Home > Thinking Right > Archives > 2007 > November
November 2007
Feigned foreign skills to Grady ills
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s weekend free-for-all. Pick a topic:
• Oh my. Which foreign service experience is more valuable: Hillary’s “security bubble in which guests eat fancy lunches and watch native dancers,” or Obama’s four childhood years in Indonesia? Experts — both Hillary and Obama — disagree.
• Wanted: Disabled child to ask Republican presidential candidates about universal health insurance. Wanted: Gay retired military officer with long career to ask planted questions about “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. Wanted: Brilliant child of hardworking illegals who couldn’t complete medical school because of some mean-spirited Republican policy. All needed to ask questions at public forum. Contact Hillary’s Employment Agency.
• Pick your crisis: The water police in Las Vegas tool around in a gas-hungry SUV looking for violators. The only sin in Vegas is watering the lawn.
• Conservative pork-barreler Trent Lott resigns from the U.S. Senate. The Senate needs conservatives, not pork-barrelers. So we’re halfway sorry to see him go.
• In the spirit of the Grady board’s demands on the private sector and the state, I’ll not pay my bills or balance my checkbook until my next-door neighbor agrees to mow my lawn. These “demands” read like the work of a committee of eighth-graders.
• Kiss the ground in America. You could have been born in North Korea, where a factory chief was just executed before a stadium crowd of 150,000 for making international phone calls. Or in Sudan, where a British schoolteacher was just convicted of inciting religious hatred for naming a teddy bear Muhammad, a common Muslim name. Or in Saudi Arabia, where a 19-year-old woman raped by seven men was sentenced to six months in prison and 200 lashes for allegedly cheating on her husband.
• If it’s not the Georgia Supreme Court legislating from the bench, it’s the attorney general legislating from the corner office. The high court ruled, properly, that registered sex offenders couldn’t be made to move from homes they own if schools, churches, day care centers or school bus stops subsequently locate within 1,000 feet of them. Forcing that would amount to taking their property. The Airport Rule applies here: You move there, the noise is your problem; they move next to you, it’s theirs. But the AG has expanded the ruling to include renters. Wrong.
• Bishop Earl Paulk is a reminder of why monuments should never be erected, nor roads and buildings named, for living people.
• A suit attempting to halt Tuesday’s runoff in Riverdale because voters might not have known a candidate is transgendered. And the relevance of this information is …? Toss it.
• Wake me so I can express my excitement at Mideast peace prospects when the Arab world acknowledges Israel’s right to exist. Until then, it’s rhetoric and photo ops.
• As the Grady episode reminds, Atlanta suffers an excess of politicians whose stock-in-trade is negativity. The Atlanta Housing Authority, and chief executive Renee Glover in particular, have achieved a national reputation for redeveloping public housing so it’s not a dead-end street generation after generation. Years into the process, Atlanta City Councilmen Ivory Lee Young and Kwanza Hall take notice and insist that everything come to a halt until a task force can study the impact on tenants and especially on “our seniors.”
• Next up: A demand that moose stop belching until a task force can study their impact on global warming. (Norwegian researchers find that a grown moose belches the methane equivalent of 4,630 pounds of carbon dioxide a year, more than twice the amount emitted during a round-trip flight from Oslo to Santiago, Chile.)
• Headline on Spelman College campus politics: “Should I vote for Obama because of my race? Or vote for Clinton because of my gender?” Or this unstated possibility: “… the most competent candidate?” Or “…the one who’s best for America?” Nah. Wrong prism.
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Team’s ready: Bring on Hillary.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Before Wednesday night’s CNN-YouTube performance, which at times took on aspects of a real debate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney was apprehensive. “I think the presidency ought to be held to a higher level than having to answer questions from a snowman,” he said.
He needn’t have worried. While there are undoubtedly gimmicky aspects to home-made video, CNN for the most part resisted any temptation to turn the forum over to snowmen, cartoon characters and adult questions planted in the mouths of small children. For that the adults who selected the questions from among 5,000 YouTube submissions deserve credit. It still had some cheesy aspects to it. One, for example, was the invitation to the retired Army Reserve officer from California brought in make the case that the military should jettison its “don’t ask-don’t tell” policy.
On the whole, though, it worked. The initial exchange over illegal immigration prompted real give-and-take. Romney accused former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani with running a sanctuary city for illegals. Giuliani, in turn, claimed that as governor Romney had run a “sanctuary mansion” with hired illegals — landscapers used by a contractor at his Belmont, Mass., home. Romney actually handled it very well, insisting that it would “not be American” to insist that a contractor’s employees produce immigration papers just because they had a “funny accent.”
Clearly among Republicans, illegal immigration is a hot issue — and it likely is among Independents and Democrats as well, one reason Democrats who now support driver’s licenses for illegals will find the issue troublesome in the General Election. While Hillary has hedged, Obama is unequivocal in his support for them.
Mike Huckabee continues to impress — and while he has no chance of getting the presidential nod, he is beginning to appeal as a vice presidential nominee on either the Romney or the Giuliani ticket.
At this point in the debate cycle, the conservative tunes in not so much to see who best succeeds at the game of “gotcha,” or to hear positions reaffirmed. It’s to see who could best go toe-to-toe with Hillary or Obama and who can take the off-the-wall and agenda questions (the military guy, for example) and defend his values and positions.
Wednesday night’s candidate performance demonstrated that the front-runners are perfectly capable of holding their own on any topic — questions germane, off-the-wall, loaded or not — before any audience, utilizing any format. Let’s vote.
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‘Doomed to failure’?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Tens of thousands of protesters in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip filled Gaza City Tuesday chanting “Death to America” and “Death to Israel.” So much for the facts on the ground in at least one part of the Middle East in response to the Mideast peace conference at Annapolis. Protesters called Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas a “collaborator” for participating. The top leader of the Hamas government in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, insisted the summit is “doomed to failure.”
That certainly is the history of Mideast peace negotiations. Until the 16 Arab countries represented at the one-day conference acknowledge and commit to Israel’s right to exist, no real peace is possible. It’s pretty clear that the masses don’t. And just as leaders of most of the Mideast powers represented at Annapolis are not keen on the idea of a functioning democracy in Iraq, they’re served by having Israel as the region’s whipping boy to draw off the attention and wrath of the extremists in their midsts.
“Doomed to failure” may be too fatalistic. But that assessment will change when the states represented at Annapolis acknowledge Israel’s right to exist and when they stop pursuing another strategy aimed at eliminating the Jewish state — and that is insisting that Palestinian refugees be allowed to settle in Israel.
Anybody see a solution?
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Johns Creek on right track with housing allowance
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Just as it is risky to heap praise on living evangelists, it can be risky to heap praise upon start-up cities. One never quite knows how these things are going to turn out.
But the infant city of Johns Creek in north Fulton County offers an impressive example to cities old and young alike of the proper way to entice police officers to live intown.
The traditional Big Government way is to sell bonds and create a new “affordable” housing program, ostensibly to make it possible for policemen, firemen, teachers and assorted public employees to live near their work. For police, especially, neighborhood visibility reassures the homefolks that their homes and businesses are secure.
The Big Government approach is really more about empowering politicians and enriching their connected friends than it is about providing housing for the sought-after public employees. Teachers and police are simply a marketing opportunity to sell a new taxpayer-subsidized program.
Johns Creek is doing it right. The new city is in the process of hiring a police force that will consist of 56 sworn officers and 13 civilians. Officers will earn an average of $42,000. The typical house in Johns Creek sells for $400,000, unaffordable on a policeman’s salary.
