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June 2007
School vouchers would grant parents a choice
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The ready cure is at hand for the anguish expressed by those who see last week’s 5-4 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court further restricting the use of race as a factor in determining how schools should be mixed.
Liberals won’t like it. The gods of “diversity” will be agog. And the grand strategists who see it as their mission to use public schools to expose children to an idealized multicultural world will fall into near-fatal fantods. But, yes, there is an answer.
It is vouchers. School vouchers. Allow parents to choose. Give them choice, alternatives to school administrators who have attempted now for half a century or more to brew some elusive concoction, using black and white students, to precisely integrate schools, presumably to help minority students overcome the disadvantage of poor schools and neighborhoods.
Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote the majority opinion in a case arising from Seattle and Louisville, Ky., pointed out that “the way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” Seattle used race as a factor in a high school assignment plan. The Louisville case was filed by a parent whose child was denied a transfer to a kindergarten class closer to their home on the basis of race.
The original suit that gave rise to the decades-long efforts by federal judges to micromanage schools came in Brown v. Board of Education, a landmark 1954 decision addressing government-sponsored segregation in Little Rock, Ark. The problem, however, is that achieving any local board’s desired balance involves race-based remedies.
One likely outcome now is that administrators and local boards, convinced that it’s their moral obligation to expose children to “diversity,” will simply devise more subtle methods of employing race-based school assignments. While it is important for children and adults to respect people of different nationalities, races, religions and cultures, it’s not the primary business of the schools. The job of educators is to prepare children academically so that they are able to think critically and to be prepared to support themselves and their families as adults.
Schools should, of course, reflect the broad community where children live. But when those communities change, schools should be permitted to change.
If the schools are lousy, parents from the community shouldn’t be held prisoner. They should be able to take their children — and the taxpayer money — to another school, public, private or parochial.
Parents then can examine the classroom and the school, including its racial mix, and decide whether it’s achieving the results they want for their children.
Some will segregate, but that’s no different than now where constantly changing housing patterns affect the composition of schools. They may segregate black. They may segregate white. Or Hispanic. Or male. Or by religion. Or any other way that satisfies parents. Parents who believe a grade-school diversity experience is a priority, who further believe their child lacks opportunity to associate with a diverse array of other children, may choose a school on that basis.
With vouchers, children rich or poor need not be denied any of the experiences social planners strive for in creating and maintaining the perfect race-based mix in the classroom. Far too much time and energy has been devoted to the effort.
This is a tired, old debate that has no end. In about 40 school districts nationwide, with about 2.5 million students, school officials have now expanded their social engineering to employ “socio-economic status” to make certain that children of one income level are exposed to another, reports The Wall Street Journal. Income-based social engineering emerged as race-based efforts came under attack.
Give parents vouchers. Let them choose the setting they want for their children. Let parents, not strangers whose agendas are beyond challenge, be the social engineers.
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Immigration; race; schools; intown life
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s Friday free-for-all. Pick a topic:
• Quote of the week — this from U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” End of story. Or it should be. But won’t. Despite Thursday’s 5-4 decision striking down race-based school assignment in Louisville, Ky., and Seattle, this is but another small step on the journey to the destination Roberts defines. Creative school administrators, convinced of their moral imperative to find just the right “Kodak diversity” mix, will be back.
• Secure the borders, build credibility and return to immigration after President Bush leaves office. U.S. Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) nailed it. “Americans feel they are losing their country … to a government that has seemed to not have the competence or the ability to carry out the things that it says it will do.” (U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss, incidentally, won re-election this week with his immigration votes.)
• A transplant from Florida is said to have purchased a Peachtree Street loft because he was “pleased by the growing urban sophistication of the intown areas.” I can’t crack that code, but apparently it’s something that stops at the river.
I suppose it is true, though. Years ago, most of the gentlemen consuming wine in the urban alleys were stuck on MD 20/20. Now their palates enjoy Thunderbird, Wild Irish Rose and Night Train Express, too. Very sophisticated.
• These are “Profiles in Courage” days for Georgia’s Attorney General Thurbert Baker, who’s been given the bum’s rush to ignore the law as written in the Genarlow Wilson case. If a fraction of the energy and attention devoted to this case had been spent promoting marriage and responsible fatherhood, untold millions of young men might be spared his plight.
• If your 45-foot wind turbine is so unattractive that it diminishes the value of my property next door, that’s taking — and the neighbors are due either compensation or removal of the offending object. A little neighborhood spat develops among liberals in Grant Park over whether one should be sensibly “green” or fanatically “green.”
• Unions, unsuccessful in the workplace, turn to Congress. Legislation that would allow union representation when 50 percent of a work force signed cards, failed in the Senate, 51-48. Sixty votes were needed to move the bill, which would have eliminated the secret ballot in organizing elections. Chambliss and Sen. Johnny Isakson voted right. All six Georgia Democrats in the House signed on with the union bosses as co-sponsors.
• I don’t know which is cuter: Emory students planting a “Sustainable Food Initiative Education Garden Project” or intowners paying $145 for their little rain barrels to keep alive squash that can be purchased at the supermarket for a dollar a pound or less.
Country boys dress up in camouflage to go to the Piggly-Wiggly. City boys boot up and trap rainwater and plant sustainable food initiatives. All to demonstrate our incredible survival skills. Me, I’m still hoarding freeze-dried bananas — and don’t dare try to take them. I’ve got camos and I know how to use them.
• Holy cow. A questioner asked AJC Q&A researcher Sharon Gaus whatever happened to Tom Stimus, the Forsyth Ford dealer who blanketed TV with commercials years ago. She details a litany of misfortune: bankruptcy, criminal charges later dropped, divorce. She concludes with this further evidence of the poor man’s fate: “and he now lives in Ohio.” Ouch. Surely not Cleveland.
• Cobb School Superintendent Fred Sanderson wants to spend $4.4 million to equip seven schools with the latest in electronic equipment, described as interactive electronic whiteboards, electromagnetic digital pads, high-tech speakers, student response systems, etc. For those who came along before the urban area gained its sophistication, those would be chalkboards, notepads, microphones and kids raising their hands.
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Paris is free! And rehabilitated, too. Oh, joy.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Even before the criminal justice system’s most joyous news of the week was emoted from CNN’s Larry King show — the revelation that a freed Paris Hilton has grown from a “traumatic” period of incarceration — there was other good news on the legal front.
It was not, mind you, on the order of Hilton’s confirmation of the conservative belief that prison is usually good for the individual and for society at large — either by offering an opportunity for rehabilitation or, failing that, ridding the free world, however briefly, of a miscreant whose conduct poses a danger to the rest of us. (That is one of the reasons, too, that I am more reassured than alarmed by the other news Wednesday that Georgia’s prison population is the third fastest growing in the country, at 8.1 percent last year. It’s attributed to stricter sentencing, tougher parole board policies and a continuing meth problem.)
Paris is a digression, however. Yes, conservatives are pleased that, as she says, “I took the time to learn about myself. I have a new outlook on life.”
But the more important good news came earlier in the week from the U.S. Supreme Court on three cases:
Schools may prohibit student speech that can reasonably be interpreted to promote drug use, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in a 5-4 ruling. A student in Juneau, Alaska, unfurled a 14-foot-long banner with a “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” message. The principal interpreted it as a message advocating drug use and suspended the student, who contended he thought the message nonsensical and had no idea what it meant. Roberts said the principal’s interpretation was “plainly a reasonable one.” The student, incidentally, pleaded guilty to selling marijuana at a Texas college two years later, the Associated Press reports.
In another 5-4 decision, the court ruled that 8 agnostics and athiests hadn’t a prayer of winning their suit objecting to efforts by the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives to encourage religious charities to apply for federal grants. The group filing the suit “set out a parade of horribles that they claim could occur” unless the court stopped the faith-based initiative, wrote Justice Samuel Alito. “Of course, none of these things has happened.” If they appeared, Congress could act.
In the third, a 5-4 court agreed with an appeals court ruling that Wisconsin Right to Life should have been allowed to air ads during the final two months before the 2004 elections that asked voters to contact the state’s two senators and urge them not to filibuster President Bush’s judicial nominees. Democrat Russ Feingold, who co-authored the campaign finance law, was up for reelection in 2004.
Three justices, Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, would have used the case to overturn a 2003 Supreme Court decision upholding the constitutionality of the law, which imposes restrictions on corporate- and union-funded television ads that air close to elections. The three should have prevailed, because it is an incumbency-protection restriction on free speech, but Roberts and Alito granted only that the Wisconsin group’s ads were not the equivalent of explicit campaign ads and, therefore, weren’t covered by the 2003 decision.
