Home > Thinking Right > Archives > 2008 > January
January 2008
Streetcars, pools and tax ‘rebates’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s weekend free-for-all. Pick a topic:
• A state history museum, yes. State money to keep halls of fame in business, no. Taxpayers pumped $60 million over the past 15 years into halls of fame that can’t sustain themselves. Some clarity is needed. What public policy interests do taxpayers have in maintaining facilities only marginally related to Georgia — as in “they were born here”?
• The Legislature overrode one of Gov. Sonny Perdue’s vetoes, the first in 34 years. That’s as it should be. One-party government requires the legislative and executive branches to check each other. When the “team” goes behind closed doors, does the deal and whisks it through the legislature, public cynicism grows. We could do with more separation-of-powers disagreements and fewer stemming from personalities.
• State officials should run at top speed from the Grady Hospital debacle — just as they should from any similar dispute in Podunk. The local alcoholics are not yet ready to give up booze — and nobody can make ‘em.
• What? The proposed special tax district that would bring 10 miles of streetcar lines to Peachtree and vicinity would raise property taxes on condos but not on single-family homes. And why should I be discriminated against for buying a condo? I thought density equaled “smart growth.”
• Politicians — whether they come from the left or the right — should avoid burdening public retirement fund managers with foreign policy requirements. That’s true whether those are companies that sell weapons to Sudan, as proposed by state Sen. David Shafer (R-Duluth), or companies that do business in countries with policies that offend some labor, environmental or “economic justice” constituency. The boards and fund managers are perfectly capable of exercising good judgment. Play statement investing on your own dime.
• It is absurd, simply absurd, to close pools and destroy sectors of the local economy in the name of water conservation. Metro Atlanta’s water use accounts for 1 percent of the flow in the Apalachicola, Chattahoochee, Flint basin at the state line in normal times, 2 percent during droughts, according to experts. A bill authored by state Sen. Chip Rogers (R-Woodstock) would keep pools open. “There is absolutely no evidence that closing swimming pools will noticeably impact our drought situation,” he said.
• The judge in the Brian Nichols murder case, Hilton Fuller of DeKalb County, made the right call. Now get a judge with a reputation for fairness — and for moving trials along. And yes, Fulton District Attorney Paul Howard should continue to press for the death penalty. Never let death penalty opponents kill capital punishment on pocketbook arguments or tactics.
• The $146 billion stimulus package is certain to get the factories fired up. In China, anyway. As U.S. Rep. Phil Gingrey of Marietta notes, $30 billion in tax “rebates” will go “to people who didn’t even pay taxes last year.” Said Lynn Westmoreland of Grantville: “It’s not a tax rebate when we’re borrowing money from China to write checks to ourselves … sending out checks isn’t going to expand the economy, it’s just going to expand the deficit.” All seven House Republicans from Georgia were among the 35 who voted no; 385 voted yes.
• Give us a state transportation plan first — and then we’ll know what congestion relief we’re buying and whether the benefits exceed the cost. A transportation “plan” that gives every interest group what it wants in return for agreeing to sign on to higher taxes is not the answer. Fix congestion. Show us the plan.
• Counting votes in Department of Transportation board elections is a fool’s errand. People lie. But personalities aside, it’s hard to see why any good conservative would wish to throw former state Rep. Mike Evans off the DOT board he chairs. Members of the House and Senate from the 9th Congressional District, 24 in all, will decide today. Advance word is that Evans has 13 and House Speaker Glenn Richardson, who is determined to oust him, has 13. The counters are products of Georgia’s public schools.
Permalink | Comments (161) | Post your comment | Categories: Column
McCain-Romney: 10-9-8…
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
As expected, Rudy Giuliani pulled the plug and endorsed John McCain — something that should help McCain a tad in at least four of next week’s Super Tuesday primaries: New York,New Jersey, Connecticut and Deleware, where 201 delegates are up for grabs.
Rumors are swirling, too, that California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is set to endorse McCain, though he indicated any endorsement will come after Super Tuesday, when California votes. “I’ve always said that I would stay out of the whole thing of endorsing anybody until our, you know, primaries are over, so I think that’s exactly what I’m going to do,” Schwarzenegger said on CNN. California offers 173 delegates, but they’re divided by congressional districts. Schwarzenegger was re-elected in a landslide 2006 and remains popular, so an endorsement before Tuesday could matter.
The two-man race the hunt for delegates has become was evident Wednesday night at the Ronald Reagan Library debate — though Mike Huckabee continues to hang in there, at Romney’s expense.
Romney argued last night that McCain is out of the conservative mainstream. McCain-Feingold. Twice opposing President Bush’s tax cuts on the basis then that they favored the rich, though he subsequently argued that his opposition was because he wanted offsetting spending cuts.
“Those view are outside the view of mainstream Republican thought,” Romney said. “I’m proud of my conservative record,” McCain replied, accusing Romney of leaving Massachusetts with high taxes and heavy debt.
In a preview of clashes to come, Romney accused McCain of dirty tricks in Florida for his last-minute accusation that the governor had supported a date for withdrawal. In the days before Tuesday’s primary, McCain said “If we surrender and wave a white flag, like Senator Clinton wants to do, and withdraw, as Governor Romney wanted to do, there there will be chaos, genocide, and the cost of American blood and treasure would be dramatically higher.”
Romney accused McCain then, and again Wednesday night, of being dishonest.
McCain’s basis was Good Morning America interview last April. The interviewer, Robin Roberts, said “you have also been very vocal in supporting the president and the troop surge. Yet, the American public has lost faith in this war.” Then she asked: “Do you believe that there should be a timetable in withdrawing the troops?”
His reply:
“Well, there’s no question but that the president and Prime Minister al-Maliki have to have a series of timetables and milestones that they speak about. But those shouldn’t be for public pronouncement. You don’t want the enemy to understand how long they have to wait in the weeds until you’re going to be gone. You want to have a series of things you want to accomplish in terms of the strength of the Iraqi military and the Iraqi police and the leadership of the Iraqi government.”
“So, private,” said Robins. “You wouldn’t do it publicly? Because the president has said flat out that he will veto anything the Congress passes about a timetable for troop withdrawals. As president, would you do the same?”
