Home > Thinking Right > Archives > 2007 > May
May 2007
Bugs in global warming alarmism
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Pack the kids in the car, Maggie, and let’s flee to the hills of Idaho. Our Southern lifestyle is about to come to a crashing end, an early victim of global warming.
As described by the AJC’s Bob Dart, the picture presented by tourism officials to the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works has “golfers heading north to escape bug-infested, parched courses. Southern rivers too shallow for tubing [and] beaches from Jekyll Island to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., engulfed by a rising Atlantic Ocean.” The cause? Global warming. What’s a native to do? The same thing, I suppose, when we’re bombarded by what in modern times has become a steady stream of dire warnings on everything from the new millennium disaster that was to befall our computers to the revelation that cul-de-sacs and the suburban lifestyle cause obesity. And yet the worst we got was that a software upgrade crashed MARTA’s new Breeze fare system for a day. And fat kids everywhere.
The problem I’ve always had with global warming alarmists is that while most climate scientists agree that global warming has occurred in the past century,on the order of 1 degree Fahrenheit, predicting the future depends on assumptions fed into computer models. Different assumptions, different outcomes. Are humans causing it? Scientists are split. It’s hard to argue that humans have no impact whatsoever, but my suspicion is that those who say humans are the cause have an agenda, which is to set national energy and environmental policies.
Yes, it’s hot. Yes, there’s a drought. Yes, the weather is peculiar. But current conditions are not evidence of looming environmental disaster.
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Tunnel, double-deck, but free up traffic
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The newest member of the state Department of Transportation board, Larry Walker of Perry, is determined to push the state to fish or cut bait on commuter rail. “Frankly, I feel like this is a matter of such consequence for this state, it is incumbent on us to take some sort of position,” he said during a committee meeting last week.
He is right, of course. It’s a distraction. Except as a scenic excursion, slow rail is of limited usefulness. And unless the 26-mile Lovejoy line is a part of something larger — an overall state development strategy to move state department and agencies out of gridlocked Atlanta, for example, and to push growth south — it makes little or no sense.
Proponents of a line to Athens do try to give it a grander calling, describing it as the “Brain Train” that would link universities in Athens, Atlanta and eventually Macon. During one such presentation last week, a proponent told the committee that “the State Senate voted unanimously to support” the slow train to Athens. Sorry. That should be the “brain train” to Athens.
“You think they’d vote unanimously to fund it?” asked Walker, the former Majority Leader in the Georgia House of Representatives. “It was a resolution wasn’t it? I vote for a lot of those that I wouldn’t vote to fund later,” he said.
Neither line, Atlanta-Lovejoy nor Atlanta-Athens, solves any of a gridlocked region’s transportation problems. Also on the gridlock front:
Atlanta should develop as the locals wish. But as a daily visitor, I’ve got to tell you that given the density being allowed on surface streets that are already in gridlock during some hours of the day, it’s near-insane to spend a billion dollars to introduce more obstructions onto Peachtree Street, namely streetcars. Count on it: businesses flee gridlock.
The failure to prepare Howell Mill Road leading into I-75 in Atlanta to support the density the local government unwisely approved demonstrates yet again the need for a state law to prohibit local governments from zoning or approving projects that create density beyond existing roads’ carrying capacity. Approved development adds 15,000 more trips to Howell Mill.
Next year gridlock gets worse. The I-75/85 Downtown Connector gets repaved. That strip should be double-decked. Or tunneled. It is absolutely essential to develop a way to move traffic through Atlanta. It’s a nightmare bottleneck for north-south traffic.
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PeachCare: Take control of its growth
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
For conservatives attempting to contain the growth of government, three major obstacles loom.
One is that social programs, once created, become sacred cows, as PeachCare has, surrounded and protected by beneficiaries, by interest groups, by the media and by politicians who use the public purse as the currency of their power and longevity. All provide a protective phalanx around the good and the bad, the workable and the wasteful, resisting anything that is not a benefit expansion.
The second is that the more-government advocates, mindful of Ronald Reagan’s use of “welfare queen” imagery to push reform, learned quickly that the key to new and expanded social programs is to shift the focus of public attention from unsympathetic characters — irresponsible adults and “welfare queens” — to “children.” When the dispute is penny-pinchers vs. “children,” government grows.
The third major obstacle is that Republicans, who now exercise control under the Gold Dome, come in all stripes. Getting them all together on any rock-the-boat legislation is no small feat. Visionary, committed leadership is essential.
The PeachCare debate in this year’s General Assembly is illustrative. The obstacles to reform, however slight, are so deeply embedded in defense of the status quo that it’s not the work of the weak, the queasy or the timid.
PeachCare, as proposed by then-Gov. Zell Miller in 1998, was a distinctly different concept. Miller would have expanded Medicaid coverage for children under 6, and offered low-cost coverage to children 6-18 whose parents earned $32,100 or less, and coverage for slightly higher premiums to children 6-18 whose parents made more than $32,100. Private insurance companies would sell policies on contract with the State Merit System.
The House, which had by then fallen under the dominating influence of its more liberal wing, stripped away Miller’s name for the proposal (Children’s Health Insurance Program), dubbed it PeachCare for Kids and turned it into a wholly taxpayer-funded expansion of Medicaid with free coverage for eligible children.
“PeachCare is a huge, new entitlement program,” said Miller at the time. “And I thought we had learned our lesson long ago that when it comes to entitlements they are impossible to control and the costs skyrocket over time.”
Oddly enough, PeachCare is not an entitlement. It simply behaves as one. Any attempt to manage its growth — something most taxpayers would want and expect — is treated as a visitation of the plague. House Speaker Glenn Richardson (R-Hiram) was accused here of using “boogeyman scare tactics and gross mischaracterizations” to bully his colleagues into “gutting” PeachCare. Gutting was essentially to align its future eligibility with plans in surrounding states.
By its nature, the media are most often a proponent of more government. As problems are defined, the solution is invariably a more active and expansive government. It is the simple, easy solution. Asking parents to be responsible for their own children, for example, or to marry so that children are given a fair shot at a loving, healthy and protected childhood, infringes on the free-spiritedness adults claim as a divine right. So if children are neglected, it’s because too few government agents were on the payroll or because those who were lack competence.
Conservatives in public office have to become smarter, and more media savvy, in explaining and defending actions that are bound to be unpopular.
A symbiotic relationship often exists between the interest groups that promote bigger government and the media. Interest groups conduct “studies” and commission polls, spin stories, find and offer access to individuals or families they wish to represent as typical of beneficiaries.
Effecting change is tough. It requires a governor leading. And it requires capable, committed legislators who are comfortable explaining and defending the need for a different approach, whether that is tax revision, PeachCare reform, vouchers, spending caps or health care reform. Otherwise, they’ll always be on the defensive trying to explain why they’re out to punish children.
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Stealing the good names of the dead
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Lawmakers in Arizona are considering, and should approve, legislation that would outlaw the commercial use of the names of those who died in service to the country without the permission of their families. The legislation was prompted by the sale of anti-war tee shirts bearing the names and photos of those who lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Two other states, Oklahoma and Louisiana, have enacted similar laws and two more, Texas and Florida, have legislation awaiting a governor’s signature. The Arizona legislaiton was filed in response to the sale of tee shirts that list the names of the dead, along with such slogans as”Bush Lied — They Died” and “Support Our Remaining Troops — Bring the Rest Home Alive.”
Most of those who die in service to their country are young. Had they lived to old age, their life’s work and accomplishments and the lives they brought into the world or touched would stand as testament to its meaning. But because they answered the country’s call and made the supreme sacrifice, it is left to others, to those who knew them and to those who loved them, to tell their story.
As one who served in another unpopular war, it offends me deeply that their names or photos would be seized for a use and purpose they most likely would not have approved of in life. Not only do they lose their lives, but they lose, too, the right not to have their names and images corrupted into a campaign aimed at undermining public support for the war in which they served — and in which their buddies still serve.
Anti-war activists love to “honor” the dead by offering their names to make an anti-war statement. In a news context, it’s objectionable. When commercialized, it’s stealing something precious. It shouldn’t be allowed without the family’s permission.
