.
We simply cannot configure government schools to serve all abilities and needs in one classroom. We can’t give up on efforts to make public schools better just because some parents are perfectly content to abdicate their responsibilities to government.
But because every child has one lifetime shot at the third grade, our elected representatives should give parents a genuine option to leave when they become convinced the child’s not being served. Special education parents, as they demonstrated in hour after hour of public discussion of SB 10, are informed and are capable of making responsible choices. Those who care can get the information to help them make those choices. Government collects tons of it. And if parents have the means, they can act on it.
Yet, a large contingent of legislators, close to a majority, is of the mind that parents are incapable of making responsible choices and, therefore, a government agent should. “SB 10 is not the solution for the families of Georgia with special education kids,” state Rep. Kathy Ashe (D-Atlanta) argued when the bill got to the House floor. A version of that advice came from a number of other speakers.
SB 10 said that parents who are satisfied with how public schools are educating their special needs child are free to stay. Those who have reason to believe their public school is doing a poor job can take a voucher and shop for services elsewhere. Choice.
Parents of limited means can, for the first time, exercise choice in k-12, just as they do in pre-k and college. How could anybody possibly object?
Lots do. And not just Democrats. Those who believe the role of government is to array us for its convenience and to educate us when, where and how the education establishment sees fit, opposed SB 10. Not only is the status quo the choice they’d make, they insist it’s the choice for the rest of us, too.
But for House Speaker Glenn Richardson (R-Hiram), the let-government-decide view would have carried the day. On the House floor, in the last day of the session, SB 10 fell one vote shy. Richardson, to his everlasting credit, cast the deciding vote that will bring choice into law.
Permalink | Comments (129) | Post your comment | Categories: Column
Taxes and the American Dream
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
While I’ve successfully avoided the label “ultra-rich,” the number of those who are rose sharply last year, according to data gathered by the Chicago consulting company Spectrem Group. For the first time, the number of U.S. households with a net worth of more than $5 million, excluding the primary home, exceeded a million in 2006. That’s up 23 percent in one year. A decade earlier, only 250,000 households fell into that category.
Drive through some intown Atlanta neighborhoods and through the mini-estate communities in prosperous areas outside I-285 and you get a sense that the nation’s wealth is more broadly shared than the class-warfare warriors would have us believe. A lot of folks are living high in the 28-county Metro Atlanta region.
Sunday was the first day in 2007 that Georgians are actually working for themselves and not to pay federal, state and local taxes, according to Tax Foundation calculations. That’s 112 days into 2007.
Who really pays? In the ongoing examination of Internal Revenue Service data by the Washington-based Tax Foundation and by the National Taxpayers Union suggests that those enjoy a decent living pay their fair share — and far more. What’s interesting, though, are the numbers of Americans who have no tax liability. Roughly 40 pecent of the U.S. population falls outside the federal income tax system, the Tax Foundation reports, and 60 percent get more in government spending than they pay in taxes. And it’ll get worse when baby boomers retire.
The point here is that an increasing number of Americans don’t care about tax cuts or the size of the federal governent. A permanent soak-the-rich constituency is in the making. And a permanent political class that sees wealth-transfer as the way to stay in office.
So rejoice that the American Dream lives. But just as there’s a race between government-provided universal health care and free-market alternatives, there’s a race too to define the American Dream. Is it that we earn our way to mini-estates by producing? Or that we elect politicians who will soak the producers to provide us their lifestyle?
Permalink | Comments (110) | Post your comment |
GOP’s bizarre budget flop goes down in history
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
If Republicans were dedicated to giving voters reason to throw them out of office, they succeed marvelously in this year’s legislative session.
Even granting newcomers a learning curve, this session of the Georgia General Assembly will go down as one of the most bizarre in modern times. It was, to borrow a lobbyist’s phrase, “chaos in search of frenzy.” There were no winners — except, perhaps, Democrats who as the minority party are achieving something that has eluded them for the past decade or more. That remarkable achievement is either the imposed or the self-regulated silencing of the fringe rhetoric that made the Georgia party indistinguishable from its national leadership.
To their credit, they’ve largely kept their mouths shut when they should, appeared reasonable when necessary, and have generally avoided missteps.
Pray tell, then, what were Republicans thinking?
Minutes after the Georgia House overrode Gov. Sonny Perdue’s veto of the supplemental budget by a surprisingly large and bipartisan margin, 163-5, the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, Rep. Ben Harbin (R-Evans), said of Perdue: “If he had been involved three or four weeks ago, we would not be at this point.”
On the evening of the 39th day of a 40-day session, Perdue vetoed the budget that fleshes out spending for the current year, the one that provides money to local school systems according to final enrollment numbers. That budget also, this year, provided $142 million in tax relief to property owners. “I’m afraid politics got in the way of doing the right thing,” Perdue said in vetoing the bill. “I believe the House and Senate got into a bit of a brawl and realized too late that they were nearly out of time and had to come up with a compromise quickly. … Unfortunately the late-night quick fix they came up with was the wrong solution for Georgia.”
It did not, he argued, provide enough money for various programs.
Within hours, in dramatic fashion, the House — Democrats and Republicans alike — overrode the veto. It was one of those rare moments in legislative proceedings where principle triumphs. House Minority Leader DuBose Porter (D-Dublin) reminded legislators that until 1966 the governor chose the speaker and committee chairmen. Former Gov. Lester Maddox gave up that power in return for the governorship after a write-in campaign kept either Maddox or Republican Bo Callaway from winning a majority, thereby throwing the decision to the House.
Leaders of both parties argued that the independence of the House required the veto override.
