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Thursday, December 13, 2007
A grievance museum, energy bill
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s weekend free-for-all. Pick a topic:
• Pssst. Geography doesn’t move. People do. Any comparison of attitudes in Gwinnett County about MARTA today and decades ago is valid only if we assume that places have minds of their own. Since they don’t, it’s not surprising that newcomers hold different views than those residents who died, moved or changed their minds. A poll for the Gwinnett Village Community Improvement District finds that two-thirds of active Gwinnett voters view MARTA favorably.
• Odd tidbits in stories that reveal more about the writer than the issue: Often when it’s a crazed gunman, the tidbit is prior military service, especially in Vietnam. But in one wire service account of the gunman who killed four people at a missionary training school in Colorado Springs, Colo. “was home schooled by his family …” If one believes home schoolers are weird out-of-the-mainstream people — I don’t — the tidbit’s relevant. If not, it’s a relevant as the killer’s favorite fast-food restaurant.
• My sympathies now fall to Michael Vick. A 23-month sentence and a “fine” that could exceed $142 million in loss of earnings is a penalty that I’d consider excessive.
• Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee draw criticism for talking about religion. But when Democrats politick from the pulpit just before elections, especially in black churches, not a peep.
• A hundred and twenty-five million dollars for a Center for Civil and Human Rights in downtown Atlanta? Just what the world needs: An All Grievances Past and Present Exhibition Hall.
• I gotta tell you this drought brings some real eccentrics into the news. No thanks, I’ll not take 5-gallon showers with water collected from the roof or dry shave or brush without water.
• Bipartisanship fails. Taxpayers lose. The Senate rejects a proposal by Sens. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) and Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) to limit farm payments to $250,000 yearly per married couple, down from the current $360,000 — though loopholes allow them to collect more. It would also have required that farmers be “actively engaged” to receive subsidies. The administration wanted to reduce payments to individuals who earn more than $200,000. The cap now is $2.5 million. Bush threatens a veto of the five-year, $286 billion bill.
• Almost 900 special needs kids are beneficiaries of the state’s new scholarship/voucher program. And it’s not rich white kids, who for the most part already have school choice. Of the 899 children who got scholarships averaging $6,300 to buy services where their parents deemed best, 34 percent qualify for free and reduced-price lunches. Some 494 are white, 359 black; in all, 45 percent are nonwhite. The 899 came from a public school population of 199,509. So much for vouchers being a threat to them.
• Please, send this Congress home and bring on the 2008 elections. Once again Democrats send the president a costly campaign-agenda bill that sharply increases spending on the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. Once again, as promised, President Bush issues a veto. Give it a few months. It’ll be sent back, essentially unchanged, to another veto certainty.
• Geez, Atlanta, it’s just a coach.
• If Georgia builds a multimodal station to serve metro Atlanta, it should be at the Atlanta airport, not in the downtown railroad gulch. That area’s congested already. State and local governments shouldn’t add traffic to roads that are already congested.
• It’s called a “major victory for coal-dependent utilities in the South, especially Atlanta-based Southern Co.” In reality, it’s a victory for me, a consumer who wants politicians to stop hiding their interest-group agendas in my living costs. The issue here concerns an energy bill working its way through Congress. Senate Democrats dropped the provision requiring power companies to generate 15 percent of electricity from renewable sources by 2015. Forcing consumers to pay higher costs for energy that’s not economically viable — windmills, for example — doesn’t hurt Southern Co. It hurts me. They buy and pass the costs along. We pay.
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Don’t ask reporters
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mitt Romney or Mike Huckabee?
Three weeks out from the Jan. 3 caucuses, the two are in a dead heat in Iowa. Romney started running TV this week accusing Huckabee of being soft on illegal immigration for supporting college tuition breaks for illegals who had graduated from high schools in Arkansas. Huckabee, though, prompted the greater stir by asking a New York Times reporter: “Don’t Mormons believe that Jesus and the devil are brothers?”
Huckabee is an ordained Southern Baptist minister with a theology degree. Posing such a question to a reporter is not a legitimate inquiry or a search for facts . It’s an effort to plant doubt about Romney’s Mormonism. Huckabee acknowledged as much by apologizing to Romney when they met Wednesday in Iowa.
Huckabee’s getting noticed. A Georgia poll of 800 likely Republican voters conducted by Strategic Vision LLC put him at 23 percent, with Fred Thompson at 20, Rudy Giuliani at 17, John McCain at 11 and Mitt Romney at 10. About 12 percent were undecided. In September, Huckabee registered 6 percent in a poll by the same firm.
Huckabee does handle the media well, especially on questions of faith and values. He comes across as authentic and able to hold his own at the national level. He strikes me, though, as a #2 guy — the Southerner that either Romney or Giuliani will need to help carry the South, especially if Obama-Oprah/Bill Richardson is the Democratic ticket.
Romney or Huckabee? You decide.
