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Thursday, October 11, 2007
Sensible Cobb, silly business lobby
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s weekend free-for-all. Pick a topic:
• It’s not “fair” that some people have 60-inch flat-screen televisions while most of us don’t. While Hillary is giving away thousand-dollar grants to build up 401(k)s, she will surely provide the have-nots either the flat-screens or the money to buy them. Tax the rich.
• Fulton resident John Woodham does have an important issue in an Atlanta Beltline special tax district case now before the Georgia Supreme Court. It’s unconstitutional, he argues, for school taxes to be collected and spent on the Beltline, rather than schools. The problem with special tax districts is that the increased collections go to one project, while the educations of the new children development brings are borne by those property-tax payers outside the district. Special tax districts should be rare.
• America has no appetite for extended sacrifice, like that required for the long war on terrorism. But it loves minor crises, like short-term droughts, that invite silly gestures such as unflushed and brick-in-the-tank toilets and the thousand-year crisises like “global warming” about which we can be passionate.
• Alpharetta and Roswell ticket trucks used as mobile advertising signs. Alpharetta fined one $500. Roswell has one scheduled for Municipal Court on Oct. 18. Just what metro Atlanta needs: another traffic congestion obstacle.
• Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad should return to Columbia University, where he is loved. Some 100 students shouting “death to the dictator” protested his speech at Tehran University marking the beginning of the school year.
• Cobb County authority figures are having a run of good sense. First, Kell High School principal Trudie Donovan wisely declined to censor an opinion article in the school newspaper, avowing: “My job is the safety and security of the school, not censorship.” And Cobb’s chief magistrate, Judge Frank Cox, noted that it wasn’t smart or appropriate, but not criminal, for a now-departed school system aide in an after-school program to briefly tape a talkative student’s mouth shut. The principal gets an “A.” The judge is on my short list for the next State Court vacancy.
• Three-time Olympic gold medalist Marion Jones voices the most honest apology and expressions of contrition I’ve ever heard from any athlete — or any public figure, for that matter. She’d lied about using steroids. Public figures should study the tape of her public apology to learn how one should be done. No “sorry I got caught” or “sure I stole, but I stole for you” whine. She squared up and took responsibility.
• No stinking flag lapel pin for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. He wore one after Sept. 11, but then decided to take it off because it had become a substitute for “true patriotism.” As every leftist knows, true patriotism is trashing America while opposing any military action the country is pursuing.
• Quote of the week: “The word partnership stops the second you sign the contract,” explains Jack Opiola, a transportation consultant discussing “public-private partnerships.” The trick for public officials always has been to write clear standards, provide arms-length oversight and accountability. Government should not be the least bit adverse to turning functions over to the private sector. But don’t make “partnerships” private reward and public risk.
• Send me back to Conservative Re-education Reform School for six months of reindoctrination. I need a refresher course on why conservatives reflexively support business, though the business lobby — the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — joins with the AFL-CIO and the ACLU to entice a Clinton-appointed federal judge to block a reasonable effort to identify illegals on business payrolls using “no-match” Social Security data.
• Why presidential elections matter: National security, judges and the preservation of tax cuts, in that order. All else is secondary.
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Illegals and fake Social Security numbers
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A Bill Clinton appointee to the federal court bench in San Franscisco, Charles Breyer, who happens to be the brother of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, has blocked the Bush Administration from requiring employers to clear up or discharge employees with questionable Social Security numbers.
“There can be no doubt that the effects of the rule’s implementation will be severe” and cause “irreparable harm to innocent workers and employers,” wrote Breyer in issuing a preliminary injunction to halt the administration’s plan to mail Social Security “no match” letters to 140,000 employers. The letters would have identified workers with phony, or at least questionable, Social Security numbers. Workers would have 90 days to clear up the problem before losing their jobs.
Employers who kept them on after the 90 days could have faced fines or possible prosecution for knowingly employing illegal aliens. The plaintiffs, including the ACLU, the AFL-CIO and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, asked for the injunction, contending the Social Security database contains errors. Using those records as the basis for dismissals could discriminate against legal workers, they argued.
A three-year government audit found widespread fraud by illegals who often presented fake documents and Social Security numbers to obtain jobs.
The administration should, of course, appeal. Border security, yes. But the illegal immigration problem won’t be solved until employers are held accountable for knowingly hiring illegals — or for pretending not to know. Giving them 90 days to clear up questions about a document widely abused and a key to the illegals-to-jobs problem is reasonable. Appeal.