On important occasions in times of stress, a hush does fall over legislative bodies, members become attentive, and speakers are rarely more eloquent than when arguing in defense of principle. The Huose override came quickly and decisively.
Who wins? Nobody. Certainly not Richardson or other House leaders, who did the right thing in returning excess money to taxpayers, though they framed it as a dare. Certainly not Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle or other Senate leaders, who also did the right thing in stripping “pork” from the House appropriations bill, but in a way that came across as political opportunism and the far too early start to the 2010 gubernatorial campaign.
Certainly not, either, the governor, who intervened far too late in a way that failed to distinguish himself from his Democratic predecessors, blaming legislators for providing too little money for this and that.
“This was not a matter of miscommunication,” said Harbin later. “There was no communication. Nobody has ever communicated ‘we want to go another way.’”
So we have here two budgets, one the supplemental for the current year and another a $20.2 billion budget for next year that involves spending $1.6 billion more. Neither is austere. Neither, with the exception of a tax rebate, would represent any important distinction between this party and the last one in power. And even the property tax rebates, while symbolically important, come with new borrowings — meaning, of course, that cash out is replaced by debt.
We have, too, the party in power that professes conservatism as its foundation. If conservatives agree on principles, then surely they can agree on pork, on borrowing, or spending limits, and on giving back to taxpayers the excess inappropriately collected.
They can, yes. If they talk. And if they leave ambitions for higher office out of the public’s business.
Who won this year? Nobody, except perhaps the not-seen and not-heard Democrats.
Permalink | Comments (88) | Post your comment | Categories: Column
Virginia Tech; senior taxes; black males
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s free-for-all Friday. Pick a topic:
• Sexual abstinence classes don’t work, critics contend. Their view gained some support when a research group examined four classes and found no dramatic difference in those who attended and those who didn’t. So drop them, right? Definitely not. Government has an obligation, as does the middle class, churches and the entertainment industry, to discourage some behaviors and encourage others.
• Not surprising, prisoners object to a reduction in daily calories, down 130 to 2,900 for men and down 250 to 2,200 for women. It’s being done to improve their health. Taxpayers spent $163 million on inmate health care. But … if those behind bars made good choices in their lives, chances are they wouldn’t be where they are.
• If we wish to stop taxing one segment of the population, airline passengers, for the benefit of another, small airports used by private jets, let’s do it. But while we’re at it, we should also stop taxing the poor suckers who rent automobiles at Atlanta airport over a 42-year period starting in 1996 for the benefit of a downtown sports facility they are unlikely ever to use.
• During a three-year World War II pen-pal relationship, Mildred Denman fell in love with British sailor Arthur Earnshaw. Their marriage lasted 61 years, until death parted them. There’s something to be said for slow mail, anticipation of correspondence and long reflective waits. Text messaging produces hook-ups. Chat rooms, trouble. Slow mail, seriousness. Arthur died in 2005, Mildred last week.
• Being in the company of Ralph McGill is high honor, indeed. My colleague, Cynthia Tucker, is there, winner of this year’s Pulitzer Prize for commentary. From any vantage point, left or right, her’s is a lifetime achievement. Congratulations, and well-deserved.
• In its annual “State of the Black Male,” the National Urban League offered up an array of government “solutions” for the education, employment, crime and violence problems of black males. One that didn’t occur to them was to lead the charge for marriage, so that babies enter the world with a mother and a father in the home.
• No form of gun control would have prevented the Virginia Tech murders. Every tragedy involving guns becomes a launch for anti-gun agendas, even when the dots don’t connect. America simply cannot make every potential target secure.
• Sudan agrees to accept another 3,000 U.N. and African Union troops to stop the bloodshed and protect 2.5 million people in Darfur, though it could be six months before they get there. U.N. officials are hoping the force will eventually total 22,000, though nobody’s holding their breath. Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden would send American troops. “I think it’s a moral imperative,” he said. It is. For the world community. The United States is not the world’s policeman. No American security interests are at stake here.
• Eliminating retirees state income taxes appeals. So, too, does anything that allows me to keep more of my money. With every choice, however, elected officials ought to be able to articulate clearly why one group of taxpayers is preferred over another and what desirable public policy objective is being advanced. The goal here, I suppose, is to get financially independent oldsters to move to Georgia, thereby, stabilizing rural towns and counties. If so, limit it to poor counties, those that aren’t growing, or those south of Atlanta and west of the coast.
• Openness leads to accountability which leads to better government. The pork kingpin who now chairs the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee, West Virginia Democrat Robert Byrd, agrees under pressure from conservatives Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) and Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), two leading lights of the anti-pork effort, to require that all earmarks be clearly identified. The requesting senator, the recipient of the earmark, and its purpose must be posted on the Internet. Senators also have to certify that they and their spouses are not beneficiaries. The good fiscal conservative Joe McCutchen of Ellijay, a vigorous pork opponent, will be a bit happier today. Do what you think necessary, but do it in the open.
Permalink | Comments (333) | Categories: Column
Abortion rights ‘losing ground’?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Here’s the day’s homework assignment for social conservatives: Read or listen to as many accounts as you can of Wednesday’s 5-4 U.S. Supreme Court ruling on partial birth abortion.
If you can tell off the bat that the reporter or newscaster regards this as a very bad thing the high court has done, it could be bias “rearing is ugly head.” This is the first paragraph in one of the day’s Associated Press account: “The Supreme Court’s endorsement of the first federal curbs on an abortion procedure in a generation suggests that even with Democrats in control of Congress, efforts to preserve abortion rights may be losing ground.”
My inclination would not be to conclude that “efforts to preserve abortion rights may be losing ground.” If I thought it necessary to observe in the context of yesterday’s ruling that this was happening “even with Democrats in control of Congress,” it would only be as a call to arms, since the Libertarians could have been in control and it would not have been relevant to the court decision.
