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August 2008
Bush should be with Gustav
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
From the airplane flying into the Twin Cities, you can see forever — and all eyes here are looking south, to the Gulf Coast. The fear is that Hurricane Gustav will become, like Katrina, a category 5 hurricane, and wreak havoc on New Orleans and elsewhere.
Democratic partisans would not wish for death or destruction, of course, but as the political games go a major hurricane that reminds the nation of Katrina, and the failed performance of local, state and then the federal government, could be a teaching moment. Too, it would draw attention away from the Republican convention, reducing any possible bounce John McCain and Sarah Palin would get from it. It’ll be a close election; any small advantage helps.
Lots of Republicans here aren’t all that disappointed to see President George W. Bush spend Monday — the day he is scheduled to deliver the keynote address — elsewhere. The best place would be in the area that will be affected when the hurricane comes ashore.
The setup here is perfect for him to address the convention from the hurricane-hit region. Unlike the Democratic convention, which was built for glitz, the Republican convention platform will be modest with a huge screen.
While President Bush has certainly earned the right to appear in person to receive the adulation of convention delegates, speaking from the coast would help two ways.
One is that it would draw attention to the importance of preparation, a difference between Katrina and Gustav. That planning and preparation should showcase Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, a rising star in the GOP. Louisiana won’t be caught unprepared by either the state or by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
The other is that his staying there would eliminate the appearance that Republicans are partying through disaster.
Bush was scheduled to be here Monday. The White House decided Sunday, he and Vice President Dick Cheney would stay in Washington. If Gustav delivers the punch expected, the place for him is there.
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McCain’s choice of Palin erases doubts
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The only question now is the spread, the over/under.
Vice presidential candidates rarely affect election outcomes. The selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin will.
On the Friday it is announced, the sun is gloriously bright in Atlanta, appropriate to the mood of the Republican Party. In one morning, it becomes entirely clear: John McCain can be elected president of the United States. He can win and in the process make history.
The first woman on the winning presidential ticket won’t be a liberal Democrat. It’ll be a conservative, a working-woman conservative, a mother of five married to a commercial fisherman.
With her selection, it is possible to begin to fully understand the devotion most blacks have to Barack Obama and to the prospect that he could be the first black to occupy the Oval Office.
Sarah Palin is that historic figure for women and for the conservative movement.
Conservative women in politics often find themselves without the support network that the good ol’ girl network represents for Democratic women or the good ol’ boy network represents in both parties.
When women of the left speak of “women’s issues,” they speak always of women as though they are of one mind, and it is theirs. When they complain that not enough women are in high places, it’s not conservative women they seek to promote. In fact, I can never remember in the Georgia General Assembly or elsewhere women of the left objecting to the perceived mistreatment or glass ceiling that affects women of the right. More commonly, they are vilified in the same way that most blacks of the left vilify Justice Clarence Thomas.
Two decades ago, when women were just beginning to move into judgeships and other important political positions, I thought they would revolutionize public service, primarily because they were outsiders. They were not of the good ol’ boy networks. Unaffected and uncorrupted by an inherited culture, they could therefore be reformers. They could promote ethics and transparency and accountability because they were not invested in the system.
Truth be told, women in power have been changed by the culture more than they have changed it.
But Sarah Palin, perhaps because she came to power as an outsider in a state with an ingrained culture of political corruption, is still the fighter, still the reformer, still committed to ethics, transparency and accountability in government. She’s a fiscal conservative with the courage to cut the budget and tell Alaskans to lessen their dependence on federal largesse. She’s fresh. She’s real. She’s the Washington outsider untainted by the culture that exists there.
Any misgivings I had about John McCain as the Republican standard-bearer are erased by his boldness in choosing Palin.
When successful in November, she will give the nation an opportunity to see a confident conservative woman who knows what she believes, and who practices what she preaches. She is pro-life, for example, and nobody in American can question her convictions. When faced with the option of aborting a child she and her husband knew would be born with a condition that would require their lifelong care, she chose life. It’s not an abstract with her, nor is it a political power game. It’s life. She’s genuine.
Yes, she’s inexperienced on national security and foreign policy issues. Yes, she most likely won’t be able to name the prime minister of some obscure Third World nation and can be tripped up in the “can-you-name” games that journalists play. Yes, Alaska’s a small state. Yes, she has only two years’ experience as governor — though that’s two years more of actual decision-making experience than any of the three men the two parties will nominate.
But as the number-two, the seasoning will come. And while Alaska is small, she has demonstrated that she can make decisions that taxpayers see as in their best interests, which is why her approval numbers are through the roof.
This week’s the Republican convention. There’s no need there to harp on the choices the Democrats have made.
Instead, remain upbeat and introduce America to Sarah Palin. They will love her. Oh, happy day.
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First woman could be conservative. Yes!
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Pinch me. Yes! Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska, will be on the ticket.
She’s got it all. She’s a strong fiscal conservative, a champion of transparency and accountability in government, a leader capable of leading the charge on a sane and practical energy policy that involves drilling where experts believe there’s oil. She is, too, a strong pro-life believer who is unquestionably true to her convictions. She and her husband knew that their child would be born with Down syndrome — and they did not choose to end his life by abortion.
This is a gutsy call on John McCain’s part. She has no more credibility on national security and foreign policy issues than does Barack Obama. But we are talking here about the under-card. As vice preident, she’ll have an opportunity for seasoning.
The prospect that the first woman in the White House will be a conservative is a hallelujah moment. Yes!
Faux fees, drought dent, the Internet
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s weekend free-for-all. Pick a topic:
Yes! Greater transparency. Cobb Superior Court Judge J. Stephen Schuster, declaring “democracy is not a bad thing,” pushes Cobb EMC to give members a genuine opportunity to control the governing board. And he pushes the board and its subsidiaries to disclose profits and losses and the names of stockholders in a management subsidiary. Super ruling.
Builders who need therapy because of a downturn in the housing market may be too fragile to be in the business. They may be a better fit as toll booth operators. It’s not this generation’s job to translate every unpleasantness into a call to the couch.
Representatives of the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute in Atlanta are the go-to guys when reporters need somebody to argue against tax cuts, spending caps and other taxpayer-friendly checks on state spending. As a recent report calling for more subsidized child care makes clear, the organization doesn’t want to cut taxes or cap spending because it wants more of your money spent on new or expanded social programs.
Cuts in state spending are certainly possible. The state’s in the golf course business, for example, subsidizing them to the tune of $1 million a year. Golf courses should be financed entirely by user fees. Those are legit. It’s not a user fee, of course, when $10 is added to the price of auto license tags for trauma centers, as proposed. That “fee” is a tax. There’s no real connection between the “fee” and users.