The solution? Johns Creek is offering officers a housing allowance that averages about $600 per month to live in the city.
Bingo! That is precisely the way to go. It’s targeted. It’s adjustable. It has the potential to achieve a desired public policy of having officers present and visible in the community. And it can be discontinued if warranted — not for those who made housing decisions based on the subsidy, but for those not yet committed.
As with Johns Creek, “affordable” housing efforts really should be cleareyed and narrowly focused. Public officials should be able to articulate precisely why some lucky souls are entitled to a gift that may come at the expense of others struggling to make ends meet. In the Old Fourth Ward in the city of Atlanta, a gentrifying neighborhood causes angst among some nostalgics. Between 2000 and 2006, the city’s population increased 17 percent, from 416,474 to 486,411. Neighborhoods close to the downtown business district, like the Old Fourth Ward, are moving upscale.
This is commonly where politicians intervene with proposals to make housing “affordable” to some preferred group — often insisting that their neighbors provide the subsidy. In the case of the Old Fourth Ward, a master plan is being developed, but City Councilman Kwanza Hall wants to make certain that it includes housing for teachers, recent college graduates and artists. One solution he proposes is higher density in some parts, with a substantial number of units set aside as affordable. That means, of course, that a portion of their rents or their mortgages are paid by their neighbors.
Unlike the Johns Creek proposal, it’s not clear why taxpayers or neighbors are expected to be patrons of artists, for example, or why their presence in a given neighborhood is a compelling public purpose. And who decides which artist is entitled to a housing subsidy and why? And once selected for a public bounty, does the artist have no obligation to reciprocate — to donate a small abstract to a public building, for example, or to sketch a park scene for the enjoyment of the subsidy-payers ensconced in their high-rises?
And once the artist chooses to abandon the property, to whom does the windfall profit belong? Certainly not to the artist, for he surely has no expectation that the public treasury is an entitlement bestowed on him individually. Since the allotment is to guarantee that an artist will occupy neighborhood space, the property should be kept perpetually “affordable.” The now-affluent artist should make it available at something near the purchase price to an artist of the city’s choosing to preserve the quality of the neighborhood mix.
Silly? But of course. A city has no business designating some neighborhoods, or parts of them, as an entitlement for a preferred group. If they want police in the city, or teachers, they should follow the Johns Creek example: Give them cash and be done with it.
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Black Friday and Cyber Monday
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Today marks the start of what the National Retail Federation regards as the beginning of the online Christmas shopping season. It’s “Cyber Monday,” the season’s first big online shopping day, boosted by consumers returning to work and making purchases from their office computers. More than half of adults shop at work, according to the federation.
“The online community is getting more competitive as the amount of new customers slows,” Scott Silverman, executive director of Shop.org, an online arm of the National Retail Federation, told the Associated Press. Free shipping without conditions, such as a minimum purchase, has jumped to 41.4 percent from 36 percent last year, he said. In addition, a third of Web-based retailers are having one-day sales today, while 42 percent plan some kind of promotion, according to the group’s survey.
Consumers are expected to spend $33 billion online this season, up 21 percent from a year ago. Last year’s growth rate was 23 percent.
ComScore Networks, which tracks Internet spending, reported Sunday that online sales, excluding travel, auctions and corporate purchases, rose 22 percent to $531 million on the day after Thanksgiving from a year ago. Today’s online sales are projected by ComScore to exceed $700 million.
Today is a break from politics and from the left-right skirmishes. Consider it a sampling of the Internet savvy. Two questions: 1) How has the Internet changed your Christmas shopping? And 2) If a proposal is made in this year’s General Assembly to tax online purchases, would you object? Should online purchases be treated the same as in-store purchases?
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Nation’s children being harmed by unmarried adults
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Former professional basketball player Jason Caffey had two children with his wife, and at least six other children with women in metro Atlanta, Alabama, Louisiana and Illinois.
Professional football player Travis Henry, a Denver Broncos running back with a $25 million contract, has nine children by nine women in four Southern states, including a Lithonia boy fathered out of wedlock three years ago.
Caffey, who earned as much as $5 million a season in a 10-year NBA career with the Chicago Bulls, Golden State Warriors and Milwaukee Bucks, filed for bankruptcy in Alabama in August. His wife, who lives in Roswell, filed for divorce last year after eight years of marriage.
“She didn’t know about all of the children,” her lawyer told Journal-Constitution reporter Tim Eberly. “She knew about a few. She had no idea he was being that disrespectful to her.”
In Henry’s case, a propensity to exercise “bad judgment in his spending habits” put him behind on the $3,000-per-month in support payments for the Lithonia boy.
So the judge in that case — DeKalb Superior Court Judge Clarence Seeliger — did something that should be mandated by law or become standard practice for judges presiding over child-support cases involving athletes, entertainers and others of means, particularly in cases involving out-of-wedlock births. To guarantee the child’s financial security, Seeliger required Henry to create and fund a $250,000 trust on the boy’s behalf.
Coincidentally, federal authorities in Richmond, Va., asked for a similar guarantee on behalf of pit bulls. Citing Michael Vick’s “deteriorating financial condition,” prosecutors asked a U.S. District Court judge to freeze about $928,000 to care for 54 pit bulls seized from his Bad Newz Kennels property in Virginia. Children deserve as much.
The Caffey story coincides with release of a Brookings Institution study by Julia Issacs that tracked incomes of 2,367 families over 30 years. It found that two-thirds of the number, now grown to more than 8,000 families, have inflation-adjusted incomes higher than those of their parents. That’s true in about the same percentages for blacks and whites, Issacs finds.
While median family income for both blacks and whites increased over those three decades, an income gap persists. “Between 1974 and 2004, white and black men in their 30s experienced a decline in income, with the largest decline among black men,” Issacs writes. Families beat their parents largely because more households had two breadwinners and because of gains in women’s incomes.
As framed by The Associated Press — “decades after the civil rights movement,” the black-white income gap persists — this is a discrimination issue. Yet as Isaacs noted, “the lack of income growth for black men combined with low marriage rates in the black population has had a negative impact on trends in family incomes for black families.”
At some point, the nation — and more importantly, influential blacks of the post-civil rights generation —really do have to address the harm intentionally inflicted on children by unmarried adults. When 69.3 percent of black children, 46.4 percent of Hispanic children and 24.5 percent of white children are born to unmarried women, the nation has a serious problem.
Rich athletes and entertainers are the Murphy Browns of this era. Fifteen years ago, Murphy Brown was an unmarried television sitcom character who opted to find fulfillment by having a baby rather than buying a puppy. Vice President Dan Quayle created a national stir by criticizing the character for “mocking the importance of fathers by bearing a child alone and calling it just another lifestyle choice.”
Quayle’s point was that role models are obligated to consider the consequences of their actions. Rich actressses and well-educated women with high earning potential can toy with children’s lives, just as rich athletes can pleasure themselves at children’s expense. But when the poor and uneducated pick up the culturally sanctioned lifestyle, it’s deadly for children and for the nation.
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Water guzzlers; the lottery scheme
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s weekend free-for-all. Pick a topic:
• Progressive Corp. of Mayfield, Ohio, starts paying up to $500 if a customer’s dog or cat dies in a car accident. It’s “free” in that the cost of it is built into the existing rate structure. Set the timer. Start the clock. Within five years, some Democrat will insist that it be an entitlement for all, including goldfish and guppies, subsidized by a tax on “the rich.” If it can be imagined, it can be entitled.