I’ll grant that there was one small victory for abortion opponents in Wednesday’s 5-4 decision. The court upheld a statute that excluded “health of the mother” as grounds for performing a partial birth abortion. Life of the mother, yes. Health, no. That is a major divide between the two camps. “Health of the mother ” is the exception that neutralizes all abortion restrictions. It’s a loophole big enough to slip the World Congress Center through. It’s self diagnosis and the equivalent of what you can expect when liberals are forced by law to teach abstinance to teens: “I’m obligated to tell you abstinace is best, but we all know….” “Health of the mother” is the wink-and-nod that clears the deck for any and all abortions.
But neither side should draw too many profound conclusions from an opinion that has Justice Anthony Kennedy as the deciding vote.
Guns, here and there
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
In the aftermath of Monday’s horror at Virginia Tech, two avenues of commentary have emerged. One is to wring our collective hands and bemoan the fact that all of us now live in a time and place where we are exposed to crazies. Acknowledging that, the hand-wringers further argue that we should try to make schools, college campuses, public places and other potential venues for large-scale violence secure by hiring more police or by developing elaborate warning systems.
The second avenue of commentary, incidentally, was entirely predictable — the prepackaged, ready-for-the-moment call for more gun control. For the remainder of our lives, until liberals find a way to repeal the Second Amendment, every tragedy involving misuse of a gun by a crazy, a flipped-out workplace shooter or a looney misfit, will be the media moment to key up the anti-gun campaign.
Certainly, political leaders who favor the Second Amendment should be mindful of the news and avoid becoming an extension of an urelated tragedy. That would have been the case here Tuesday had the Georgia Senate not postponed a vote on a measure to allow people without felony convictions or a history of mental illness to keep legally purchased guns anywhere in their cars. Another bill tacked on would prohibit employers from denying their workers the right to have a gun in their locked car at work.
Timing matters. Considering the bill on Tuesday would have fed the critics and subjected senators to the damning charge of “insensitivity.” But having waited, the Senate cannot now fail to act, either by passing or defeating the bill before adjournment Friday, lest they confirm the argument of gun-control advocates that guns, and their availability, are the problem.
As to the nation’s search for security, the plain truth is that we could hire two-thirds of the population and assign them to “protect” the remaining third — and still not provide the security that would prevent future massacres. And we could round up all the guns, and that wouldn’t stop them either.
Action now can improve education
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A key test of whether the New Day in Georgia can frame and pass the Big Ideas that make a difference will come later this week under the Gold Dome.
Two bills that represent the most innovative potential reforms of public education in decades are expected to hit the floor of the Georgia House of Representatives, probably on Friday, which is now slated to be the final day of this year’s session. The two bills are Senate Bill 10, the Georgia Special Needs Scholarship Act, and legislation initiated by Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle in the Senate and state Rep. Ed Setzler (R-Acworth) in the House that would aid the expansion of charter schools and, in Cagle’s proposal, charter districts.
Both ideas, along with legislation authored by state Rep. Earl Ehrhart (R-Powder Springs) to offer educational tax credits to individuals and corporations, are precisely the kind of initiatives that conservatives should be using their majorities to pursue. Ehrhart may wait until next year; bills don’t die at the end of this year, as they do when legislators’ two-year terms end.
The Special Needs Scholarship Act would allow parents of special needs children to get a portion of the money spent to educate them — not including the local share generated from property taxes. They could then purchase education services from another school district or from the private sector.
The scholarship, or voucher, depending on how one describes programs like HOPE for 218,000 college students and state-paid pre-kindergarten offerings for 76,600 children, is expected to average about $9,000. Georgia’s proposal, sponsored by Senate President Pro Tem Eric Johnson (R-Savannah) is based on a Florida scholarship/voucher plan that provides sums ranging from $4,800 to $20,700 for about 17,000 special needs children.
The floor vote, when it comes, may be closer than should be expected for Big Idea conservative legislation that gives choice to parents without harming public education. Schools, in fact, should be better off, since they keep the local funding share and lose the obligation to educate a special needs child. Parents, too, are winners. They can elect to keep their child in public school, if they’re happy with the results, or they can take charge — something special education parents are well accustomed to doing.
The fact is, though, that the alphabet-soup organizations that stalk the halls of the General Assembly neutralizing or killing anything suspected of posing competition are arrayed against Johnson’s bill. Give them another year to work and the weak-kneed among the legislators are as likely to cave as not. Anything new or different and anything that smells of competition can be skillfully twisted to represent the death of public education as we know it.
And the weak-kneed do exist among Republicans. House Speaker Glenn Richardson (R-Hiram) and Speaker Pro Tem Mark Burkhalter (R-Alpharetta), both supporters of education reform, showed up last week at a House Education Committee to witness SB 10’s passage out of committee.
The crumblers really shouldn’t be so frightened. A poll of 1,200 likely Georgia voters, sponsored by the Milton & Rose D. Friedman Foundation and others, found that 59 percent favored special needs vouchers, while only 20 percent opposed. When asked about vouchers in general, the numbers changed little: 58 percent support, 22 opposed. A majority, 53-29, agreed that vouchers improve k-12 education. What’s more — and this is crucial — 54 percent of those polled by Strategic Vision during March 20-22, said they would be more likely to vote for a legislator who supports school choice, while only 13 percent said they would be less likely. Support is highest among those who are between 36 and 45, the age incidentally where parents would have a fuller experience with public education.
Georgia is not rushing to the forefront of the school choice movement in approving SB 10 and other education reforms. There’s nothing radical here — but there is something important.