“My son was not duped into going to war,” Margy Bons, a Phoenix-area mother whose son, Marine Sgt. Michael Marzano, was killed by a bomb in 2005, told the Associated Press. “I’m angry that somebody can use somebody else’s name for their political beliefs without permission.”
There oughta be a law…
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Trust lacking on border security
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The underlying problem, the insurmountable obstacle to embracing the immigration bill now before the U.S. Senate, is that people don’t trust Congress. Or the bureaucracy that will administer it. Or future administrations to honor the promises the bill makes.
Frankly, I’m ambivalent about the compromise. If the borders aren’t secured, it’s another in what will become a long line of amnesty grants. Our failure to secure them will continue to be interpreted, as it is now by the left, as an invitation to illegals. They won’t insist — they never have — that the borders be secured.
Instead, the blame will be assigned to a moving target: greedy corporatists unwilling to pay wages that would attract native-borns, a culture of conspicuous consumption dependent on cheap labor to build the houses and maintain the lifestyles we demand, or some other presumed sin that blames America for being a nation that invites and exploits desperately poor neighbors.
From that “it’s-our-fault” premise, it’s difficult to find good-faith agreement that, indeed, the provisions promising border security will, despite the triggering language that no temporary worker program can begin until border-security provisions are “funded, in place and operational,” which is not necessarily to say secure.
The ideal would be evidence that the problem of illegal entry is substantially fixed, thus making it possible to deal with a problem that’s not worsening. Once critical mass is reached, illegals become emboldened, as demonstrations for amnesty confirm, and politicians lose the will to enforce the law. It then becomes, as it is now, a debate about how best to avoid alienating a sizeable segment of current and future voters and whether they’ll vote Democrat or Republican.
The fact of border security and the fact of a biometrically secure identification card that employers are required to have on record would go a long way, for me at least, in accepting the amnesty provisions. Employers will be required to ask every job applicant for identification. For the citizen, it’s a Social Security card, a birth certificate or a passport — though the process of making Social Security cards useful for verification purposes is at least 18 months away. For the hireable immigrant, it’s the biometric identification card.
Clearly, employers should face stiff penalties for hiring illegals, as they do under the proposed bill, at $75,000 per illegal. “The employer enforcement in this bill is very strict,” says U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.). Under the existing system, employers can accept documents they strongly suspect to be forgeries without penalty by pretending not to have known.
Another concern is that while they are specifically not entitled to social service benefits beyond their Social Security contributions when they leave the country, this portion of the law won’t hold through a Democratic administration and Congress.
An analysis by Robert E. Rector and Christine Kim for the conservative Heritage Foundation notes that “current immigrants [both legal and illegal] have very low education levels … at least 50 percent, and perhaps 60 percent of illegal immigrant adults lack a high school degree.” They continue:
“The current immigration population … contains a disproportionate share of poorly educated individuals. These individuals will tend to have low wages, pay little in taxes, and receive above average levels of government benefits and services.”
Low skills equal high poverty. Such immigrant households received an average of $30,160 in benefits, including education, in 2004, researchers found. Total taxes paid was $10,573 per household. Over a 60-year life, the cost to taxpayers will exceed taxes collected by $1.2 million, researchers project.
When amnesty was granted in 1986, about 37 percent of the illegals went on to apply for citizenship.
Granted, this proposed legislation sets up a long process to citizenship and specifically does not make Z visa holders eligible for welfare, food stamps, free medical care, except in emergencies, or other social services. But you can be certain that incrementally those benefits will be made available and, morally, it’s hard to argue that those Z visa holders who spend a lifetime working beside citizens should be excluded from benefits granted to those in need. It’s not in the American nature to create a permanent caste system.
If the left and the right could sign a good-faith agreement that we’d support honest border enforcement now and in the future, a biometric ID card for noncitizens with workplace enforcement, and that we’d accept a social service and education system that treated citizens and noncitizens differently, amnesty could work.
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State parks; gas prices; Iraq funding
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s free-for-all Friday. Pick a topic:
• Poor Zoo Atlanta pandas. They’re losing their ga-ga, goo-goo audience to Ya Ya, the Memphis mom-to be. And now their PR firm has obviously been stolen away by the World of Coca-Cola. Fortunately, however, over-exposure is not fatal, as Britney Spears revealed.
• Hush, John, you’re scaring us. John Kerry’s vice presidential candidate, John Edwards, spoke to Georgia Democrats. Recalling the presidencies of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, he allowed as to how it’s “time for another Democrat from the South.”
• The GOP should fund a missionary to Candler Park. Democrats pull 99 percent of the campaign contributions there. Same for southwest Atlanta.
• The state should set a three-year limit on funding halls of fame and similar attractions. Or better yet, make it a one-time expenditure. Or even better, enlist the honored industry to pony up.
• If you trust Congress and all future presidents to secure the borders and to live up to the promises in the immigration bill now before Congress, you should support it. Much as its proponents argue otherwise, it still does look like amnesty.
• OK, so some under-utilized state parks or historic sites are being closed on Monday and Tuesday — the slow days — to save money. How many Georgians would vote to raise the user fees by a dollar to $4 to keep them open 7 days? Is that a hand I see down in Valdosta? Nope. Don’t see one.
• A Congress that proposes to fund a war two months at a time really should screw up the courage to cut off funding entirely and take the consequences when the American people take note of what they’ve done. But, for the time at least, Democrats have come to their senses. Funds will continue through the end of the fiscal year, Sept. 30, and no timetable for surrender is in the latest bill.
• Jimmy Carter is beginning to sound like the cranky old uncle who starts ranting about the broccoli during Thanksgiving Dinner.
• Some Clark Atlanta University students and faculty want its president, Walter Broadnax, fired. The school was penniless and in danger of losing accreditation when he came five years ago. He did the kinds of things private equity firms do to save failing businesses, aligning costs and revenues while attempting to find a financially secure place in the education market. As with the auto industry and the airlines, it may not work. Students and faculty have choice. But for what he’s done, he should be commended, not run off.
• Appalling, simply appalling that the board of Grady Memorial Hospital would shut out an elected representative of the government that pays their bills. Fulton County Commissioner Lynne Riley sat for more than four hours while the Fulton-DeKalb Hospital Authority met behind closed doors to hear a consultant’s report on shoring up the hospital’s fiances. Dumb.
• The brouhaha over the firing of eight U.S. attorneys, the state Senate’s decision not to confirm a DNR board member originally selected by Gov. Roy Barnes and renominated by Gov. Sonny Perdue, followed by the flap generated by hints that Perdue won’t renominate another Barnes appointee, Dee Simms, as state child advocate, prompt the question: Is it better to fire en masse when administrations change, as President Bill Clinton did with U.S. attorneys, or to pick-and-choose, as Perdue did? The latter certainly — unless every subsequent change is treated as the end of civilization. A president or governor should have the people they want carrying out their policies, subject as they are to Senate approval.
• Oh, please. The U.S. House of Representatives, a two-year re-election campaign, takes note of high gas prices by voting to make gas price gouging a federal crime. This is theater. Devote this wasted energy to securing the borders.
• I’m a victim of vehicle profiling. As the longtime owner of a pickup, I’m scratching my head to connect the vehicle to the neighborhood confrontation between a Cobb County jogger and a man who later approached him “driving a pickup truck.” Had the suspect been driving a little hybrid vehicle, he would undoubtedly have been more even-tempered — or, I suppose, unable to overtake a speedy jogger, thus preventing the crime.
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Immigration: Any minds changed?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Whatever you think about the immigration bill now being debated in the U.S. Senate, you have to give credit to U.S. Sens. Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson for leadership. They jumped into a contentious public issue bound to be divisive, no matter the details, and have actively and patiently dealt with the concerns raised by opponents.
