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Thursday, May 3, 2007
Iraq deadline, escort service and tax misuse
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s free-for-all Friday. Pick a topic:
• The U.S. Supreme Court may have OK’d the practice of ramming the vehicles of fleeing suspects to end high-speed chases, but the next General Assembly should spell out in law specific circumstances under which such tactics can be used. Police shouldn’t be ramming speeders, for example, as was the case when a former Coweta deputy rammed a fleeing Cadillac on a two-lane, rain-slicked road. The 19-year-old driver was rendered a quadriplegic. The tactic should be reserved for suspected felons or those who pose an imminent danger to others.
• Headline: “I-75/575 price tag hits $4 billion.” Act. There’s no time to waste. In 20 years, it’ll seem cheap. Fix congestion.
• I’m not convinced that a governor who rides down the highway at 90 miles per hour without a seat belt — Jon Corzine of New Jersey — has the judgment to be governor. It is, I suppose, evidence that liberals feel secure in government’s arm no matter the driver or speed.
• Wonder how many protesters gathered last Sunday to demand an end to violence in Darfur could find Sudan on a map? All, surely.
• Too much concrete, asphalt and rooftops in Metro Atlanta? Require bigger lots, thereby preserving trees and soil surface or, as in South Fulton, density tied to green space. There, in the 2,000-acre Friendship Village project, almost 1,300 acres is preserved as green space. The General Assembly should make green space preservation top priority in local consideration of high-density zoning.
• The many tax breaks handed out in the last hour of the General Assembly, most of which were well-publicized in advance, demonstrate two points: One is that the session was poorly managed. The other is that Republicans who talk of future tax reform while handing out breaks, however defensible, are never more than a heartbeat away from an accusation of hypocrisy.
• “Setting a deadline for withdrawal is setting a date for failure.” So spoke President Bush in vetoing a $124 billion war spending bill that he said “substitutes the opinions of politicians for the judgment of our military commanders.” The president did not include in the latter group Armchair General Harry Reid, who is prepared to surrender just as soon as Osama bin Laden surfaces to receive it. Of course, if he does, some trigger-happy U.S. Marine will kill ‘em. It’s a big mess. Why can’t we all just get along?
• Only 16 narc officers in a city the size of Atlanta. That paltry number, when combined with arrest quotas — a charge officers make and the brass denies — would be a formula for corruption.
• Holy Toledo! I’m agreeing with state Sen. Vincent Fort, a most liberal Atlanta Democrat. Said he of the $150,000 inserted into the state budget to hire a “jobs advocate” in Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle’s office to promote economic development and to act as a “liaison” to corporations: “I’m not convinced this jobs advocate will bring anything new and dynamic to the mix except to let the lieutenant governor keep a campaign promise.” Too mild, Vince. It’s a pointless expenditure. An unnecessary duplication of executive branch functions. Don’t grow this office into a gubernatorial campaign.
• The guilty plea by the Atlanta Public Schools’ technology director, Arthur Scott, to taking bribes from vendors in the grossly mismanaged national program to wire schools for high-speed Internet service, is evidence that as watchdogs, newspapers are irreplaceable. AJC reporters Ken Foskett and Paul Donsky in 2004 unraveled a complex story about waste and misuse of public money. Those stories prompted official investigations that resulted in the guilty pleas by Scott and his wife. Everything you hate about hidden taxes and spending without accountability was represented in the stories Foskett and Donsky uncovered.
• News organizations that publish the names of men visiting prostitutes, but don’t publish the names of other adults arrested for minor offenses, do it to embarrass. A Washington woman accused of operating an escort service is dropping names “in her effort to avoid a prison term.”
• Bring on the special session. Include Senate Resolution 20 — spending caps — in the call. Then agree to add the $142 million to reserves. Or, if not spending caps, give it back. Return the $142 million to taxpayers who paid for more government than they wanted — because clearly Republicans can’t be trusted to keep it. They’ll find a reason to spend, just as the Democrats did.
• Rosie O’Donnell and actor Leonardo DiCaprio are included by Time magazine in its 100 most influential people in the world. But not President Bush. A once-proud and vital magazine is now frivolous — and silly, too.
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Where is Newt Reagan?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Republicans gather tonight at the Ronald Reagan library for their first presidential candidate debate of the 2008 cycle. Scott Shepard, writing about it in today’s AJC, observes as others have that the Republican base is looking for another Reagan. No doubt there’s some truth to the observation.
President Bush is nearing the effective end of his presidency. The other party controls Congress and is obviously determined to devote the next two years to politicking, as they just did in sending him an Iraqi funding bill loaded with essentials and pork, knowing full well it would be vetoed and the votes didn’t exist to override. Sure enough, he did and the House fell 62 votes shy — 62 — in an attempt to override. Numbers so staggering make it obvious yet again: This is not about governing; it’s about defeating Bush. Pssst, Earth to Mars: He ain’t on the ballot in 2008.
If the Democrats succeed in turning two years of the nation’s life into political theater, Bush’s legacy can be predicted now. If the U.S. succeeds in Iraq, he’ll rank with the greats as a wartime leader who stayed the course to victory despite the critics, who will fade away to surface again in the next war. I do tell you, though, that I believe most of the Bush-haters would rather fail in Iraq than see Bush compared to wartime presidents FDR and Lincoln.
Bush’s legacy,too,will be his two appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court. Tax cuts, too, will place him in Reagan company, though if Democrats take the White House in 2008 and keep Congress, those are gone. No Child Left Behind has its conservative features, but it’s also the vehicle for nationalizing local school funding.
Then there is, of course, the prescription drug program, a reminder that Republicans had elected Bush, not Reagan.
I’m ready for a cross between Reagan and Newt Gingrich, for a stout conservative with big ideas based on the world as it exists today. The country won’t readily permit conservatives to scale back any of the high-cost social programs. Too many people have grown dependent on the postman. But just as liberals used government to cultivate dependency, conservatives can use it to wean them from it and to grow self reliance. Health and retirement savings accounts are two examples. Vouchers, of course, for schooling and housing are part of the answer, too.
Principle, Big Ideas and the ability to explain them to the American people. A communicator. That’s the conservative Republicans need to find in this field.
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