The U.S. Supreme Court got its three right. But the case — other than Paris Hilton’s — that prompted the most national attention and emotion this week involved a lawyer who is an administrative law judge and the mom-and-pop dry cleaners he’d sued for $54 million over a missing pair of suit pants. Most everything despicable about litigation abuse was contained in the lawsuit filed in Washington by Roy L. Pearson against Soo Chung, Jin Nam Chung and Ki Y. Chung. owners of Custom Cleaners. Pearson sued for $54 million after the Chungs lost a pair of blue-and-marooon suit pants.
A judge threw out the lawsuit and ordered Pearson to pay the Chung’s court costs, which amount to just over $1,000. Justice will be done when the judge also rules that Pearson must pay the Chung’s legal fees and tosses in a few extra bucks for their suffering as well.
4-for-4. Not a bad day’s work. And yes, Paris is free and rehabilitated. Life’s good.
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Pull the plug on immigration bill
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It was a worthwhile effort. But in the end, the immigration bill failed on three key points, all having to do with trust. This Congress and this Administration could never convince the country that it could or would secure the borders. It never established that the path to citizenship was anything other than wink-wink amnesty. And it never succeeded in making the case that a workable employer verification system could be established.
“It’s dead on arrival in the House,” said Rep. Mark Souder, R-Ind., an assessment affirmed by a 114-23 vote among House Republicans on a symbolic resolution to oppose the Senate bill. “A comprehensive bill will not pass the House,” said Souder. “There is significant Democratic opposition and overwhelming Republican opposition.”
Over the next two days, the Senate will take up some 26 amendments proposed by liberals and conservatives. Some are killers — including, for example, an amendment by Sens. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) that would ease the requirement that employers verify that all hires are legal. Instead, they’d be allowed to check only new employees and those the Department of Homeland Security believes are illegal. It would also weaken the requirement that non-citizens present a REAL ID by allowing driver’s licenses or other identification cards. Potential employees not hired under that system could appeal to the Department of Homeland Security for lost wages. The Bush Administration opposes this amendment.
In addition to possible killer amendments, details about undesirable provisions of the bill continue to surface. The Heritage Foundation, which has done a superb job of examining the fine print, argues that immigration law would be suspended under the bill. Two examples it cites: If an agent apprehends an illegal who appears to be eligible for a Z visa, he has to be released and allowed to apply for amnesty. The same applies to immigration judges, who must close any proceedings against illegals who appear to be eligible for Z visas and allow them an opportunity to apply. “These provisions (and others) will create endless litigation — tying up a legal system that’s already swamped,” Heritage analysts contend.
Both Georgia senators, Johnny Isakson and Saxby Chambliss, voted on Tuesday against taking the bill back up. “We’ve listened” to Georgia, said Chambliss. They are not yet committed to voting against the final bill. But it comes back to trust.
Any bill that passes the House and Senate will go to conference committee where provisions can be added, eliminated or rewritten entirely. Trust. It’s not there. Pull the plug.
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Clout of Cuban community is not enough
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Republican who wins the Florida primary will likely win the Republican presidential nomination, Rudy Giuliani told a group of Cuban-Americans last week in Hialeah, Fla.
“You’re going to have a big, big impact on who the nominee is going to be,” Giuliani said, promising not to support lifting a trade embargo against Cuba until democracy has come to that island nation.
Such promises, most likely sincere, are to be expected from both parties’ presidential candidates. But the day will come when such expressions of support will be followed by betrayal, as supporters of the Republic of China, also known as Taiwan, can testify. Cuban-Americans should steel themselves for that eventuality.
It’s reasonably certain that the embargo won’t be lifted during Fidel Castro’s lifetime. But it won’t endure until democracy comes to Cuba, either. U.S. Reps. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) and Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) have introduced legislation to lift barriers to travel and to ease trade restrictions.
“Why is our government telling us where we can and can’t go?” asked Flake in a joint appearance with Rangel before the libertarian Cato Institute. Rangel said trade and travel restrictions are “bordering on sophomoric.”
In Congress, meanwhile, the Bush administration last week managed a five-fold spending increase, to $47 million, on efforts to support dissidents in bringing democracy to Cuba. Democrats on the appropriations panel chaired by Rep. Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.) had cut that spending to $9 million, but Cuban-American Reps. Lincoln Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.) and Albio Sires (D-N.J.) restored funding to the level Bush wanted. Supporting the Cuban-Americans were 66 Democrats and 188 Republicans.
Without question, Cuban-Americans are the prime reason, and perhaps the sole reason, the embargo remains. It has been effective. But it’s also true that the Cuban regime can survive for decades more with the embargo. While Cubans cannot import nonagricultural goods from the United States, and while foreign suppliers can’t sell equipment, such as airplanes, that have a defined percentage of American parts, Cuba is free to trade with the rest of the world.
American agricultural interests argue uniformly against the embargo, pointing out that the United States routinely trades with Communist countries, including Vietnam and China. The dollar has no conscience or ideology, and while Cuba — with a population of 11.4 million, less than a third the size of California — is not a major potential market and certainly not as a noncapitalist state, it does have potential interest to energy companies.
Reserves estimated at 6 billion barrels of oil have been discovered in an area of the Gulf of Mexico that Cuba divided into 59 deep-water blocks and started leasing seven years ago. About 20 have been leased. The oil could add to business interest in Cuba.
Cubans are working, too, to influence American public opinion, recognizing from the debate over Iraq that this nation lacks the will to sustain confrontation and that public opinion will change U.S. foreign policy. Cubans also understand that globalization and the Internet have turned most reasonably educated Americans into freelance diplomats, meaning that the U.S. government is severely limited in its ability to make a restrictive policy stick.
The embargo can be lifted after Castro’s passing, but slowly, in a way that induces economic and political reform while respecting Cuban sovereignty. Both American businesses and Cuban-Americans are due compensation for expropriated property, though they may not get the compensation they deserve, or any at all.
Businesses should get full value. Cuban-Americans should get something, a negotiated share of future oil royalties, perhaps.
The post-Castro world will force a lot of change on Cuba. Now it’s a country in a time capsule, stuck in 1959 with flashes of ’70s Soviet architectural atrocities. Its people live in a kind of harmonic balance with a world that no longer exists elsewhere. A government that tries to parcel out liberties while allowing a few new ideas and a little free enterprise will find itself overwhelmed. It can handle the embargo. It can’t handle freedom.
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Talk radio hits a nerve
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Credit or blame for the plight of the immigration bill now before the U.S. Senate is being heaped on talk radio. While I rarely have a chance to listen during the work day, the snatches of talk radio conversation I’ve heard lead me to cheer their efforts to explain the bill’s provisions.
A key test comes tomorrow. The Senate needs 60 votes to resume debate. It’s uncertain whether supporters have the 60, despite efforts over the weekend by President Bush to rally support. Even Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., who has become the target of talk radio criticism said Sunday, “I’m not committed to voting for the final product. The wheels may come off. But I am committed to trying.”
Lott drew the wrath of talk radio hosts and listeners for saying last week that “talk radio is running America. We have to deal with that problem.” How “that problem” is dealt with is open to question. It could be by government-mandated “balance” in programming or by more fully using the medium to have a conversation with those who are concerned about a process that would grant amnesty to 12 million illegals.
Lott’s wrath is annoying. As Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) pointed out, “This is a bill that was written behind closed doors by a small group of senators, and now it’s being brought to the floor again without an opportunity to offer, freely offer, amendments and to have the kind of debate that I think this topic deserves.” Frankly, any politician, like Lott, who would complain about talk radio, or any other information system that amplified details of a bill for fuller debate, has grown remote and should go home.
Both of Georgia’s senators, Johnny Isakson and Saxby Chambliss are now opposed to the bill, though presumably that could change. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said his support hinges on amendments that may be debated starting Tuesday.
Whatever the outcome, talk radio has performed a useful public service. Hosts very quickly digested the bill’s provisions and explained or commented on their consequence. Who could possibly find fault with that?
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Cuba will pay claims? Only in your dreams
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Cubans stand ready to compensate American businesses for property seized when Fidel Castro came to power in 1959, which could amount to $10 billion.
They stand ready, too, to pay $22 billion in debt to the former Soviet Union, which propped up the Cuban economy for more than two decades, ending 15 years ago.
The entire gross national product of Cuba in 2005 was $11.2 billion.
There are some caveats, though. Josefina Vidal Ferreiro, director of the North American Division of the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs, notes that 5,911 American claims have been recognized. She did not specifically say — and I neglected to ask — whether the Cuban government recognized them for payment. The claims for properties and businesses were certified in the 1960s by the Foreign Claims Settlement Commission of the United States. Ferreiro said Cuba has been “prevented” from paying those claims by the embargo. But, she said, other international claims filed by Canadian, Spanish, French businesses have been settled. “We have compensated them all,” she said.