Both defend the bill, but say too that they could end up voting against it. In a conversation with Isakson earlier in the week, I expressed the concern common among conservative opponents that illegals get amnesty but our borders still won’t be secured. As he’s done repeatedly since, he patiently spelled out what he believes to be evidence to the contrary: the beefed-up Border Patrol, an increase in detention beds to 27,5000 to end catch-and-release, aerial surveillance, and other barriers, including 370 miles of fencing — and the trigger that requires those first. He made the now familiar arguments, too, that it’s not amnesty because of the fines and back-of-the-line requirement that doesn’t put them ahead of those who are playing by the rules.
The point here, though, is not to rehash the known provisions of the immigration bill, but to note that, agree or not, it’s an example of elected officials staking out a position on an unpopular question and then making themselves readily available to explain it — and to sell it. Georgia’s Gold Dome Republicans should taken notice.
I’m still not sold on the bill. It basically comes down to trust — and there’s really no reason to trust Congress or future administrations to honor the immigration law they write. They didn’t before.
The real question here, though, is this: Chambliss and Isakson say they believe that support is building in Georgia. Is it? Have you changed your mind on any of its provisions in the five or six days since the details became public?
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Winners on immigration
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
No question the Republican base is in turmoil over the proposed immigration agreement. “The Republican Party might very well collapse” if the bill makes it into law, said Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa). “It is demoralizing that our leadership doesn’t realize it is starting us down the road to national and political suicide.” Republicans will get the blame if it passes and Democrats will get the votes, he said.
Six days into the agreement’s national debate, a side question floats to the surface: Which party benefits most? Conventional wisdom is that Democrats win big because, eventually, Hispanics who become citizens — especially the low- and unskilled with high-demand for government services — will gravitate to the party of big government, as they’ve done in California.
“This will shrink the GOP percentage of Latinos rather than enlarge it,” James G. Gimpel, a government professor at the University of Maryland, told Cybercast News Service’s Fred Lucas for an article on CNSNews.com. He continued:
“A vast majority of this population learn their politics as Democrats. Why? Because they’re poor. There are not a lot of skilled workers and not a lot of educated workers.”
Gimpel predicted major shifts in Georgia, Texas and North Carolina. “Purple states will become blue, and the blue states will become even more blue.”
When considering the likely ramifications of the proposed immigration law, which party benefits is not a particular concern to me. Granted, those with high demand for public services do tend to support the politicians who are best at promising to transfer wealth to them. But there’s evidence the country’s on that treadmill already, with a shrinking base of income tax payers and a growing percentage of Americans, now over half, who rely on government for at least part of their income.
Besides, I’m the optimist. Hispanics, by and large, work hard and work up. They are family-oriented and should be drawn to a party that encourages self-reliance, personal responsibility and free enterprise. It’s not a given that they become Democrats.
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Dubious polls often serve devious goals
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The numbers are, quite frankly, overwhelming.
The depth of knowledge expressed by ordinary Georgians about a public policy issue now being debated in Congress is breathtaking. Such are the findings of a University of Georgia Survey Research Center poll conducted for an advocacy group funded as a condition of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Georgia’s 1996 conversion to a for-profit company. About 20 percent of the stock, then amounting to $80 million, was set aside in the Healthcare Georgia Foundation to help increase “access to primary health care and preventive services for underserved individuals and communities.”
The poll, released last week, purports to show that two-thirds of Georgians think the “state doesn’t spend enough on health care,” according to headlines. While it’s doubtful that one Georgian in a thousand could come within $50 million of guessing the amount spent on PeachCare ($385 million), they are overwhelmingly united in stating an opinion that supports the sponsor’s agenda.
The findings of the survey are simply astounding — and surely dramatic enough to intimidate any Georgia state legislator who might be tempted to rein in out-of-control spending for PeachCare. That’s a 10-year-old program that provides taxpayer-subsidized health care coverage for children whose parents earn too much to qualify for Medicaid, a program to serve the poor. PeachCare was projected to run out of money in Georgia this year, requiring an immediate $81 million infusion in this year’s supplemental budget.
House Speaker Glenn Richardson (R-Hiram) offered a bill that wouldn’t affect anybody now enrolled legally in PeachCare, but would modestly curtail future spending. As passed the Senate, the bill would actually increase spending.
It is an emotional debate, both in Georgia and in Congress. While the program didn’t exist at all a decade ago, its supporters present it now as something that will cause death, school failure and calamity on the scale of Al Gore’s global warming if benefits are curtailed so much as a dime.
The survey conducted by UGA pollsters under contract to the Healthcare Georgia Foundation utilized questions drawn from similar polling for another advocacy group, the New England Alliance for Children’s Health in Boston. In the UGA survey, 100 percent said PeachCare funding should be kept at the same level, given more money or given enough funding to cover current members. Fully 80 percent favor expanding it.
Walk into any coffee shop anywhere in Georgia and ask any question that requires knowledge of PeachCare’s funding level or of the public policy issue being debated and you’re likely to draw blank looks. And yet 500 Georgians who picked up the telephone did.
What to conclude? Clearly the issue has to be framed for respondents. And it was. While the reported sample was 500, it was drawn from 2,166 and had a cooperation rate of 37.4 percent, according to Research Center Director James S. Bason. So when the client interprets results as “a message to legislators that people don’t want this program cut, that it works” some context is needed.
For one, those who participated were given a premise. “PeachCare for Kids is a state program that provides low-cost health care coverage to children in low-income working families, whose parents can’t afford insurance and do not get insurance from their employers,” the survey-takers said. “The program is run by the state, and costs are shared by the federal and state governments. Parents share the cost by paying monthly premiums for their children’s health insurance.”
Loaded words and phrases aside, that’s not an entirely factual statement. The Congressional Budget Office found that for every 100 children enrolled, “there is a corresponding reduction in private coverage of between 25 and 50 children.” Obviously some parents could afford and some employers did provide health insurance, but parents chose the taxpayer-subsidized alternative as cheaper and better.
If given any number of other facts — that, for example, citizenship and income weren’t verified, and that in recent weeks a quarter-horse had been signed up, or that benefits were more generous than those provided state employees — responses undoubtedly would have been different.
Polls and studies undertaken to influence policy and public opinion are often described as “nonpartisan” or coming from “nonprofit” organizations or foundations. That is not the same as saying they are unbiased.
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Immigration: What’s in there?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The immigration bill that came to life behind closed doors moves into the open as U.S. Senate begins what is expected to be five days of open debate on the bill’s particulars.
I’m willing to heed for a few more hours the pleas of Georgia’s two U.S. Senators, Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson, that we not lock down on this bill until the details are more fully aired. As the cliche goes, the devil’s always in the details.
My initial reaction is that it is amnesty. It legitimizes the presence of people here illegally. Sure, the head of household has to make a shopping trip back home, but that appears to be no more than a legal charade, since the family remains and he’s guaranteed acceptance, assuming he’s not a known felon.
Border security is a preconditon, of course. But my guess is that, secure or not, a president eager to have a second-term legislative success will certify it as secure on the way out.
The shift from family ties to job skills as a basis for entry has some appeal, but it’s ultimately unworkable. Public opinion won’t sustain the policy once the news media starts profiling the law’s impact on immigrant families.
But given the way the compromise came about, not enough is known about the details to speak with certainty about its provisions. Five days is hardly enough for the public to know what the Senate’s brought forth. The House is expected to act in July. Bush wants to sign it into law by the August recess. It sounds awfully much like a done deal.
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Talk of minor spending cuts provokes wails
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Georgia legislative debate over PeachCare, and the congressional debate over whether to nearly quadruple spending for programs like it, demonstrate the profound difficulty fiscal conservatives have in containing government’s spending and growth.
Ronald Reagan was right. And those in Georgia who advocate a constitutional lid on spending are right, too. Without controls and without tax cuts, politicians will never have the discipline to contain spending.
In Georgia, the Senate has passed a proposed constitutional amendment that would limit spending to population growth plus the rate of inflation, with considerable built-in flexibility. A similar resolution is pending in the House. It’s offered by Reps. Tom Graves (R-Ranger), Martin Scott (R-Rossville), John Lunsford (R-McDonough), Mike Coan (R-Lawrenceville), Jeff Lewis (R-White) and others. In Congress, where tax cuts once represented a limited check on government’s growth, Democrats have embraced a $2.9 trillion budget blueprint. It increases domestic spending by $23 billion, but projects a surplus by 2012. How? By assuming that the Bush tax cuts on income, dividends and capital gains will expire in 2011.