Reply: “Well, of course. Can you imagine a setting where during the Second World War we said to the Germans, gee, if we haven’t reached the Rhine by this date, why, we’ll go home, or if we haven’t gotten this accomplished we’ll pull up and leave? You don’t publish that to your enemy, or they just simply lie in wait until that time. So, of course, you have to work together to create timetables and milestones, but you don’t do that with the opposition.”
McCain can wear a little thin on Iraq — and on his assertion that he was the lone warrior spelling out the troop surge strategy. He was constantly second-guessing the administration on troop numbers, but that is not quite the same as being the leading light of the troop surge strategy. (Check out the Mike Lucovich cartoon today on McCain.)
He’s a loveable fuzz-ball now with an inspiring life story but by October, if he’s the nominee, McCain will be a kooky old war-monger vilified by the left in the same way that LBJ Daisy-ed Barry Goldwater with the famous September, 1964 commercial of the little girl counting off to nuclear war. Goldwater’s slogan was: “In your heart, you know he’s right.” Bill Moyers, LBJ’s press secretary and later a PBS journalist, responded with: “In your guts, you know he’s nuts.” McCain’s habit of smirking dismissively, as he did Wednesday night to Romney’s explanation of his views on Iraq, can come across as bizarre.
Permalink | Comments (97) | Post your comment |
Florida down. Giuliani, too?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
John McCain takes Florida but for Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor who staked out a high-risk strategy of sitting out the early primaries, Florida may be the start — on the end — of the line.
For McCain, it was a breakthrough win— a win in a Republicans-only primary.
“I expect to win it,” Giuliani said in Ft. Meyers Tuesday. But all recent polls had suggested otherwise. And on Tuesday evening, he was in third place, at 15 percent, fighting it out with with Mike Huckabee, well behind both McCain and Mitt Romney, “Wednesday morning, we’ll make a decision,” said earlier. “The winner of Florida will win the nomination; we’re going to win Florida.” Speculation Tuesday afternoon was that he’d drop out Thursday and throw his support to McCain.
McCain should get a boost from an impressive win in Florida, It’s a winner-take-all with 57 delegates at stake. Romney entered the contest with 59, to 36 for McCain, 40 for Huckabee and one for Giuliani. Super Tuesday on Feb. 5 has 21 GOP contests, with 1,023 delegates up for grabs. Getting the nomination takes 1,191.
Wednesday is decision day for Giuliani. After that, it’s a Romney-McCain race.
Permalink | Comments (139) | Post your comment |
Real clout will reside in eschewing those earmarks
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
In his final year in office, George W. Bush could become the president fiscal conservatives wanted.
On Tuesday, he’ll sign an executive order directing the executive branch to ignore “earmarks” that are not actually written into law. Those are the pork barrel projects that individual members of Congress slip into committee reports or “manager’s statements” that accompany the language voted on by both houses. Earmarks gave us Alaska’s Bridge to Nowhere and, in Georgia, the Train to Lovejoy.
The president clearly has the authority, according to the Congressional Research Service, to ignore earmarks not contained in the text of legislation passed by the House and Senate.
His decision would have been all the more admirable had it applied to the 11,735 earmarks amounting to $16.9 billion included in the current year’s spending — and had he started earlier and disavowed the practice by the administration, as well. But nevertheless, this is a start.
In some respects, getting Bush to this point could be the script for a movie on “Tom Coburn’s War” or “Jeff Flake’s War” — a tribute to the senator from Oklahoma and the representative from Arizona who have aggressively pushed their party on earmarks.
When U.S. Rep. Tom Price (R-Roswell) was home for the Thanksgiving break, he announced that he would no longer ask for earmarks. His Republican colleague, Lynn Westmoreland of Grantville, said he, too, will decline to ask for earmarks in this year’s budget.
U.S. Rep. Jack Kingston of Savannah, a “repentant sinner” on earmarks, is among the leaders of an effort to declare a moratorium on earmarks until Congress can set rules for greater disclosure, advance notice and open debate.
As members of Congress were issuing statements eschewing earmarks and as the president prepared to announce that he’ll veto any spending bill that does not cut the number of earmarks in half, an interesting story appeared in the day’s news.
It was an Associated Press analysis of the $555 billion spending bill that President Bush signed last month.
Here’s the first paragraph: “Atlanta and other drought-stricken Georgia cities miss out on millions of federal dollars to repair leaky water infrastructure because the state’s congressional delegation lacks clout on key funding committees in Washington.” Its analysis revealed that 33 states got more money in earmarks for water and sewer projects, with Georgia getting “just $1.6 million.”
The media unwittingly are often advocates for more and bigger government — in large part because it’s the quickest and easiest “solution” to problems of crime, poverty, education, discarded children and other social ills. The solution, therefore, is to insist on more caseworkers, wiser supervisors or more teachers with smaller classes — and if those are not forthcoming from one level of government, we demand it of another.
It does not occur to me that the federal government should concern itself with leaky pipes in Atlanta or with a local road in south DeKalb — or with any other problem more properly the responsibility of city, county or state government.
Furthermore, for a nation at war, in the throes of disruptive global competition while wrestling with illegal immigration, health care financing, looming Social Security bankruptcy and the like, the last thing I want is members of Congress fixing potholes in Snellville or dripping faucets in Fayetteville.
Earmarks, like the one for commuter rail to Lovejoy, simply divert federal tax dollars from a legitimate transportation need to one that’s not — or marginal at best. Once the pork is in place, it then means state dollars are diverted, too. And, as with the rail line, it means local taxpayers may also be on the hook. And for what? Nothing ever identified competitively as a top priority or need.
Lack of clout? Shoot fire, man, that’s precisely why we get more and bigger government. Labeling members of Congress, or the entire delegation, as ineffective because they’re not the greediest porkers at the trough is why government grows. We make government officials spend and hire to prove they are “effective” in public office.
Permalink | Comments (111) | Post your comment | Categories: Column
Wrap it up. Ted’s in.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Pack it up. We’re heading home. The Democratic race is over. Cancel the convention. Barack Obama’s it.
Oh, it’s not his showing in South Carolina, though he did pull 55 percent of the vote there to 25 percent for Hillary Clinton and 18 for John Edwards (and why’s he still in the race?). No, having gotten the endorsement of the Democrat’s 2004 loser, John Kerry, the only thing Obama needed to wrap it up was one more big endorsement from one of the party’s famous has-beens. That’s expected today.