U.S. Sen. Robert P. Casey Jr. (D-Penn.) was identified in CNN labeling as “opposed to abortion rights, as was his father,” former Gov. Bob Casey. To translate from the negative: He is pro-life. His father was denied a speaking role at the 1992 Democratic convention because of his views on abortion.
An Italian priest and theologian is organizing a beauty pageant for nuns, allegedly to counter the view that they’re not pretty. Too bad. In Vietnam, I saw Montagnard women who had never seen themselves in a mirror. There was a physical and spiritual beauty in their lack of awareness. Don’t make nuns mirror-gazers.
Jason Cecil, president of Georgia’s Young Democrats, estimates that 60 percent to 70 percent of his friends would never consider dating a conservative. “I don’t see myself dating a Republican.” Oh, date ‘em. They’re not all conservative. And some days, not even most of them.
Do not say that. Don’t. Rain here from Hurricane Fay “would put a pretty significant dent in the drought,” said meteorologist Stephen Komarik. The drought can never be considered mitigated until everybody has the low-flush toilet and installs synthetic grass on the front lawn or moves into a high-rise. We’re not there yet. Don’t be suggesting that rain is drought-affecting good news.
Saving Grady Memorial Hospital from bankruptcy may not have been the smarter course. Bankruptcy would have signaled the need for a quick and major transformation in the way it does business. As it is, execs will be battling “cultural and behavioral barriers” for years to come. The “cultural and behavioral barriers” have always won.
Southerners are given to understatement. An example is this headline: “Ga. politicians: Biden not likely to swing state” to Obama. Not likely, as in, “not a chance.” If you take the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate and pair him with the third most liberal, the ticket’s chances in Georgia are “not likely” improved. Sam Nunn’s just pulling our leg when he says Biden could help Obama carry Georgia.
Ah, the Internet. I waited excitedly to see who would post the 100,000th comment on the Thinking Right blog on ajc.com. It was spam, promptly unpublished.
You’re kidding, right? The nonprofit Atlanta Police Foundation is not paying 26 percent of its revenues, or $211,000, to its executive director. Don’t bother calling me for donations.
Voucherize Clayton County.
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Sticks and stones Democrats
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
So far Democrats are getting no real bounce out of their convention or of the selection of Joe Biden as vice president. Efforts Wednesday night by Bill Clinton and Biden to rough up John McCain help explain why.
The Democrats’ campaign theme is that McCain represents another four years of the Bush Administration. The problem, however, is that they first have to explain that McCain’s not a Bushie or somebody unqualified to be President, which is a persistent doubt about Barack Obama.
Clinton tried last night. “They actually want us to reward them for the last eight years by giving them four more,” he said. But “them” is a maverick who wasn’t in power for eight years and furthermore, as Clinton explained, is “a good man who served our country heroically and suffered terribly in Vietnam.” And, acknowledged Clinton, “as a senator, he has shown his independence on several issues.”
From that platform, he then goes on to try to make the case against McCain. Biden, speaking afterwards, attempted the same. Does it work? I don’t think so. Hating Bush is fine for partisans, but America’s more balanced.
Democrats had better have something more convincing or else this election becomes a referendum on Obama’s inexperience and his liberalism.
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Hillary, if gone, will be back
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Is Hillary married? Just asking.
In many ways, it was a strange speech from Hillary. For one, there was no acknowledgment that any man in her life might be anywhere that mattered. Bill sat, looking proud and almost tearful. She began her speech by saying that “I am honored to be here tonight” Then she identified the special distinctions she represented: ” A proud mother. A proud Democrat. A proud American. And a proud supporter of Barack Obama.”
No “Proud Wife and Mother.”
No “Proud Wife.” Or “Former First Lady.”
It’s true that unmarried women are drawn to the Democratic Party. For many, government is the supporting husband — if not directly, then in providing the back-up financial security that marriage once represented.
But maybe I read too much into her intentional omission. Maybe she just didn’t want to risk sharing the spotlight.
As a viewer, I expected an adoring crowd of Hillary supporters. There were some of those, yes. But many of them had the look of bystanders watching a potential suicide bomber. They weren’t quite sure where this spectacle was going. Me neither.
Much of it sounded like her acceptance speech or her first State of the Union. An example was her laundry list of things to do in the White House. In the following paragraph of her text, strike “he’ll” and substitute “I’ll” and in the last sentence strike the phrase “watch Barack Obama.” The paragraph:
“He’ll transform our energy agenda by creating millions of green jobs and building a new, clean energy future. He’ll make sure that middle class families get the tax relief they deserve. And I can’t wait to watch Barack Obama sign a health care plan into law that covers every single American.”
Yes, she couldn’t have been vice president. She is the dominant personality in the Obama-Hillary duo. She would have overshadowed him at every turn. His successes would have been because he implemented her programs, his failures because he didn’t. Joe Biden may be a windbag, but his fulsome rhetoric is not threatening to his potential boss.
Did she drive any Hillary supporters to the ticket? My sense is no, or at least none of those not already inclined to support the ticket, no matter what. The lady, if gone, will be back.
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Busted budgets raise ire of GOP base
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
oe McCutchen, meet Alan Blackburn.
Both are fed up. They’re not taking it anymore.
McCutchen, of Ellijay, is widely known and highly regarded in conservative and Republican circles as a passionate advocate for fiscally responsible government. Pork sends him up the wall. Hidden debt dumped on the grandchildren invites his wrath. He’s loyal to Republicans until they cross him on core principles. Then he’s gone. “They’re nice guys,” he says after identifying members of the Georgia congressional delegation, “but I can’t vote for them.” In the U.S. Senate race, he’ll vote for Libertarian Allen Buckley, convinced that incumbent Saxby Chambliss is a big spender, particularly on farm programs.
Alan Blackburn has been a quiet conservative, content to pursue his work on the Georgia Court of Appeals, and argue his ideas among colleagues.
But then came $4 gas —- and the political world crystallized.
Just as House Republicans, prompted by U.S. Reps. Tom Price of Roswell and Lynn Westmoreland of Grantville, were about to crystallize the $4 gas issue for the nation, Georgia’s two senators —- Chambliss and Johnny Isakson —- joined to offer a compromise on offshore exploration that has been widely criticized as providing cover to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Sierra Club Democrats.
Their compromise would allow drilling with state approval more than 50 miles off the coasts of four states —- Georgia, Virginia and the Carolinas —- while raising subsidies for ethanol and other alternative fuels to the tune of $84 billion. Another $30 billion in taxes would be levied on oil companies. Writes Blackburn:
“Like the immigration compromise, it is designed to convince conservatives that the plan accomplishes what they want, while in fact, both plans simply capitulate to the special interest groups who fund the Democrats. … If immigration and the drilling ‘compromise’ is their idea of solving problems, then conservatives don’t need them.”