In Georgia, unless spending caps are in the state constitution, no containment is possible. The PeachCare debate, and the way Georgia dealt with a newly created program that had spent out of control, is illustrative of how difficult it is to make even minor spending adjustments.
PeachCare is not an entitlement. It was created by Congress in 1996 to cover uninsured children in families too well off for Medicaid.
States are reasonably free to decide who should be covered. Georgia is one of 15 states with the most generous eligibility standards, providing subsidized coverage for a family of three with income of up to $40,349 in 2007. Most states — 26 in 2006 — cut off eligibility at twice the federal poverty level, or $34,340. Nine states are lower. Most states, including Georgia, subtract some earnings and expenses from total income to determine eligibility.
Georgia, like Florida, North Carolina and most other Southeastern states, started by setting eligibility at up to twice the federal poverty level. But in 2000, with money flowing, eligibility was raised to 235 percent.
The program is now up for renewal in Congress. In the first 10 years, the feds spent $40 billion on a roughly 70-30 federal-state basis. In the renewal, Democrats are proposing $75 billion over five years, more than double the administration’s request.
This session’s effort to deal with the impending shortfall in PeachCare, and to deal squarely with taxpayers, tells Georgians a great deal about what we can expect here from the party of Reagan. Gov. Sonny Perdue made an impassioned appeal to Congress for more money, though Congress responded by including it in legislation tied to a withdrawal date from Iraq, which the President vetoed.
In the House, Speaker Glenn Richardson (R-Hiram) put forth a bill to deal with the problem longer term. It would have brought eligibility back to 200 percent but grandfather in children already covered, and allowed the board of the Department of Community Health to make adjustments between 185 and 225 percent. It would, too, have required beneficiaries to make small payments for vision and dental coverage. Nothing outlandish.
“This is one small step, one small step, toward reining in a good program and keeping this for the poorest of the poor,” Richardson said.
When all of the proposed changes were factored in, the savings to taxpayers amounted to a projected $2.1 million. Million, not billion. For this, opponents predicted Armageddon.
In the Senate, however, eligibility was expanded to 250 percent of the federal poverty level, with a requirement that they pay premiums of 1.5 percent of household income. Premiums now range up to 1.7. While it may have been intended to be break-even, financial analysis done after the session revealed that the cost to Georgia taxpayers for included provisions would increase by $67,612,086.
So the cost of a program that is less than 10 years old, that’s not an entitlement, that has been drawn little or no analysis of how it works, comes up for examination. One problem, three solutions, and a dire prediction that the sky will fall. Not a promising start that the new bunch will be any more successful in containing the growth of government than the old.
• Jim Wooten is the associate editorial page editor. His column appears Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays.
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New Orleans; airport taxes; and amnesty
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s free-for-all Friday. Pick a topic:
• It’s time for Democrats to set a firm troop withdrawal deadline. Regardless. A deadline. Period. National Guard troops have been patrolling the streets of New Orleans since last June when five youths were killed in a single day. The police superintendent is now asking that they stay through the end of the summer. At some point, the locals will have to stand on their own. Oh, yes, it’ll be chaotic, but if they are asked to remain any longer, we’ll have to restart the draft.
• When a crime occurs in an area where crime might be expected to occur, bystanders say “it could have happened anywhere.” When it actually does happen in those no-crime “anywhere” places, bystanders say “something like this never happens here.” Note to all TV reporters: For a $25 appearance fee, I’m on call to go to crime scenes to make the requisite pronouncement. If the weather’s not too bad, I’ll also go to tornado scenes to give the quote: “It sounded like a freight train.”
• A Fulton County man indicted for rape on the basis of DNA samples taken when he went to prison for cocaine possession files suit challenging the saliva-swab testing as constituting, among other things, an unreasonable and constitutionally prohibited search. The DNA challenge is before the Georgia Supreme Court. My legal opinion is that once we take a person’s liberty, the lessers follow — including the right to search and take anything in state custody, bodily or otherwise. (If I am to be quoted, please remit $30 as my expert witness fee, which is necessarily higher than my bystander-quote fee.)
• Atlanta airport General Manager Ben DeCosta is among those who want Congress to jack up the $4.50 per flying segment tax to $7.50 when the current tax expires Sept. 30. Two points: No “expiring” tax ever expires, unless it’s a tax cut. And the airport’s need to levy a “passenger facility charge” would be less if it spent at the airport the car rental taxes collected there. Instead, Atlanta uses them to fund unrelated projects and programs. It’s part of the usual ploy of taxing those who aren’t here to object.
• Have patience, America. The bad guys are falling one at a time, just as the nation was told initially. Joining Saddam Hussein, et al., this week is Mullah Dadullah, the Taliban’s top operational commander in Afghanistan. Victory is an option.
• Anticipating criticism, The Associated Press reports, U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) swears of the immigration agreement: “It is not amnesty. This will restore the rule of law.” A bill that instantly legalizes those who weren’t legal yesterday looks an awful lot like amnesty.
• Movie reviewers pack punch. Two especially memorable lead-ins to obviously lousy movies came in the last week. One, in the AJC, from Lisa Rose of the Newark, N.J., Star-Ledger, introduces us to Hollywood’s treatment of the military and Iraq, thusly: “After making a laughless, tasteless mockery of the war in Iraq, the creators of ‘Delta Farce’ have the audacity to end the movie with a dedication to the men and women of the military.” The headline writer gets a star, too: “This tasteless military farce desperately needs exit strategy.” (The lefties, incidentally, think they can trash anything related to the military if they pretend to honor them.)
The other comes from The Wall Street Journal reviewer Joe Morgenstern. Writes he: “Certain words should be reserved for special occasions. ‘Abysmal’ is one of them, and ‘Georgia Rules’ is as special as such occasions get.” Ouch! Our beloved Jane Fonda even takes anti-aircraft fire on the home front. “If, as Fonda has said, she’s ready to return to acting, I wish she’d return to acting,” wrote Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, the AJC’s reviewer.
• Let’s see now. … When the director of a liberal think tank with ties to the administration of former Gov. Roy Barnes and who, furthermore, opposes tax cuts and favors more spending for social programs starts to opine about Republicans, it is with the authority with which I speak for Nancy Pelosi. Alan Essig waxes on about tax-cutting Republicans and “the responsible” ones.
• Gov. Sonny Perdue approaches press censorship when he insists “until you get a better idea [on Iraq], keep your mouth shut.” I, for one, will fight to the death for the rights of my liberal colleagues to voice their opinions.
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Think south for airport relief
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It’s just in the first-mention talking stage, but a remark here by U.S. Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters has prompted new attention to the prospect of a second major commercial serving Metro Atlanta.
“Atlanta’s leaders will have to embrace new airports and new ways of thinking if they want this city to remain a national symbol of good connections and not become a destination of delays that would make rush hour on the connector feel like a pleasant Sunday drive,” Peters said during a news conference here this week.
While awaiting the start of Senate debate on an immigration bill that’s projected to make few happy, the idea of a second airport does bear discussion.The city owns land in Dawson County that was purchased decades ago as a potential site. It’s unlikely however, given the development that’s come to North Georgia, that a second airport there is still politically viable. The lesson of that story is: Put in the roads and build the necessary infrastructure before people come. Afterwards it’s contentious and costly.
If rail advocates are serious about trying to turn a white elephant idea (commuter rail) into something workable, and if the state is serious about spreading economic development, a second airport should go to the middle part of the state, perhaps Macon or Warner Robins. A rapid-rail connection to Atlanta would then make sense. Rapid rail might make sense, too, to Chattanooga if the airport is expanded there as the two cities, Atlanta and Chattanooga, grow together.