According to The New York Times, Ted Kennedy will anoint Obama today “as part of a coordinated effort to lend Kennedy charisma and connections to the Illinois senator as he heads into a crucial 22-state showdown” on Super Tuesday a week from tomorrow.
Since I don’t expect to vote in the Democratic primary on Super Tuesday, my interest in the internals of Democratic politics is primarily that of a spectator bored with American Idol and looking for cheap entertainment. But I gotta tell you: There’s some real dysfunctional political families in that party.
The shocker was Kerry’s endorsement of Obama over the man that he had actually chosen to be the President of the United States just four years ago (had Kerry been elected and died in office). Now he tells us that Edwards was good enough to be President for us — but not the living him.
And now Ted. You think he’s high on the Clintons and then find it’s something else. The Times’ reporting is breathless about this: “Beginning with a joint appearance and rally in Washington on Monday, Kennedy, a major figure in party politics for nearly 50 years, intends to campaign aggressively for Obama…. Strategists see him bolstering Obama’s credibility for the office and providing particular benefits with union members and Hispanics, as well as the party base.”
In politics, you think they’re your friends and ideological soul-mates and Bam!, they’re about to drive off with somebody else. This endorsement may be big with the wing of the Democratic Party that resides in Vermont, San Francisco, Boston and some major cities, but Obama likely had those voters anyway.
As an aside, on Friday I was in Dublin, Ga., visiting with Rotarians. While there, they conducted a straw poll. The results for Republicans: John McCain (24), Mike Huckabee (15), Mitt Romney (6) and Rudy Giuliani (2). On the Democratic side, it was Hillary Clinton (6), Barack Obama (1) and John Edwards (1).
Obama was in Macon Sunday speaking at a black church. Edwards was in Dublin, where he was introduced to an after-church crowd at a downtown restaurant.
The Macon Telegraph reports that when Edwards was asked by one diner about his stance on gun control, he quickly replied: “I’m for the Second Amendment.”
State Rep. DuBose Porter, the minority leader of the Georgia House, quickly jumped in. “That’s why he’s down here,” he said. “You didn’t think I’d have him down here without that?”
“That’s the only thing I needed to know,” The Telegraph quotes the diner as saying before he sat back down to finish his meal.
Yes, the Ted Kennedy endorsement will do a lot for Senator Obama in the South.
Permalink | Comments (150) | Post your comment |
Big Government? It’s time to wean Americans of dependency
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Whether the limited-government party of Ronald Reagan can win the White House or whether its chances would be improved by reinventing conservatism, is a subtext of a long primary season which is yet to establish a clear Republican front-runner.
Throughout the administration of President Bush, the party has wrestled with accommodation with Big Government. That dilemma will persist for decades to come.
After the initial success of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, American Enterprise Institute scholar Henry Olsen and others questioned whether Republicans were tempted to invent themselves as a pro-faith, pro-government party akin to Europe’s Christian Democrats.
“Christian Democrat parties have always distinguished themselves from liberals and socialists,” he wrote in The Wall Street Journal, “favoring private property and traditional values while supporting government regulation and taxation to ameliorate what they perceive to be capitalism’s defects.”
Whether the model is perceived as European or as Democrat-light, it is increasingly clear that a limited-government party that exercises fiscal discipline is a tough sell — no reason to give up, but a reason to keep focused on the end game.
The reasons for the tough sell are many. Workers who feel threatened by global competition, those with whom Huckabee connected, want a government that will protect them and their jobs. Baby boomers who’ve now begun to retire will be an aggressive constituency for expanded benefits. The federal government was projected to spend about a fifth of the nation’s economic output, $2.7 trillion, in 2007. Of that, about 45 percent went to support Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
A cultural trend does not bode well, either. Children increasingly are being brought into the world without a mother and father in the home. Some 70 percent of black children, almost half of Hispanics and a quarter of whites are born to unwed women. For poor families, the government has become the father and husband.
Illegal immigration increases the demand for government, too. An analysis last year by Robert E. Rector and Christine Kim for the conservative Heritage Foundation found that “at least 50 percent, and perhaps 60 percent of illegal immigrant adults lack a high school degree.” Low skills equals high poverty — meaning that immigrant households, legal and illegal, need far more in services than their taxes support.
The point is that claimants grow while the tax base shrinks. A worrisome disconnect exists between those who pay for government and those who demand its services.
The Washington-based Tax Foundation found that in 2005, Americans filed 134.4 million tax returns, with 90.6 million paying something — meaning that 44 million filers paid nothing or got a check from Uncle Sam.
That’s 32.6 percent of those who filed returns. In 1988, at the end of Reagan’s second term, that percentage was 20.6 percent.
“Personal income” is not just salaries and investments. It also includes benefits, such as medical insurance and employer contributions to retirement plans.
The top 50 percent of taxpayers pay 97 percent of the individual income taxes.
The argument here is not tax policy, but simply to note that the base is narrowing while dependency grows.
Trends favor Democrats. A party that offers smaller government appeals to Reaganites, but it cannot sustain a majority by making grand efforts to whittle away at programs, only to see Democrats restored to power on the power to expand them.
The trick is to wean dependency by offering alternatives that build self-reliance. Health savings accounts. Retirement savings accounts. Promoting private-sector alternatives and competition in health care, transportation and other services. The GOP has to come up with a viable alternative for security conscious individuals who have grown dependent on the mailman. But first it has to get into position to do that.
It’s easy to look at the current field of presidential contenders and want for more — more in the sense of a Reagan clone. Conservatives have to be willing to accept that the nominee most likely to win the White House won’t be the one who tells the country to suck it up and go. John McCain told Michigan voters that about their factory jobs — and got waylaid in the primary. This is not a suck-it-up-and-go country anymore.
It’s a country comfortable with big interventionist government, one financed by somebody else. That can be changed. But it will take time.
Permalink | Comments (199) | Post your comment | Categories: Column
King grandchild; tax rebate checks
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s weekend free-for-all. Pick a topic:
• To the week’s celebrity news excesses and banalities, I add this insightful observation: Had Heath Ledger lived, he’d be 28 now.