Conservatives should not simply maintain the status quo in government. They should use it to grow personal responsibility and self-reliance. Giving parents information and choice will make the public schools stronger and will reward caring parents for taking an active interest in their child’s education. Now, unless they can move or afford private schooling, they’re stuck wherever and however government wants to serve them.
That’s the Old Day in Georgia.
Permalink | Comments (132) | Categories: Column
Obama!!!!!!
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Without question a presidential candidate who can draw an estimated 20,000 people, as U.S. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) did in Atlanta Saturday, is somebody to be taken seriously. In the Democratic primary.
The smart money’s still on Hillary, despite high negatives, despite that dreadful fake talk-Southern speech at Selma last month, and despite her go-with-the-polls positions on Iraq. But there’s no discounting a celebrity who can turn out the crowds, even if it’s just to get a glimpse of the Democrat everybody’s talking about.
In the Obama story I kept looking for the name of some Democrat from outside I-285. Didn’t see it. Not entirely surprising. An analysis last month by the National Journal reveals Obama to be the most liberal member of Congress running for President in 2008. “The most liberal member of Congress running for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination isn’t Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio,” wrote reporter Steven Thomma of McClatchy Newspapers. “It’s Sen. Barack Obama of Ilinois.”
The National Journal rankings were based on “comprehensive voting records” of lifetime records in Congress. The most liberal score possible was 99. In his first two years in the U.S. Senate, Obama scored 84.3. Next closest was Kucinich at 79.4. Hillary had 78.8 and U.S. Sen. Joe Biden of Deleware had 76.8.
For a fresh-face Democrat, Obama sounds an awful lot like one of the anti-war hippies of the bygone era which, alas, may be the only way any Democrat can win the party’s nomination. Any chance that Obama could be the national Democrat with a serious shot at carrying Georgia in the 2008 General Election evaporated with rhetoric such as this: The war in Iraq, Obama said Saturday, is about “an administration that is trying to preserve its own political viability.” That’s the entrenched cynicism that has come to define the national Demcrats, the jaded and the fresh-faced alike. New face, same pitch.
Conservatives do right thing for taxpayers
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
To this day, veteran legislators cringe that 11 years ago, in the midst of a heady debate about how best to reform the state tax system, Gov. Zell Miller succeeded in persuading fellow Democrats to eliminate the sales tax on food.
Their dismay is not particularly related to the fact that legislators allowed taxpayers to keep what was projected to be $166 per year for the average family when fully implemented in 2000, but to the fact that the legislators were giving up a sum that amounted to 5 percent of the $10.7 billion budget in a way that brought no glory except to Miller. Who notices?
While another political party awaits yet another stab at tax reform next year — the most difficult of all legislative feats — the General Assembly had a “holy cow!” moment last week, agreeing to return $142 million in excess collections as an additional property tax break for homeowners.
It started as a dare. Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle and Senate Republicans pulled what House leaders regarded as a budget stunt when they stripped House “pork” from the supplemental budget. They sent word privately that they’d be willing to add back 30 or more projects, including $15 million as the state’s share of the funds needed to acquire the 7,000 acre Paulding Forest Wildlife Management area in rapidly developing Paulding County, the home county of House Speaker Glenn Richardson (R-Hiram).
Furious that the Senate had used the supplemental for what they regarded as political games, partly related to the next gubernatorial campaign, the House first balked — and then delivered the Bomb.
The Bomb was an offer to give the excess revenues back to taxpayers as a one-time property tax rebate, the only vehicle then available for returning the money. The Senate took the dare. Deal done. Nobody blinked.
For fiscal conservatives — and for Republicans who control both Houses — it was a superb outcome.
Congressional Republicans were bounced last year in large part because their inability to discipline themselves on spending alienated their base. Projects like the Alaska “bridge to nowhere” sent the message that, once in power, one political party is not much different from the other.
The bumper stickers on this legislative session, insofar as the budget is concerned, was “PeachCare Cut” and “House Loves Pork.” Like all bumper stickers, they’re simplistic and largely inaccurate. But there’s enough truth to damage Republicans, primarily because the GOP has failed during the three years it has fully controlled the Gold Dome to define a difference.
They say they stand for lower taxes and less government and other conservative principles. But on most days and on most matters up for debate, it’s not particularly noticeable.
This session could well be a rerun of 1996 when Democrats had full control. Taxes were cut. Legislators who had other agendas sulked. The grow-government pleaders who stalk the halls and committee rooms whined. And editorialists with “pay now or later” admonitions complained that bigger government was being starved.
And yet nothing bad happened. Groceries got a tad cheaper. Georgians kept a little more of their money. And government continued to grow. The budget for the 2008 fiscal year is $20.2 billion, double the size of government when Miller passed his grocery tax exemption 11 years ago.
Instead of sulking unhappily now that a game of brinksmanship has given homeowners a one-time break that will amount to about $100, a sum likely to be unnoticed in the yearly fluctuation of property taxes, leaders should have used it to declare the New Day in Georgia: “We’ll try not to overtax, but when we do, you can trust us to give it back.”
As an extension of that explanation to voters of the difference it makes to have conservatives running Georgia, House members should pass the constitutional amendment already approved by the Senate that would impose a measure of spending discipline. It will not pass this year. Too much other vital legislation pends. But it should be passed next year and put on the ballot in 2008.
On a dare, legislators defined themselves and the difference it makes that Georgians gave power to these Republicans. They had too much money. And, as good fiscal conservatives, they gave it back.
There’s no glory to individual politicians. The public may not notice and send thank-you notes. But they had the money in hand to give us more government, and they gave us less. That is a difference that matters.
