Home > Thinking Right > Archives > 2007 > September > 06
Thursday, September 6, 2007
Same-sex marriage; foreclosures
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s weekend free-for-all. Pick a topic:
• One day before Hurricane Dean hit Mexico, Texans were being urged to prepare for possible evacuation. We’re now up to Felix and from one day to the next, scientists cannot speak with certainty on the path of a hurricane. But the computer models that predicts global warming’s catastrophic future are taken by many as the gospel. But of course mass starvation was to be our future too before the Green Revolution.
• In a world where doing nothing is not an option, doing a little is the next best thing. President Bush proposed a modest federal program to aid credit-worthy homeowners — not investors — with adjustable-rate mortgages to refinance. “It’s not the government’s job to bail out speculators or those who made the decision to buy a home they knew they could never afford,” said the president. True. But Congress is back in session. Methinks the Dems will see it differently.
• There’s bound to be a dark cloud behind the silver lining good news that the percentage of Georgians living in poverty dropped slightly. Ah, yes, here it is: “We are one of the high-poverty, high-uninsured states,” responded Alan Essig of the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute, a group that advocates more social spending. “Many are struggling,” he said, while “the economy is supposedly booming.” That old liberal staple. The real story, as Newsweek columnist Robert J. Samuelson reported, is that America is importing poverty. Between 2000 and 2006, the number of poor Hispanics increased from 6 million to 9.2 million. Among whites and blacks, poverty declined.
• Yes, it’s true. Decatur, Ga., is the center of the universe. And occasionally the rubes in Marietta and Stockbridge come to marvel at the restaurants, festivals and other gathering places that exist nowhere else on the face of the Earth — and certainly not in you-know-where. “The ‘burbs are nothing like this” marveled one of the travelers from afar.
• A company that has manufactured utility poles in East Point for more than 80 years is being sued by neighbors, at least some of whom have just moved there, over “noxious odors and dangerous chemicals.” Yet the company, William C. Meredith Co., has no air pollution violations. Once again: You move in on an existing “nuisance”; it’s your problem. The nuisance, an airport for example, moves in on you; it’s theirs. Verdict here is to the company, including legal fees.
• Iowa offers a reminder of why Georgia passed a constitutional amendment defining marriage as one man/one woman. A county judge there declared the state’s one man/one woman law invalid, setting the stage briefly for same-sex unions. It’s stayed pending a hearing before the Iowa Supreme Court. A judge always exists somewhere willing to write the laws he wants from the bench.
• It’s no surprise that Democrats are having “second thoughts on surveillance,” as the headline says. They’ve never liked the Protect America Act provision allowing electronic surveillance of phone calls and e-mails originated from suspected terrorists abroad to American citizens. They passed six-month authority in August because they knew the majority in this country would react badly if they didn’t. But second thoughts? The second thoughts were their first.
• What has this world come to? Former U.S. Rep. Bob Barr is praised by House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.) and Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) for his testimony expressing his “second thoughts” about surveillance authority. Waters praised him for standing up to the White House and, to quote the reporter, “his conservative brethren to oppose the law.” He’s a man of principle, but his “conservative brethren” are Libertarians and it’s unlikely his position is at odds with theirs.
• Sooner or later a responsible General Assembly will step in and provide local governments the guidance they need on rezonings, waivers and other invitations to high-density development that exceed the carrying-capacity of roads. It is insane to continue worsening traffic congestion without plans in place to add capacity. The Sembler Co. is proposing to put 1.5 million square feet of retail space, 300,000 square feet of offices and 3,700 housing units on 100 acres on already-congested North Druid Hills Road in DeKalb. And why in the world would the school board sell schools in an area projected to get 3,700 more units of housing?
Permalink | Comments (242) | Post your comment | Categories: Column
Thompson is in. You care?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Fred Thompson made it official Wednesday night, allowing Jay Leno to assemble his announcement audience just after the rest of the field gathered in New Hampshire for their fifth national debate. The timing and Thompson’s choice of Leno over New Hampshire is pretty clear evidence that he concedes that state to others, probably Mitt Romney.
He starts the campaign about 11 points behind Rudy Giuilaini and 2.6 points ahead of Romney, on average, nationally. He’s appealed so far to Republicans who survey the field and decide their first choice is somebody else. He’s the “other” candidate who polls well, but traditionally begins to fade when the real candidate emerges.
He starts his campaign eight months after the rest of the field, and lags way behind both Romney and Giuliani in organization and fundraising.
He’s attractive, in large part because he blends the entertainment-politics culture. He’s easily most familiar to the nation as district attorney Arthur Branch on ABC’s “Law & Order” crime drama. He’s also had roles in more than a dozen movies.
He also appeals in the Red State South because he’s a former U.S. Senator from Tennessee between 1994 and 2002, where he was mostly conservative. He backed John McCain over George W. Bush in 2000. He also spent a number of years in Washington as a lawyer and lobbyist and those years are likely to give him some trouble in the primaries. One of his lobbying clients was the leftist former President Jean Bertrand-Aristide of Haiti and another was the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association, which retained his lobbying firm in 1991 to ease a regulation that prevented clinics receiving federal money from providing abortion counseling.
Any Thompson supporters here? Thompson badly needs to win South Carolina, where he’s currently running behind Giuliani, to demonstrate that he can carry the South. Maybe. But I’m betting that while he’s the “other” candidate now, by tomorrow he’s just another mortal in the race.