• The only way to achieve the goal of keeping “affordable” housing in gentrifying intown neighborhoods is for government to buy them at market rates, subsidize them down to “affordable” levels and obligate buyers to sell them back at a predetermined price, irrespective of market prices. Government then can repeat the process. Atlanta City Councilman Kwanza Hall wants to make certain that houses in the Old Fourth Ward stay “affordable.” Such programs usually mean bond lawyers get rich, some well-connected political friend gets a cheap house to sell for windfall profits — and taxpayers get whacked.
• DeKalb school officials are right to question creation of tax allocation districts that could cost the system — and other taxpayers — $126 million. For every child a new TAD brings into DeKalb, some taxpayer elsewhere in the county has to foot the bill. The study didn’t include the largest of the proposed districts, the 685-acre Sembler project at North Druid Hills and Briarcliff. That one would add 3,700 condos, apartments and townhomes.
• The only capital punishment many Georgians will support is the public execution of some homeowner or businessman who takes an “unfair” share of water or who runs power plants that “guzzle water.” Hate crimes are said to be up 8 percent. Wonder when using too much water will become a hate crime.
• Surely members of the Georgia General Assembly do not begrudge the state’s gambling enterprise, its tax-by-ticket lottery scheme for fleecing the poor and ignorant, from increasing the payout to “winners” from the 45 percent planned when the lottery was created to 62 percent last year.
Good gawd, man, the poor paid a lottery tax of $853 million last year, up from $822 million the year before to subsidize college for the middle class. If they ever learn that the lottery’s a real loser’s game, they could go back to playing the bug on the streets, and the middle class would have to actually start saving again for their kid’s tuition.
• Right-winger Phil Kent, author of “The Dark Side of Liberalism” and “Foundations of Betrayal,” follows in the footsteps of conservative author and activist David Horowitz in speaking to campus Republicans at Emory next Thursday. Horowitz was hooted off the stage last month. School bigwigs assure Kent he’ll be in loving arms.
• It’s not courage for 250 physicians and ministers to call on “community and state leaders” to save Grady and to “restore it to financial health.” Courage would be proposing a remedy that imposes some burden on the pleaders. Issuing a call for one government to bail out another is elevator music.
• Where’s my tax cut? If you can’t get it in Georgia from the party of smaller government, it’s certainly not coming from Congress. Here’s the picture from Congress, as tabulated by the Washington-based Heritage Foundation:
So far this year, Congress has “enacted $98 billion in tax increases while also passing a budget resolution that assumes approximately $2.7 trillion in tax increases over the next decade.” And increased entitlement spending by $179 billion over 10 years. And added $300 billion in deficit spending over the coming decade.
• So where’s my tax cut? Georgia’s pegged reserves and unallocated cash, at $1.6 billion as of June 30, is approaching 10 percent of the state’s budget. It’s up $912.8 million over the year, setting the stage for a contentious legislative session. There’s not a liberal do-gooder or interest group from Rabun Gap to Tybee Light that won’t be pounding on the General Assembly for more money. And there’s not a Republican who won’t be stereotyped as Ebenezer Scrooge for not whipping out the checkbook. See Congress. See Grady.
• Jim Wooten is the associate editorial page editor. His column appears Fridays, Sundays and Tuesdays.
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Judicial activism? Not this time.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Conservatives often are not of like mind — and on a decision handed down Wednesday by the Georgia Supreme Court, my conservative bretheren and I disagree.
The case involved a registered sex offender, Anthony Mann, who owned a home with is wife in Hampton. When they bought it, there were no child care facilities, schools, churches or other areas where children congregate located within 1,000 feet of the house. Under Georgia law — parts of which the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional Wednesday — offenders cannot live or work within 1,000 feet of those facilities and areas. Mann also owned half interest in a barbecue restaurant in Lovejoy that, at acquision, was not within that distance of prohibited places.
Later, however, two different day care centers were constructed within a thousand feet of his home and his business. Mann was told by his probation officer to move or face arrest. Mann sued.
The decision written by Presiding Justice Carol Hunstein affirmed the provision related to employment, but struck down the provision related to an offender’s home. Offenders would be forced to move repeatedly from property they own to stay in compliance when churches, day care centers or other facilities locate within a thousand feet of them.
It does, as the court found, permit the taking of an offender’s property without just and adequate compensation. The court did not choose to apply that principle to Mann’s business because he had not shown that his income depended on his physical presence there.
The bill’s author, State Rep. Jerry Keen (R-St. Simons), who is majority leader of the Georgia House, took issue with the decision. Said Keen: “The Georgia Supreme Court has superseded both the legislative and executive branches of government, and therefore the will of the people of Georgia. Any opportunity to address this issue will not come until January when the General Assembly reconvenes. In the meantime, convicted felony sex offenders will be allowed to live next door to day care centers, school bus stops, or anywhere else they choose.”
Superseding the will of both the legislative and executive branches is not judicial activism if what they’ve done violates the Constitution. In this instance, much as legislators might want to punish sex offenders, they can’t take their property without due process. Forcing them to abandon their own property because a third party took an action over which the sex offenders have no control or influence — locating within a thousand feet of their homes — is taking. The court’s right on this one.
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An early reason to be thankful
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It’s never too early to start being thankful for our blessings — one of which is in the news today. It’s the announcement that teams of scientists in Japan and Wisconsin have made a breakthrough in stem cell research that’s being compared to the Wright Brothers’ airplane.
Without having to destroy human life, the two teams, working independently, added four genes to human skin cells, creating what appears to be embryonic stem cells. Two of the genes the two teams used used differed, but both discoveries appear to have the potential to turn into any of the body’s 220 cell types, reports The New York Times.
On the day before Thanksgiving the discovery is, truly, a reason to be thankful — thankful that a door may be opened for the nation to escape the divisive moral and ethical wars that accompanied debates about federal tax dollars for embryonic stem cell research. The risk there has always been that human life would be created for the purpose of destroying it. Every option appeared to lead to the slippery slope. Researchers have been free to proceed as they chose, though, but without federal money.
I’m curious how those who gather here think — and feel — about embryonic stem cell research, and specifically the use of federal money to finance it, two entirely different matters. Many who would support research would, I suspect, oppose funding it with taxpayer dollars on the grounds that they shouldn’t be forced to fund something that offends their moral and religious beliefs.
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Effort would trim down those pesky pork projects
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
If fiscal conservatives ever walk away from the party that professes to share their beliefs — something entirely possible — the reason will be one “bridge to nowhere” too many.
Or one pork project, the $250,000 to build the Walter Clore Wine and Culinary Center in Prosser, Wash., identified by Citizens Against Government Waste, or the $135,907 for potato breeding in Prosser, identified by the Heritage Foundation.
The wine and culinary Center was added by U.S. Rep. Doc Hastings, a Republican from Washington state, and by U.S. Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, both Washington Democrats. The potato breeding earmark was added by Hastings and by U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, another Washington Republican.
Earmarks exist in Georgia, too, of course. U.S. Rep. Jack Kingston, a Savannah Republican, drew the ire of fiscal conseravtives earlier this year with the revelation that he was among the top 10 members of U.S. House in adding 26 earmarks to the defense appropriations bill.
At the time, Kingston defended earmarks, the single-member-designated appropriations that burst on the national scene two years ago with a $398 million “bridge to nowhere” in Alaska that would connect Ketchikan, a town of 8,900, to its airport on the Island of Gravina, population 50. The project was canceled in September by Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.
Negative publicity about the bridge, which was being pushed by U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) undoubtedly contributed to the Democratic takeover of Congress. In victory, Democrats promised to cut the number of earmarks in half, from 13,492 in 2005, when Republicans were in control, to 6,746. The Office of Management and Budget reported in October that House spending bills contain 6,651 earmarks, while Senate bills add another 4,700.