Permalink | Comments (157) | Categories: Column
Legal vs. illegal gambling; and Don Imus
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s free-for-all Friday. Pick a topic:
• A surcharge on traffic violations has generated $11.9 million since May 2005 to start up a statewide driver’s ed program for 16-year-olds. But only $2.7 million has been spent. Why? No single program has proved to be most effective, said Robert Dallas, vice chairman of the commission designing the start-up program. “All of us involved … would like to today, not tomorrow, roll out a program that the experts and data agree is the perfect program. The reality is that does not exist. All the programs have to be put in the context of their respective costs.” What Democrats know, and Republicans are yet to learn, is that program design is less important than spending all the money.
• The World of Coke closes at Underground, leaving a building that would be a fine place for a State History Museum.
• Warning to gamblers: The state owns that franchise and has illegalized competition. Morally, it might have a hard time prosecuting as a crime the activity it pushes in most every convenience store. One difference, of course, is that the Texas hold-‘em crowd is not giving a portion of the pot to “education.”
• Do apologies matter? Ask Don Imus. Yes, his comment was racist. We live, however, in an era where grievance-bearers are poised for the media moment — the stupid, racist or dumb remarks, and not just about race either — that enables activists to claim the microphone to pursue group or personal agendas. I always have the sense that activists have at-the-ready a thousand marketing plans awaiting the window of public attention.
• More surprising to me is not that three inmate-on-inmate killings occurred in March, but that only five have occurred since 2005. One’s too many, of course. But Georgia holds 52,792 convicts, 8,000 of them with mental illnesses and 60 percent of them considered violent. Thanks, guards, for doing a job I wouldn’t take for any sum of money.
• The General Assembly should rescind its 1993 recognition of the Georgia Tribe of Eastern Cherokee. Four separate groups claim that mantle. One will show up one day demanding a casino license. The feds don’t recognize any tribe in Georgia. But if they do, it would be hard for the feds to deny casinos since Georgia has also declared a fondness for gambling.
• It would be hard for federal regulators to punish subprime lenders more than the market already has. The problem, always, in talking about subprime lenders is that subprime lenders, “predatory” lenders and those who “trick” bad credit borrowers are not the same. Subprime is legit. People pay for the risk they represent. “Predatory” is fraud added to subprime. Trickery is a salesman’s pitch; whether it has occurred is subjective. Don’t yet see anything here that Congress can regulate more effectively than the marketplace has. Spending “hundreds of millions of dollars” to bail out borrowers, as U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) proposes is a lousy idea. Even those who lied about their income? Or bought houses they knew they couldn’t afford?
• When House Speaker Glenn Richardson (R-Hiram) and state Sen. Nan Orrock (D-Atlanta) join forces on any issue, as they’re being urged to do on a resolution urging the feds to become more involved in “family planning,” we’ll know this: We’ve lost one of them. Gone. Reduced to incoherent mumbling.
• Another clue as to whether congressional Democrats have any interest in legislating or simply politicking for 2008 will come on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. The Democratic bill, which President Bush has vetoed once, is a slippery slope to embryo farms. The votes don’t exist to override. Georgia’s Republican U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson authored one the president will sign that allows federal funding only for stem cells taken from deficient “naturally dead” embryos. It has risks, too, but is the best deal that supporters of federal funding for embryonic stem cell research will get out of this president. Isakson does have a knack for finding the middle ground on contentious issues.
• By agreeing to return $142 million in excess collections to taxpayers, House and Senate leaders achieved the best possible outcome to their stand-off over the one-time appropriations we call pork — though, clearly, much of it has merit. The state should not fail, for example, to ante up the $15 million needed to acquire the 7,000-acre Paulding Forest Wildlife Management Area, for which Paulding County residents have already consented to taxing themselves $15 million. The Robert W. Woodruff Foundation will give $7.5 million when the state antes up.
• Life’s good. It’s spring in Atlanta. I have a great job I intend to keep. And for however long it lasts, the Braves are the best team in baseball.
Permalink | Comments (237) | Categories: Column
Duke case should scare us all
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Like most conservatives, my first inclination is to support the cops, the prosecutors and the men and women in the criminal justice system who are constantly under the gun. But as former governor Roy Barnes was fond of saying, “I gotta tell ya” And this “I gotta tell ya” is that the prosecutor’s conduct in the case of the Duke University lacrosse players scares the bejesus out of me.
North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper announced Wednesday that charges are being dropped against three former Duke lacrosse players who were accused of rape by a stripper who performed at a team party on March 13, 2006. The three faced charges — dropped Wednesday — of sexual assualt and kidnapping. After a thorough review, the AG announced that “these cases are over, and no more criminal proceedings will occur.” And here’s the kicker:
“We believe that these cases were the result of a tragic rush to accuse and a failure to verify serious allegations,” said the AG. “We have no credible evidence that an attack occurred in that house that night.”
The next chapter in this unwarranted prosecution should bring the disbarment of Durham County District Attorney Mike Nifong who proceeded to charge the three despite the fact that eyewitness indentification procedures were unreliable, none of the samples of DNA taken from the woman’s underwear matched those charged, her story changed and no witnesses corroborated it. Furthermore, the DA knew and did not share with lawyers for the three that no DNA match was found.
“I think a lot of people owe a lot of apologies to a lot of people,” said Atty. Gen. Cooper. Nifong for one. The 88 Duke faculty members who rushed to the conclusion, which they later denied, that the three were guilty, signing a newspaper ad that linked the case to “racism and sexism” on the Duke campus. One by one, they should deliver personal apologies to the three students whose lives were almost ruined by false accusation.