The growth market is north, the economic development need south. The state, by the way, should do essentially nothing by way of providing financial incentives to people and industries moving to the Atlanta area and northward. They’re coming — if the state acts responsibly to eliminate transportation barriers. One major barrier is the lack of a connection linking I-75 and I-85 across North Georgia. Incentives, including the proposed senior tax break, should be limited to counties that are either stagnant or losing population.
Drunk sailors, beauty-shop Edwards’ spending
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Former Arikansas Gov. Mike Huckabee had the line of the night during Tuesday’s second Republican presidential candidate debate. On taxes and spending, Huckabee said that “we’ve had a Congress that’s spent money like John Edwards at a beauty shop.” Funny stuff and the South Carolina audience roared. John McCain compared its spending to that of drunken sailors, which offended drunken sailors, he said. The line was funnier the first time.
A single debate involving 10 candidates would have been unwieldy and not particulary productive. But the field and the format are growing on me. Not love-ins, but not nasty either. And occasional good humor. Little by little, individuals are breaking through and, most usefully, there’s no joker in the deck.
Huckabee had a good evening, embracing the flat tax and vowing to post an “out of business” sign at the Internal Revenue Service. Other candidates, too, had comforting messages for fiscal conservatives. “I am not going to raise taxes,” declared Mitt Romney without equivocation. Even McCain, who opposed the Bush tax cuts because, he said, there was no concomitant agreement to cut spending, vowed to make them permanent.
All of the candidates, even Ron Paul, who narrowed his appeal in the GOP primaries with the allegation that America brought 9/11 on itself by its aggression in Iraq and elsewhere, contribute to making the debates interesting and productive for potential voters.
That particular assertion by Paul offered Rudy Giuliani his best moment. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard that before and I have heard some pretty absurd explanations.” Surely Giuliani meant he’d never heard it before from Paul. That “it’s our fault” line has been pretty standard fare on the left.
A bit of a Fred Thompson boomlet is developing in Georgia with two of the State Senate’s most substantial conservatives, President Pro Tem Eric Johnson of Savannah, and State Sen. Chip Rogers of Woodstock, lining up for him. He’s not in the race yet. Nor is Newt Gingrich, who plans to wait until September. Neither better wait too much longer. Some of these guys, like Romney and Giuliani, are beginning to hit their stride.
Gloom, doom on PeachCare exaggerated
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“It causes death, my friends.”
That’s it.
Modify in the slightest a government program that didn’t exist in Georgia at all a dozen years ago and the consequence will be, in the worldview of state Rep. Lester Jackson (D-Savannah), children flunking and dropping out of school and worse.
“Recently in Maryland there was a young boy [who] died of a dental infection,” said Jackson during a legislative debate on PeachCare. “Do we need this to happen in Georgia? What would happen if vision and dental care would be eliminated? You have a decreased reading comprehension in our classrooms, a loss of school days because of dental pain, unnecessary pain and suffering for our children, for our working families, and also death because of infection.”
Until one listens to the full debate on how best to frame high-cost government social programs, like PeachCare, it’s easy to forget just how far to the left the Democratic Party in Georgia has drifted. This is not the party of Joe Frank Harris or of mainstream Georgia. The rhetoric employed to oppose legislation that would modestly rein in costs is so outlandish and absurd that one wonders what’s left to say this side of calamity.
The proposal for PeachCare that “causes death, my friends” would allow the Department of Community Health to charge an additional premium the bill’s author, House Speaker Glenn Richardson (R-Hiram) projects at $5 to $10 a month for dental and vision coverage. It’s now provided free by taxpayers.
The bill would, too, allow the board to adjust future eligibility to a range of 185 to 225 percent of the federal poverty level, and to fix it now at 200 percent, down from 235. Importantly, however, no child currently on the program would lose eligibility. For a family of three, the new income limit would be $34,340, down from $40,350. The bill is still alive, but was not resolved on the final legislative day.
The program required an $81 million infusion of cash, which was included in the unvetoed budget. The feds may or may not provide reimbursement, in full or part. Congress has it tied up in its Iraqi war games.
This Georgia debate goes to the heart of the two parties’ approach to government. It’s precisely why a Republican majority that shows flashes of conservatism needs to coalesce under the Gold Dome. Those who have no clue as to what they’re trying to do with government, or why, simply cannot bring change, no matter how essential, in the face of “death, my friends” hyperbole. And once conservatives start picking up that language for each other, all is lost.
On PeachCare, Richardson, in one of those flashes of purposeful conservatism, stood his ground. Said he: “This program was started as a block grant [by Congress] and [they] told us to set the rules. There were no rules. So the people that are now telling you we shouldn’t change the rules are the ones that set the rules that put the program in place and ran it out of money. And it is time to make a decision. Do you want to rein in this program and provide it to those that need it? … ” Said the speaker, too:
“This is a reasonable, measured response to reel in a program that was out of control, that a member of this body signed up a quarter-horse for and got a temporary ID number just three weeks ago. Because it was so easy, he just went online and punched in a name and you’ve got PeachCare. Anybody can get PeachCare. If you are not a U.S. citizen, it’s OK.
“And by the way, you don’t have to take your Social Security number. Now if that’s the kind of program you want, that’s what you had … ” The department is now being required to verify income and citizenship.
“All I’ve heard is how terrible it will be if we restrain spending just a little bit … In all the arguments … against this bill, not one of them talked about the taxpayers of this state who have to work for three and four months out of the year to pay for children to have health insurance.”
The conservative approach should be to create programs on a small scale, examine results to see what works and what undesirable behaviors have been unintentionally induced, and to make changes. That never happens. But it should.
Last week a Congressional Budget Office report found that the parents of as many as half the children enrolled in programs like PeachCare dropped private insurance coverage and shifted them to the taxpayer-subsidized plans. Democrats in Congress want to double the spending recommended by the Bush administration, to $75 billion over five years.
Conservatives create and examine. Liberals create and expand.
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An entitlement to college
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards is proposing an $8 billion federal entitlement — he calls it a scholarship; it could also be called a voucher — that would go to high school graduates to cover tuition, fees and books for the first year of college. Before long, Edwards or some Democrat will succeed in creating a near-entitlement to a college education — not because such a program’s needed, but because it’ll be popular with the middle class.
As Edwards sees it, the $8 billion entitlement will be funded by a windfall profits tax on oil companies and by eliminating subsidies to banks for student loans. Edwards has tested a privately-funded “College for Everyone” program in a rural North Carolina community for two years. It pays most expenses for the first year for students who complete a college prep or college technology course in high school and who aren’t suspended and aren’t caught using drugs or alcohol or committing a crime. Students also agree to work or volunteer for 10 hours a week while in college.
Several points here. One is that “scholarships” is the politically correct word for vouchers and follows on FDR’s bright idea in creating the Social Security program that will sooner or later bankrupt this country. FDR called his entitlement “insurance” and the payroll taxes levied “contributions” that were to be socked away in a “trust fund” for old age. He knew if he called them what they were — taxes for a pay-as-you-go entitlement — the country would balk. Labels matter.
Entitlements like the one Edwards proposes do three things. For one, they send a message to parents that it’s no longer necessary to exercise thrift or to plan or be responsible for little Johnny’s education. The other is that it tells college administrators not to trim the fat or make any effort to control costs because Congress will levy the taxes to cover the entitlements it creates, no matter the burden on that dwindling percentage of Americans who actually pay federal income taxes. The third is that government entitlements crowd out merit-based scholarships given by foundations and other individuals and organizations.
Do the poor and the middle class save for college anymore?
Party of Reagan yet to emerge at the Capitol
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Witnessing the train wreck under the Gold Dome, a new realization dawns.
This is not a governing party rooted in the conservatism of Ronald Reagan. It’s the Southern Democratic Party of Joe Frank Harris as realigned by Reagan in 1984. You can’t look at it and expect Reaganism. Within the majority is a promising core of mostly young movement conservatives whose formative years came during his presidency and thereafter. Great things will come. But not yet.