Ah, but there’s a catch.
The Russians, just now extending paltry sums of credit to Cuba, $355 million over 10 years, assert a claim to be repaid for the $22 billion loaned by the former Soviet Union before it broke up in 1991. But, say the Cubans, that withdrawal of Soviet support caused greater billions in damages to the island, suggesting that it should be written off.
While acknowledging the 5,911 American claims, Ferreiro insists that the American embargo has damaged the Cuban economy by $106 billion. Another Cuban government official, during an informal conversation later, stiffens noticeably and his tone hardens when discussing compensation claims of Cuban Americans. “Never,” he said. Those who fled to the United States were Cuban citizens when their property was nationalized and, like other Cubans, have no valid claim to restitution, he declares.
On these questions hinge the future of U.S.-Cuban relations after Castro. Cuban assets in the United States were frozen in 1963 and bank accounts that once totaled almost $270 million have been drained to pay court judgments.
After almost half a century chances are remote that anybody will get homes or businesses back — and, frankly, the cultures of Cuba and South Florida are so dramatically different that it’s hard to imagine any American, save the armchair revolutionary guilt-ridden about the abundant fruits of capitalism, could find satisfaction in the Cuban lifestyle.
Cuba has the transportation system and the lifestyle that Smart Growth zealots dream about — except that ordinary people devote years of their lives to waiting — waiting for hitched rides, waiting for overcrowded buses, waiting and walking.
Few have cars, and for the ordinary Cuban, those are the relics of pre-revolution Americana. Where else in the world is it possible to rent a ride in a 1952 Cadillac convertible with an up-to-date Toyota engine? Auto body filler and replacement parts designed and built by creative mechanics preserve Cuba as a living museum of 1940s and ’50s automobiles. Mostly, though, people walk — one of the reasons, to be sure, that life expectancy is 77.6 years. It’s 78 in the United States.
Cuba, for all its potential appeal to tourists, will not be a country that appeals to native-born Americans who’ve grown up accustomed to its lifestyles and options. It’s hard to imagine the young in today’s Cuba relating to old-line revolutionaries, and it’s equally hard to imagine people who have lived on food rations and inconveniences embracing South Beach.
“Transition,” says Ferreiro, turning the questioner’s description of the process now begun over slowly in her reply, “in Cuba, that word doesn’t say anything. It is a continuation … a very organized process without any changes.”
Pipe dreams abound. The dream that Cuban Americans can go back and reclaim property that’s now been occupied by two generations of Cubans. The dream that American businesses will get fair and just compensation for property taken. The dream that a totalitarian state can control a nation of individuals, once they are inspired to dream.
- Jim Wooten is the associate editorial page editor. His column appears Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays.
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From sprawl to Israel to rented rims
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s Friday free-for-all. Pick a topic:
• Grab the children, school them at home. When zero tolerance is interpreted so that children are forced to cut the guns off toy plastic soldiers, as was done in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif., it’s time to take the children and run — either to form private schools or to school them at home.
• I can never see the “sultan of sprawl” label applied to former Gwinnett County Chairman Wayne Hill without thinking it reflects bias. Truth is, he did a fine job of managing a fast-growing county. Stopping growth was never an option, though mismanaging it was.
• “I had one developer tell me he had just put in $300,000 to $400,000 in landscaping and he was going to do what he had to do,” said one of the water police in Forsyth County. If car-washing outfits can operate during drought, an exception surely should be made for developers putting in new projects.
• OK, smart guys and career second-guessers on Iraq, what should Israel do now that Gaza is a terrorist campground and the West Bank is a land mine of exploding possibilities? Certainly the U.S. should lift the embargo, as it did. And Israel is right to unfreeze millions in Palestinian tax receipts. Both strengthen President Mahmoud Abbas and his Hamas-less government. Israel, however, is now bracketed by Hamas and Hezbollah with Syria and Iran wishing their destruction. Second-guessing is easy. Charting this course is not.
• In a full press release promoting commuter rail between Atlanta and Macon, and a next-day news story about the staged event in Griffin, not one of the seven or so people quoted appears to have any need to use it to commute to either Atlanta or Macon. Said one of the interest-group big shots there: “Building more roads to alleviate congestion is like buying a bigger pair of pants for obesity. It’s just going to make things worse.” Huh? Buy the bigger pants, son. Do it for the rest of us.
• Juvenile Court Judge Tom C. Rawlings of Sandersville, the newly appointed state child advocate, is a first-rate pick. His selection is a reminder that there’s a replacement capable and qualified for every one of us.
• An etiquette question: If one wishes to give a spouse rent-to-own rims for an anniversary, birthday or Christmas, is it sufficient to pay only the first month’s rim-rent?
• And what chance do conservatives have of cultivating a culture of personal responsibility and self-reliance when rent-to-own rims fall into a category described by Larry Sutton, the president of the 60-store Rent-n-Roll chain thusly: “We want to feel good about the way we look: ‘I don’t want to wait for that. I don’t want to save for that. I just want it.’” Man, when the rims are rented, I’m guessing the 401(k) or the Roth IRA is sliding.
• The head of France’s Socialist Party, Francois Hollande, splits with its recent presidential candidate, Segolene Royal, with whom he had four children over three decades. They never married. They would have, she suggested in a recent book, but he allowed his friends to talk him out of it. A couple that can’t commit after four children is most likely not nuclear-trigger material. French voters agreed.
• Looking for the real-deal fiscal conservative? It’d be hard to beat U.S. Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, a Coweta County Republican who’s certain to take a media bashing — paid and free — for voting against a proposed $100 million federal program to investigate unsolved murders from the civil rights era. He’s one of two members of the House to vote no; presidential candidate Ron Paul of Texas was the other. Westmoreland’s the guy who, as minority leader in the Georgia House, opposed the first Republican governor in 134 years for submitting a tax increase in his first year in office in 2003. He was one of the few, too, who voted in Congress against a $62 billion no-accountability check for Hurricane Katrina relief. And what does it mean that his district is described, in the context of voting against this proposal, as “largely rural”? Is that code?
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Gas at $6 per gallon? Get ready.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Get ready for Congress to solve the energy problem just as it has previously solved the illegal immigration problem. A bill being debated in the Senate this week is described by some of its supporters as “far from perfect” but “a good start.”
A good start, yes, to higher gas and food prices, to new taxes and to forcing consumers to pay for high-cost “renewable” energy sources — solar and wind, for example — that are to energy independence what bicycle trails are to traffic-congestion relief.
The Senate bill, grandiosely and falsely dubbed the Renewable Fuels, Consumer Protection and Energy Efficiency Act of 2007, should come with a section prohibiting price gouging — by Congress. The legislation “could result in significantly higher prices for gasoline consumers,” according to Heritage Foundation researchers. “A review of S. 1419, including the just-completed section on tax changes, reveals that the bill could increase the price of regular unleaded gasoline from $3.14 per gallon (the early May national average) to $6.40 in 2016 — a 104 percent increase,” write Heritage Foundation researchers William W. Beach and Shanea Watkins.
“Gas consumers can expect to pay between $3.16 and $3.79 a gallon for gas in 2008 after adding in the estimated impact of the Senate energy bill. By 2016, all states can expect gas prices in excess of $6. As a result of S. 1419, consumers would spend an average of $1445 more per year on gasoline in 2016 than in 2008,” they write.
With the the concurrence of the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, Charles Grassley of Iowa, and others (Gordon Smith of Oregon, Olympia Snowe of Maine and Pat Roberts of Kansas, all Republican), the committee is proposing $29 billion in new taxes on oil companies. The tax is to subsidize wind and solar power, hybrid vehicles and biofuel. The bill calls for a sharp increase in the use “renewables,” including heavily-subsidized ethanol, up from 8.5 billion gallons next year to 36 billion gallons by 2022. And it requires, too, that utilities would be required to buy at least 15 percent of their energy from wind, solar and other “renewable” sources.
Ethanol requires more energy to produce than it generates as fuel, to say nothing of the water required for irrigation in areas like drought-stricken South Georgia. It’s subsidized by taxpayers with a 51-cents per gallon tax credit, and it’s subsidized again at the pump with a 54-cents-a-gallon tariff on imported ethanol. Go figure.
The provision, too, that would “protect” consumers from “price gouging” is an invitation to price controls. And that’s an invitation to economic disaster. This comes, incidentally, despite the fact that no reputable studies establish that price gouging has occurred.
Borders were made secure and the illegal immigration problem was solved in 1986. And now the energy problem is about to be solved, too.
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Oh, no, another spoiler
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Uh, oh. Another Ross Perot.
