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Thursday, December 27, 2007
Mortgage fraud; FEMA; and Beltline
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s weekend free-for-all. Pick a topic:
• Five things I have no need to be told in the new year: Details of Jane Fonda’s private life — or, for that matter, anything else about the bedroom activities of any other celebrity, including the gender of their mates. When fish get sick — unless it’s caused by pollution or is one I’m about to eat. What Al Sharpton thinks, Rosie O’Donnell says or Britney Spears reveals.
• If DeKalb County wants owners of commercial buildings and of 160,000 homes built before 1993 to switch-out commodes and shower heads when they’re sold, it should pay the tab. Rebates and lowered rates would compensate. The intent is to save water. But surely we cannot stop here. There has to be some penalty for the flush-happy who abuse their flushing privileges by flushing twice, thereby defeating the design intent of the new toilets.
• Quote of the Week: “If we are not going to use the Senate floor to do the business of the American people, can we set up a flea market or something, so that something positive is happening?” asked U.S. Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.). Congress is a flea market. The problem is that half the population wants merchandise for free — and cannot fathom why owners might object.
• “Fraud goes a long way toward explaining why mortgage defaults and foreclosures” are skyrocketing, reports The Wall Street Journal. White-collar criminals in Atlanta got $6.8 million in mortgages from Bear Stearns Co. One borrower being prosecuted by the feds here got a $1.8 million mortgage after claiming monthly income of $50,000, with assets of $3 million. He was a 23-year-old phone technician with an income of $105,000 per year and $35,000 in assets. The distressing realization is how many professionals are involved.
• Headline: “Home price dip hits Atlanta.” Thinking Right connects the dots: The $1.8 million loan cited above was for a home that later sold out of foreclosure for $1.1 million. Eliminate fraud, speculation and purchases that were beyond the means of borrowers and expect the market to settle, as in “Home price dip …”
• The Federal Emergency Management Agency begins testing trailers still occupied by Hurricane Katrina evacuees following complaints about air quality. Tests should be conducted, too, for those built at the same time and sold in the private sector. Otherwise, some critics won’t believe the findings if trailers are given a clean bill. And if there are air quality problems — formaldehyde is found in some mobile home building materials — critics will argue that Katrina victims were singled out because of their race or class.
• Change the law. DeKalb County purchasing officials authorized 26 payments of just under $50,000 to one company over a five-month period. Anything $50,000 or above would have required competitive bidding. The law should require competitive bids when any service can reasonably be expected to exceed $50,000 a year, except in a legitimate emergency. Offenders should go to jail.
• One man’s sand is another man’s gold. John Woodham, an Atlanta attorney, raises perfectly legitimate questions about the more than two dozen tax allocation districts across Georgia, and for that he is described as a man who “has managed … to throw sand in the gears” of the Atlanta Beltline project. The “sand” quote comes from Terri Montague, president and CEO of Atlanta Beltline Inc. Her sand, our gold. Woodham’s lawsuit questions whether school tax money can be diverted to other purposes. That’s a key question, since every child brought into a tax allocation district anywhere in Georgia has to be educated on somebody else’s dime. The suit is now before the state Supreme Court.
• On New Year’s Day, Texas begins to levy a $5-per customer tax on strip club patrons. Proceeds, estimated at $40 million per year, will be used to fund rape counseling centers. Strip clubs are suing, as they should. Two kinds of taxes should be outlawed: Those unrelated to the expenditure for which it is levied and those where the people to be taxed are not present to object — people who rent cars, for example.
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The courage of a martyr
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
From the moment she returned to Pakistan in October from an eight-year exile, the danger to Benazir Bhutto was evident. She narrowly escaped injury when her homecoming parade was targeted by a suicide bomber, killing more than 140 people in Karachi.
Bhutto and at least 20 others were killed Thursday by a gunman who later blew himself up as she was leaving a campaign rally in Rawalpindi near the capital of Islamabad. She was shot in the neck and chest as she entered a vehicle to leave the rally.
Supporters at the hospital where she was pronounced dead reacted angrily, chanting “Dog, Musharraf, dog.” Bhutto, who served twice as prime minister between 1988 and 1996, was campaigning for the Pakistan People’s Party in opposition to President Pervez Musharraf in Jan. 8 parliamentary elections.
Musharraf would have been a fool to sanction in any way whatsoever any attempt to cause harm to Bhutto. More likely the assassination will be traced to extremists, probably connected to al-Qaida, determined to topple Musharraf. It is possible, too, that it is the work of crazies who couldn’t abide the prospect that Bhutto might return to power.
It is, in any event, a tragic day for Pakistan, for democracy and for the region.
Occasionally we stand in awe at the courage of leaders in other lands. Bhutto knew full well that this day could very well come, and probably would. And yet she came. That is the courage of a martyr.
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