Nifong shows us what one out-of-control prosecutor feeding and feeding off mass hysteria can do to individuals caught up in the frenzy.
Who’s the baby’s daddy?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Whew! DNA tests establish California photographer Larry Birkhead as the daddy of Anna Nicole Smith’s baby. Now America can move on to more important matters, like whether Sanjaya, one of the American Idol contestants, can sing. Your Thinking Right host, having never heard the lad carry a tune, or even try, has no opinion.
It’s the baby/daddy DNA search, however, that prompts today’s commentary.
Restoring the traditional two-parent family is another of the challenges conservatives face in trying to use government to reverse trends that are harmful to society. As noted here before, a nation that suffers an epidemic of out-of-wedlock births, as this one does with 70 percent of black babies, almost half the Hispanic and a quarter of the whites born into homes without a mother and a father present, is in trouble. It’s a nation of adults who can’t commit, who won’t be responsible, who have children carelessly or because they’re bored and find babies more adorable than puppies.
Government, along with Hollywood, the church, civil rights leaders and the middle class, all have a role in changing that. The Anna Nichole baby/daddy search offers direction.
When a pregnant woman presents herself for public assistance, she should be required to identify the male she suspects as having caused her pregancy. That accusation would be sufficient to obligate him, by law, to submit DNA samples. If he is, indeed, the responsible party, every dime the state spends on the baby should be on his tab, with the state willing to spend $5 to get $1 from him. The message to him is: You can’t cause children and walk away. If the first DNA test is negative, the woman carrying the baby would be obligated to name other candidates. The failure to establish the daddy’s identity would constitute child abuse.
Tough? Yes. But every child has a right to be born knowing his mother and father. And every child has a right to their financial support until he’s an adult, with the state enforcing their obligations to him.
Conservatives must cultivate self-reliance
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Maybe there’s no going back. But conservatives — for the nation’s good — need to make one enormous try.
To be honest, the media won’t be much help. By its nature, it highlights the case for more government. It documents suffering and what it sees as inequity and injustice that require a governmental solution.
Personal responsibility is rarely, if ever, a mentioned virtue. Poor choices — like, for example the decision to bring babies into the world without a mother and a father in the home — are rarely, if ever, questioned, and never in a way that would suggest blame.
The current debate in Georgia over PeachCare is the proper balance between providing a temporary safety net for those who are genuinely down on their luck and with creating a government program that invites adults to make bad choices, and to dump their children onto the backs of taxpayers.
It is terribly unfortunate that debates like this are always reduced to absurdity, with social and fiscal conservatives caricatured in penny-pinching stereotype while the advocates of more spending are seen as compassionate and, therefore, virtuous.
Georgia House Speaker Glenn Richardson (R-Hiram) spoke, in a story published this weekend, to that balance. “It is the obligation of all of us to take care of those that cannot take care of themselves,” he told reporter Bill Hendrick. The benefits, however, have been made too generous to strike the proper balance and furthermore, he argued, PeachCare is coming to be regarded as an entitlement and a constitutional right, which it isn’t. “The responsibility to take care of children is first with moms and dads. Mamas and daddies are responsible.”
When PeachCare is discussed it is in terms of a struggle between good and evil — bad people intentionally inflicting suffering on the deserving poor over the objections of the virtuous. But in the story Hendrick presents, a minister making $42,000 a year, with a wife and three children, opts instead to preach as a freelancer, substantially reducing his family’s income, thus qualifying the children for PeachCare.
I cannot possibly know, nor can any journalist present in a single story, the reasons people make the choices they do. So I’m not here to judge the choices the family made.
The public policy question, however, is whether parents should be invited to make choices that transfer a parental obligation to government.
We keep crossing that divide. For all its public support, the truth is that HOPE stipends do the same thing. The program says to parents that it’s no longer an essential family obligation to save for your child’s college expenses. Even for children who are not college material, HOPE is available.
So in at least these two instances, we start from the premise that deserving people are falling through the cracks — and use that to construct social programs that alter adult behavior, often in ways that are contrary to the public good.
Public welfare, for all its good, became a program that made men immaterial. Women married government. The result, now, is that in some populations men are disappearing from the lives of their children. Read the newspaper or watch television news and note how seldom men show up, especially in stories involving underclass families. Men are incidental.
This is, then, the consuming goal of conservatives in government: Strike a balance in the creation of social programs, or any other, so that help is extended to deserving poor without cultivating dependency and without tempting adults to make choices that could be harmful to family and to children. If, as with PeachCare, people are allowed onto the rolls without having to verify citizenship or eligibility, the result is obvious. Ineligible people will enroll, inviting dishonesty and forcing taxpayers to support freeloaders.
PeachCare reform, then, is not about abandoning public responsibility to the poor, but is about striking a balance that doesn’t entice the middle class into dependency.
Policy-makers can re-fashion social programs intelligently. Welfare reform’s emphasis on work is one example. The HOPE VI housing program, under which public housing projects are razed and replaced with upscale mixed-use housing, invites back those who demonstrate personal responsibility by work, by conduct and by property upkeep. The government that cultivated dependency is reconfigured to cultivate self-reliance and other virtues.
It’s a tough challenge for conservatives. The pressure, always, is to throw money and to equate intent with results. That’s what conservatives have to change.
Permalink | Comments (141) | Categories: Column
ATL-Lovejoy: Missed that train years ago
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Metro Atlanta — the 28 counties stretching from Pickens in the north to Pike in the south, and Harralson west to Walton east — was declared this week to be the nation’s fastest growing metropolitan area.