Kingston, though, sees the handwriting on the wall. “The way things happen in this town, the earmarks controversy will flare up again and again for some reason — a kickback, a bribe, something dumb,” said Kingston. “Earmarks is the gift that keeps on giving in terms of journalism.”
About five weeks ago, he said, he and other members of the appropriations committee started meeting once a week, a group that included determined opponents of Congressional pork, such as U.S. Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) and moderate Northeast Republicans.
The result is a resolution introduced Thursday calling for a moratorium on earmarks and the appointment of a 16-member House-Senate committee to hold at least five public hearings on reforming the earmarks process.
The moratorium would continue, Kingston said, until the committee reports back.
Among the reforms to be considered:
• Transparency.
• A prohibition against putting individual pork projects in any bill after initial committee consideration.
• A process for removing earmarks throughout their legislative journey.
• A requirement that earmarks be certified by bill sponsors and committee chairmen.
• A system for evaluating earmarks inserted by the administration, an example of which would be the $330,000 earmark for fire sprinklers in Boise, Idaho, inserted in an Interior appropriations at the request of President Bush.
The committee would have no deadline for reporting back. But as Kingston noted, the moratorium would exist until new rules are adopted. “The rules wouldn’t have to be adopted,” said Kingston, “but they would have to be reported. “If you had this committee and these hearings, the public scrutiny would be so strong that for them to come out with a report that would be ignored — that would just not happen.”
The resolution was introduced with 78 co-sponsors, including all the Republicans in the U.S. House delegation from Georgia. Kingston hopes to pick up at least 10-15 co-sponsors among Democrats.
Kingston is right. Earmarks are the gift that keeps on giving. The billions often don’t register. But the little pork projects do — and they drive voters mad.
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Abortion: Any minds changing?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee is the surprise among Republican presidential contenders. While he’ll not get the nomination, he’s moved into second place in Iowa (for what that’s worth, since it’s a caucus state) and is attracting converts elsewhere.
One topic Sunday was abortion, with Huckabee insisting on “Fox News Sunday” that the nation could not allow states to “have 50 different versions of what’s right and what’s wrong.” Continued Huckabee: “For those of us for whom this is a moral question, you simply can’t have 50 different versions of what’s right.”
Huckabee expressed surprise that the National Right to Life Committee has endorsed opponent Fred Thompson. “But my surprise was nothing compared to the surprise of people across America who had been faithful supporters of right to life… Fred’s never had a 100 percent record on right to life in his Senate career. The record reflect that. And he doesn’t support the human life amendment which is most amazing because that’s been a part of the Republican platform since 1980.”
Thompson, interviewed on “This Week” on ABC, said Roe v. Wade should be overturned with states deciding whether to allow abortions and under what conditions. “We need to remember what the status was before Roe v. Wade.”
My view tracks Thompson’s. Roe v. Wade is an example of court activism. Had the states been allowed to proceed, as they were doing in 1973 and before, to reach political agreement on abortion, the country would have been spared almost four decades of bitterness and polarization. Even now, abortion dominates the debate over U.S. Supreme Court nominations.
The question of the day: Has anybody changed his or her mind on abortion in the past 10-20 years? Is there any point in discussing it in a presidential campaign? I’m thinking no and no.
Governor in driver’s seat on transportation
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Leave it to a trucker — a trucker of a sort — to get to the gist of the traffic congestion problem in Georgia.
He did it by recounting four seconds as a child on a school bus field trip. The bus hit a bad stretch of road. The driver, tossed from her seat by a sudden bump, tumbled into the exit well.
The driverless bus “began to lose direction and speed — we were only going where momentum was carrying us. …” Of those who reacted, some just yelled, others reached for the wheel, and others reached for the driver.
Getting her back in control “probably took only about three or four seconds … but for those of us who saw it, it was a moment frozen in time, a moment that seemed as though it would last forever.”
The trucker speaking here is Ed Crowell, president of the Georgia Motor Trucking Association. His remarks were made at a luncheon of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation think tank. There’s a point to his story that reflects an indisputable truth.
“Our state today may be in that same kind of frozen moment,” said Crowell. “We may not have anyone in the driver’s seat.”
There can, of course, be one only person in the driver’s seat — and that is Gov. Sonny Perdue.
Crowell, a clever man who was describing an event in his childhood in Haddon Heights, N.J., describes Georgia’s transportation system as a “Yankee containment system.” The state’s strategy a half-century ago, he said, was “to funnel all the major interstates into a ridiculous nexus right in the heart of Atlanta” and to add “an overabundance of off-ramps to ensure congestion, along with illogical interchanges and convoluted connectors to create confusion.” What’s more, he notes, they threw a major airport in the same region.
“Then, just in case some Northerners still found their way out, they ensured the travelers would see absolutely nothing of significance on their 250-mile trip south until they crossed into Florida.”
No darts, please, from the natives to the South, for while terribly attractive points of interest have, indeed, sprung up or grown out to the interstates, Crowell is speaking of the past. As he noted later, too, he would have been a Georgian earlier but for “the unfortunate geographic facts of my birth (please understand I wanted to be near my mother), but I got here as fast as I could.”
The state’s strategy, he said, was growth: “growth was the only definable goal, growing was the strategy.”
Here we depart from Mr. Crowell to examine where the bus is moving in the era beyond growth for growth’s sake.
Promising things are happening. Just this week, the Georgia Regional Transportation Authority (GRTA) approved a memorandum of understanding that defines how projects are to be chosen and funded. The agreement will include the Atlanta Regional Commission and the Georgia Department of Transportation.
It picks up language from a metro congestion mitigation task force committing the state to selecting projects on the basis of how they solve gridlock. All would be required to use congestion relief as the major factor (70 percent weight), subject them to cost-benefit analysis and to fix and measure a gridlock-relief goal. All will agree to adopt plans “that clearly target congestion and mobility.”
That’s big — and it’s vital.
Meanwhile, a joint House-Senate task force, which has been studying the state’s transportation and funding systems, will produce legislation to be introduced in January. Elements likely to be included would convert the 7.5-cent gasoline tax into a statewide sales tax as an even swap, roughly two-thirds of a penny. And it’s likely to include a proposal to allow counties to join together to levy a local sales tax, something metro Atlanta leaders favor, though the governor may not yet be sold.
Most importantly, though, are two related needs: an honest-to-goodness statewide transportation plan — statewide, not regional — and a clear delineation of roles and authority with a hierarchy that leads to, and stops at, the governor’s office and the Legislature.
There’s one driver. That’s the governor. There’s one school bus procurement source. That’s the Georgia General Assembly.
• Jim Wooten is the associate editorial page editor. His column appears Fridays, Sundays and Tuesdays.
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Compassion, death and taxes
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s weekend free-for-all. Pick a topic:
• Headline: “Who killed Mark Allen MacPhail?” The jury’s already told us who killed police officer MacPhail. That’d be Troy Davis. We know, too, who killed children in Atlanta and DeKalb. That’d be Wayne Williams. A genuine question is “Who snatched Mary Shotwell Little?”
• Favorite headline of the week: “Hospitals no place for sick people.” That’s my belief, too. Too many really sick people there.
• Demo presidential sweepstakes: Hillary promises a $1 billion federal program to give employees at least eight weeks of paid leave to care for newborns or sick family members. Nope, says Obama, $1.5 billion. But wait! says John Edwards. He’ll spend $2 billion. In Democratic political terms, this means Edwards is twice as compassionate at Hillary.