New York City’s billionaire mayor, Michael Bloomberg, who switched to the Republican Party to run for mayor in 2001, announced Tuesday that he’s leaving both parties. He’s now expected to run for President as an independent. Bloomberg, like many of the Northeastern Republicans, embraces positions on same-sex unions, abortion, taxes and gun control that would limit their appeal in most Southern and Western states.
He’s another of those rich office-seekers capable of buying attention. Bloomberg spent $85 million of his estimated $5 billion fortune to win a second term as mayor in 2005. He spent about $70 million to win the first.
In a Los Angeles speech kicking off a University of Southern California conference on ways to improve political debate, Bloomberg said partisanship is sinking Washington “into a swamp of dysfunction… We can turn around our country’s current, wrong-headed course, but only if we start basing our actions on ideas, shared values and a commitment to solve problems without regard for party.”
I started out my voting life choosing a “third way” candidate, former Georgia Gov. Ellis Arnall, in a 1966 election that pitted Democrat Lester Maddox against Republican Bo Callaway. The result was that the election was thrown into the Georgia House of Representatives and Democrats who controlled that chamber picked Maddox. That delayed for decades Georgia’s shift to competitive two-party politics.
And of course there was rich man Ross Perot, the third way independent in 1992. His 19 percent put Bill Clinton in the White House. And maybe Hillary, too.
Sorry, Mikey. Been there, done that on third way candidates. Partisan gridlock in Washington will work itself out. Voters will tilt the country in one direction or the other and politicians will follow.
On another election front: Former State Sen. Jim Whitehead of Evans, a Republican, got 43.5 percent of Tuesday’s vote in Georgia’s 10th Congressional District to replace Charlie Norwood, who died in office. The runoff is July 17. Whitehead will win. The big issue for the six Republicans was immigration; all opposed the current Senate bill. For the Democrats, it was Iraq. The two leading Republicans drew about 64 percent of the vote, in line with recent outcomes. Whitehead wins the runoff, though, because the voting majority is in the Augusta area. In the State Senate district Whitehead gave up to run for Congress, Republican Bill Jackson won outright with 63 percent of the vote.
Only embargo’s end can kick off Cuba revolution
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Old Havana may be the most beautiful old city in the world. Or could be with a heavy dose of capitalism.
As it stands now, capitalism’s not coming to the rescue — and may not, even after the deaths of the old Communist revolutionaries who, like Fidel Castro, 80, and his 75-year-old brother, Raul, are now on the cusp of the great beyond.
Old Havana, with its narrow streets and baroque and neoclassic buildings, is one of three distinct districts in Havana, and easily the most enchanting. Dating to the 16th century, Old Havana contains about 3,000 buildings, a thousand of them lining the narrow streets of the historic district. About 350 have been restored, an effort that started in 1978 when the Cuban government declared the district a protected national monument. The United Nations designated it a World Heritage Site in 1982.
The revolution has, in one sense, protected a treasure while in another it has contributed to the deterioration of irreplaceable treasures. On a stroll through a neighborhood leading into Old Havana, one elegant three-story mansion that a century ago may have been the residence of a wealthy trading family is today divided into apartments. Half the roof is gone, walls are crumbled to midway on the third story and yet families live on the second, as revealed through the doors opened onto one of the ubiquitous balconies.
The seizure of all private homes and businesses by the Castro revolutionaries in 1959, and the government’s primary interest in rural development, kept Old Havana intact. Once the U.S. embargo and travel restrictions are lifted in the post-Castro years, Old Havana and the stunning white beaches of Varadero two hours away will swarm with American tourists.
But for now, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, its artificial price support for Cuban sugar and its subsidized oil, Cuba is desperate to build a tourist economy. Its primary market is Canada and Europe, but distance limits tourism from those markets and from Russia.
Cuban officials look to the day that a million or more tourists will flood this nation of 11 million people, about 2.5 million of whom live in Havana, 65,000 of them in the 1.5 square miles of Old Havana.
“At that moment, I move back to Washington,” chuckles a government escort who spent four years in D.C.
The government has not surrendered any ground to capitalism, but it has invited foreign companies to manage hotels and resorts with leases of up to 25 years. One example is the 404-room Sandals Royal Hicacos resort at Varadero, where the Cuban government has sought to develop a resort community. Varadero now has 17,000 hotel rooms, local officials say, and will top out at 26,000.
Cubans, no matter their resources, cannot stay at Sandals or at the national hotel they own in Havana. A Dutch company manages Sandals, which was opened in 2002. Many tourists come via charter flights to a new airport built near the city as part of its tourism development effort.
In Old Havana, tourism revenues from restored hotels are spent on social programs, with about a third plowed back into restoration and preservation of other buildings in the historic district.
Residents don’t own their apartments. During restoration they are moved to temporary quarters near the district until restoration is complete. Afterward, most are allowed back, depending on how long they occupied the restored buildings.
Comes now the post-Castro trick. At the rate now visible, post-Castro Cuba will not restore Old Havana for generations to come. Capitalists could do it in five years. A million tourists would swamp the city and Varadero.
Cuban officials believe they can manage, parceling out liberties and private initiative while avoiding capitalism.
“The ‘c’ word is bad,” said one American official. “They would not allow private initiative if it gets close to the ‘c’ word.”
Cuba is, in many ways, a place stuck in time, isolated by the embargo and by the withdrawal of Soviet support. It’s not desperate and it could survive for years to come with the embargo intact.
But once it’s loosened, once people who have known nothing but Communism taste the fruits of a freer market, government cannot possibly control the parceling of liberties and free enterprise for more than a brief spell.
Now the embargo is the bogeyman blamed for every ill. When the day comes that it is lifted, the next revolution starts.
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The right one is punished
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
If I’m the lawyer for the City of Durham, N.C., we pay. We write the checks to three members of the Duke University lacrosse team in sums that are at least sufficient to pay the millions of dollars in legal fees run up by their families. And while a civil suit is unlikely to produce much in financial compensation from the accuser, she, too, should be forced to defend herself publicly.
For rogue prosecutor Mike Nifong, justice came quickly on Saturday, when his license to practice law as yanked. On Friday, he tearfully resigned the District Attorney position he used the three Duke athletes to win. And more punishment may be around the corner. Nifong told the judge overseeing part of the original case that he knew of no information helpful to defense that he hadn’t turned over. At the time, he knew that the stripper’s underwear and body offered up DNA from several men, but none from the defendants. The judge may act on that deceit. And, of course, the lawyers for the three would certainly include Nifong in any civil suits to be filed.
Nifong incited the class and race prejudices of Duke faculty, Durham residents and commentators thorughout the country with comments that included a vow made at a campaign forum that he’d not allow the community to become known for “a bunch of lacrosse players from Duke raping a black girl.” To gain political office, he would have destroyed the lives and careers of three innocents. In the end, only one was destroyed. The right one.
In Cuba’s airport, signs point to lasting embargo
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Among the first billboards greeting visitors exiting the grounds of Havana’s Jose Marti International Airport is one that features the images of President Bush and a reviled anti-Castro militant now in Miami, Luis Posada Carriles, and avows that one plus the other equals the third image, Adolf Hitler.
Georgia’s 1st District U.S. Rep. Jack Kingston noticed it, too, when he came into town for a Cuban-American agricultural trade conference. “If I were interested in trade, I might have served up a little diplomacy with it,” said Kingston, one of five congressmen in a delegation led by Georgia Commissioner of Agriculture Tommy Irvin who attended all or part of the conference.
A week later, billboards in the airport proclaimed long life to the indestructible friendship between Cuba and Vietnam, a greeting intended for arriving Vietnamese Communist Party chief Nong Duc Manh.
Though it took Fidel Castro 40 minutes to mention Bush in a television interview that followed Manh’s visit, government officials who spoke to a group of Georgia journalists during the trade conference week wasted no such time. “We have seen a constant escalation [of efforts to force regime change] by the Bush administration against Cuba,” said Josefina Vidal Ferreiro, director of the North American Division of Cuba’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Her responsibilities include the United States and Canada, but not Mexico.
Though youthful, her rhetoric is that of the old-time revolutionary — a long, detailed 100-year indictment of supposed transgressions leading to the observation that “the relationship we are facing with this administration has been one of the most difficult,” though “every American administration has attempted to change Cuba’s administration.” She continues: “We have no expectations about changes in U.S. policy in the next one and a half years… . Who knows what will happen after that?”
Ferreiro and other government officials interviewed, along with some of the American agricultural interests represented at the conference, say by making financial transactions difficult and by other subtle means, this administration obstructs even the permitted trade — food and agricultural products. Cuba, otherwise, is subject to a trade embargo and travel restrictions that keep most Americans from visiting the country.