Whoa! When a dyed-in-the-wool fiscal conservative like Joe McCutchen turns to the Libertarian Buckley, and when a conservative jurist is moved to issue a public challenge on a policy issue, it’s time to take notice. The base, part of it at least, is restless.
Buckley will appeal to fiscal conservatives, regardless of their party affiliation. The 47-year-old lawyer and certified public accountant is the voice of the Depression-scarred generation that feared debt and believed that it’s immoral to consume at the expense of children and grandchildren. It’s a rather quaint notion in a self-indulgent age where splurging for immediate consumption is the national sport. Debt? Why worry? The Republican Party was once largely filled with those who considered it their civic duty to come in and tidy up the mess created by free-spending Democrats. At some point, however, they came to conclude that there was no long-term majority to be built being the fiscal disciplinarian. For the most part, they have surrendered.
As Buckley correctly notes, neither Democrats nor Republicans can muster the political will to make cuts. Buckley has charts, drawn from the General Accounting Office and other authoritative sources, spelling out the looming “economic catastrophe.” Between 2000 and 2006, the financial exposure from Medicare, Social Security and other health and pension obligations increased from $20.4 trillion to $50.5 trillion, he says. That amounts to $400,000 per full-time worker.
Analysis of the GAO’s budget simulations by the Peterson Foundation finds that in two decades the 18.3 percent of GDP that the federal government consumes won’t cover interest on debt, Social Security and Medicaid, he says, with accompanying charts.
Can he win the Senate race? No. At most he can take enough votes from Chambliss to deliver victory to Democrat Jim Martin. Given Republican Senate prospects elsewhere, Democrats could wind up with a filibuster-proof majority. That would be enough to swing the courts far left and to create any entitlement liberals want.
No thanks. The stakes are too high.
Ross Perot taught me a lesson about third-party candidacies. None for me.
But Buckley does perform a public service, raising the alarm.
I want change. Not the change that Barack Obama promises. The change I want is to a governing majority that doesn’t steal the quality of life of the next generation to serve this one.
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Does the VP matter?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Barack Obama paid a high price to get experience. Picking Joe Biden as his vice presidential running mate shores up his glaring weaknesses in experience. Pretty clearly, he’d gotten the message from skeptical voters that they’re not comfortable with him getting that 3 a.m. phone call.
Biden has flaws and baggage. Over the next two months, voters will get a first-rate education on what those are.
Biden does allow Democrats to play the good cop/bad cop routine. Out of the gate, Biden fell into his role: Be the attack dog on McCain..
A quick Zogby online interactive survey Saturday and Sunday of 2,248 likely voters gave it a wash. Among all voters, 19 percent were more inclined and 16 percent less inclined to support the ticket because of Biden. Only 7 percent said they’d ever voted for a ticket because of the number two, but 74 percent think it’s important this year.
Among Republicans, Mitt Romney is the clear favorite at 49 percent. Nobody else is close. The AJC endorsed Romney in the Georgia primary. He’d certainly float my boat. He’s the guy I’d like getting the 3 a.m. phone call that Congress is about to ride to the rescue of, say, housing or the economy.
The question is, though, does the VP selection induce you to vote for a candidate you hadn’t already favored?
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Same old class warfare in this race
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The national referendum on class warfare and the debate whether “change” is anything more than yesterday’s failed ideas kicks off this weekend with the gathering of Democrats to anoint the country’s savior.
That, presumably, is Barack Obama, though the cautious observer does not discount the possibility that Bill and Hill will seize the show.
Leading up to it, Democrats were convinced they’d found the bumper sticker/sound bite that would cause the unwashed masses to recoil in horror at the notion that a rich man could be president of the United States.
The sound bite was an interview John McCain gave Politico.com in which he appeared to be uncertain how many houses he and wife Cindy own. “I think — I’ll have my staff get to you,” he said. “It’s condominiums where — I’ll have them get to you.”
It was the gotcha moment for desperate Democrats, sound-bite evidence that McCain is either befuddled or out of touch with ordinary Americans. The Obama campaign rushed to capitalize. “If you’re like me, and you’ve got one house, or you are like the millions of people who are struggling right now to keep up with their mortgage so they don’t lose their home, you might have a different perspective,” said Obama, who occupies a $1.65 million mansion in Chicago.
The wealth of the McCains is not in dispute. Cindy McCain is a highly regarded business executive who managed an inherited beer distributorship to a value estimated at $100 million. She, or they, own single-family homes or condos in Arizona, California and Virginia.
But, then, by the standards of those of us who draw paychecks, all the candidates offered for the presidency, Democrat and Republican, are rich — or live the lifestyles of the rich, with the possible exception of Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas. The Clintons, Bill and Hillary, have made more than $109 million since leaving the White House eight years ago.
The young, at least those who are convinced that in this year’s race they have found the post-partisan consensus-builder, should take note of what is happening.
In the generations before you, Democrats routinely won office by scaring the old folks into believing that Republicans intended to take or diminish their Social Security. They win office too by scaring minorities into believing Republicans intend to take or diminish their opportunities.
Their success is built on fright, on feeding the fear that somebody else — “the rich” — got or will take wealth, power or privilege that rightly belongs to somebody more deserving. You.
Obama, in that regard, is just another of a long line of class-warfare Democrats. Politics as usual.
Two trends are of concern, though.
A growing percentage of the country is beginning to walk away from any income tax obligation to pay for the bigger government they advocate. According to the Washington-based Tax Foundation, 41 percent of the U.S. population is totally outside the income tax system. Since 2000, the number of filers with zero tax obligation has grown from 29 million to 42 million. Only 90.6 million of the 132.6 million returns filed in 2005 paid taxes. The rest got back all they’d paid in, or more.
We don’t mind more government — if you’re paying, and especially if those who pay got “my share” of the nation’s wealth through $4 gas and high fees on subprime mortgages.
The other concern is that unmarrieds could be a majority of the population within 15 years, according to research done earlier this year by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner. Unmarried women favor Democrats by a 70-24 margin, they found.
And while the good news for McCain supporters is that Obama really does not wear well — doubts grow with prolonged exposure — the bad news is that to a large segment of the country, class warfare is a winner.
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Property taxes, environmental extremists, lighten up
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Not surprising that some state officials are willing to sacrifice the $428 million homeowners’ property tax break —- amounting to about $150 to $200 per year per homeowner —- to cover a revenue shortfall. Former Gov. Roy Barnes started it and state officials have never thought they got proper credit for it. Same with the sales tax exemption on food. Lots of money “spent” on tax relief —- to use the phrase of the more-government crowd —- without “buying” any gratitude. Still, House Speaker Pro Tem Mark Burkhalter (R-Johns Creek) vows that won’t happen. Taking the break away “is analogous to a tax increase, and we’re not going to do that,” said he.