• Former Atlantan Lois Quick Novick, who died this week, was described by her family as “a voracious reader of newspapers [who] had the gift of being able to take editors to task and articulate her position with intelligence and wit.” And, furthermore, “she never met a dog she didn’t love.” I often read obits thinking: “I wish I’d known” the departed. A dog-lover who could dress down snarling editors with intelligence and wit is high on that “wish I’d known” list.
• Let’s see. On the one hand, as a Cobb resident, I have a sheriff, Neal Warren, who is checking the immigration status of those booked into his jail. On the other, the man who did little or nothing with law enforcement or job creation to deter his citizens from entering this country illegally, former Mexican President Vicente Fox, visits Cobb for a $500-a-plate fund-raiser, considers Warren’s actions to be “really going too far.”
Warren or Fox? In my county, it’s Warren by a landslide.
• Sixty-nine million dollars — the sum the Rev. Creflo Dollar’s World Changers Church International in College Park took in last year — is a mind-boggling sum. But unless somebody’s done something crooked, the $69 million and how it’s used is entirely between him and his congregation. Same for Bishop Eddie Long, another of the evangelists whose records are being sought by Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa). Ministers can’t dip into the church’s accounts for personal use, compensation must be “reasonable,” and expenses must further the church’s purpose.
• Striking transit workers in France, angry that President Nicolas Sarkozy proposes to end their retire-at-50 perk, force Parisians to walk, bike or skate to work. Roads don’t strike.
• President Bush is chosen by the online magazine Film Threat as the “least-powerful, least-inspiring and least-intriguing people in Hollywood.” Or, more correctly, “to Hollywood.” We know. We see their movies. And Academy Awards clips.
• Billionaire Warren Buffett tells Congress to keep the death tax — now set to expire in 2010. Unless Congress makes existing law permanent, though, it roars back in 2011 on estates of more than $1 million. “I think we need to … take a little more out of the hides of guys like me,” he told the Senate Finance Committee. Buffett is giving 85 percent of his fortune, estimated last year to be $44 billion, to five foundations not subject to death taxes. Tax policies targeting “the rich” have unintended consequences. The alternative minimum tax that Congress passed in 1969 to chase down 155 individuals who avoided income tax now hits up to 25 million middle-income taxpayers, costing them as much as $2,000 in additional taxes.
• The silly U.S. House of Representatives. The silly, silly House. For about the 40th time, Democrats bring up an Iraqi withdrawal bill — this one attached to $50 billion to fund troops for about four months. It has no chance of making it into law. The silly, silly House of Pelosi. All Georgia Republicans voted no, as did Democrats John Barrow of Savannah and Jim Marshall of Macon. Both are in competitive districts. Atlanta’s John Lewis voted present.
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Driver’s licenses for illegals
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
After appearing to flip-flop all around the question of driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants in the last Democratic presidential debate, candidate Hillary Clinton took a stand Wednesday: The polls are in: She’s opposed.
In that late-October debate she told moderator Tim Russert: “You know, Tim, this is where everybody plays gotcha, but it makes a lot of sense.” She was referring to the proposal by New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer to issue driver’s licenses to illegals. It didn’t make a lot of sense to those polled, with two-thirds or more expressing opposition. Spitzer threw in the towel this week.
“Leadership is not solely about doing what one thinks is right,” said Spitzer. “Leadership is also about listening to the public.” His proposal would have established three different licenses. One, considered more secure, would be for those routinely crossing the Canadian border. Another was the secure REAL ID, which is to be required nationally by Dec. 31, 2009. The third, for illegals, allegedly could be used only for driving. There were questions, though, about whether such a document could be misused for voting and for accessing public benefits.
Hillary’s chief rival, Barack Obama, said in phone interview with the AJC’s editorial board after the October debate that he does support driver’s licenses for illegals. My reaction was that taking that position would be a body-blow to his chances in the General Election. My colleague disagreed, insisting that the immigration issue — and especially the driver’s license question — is over-rated as a concern among voters.
Who’s right here? Spitzer? Hillary? Obama? My colleague? Me?
Universities leaning left
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The commonly-held view that university faculties tilt left is confirmed by studies being released today by the American Enterprise Institute to advance a forthcoming book, “Reforming the Politically Correct University.” The conclusions:
• “Conservatives and libertarians are outnumbered by liberals and progressives” by 2-1 in economics, 5-1 in fields such as political science, and 20-1 in disciplines like sociology and anthropology, report professors Daniel Klein of George Mason University and Charlotta Stern of Stockhold University. Their study is based on research into voting behavior, voter registration, ideology and policy views. The bias is likely caused by “groupthink,” they say, the theory that those rewarded by organizations are those whose views are similar to those of the dominant members.
• Two other researchers — Matthew Woessner of Penn State Harrisburg and April Kelly-Woessner of Elizabethtown College — report that conservative students are substantially less likely to pursue doctorate studies. That’s due in part to “unexplained differences in career motivations,” AEI reports, but “evidence also suggests that conservative students lack academic role models and have more distant relationships with faculty.”
• In a similar vein, researchers Stanley Rothman of Smith College and S. Robert Lichter of George Mason University offer “strong statistical evidence” that social conservatives have to publish more books and articles than their liberal peers to get the same kinds of jobs.
• Another study of literature departments finds that “a stultifying uniformity reigns, as literature departments study a wider variety of works only through the lenses of race, class, and gender oppression.”
• Linguistics has departed from the original mission of investigating how languages and dialects differ among groups “to become dominated by a leftist-driven advocacy for the downtrodden, as the controversy over Ebonics, or ‘Black English,’ shows,” according to AEI.
• In the political science field, “because over 80 percent of all political scientists are liberal or progressive, the political science discourse in universities is quite restricted,” another study concludes.
Two questions: Are these studies consistent with your views about colleges and universities? And how is it possible to move them from Kodak diversity to full inclusion for conservatives in the curriculum, instruction and leadership ranks?
Case not yet made for shifting property tax for services
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Congressional efforts to drive Big Tobacco out of business is one reason to be wary of a shift of taxes to services — a key feature of House Speaker Glenn Richardson’s tax-swap proposal.
Having watched the apparatus of government employed against “predatory” lenders — a category demonized, but only anecdotally defined — and watching now as Congress proposes to loot Big Tobacco to create a new health care entitlement, alarm bells ring at the prospect of expanding the reach of government into the service sector.
It’s easy to imagine a populist governor and a tax-the-rich General Assembly deciding that lenders making high-interest loans, for example, are “predators” and that various of their services should be taxed more aggressively to compensate their “victims.” Or that various forms of medical services should be taxed higher to bail out Grady Hospital or to create a trauma network statewide.
The point is, simply, that giving legislators a wide array of new taxing possibilities should raise red flags among those concerned about the growth and spread of government. Look, for example, at what’s happened to the city of Atlanta’s tax on airport car rentals. When approved more than a decade ago, the 3 percent levy was to be used to finance $58 million in improvements related to a new basketball arena for the Atlanta Hawks. Now, it’s used by Atlanta to finance programs for the homeless. Who knew?
First off, the 3 percent tax on a service — car rentals — was levied because it was easy. People renting cars at some future date are a class not yet formed and, therefore, unable to raise objections. Secondly, shifts occur unnoticed. Once levied, taxes don’t go away.
Fiscal conservatives should welcome a straightforward tax on consumption that is part of comprehensive reform. At the federal level, according to the Tax Foundation, 41 percent of the U.S. population is completely outside the income tax system, and since 2000, the number of filers with zero income tax liability has increased from 29 million to 43 million, a 50 percent increase. It’s worth noting, too, that the top 1 percent pay a greater burden than the bottom 90 percent combined. A nation that believes the other guy is picking up the tab is one with an insatiable appetite for new and expanded entitlements.