Kirby Jones, who heads a Washington-based consulting firm, Alamar Associates, has promoted trade and trade conferences with Cuba for 33 years. “We’re in a unique situation,” he told a group of what appeared to be about 200 delegates. While agricultural trade is legal, “the executive branch is making the exercise of that trade as difficult as possible.” In a conversation later, he elaborated, citing financing and banking restrictions — requiring cash in advance and no direct banking — and a once-a-year limitation on visits to Cuba by American port officials.
“People in the executive branch are doing what they can to stop it [trade with Cuba], to prevent it, to screw it up,” he said.
He and the Cubans expect nothing to change until Bush leaves office. Besides, the embargo and travel restrictions aren’t on the radar. “Cuba is nobody’s No. 1 issue,” said Jones. “Iraq is sucking the political life out of every other issue.”
Kingston, who has voted repeatedly in Congress to maintain the embargo, says after some equivocation that “I really do sense that this thing is coming to a …” He doesn’t finish the sentence and tries another tact. “It may not be a point — it may be a blunt angle.” He notes, as the farm representatives do, that we trade with former enemies Vietnam and China. “We need to get over this thing somehow.”
But two passages will occur first. A determined administration. And Castro.
If nothing more than a question of trade, lifting the embargo would be a no-brainer, says Kingston. After that, there’s the question of compensation to American businesses — and to Cuban Americans — for properties seized. And those questions are eons from resolution.
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Voter ID; stem cell bill; and MARTA
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s Friday free-for-all. Pick a topic:
• Stop the presses! A severe traffic bottleneck in metro Atlanta is getting fixed. Not with “alternatives” such as bike trails or buses. Fixed. After more than a decade of talk, Gwinnett County, the Evermore Community Improvement District, and the state and the feds are spending the money to add a sixth lane and to make other improvements along traffic-snarled U.S. 78 . Either add capacity or stop the kind of development that makes traffic worse.
• And more! Cobb is adding turn lanes to the second-most dangerous intersection in the region, Barrett Parkway and Cobb Place Boulevard. High density makes widening cost prohibitive.
• HOPE stipends have cut merit scholarships out of much of their market. Those who object to higher college tuition for illegals should encourage foundations and private-sector givers to direct a few scholarships to brainy illegals. Government doesn’t always have to be the solution.
• The packed-stage presidential candidate debates featuring more bodies than can be squeezed into a prom-night limo is the best side-by-side public face of the two parties that I’ve seen anywhere. My guess is they’re represented on stage — the fringes, too — in about the same number they exist in party ranks.
• President Bush and U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson each pulled 65 percent of the vote in Georgia’s 10th Congressional District in 2004. Gov. Sonny Perdue got 64 percent last fall. So does a Republican, probably state Sen. Jim Whitehead of Evans, win the special election Tuesday — or in a July 17 runoff? Next Tuesday’s my bet.
• Congress is a political playpen. Passing an embryonic stem cell bill the president has already vetoed, and promises he will again, is an example. So, too, was Iraqi troop funding with a surrender deadline.
• Less than a month after vetoing $142 million in tax cuts because of fears that revenues would be less than projected, May revenue numbers are in. Collections were up 28 percent in May over last year, aided by a 45.4 percent increase in income tax collections. Subprime and payday lenders get accused of gouging with lower rates of return. April income tax collections were down 24 percent, but suspicious House members said it was because the revenuers weren’t cashing checks to paint a picture of gloom. The cynics.
• Voter ID was unanimously upheld by the Georgia Supreme Court. Opposition to voter ID has never been anything more than a partisan attempt to frighten the Democratic base to the polls. One plaintiff dropped out after getting a state-issued photo ID. Another produced a MARTA card issued under the Americans With Disabilities Act, which is a qualifying photo ID.
• At a cost to taxpayers of $32 per ride — or $1,600 for the 50-trip limit MARTA proposed for the disabled — the paratransit shuttle service bleeds red ink. Users pay $105 per month for curb-to-curb service. Only about 22 of the 3,400 disabled riders take more than 50 trips per month. And even with that few affected, MARTA can’t make a modest budget-cutting decision stick. It backed off.
• Disputes about whether something is “safe” — the highways, the skies, food, the air — crop into the news almost always in three contexts: labor troubles, a desire for more taxpayer money spent according to somebody’s agenda, or an effort to force an interest group’s preferred regulatory change. Federal Aviation Administration Chief Marion C. Blakey insists skies are “absolutely safe” despite staffing questions being raised by its union.
• Every farm group in the United States loves free trade — so long as it doesn’t threaten their subsidies. Brazil and India want subsidies cut, insisting U.S. taxpayers unfairly depress international prices, making it hard for other nations to compete. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) should hold their breath until the policy is changed. That’s just my recommendation.
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Rudy’s dozen promises
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Rudy Giuliani, thought conservative by just 21 percent of Republicans polled by Rasmussen (compared to 42 percent for unannounced candidate Fred Thompson) hit what should be a home run with conservatives in a speech Tuesday in New Hampshire.
Giuliani, in his own version of a contract with America, declared 12 commitments, the details of which he will spell out as he campaigns across the country this summer. The dozen promises:
- To keep America on offense in the war on terrorism.
- To end illegal immigration, to secure the borders and to identify “every non-citizen in our country.”
- To restore fiscal discipline and cut wasteful spending.
- To cut taxes and reform the tax code.
- To impose accountability on Washington.
- To lead the nation to energy independence.
- To offer affordable and portable free-market solutions to health care.
- To increase adoptions and decrease abortions.
- To reform the legal system and appoint strict constructionist judges.
- To ensure that every community is prepared for natural disasters and terrorist attacks.
- To give parents school choice and access to a quality education for every child.
- To expand trade.
While not as specific as the Contract with America, it is a useful start. The nation really is tired of the old political games in Washington. A new L.A. Times/Bloomberg poll reveals that Congress has sunk to its lowest approval rating in more than a decade, at 27 percent. That’s down from 36 in January. Sixty-three percent of the country looks to Washington and sees business as usual on Capitol Hill.
Giuliani may not yet have broken through to the conservative base, but a candidate who can convince them that he will deliver on this one of those 12 commitments will jump to the head of the pack: “I will end illegal immigration, secure our borders, and identify every non-citizen in our nation.”
Genarlow gambled and lost
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
State Sen. Eric Johnson (R-Savannah) the top ranking member of the Georgia State Senate nailed it Monday in reacting to the decision handed down in the Genarlow Wilson child molestation case. “The Georgia Supreme Court already ruled on the constitutionality of some of this,” he said of the decision by Monroe County Superior Court Judge Thomas H. Wilson that the sentence imposed in Douglas County was grossly disproportionate and violated the state constitution. The judge changed Wilson’s felony to a misdemeanor and ordered him freed. Said Johnson, the president pro tem of the State Senate: “I think this was another…[judge] enjoying his 15 minutes of fame.
Georgia’s Attorney General Thurbert Baker is right, too, and it’s a mark of the man’s courage that he elected not to take the easy way out. “The law in Georgia is clear that while a habeas court may grant habeas relief, there is absolutely no authority for a habeas court to reduce or modify the judgment of the trial court,” said Baker.
The Wilson case has gotten so absurd that activist Joseph Lowery urged Baker to drop the appeal — or resign — and to set this “political prisoner” free. It would have been awfully easy for Baker to capitulate to such pressure. But it would have been wrong. The Legislature acted and intentionally chose not to revisit more than 90 cases like or similar to Wilson’s.
What’s more, there’s the matter of the four other males at the same party who agreed to plead guilty to aggravated child molestation involving the same 15-year-old girl and sexual battery of the dazed 17-year-old. A fifth male also pleaded guilty to false imprisonment.
Wilson chose to run the table, rejecting a plea bargain, while gambling that he could beat the rap. He didn’t. Even as late as last weekend, Wilson was offered a plea deal that would have accomplished his stated objectives and he turned it down, according to the attorney general. The deal would let Wilson plead as a first-offender “which would mean he would not have a criminal record nor would be subject to registering on the sex offender registry once his sentence has been completed,” said Baker. It would have been a shorter sentece and might have set him free based on time served. Wilson and his lawyer rejected it.
Bad judgment. Bad advice. Repeatedly. Justice is not about just this “political prisoner,” as Lowery calls him. It’s about the 90-plus others without public relations machines, or the five others who accepted plea bargains. Wilson was determined to set himself apart from the law so that he’d be right and the law, the prosecutor, trial court and legislature would all be wrong. He appears to have found a 15-minutes-of-fame judge who is willing to go along. The judge’s ruling was a shocker; its reversal won’t be.
Cuba softens U.S. attitudes on trade ban
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Havana, Cuba — The Cubans have learned from this country’s debate over Iraq: To change national policies, change public opinion.