Georgia needs a spending cap.
Environmental extremists oppose all efforts to add capacity —- oil, water or highway. Why? Managing shortages gives them the power to tell you where and how to live. It’s a life-control tool. When you see the word “alternatives” to more drilling, reservoirs or road capacity, it’s code for dig-in-the-heels opposition to solutions.
Obama thinks McCain had prior notice of the questions asked in their joint interview at Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif. It can appear that way when the other guy’s prepared. The inexperienced Obama may not know what he believes, but he’s certain about this: He wouldn’t have nominated Clarence Thomas for the Supreme Court because he doesn’t think he was “a strong enough jurist or legal thinker at the time.” What arrogance. Obama was in the U.S. Senate for two years when he announced his presidential candidacy.
Best explanatory quote of the week: “People get away with things and they mushroom,” said lawyer Jimmy Berry in explaining why Georgia Tech employee Donna Renee Gamble stole $316,000 with a state credit card. “She did it a few times; there were no checks and balances at the school, and it took off from there.” He just explained crime in America.
Good or bad, we get the behaviors we pay for. Mortgage brokers who signed up borrowers for high-interest/high-fee “liar loan” mortgages —- those requiring no verification of job, income or assets —- could make $15,000 on a $300,000 loan. A traditional loan would net $2,000 to $4,000. No surprise. Half of the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac losses of $3.1 billion between April and June were due to liar loans. Invite people to rip off any business or government program, or to immigrate illegally, and they will. See Jimmy Berry on “no checks and balances. …”
An Orlando newspaper reporter notes that McCain got a better reception among veterans attending a VFW convention than Obama. That information was conveyed thusly: “But McCain was the clear favorite among the predominantly older, white male crowd. …” Perhaps the louder applause was because McCain is a fellow veteran, was deemed to be the better leader on national security issues, or because he’s an older white male?
Liberals and conservatives are alarmed about the growing national deficit —- but with liberals it’s never when proposing new entitlements. The deficit to be feared is the one caused by military spending and the one that exists because of tax breaks granted to “the rich.” The act of supreme political courage for a liberal is to agonize publicly before agreeing that, darn it, taxes have to go up to support their favored programs. Sad thing is, there’s no constituency left, or not much of one, in either party for being fiscally responsible. And when there is, the “solution” is to raise taxes. Always. And promise restraint.
Take a deep breath. Count to 10 —- and then don’t say dumb things, like the response to a report that State School Superintendent Kathy Cox will appear on the game show “Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?” The quote is from Tim Callahan of the Professional Association of Georgia Educators, which at one time did not act and sound like a union. Said Callahan: “The budget is in meltdown, the CRCT is a mess and you have a superintendent in Hollywood taping a game show. It gives new definition to the word ‘frivolous.’ ” Lighten up, bud.
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After ‘change,’ what?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Democrats privately are questioning whether Barack Obama has a second-phase act, a follow-up once “change” wears thin, the Associated Press reports.
John McCain,meanwhile, is finding his footing. A new radio ad for McCain returns to the image of Obama, the celebrity. “Celebrities like to spend their millions,” it says. “Barack Obama is no different. Only it’s your money he wants to spend.”
Obama television ad approach is to accuse McCain of being “more of the same” with tax-cut giveaways to big oil and big corporations. It’s the sort of stuff that appeals to his liberal base, but after a year of campaigning has lost its punch. Young guy, old stuff. Is there something else? Something else beyond “change”?
A problem for Obama, too, is that once he goes negative, as he’s doing this week, he risks turning off the young who hear one message and see another. In the Atlanta market, he’s launching a television ad that attempts to link McCain to Ralph Reed. “It is just sad,” Reed said, “that the Obama campaign, which once pledged to run on hope and change, is now resorting to the politics of personal destruction and fear and smear as Obama drops in the polls.” Too, he continued, it takes “a lot of chutzpah for someone who did real estate deals with Tony Rezko to attack others.” McCain is up 5 percentage points over Obama in the latest Rasmussen poll, a real turnaround.
Reed, who handles the media’s tough questions better than any other Republican in the country, did go to the heart of one of Obama’s vulnerabilities in his response. The young have a nose for hypocrisy. If Act Two of the Obama narrative is the scene where he reveals himself to be just another Chicago machine politician who plays with the truth, the young cut him loose in a heartbeat.
Obama goes into his convention reeling. But no worry. Bill and Hillary are there to lift him up.
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One Joe, yes. Please. But not two.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Please, make it Joe.
Make Joe the VP.
Joe Lieberman, the Independent U.S. Senator from Connecticut who caucuses with the Democrats, came to Atlanta Monday with the Republicans’ presidential candidate for a fund-raiser. The speculation — and concern — was that John McCain was shopping Lieberman as his running mate. If so, it didn’t go over well. McCain’s base is growing comfortable with him as the nominee, reassured by his aggressiveness in taking on the post-European global citizen, Barack Obama, and by his sterling performance in the Saddleback Church conversations with Pastor Rick Warren.
Don’t blow it now. Joe, no. Surveying the entire Republican Party and concluding that there’s nobody there who’d be a suitable vice president is a message McCain doesn’t want to send.
Ah, but there is a Joe, a fine Joe, who would be a spectacular choice for vice president. That’d be Joe Biden, U.S. Senator, Deleware, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
There’d be great tension, of course. Both are talkers. Talk and talk and talk. Morning and night. Vapid, empty, meaningless, meandering rhetoric. With Obama and Biden, America could revive the presidency of Warren Harding.
About him it was said by Georgia native William G. McAdoo, Treasury Secretary under Woodrow Wilson, that his campaign speeches were “an army of pompous phrases moving over the landscape in search of an idea. Sometimes these meandering words actually capture a straggling thought and bear it triumphantly, a prisoner in their midst, until it died of servitude and overwork.”
And arrogance? If there’s a politician in America who matches Obama for arrogance, it’s Joe Biden. Instead of the annual Easter Egg Roll on the White House lawn, we could have an Arrogance Face-Off at 20 paces. This is a tough one. My money in that contest is on Biden. He’s far more experienced.
But with a little seasoning, “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for” could be the Michael Phelps of political arrogance.
Oh, the suspense of it all. Who will it be? Who is the other one we’ve been waiting for?
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Turn services over to private sector
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Despite a 12-year job-performance record that included “fights with co-workers, chronic tardiness, insubordination, repeated sleeping on the job and numerous mistakes routing emergency calls,” it wasn’t until a major 911-call blunder ended with a woman’s death that Gina Conteh got fired.