The announcement prompts the nostalgia brigades to rush to the Gutenbergs to denounce the invention of the automobile (except the tiny variety, of course) and to take quill to hand to bedevil Department of Transportation Commissioner Harold Linnenkohl for his reluctance to sign a document no prudent public official should rush to sign on a double-dog dare.
That document would be, of course, the “Intergovernmental Agreement for Commuter Rail Procurement and Operations” or, for conversational purposes, the White Elephant Contract to commence slow-train commuter rail service from downtown Atlanta to Lovejoy.
No question the arrival of 890,000 new residents in the 28 counties between 2000 and 2006, pushing the region’s population to an estimated 5,138,000, hastens the need for a serious statewide plan for addressing critical transportation bottlenecks, particularly those that represent barriers to growth. Those would include, for example, the state’s failure to provide the carpet, auto and related industries a North Georgia alternative to I-285 congestion — something that would save them money and all of us aggravation. It includes, too, a more convenient way to leapfrog Atlanta that gives relief to gridlock on the downtown connector.
The solution requires boldness and a reliance on the private sector to fill the gaps beyond potentially available tax resources. There’s no time or money to fritter away on adventures into the past or on designing spoke-like systems to funnel traffic to a central point — unless of course, as with the needed relief to the downtown connector, it’s a speedy pass-through to points beyond. That era is gone when all the jobs and the traffic were to downtown Atlanta.
When we note commuting time in connection with development, it usually is to suggest that people are moving farther out from Atlanta’s core, where their jobs are assumed to be. It may be that, but more likely it is that people are stuck in traffic — wherever they’re going — because the state has failed to devote the proper attention and resources to the right transportation solutions and local governments have zoned to permit density far in excess of the carrying capacity of roads. It should be the law that no city or county can rezone to a higher density than existing roads can support.
Time and money spent on the wrong “solutions” aggravate traffic conditions for those 5 million Georgians, wherever they choose to live in metro Atlanta. An example is commuter rail line from downtown Atlanta to Lovejoy.
In the 10-year period ending in 2006, state auditors’ estimate $21.1 million was spent just on studies of alternative rail projects. Those studies covered seven proposed commuter rail lines and seven intercity lines, service that “would primarily share track usage with freight lines.” None of them has been built.
While state auditors noted that they were not asked to comment on the decision to build the Atlanta-Lovejoy line, they nonetheless acknowledged some of the risks that Linnenkohl is being pressured to ignore in signing a contract with Norfolk-Southern Railway.
“We found the project may cost more than the estimated $108 million; the state may be liable for a portion of the federal investment in the project (about $87 million) if the line is terminated prior to being in operation for 20 years; and the state may be liable for covering any operating shortfall,” the auditors said in a report published earlier this year.
Of the $108 million — $86.7 million from the feds and $19.9 million from state borrowings made in 2003 — “almost half … are expected to be spent on upgrades to the rail track between Atlanta and Lovejoy, with much of the rest being spent on rail stations.” Projected ridership is 1,540 passengers daily, with fares covering 35 percent to 40 percent of operating costs by the third year. The state, presumably, will be expected to cover the difference.
The decision to proceed with the Atlanta-Lovejoy line was not based on any analysis of need or traffic congestion relief that moved it to the fore, but “appeared to primarily be based on the amount of funding identified as available at the time the decision was made in 2003.”
While we’re mired in nostalgia, inventing solutions for yesterday, 900,000 new residents are moving into and around 28 counties, mired in worsening traffic congestion.
• Jim Wooten is associate editor of the editorial page. His column appears Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays.
Permalink | | Categories: Column
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.
Permalink | Comments (76) | Categories: Column
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.
Felons in public office?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Florida, which routinely leads Georgia in pushing cutting-edge legislation — school vouchers, for example — may be handing activists a prize they’ve been denied in Georgia: automatic restoration of the rights of felons who have completed their sentences to vote, serve on juries, hold public office and hold professional licenses.
A clemency board, made up of Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, the attorney general, chief financial officer and agricultural commissioner, may agree this week. Crist supports automatic restoration, if fees and restitution are satisfied, a stipulation the ACLU opposes. Two of the other members of the board would have to agree with Crist before he could sign an executive order implementing the change. Crist’s predecessor, Jeb Bush, opposed automatic restoration, Both are Republicans.
“We’re working very hard to have restoration of civil rights, something that Florida can be proud of,” the governor said. “It’s along the lines of what Abraham Lincoln would support, so I’m working very hard to try to make that happen.”
Some 1 million new voters could be made eligible for the rolls by the decision. Attorney General Bill McCollum thinks the change would be “reckless and irresponsible.” Agriculture Commissioner Charles Bronson has reservations, too.
To relieve a state backlog of felons who seek individually to have their rights restored, McCollum suggests hiring more Parole Commission employees and having more clemency board meetings. The wait now can be years. More meetings and employees could cut that to a year, he said.
I would oppose the change here. The state should punish behaviors that are harmful to society — and crime certainly is — while rewarding those that are desirable, like marriage. Taking away the right to vote, serve on juries or hold public office, while putting the burden on the wrong-doer to demonstrate rehabilitation, sends the desired message that there are lifetime consequences to criminal conduct.
When the pork is sliced, diced, keep clean slate
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It’s a bit like a small-town sewing circle. Five legislators in a fourth-floor committee room at the state Capitol divvy up the pork. The door is open, the meeting announced. I wander in, just as I had days earlier when legislators appeared before the “Special Projects” subcommittee to ask for small sums, usually $25,000 or less, to purchase vehicles or other equipment for recreation, police, fire and other community projects.
They hate the word pork. Up and down the line, either in this gathering or later in conversations with House Speaker Glenn Richardson (R-Hiram) and Majority Leader Jerry Keen (R-St. Simons Island), my use of the word to characterize legislator-added largesse, makes them immediately defensive.