The Democratic Party that ruled Georgia through Joe Frank was essentially conservative, with its spending impulse held in check by debt-fearing Depression-era fiscal conservatives such as former Speaker Tom Murphy and Ways and Means Chairman Marcus Collins, both of whom came in 1961. Well before Murphy actually left, the influence of that breed had faded. In both parties, it’s been replaced by majorities susceptible to the bond lawyers and deal-makers who grow rich by inventing new ways to get government into debt.
That Democratic Party, businesslike and relatively efficient at determining the tax load Georgians would bear, was personality-driven and had no ideological engine — except, perhaps, the transfer of metro Atlanta’s wealth. But in managing the budget and distributing the state’s wealth to its constituent interest groups, it had developed a system that worked. There was a comfortable orderliness to it all. In the good years, the pleaders got cash. In the lean, they got perks — power, job security or future retirement benefits. And in all cases, except when public sentiment dictated otherwise, the pleaders had near veto power over legislation affecting their turf.
When their self-interests clashed — the big and small banks, medical professionals, liquor dealers, cities and counties — the people’s representatives, tempted and nudged by lobbyists in the hall, split the baby.
Ronald Reagan changed the game. Until the early ’80s, about half the South’s white voters considered themselves Democrats. “The 1984 election was the great turning point for white voters in both the South and the North,” write Earl and Merle Black in their latest book, “Divided America.” “Reagan’s realignment of white voters, the most important shift in white partisanship since the New Deal, occurred in the North as well as in the South. The Southern transformation was much more dramatic. …” The Democratic Party in Georgia and nationally began to align leftward.
This GOP, as a governing party, is ideologically indistinguishable from the Joe Frank Harris Democrats. It pays homage to different icons — FDR then, Ronald Reagan now — but mostly like the tourist muttering “como se llama?’ from a phrase book.
During this session’s much-publicized stand-down involving the governor, lieutenant governor and House speaker, all invoked some utterance from the conservative phrase book — but often without anything proceeding or following that gave foundation to conservative principle. Some phrases hurled at each other reflected, in fact, the liberal stereotype of conservatives as heartless trolls determined to squeeze pennies out of the meager rations of the vulnerable. When Perdue rescinded his veto of the supplemental budget, Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle issued a statement declaring: “Governor Perdue has ensured that the urgent needs of students, kids on PeachCare and communities devastated by natural disaster will not take second place to political posturing.”
In vetoing the supplemental budget in the first place, Perdue averred that it “would lead to furloughs of literacy instructors and prosecutors, stopping cleanup of hazardous waste sites, halting health screening of newborns, letting up on Internet predators, leaving us unprepared for a pandemic flu outbreak and turning a blind eye to meth labs.”
No liberal commentator anywhere in Georgia, nor any interest group of the left, could have more effectively juxtaposed tax cuts and Armageddon or more emotionally framed the case for more government. The Right is making the Left’s arguments, usurping its language.
This is a party adrift, a big tent where an assortment of moderates and conservatives mill about, without unifying principle, aim or agenda.
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Atlanta cops; false victims; barbershops
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s free-for-all Friday. Pick a topic:
• One sentence in a story “Mortgage shakeout squeezes families” explains how far we, journalists, reach to find “victims.” The victims are a Southern California couple wishing to move from a two-bedroom apartment. The sentence: “But because their timing coincided with a shakeout in the mortgage market earlier this year, their credit now isn’t good enough to get a loan to purchase the house they wanted with no money down.” In other words, their bad credit keeps them from getting a 100 percent loan for the “house they wanted” just now.
• When officers assigned to police the cops submit phony reports to justify taking autos home — four internal affairs officers filed identical reports justifying need — it’s hard to have confidence in the Atlanta Police Department’s culture. Or when the police chief’s meticulous records are to make certain he doesn’t give taxpayers a minute more of his time than they are billed for.
• When my band of right-wingers take over, women who weigh more than Rosie O’Donnell will not be allowed to wear miniskirts outside the bedroom. Some things should not be seen in public.
• An Atlanta police spokesman explains why robbers target barbershops. They see them as “cash cows” and easy pickings, said spokesman James Polite. Maybe I was wrong to think that working people wouldn’t vote for a presidential candidate (John Edwards) who spent $400 for a haircut. I have obviously spent my life in the wrong barbershops, nary a one of which would be thought to herd “cash cows.”
• There are some crimes for which parole should not be allowed. Murdering six people, as Carter Arnold Jr. and his partner did, is one of them. After serving 37 years, he’s due to be released next week.
• It’s reported by the Associated Press as a “triumph for the pharmaceutical industry” but it might just as easily been reported as a “triumph for consumer protection.” By a 49-40 vote, the U.S. Senate required the feds to certify the safety of prescription drugs imported in Canada, Australia, Europe, Japan and New Zealand. Imported drugs can be cheaper, hence the “triumph for the pharmaceutical industry” slant. Yet, as noted by Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), both Republican and Democratic administrations have declined to certify safety.
• Of course, if we want really cheap drugs, we can always follow the example of Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who effectively seized Merck & Co.’s patent for the AIDS drug efavirenz and announced plans for an inexpensive generic version. Merck had offered the drug at a 30 percent discount. We could, as Hugo Chavez is doing in Venezuela, nationalize everything we see. Oil first and now he threatens banks and steel.
• One marvelous feature of the Senate drug bill, which passed 93-1, is to double the number of FDA researchers studying drug side effects. Another is to create a computerized network to scan insurance and pharmacy records for indicators of problems with new drugs. House action awaits.
• Hint to all: Jane Fonda’s getting a bit over-exposed. I’d put her mug in the panda file. With Ralph, the whale shark.
• Having used the line-item veto to kill the $142 million tax rebate, thus drawing the ire of fiscal conservatives, Gov. Sonny Perdue should now veto everything that oinks. If he starts singling out House bills or House pork for veto, there’ll be lasting consequence, one of which is that somebody from outside the Gold Dome will be the next governor. The Big Three will chew themselves up. I’d bet on U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson, if he wants to come home in 2010, or U.S. Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, the likely favorite of fiscal conservatives.
• Somebody’s still counting sports teams, in baseball anyway, by skin color. Jesse Jackson’s crew. Atlanta Braves. I’d relate more, but it’s simply too boring.
• The president trusts an aide to tote the code to launch nuclear missiles, but the queen totes her own pocketbook. The precaution was not necessary. When we accuse Washington politicians of pilfering the public purse, we are speaking of pork, not the queen’s pocketbook.
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Cheap tuition for illegals?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
For nine years Luis Ramos has been living in the U.S. illegally. Now, he’s about to be one of an estimated 100 college students statewide who will be required to pay out-of-state tuition under a law that takes effect July 1. Its intent is to discourage illegal immigration.
Georgia is one of 10 states that allow illegals who graduate from high school here to attend public colleges by paying in-state tuition. That amounts to $1,946 per semester at Georgia State University, for example. Out-of-state tuition is $7,785. Ramos, now 19, came into this country illegally with his parents at the age of 10. He’s a graduate of Morrow High School in Clayton County where, he estimates, 100 illegals will be granted high school diplomas this year.
Tuition paid by college students who are legal residents of Georgia amounts to about 25 percent or less of the cost of providing their educations. Taxpayers provide the rest. The higher tuition for out-of-state students is to relieve Georgia taxpayers of the obligation to subsidize guests. A panel of the University System Board of Regents is being asked to restore the waivers.
The tuition question is important in one primary sense. Every public policy decision made rewards some behaviors and discourages others. A speeding fine “rewards” us, in the form of safer streets, for staying within the posted limits. A fine penalizes behaviors that put us and our fellow motorists at risk. Likewise, bestowing privileges and favorable tax treatment on marriage is to induce adults to enter into a relationship that best protects and serves children. Layer upon layer of messages, in the form of public policies, should encourage marriage as the most desirable sanctuary for children.
Charging out-of-state tuition is a policy messages to those who would enter this country illegally or who, once here, retain their allegiance to another country by declining to stand for citizenship. In this instances, two desirable public policy goals conflict. One is to discourage illegal immigration. The other is to cultivate an educated populace. The first trumps. When guests, invited or not, choose citizenship, the second prevails.