The quotes are from an account by AJC reporters D.L. Bennett and Marcus K. Garner of how the Fulton County civil service system works —- or doesn’t —- to serve the public interest. A mishandled call for medical assistance from Darlene Dukes of Johns Creek delayed help for almost an hour; she later died from a blood clot in her lung.
Getting rid of bad employees in Fulton is “impossible,” said Rob Simms, chief of staff to former Commission Chairman Mike Kenn. “Essentially, you can’t be fired.”
The state legislator who represents Johns Creek, House Speaker Pro Tem Mark Burkhalter, told the reporters that it’s “well-known that Fulton County is quick to hire, rarely disciplines and perpetuates an inefficient government.” He described Fulton as “a bloated jobs program.”
The inability to rid the public payroll of bad employees is a prime reason for moving virtually all nonjustice functions of state and local government into the private sector.
After a hundred years or more, we should have learned some lessons about the services government provides and the management systems they’ve created.
The primary one is that elected officials are notorious for thinking no further than the next election cycle. As such, they are incapable of acting in taxpayers’ best interests. The city of Atlanta, for example, sweetened pensions as a quick fix to placate disgruntled employees, putting the city in a financial bind for years to come.
The Atlanta school board has a pension system that covers 2,400 retirees and 1,000 current employees, mostly janitors, secretaries and other support staff, that is underfunded by $510 million. Teachers are, for the most part, in the state system. The board will spend $850 per student yearly to keep the system afloat —- meaning that the first $850 raised from property taxes for education goes to pay for yesterday’s short-sightedness.
Most of Georgia avoids troubles so dire not because they have smarter, more fiscally responsible, elected officials. It’s because Atlanta is older, has had more of a union presence and a greater cash flow, enabling its officials to be irresponsible more consequentially. It’s built up systems, like Fulton County’s, that make it virtually impossible to properly manage its personnel.
Before personnel problems get any worse, elected officials should be working overtime to come up with ways to turn functions over to the private sector. Then if a company doesn’t deliver, or is staffed with bad employees, elected officials can get rid of the company and give the contract to a new one. When workers are in the private sector, they’re not voting to elect their bosses, and they’re not lobbying for special favors. And, furthermore, politicians aren’t tempted to give in to them because they see the workers as a voting bloc. If they do, the costs will be pushed into the open, raising the possibility that another company will bid for the contract.
The other concern is unionization. Elected officials should never put themselves in the position of dealing with blocs of workers. More unionization is coming. A bill now before Congress called the Employee Fair Choice Act is a short cut to unionization. It would authorize a union in a private-sector company if a majority of workers merely sign an authorization card. No election would be necessary.
That’s on Big Labor’s wish list because the percentage of unionized workers in the private sector has dropped by more than half, to 7.5 percent, in 25 years.
Meanwhile, though, in the public sector, unionization is exploding and is now at 35.9 percent. That’s ominous. Georgia’s one of the five states with less than 5 percent of the work force unionized (4.4 percent). The time to deal with the problem is before it arises.
We see in Fulton and Atlanta, two mature governments, the consequence of short-term thinking and of adopting work rules that make it impossible to manage the work force properly.
Now’s the time to act. Privatize everything that’s not a function of justice. Everything.
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Liberation Russian style
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Russia promises, of a sort, to begin moving its forces, including 2,000 tanks, out of the territory of its neighbor, the republic of Georgia, today. To paraphrase a former governor of this Georgia, Marvin Griffin, everybody who believe that should pick up a tank and follow me.
In Griffin’s phrase, the object to be picked up was a bale of cotton. But the point is the same. Nobody expects Russian President Dmitry Mededev or Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to honor the promise to begin leaving Georgian territory today — except, perhaps, to begin a months-long trickle, while building up their defenses in the Georgian province of South Ossetia.
Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili was asked by Wolf Blitzer Sunday on CNN Late Edition whether “those Russian peacekeepers who were in South Ossetia before the violence started about 10 days ago…will be allowed to remain?”
“Well, you know, there is no such thing as Russian peacekeeper,” Saakashvili replied. “I mean, these are obvious Russian interventionist forces, Russian occupiers.”
They are that — and the challenge for the rest of the world, Europe and the U.S. most prominently, is to get them out, not only of the undisputed territory, but out of all of Georgia, including South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The Russians in Georgia “are destroying our pipeline and port infrastrure…they are just rampaging and going — looting… this is liberation, Russian style,” said Saakashvili on CNN.
The U.S. is the sole superpower remaining in the world, but there’s never been any doubt that it cannot be the world’s policeman. Some problems are first and foremost our responsibility, regardless of whether a single ally joins in. The war in Afghanistan and Iraq is an example. Some, Sudan for instance, require regional intervention. Others require a global response — in this case to make it clear to the Russians that it cannot seize and actually or effectively annex the territory of a sovereign nation.
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McCain showed best how to react to Russian force
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The world really cannot allow the Russian attempt to annex the territory of its neighbor, the republic of Georgia, to succeed.
If it does, if the West acquiesces to Russia’s seizure of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, it is not necessarily a return to the Cold War. But it is the beginning of a period of heightened tensions where great risk accompanies miscalculation by either Vladimir Putin or by America’s next president, Barack Obama or John McCain. It’s no time for indecisiveness, for lack of clarity and hints of timidity.
The invasion of Georgia is, like 9/11, a defining moment — less consequential, obviously. A military response to the invasion is not an option.
While Georgia is a beacon of aspirational democracy that suffered for generations in Communist bondage, the strategic interests of the United States in the republic of Georgia are circumscribed by its location and by more direct threats to our national security elsewhere.
Still, the entire world — and the Western world in particular — has to assert every noncombat effort possible to enforce a cease-fire and to replace Russian “peacekeepers” in South Ossetia and Abkhazia with an international force. The United States and other nations cannot look away while Russia effectively annexes the two regions — not now and not two years from now.
In the initial U.S. response to the invasion, the clearly decisive leader was McCain, not Obama or President Bush. Obama’s initial reaction was to urge both the rapist and the victim to show restraint, while McCain spoke forcefully to denounce the invasion and to call for specific actions, including withdrawal from “sovereign Georgian territory,” an emergency session of the U.N. Security Council, action by other official bodies and the creation of “a truly independent and neutral peacekeeping force.”
Ten days later, McCain’s first response appears to have been the right one. Obama reflected uncertainty in part because of inexperience and in part, too, because he was responding as events unfolded. He is far more comfortable, as indeed the administration’s critics are, in letting President Bush act and then declaring that he or they would have been smarter, wiser and righter had they been making the decision.