It’s a sore subject, in part because of timing. Congress, with its Alaska “bridge to nowhere,” has raised the hackles of fiscal conservatives who object to a budget process that allows powerful legislators to add unscrutinized and uncompetitive spending projects to appropriations bills without debate. That disenchantment may well have contributed to the loss of the U.S. House of Representatives last November.
It’s a sore subject, too, because Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle — in a grand gesture that House Appropriations Committee Chairman Ben Harbin (R-Evans) asserted is “about politics, ambition and leverage” and not spending — summarily rejected the House-passed supplemental as containing too much pork and non-emergency spending. “We are not spending what we do not have,” Harbin told the House.
Richardson was furious that questions about how to structure the supplemental budget were first raised on the afternoon of the day it passed the House. The Senate, retreating to an argument commonly made by fiscal conservatives and by many Republicans when they were in the minority, informed the House that its appropriations committee would strip out pork, new projects and other non-emergency spending, shifting them to the coming year’s budget. The supplemental, thus, would become what it was originally intended — one that makes adjustments to school funding based on new enrollment and to emergencies, such as PeachCare and indigent defense.
Those who object to the use of the supplemental as a second budget that can be used to borrow money and create new spending programs largely unnoticed — me among them — cheer the Senate position. The timing, however, does legitimately give the House reason for anger.
The Senate, Richardson argued, is merely shifting money, not spending less. He argues, too, that special projects the House included are worthwhile and serve a state economic development or tourism interest. I mention the Golf Hall of Fame, a $300,000 addition. “There’s not a greater place for golf than Georgia,” he said, and without the grant, the Hall “is about to be closed down.” He mentions $5 million the House added for the National Infantry Museum project in Columbus. Georgia’s $5 million will be matched by $20 million in federal money and $40 million raised privately, he said. Allocating the money is a tribute to the soldiers who have served in this nation’s wars, he argues, defending the grant with some emotion.
Each of the projects can, of course, be defended. Keen points out with some vigor that the Senate, with Cagle as a member, last year larded up the budget that they now righteously reject.
Truth is, neither the House nor the Senate, neither Richardson nor Cagle, wins this one. Down home, it just looks like more of the same. And if it is gubernatorial politics, it’s two or three years premature.
Meanwhile, back on the 4th floor, a “pork” process is under way that satisfies most of my requirements for doling out legislative largesse. Legislators, in an open hearing, make their requests to a subcommittee headed by state Rep. John W. Heard (R-Lawrenceville). The requests are scored on five points: community benefit, economic development, no ongoing operational costs, local cost-sharing and promotion of civic or personal responsibility. The sums are modest, usually $25,000 or less, with most in the $10,000-$15,000 range. Requests total $10 million. The panel whittles. The max allowed is $3.5 million.
It’s a sewing circle. State Rep. “Able” Mable Thomas (D-Atlanta) has requested $25,000 for an Atlanta Public School project. “You know,” says one of the panel, “she did a very good job in the well yesterday.” Others agree. Her project scores well, an 82, with anything in the 90s or over 100 considered a slam-dunk. “She gets a check,” the chairman declared.
Rep. Henry “Wayne” Howard (D-Augusta) has asked for $200,000 for a variety of projects. “Henry’s new to the program,” says one. He gets $25,000 for hometown projects, though that could be whittled down later.
It’s open. Transparent. Projects are graded and compete. And the money can be taken back if not properly supervised, as four grants were this year. I’m not a purist. Small grants can be incentive to communities to come together. Openness, competition and accountability is all I ask.
Permalink | Comments (76) | Categories: Column
Two-fer candidates? No thanks.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
One marriage “partnership” I’ll never get accustomed to is that the spouse of an elected official should have any decision-making policy role whatsoever. Rudy Giuliani, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, found it necessary to clarify comments suggesting that his wife would play a significant role in his administration.
In an interview Thursday with Barbara Walters, Giuliani said he would be receptive to having his wife, Judith Nathan Giuliani, attend Cabinet meetings on issues in which she had an interest. “If she wanted to” and “if they were relevant to something she’s interested in,” said Giuliani, “I mean that would be something that I’d be very, very comfortable with.” The comment produced a flood of HillaryCare two-fer President memories. Not good. He later clarified his remarks.
“Obviously, she will not be a Cabinet member or attend most Cabinet meetings — if any. But she will pursue a campaign to educate Americans on preventing illness and promoting overall health.” His wife was a nurse.
In general, it was not a good week for Giuliani, whose support in a USA Today- Gallup Poll taken March 23-25 revealed a drop of 13 percentage points among Republicans and Independents to 31 percent from a March 2-4 poll. Of course the news for Gov. Mitt Romney was worse, as he dropped from 8 to 3. The gainer was former U.S. Senator Fred Thompson (R-Tenn), who registered at 12 percent. This is the first time he was included.
Giuliani certainly appeals. His leadership after 9/11 and his ability to manage New York City spenders make him a candidate to be taken seriously. The six marriages — three for him, three for his wife — are a problem, since one of the issues the next President needs to confront is the unacceptably high rate rate of births to unmarrieds and the decline of traditional two-parent families.
As for the wife in the Cabinet meetings, we do live in an era of two-career households. And since intelligent people are inclined to marry intelligent people, the temptation to elect a two-fer is always there. But the spouse is a position where his or her influence over policy matters cannot be precisely gauged or effectively challenged. I didn’t want a two-fer with Hillary, don’t want it with Bill and don’t want it with Judith. One on the ballot. One in the office.
.JPG)
-1.JPG)
Services »
