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Thursday, November 1, 2007
Stop the terrorists — and the thugs
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s weekend free-for-all. Pick a topic:
True fiscal conservatives lost a champion Monday with the passing of state Rep. Dan Lakly of Peachtree City. Whether in the minority or the majority, he was a principled man who never compromised core beliefs. Power changes some. Not Dan.
• Alive to kill again: Jamal al-Badawi, one of the al-Qaida masterminds of the 2000 USS Cole bombing was convicted in Yemen and sentenced to death. Later that was commuted to 15 years. He and 22 others, mostly al-Qaida terrorists, escaped in 2004. He turned himself in, swore allegiance to Yemen’s president, and was immediately set free. The bombing killed 17 U.S. sailors. Now the United States has to track him down and kill him.
• More than half the public school students in Georgia — 52 percent — are considered low-income, reports the Southern Education Foundation. That undoubtedly is caused by immigration and an effort by middle-income parents to find a better solution for their children. All parents should be able to take the money taxpayers spend on behalf of their child and use it to buy the education services they want from any provider they choose. People of means have a choice.
• Wake me when we’re through talking about Mark Richt’s decision to let his players rush on the field to celebrate Georgia’s first score against Florida.
• It’s noteworthy how many women whose positions help to put Georgia in the “vanguard of change,” were chosen by Republicans — and Gov. Sonny Perdue, in particular. So much for the liberals’ politics of gender line.
• Be careful when you drive or walk the streets. We never know which circuits are connecting — or not — in the brains of those around us.
Case in point, #1: A former revenue agent who’s been a certified public accountant for a decade didn’t file taxes for five years because she had done a lot of “research” that convinced her she didn’t have to — in part because she couldn’t find “individual” defined in the code.
Case in point, #2: A jury in Baltimore returns an $11 million judgment against members of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kan., for picketing funerals while carrying signs declaring “Thank God for dead soldiers.” Their mental circuits connect military deaths with the nation’s tolerance of homosexuality.
• Next Halloween, my sidekick and I terrorize metro Atlanta. She walks through Cherokee County dressed as Hillary; I walk through Decatur dressed as a conservative.
• Attorney general nominee Michael Mukasey’s confirmation is said to have “dimmed” because he declines — not having seen classified information off-limits to him — to equate waterboarding with torture. “He doesn’t know whether we use those techniques or not,” said the president. Congress, of course, has not found it to be “torture” and hasn’t outlawed it, which it could. “Whatever techniques we use are within the law,” said Bush. Yes, we’re in for 14 more months of pointless political posturing from this 11 percent approval-rating Congress.
• Ah, those exuberant yoots. An attorney for one of the thugs who beat a no-offense youngster into a coma outside Six Flags, explains thusly: Late on July 3, Six Flags held an employee pep rally to promote good service next day. On leaving the park, “the boys just had a whole lot of enthusiasm and energy, and they just picked the victims,” explained the mouthpiece.
• You have to hand it to Fulton Superior Court Judge Craig Schwall. He does reflect the frustration of the people, and of their legislative voices, with Judge Hilton Fuller and the bankrupt-Georgia game playing out in the Brian Nichols trial. Fuller holds all the cards. Impeachment talk is a non-starter, but the General Assembly does need to study this case, and the use of senior judges, to make certain this is one-of-a-kind.
• Some 67 percent of Americans polled in an Associated Press-Ipsos favor letting public schools provide contraceptives to students, though 37 percentage points of those would require advance parental permission. Questions such as this are one reason parents should be in schools and why school councils, with heavy parental representation, should control them. When schools are parents, parents should be schools.
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If young, be wary of Social Security
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
During Tuesday night’s nationally-televised Bash Hillary Q&A, the New York senator was asked by MSNBC’s Tim Russert to “clear something up which goes to the issue of credibility.” During an AARP debate, he said, Clinton was asked whether she would consider raising payroll taxes above the current ceiling of $97,500. She said no. Asked again in New Hampshire, she again replied no.
“Then you went to Iowa and you went up to Ted Bowman, a teacher, and had a conversation with him saying, ‘I would consider lifting the cap perhaps above $200,000,’” said Russert. “Why do you have one public position and one private position?”
“Well, Tim, I don’t,” she replied, going on to declare that she’d pursue fiscal responsibility first and then appoint a bipartisan commission to look at Social Security financial condition, at which point “anything could be considered.” She’s not advocating any particular fix, she said, before venturing into head-in-the-sand la-la land. “For us to act like Social Security is in crisis is a Republican trap.”
Herein lies the problem with much of today’s political leadership — and certainly most Dems running for President. You can’t trust them either with national security over a protracted war or with a serious national problem — Social Security — that will be bankrupted by Baby Boomer retirees. We can debate whether global warming is a genuine threat and whether mankind’s the cause, but any accountant with a scratch pad can project to a high degree of accuracy what will happen when the retiree population overwhelms the working stiffs in a pay-as-you-go entitlement.
Young people now entering the work force really should be running for the hills looking for alternatives, especially alternatives that will allow them to own retirement savings that they can pass on to their heirs. All Democrats on stage who express an opinion hate “privatization of Social Security,” as they call it. And why not? Politicians who’ve built majorities and careers pandering to the old folks and scaring them to the polls are not likely to wean grandma off the expectation that Democratic politicians are the key to their old-age security.
Barack Obama, Hillary’s chief rival, has at least been forthright in talking about increasing Social Security taxes. He wrote an opinion column in an Iowa newspaper suggesting that “one possible option” is to lift the $97,500 ceiling. Everybody with a job earning more could, therefore, expect to pay an additional 12.4 percent on those earnings. That, Obama said, would raise more than $1 trillion over 10 years.
We are in a headlong rush to become two nations — one that works and one that takes, one that relies on individual effort and the other that relies on the mailman. There’s a limit on how much “the rich” — meaning anybody with a well-paying job, two incomes, or a small business they’re selling — can be fleeced before the system breaks down.
Social Security maintains public support because people believe there’s some rough correlation between taxes paid during working years and benefits paid out later. Obama’s suggestion — which, frankly, is certain to be embraced by any “bipartisan” commission Hillary might be in a position to appoint — further distances tax-payers from tax-takers in this Ponzi-like entitlement.