President Bush’s strongest response was to reach agreement with Poland last Thursday to base 10 interceptor missiles to protect Europe from those fired by Iran or North Korea.
In the days prior to the Russian invasion of Georgia, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was quoted as saying that “we should restore our position in Cuba and other countries.” He made comments in response to a report on a delegation’s visit with Cuban leaders to discuss cooperation in “energy, mining, agriculture transportation, health care and communications.” Military ties were specifically not mentioned, publicly at least.
But an influential former top defense official, Leonid Ivashov, was quoted in a separate report as saying: “It is not a secret that the West is creating a ‘buffer zone’ around Russia involving countries in central Europe, the Caucasus, the Baltic states and Ukraine. In response, we may expand our military presence abroad, including Cuba.”
The invasion of Georgia was clearly intended as a message to the West and to the newly independent states on Russia’s borders. If, in the process, it is possible to replace Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili with a puppet, so much the better. Russia has a compelling interest now in having the entire world see Georgia suffer. It has to be painful. It has to be humiliating and brutal.
The world either agrees now that Russia can declare a sphere of interest that includes surrounding itself with compliant states. Or it exerts every noncombat effort to protect the sovereignty of Georgia and to recognize its territorial integrity. That involves some risk. Medical and humanitarian resupply, for example, would be in proximity of Russian forces.
The invasion makes the world less safe. We enter a period where Putin and other Russian leaders should have no doubts about our intentions and our resolve. We have to take some risks in undoing the aggression, but there can be no false signals. In a time of testing, America needs a seasoned leader.
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‘Green’ costs, gun ruling, watchdogs
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s weekend free-for-all. Pick a topic:
When local governments impose higher costs on developers, as Doraville does in passing a “green” building requirement that includes recycled materials, low-flow toilets and other energy-use mandates, developers deserve compensation. A requirement imposed for the public good should obligate the public to pay the expected 2 percent to 5 percent increase in costs. At issue is redevelopment of the GM plant on I-285.
Did anybody in Georgia expect a different opinion when Marvin Shoob, a senior judge on the U.S. District Court here, got the airport gun case? No preliminary injunction prohibiting the city of Atlanta from blocking a new state law permitting licensed gun carriers to take them into the airport. “Here, the evidence demonstrates, at the very least, that there is a significant question as to whether permitting the carrying of guns in the airport is a serious threat to the public safety and welfare,” said he. Yes. He’s correct. The Legislature properly considered that question. The people’s elected representatives struck the balance they determined to be in the public interest, as is their right and duty.
Blow me over. Barack Obama’s energy policy did work. When America responded to his call to properly inflate their tires, a headline in The Wall Street Journal tells the rest of the story: “Oil Goes to the Bears/Even a War Can’t Stop Decline in Crude, Now Below $115.” Stocks rally. The dollar climbs to a 21-month high against the British pound and to a six-month high against the euro. Congress can now return to what it does best.
The people agree with Republicans on oil exploration —- 64 percent want more offshore drilling. A valiant band of House members that includes Georgians Tom Price, Lynn Westmoreland, Jack Kingston, Phil Gingrey and Paul Broun continues to speak in a recessed House for Nancy Pelosi to return and vote on the issue. She’s suggested offshore drilling will be part of a larger energy package, with a vote forthcoming. The fear here? That something akin to the plan endorsed by the Gang of 10, which includes Georgia’s two senators, will strike a compromise that gives us the words “offshore drilling” but leaves the most promising pools off-limits.
The first day of the Democratic convention features Nancy Pelosi, Michelle Obama and Ted Kennedy. No matter who or what follows, the convention moves right.
I’m at a loss to know how to further outlaw practices that already are —- giving campaign contributions that hide the true donors, as Facility Group founder Robert Moultrie acknowledges he did in Mississippi —- but this touches on one of the major challenges facing Republicans, at least those who are conservative. The challenge? Erect a firewall between the public and private sector, built around standards, transparency and accountability. The Facility Group performs an essential function invaluable to taxpayers. It manages construction of public projects. Options are to grow the bureaucracy or farm out functions. Much prefer the latter —- at arm’s length.
How to know when a reporter or commentator disagrees with an opinion rendered by a federal judge or a panel of them? When we must know which president appointed them. Thus it is that we know that a Reagan and a Bush 41 appointee upheld a lower-court ruling that dismissed a lawsuit filed on behalf of Valerie Plame against members of the Bush administration by a liberal “watchdog” group. A Clinton appointee dissented. One more thing: Ever hear a group on the Right or one opposed to excess regulation from, say, the Environmental Protection Agency, described as a “watchdog”?
Southern Co. and other utilities nationwide will need to spend as much as $1.5 trillion on new power plants, transmission lines and related facilities over the next 20 years, CEO David Ratcliffe projects. The cost of those projects will, of course, be passed on to ratepayers. A reminder here: Congress can levy any amount of taxes on Big Oil or any other industry on top of their normal business costs and, as with Southern and others, higher operating costs get passed on to us. As a businessman, I’d agree to any exotic energy proposal the wackiest of politicians want —- if I can build them into the rate base.
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For some, right to secret ballot could be lost
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Wal-Mart, the company that liberals love to hate, their George W. Bush and Big Oil of corporate America, has summoned department heads and store managers to meetings with human-resources managers to warn against a bill now before Congress that would make it easy for unions to get their foot in the door.
The percentage of private-sector workers who belong to unions is in a tailspin, down from more than 16 percent in 1985 to 7.5 percent last year. To counter that, organized labor had its Democrats introduce legislation called the Employee Free Choice Act. It’s been around since 2003, but has new life now that Barack Obama has a real shot at taking the White House. Organized Labor is mounting a major push to get him elected.
Wal-Mart is the nation’s largest private employer. It has aggressively resisted efforts to unionize its stores. When the United Food and Commercial Workers succeeded in organizing meat cutters at a store in Texas eight years ago, the company opted to phase them out in favor of prepackaged meats.
The conversations Wal-Mart officials had with its store managers and department heads warning against the legislation were legit. But they nonetheless sent unionists into a tizzy. Richard Ray, president of the Georgia AFL-CIO, called it “unfair corporate bullying” and proceeded to argue that it’s a really bad company in need of the Employee Free Choice Act.
That propose act gives back to organized labor all that it has lost and more. It allows unions to gain representation simply by gathering up and submitting signed authorization cards from a majority of the work force. There’d be no secret vote where workers declare their preferences, as they do in local, state and national elections.
The union could simply intimidate enough workers to force them to sign union cards and that’d be it. So much for free choice. So much for privacy in voting.
The Employee Free Choice Act is an awful bill. It stacks the deck. It takes from workers the right to make a free choice in the privacy of the voting booth. It’s one more reason the November election matters.