Clark Howard for mayor?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right, an often invaded gathering place for enlightened conservative discourse on the weighty matters of the day, does not usually deign to intrude into local politics. But I must admit to being intrigued by the prospect that penny-pinching consumer advocate Clark Howard is considering a run for mayor of the City of Atlanta after Shirley Franklin.
If so, count me as an early and inspired booster. A penny-pincher would, no doubt, be an ill-fit for a city more noted for pinching taxpayers than pennies. But he intrigues, nonetheless. Like many Americans, I’ve grown disenchanted with politicians who profess one set of values in the campaign and exhibit another in public office. Pork, for example. Republicans railed against it year after year while in the minority. But once in office under the Gold Dome, the aversion to pork seems to have faded. The only way to limit government is not to want anything from it. When Republicans who profess to be fiscal conservatives start thinking their job is to bring home the bacon, all pretense that the expansion of government can be contained is lost.
Whatever his politics — liberal, moderate or conservative — Clark Howard comes across as genuine and honest, qualities highly prized in public office. I know. My wife makes me listen to him in the car. He’s one of those figures, like Oprah Winfrey, who can draw attention, in a good way, to the ideals and values he expresses. Nearing the edge of doubt that there is any such thing as a fiscal conservative in public office, I’m ready to embrace a dyed-in-wool penny-pincher.
Give it a shot, Clark. We need cheapskates in public office.
Tax proposal tests GOP’s reformist zeal
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The army of alphabet-soup interest groups marshalled to oppose vouchers for special needs children was sandlot football compared to the army that will gather to oppose any serious effort to overhaul Georgia’s tax structure.
The alphabet-soup armies, most funded directly or indirectly by taxpayers, consisted largely of groups protecting their public school turf. That conservatives succeeded despite the odds is a career achievement for state Sen. Eric Johnson (R-Savannah), the voucher bill’s sponsor, and for House and Senate leaders. The victory was a decade or more in the making.
Comes now tax reform, the Big Idea being advanced by House Speaker Glenn Richardson (R-Hiram) and other House leaders. As proposed, most state and local taxes would be eliminated, replaced by an income tax and a value-added tax of 5.75 percent. Among those targeted for elimination are all property taxes, local sales taxes, and taxes derived from motor fuels, insurance premiums, workers’ compensation, estate, business and occupation taxes, intangible and utility taxes, among others.
The state would collect a flat 5.75 percent income tax — the top rate now is 6 percent — and a 5.75 percent value-added levy that is added in to the cost of goods and services. The state sales tax now is 4 percent, but local levies push that up. Tops in the state is the City of Atlanta in Fulton at 8 percent.
To achieve the flat rate, income tax deductions would be limited to charitable contributions, mortgage interest, Social Security and unemployment benefits, tax-exempt income and rental payments for a primary residence. The value-added tax is similar to a sales tax, but it’s built into the cost of goods and services. Businesses would pay based on total sales, minus depreciation, bad debts, charitable contributions, and most goods and services purchased. Revenues collected by the state would be divvied up to local governments.
Without question it is the biggest of the Big Ideas to come from the Gold Dome in our lifetimes. It’s a legacy idea. Bold. So daring that the very suggestion that such comprehensive legislation will be considered draws legions of hand-wringing critics who fear that its simplicity and transparency will crimp politicians’ ability to creep levies higher. With two primary levies, an increase will be a much-publicized debate.
Should Georgia switch? It’s far too premature to decide. The debate has not yet begun. Nothing legislators attempt approaches tax reform in degree of difficulty. Not only is every perceived advantage in the tax code protected by special interests, but Georgia is developing a vocal cadre of liberal advocates for higher public spending to grow social programs. And, of course, local governments are likely to join the opposition, since the tax revision being proposed would take away their authority to levy most taxes.
Tax revision on this scale really is not an idea that should emanate from individual legislators — and not because they lack the expertise or standing, but because explaining it requires an enormous marketing effort using the media, civic clubs, chambers of commerce, business and social networks, tax experts and individual legislators.
Without the governor and lieutenant governor leading the charge, or at least actively involved, the prospect of so much change at once is so frightening to so many that the armies of the status quo will destroy the outgunned reformers before they decamp. Under the state constitution, tax legislation has to originate in the House, but that does not preclude the governor or lieutenant governor from embracing tax simplification or reform as part of the conservative agenda. Of course, the governor and House leaders could also have embraced a flexible cap on spending — the resolution offered by state Sen. Chip Rogers (R-Woodstock) and passed on a bipartisan basis in the Senate — and neither has.
It’s been remarkable how quickly this new conservative majority has grown dysfunctional. Big Ideas fall to individual legislators, who maneuver them through by their own wit, skill and drive. Man, we could have gotten this under the Democrats.
If the top leadership is incapable of putting forth and rallying around something, anything, that provides evidence that it matters at all that the party of fiscal and social conservatives is charting the course, this revolution will be over before it strikes its course.
Tax reform may not be the right Big Idea — but at least it is something.
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France is Thinking Right
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Professional courtesy — one right-winger in praise of another — prompts today’s Thinking Right to pause to take note of Sunday’s French elections and the success of Nicolas Sarkozy in defeating Socialist Segolene Royal for President by 53-47 percent, with an 85 percent turnout. (Eighty-five percent? Maybe we should vote on Sunday. Some special elections here to raise taxes draw 3 percent.)
OK, so I exaggerate in calling any French politician who wins the presidency a right-winger. But then I also called former U.S. Sen. Lincoln Chaffe of Rhode Island a Republican.
Sarkozy’s victory is, however, occasion to take note of France, a country that — is there a delicate way to say this? — failed repeatedly to merit the world importance that the rhetoric of its politicians, President Jacques Chirac among them, claimed. By and large, Europe is far more significant in our past than in our future and of all the Europeans, none strutted on the world stage more boastfully than the French, and President Jacques Chirac in particular. Chirac saw France as the counter-balance, especially on Iraq, to the American super-power.
The pretensions, interestingly, were stacked on domestic turmoil, and specifically high unemployment, a bloated bureaucracy and social divisions that threaten to turn the country into a dysfunctionl welfare state where the employed vacation, the rich flee, and the young linger to await their turn for a no-fire job in the bureaucracy.
Sarkozy is not, by any means, a Reagan conservative. But for those inclined to write off France as an irrelevant irritant in world affairs, he is interesting. He’s not anti-American, vowing in fact to better relations with this country. And, for France, he’s a genuine right-winger, promising “I will restore the value of work, authority, merit and respect for the nation.” That’s the kind of talk that draws warnings from the Socialist he defeated, Segolene Royal, that plans to restore the work ethic, reduce crime and welfare dependency, would spark violence in the streets.
Sarkozy vowed to fight unions and the 35-hour work week, which makes it virtually impossible for the French to compete with China, India and other highly productive countries. He wants to scrap the 35-hour work week and make pay for any work in excess of that tax free. “Work more to earn more” was a campaign theme. France’s unemployment rate is about 8.4 percent, one of Europe’s highest. The young, and immigrants, can’t get work because it’s virtually impossible to fire anybody in France once they get a job. Sarkozy promised to reform pensions and to limit the ability of unions to strike. Union leaders say they will take to the streets if he tries. Ah, the welfare state.
France also has a serious problem with immigration — and many of those who fear that France is losing its distinctiveness because of illegal and uncontrolled immigration, which they attribute to an increase in crime, favored Sarkozy.
Sarkozy is, from across the Atlantic, a breath of fresh air, though change comes slowly, if at all, to France. Parliamentary elections are scheduled June 10 and 17 and without a majority there, he’s like George W. Bush in Washington — a voice without the power to implement the change he advocates. Buf for now, cheer. France has elected its version of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.
GOP fields capable lineup for ‘08 victory
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
For potential Republican presidential candidates who’ve chosen to be coy about future plans — Fred Thompson and Newt Gingrich among them — the season’s first debate should signal a message: It’s soon or never.
The field of 10 who fielded questions that ranged from the inane to the argumentative established fairly convincingly that the talent already in the race is eminently capable of leading this country in war or peace. Some conservatives may have been hanging back awaiting the arrival of a more perfect candidate.