The speaker’s proposal is to swap the property tax for the rich and poor alike for an expanded tax on consumption. That’s one option. But it’s not altogether clear to this fiscal conservative why vast wealth in the form of property should be spared with no distinction except whether the owner resides in Georgia or elsewhere.
To be sure, the property tax is hated and, as used to finance public education, is archaic. When imposed, it was the most universal form of wealth and, furthermore, the tax man could see it, touch it and assign value to it. It was generally collected as a single payment in the fall after the crops came in, something that coincidentally provided a useful check on government growth. Property owners could easily compare this year’s cost of government to the last — and raise Cain when its expenses started getting out of hand.
Some relief may very well be in order. There are any number of ways to do it.
Floridans are voting Jan. 29 on a proposal to double the $25,000 homestead exemption, which is estimated to save homeowners an average of $240 per year. Other property owners would see increases capped at 10 percent per year. There are other provisions, too, but the point here to there are options to address specific problems. One option, suggested by a contributor to the Thinking Right blog, is to give a $1,000 voucher to be used to pay property taxes.
Or, as proposed by state Rep. Mark Burkhalter (R-Alpharetta), eliminate the property tax on vehicles — the birthday tax, he calls it, because it falls due on your birthday. State Rep. Ed Lindsey (R-Atlanta) has a proposal to cap property tax increases to 3 percent, something Florida did in 1992, or at the consumer price index.
Because the property tax is hated is a good reason for politicians to oppose it. But not for the rest of us, until we are certain that the alternative is warranted, manageable and its flaws are not worse.
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Don’t subsidize high-risk development
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Should taxpayers or insurance policy-holders outside high-risk areas — coastal areas in hurricane-prone regions, for example — subsidize homeowners who choose to buy or build there?
Florida, faced with a retreat by private-sector insurance companies from high-risk coastal areas, created its own Citizens Insurance Corp. To spread its risk, Florida allowed the pool to sell complete homeowners’ coverage throughout Florida. Taxpayers now have $8 billion in the pool to pay claims that could total $433 billion in the event of a catastrophe.
In Congress, meanwhile, the House on Thursday passed a sweeping proposal to create a risk pool that states can choose to join. The intent is to lower premiums in states where natural disasters, including earthquakes, hurricanes, flooding or other perils have forced insurers to jack up rates. Florida lawmakers certainly wanted the pool and have pushed for it since Hurricane Andrew rolled over South Florida in 1992.
The House bill would establish a quasi-governmental entity that would issue long-term catastrophe bonds. Those proceeds would be used to fund state pools. When those go broke, the federal government would issue long-term, low-interest loans directly to the state. States could also buy reinsurance from the feds for the state pool. Again, think of Florida: $8 billion in assets; $433 billion in policy coverage.
White House officials say President Bush will veto the bill if it passes the Senate, which is not expected to take it up until early next year. The legislation, the administration correctly notes, squeezes out private insurers and “clearly result in a subsidy for insurers, state insurance programs and their policyholders.” It suggests, too, that the taxpayer subsidies encourage “overdevelopment in hurricane- and earthquake-prone areas, putting more people in harm’s way.”
The question here: Should states permit development, or redevelopment, in such areas? Should property owners pay the full cost of insurance? (The correct answers, incidentally, are no and yes.) Bonus question: Is this a bill President Bush should veto if it passes? (Correct answer: Yes, even if it passes just ahead of next year’s General Election.)
Six in Reserve, Guard steadfast in their service
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
On a quiet fall Sunday afternoon, returning home from a three-day festival in Tennessee, my wife suggested that we drive through the scenic 450-acre grounds of the Mountain Home Veterans Administration Medical Center.
It is a lovely, well-maintained, inviting campus with a teaching and research hospital available to 170,000 veterans in 41 counties in Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina and Kentucky. In early afternoon, before the church crowd had begun to move about, the campus was still.
Just inside the gate, we turned into the 99-acre National Cemetery, a burial ground originally intended for the Union dead in the Civil War. In the stillness of the day, we walk the rows and read the markers. The burials were occurring, one beside the other, as they died.
There was no distinction made to rank or to station in life. Recipients of the Medal of Honor are buried with the simple markers reserved for those who answered the nation’s call.
Heroes and those who weren’t, the ordinary men and women who were most likely strangers in civilian life, united by the shared ideal of national service. The simple white marble markers, arrayed for eternity as soldiers stand in life, are elegant reminders that all who have served have been a part of something that matters more than the individual does.
On a Sunday afternoon in November, I stood before the ranks of the those who are still a part of something that matters more, the soldiers of the Georgia Army National Guard and the U.S. Army Reserves. For three decades now, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has honored the most outstanding citizen-soldiers in the enlisted and noncommissioned officer ranks of the Guard and Reserves.
Every American given to doubt about whether the country still attracts volunteers of the caliber of the Greatest Generation should have the opportunity to visit with professional citizen-soldiers such as the six chosen by the Guard and Reserve for the AJC’s Army Reserve Components Achievement Awards. They are exemplary evidence that America is a blessed nation.
As President Bush said earlier this month in remarks to the Heritage Foundation:
“I believe 50 years from now an American President will be speaking … and say: ‘Thank God that generation that wrote the first chapter in the 21st century understood the power of freedom to bring the peace we want.” This is that generation.
• It is Pfc. Brandon Conway of Suwanee, a landscaper in civilian life, who joined a combat unit, Winder’s Co. C, 1st Battalion, 121st Infantry. “An unusually high number of our new members are opting to serve in combat arms units,” said Lt. Gen. David B. Poythress, the state’s retiring adjutant general, noting that at Georgia Army Guard units are at 110 percent of authorized strength.
• It is Pfc. Raymond C. Valez of Lilburn, a member of the Army Reserve’s 427th Medical Battalion at Ft. Gillem.
• Staff Sgt. Christopher Aldred of North Augusta, S.C., an Iraqi veteran and assistant operations sergeant in Augusta’s 878th Engineer Battalion of the Georgia Guard.
• Sgt. Francis S. Laudano of Clarksville, Tenn., another Iraqi veteran in the Reserve’s 310th Psychological Operations Co. at Forest Park, Ga. He is a customer service representative while pursuing a college degree.
• Sgt. 1st Class Andrew B. Gideon, an Army Guardsman and Iraqi veteran who was awarded the Purple Heart for injuries sustained when his vehicle was hit by an improvised explosive device. Gideon, a Georgia State Patrol officer, resides in Lafayette. He deployed to Iraq with Calhoun’s 1st Squadron, 108th Reconnaissance Surveillance Target Acquisition unit.
• Sgt. 1st Class Laurie A. Jones of Lithonia, who originally joined the Army in 1983, is the NCO in charge of the Army Reserve Casualty Program for the reserves at Ft. McPherson. She juggles a military career with being a single mother of two sons.
Through all of this nation’s polarizing debate on the war, they have remained focused, acknowledging as citizens the divisions that exist in their country, while as soldiers remaining undeterred and distracted from the necessary preparation for the duty that calls.
Their professionalism does them — and our country — proud.
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Property taxes, Pakistan, vouchers
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s weekend free-for-all. Pick a topic:
• No need to wonder where voters stand on higher taxes and more government. Across the country, with rare exception, they rejected one grand scheme after another on Tuesday. Oregon even rejected a tax on cigarettes that would fund “healthy children” — the state version of the proposal now before Congress to wildly increase the cost of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. Supporters blamed Big Tobacco. Big Tobacco has a lot of pull with voters in a tofu state. Voters rejected it because they know cost projections are smoke and mirrors.