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Hold adults accountable for the life they conceive
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Can he say that?
We’re talking Emory University here.
I ask in admiration, since John Witte Jr., director of the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory, in his Sunday @issue article “Sex may be free, but children come with a cost we must accept,” pulls no punches in admonishing adults for the harm they inflict. He uses words that are plain and descriptive, identifying irresponsible adults as “adulterers and fornicators” whose irresponsibility creates “illegitimate children.”
His plain-spokenness and forthrightness are welcome. But in the modern world, where euphemisms are invented for all conduct or situations that could possibly result in any individual feeling shame, or suffering any loss of self-esteem, speaking plainly is simply not done. I fear for his safety — it’s a liberal-arts re-education camp for John Witte, for sure. I must remember to send him cigarettes soon as I know which camp.
Witte’s argument is that adults pay little or no penalty for causing life, with the result that ” 28 percent of all Caucasian, 50 percent of all Hispanic, and 71 percent of all African-American children were born to single mothers in 2007,” at a cost to taxpayers of $112 billion per year.
“Compared with children born and raised within marital households, nonmarital children on average impose substantially higher costs on society for anti-poverty, criminal justice and education programs and in lost tax revenues,” he writes. Those costs exceeded $1 trillion over the past decade, according to the Institute for American Values, he continues.
But rather than visit that cost on the rest of us, a greater burden should be placed on both adults “whose sexual dalliances produce children.” Contraception is available and cheap. Those who opt to ignore it, resulting in life, should be forced to pay support sufficient to guarantee that a child born outside marriage has a comparable living standard to children born to adults who marry.
Witte’s remedies include aggressive maternity and paternity suits, punitive-damage and estate lawsuits by illegitimate children when they reach adulthood, and concerted adoption efforts.
In an apparent effort to secure for himself a better daily work assignment or more morsels of food in the re-education camp, Witte is quick to remind readers that his proposals are not “grumpy conservatism but elementary liberalism.”
Whatever. Conservatism is never “grumpy” to those who understand its magnetic power to transform lives for the better, but if the gentleman wishes to throw us under the bus to advance his efforts to force adults to accept their “moral and fiscal” responsibilities to children, so be it.
It may be intrusive liberalism to suggest, as he does, that “birth certificates should carry more specific information about both parents — not just their names and addresses, as now, but their Social Security numbers, blood types and genetic data as well.” That would be combined with “a national registry of these birth certificates … to ensure that parents can be found regardless of where they move,” the better and easier for government authorities to track them down.
The discussion of Witte’s proposals ends here, but not before again noting the important role he plays in focusing national attention on a crisis of the culture.
Without question, when 38 percent of children are born to single women and to men who are most likely walk-aways, serious changes in the law, in the media, in the conversations on campuses, and in the middle class and in churches, are required. Adults deserve every protection of the law — until the moment they conceive. Then the law’s obligation shifts to the interests of the child until the age of majority. We should be prepared, as taxpayers, to pay $1,000 to collect $1 if it results in compelling an adult to recognize responsibility. An adult’s lifestyle is secondary to the child’s.
Every institution has a role.
As the Parents Television Council reported last week, prime-time television is overwhelmingly drawn to nonmarital sex in conversation and visuals. TV helped to turn the nation on cigarettes; its dialogue and scenes determine the norms.
It does not take a village. It takes a mother and a father.
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Get Russia out of Georgia
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Russian invasion of Georgia, initially represented as necessary to protect its citizens in the breakaway Georgian province of South Ossetia, is a reminder that where Russia is concerned, the world is still a very dangerous place.
Vice President Dick Cheney told Georgia President Mikheil Saakashvili on Sunday that “Russian aggression must not go unanswered and that its continuation would have serious consequences for its relations with the United States, as well as the broader international community,” said his press secretary, Lee Ann McBride.
Russia is the villan here clearly. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia has attempted to make South Ossetia and Abkkhazia Russian outposts — or even Russian territory — on Georgian soil. Russia has “peacekeepers” stationed in both. The longer they stay, the more difficult to impossible it becomes for Georgia to assert sovereignty over its territory.
It is another measure of the impotence of the United Nations or any other world body that Russian peacekeepers remained on Georgian soil allegedly performing a function that required neutral forces.
The timing of Georgian military action to reassert control of its South Ossetian territory is somewhat surprising though. Russia has been sending signals recently that it is threatened by Western efforts to establish military ties with buffer states. It’s been looking for some way, including reestablishing a relationship with Cuba, to send a message. Georgia now is the message. It has applied for NATO membership and is a strong U.S. friend and ally, providing 2,000 troops to help stabilize Iraq.
Diplomatically, the U.S. has to do everything possible, including chilling relations with Russia, to get its army out of Georgia. This is an instance where the world’s security interest requires a world response. Georgia is our friend, but it’s not specifically the U.S. security interest threatened by Russian aggression. It’s the world’s.
The over-reaction by the Russians is a reminder that inexperience in the White House is risky business. Why John McCain over Barack Obama? You don’t want the Russians to miscalculate the intentions or the resolve of a U.S. President.
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Pretty rhetoric is not what will win this thing
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
As the dog days of summer draw to a close, the sleeping-dog conservatives have sprung to life — almost spontaneously, it was — but with enough vigor and passion to signal the truth: We can win this thing.
The reality is, as recent weeks have demonstrated, John McCain wears well. Barack Obama doesn’t. Give the American people enough time to assess the character, competence and core of anybody in public life and they’ll end up making the right choice. It’s instinctive, maybe. But People Know. They know what’s best for them and for the country.
Obama die-hards, especially those on the Left, don’t recognize it. They’re mesmerized by him and fixated by their fanatical desire to move George W. Bush to the dustbin of history and to begin the process of dismantling his legacy. It’s a real blind spot. An adversary this cocky, this blinded by the certainty that “we are the ones we have been waiting for” can be defeated.
The rhetoric that charms and soothes when TelePrompTed, the language supporters don’t hear, is the rhetoric that triggers alarm bells in the America that doesn’t share the passions of his committed followers. This week, for example, he responded to a 7-year-old girl who asked why he wanted to be president. His answer: “America is, uh, is no longer, uh, what it could be, what it once was. And I say to myself, I don’t want that future for my children.”
Obama simply cannot stay on the “I love America” script, a threshold requirement. With him, it’s conditions and qualifiers, lawyered-up codicils to define precisely the America he embraces, lest his adoring acolytes on the Left think he includes all that Big Oil, God, guns and bigotry stuff, too. Middle America hears him and it jars. We don’t know what America he’s talking about, whether we and our values are in or out. Middle America will not get comfortable with Barack Obama as president in 90 days — and the Left will never understand why.
