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Thursday, January 17, 2008
Taxes, school vouchers and more township authority
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s weekend free-for-all. Pick a topic:
• Gov. Sonny Perdue in his State of the State proposes eliminating the state’s portion of local property taxes. That’s a quarter mill, which would amount to about $30 for most homeowners. Do it. It’s a nothing tax that never should have been imposed. Then morph the GREAT plan into elimination of property taxes on vehicles — and get back to using the income tax as the vehicle for tax relief. Reward people for working.
• The governor also proposes, again, to increase speeding fines to help pay for a statewide trauma network. Fee-and-spend Republicans, tax-and-spend Democrats same-same. Fees not directly flowing from the service being provided are really taxes. They never go away. Examples are add-on fees used to fund second and third retirement systems for some county officials, like sheriffs.
• The state should offer every child in Clayton County a voucher that could be spent in any public, private or parochial school inside the county or out. It’s a crime to imprison children in dysfunctional systems. Free the Clayton 52,800.
• And imagine, Fulton County schools tracking down students whose families may have moved to other jurisdictions with the intent of booting them. The money should follow the child. Stop this misuse of the workday of public employees.
• State Rep. Mike Jacobs (R-Atlanta) would allow communities to hold referendums and become limited-authority townships. They wouldn’t have power to condemn property, but could control construction, land use and liquor and contract for services. It’s a concept that should have been embraced long ago. Communities need to be able to control their own space. And residents should be able to get a real person — real and responsive — on the telephone. Atlanta is too big for individuals to matter.
• Bobby Jindal, the 36-year-old son of Indian immigrants and a rising conservative superstar, is sworn in as governor of Louisiana, a state with a political culture that sets the standard for corruption. First up: strengthening the state’s ethics laws — thereby setting a fine example for other Republican governors. Be reformers. Get identified with good government.
• Nawaz Sharif, the leading foe of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, accuses him of being a U.S. pawn who’s blindly followed U.S. anti-terror directives that have left the country “drowned in blood.” Of course, anybody who’d tuned into Democratic presidential politics after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto could easily have gotten the impression that it’s up to Washington to decide whether he stays or goes — nonsense, of course.
• Georgia’s gambling enterprise has $600 million in surplus. Some legislators want to use the money to fund a public school program for 3-year-olds. That’s one option. Another would be to reimburse doctors and hospitals for treating the uninsured or to fund a trauma network. It’d take a constitutional amendment — but there’s no reason to create a new entitlement just because money’s available.
• You really have to admire anybody who can get anything done in the public arena in Atlanta, and that includes the valiant souls in the business community trying to divert Grady Hospital from its path to financial ruin. This is not Grady, though. It’s the Atlanta Housing Authority, a national leader in moving public housing from generational warehousing to mixed-income communities that give the poor hope for a better life. And yet local politicians like Councilwoman Felicia Moore are determined to muck it up by attempting to block AHA’s efforts.
• Just curious. Are skies safe when air traffic control unionists aren’t renegotiating contracts? All the dire warnings from public-sector unionists come when they have a financial or membership-recruitment agenda. At other times, the skies are safe, children are getting a top-notch education and buses and trains are all well-maintained.
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Hillary, Obama can be beat
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama could wind up in the White House. That’s a given.
But in many ways either is an inviting opponent for a Republican able to put together the Reagan coalition, while appealing to those turned off by the liberalism of Obama or Clinton. Karl Rove, the former top adviser to President Bush, outlined some of Clinton’s and Obama’s vulnerabilities in remarks Wednesday at the winter meeting of the Republican National Committee. No great surprises.
Hillary, despite retreating to the rhetoric of the fiscal conservative, has proposed more than $800 billion in new spending while opposing the Bush tax cuts, he said. Obama’s vulnerability is that he’s inexperienced and lacks accomplishments in the U.S. Senate. Neither inspires confidence that the’re up to the job of leading the nation in a perilous world.
I’m not sure it matters which of them gets the Democratic nomination. Both have their appeal and their baggage. The Republicans could nominate an opponent with less appeal and more baggage. That prospect will be clearer after Super Tuesday on Feb. 5 when Georgia and 20 other states vote.
Meanwhile, be entertained, as I am by the brouhaha now underway among Democrats in Nevada. I love it when those who attempt to manipulate the system get on their moral high-horse, as the Clinton camp has done in Nevada.
Democratic caucuses are to be held Saturday in nine casinos along the Las Vegas Strip. Those sites were chosen for the convenience of the unions representing hotel employees. Two days after the Culinary Workers Union Local 226 endorsed Obama, six Democrats and the teachers’ union sued to move those sites. The Culinary Workers Union is the largest in Nevada, with 60,000 members.
In a flash, the high-horse emerges. “I think the rules ought to be the same for everybody,” Bill Clinton said Monday in defending the lawsuit. The union mounted its high-horse, too. “Backers of Hillary Clinton are suing in court to take away our right to vote in the caucus.”
Voter ID, deja vu. Any rule not advantaging the party — or the dominant faction — has to be a scheme to “take away our right to vote.”
Who would pay for entertainment these days? So much is free.