• Before Martin Luther King III, the last time I heard of somebody keeping a marriage secret for an extended period of time — not approaching two years — it was so the lovely couple could finish high school. One more reason life is worth living. The surprises and the mysteries never cease.
• Impeach Casey Cagle? Absurd. One should not arm those Georgians who already think the State Capitol is a nut house, as state Rep. Ron Forster’s suggestion does. Some thoughts pop into our heads that need not pop out of our mouths. Somewhere, for example, there’s probably some school employee thinking it’d be neat to post racy photos of the assistant principal on his school computer. But then he pauses and reminds himself: Nobody is that stupid.
• You know you’re yesterday when the previously worshipful start tossing little bomblets — as Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin did in insisting that it’s “reality, not fantasy or fairy tales” that Barack Obama could be elected president. The fairy tales line was a poke at America’s first black president, Bill Clinton, who was seated in the audience. Ouch. He’d said that Obama’s assertion that he’d opposed the war in Iraq from the start was a fairy tale.
• A foundation will pay 40 students from Creekside High and from Bear Creek Middle schools in Fulton County $8 an hour to submit to tutoring. And if the tutoring takes, they’ll get bonuses. It’s a worthwhile experiment. Desirable or not, we get the behaviors we reward. That’s not to say they actually learn, but it’s not public money, coming as it does through a Charles Loudermilk foundation.
• Former Georgia Tech student Syed Haris Ahmed , who took “casing videos” of Washington buildings, including the U.S. Capitol, who met with extremists and went to Pakistan for jihadist military training, is fortunate that his target was the USA. Otherwise he’d not be arguing now that his admissions should be dismissed because he’d been tricked by the FBI. He’d be arguing for the promised virgins.
• Kudos to state Rep. Mike Jacobs (R-Atlanta) for legislation to crack down on a practice in which purchasing agents authorized six $49,000 payments to a technology consultant, thereby skirting the requirement that expenditures of $50,000 be bid competitively. His legislation would criminalize that practice. “I was shocked to find that bid-rigging like that is not a crime,” said Jacobs. Me, too. Should be.
• Gov. Sonny Perdue wants to spend $26.5 million next year to turn the old World of Coke building near Underground into a state history museum. Another — me, too. Georgia is, as amateur historian state Sen. George Hooks (D-Americus) pointed out, one of the few states without a history museum. “It’s a great move for the state,” said Hooks. “We’ve got priceless treasures of this state warehoused because we don’t have anywhere to display them.”
• Politicians cannot be stopped from rolling the printing presses during economic panic. It’s good politics to cut and distribute checks for a few hundred dollars but it’s hard to see what that approach solves, other than growing the deficit. The subprime debacle and housing will settle out when the marketplace reprices the real estate inflated by speculators and high-risk loans to unworthy borrowers. A check for $300 is “don’t blame us” insurance.
• At the South Carolina debate, Hillary Clinton said President Bush has done “too little, too late” to stimulate the economy. And what was she proposing when? Liberals are always brilliant after-the-fact. They won the war in Iraq that way, too.
Permalink | Comments (125) | Categories: Column
Some Beach, Somewhere
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It’s looking bad down South for Rudy Giuliani. The latest Florida poll put him in third place, well behind John McCain and Mitt Romney.
The poll, conducted Sunday-Tuesday for the St. Petersburg Times/Miami Herald/Bay News 9, has a margin of error for Republicans of 5.1 percent. Both John McCain at 25 percent and Mitt Romney at 23 are within the margin of error. Giuliani’s not. He’s tied with Mike Huckabee at 15 — and Huckabee, running out of money, has essentially conceded Florida, showing up primarily for airport news conferences.
On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton leads Barack Obama 42-23, with John Edwards at the drop-out level, 12 percent. Edwards registers a distant third in South Carolina, too. Obama’s up there by about 15 percentage points. That race should be over early Saturday and with a third-place finish, it’s hard to see Edwards going on. No great loss, though. Of the three, he’s the Democrat I’d least like to see in the White House. I can’t bear four years of a President who uses the bully pulpit to demonize some sector of corporate America he wakes up despising.
In some ways, Giuliani’s campaign strategy was the most interesting. Jimmy Carter’s Iowa strategy gave that state visibility and him momentum in 1976. Giuliani intended to use Florida as the springboard to burst onto the scene, win, get the Big Mo and sail through delegate-rich Super Tuesday. It was always high-risk. His problem now is that nobody’s much paying attention to him and all of his some beach, somewhere efforts appear likely to produce meager results. Florida’s winner-take-all.
Florida is huge. It answers two questions. One is whether McCain can win a closed primary. The other is whether Giuliani’s major-league gamble worked. If, by chance, he surges in the next week and wins, he will have rewritten the play-book. If McCain can win among Republicans, he’d have to be considered the front-runner. He’s making a major play for conservatives in Florida by trotting out a commercial featuring supply-sider Jack Kemp, deficit hawk Phil Gramm, the former Texas senator and Tom Coburn, who led the fight against the Bridge to Nowhere.
It could take me a few days to warm up to McCain, but with visions of most of the Democratic alternatives, I could get there.
Borking or Swiftboating?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
U.S. Sen. John Kerry, determined to go down in history as a victim, cleverly slips his baggage from the 2004 presidential race into this year’s Democratic primary campaign.
In an e-mail to Barack Obama supporters, Kerry re-centers the universe back to his campaign and his conflict with Vietnam veterans who questioned his record there and his anti-war activism back in the states. Wrote Kerry:
“I support Barack Obama because he doesn’t seek to perfect the politics of Swiftboating — he seeks to end it.
“This is personal for me, and for a whole lot of Americans who lived through the 2004 election. As a veteran, it disgusts me that the Swift Boats we loved while we were in uniform on the Mekong Delta have been rendered, in Karl Rove’s twisted politics, an ugly verb meaning to lie about someone’s character just to win an election. But as someone who cares about winning this election and changing the country I love, I know it’s not enough to complain about a past we can’t change when our challenge is to win the future — which is why we must stop the Swiftboating, stop the push-polling, stop the front groups, and stop the email chain smears.
“The truth matters, but how you fight the lies matters even more. We must be determined never again to lose any election to a lie.
