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Thursday, December 20, 2007
Vouchers, ethanol, Fulton sheriff
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s weekend free-for-all. Pick a topic:
• Flush with endowment cash and recognizing that top-tiered private schools are becoming accessible only to the rich and the poor, Harvard University opens itself to the middle class. Families earning between $60,000 and $120,000 will pay tuition of up to 10 percent of family income. Families earning between $120,000 and $180,000 will pay the full 10 percent. The University of Pennsylvania gives free room, board and tuition to students with family incomes of less than $60,000. It’ll gradually up that to $100,000.
• Nevermind my recent assertion that you’ll never be rich if the job requires your actual presence to make money. Alex Rodriguez of the New York Yankees, having walked out of a 10-year $252 million contract signed originally with the Texas Rangers, signs a new deal for $275 million over 10 years. It’ll pay him $32 million in 2009 and 2010. That’s rich.
• There’s hope. Hope that all Georgia restaurants will routinely stock sweet tea. And the reason for hope? Ritz-Carlton Buckhead has discovered, and serves, fried pies. OK, they gussy ‘em up and charge nine bucks for two. But at least they’re there.
• Shocking, yes, the news that almost one in four — 24 percent — of the out-of-state college students improperly classified as in-state for tuition purposes are also collecting HOPE. A state audit sampled students enrolled from out of state and found that 28 percent had been reclassified as residents between the spring of 2004 and spring of 2006. Each improperly classified student cost taxpayers about $7,300 per year.
• A Princeton student who claimed to have been beaten by two men because he’s a conservative admits he made it up. His injuries were self-inflicted. So common are “hate” hoaxes, especially those involving graffiti, that the first question to ask is whether “victims” have agendas.
• Quote on ethanol from an executive with the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association: “We think there will be a day when people ask ‘Why in the world did we do this?’” Congress has just passed an energy bill mandating production of 36 billion gallons of ethanol by 2022, up from 6 billion now. The technology doesn’t exist to get cellulosic ethanol from switch grass and wood chips, though Congress is counting on 21 billion gallons of it after 2015. Meanwhile, corn in the tank is pushing up food prices, by $47 per person in a year, according to one study. Why in the world did we do this?
• Thinking Right connects the dots, so you don’t have to. Headline Sunday: “Cocaine terms may be reduced” for 700 Georgians in federal prison for crack cocaine offenses. The first wave hitting the streets starting March 3. Headline Monday: “Freed offenders repeat crimes.”
• Headline: “Vouchers popular, limited.” OK. Expand them. The next headline should be: “Vouchers popular, sufficient.”
• Vouchers or not, however, school choice is inevitable. Parents want it. Henry Ford Institute, Ford Motor Company Fund, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have joined to launch a national network of small high schools modeled after the Henry Ford Academy in Dearborn, Mich. That’s a 10-year-old charter with a 95 percent graduation rate, 99 percent of whom go on to college. The first of the new schools comes in Chicago, but Atlanta is a candidate too, reports the Georgia Public Policy Foundation, which helped start the successful Tech High charter in Atlanta.
• The Marietta Conference Center and Resort is to Marietta what commuter rail will be to Georgia: A public investment that keeps on needing and never quite seems to nail the market.
• Headline on ajc.com: “77 Fulton teachers overpaid.” Just 77? I’d say all being paid for advanced degrees unrelated to their teaching field are being overpaid.
• Fulton needs a sheriff to. … Nope, can’t think of any good way to finish that sentence.
• New Jersey’s in the process of ending capital punishment. If you agree, see the movie “No Country for Old Men.” Or read the trial transcripts of those on death row.
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In and out, up and down
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Former Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney finds that Democrats and Republicans are just alike — both “eat out of the hands of corrupt lobbyists and feed at the same corporate trough” — so she’s abandoning the Dems to run for the Green Party’s presidential nomination.
In recent weeks, she’s campaigned in Texas, Oklahoma, Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota and Wisconsin. The Green Party will choose its nominee from among a field that includes McKinney and six others at a national convention in Chicago next July.
McKinney’s in — and it appears that Republican presidential candidate Tom Tancredo, a five-term Congressman from Colorado who had based his campaign on opposition to illegal immigration, is out. His withdrawal announcement is expected today in Iowa. He may be opting, instead, to run for the U.S. Senate to replace Republican Wayne Allard, who is retiring. Tancredo was never among those likely to get the nomination.
Meanwhile, on the campaign front, an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released Wednesday finds that Rudy Giuliani has dropped 13 points nationally since November and is tied with Mitt Romney at 20 percent among Republican primary voters. Mike Huckabee’s third at 17. A brokered convention? Ask again after Feb. 5, which should be a big day for Giuliani.
McKinney, if she gets the Green Party nomination, could siphon off a few Democrats. But a nominee who can’t get reelected in an overwhelmingly Demcratic district is not much of a threat to either party. Like Jane Fonda, she strikes me as no more than a footnote from the past, a figure who once fired the passions but who’s now no more than an occasional curiosity.
In, out, up, down. The question really, though, is whether anybody is engaged in politics now. We may declare here a Christmas Cease Fire, giving ‘em all a rest until the new year. Tuned in or tuned out?
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