• Nine labor unions representing Amtrak employees reject binding arbitration. A strike’s possible. Roads never strike. Once built we can use them at our convenience to go where we want when we want. You’ll never be rich if your job requires your presence for you to make money. We’ll never be truly mobile if getting there requires an operator.
• Subsidizing Amtrak will cost taxpayers $11.4 billion over the next six years under a bill the Senate passed 70-22. No longer is profitability a goal. Now it’s expanding service. Red ink by the gallons will continue to flow. Elections do have consequences.
• Sonny doesn’t think House Speaker Glenn Richardson’s GREAT tax plan is all that great. “How do we help homeowners who face rapid substantial escalations in these [property] assessments?” he asked at the Atlanta Press Club this week. How about a two-tiered property tax? Pay taxes annually on the basis of purchase price plus the rate of inflation. Then when it’s sold, recover the difference between that and assessments. Neither homeowners nor the tax man lose.
• More reasons Congress has an 11 percent approval rating: House Democrats, still milking the dismissal of eight U.S. attorneys for presumed political advantage, insist they’ll hold White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten and former presidential counselor Harriet Miers in contempt for refusing to provide information. And House Speaker Nancy Pelosi schedules a vote that will fund troops in Iraq and Afghanistan for four months — four months — tagged with a requirement that troop withdrawals begin immediately. These are unserious people.
• Clayton County commissioners have scheduled a 1-cent local option sales increase referendum for February — reason enough to vote no. A referendum to levy taxes or borrow money should always be held on primary or General Election day. The General Assembly should put it in law. They’re scheduled at other times to keep down turnout.
• If President Bush is reading our editorials, and if he heeds the advice to cut off Pakistan’s $10 billion aid because of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf’s use of a national emergency declaration to seize power, and if, as a result of Bush following our advice, Musharraf falls and Pakistan becomes another Iran (with nuclear weapons), I’m boycotting the board’s next Global Warming Angst session. And don’t expect me at the Blame Bush retreat, either.
• How to tell if you’re a newcomer: The name Nick Belluso means nothing to you. He ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate, governor, lieutenant governor, secretary of state, the state House and Senate, Atlanta City Council and other offices. Died this week in Conyers at the age of 85.
• For education workplace unions, vouchers are the poison that will destroy their commanding influence over public schools, boards and legislatures. No surprise, then, that the National Education Association, the parent of Georgia Association of Educators, poured at least $3.15 million of teachers’ money into the successful effort to defeat a statewide voucher plan in Utah. Education reformers have to be creative in finding other routes — including charter schools and tax credits — to give parents choice.
• Who’d have thought any of us would live to see this day? But here it is, the president of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, sounds more rational about Iraq than House Democrats. “What does France want? A united Iraq. It is in no one’s interest to see Iraq dismantled. We want a democratic Iraq.” But then he’s not running here, counting on Iraq to give his party the White House.
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Good day for Rudy?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Like most potential voters drawn to the Republican presidential field, religious conservatives are in a quandary. Rudy Giuliani’s pro-choice views and support for civil unions turn off many, while Mitt Romney’s Mormonism continues to be a concern to some. I’d guess 10 percent of the Christian conservative base.
On Wednesday, though, the attention was on Giuliani — or more specifically the endorsement of Giuliani by televangelist Pat Robertson, founder of the Christian Coalition, the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) and Regent University.
It’s debatable whether Robertson’s endorsement will have much impact. Frankly, the earlier endorsement of Romney by Bob Jones III, chancellor of the South Carolina university his grandfather founded, had more impact. If the base’s acceptance problem is a candidate’s faith, the endorsement of an influential figure on the religious Right could calm doubts. But their policy differences with Giuliani and concerns about his personal life are not likely to be erased by Robertson.
Romney, of course, sought to stoke those flames. “I don’t think the Republican party will choose a pro-choice, pro-gay civil union candidate to lead our party,” he said. “I think in order to win the White House we have to bring together the coalition of conservatives that won the White House for Ronald Reagan and George Herbert Walker Bush and George W. Bush and that is social, economic, and foreign policy conservatives. And that is why I think that others that are running in this race, myself included, have a better shot of winning the White House.”
Giuliani has other potential problems brewing, too. The New York Times reports today that U.S. prosecutors in Winchester, N.Y., are seeking an indictment against Rudy’s police commissioner, Bernard B. Kerik, on charges that include tax fraud, corruption and conspiracy. Giuliani was Kerik’s patron and even recommended him to President Bush to head Homeland Security.
Questions are beginning to be raised, too, about the client list of Guiliani Partners, a consulting firm he founded.
Robertson’s endorsement may sway a few. But the key test now is electability. Giuliani can’t stand any hits on his ability to manage his public or private life. My gut, still, is that Christian conservatives overcome their concerns about Romney’s Mormonism — and he wins the nomination.
Hold the election, get ‘em out
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Sierra Leone, a West African country wracked by a 10-year civil war that ended in 2002 held its first elections in September since UN peacekeepers left in 2005.
The opposition party won. Within hours after returns were declared official, a new president, Ernest Bai Koroma, was sworn in.
There’s a lesson here for us.
An archiac horse-and-buggy system of elections dictates that newly-elected officials take office two months or more after results are known. Presumably the time is needed to allow office-holders who are defeated or retiring to finish up the affairs of the office while allowing the newcomer time to settle-up business affairs, hitch up the mules, and make the long arduous journey to Atlanta — or to the county seat.
And yet we have the example here of a nation so divided that a 10-year civil war ensued. To guard against futher bloodshed, three years of international peacekeepers were required. And yet within hours of the official results, the newly-elected president takes the oath of office.
It’s time for a change here. If a nation two years removed from peacekeepers and major American corporations are able to promptly install new leaders, Georgians can too.
In a number of local elections around Metro Atlanta, mayors lost or are in runoffs. In Avondale Estates, Jonesboro, Kennesaw and Lithonia, mayors were turned out. In three others — Norcross, Riverdale and Doraville — mayors were forced into runoffs. Doraville Mayor Ray Jenkins, most will recall, stirred controversy when he attempted to fire popular police chief and Iraqi veteran John King.
In Macon, a city of 94,000 located 90 minutes south of Atlanta, former State Rep. Robert Reichert, a Democrat, defeated a Republican challenger with 96 percent of the vote. He replaces Jack Ellis, who gained national attention for cozying up to Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and for divisive long-running disputes with city council.
Election results that leave departing office-holders in place for months at the time serve no good purpose. The Constitution and local election law in Georgia should be brought into the new century. Defeated or retiring office-holders, including governors and others who hold statewide constitutional offices, should depart promptly after election results are declared official. Add a provision, if deemed useful, to pay them as consultants for up to 30 days, if they agree to cooperate on transition with their successors. Changing the timetable for Constitutional offices would, obviously, require a constitutional amendment. Others could be updated by general and local law.
Companies change CEOs overnight with no apparent difficulties. State and local governments should too.
Answers to credit woes are not in black and white
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Among blacks, 52 percent have credit scores that would classify them as subprime borrowers.
In metro Atlanta, 49 percent of blacks wind up with a subprime mortgage.
Among whites, 16 percent have managed their personal credit so poorly that they’d be classified as subprime borrowers.
In metro Atlanta, 13 percent of whites end up with subprime mortgages.