“This year, the attacks are already starting. Some of you may have heard about the disgusting lies about Barack Obama that are being circulated by email. These attacks smear Barack’s Christian faith and deep patriotism, and they distort his record of more than two decades of public service. They are nothing short of ‘Swiftboat’ style anonymous attacks.
“These are the same tactics the right has used again and again, and as we’ve learned, these attacks, no matter how bogus, can spread and take root if they go unchecked…”
Kerry is right on one point. Politics can get nasty. I’d trace the modern low not to Kerry’s campaign, but to the politics of abortion — a prime example of which was the 1987 nomination of Judge Robert Bork to the U.S. Supreme Court. Within an hour of Bork’s nomination by President Ronald Reagan on July 1, U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy was on the Senate floor denouncing him in a nationally-televised speech. “Robert Bork’s America,” he said, “is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, school children could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of government.”
To “Bork” a nominee is to viciously attack and misrepresent. Bork was a first-rate judge with a brilliant legal mind who should be on the high court today.
It’s a certainty that between now and November, if Obama is the nominee, every campaign statement and charge will be seen through the prism of race. For that reason, free-lance political operatives should find another hobby — a suggestion, since it is free speech. An example is John Garst of Atlanta, co-founder of Rosetta Stone Communications, who launched an automated call network to criticize Atlanta Congressman John Lewis for supporting Hillary Clinton over Obama.
Because Garst is white and because his clients included Republicans (and Democrats, too) his actions were interpreted as fueling “the fight between the two Democratic candidates” and having a “provocative racial subtext.”
Garst, a former candidate for Atlanta City Council, apparently just dislikes the representation Lewis provides and launched the calls on his own.
A standard element of political campaigns now is to represent Republicans (or those who include Republicans as clients) as throwbacks who are trying to supress the black vote. Remember Voter ID?
Incidentally, it’s becoming a standard argument of those inclined to vote Democratic: If we don’t elect Obama President, it’s evidence that America has not moved beyond race. Might his liberalism have something to do with it? Or the policies he espouses? No. To the left, it’s a given that he’s properly positioned on all the issues so, as they see it, the only reason to object to his swearing in is his race. This could get ugly.
Washington approach to Georgia roads way off mark
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The pork-barrel Congress that gave us a five-year $286 billion highway bill flush with 6,371 earmarks should be trusted with three times as much money — in excess of $250 billion a year for the next 50 years — say members of a national transportation study commission.
The current federal gas tax of 18.4 cents per gallon, which comes on top of Georgia taxes on gasoline that average 15.2 cents per gallon, should be raised by 40 cents per gallon over the next five years and indexed to inflation, the commission recommended to Congress.
No thanks.
Better still, try this: Reduce the federal gas tax to a penny or two or, better still, eliminate it altogether. Give responsibility and taxing capacity to the states, ridding us of the obligation to send money to Washington in hopes that a bit of it will come back. When it does, it returns to fund transportation priorities that may not align with Georgia’s.
And it returns earmarked for projects like the $87 million allocated to the 26-mile commuter rail line from Atlanta to Lovejoy, or $3 million for clean-fuel buses for MARTA when U.S. Reps. Jack Kingston of Savannah and John Lewis of Atlanta requested $300,000.
And in the midst of a war and a tanking economy, members of the Congress of the United States are convening to decide whether safety improvements costing $500,000 should be made on Glenwood Road in DeKalb County, as requested by U.S. Rep. Hank Johnson. They did, thereby transferring to Washington a problem that should have been solved at the county level or, absent that, at the state level.
Not surprisingly all nine members of the National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission appointed by Congress are in agreement that federal gas taxes should be raised by 5 to 8 cents a gallon every year for five years. And they support higher state gasoline taxes, too. To be fair, the nine also urged Congress to do away with earmarks.
More interesting than the call for new gas taxes, however, is the minority report issued by Transportation Secretary Mary Peters and two others appointed by the administration, Maria Cino, the deputy secretary and Rick Geddes, a Cornell professor who served as senior staff economist on the Presidents Council of Economic Advisers.
“Raising gas taxes won’t improve congestion,” said Secretary Peters. “It will only perpetuate our ineffective reliance on fossil-based fuels to fund infrastructure and send more of Americans’ hard-earned money to Washington to be squandered on earmarks and special-interest programs.”
The “failure to properly align supply and demand, not a failure to generate sufficient tax revenues, is the essential policy failure,” she and others said in the minority report.
Tyler Duvall, Assistant Secretary for Transportation Policy, noted that “Atlanta is one of the worst congested cities in the country … demand is too high given current supply in rush hours … and the peak is spreading. You don’t have a supply problem at 2 in the morning. As with any good commodity, you get over-consumption at some times of the day.”
Adding capacity and time-of-day pricing are part of the solutions, the three say. The private-sector capital is there, too — toll roads — and with different policies and regulations, can be part of the solution. Duvall said that “yes, we do need to spend more money … but the model will produce meager results if we don’t do anything different.” The fed’s role should be to focus on the national interstate highways and connecting cities, he said. Beyond that, it should encourage cost-benefit decision-making and innovation.
Nobody’s advocating eliminating the federal gas tax — though they should, and let states have the taxing capacity to solve their own congestion problems using taxes, the private sector and any road and transit pricing options residents want to try to ease congestion.
Permalink | Comments (92) | Categories: Column
No need to leave before Super Tuesday
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
For Democrats, there’s South Carolina. In Nevada, Barack Obama pulled 83 percent of black voters, who are about half the Democratic base in South Carolina. If Hillary wins there on Saturday, wow. Obama’s up about 10 points now.
For Republicans, there’s Florida. Polls taken last week give John McCain a slight edge over Rudy Giuliani, who competes seriously for the first time, followed by Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee
Florida may begin to provide the clarity that’s been lacking — which, incidentally, is no cause for serious concern. Huckabee aside, the other candidates in the field with a chance of getting the nomination should be able to unite the base for the General Election, some more easily than others. McCain, for example, has not yet demonstrated that he can win without independents. Florida’s primary is a GOP-only affair. In New Hampshire and South Carolina, independents provided McCain’s margins.