Until George W. Bush is out of the White House and until the next presidential campaign moves past Florida, where anti-Castro Americans of Cuban descent are influential political players, there’s little likelihood that the U.S. trade embargo — “blockade,” the Cubans call it — or travel restrictions will be lifted. No presidential candidate, Democrat or Republican, competing for Florida’s 27 electoral votes, enough to have been pivotal in the last two elections, dares alienate South Florida’s Cuban-Americans by advocating an end to the embargo.
“Cuban-American hard-liners represent the only community in the U.S., in the whole world, that can control a president,” says Pedro Alvarez Borrego, chairman and chief executive officer of the Cuban government’s trading company. “That small group controls the president.”
While haranguing the Bush administration, Cuban officials are clearly schooled in the art of speaking past the head of state. Borrego, for example, speaks diplomatically in framing an argument to ordinary Americans — those who, as we have seen on the Iraqi phase of the war on terrorism, are able to press for policy changes. “Congress needs to be convinced” to lift the embargo and travel restrictions, he says, “and the only ones who can convince Congress are the Americans.”
“To have peace and friendship with the U.S., these are our primary objectives,” says Borrego. “When the blockade is lifted, let Americans invade us” as tourists and traders, he says. Trade will represent more revenues to American companies, he continues. “The whole world wants to sell to us, but we believe two neighboring countries should” be trading partners.
American farmers and others who sell to Cuba deal through Borrego’s state-owned company, which is referred to as Alimport. Farmers and those connected with agriculture have become some of Cuba’s most energetic advocates for lifting the embargo.
John Newcomb, a cotton farmer in Mississippi and Arkansas, who attended a trade conference that Alimport sponsored, said “this trade embargo has not only hurt the Cuban people, it has hurt the American farmer as well.” And this: “I want to challenge Mr. Bush to tear down this trade embargo now; open up free trade and travel between our two countries.”
Marvin Lehrer, the USA Rice Federation’s senior adviser for Cuba, said that in 1959, Cuba was America’s biggest rice customer, and that it could be again. “The sanctions are sanctions against ourselves,” he told the delegates.
In addition to farm groups, Cuba also allows journalists, state agricultural and legislative delegations, university students and others — all of whom mingled at the National Hotel of Cuba during the last week of May. It may be a coincidence. But all are groups in positions now or in the future to be influential advocates for normalizing relations with Cuba, post the Bush presidency and post Castro.
“There’s no doubt that the Cuban government is trying to make full political use out of agriculture’s access to Cuba. We recognize that,” says James H. Sumner, president of the Stone Mountain-based USA Poultry & Egg Export Council, which represents 200 member companies comprising 95 percent of U.S. poultry production, along with exporters, port authorities and shippers. He continues:
“Whether it is a state department of agriculture or the American Farm Bureau, we realize they are trying to buy from as many states as they can to win as much political support as they can. Is that wrong? I don’t know. Our organization does not actually lobby government. I don’t go to Congress and ask them to lift the embargo, but I don’t have a problem making a statement in Cuba or elsewhere that the embargo should be lifted. We are punishing the Cuban people more than we are punishing Fidel Castro.”
Cuban officials insist for the record that nothing dramatic will change after Castro’s death. “Continuity,” as they describe it, is set with Raul Castro assuming power from the ailing Fidel, and after that will come an orderly transition and, if need be, a restructuring of power. They may be right.
But the prospect of lifting the embargo and permitting freer travel, if done sensibly once Castro is gone, could serve both countries.
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Neither bill nor Tony is dead
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Like Sunday night’s final episode of “The Sopranos,” a series to which I foolishly committed an entire hour of my entertainment life, last week’s Senate debate on the immigration bill ended with a blank screen. It’s not resolved. It’s not over. And when President Bush returns to Washington this week, the old rivalries are likely to kick back to life.
Oh yes, they’ll pause to engage in this year’s sport of the Democratic Congress: Bush- bashing. Up today is a “no-confidence” vote Democrats are pushing in the Senate to force the resignation or firing of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. It’s theater and, as Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) noted on CNN Sunday, “this isn’t our form of government to have votes of no confidence.” It can’t muster 60 votes and, even if it did, Gonzales and the President should ignore it. It’s merely another round in the Politics of 2008.
The immigration bill is not dead. It’s not likely, though, to be materially changed. An amendment certainly will be offered to require the administration to spend the money to complete the border-security plans spelled out in the bill. That amendment would make the spending mandatory. Another provision would increase the number of people subject to the touchback provisions. Now it’s just the head-of-household.
Georgia’s two U.S. Senators, Johnny Isakson and Saxby Chambliss, are not committed yet to vote for the bill, but do argue that it’s better than the status quo and that under a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress, it’ll get worse.
Even at this late day, I’m not yet sold. The better solution, which is probably not politically possible, is to secure the borders first. Show that the system works. Perfect the Social Security check that compares birth and death certificates to detect phonies, which is at least 18 months away. Develop the tamper-proof biometric identification system for immigrants with heavy employer fines, as the current bill envisions. And deport those arrested for committing crimes. Don’t try to round up 12 million people. Nobody envisions that. Over time, the illegals would take steps to make themselves legal — or they’d return to their home countries.
When the screen flashes back on this week, we’ll all discover the truth: Neither this bill nor Tony was killed last week.
Chambliss faces tough choice
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
For U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), a single vote could be career terminal.
On this day, he’s a shoo-in for re-election next year. If he votes for passage of an immigration bill that’s likely to resurface, he’s instantly vulnerable.
Chambliss knows the stakes. “I’ve never seen anything strike the emotions of people like this,” he said. “But you can’t make decisions by putting a finger to the wind. Richard Russell went through some difficult issues. Sam Nunn did, too. And [Paul] Coverdell.”
Russell, whose oversized monument towers over the grounds of the state Capitol, certainly faced decisions that put him at odds with some voters. Civil rights or his 1936 defense of the New Deal in defeating a first-term challenge from Gov. Eugene Talmadge are two examples. Nunn’s 1978 vote on the Panama Canal treaty, coming just before his first re-election campaign, was risky, though not to the extent it appeared when the Senate voted in the spring. Coverdell had the 1999 impeachment vote but never got seriously crosswise with his base.
“The status quo is not acceptable and I don’t see this as an option,” Chambliss said, citing what he believes to be a narrow opening to get secure borders and a workable temporary workers program. “If we don’t get it done now, I don’t see that we get it done” for the remainder of the Bush presidency. After that, it could be worse, he said, with Democrats possibly controlling the White House and Congress.
It’s iffy whether the Senate is capable of producing a bill. “If we can pass a bill to secure the borders without doing something stupid, it has a chance,” Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) said in a separate interview Thursday. “It’s complicated, and I completely respect the concerns people have and I completely understand the complexity” of the issue. “This is not a two-plus-two proposition. It’s algebra.”
The problem, he and Chambliss well understand, is this, as voiced by Isakson: “There’s a credibility gap with both the Congress and the White House. For 21 years the government didn’t do anything to secure the borders. They promised it, but the [1986 amnesty] bill didn’t require it.”
Ultimately it does come down to trust. Phrases dropped into the mix, like John McCain’s from Tuesday night’s CNN debate that “we’re not going to erect barriers and fences” don’t help.
An analysis by former U.S. Attorney General Ed Meese in The Wall Street Journal noted that while the bill requires the secretary of Homeland Security to demonstrate “operational control of 100 percent of the international land border between the United States and Mexico” before other provisions that are being called amnesty kick in, “the bill contains no definition … and carries no definable, measurable performance standard,” he wrote. Provisions for fencing, beefing up the border patrol and for detention bed spaces “fail to go beyond what Congress has already accomplished in existing statutes,” he said.
Like most Americans, I am conflicted. Border security is the first priority. Developing an employer verification system that requires immigrants, but not U.S. citizens, to produce biometric identification cards is a must, too. Establishing a route to citizenship that doesn’t favor illegals over those who respected our rule of law is essential, and arguably a part of this bill. But the probationary Z-visa effectively establishes a right for most of the 12 million to be here, thereby pushing them to the head of the line.
Troubling, too, is the temporary worker class. Everybody here legally who respects our laws and shares the country’s ideals should have the citizenship option — and not as a 20-year process, either. People who pick my peas can sit at my table as equals. And if they share my allegiance to this country, I welcome them as next-door neighbors.
This is an emotional issue. The GOP’s conservative base wants border security without amnesty. If they’re not convinced this bill is that, they’ll be a surly lot still when the 2008 election rolls around.
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Katrina fraud; Atlanta crime; and rail lines
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s Friday free-for-all. Pick a topic:
• Give state School Superintendent Kathy Cox and the state board credit for the better performance on a more rigorous curriculum and tests. “We’re seeing success because the kids are better prepared, the teachers are better prepared and we’re doing some of the right stuff,” she said. When competent leaders are on the right course, my advice is to leave them be.