What’s the lesson here? In recent decades, a cult has grown on the premise that discrimination is a defining characteristic of business, banking, education, criminal justice, the federal response to disasters and most every other institution of the American culture and life. Often it’s based on some quick analysis of numbers, often done by advocacy organizations, showing racial differences in outcomes.
Without question, more blacks (49 percent) than Hispanics (34 percent), more Hispanics than whites (13 percent) and more whites than Asians (10 percent) used subprime loans to buy a house. As the AJC headline put it, black Atlantans are “frequently snared by subprime loans.”
“Frequently snared” suggests that individuals walking down the street were accosted by greedy or unscrupulous lenders on the basis of their race and impaled with subprime loans. A similar phrasing is often employed by activists convinced that discrimination is rampant in the criminal justice system because, disproportionately, more blacks are in prison. The usual entry point is “more in prison than in college,” failing to note that the college-age years, normally18-24, are a fraction of an adult’s life.
Similar “studies” — most often done by advocacy groups, sometimes done by news organizations and rarely done by serious researchers — ask individuals whether they “feel” victimized by discrimination or whether they “think” it exists.
The point here is that casting every phenomenon as discrimination based on a simple analysis of disparities or on what individuals think cultivates ill will and increases the perception that the world is cruel and foreboding place that whimsically “snares” individuals for punishment on the basis of some identifying feature, usually race.
Those who believe that naturally seek recourse in government. And more government. Activists and politicians cultivate the belief that discrimination is extant and entrenched because that belief is central to their power, wealth and re-elections.
It’s not surprising, therefore, that they look at numbers showing that blacks are more likely than whites to take out high-interest subprime loans, and that defaults and foreclosures on those loans have risen sharply, and see a need for more government.
But problems wrongly identified lead to the wrong solutions.
If individuals are making bad borrowing choices or if they’re failing to manage credit properly — which would seem to be the case when more than half the blacks in metro Atlanta are pushed into the subprime category — a different remedy is required.
A fix that requires lenders to push out more money, or to price credit differently, to “overcome” the presumption of race discrimination would worsen the problem. That’s especially true if, in fact, individuals are making uninformed choices about how much house they can buy, what to look for in a home, how to manage savings and debt, and how to shop for mortgages.
While discrimination may sometimes be real, the marketplace is brutal to lenders and to businesses that improperly price their risk or make foolish business decisions. The Citigroup Inc. board just canned its chairman and chief executive officer, Charles Prince, for bad-debt losses. The Merrill Lynch & Co. board just did the same with CEO Stan O’Neal for bad investment decisions in subprime debt. Besides that, government and news organizations would excoriate lenders suspected of discriminating racially.
It’s not as sexy as institutional discrimination, but the remedy here is education. Financial education and credit counseling. Potential borrowers should know where to look for loans and how much they can afford. Dealing with the neighborhood check-cashing outlet or the store-front broker or lender, not discrimination, is the likely culprit.
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Vote — with proper ID
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
With elections tomorrow, Georgia’s photo ID requirement has resurfaced — as, indeed, it might until Democrats reclaim all power under the Gold Dome . The questions are about whether blacks in rural areas might represent a disproportionately high number of those without proper ID.
Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel takes great exception to AJC analysis that, she wrote in an opinion piece today, provided “blatantly misleading information that was clearly meant to scare voters and lead them to believe that their votes in Tuesday’s election may be dismissed without cause.”
She pointed out, yet again, that voters without proper ID can cast a provisional ballot, can vote absentee without photo ID and can, in any event, get free and proper ID at their county’s voter registrar’s office and at driver’s license offices. And, too, she noted, dozens of local elections have already been held with the ID requirement without problems.
On Voter ID, I’m in Handel’s corner.It always amazes me how much effort critics will expend protesting a reasonable effort to improve the integrity of the voting process — but never lift a finger to serve the population allegedly at risk. If there’s been any effort at all by those who complain to, say, run a car pool once a month to obtain the free IDs, it’s not been reported in anything I’ve read.
Yes, a photo ID requirement is a “barrier.” But so, too, is the requirement that voters be 18 or older, that they come to a designated place on a certain day to cast ballots, that they inconvenience themselves to vote absentee, that they not be felons, and that they verify eligibility. All are reasonable and all are legal.
To commentators, partisans and critics across Georgia, the time has come: Give it a rest. Move on. Photo ID is constitutional.
Judges’ activism already coming home to roost
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
On both the Georgia and the U.S. Supreme Court, the need is the same — to make certain that those chosen are not tempted to write opinions that do “violence to the fundamental constitutional principle of separation of powers,” as Justice George H. Carley characterized the majority’s Genarlow Wilson decision. And just as Carley warned, the fallout has begun.
Superior Court Judge Bryant Culpepper of the Macon Judicial Circuit retired Thursday. But on Wednesday, citing the Supreme Court’s decision in the Wilson case, he granted a new trial to a convicted kidnapper. The required 25-year minimum sentence for kidnapping children is “way out and above more than what you ought to have to serve,” The Macon Telegraph quoted Culpepper as saying at the time of sentencing in July.
Noting the Wilson decision, he this week found the minimum sentence to constitute “cruel and unusual” punishment. “We can’t prosecute a kidnapping case here in this circuit [covering three counties] until something is done about it,” District Attorney Howard Simms told The Telegraph.
“Now,” said state Senate President Pro Tem Eric Johnson (R-Savannah) Friday, “judges can determine anything is ‘cruel and unusual’ and throw out a case or pull somebody out of jail.”
In the dissent Carley wrote for himself and justices Harold Melton and Harris Hines, he warned:
“Wilson is certainly not the only defendant convicted of aggravated child molestation who benefits at the expense of today’s judicial reduction of the General Assembly’s powers to legislate. … At present, any and all defendants who were ever convicted of aggravated child molestation and sentenced for a felony under circumstances similar to Wilson are, as a matter of law, entitled to be completely discharged from lawful custody. … Moreover, nothing … limits its application to cases involving minors who engage in voluntary sexual acts …”
Furthermore, he wrote, anybody convicted for a crime for which the sentence was later reduced is now entitled to argue that his longer sentence is now “cruel and unusual” and that he should be released. Superior courts, wrote Carley, should be prepared for “a flood” of petitioners asking to be set free.
It’s not just the unintended consequences of the majority’s activism that’s troubling, either. It is that, having committed this offense, it’s certain to be a repeat offender.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas spoke to this temptation while in Atlanta recently to sign copies of his memoir, “My Grandfather’s Son.” Said Thomas:
“I think that I have taken an oath to decide cases impartially and that does not include my personal opinion. My personal opinions are mine and not something I can inflict on your Constitution or on your laws. What I try to do in a very practical way and in an over-arching way is to put a firewall between my personal opinion and your Constitution and your statutory law. In my 16 years, I have never imposed my personal opinion on any of those.”
He was asked, too, about the toughest cases to come before him. “The cases that are hard are when your heart wants you to do one thing and the law requires you to do something else,” Justice Thomas said. “That is a hard case — and that is where the discipline of being a judge comes in.”
Discipline, in this case, would have required the majority to respect expressed legislative intent. “This has never been about Genarlow Wilson,” said state Sen. Johnson, an authority on the legislature’s intent in this particular case. “It has been about adherence to the rule of law.”
The General Assembly “expressly declined to make this law retroactive,” he noted earlier, and “by ignoring this part of the legislature’s wishes, this court has deliberately chosen to disregard” the legislature’s legitimate constitutional authority. That is activism.
“If you don’t like the law,” said Johnson, “you change the lawmakers.” If you don’t like the activism, you change the judges.
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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.
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