Every week’s a fun week leading up to Super Tuesday when Republicans (delegates at stake) in Georgia (72), Alabama (48), Tennessee (55) and these other states are voting: Alaska (29), Arizona (53), Arkansas (34), California (173), Connecticut (30), Deleware (18), Illinois (70), Massachusetts (43), Minnesota (41), Missouri (58), New Jersey (52) New York (101), North Dakota (26), Oklahoma (42), and Utah (36).
No reason for Fred Thompson or anybody else to drop out prior to Super Tuesday. That’s the day that will give clarity — or point to a brokered convention.
No clarity for GOP. Praise Reagan — oops, there goes Nevada.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mitt Romney wins Nevada, John McCain South Carolina.
Meanwhile, Rudy Giuliani sits in Florida, awaiting his moment to muddle into the Republican Presidential contest.
While it’s pretty clear now that the Republican battle will go on without a clear front-runner at least through Super Tuesday on Feb. 5, McCain pumped life into his prospects by demonstrating in South Carolina that he could win against a former Southern governor who has great appeal among evangelical Christians. Mike Huckabee did well in South Carolina, but a near-win in South Carolina is a defeat for him. As he noted though in conceding first place to McCain, winning the Republican nomination is “not an event; it’s a process and the process is far, far from over.”
Nevada had more delegates at stake Saturday — 31 to 24 — but South Carolina drew more attention. It was the first test for Republicans in the South and the winner there has become the party’s nominee since 1980. Giuliani skipped Nevada and South Carolina, while pursuing a high-risk strategy of taking Florida followed by a big show on Super Tuesday a week later. Florida is the first of the big states to vote with a winner-take-all primary on Jan. 29.
On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton had an impressive win in Nevada — impressive because the state’s largest union, the 60,000-member Culinary Workers Union, Local 226, had endorsed Barack Obama and several of the party’s caucuses were held in casinos in Las Vegas. The union represents maids, bartenders and other hotel and casino workers and is the state’s best-organized. He’d also been endorsed by the Nevada chapter of the Service Employees International Union.
Obama committed a terrible transgression in the lead-up to Saturday’s voting, though. He spoke favorably of Ronald Reagan.
He told the editorial board of the Reno Gazette-Journal that “I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. I think they felt like with all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s and government had grown and grown but there wasn’t much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating,” Obama said. Reagan, he said, “tapped into what people were already feeling, which was, ‘We want clarity; we want optimism.’”
“I think it’s fair to say that the Republicans were the party of ideas for a pretty long chunk of time there over the last 10 to 15 years in the sense that they were challenging conventional wisdom,” said Obama.
While attempting to make the point that he, too, represented change and new ideas, any favorable reference to Reagan is poison in Democratic politics. John Edwards, who departed Nevada to campaign in Atlanta and in Missouri and Oklahoma, reacted.
“Ronald Reagan, the man who busted unions, the man who did everything in his power to destroy the organized labor movement, the man who created a tax structure that favored the richest Americans against middle class and working families, … we know that Ronald Reagan is not an example of change for a presidential candidate running in the Democratic Party,” Edwards said.
Democrats vote in South Carolina next Saturday — and that’s a state Obama should win. About half the state’s Democratic voters are black.
GOP, especially Richardson, at high risk in the House
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Whether Glenn Richardson’s tenure as speaker of the Georgia House of Representatives is in its final year depends.
It depends on his pursuit of the GREAT tax swap — some property tax relief for a new tax on services in return.
It depends on his handling of the effort to oust the chairman of the Georgia Department of Transportation board, former state Rep. Mike Evans of Cumming.
And it depends on his handling of the effort to override Gov. Sonny Perdue’s vetoes of a dozen bills passed by the General Assembly last year. All dozen were overridden last week with just 12 to 15 dissenters, but Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle declared the Senate “will not be in a real big hurry” to get to the overrides anytime soon.
This is an important session for Republicans. People are beginning to notice how they run Georgia. A repeat of last session’s personality-driven vituperation might set the stage for an election-year disaster. The GOP won’t lose control of the House or Senate, but the result of another exhausting year of bickering does make it more likely that some incumbents will walk away — life’s too short — or that they’ll draw primary challenges.
The GREAT plan is ideal for cultivating potential challengers. For Republican legislators, it’s a loser either way. Vote in favor and the hordes of interest groups and individuals lined up in opposition will find the challengers. Vote against and the opponent will come from those who think their property taxes are too high and that illegal immigrants and others are escaping the fair-share taxation they’d get with an expanded sales tax. Either way, incumbents lose.
It’s not surprising that the speaker lacks the votes to pass it. The effort to oust Evans is another move that has the potential to ricochet. Evans was among those who supported Gena Abraham as the Department of Transportation commissioner last October.
He and Raybon Anderson of Statesboro, who represents the 12th Congressional District on the DOT board and who also supported Abraham, are up for re-election. Each member of the House and Senate who serves any portion of a congressional district has a vote. It’s ordinarily done by secret ballot. In the Evans race, Richardson wants open voting.
Strip away Richardson’s, Perdue’s and Cagle’s personalties — impossible to do, probably — but even without the pettiness and gamesmanship, there are reasonable disagreements about separation of power and about the roles and authority of the House, Senate and executive branch in both the veto-override attempts and in the DOT board contest.
House Transportation Committee Chairman Vance Smith Jr. of Pine Mountain was the other candidate for DOT commissioner.
Seventeen House members and seven senators from the 9th Congressional district (23 Republicans and one Democrat) will decide Evans’ fate. Since the House has the numbers, the DOT board is the one place where the House is supreme — in theory, at least. Abraham was the governor’s choice — thus bringing Georgia to this “Sopranos” storyline moment.
Evans is a solid fiscal conservative who, with a few others on the board, represents precisely the kind of fact-driven, results-oriented policy-makers that conservatives need to plant throughout state government.
The engineer-trained Abraham is too, the mold-breaker who shows great promise of being able to manage an agency in transition.
Turning the ship of state is a long process. Throwing out those with the ability to lead the change makes no sense.
Putting 17 House members on the line is a chance to “win,” but it is likely to be a pyrrhic victory. Besides, Richardson could lose.
The Senate certainly should, on principle, pick some issue and override the governor’s veto. But that really is something Cagle and Richardson should have worked out well before opening day.
The session is high-risk for all Republicans — but especially for Richardson.