• Thousands of state and local employees in Louisiana got both their regular paychecks and unemployment compensation after Hurricane Katrina, according to a state audit, which put the numbers at 5,439 and $10 million. And, by the way, New Orleans Congressman William Jefferson, a Washington culture-of-corruption Democrat, was indicted Monday on charges of racketeering, money-laundering and soliciting bribes. I’m beginning to see how and why crooks such as Edwin Edwards get elected.
• No problem here with laws that prohibit registered sex offenders from lingering, living or working near where children congregate. But when a day care center locates where offenders live or work, it should be the owner’s burden to find out and notify parents, not the offender’s to quit his job or move. The exception would be that once the public is notified that the site will be a day care center, no offender can move or take a job nearby. This case is before the Georgia Supreme Court. It’s the airport test: You move in on it, the noise is your problem. It moves to you, it’s theirs.
• If activists succeed in using the courts to force Medicaid to pay for abortions when the woman’s “health” is at risk, it’ll be a clear-cut example of judges legislating from the bench. The standard now is “life” of the woman. “Health” is the loophole that guts abortion restrictions. The Georgia Supreme Court is hearing activists’ appeal from a Fulton Superior Court judge’s decision to toss their claim.
• Georgia Big Labor leader Richard Ray expresses the sentiments of us all in sizing up politicians — in this case, Dale Cardwell, a TV journalist running as a Democrat against DeKalb CEO Vernon Jones for the party’s U.S. Senate nomination. Said Ray of Cardwell: “He’s got some good ideas. Some I’m kind of shaky on.” Journalists who seek public affirmation of our unpopularity are trolling for rejection.
• Set a withdrawal deadline to get the people out of Atlanta: 110 of them were killed last year.
• An Atlanta area group visiting Vancouver, British Columbia, to discover how to deal with gridlock in Atlanta heard leaders say traffic “congestion is our friend,” reports one of the participants. For those in public office who agree, the ballot box is our friend. Fix it or go.
• A better use for rail lines is not to haul people short distances — say from here to Lovejoy or Athens — but to haul trucks. Norfolk Southern plans a $2 billion-plus rail corridor stretching from New Jersey to Louisiana, through Georgia, to divert truck traffic from highways. If I’m asked to pay a subsidy, my choice would be one like this that could actually reduce highway congestion. Virginia’s kicking in $40 million in seed money.
• Don’t know the mayor of Doraville, Ray Jenkins, but he’s earned a warm place in my heart for his handling of a petition from a group of residents opposed to a proposed Asian shopping center. Residents want stores that sell “traditional American food,” said the petition-gatherer. It’s the kind of phrase that’ll get you pilloried in a politically correct world. When the woman tried to read the petition at a council meeting, Jenkins stopped her. “They meant well,” he said. “I think they just didn’t research before wording.” The petition is no reason to deny the development, of course. I hate it when an ordinary citizen’s ill-chosen words are used to represent a class or a community as bigoted.
• Gov. Sonny Perdue and Faith & Values section columnist Lorraine V. Murray are right in the advice they offer: Pray for rain. But surely somebody will insist that Sonny is guilty of some church-and-state crime or of poor leadership for failing to find a government solution to the drought and wildfires.
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Fox apologizes, apologizes, apolo…
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Fox News Channel — the one commonly regarded as the conservative alternative to CNN and the major networks — felt it necessary to issue a second on-air apology Wednesday for mistakenly airing tape of House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.) while reporting the indictment of U.S. Rep. William J. Jefferson (D-La.) on bribery and other charges.
Both are black. Conyers, according to news accounts, was upset that Fox’s first apology was not specific enough. In the second apology, anchor Martha MacCallum again expressed regret. “We in no way meant to suggest that there was any connection between the Jefferson indictment and Congressman Conyers,” she said, noting that a private apology had been extended as well.
The mistake occurred, MacCallum explained, because a production assistant picked up a tape about a meeting concerning Jefferson. So while reporting the indictment, the image on the screen was of Conyers.
Ho hum. The explanation is perfectly believable and a second round of apologies would ordinarily be unnecessary. But we are talking here about liberals reacting to an institution many of them associate with conservatives.
Democratic presidential candidates, in fact, have been dropping like lemmings over the cliff from a debate Fox is co-sponsoring with the Congressional Black Caucus on Sept. 23 in Detroit. At least five — Hillary, Obama, John Edwards, Bill Richardson and Christopher Dodd — have bailed. Only Edwards has given a reason. He thinks the fair-and-balanced network tilts Republican. Liberals of the Moveon.org variety have pressured the Dems to avoid Fox. It should be noted, however, that none of the Republicans skipped debates sponsored by networks they believe to tilt Democratic.
Had the Conyers-Jefferson mix-up occurred on any other network, it’s unlikely that it would have risen to anything more than a media tidbit. But since it plays into the liberal myth that Republicans stereotype blacks and don’t bother to distinguish among them, Fox is forced to up the apology from mere contrition for a routine production error to something that suggests denial of the other implied guilt.
It’s hard to image, given the nature of the offense, that the second apology would have been required of any other network.
Bush zinged? Yada yada yada.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The formats differ and some of the moderators can be quite distracting, but this endless series of presidential candidate debates is turning out to be the most educational national discussion of the country’s future that’s been conducted in ages.
The Democratic debate Sunday night and the Republican debate last night produced the kinds of “who won-who lost” moments that occupy the attention of political reporters and commentators. And, yada yada yada, the big news Tuesday night was that “GOP candidates zing Bush in debate.” On Sunday night, Obama “won” or Hillary did, depending on your point of view. And does she use botox? Either way, who cares?
The real story of these debates is how educationally useful they are, even though they do come more than a year before the next General Election. For that reason, I’ll regret seeing anybody drop out, in either party.
Their value is that, as is now abundantly clear, the two parties are so far apart that nobody can be confused as to the consequences of the choice to be made next November. As Hillary said Sunday night in playing the role of the above-the-fray front-runner, the differences among Democrats are minor, but between the two sets of candidates is major. She’s exactly right. Same for Republicans.
On the war, on “don’t ask,don’t tell,” on taxes, on health care financing and on virtually every other issue that arose, stark differences are evident all down the line. I’m not certain that the Republicans and Democrats couldn’t pair off and run for President — strong to strong, weak to weak — and the results wouldn’t be the same. Either party could pick the “wrong” candidate, certainly, but any of three or four candidates from either party would produce the same outcome.
Somebody wins, somebody loses, somebody’s up or down, clever or not in each debate. But if you listen to two or three debates, you know where all of the candidates from the two parties would take us.
Pardon Libby now or later
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Scooter Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, drew 30 months in the slammer today. He was convicted in March of lying and obstructing an investigation.
He should serve precisely zero time in jail. He was not the original source of the leak in the Valerie Plame case. It’s questionable whether she was a covert agent at the time and, as we all know, there was no underlying crime. The original source was former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, though nobody was charged. Libby’s crime is a faulty memory.
If forced to jail now, the President should issue the pardon before appeals are exhausted. If not, he should pardon Libby , if need be, when they run their course.
Two brands of conservatism begin to duel
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Those inclined to dismiss the tiff between Gov. Sonny Perdue and House leaders as the usual statehouse politics awaiting a kiss-and-makeup moment are wrong.
This dispute is not at all likely to end soon. Far more likely is that it will persist for the remainder of Perdue’s term.
No question, part of it is personal. But if it was the usual row between strong-willed personalities, the governor would have made his point with vetoes and House Speaker Glenn Richardson (R-Hiram) would have made his in the House’s 163-5 override of Perdue’s initial veto of the supplemental budget.
As the pattern of Perdue’s vetoes last week demonstrates, there’s something more going on, something that won’t be cured by the next legislative session or the one after. Or, most likely, during his remaining three years in office.
The problem is that they each define conservatism differently. Added to personalities, to the usual political games among those with higher ambitions, and to the traditional tension between the House and Senate and occasionally the governor, and the prospects are for a rocky next few years.
One example is the so-called rainy day fund, the cash reserves socked away to carry the state through economic downturns. Before the $142 million property tax rebate was vetoed, it stood at 4.26 percent, or about $693.5 million. Traditionally it’s considered full at 3 percent, though a governor has the discretion to increase that to 5 percent. Some legislators, and a key provision in a proposed constitutional amendment that passed the Senate, would raise that to 10 percent — or about $2 billion.
Prudent, right? That’s one fiscally conservative view.
Another is that elected officials lack the discipline to contain their spending appetite and, as with Ronald Reagan, the solution is to curtail revenues with tax cuts. Richardson, for one, believes that a generously endowed reserve fund insulates the governor and legislators from having to make difficult choices when revenues dip during downturns.