But these 10, while each has some quality, history or position that discomforts some segment of the Republican base, demonstrated en masse last week that they are serious men with convictions and a full grasp of the complexities of the issues and threats facing this country. Even a candidate who has not been on my preferred list, U.S. Sen. John McCain of Arizona, rekindled the fires with his stout defense of the cause in Iraq, his vow to go after pork in the federal budget and his ability, and willingness, to identify places to start cutting.
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney handled himself and the questions well. Everything I’ve seen or read about him, from his fund-raising appearance in Atlanta to Thursday night’s first debate, reveals a candidate who’s likeable and who’s comfortable in his faith, mind and skin and who projects an ability to lead. While some Southern social conservatives are still wrestling with his Mormonism, it is not an issue with me. He’s currently pulling 10 percent to 12 percent in polls, but he’s a guy who can be president.
The other candidate who did surprisingly well was former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore, who repealed the car tax that Georgia House President Pro Tem Mark Burkhalter, a Romney supporter, is proposing to eliminate here. That feat places him among the proven tax-cutters in the race. He has the conservative track record and the manner of the politicians Southerners love. He’s likeable and smooth, certain of his beliefs, a guy who would be comfortable at the Rotary Club, the Atlanta Motor Speedway or the country church’s dinner on the grounds.
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, the front-runner in every poll, stumbled through the question about whether it’d be OK for the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that interrupted political efforts at the state level to come to terms with abortion. That decision has extended a bitter national debate for 34 years, hardening positions to the extent that no Democratic presidential candidate can be pro-life and any pro-choice Republican will have problems in the primaries.
Giuliani’s response was equivocal. “It would be OK to repeal it. It would be OK also if a strict constructionist viewed it as a precedent,” he said.
If Giuliani is the nominee, he will badly need a Southerner on the ticket as a warm-up act. His record in New York City in dealing with unions and spending prior to Sept. 11 and his inspired leadership afterward do make him a candidate of considerable appeal in the South.
He does, however, have some liabilities here, one of which is that he comes across as very much the fast-talking New Yorker who has to leave a transcript behind so Southerners can be sure what he said.
Of the supposed front-runners — Giuliani, McCain and Romney — all would need a Southerner as vice president. The best of the lot would be former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, but there’s no chance. Given the left’s blind, vicious hatred of the president, no Bush can be on the ticket in 2008. Two other candidates, in addition to Gilmore of Virginia, are possibilities. One is South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, one of that class of congressmen who took, and honored, a term-limit pledge in 1994. Another is Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue, who continues to enjoy a high job-approval rating despite vetoing a $142 million tax rebate.
Any of the 10 is one I’d take into an election against the Democratic field. It’s as easy to imagine most any of these 10 making decisions for a nation at war as it is difficult to consider any Democratic contender at the trigger.
Sadly for America, no Democrat in this field would declare of terrorists, as John McCain did of Osama bin Laden, “we will bring him to justice, and I’ll follow him to the gates of hell.”
Both fields are good, fully representative of the America they see. The differences could not be more stark. Let’s vote.
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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.
Should Prince Harry go?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
While his father, Prince Charles, is off leading the war against climate change, a challenge he likened to Britain’s struggle against the Nazis, Prince Harry heads off to the real war. The 22-year-old second lieutenant, a tank commander who leads a 12-man team in four armored reconnaissance vehicles, will be deployed “in due course” to Iraq, according to an announcement this week by Gen. Sir Richard Dannatt, who heads the British Army.
When or whether Prince Harry would go has been the subject of immense interest and speculation in the British press. His regiment, the Blues and Royals, is scheduled to leave within weeks for a six-month tour.
The question for discussion today is whether such high-profile, high-value terrorist targets should be dispatched to the front lines. My inclination is no. In a different kind of war, the value of having a member of the royal family demonstrating a willingness to accept the same obligations asked of others, would warrant his exposure. But in this war, he will certainly be targeted and the propaganda value of his capture or execution would damage the war effort far higher than any contribution he might make. Besides, having a “distraction” in the foxhole or in the unit who would potentially affect the actions of others under fire, poses another danger.
Frankly, if President Bush had a son eligible to serve on the front lines in Iraq, I’t argue against that, too, for the same reason. We saw already how the Brits responded to the capture of 15 sailors and marines. Prince Harry in the hands of terrorists would break the country’s will. That probably wouldn’t be the case with the son of an American President, but why take the risk?
Principle, policy unite conservatives
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
On a sunny April day, when the azaleas, hydrangeas and crape myrtles are springing to new life from the Easter freeze, only the grimmest of grouches could persist in wallowing in the misery of the General Assembly session, then in its final days.
There is new life — and new hope.
Deep into the afternoon on an April day, a group of mostly young Republican legislators — young in age and/or service — who are united primarily by their conservatism and a determination to know what they’re voting on, gathers in Room 216 at the state Capitol. On this day, a dozen or so legislators analyze and discuss bills expected to surface for floor debate in coming days. The entire group consists of about 30, though committee meetings and other obligations keep some away.
“Our purpose,” said state Rep. Tom Graves (R-Ranger), chairman of what is called the 216 Policy Group, “is to be an open forum for discussion of every bill, and to analyze it through our conservative lenses.” The questions asked of every bill: Does it lower taxes? Promote personal responsibility? Lead to less government? Does it promote liberty and justice for all?
Their discussions, led by a member of the group who has taken responsibility for analyzing a bill’s content, results in a numeric score using those principles. These are not young rebels bucking authority, so they don’t circulate the scores to other legislators. They generally try to support the group’s positions in floor debate, but often wind up voting differently.
For instance, state Rep. Steve Davis (R-McDonough) voted against the supplemental budget, but others in the group did not. Still, he was incensed by the governor’s veto and his delay in transmitting it to the House, prompting an apparent need for a special session.
“This is not about the House vs. the Senate vs. the governor,” he wrote on his blog. “This is about fiscal conservatism and keeping our commitment to” taxpayers.
“The true commitment of a conservative would be to veto the budget because the refund was not large enough,” he argued.
Rep. Martin Scott (R-Rossville) provides a more measured response. “We all center around a group of core principles — that’s the gravity in the middle holding us together.”
The 216 Policy Group has existed since 2005, with the majority having been elected in 2004. They represent a kind of “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” idealism, believing that they ought to stand on principle and know the content of legislation. It’s a tough challenge. Late in the session innocuous bills that were introduced as “vehicles,” open up code sections then are amended in the final days or hours to include language that may never have been discussed on the floor.
It’s easy, especially for those who aren’t a part of leadership, to find themselves back home explaining why they voted for a bill whose contents were a mystery. That’s a fear uniting group members.
In addition to the Jimmy Stewart idealism of the 216 Policy Group, their late afternoon discussions confirm another reason for conservatives to be hopeful: There are some awfully smart, young conservatives representing communities surrounding Atlanta: legislators such as Reps. Barry Loudermilk (R-Cassville), Charlice Byrd (R-Woodstock), Jeff May (R-Monroe), Calvin Hill (R-Canton) and others. The group includes, as well, some older conservatives, such as Reps. John D. Meadows III (R-Calhoun) and Jimmy Pruett (R-Eastman), who last November won the seat vacated by former House Speaker Terry Coleman (D-Eastman).
This group is doing precisely what a new governing majority should do — and that is to convene regularly to determine which principles they share and what it is they’re trying to do with government. They look, as Graves explained, “at what works in other states and what doesn’t, to better equip ourselves to know how to handle issues and how to find the best solutions.”
The Republican majority came suddenly — and probably not because Republicans had positively convinced the state’s voters to buy in to their ideas, but because a state Democratic Party drifting into alignment with the national party had lost them. The task now is to give voters a positive reason for keeping them in power.
Those positive reasons are centered on principle and a better, fuller explanation, a vision that communicates what they intend to do with government. The essential first requirement is to decide. That’s why conversations such as those in this 216 Policy Group are vital — and encouraging.
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