Permalink | Comments (123) | Categories: Column
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.
Permalink | Comments (157) | Categories: Column
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.
Big, big win for Romney
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Big win for Mitt Romney. Big. Sure, the argument can be made that he was the native son in Michigan. But the underlying polling tells an important story.
Romney won among conservatives, 41-23 over John McCain in one network’s exit polls and 45-13 among conservatives who are Republicans in another. Among Republicans, Romney won, 41-27. He even defeated Mike Huckabee among evangelicals, 34-29.
South Carolina’s bound to be Huckabee territory — though Fred Thompson needs a strong finish there or, for him, the end is near. Huckabee, too, needs the big South Carolina win or the Huckabubble is most likely deflated. McCain, likewise, needs something to give him momentum — and cash.
Romney was on the ropes. Michigan gave him the charge his campaign needed. He talked about economic issues and if, indeed, the economy is headed into the tank, he may have found his “voice” and a way to connect with voters — all without shedding a tear.
Big night for Romney. He now should let Huckabee and McCain and possibly Thompson duke it out in South Carolina, take what he can get, and compete with Rudy Giuliani in Florida on Jan 29. The race is on.
Mitt Romney wrestles with the electability issue
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Electability. For Republican voters, that’s the final test.
Democrats will nominate Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. Of the two, Hillary is less objectionable. This nation will remain at war through the administration of the next president. Hillary, despite her pandering to the party’s hotfoot-to-run wing and rhetoric that tracks the polls, is less likely to blunder into stupid foreign policy mistakes.
Neither she nor Obama is the president I’d have seated across from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or some other nuclear-weapon-obsessed strongman. The prospect is unsettling of a president who appears to believe that our problem with evil men and regimes is that we’ve just not found the right syntax to describe ourselves and our vision in a way that will neutralize their desire to kill us. An inexperienced junior senator who speaks in greeting-card phrases who foolishly promises to meet without precondition with the likes of Ahmadinejad suggests naiveté in an arena where naiveté can be harmful to national security.
Recognizing reality — unless Republicans pick a nominee who can win in November — one of these two Democrats could occupy the White House for the next four to eight years. That is sufficient time to undo everything on the domestic front that George W. Bush accomplished, including tax cuts and the past year’s efforts to contain discretionary spending, including the huge expansion of the Children’s Health Insurance Program, a steppingstone to HillaryCare.
In a phone interview with the AJC’s editorial board on Friday, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney made the case that he’s the most electable Republican. He noted his second-place finish in Iowa and New Hampshire and an expectation that he will do well in South Carolina, Florida and Nevada. He continued:
“Pretty much across the country, I’m seen as doing very, very well. I may not always be first, but I’m either number one or number two in all of these early primary states, so it shows a broad appeal. But from a more strategic Electoral College standpoint, I have to be able to win in the Midwest. I have to be able to keep Florida, and that I can do. There are a lot of Midwesterners who, as you know, have moved to Florida. … I believe we’ll be able to keep Florida.
“We will have a hard time keeping Ohio — and the reason is because our last Republican governor created some real political mess there and the new Democratic governor is quite strong. … As the general election nominee for our party, I can win Michigan, in part because of my dad’s strong name and reputation and because of my complete focus on making sure that we get Michigan out of the one-state recession they’re in.
“I can also win in Wisconsin and Minnesota, and these states would be gravy to us. But if I can win Michigan and we win Florida, then we win the whole thing. … “One other thing, of course, is that I do re-combine the Reagan coalition in terms of social and economic and foreign policy conservatives, but I am also able through my record to speak to, if you will, progressive Republicans and independents by virtue of such accomplishments as having secured health insurance for all my citizens.
“A lot of people will talk about their ideas for health insurance, but I got everybody in Massachusetts on track to be insured. And that is something which no one else will be able to speak to. I’m proud of what I did there. I know there are some conservatives that don’t like that, but I’m proud of that. I’m also proud of what I did in education. We drove our state to be number one in the nation. … We closed the achievement gap between blacks and whites by half during my term as govenror. So I will be very capable of attracting independent voters as well as solidifying the Republican base.”
A Rasmussen poll released Sunday finds that, at the moment at least, John McCain defeats Hillary 49-38 and Obama, 46-43. Mike Huckabee beats Hillary 45-42, while Obama defeats Huckabee, 45-43. A survey conducted earlier in the week has Obama beating Giuliani 48-38 and Romney 45-39.
Romney says flat-out that he’ll win Michigan today, though it’s a polling-mischief state. On the Democratic side, voters can choose Hillary or an uncommitted slate, and no delegates are at stake. Dangerous prediction for a man on the ropes — a man who must convince the Republican base that he can win.
Permalink | Comments (125) | Categories: Column
Taxes, bail-outs and wild hogs
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Before the morning is out, our regular contributor Mid-South Philosopher will be expected to render a report on last night’s Wild Hog Supper, the traditional start of the Georgia General Assembly, for which 20 feral hogs from Wilcox County and vicinity gave their lives.
The dog ate my report on the event. In truth, while the event was underway, I passed north on Highway 21 through Wilcox County — county-seat, Abbeville — and therefore missed the evening’s festivities.
The session’s official launch is today. My guess is that the House will move quickly to override three or four of Gov. Sonny Perdue’s vetoes, the most noteworthy of which will probably be House Bill 91 authored by State Rep. Jill Chambers (R-DeKalb) that requires the executive branch to provide the legislature with information on, among other things, departments’ consultants and contracts. If the House overrides, the Senate is obligated to bring them up for override consideration.
Among other issues on the table:
The Speaker’s tax-swap proposal — an $18,000 homestead exemption on property taxes in return for an a new sales tax on services and a restoration of the tax on groceries — is out there. Lots of legislators want this one to go away. They don’t sense any groundswell of public support for the swap, nor any outcry against property taxes.
Water and the drought. The Legislature will do something, but is still in the fact-gathering stage.
The Grady hospital bail-out — or, more appropriately, a statewide trauma network that will include Grady. The Speaker has proposed an annual fee on cars and trucks, to be paid with ad valorem taxes. It’s not likely to survive. More likely, the trauma network, which is expected to cost $100 million annually, will be funded directly. And every effort will be made to structure it so that it’s not an entitlement. One possibility: A grant portion that covers some particular aspect of trauma center operation. For those who are looking for the Grady bail-out, look elsewhere.