Some conservatives would “cap” state spending based on population growth and inflation. Some would cut taxes to impose spending discipline. And others would examine programs for effectiveness, with either program-based or zero-based budgeting, and shift or eliminate appropriations from those that don’t work.
Richardson favors zero-based budgeting, with one-third of the departments and agencies forced each year to justify programs from scratch. Perdue has launched a program-based approach that essentially contains decisions within the executive branch, with the governor evaluating and targeting programs for reductions or elimination.
On top of those disagreements, both the House and the Senate are now far more aggressive. Legislators new to power are just beginning to ask questions of the judicial and the executive branches, including the Board of Regents and the various off-budget authorities. It’s an extraordinarily healthy process of new eyes looking at old programs — programs that haven’t been independently examined in decades. They properly regard it as part of their oversight function.
One of the bills Perdue vetoed, House Bill 91, would have required agencies to provide detailed financial information to the General Assembly that includes contracts valued at more than $50,000 and consultants and others who receive more than $20,000. Perdue said in his veto that most of the information was available to the Legislature already and some of the rest of it was confidential.
Legislators think departments and agencies either ignore or slow-walk legitimate requests for information that is necessary for oversight.
Perdue also vetoed language in the budget that legislators inserted to target spending, saying they were improperly trying to write general law through an appropriations bill. That position sets up future conflicts if, indeed, the Legislature reacts by trying to put specific directives, like the number of pre-k slots it’s funding (77,775) in general law that must then be changed yearly.
This may be personal. But the real disagreement is not.
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JFK plot, Demo debate and cell phones
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s weekend free-for-all:
• Just back from a trip to Cuba, which will be the topic of columns to come, I once again thank God for the good fortune to have been born free and into a free-enterprise economic system. Nobody can predict Cuba’s future 10 years after Fidel Castro is gone, but capitalism would do wonders for the place.
• The most astounding story of the week was not Cuba, though. It was the TB patient who travelled the world after being diagnosed with a potentially deadly, drug-resistant disease. If, indeed, he was informed not to travel, his actions are abominable.
• After the terrorist plot to blow up aviation fuel tanks at John F. Kennedy Internaitonal Airport in New York was foiled, U.S. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) still refuses to even acknowledge that some credit is due the Bush Administration for keeping America safe. Hillary, to her credit, did in Sunday night’s debate. “I believe we are safer than we were,” she said. Both voted against funding the war, but Hillary has the savvy to be President. Obama doesn’t. Why not acknowledge what’s plain to every fair-minded American? Bush does deserve credit for preventing another terrorist attack here.
• What’s too much government? One that tells us that during a drought we can water food gardens, but new landscapes can be watered for a maximum of 30 days after planting, as garden guru Walter Reeves explains. What’s dumb government? One that uses the water on corn to make taxpayer-subsidized ethanol.
• Residents of Roswell and other locales are invited to rat out the neighbors if they see them watering plants at the wrong time. I hate what we become during shortages and drought. We won’t enforce immigration laws, but we’ll become vigilantes on something far less important. I rat out my neighbors for abusing children, dealing drugs and shooting people who don’t deserve to be shot.
• The charter school law just on the books is a major achievement for Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle — and for believers in school choice for parents. Gov. Sonny Perdue has hope that the charter districts allowed under the bill will become “laboratories for innovation in education.” Now what’s needed is approval of legislation proposed by state Rep. Ed Setzler (R-Acworth), House Bill 469, that would allow universities and local governments to authorize public school charters.
• Some 220 prisoners trained as firefighters pulled extended shifts fighting fires near the Okefenokee swamp, which got a good dose of rain over the weekend. Why didn’t they run? Firefighter Jimmy D’Alvia’s response: “It ain’t worth it. You did something wrong. Do your time and go home.” D’Alvia’s serving 10 years at Hancock State Prison for trafficking in methamphetamine. My band of right-wingers will give those who work to better themselves (firefighters) and those with the right attitude, like D’Alvia, an early release — and pray that we’ve done right by him and the rest of us.
• Persistence pays. A voice on the line advises the wait will be “more than five minutes.” After holding for one hour and seven minutes, a state employee providing “taxpayer services” in the Department of Revenue, to whom I had been transferred, took the call. And then transferred me four minutes later.
• It’s a “hate crime,” according to the U.S. House, if the victim is gay or female — but not if it’s a soldier, sailor, airman or Marine.
The U.S. House is pure theater, a place where frivolous people play to the campaign cheap seats. If the Senate concurs with the House, this is another one the president should veto. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, in Sunday night’s debate, promised the hate crimes legislation, plus domestic partnerships, civil unions, and an end to the don’t ask-don’t tell policy. Former U.S. Sen. John Edwards supports ending the don’t ask-don’t tell policy, but had the good sense to say that “I don’t think the federal government has a role in telling states and churches what they should allow” with respect to marrige laws and ceremonies.
• When my band of right-wingers take over, we’re cracking down: No cellphone calls may be placed or received from a public restroom. Or from any restroom where accompanying noises identify location.
Technology changes, but rude remains.
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Honors to a versatile Democrat
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Eunice Mixon of Tifton is the kind of Democrat even Republicans love. She’s not really a Democrat, though. As U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) pointed out, she represents the “South Georgia Party.”
“Politics,” said Miss Eunice, “is a way to decide who gets what, and I wanted my area to get as much of the ‘what’ as we could … and good government.”
To suggest that Miss Eunice is not really a Democrat is editorial exaggeration of the highest order. Maybe even outright lyin’.
“She’ll die a Democrat, but she’ll work with anybody,” clarified Boston City Councilman Mark Saunders. He is of the Georgia Bostons, not the Kennedy-Massachusetts Bostons. The occasion for the conversations was a ceremony at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College in Tifton, honoring the longest-serving member of the Georgia Student Finance Commission with a named scholarship, endowed initially at $50,000.
“This is like getting to heaven — all the people you want to see are here,” she declared, in looking out over the assembled crowd.
For some 30 years, dating to my days as a regional correspondent for U.S. News & World Report, the farmer’s wife and schoolteacher has been a charming font of information about the mood and politics of the South Georgia Party. She knew people. She knew places. No greater authority existed in her area of South Georgia.
Her political involvement was a grandmother’s midlife blossoming. House Majority Leader George Busbee, unable to recruit a political name to manage his Tift County campaign for a 1974 gubernatorial race that he was expected to lose, turned to Eunice Mixon, a high school teacher active in education causes. He won, and she has served governors since with appointments that included the State Election Commission, the Georgia State Bar disciplinary board and, for 23 years, as a member of the Georgia Student Finance Commission, to which she was last appointed by Republican Gov. Sonny Perdue.
With her puffy blonde hair and parasol and the attentive Albert at her side, they were a distinctive pair at Democratic events. “On the farm, I wore a hat, but it squished my hair so when I went out in public, I took one [a parasol],” she said.
Bill Clinton once took her parasol, thinking it a gift for Hillary. The Southern belle allowed it, but then dispatched Sen. Max Cleland to get it back. He did.
It is no doubt ungentlemanly to reveal this publicly, but she did first. The blonde is from a bottle. Though Albert was 30, and Eunice 17 when they married — “well, at least one of you is grown,” said a tearful mother — Eunice started greying first. “I thought: ‘to heck with that.’ That’s the most undemocratic thing I could think of. I was turning grey, and he was not.” The initial effort produced reddish blonde hair, which Albert liked, so she kept it, though it is now blonde blonde.
She credits Albert with pushing her off to college, first at ABAC and later at Norman Park College and Valdosta State. She also got a master’s from UGA. “My parents were so protective; it’s a wonder I had the confidence to say boo to a goose,” she said. When she expressed to Albert a desire to go to college after the birth of their two sons, Johnny and Jimmy, he declared: “There’s no better time than now, girl.” So off she went.
Miss Eunice was a grandmother by the time Busbee recruited her into politics. Just as the farmer’s wife feeds the field hands, her dinner table became a boardinghouse array of the connected and influential, with as many as 105 guests at one time.
Despite her honors and her notable dinner-table guests, it is Albert, the farm, Tift County and South Georgia that dominate the stories of her life. Albert first.
“That man I worked in the sun and sweated for would never have left the farm except to go to church or to town. But you saw him many times put on a tuxedo and go places that he would never have gone because that was something I wanted to do,” she said.
Albert, who died in 1998, took up golf and attempted to teach it to Miss Eunice. “I wasn’t good at it. You couldn’t play 9 holes before the sun came up, … and I said ‘to heck with this.’
“If I am going to be in the sun, it ought to be hoeing peanuts, chopping cotton or suckering tobacco, or doing something that does some good, not just standing out there getting hot for nothing,’” she said.
She never stood in the in the sun “getting hot for nothing.” She had her parasol and her purpose.
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