Transportation. A regional sales tax is a possibility. The state wouldn’t impose the regional tax. Instead, the legislature would divide the state into regions and two or more counties in the regions could unite to consider a transportation sales tax. The sticking point is whether County A could impose a sales tax on County B if the residents of County B vote no. If that’s the plan, my bet is that this proposal won’t fly.
There’s more coming. But no need to over-eat. Forty days of feeding await.
GREAT plan a most useful springboard
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
While all were attentive, the least confused observer attending this week’s public hearings on House Speaker Glenn Richardson’s tax-shift proposal had to be 4-year-old Mary Scott of Rossville, a most remarkable child.
Through hours of testimony from interest groups and the occasional freewill citizen expressing personal opinion, little Mary Scott sat in dignified silence, watching, listening, doodling — contemplating for sure the vicissitudes of the GREAT plan (Georgia’s Repeal of Every Ad Valorem Tax) — the actual details of which had reached the House Ways and Means Committee less than 24 hours before.
Mary’s response to the day, which required more than three hours of quiet attention while seated beside her father, state Rep. Martin Scott (R-Rossville), was recounted later. Upon arrival back in Rossville, Scott says, “she ran in the door and said, ‘Mommy, it was great.’ I don’t think she was talking about the GREAT plan. She said: ‘I had cereal, Cocoa Krispies, and I had a cookie and I didn’t have to eat all my lunch.’ It was all about the food.”
A future legislator, no doubt — the feedings of which begin tonight with the traditional Wild Hog Supper that signals the start of every legislative session.
Barbecue and Cocoa Krispies are the diet equivalent of the GREAT plan. They have some nutritional value, but you can’t hang a life on them.
There’s so much unexamined about the speaker’s very consequential GREAT plan that the responsible course would be to set it aside. Why?
It has served an entirely useful purpose in that it has introduced Georgia to a new speaker as a leader willing to think big and take risks. A debate is needed about the cost and size of government, about the appropriate mix of taxes and how fiscal conservatives could structure them to stimulate and strengthen the economy. The GREAT plan is that impetus.
That said, however, it’s not a plan ready for prime time. At the week’s hearing, one critic after another sat down to voice objections or to raise questions. Many of those who spoke were advocating for some local government or interest group. Their primary interest appeared to be to rejigger Richardson’s proposal to swap a portion of a homeowner’s property tax for an expanded sales tax to something that would advantage them.
Howard “Buzz” Wachsteter, Rome’s mayor pro tem, made a valid point — “we need a plan with a lot of deep, detailed studies” — but then went on to advocate a tax on Internet sales, something long favored by merchants. Others saw it as an opportunity to press for tax breaks or more money.
Wachsteter proposed a blue-ribbon commission — the last thing, frankly, that Georgia needs.
Georgia already has a group perfectly competent at developing a sound tax system — one with a bipartisan combination of tax-policy expertise, youthful energy and a willingness to think creatively. It’s led by a strategic thinker who understands the implications and consequences of tax-law changes. It’s called the House Ways and Means Committee, the panel responsible for perfecting tax law.
Its chairman is state Rep. Larry O’Neal (R-Bonaire), who demonstrated last week the Southern gentleman’s ability to be polite, respectful — and firm in gently refocusing rambling speakers back to the legislation at hand.
It’s a group that — given direction from above as to the behaviors Georgia wishes to reward or discourage with tax policy — is entirely capable of building the vehicle. The parameters should be lower taxes, simplicity and economic stimulus — which suggests that the income tax is the far more inviting target.
The GREAT plan gives us a sales tax on services for the first time. It gives homeowners a significant but partial reduction in property taxes. And while it could put some dollars in some homeowners’ pockets, it takes them back out again at the grocery counter and the barbershop.
It’s easy to say: Just pass it and let the voters decide by constitutional amendment.
That’s politics. It’s not responsible stewardship.
The wise leader would not hang followers out on this one.
Permalink | Comments (101) | Categories: Column
Diplomats, donors, running mates
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s weekend free-for-all. Pick a topic:
• The Bush economy is awful. An estimated 4,600 poor souls stood in line applying for the job of announcing the winning lottery numbers on television. It’s either the economy or evidence that good-paying jobs requiring no particular skills and not much work are always in demand.
• The U.S. needs a president willing to face down State Department diplomats and their union, just as Ronald Reagan did air traffic controllers. A survey by the American Foreign Service Association union finds that 48 percent of diplomats unwilling to serve in Iraq cite “disagreement” with administration policy as the reason. Some 70 percent object to unrequested duty in Iraq. If the diplomatic service is free to take leave of duty based on whether they like the boss or his policies, some serious housecleaning and retraining is needed.
• A fascinating case making its way through the courts involves a 1961 gift of $35 million, now grown to more than $900 million, to Princeton University by Charles and Marie Robertson to support the Woodrow Wilson School so that “men and women dedicated to public service may prepare themselves for careers in government service.” The Robinson heirs sued in 2002, contending the university misused the endowment, violating donor intent by funding unrelated activities and by diverting more than $100 million “to its own use and benefit.” It’s an important donor-intent suit. Princeton is invited here to use the endowment to train or retrain those in the State Department who have lost their bearings.
• Red-light cameras at one intersection in Roswell netted $1 million the first year. In the past nine months, two have netted $1.2 million for the city. One intersection got Marietta $1.7 million. If safety’s the justification, cities and counties should have no financial incentive for installing them. All money collected should go to the state.
• No real problem here with banishing criminals from one or several counties. But there are limits. Up this week before the Georgia Supreme Court was the question of whether a judge can banish a criminal defendant from all but one of Georgia’s 159 counties, as a judge in Douglas County did in banishing a man from every county except Toombs. “If you’re banished to one county, how do you get there?” asked Justice Harris Hines. Good question. As with the sex offender ban decided recently, there’s a reasonable application of the law. This isn’t it. The penalty, otherwise, could be incarceration plus loss of livelihood.
• My curiosity about the steady stream of Hispanics dropping canisters of coins into supermarket change-sorting machines may be answered. In apartment complexes and immigrant communities where “many residents don’t drive a