But that example of Obama’s tendency to talk himself into losing is not the near-spontaneous spark that invigorates the conservative base.
It is, instead, the spunk demonstrated by two Georgia members of the U.S. House of Representatives, quickly joined by others frustrated by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s refusal to allow a vote on offshore drilling.
The had-enough moment came at 11:23 a.m. on Friday a week ago, when Pelosi gaveled the House to adjournment as U.S. Reps. Lynn Westmoreland (R-Grantville), Tom Price (R-Roswell) and Indiana Republican Mike Pence stood near the well, waiting to deliver the five-minute speeches members are allowed after the day’s business is done. Their speeches were an appeal to allow a vote on expanded drilling offshore.
Four-dollar gas has jolted Americans into reality. While additional exploration is not the sole solution, it is an essential element. Pelosi knows that if she allows a vote, oil exploration wins with a bipartisan majority. Hence the quick gavel.
“I just happened to be standing there in the well,” said Westmoreland. With the gavel, the cameras and microphone were cut off. “It’s one of those ‘do or die’ things,” he continued, “I started addressing the gallery, telling them that we had failed to address the fact that our U.S. domestic production had not been addressed.”
He talked for about eight to 10 minutes before losing his voice. Price spoke too. “It was clear almost immediately to me that the gallery was engaged and people began to line up and say, ‘When can I do mine?’ ” Price recalls. About 50 members spoke and went until 5 a.m. without microphone or cameras.
A week later, it continues. Congressmen appealing for a fair vote, up or down, return to Washington to speak to a House chamber that’s often filled with visitors. Price returns on Monday, Westmoreland on Tuesday.
The dead-microphone protest may be considered a stunt. But it’s a stunt that sends a message: We’ll fight the important battles.
That message is one the base needed to hear.
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An arborist, attitudes and a bad bet
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s weekend free-for-all. Pick a topic:
• A high school in Gonzales, Texas, requires inappropriately dressed students to don navy blue coveralls — prison jumpsuits of a sort. Some parents object. What’s wrong with public education? These three things, among others: 1) parents who object to efforts to maintain discipline; 2) students who disregard simple instructions; 3) parents who don’t parent before the child hits school.
• Financing a car for six years, as Chrysler proposes, appeals to those who buy based on the monthly payment. It’s the kind of thinking that prepares people for payday loans and subprime mortgages.
• Now that Hillary is out and has no use for them, Barack Obama — in the spirit of party unity — asks that all the delegates from Florida and Michigan be allowed to vote at the convention.
• At a federal reimbursement rate of 58.5 cents per mile, parents and the DeKalb school system both win by transporting their own children to new schools from those that are nonperforming, as parents of 2,300 request. Car pools. Vans. All are preferred to buying more under-filled buses in rush-hour traffic.
• Atlanta fired a popular arborist, arousing concern among some that the city will be too lax in enforcing tree ordinances. I love trees. But right now I’m all worried-up. Global warming. Whether we’re executing people who are too fat. Whether Paris Hilton has a better energy policy than Barack Obama. The arborist firing is on my list, though. It’s due for serious worry time at 9:16 a.m. on April 16, 2011.
• First Starbucks and now Whole Foods Market announces lower earnings and plans to curtail expansion. Can the trendy among us live another day? Yes, if we assure them that all’s well with IKEA and itsy-bitsy cars are here to stay.
• When Gwinnett’s minorities become the majority — minorities had reached 48.3 percent a year ago — can the world stop ascribing all the convenient “suburban” stereotypes to the place, specifically related to MARTA and to how Republicans think? Comparing attitudes about MARTA today, for example, to those of decades ago reflects ignorance of the changes that have taken place. It’s ignorant, too, to assume that all Republicans think alike because they represent districts usually identified as “suburban” or that Democrats do who represent “rural” areas.
• Like Jim Martin, I declare myself a friend of the working people. And if his guy wins the White House, my friends are going to get hosed by the tax man.
• Sure as shootin’ when state revenues dip, the casino-gambling/ horse-racing crowd emerges to push their agenda. The president of the Georgia-South Carolina Horse Racing Committee wants you to know he is very distressed about education funding in Georgia and the tax burden on old folks. Just guessing, but might he have a solution to propose? Coincidentally, yes. But no thanks. We’ll get by without giving poor people even more ways to lose the butter and egg money.
• See, these folks being held at Guantanamo are enemy combatants captured on the battlefield. They didn’t shop-lift at Wal-Mart. They’re not U.S. citizens with constitutional rights. When The Associated Press account notes in the first sentence of its report of the split verdict on Osama bin Laden’s driver that “A jury of six military officers … ” and at the start of the second paragraph that “The Pentagon-selected jury … ” one gets the distinct impression that the reporter is trying to tell us that the driver could not get a fair trial. But he did. Then we’re told that defense lawyers “feared a guilty verdict was inevitable” because “the tribunal system’s rules seemed designed to achieve convictions.” That observation was attributed to the driver’s “Pentagon-appointed attorney.”
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Do you suffer Obama fatigue?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Are you suffering Obama Fatigue?
It’s barely August and, according to the Pew Research Center for People & the Press 48 percent of the country thinks Obama is over-exposed. Among Republicans, it’s 67 percent; among Democrats, 34. Only 10 percent of Republicans think the same of John McCain — that we’re hearing too much about him — while 35 percent of Democrats think McCain’s over-exposed.
No question, Obama is the dominant attention-getter in the campaign so far. Many of the commentators and much of the campaign media is caught up in the narrative of the Obama story and of the possibility of being part of a historic moment. We can, at times, appear to be groupies. That’s what Republicans are picking up. That’s why two-thirds of them believe he’s over-exposed.
Clearly, their response is not an indication that they’re tired of reading and hearing about him. Much of my daily e-mail consists of forwarded or original commentary related to Obama and to the campaign.
On the whole, according to Pew, the media is providing coverage of the campaigns that generally tracks the level of public interest. Where there’s a disconnect is with the economy. About 30 percent of the poll participants say they are closely interested in stories related to the economy, and those are about 5 percent of news content.
Question of the day: Are you suffering Obama fatigue? What aspect of the campaign coverage do you think is over-exposed?
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OK, now is Georgia in play?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The vote shift in the Democratic runoff can have only one explanation: The Democratic Party and the Barack Obama campaign decided their chances in Georgia would be far better in November with former State Rep. Jim Martin of Atlanta on the ticket than with DeKalb County CEO Vernon Jones.
Nothing obvious in either campaign, in Martin’s or Jones’, can account for the dramatic shift in three weeks. Some examples:
In Bibb County (Macon), Jones led Martin by 2,000 votes in July and less than 100 Tuesday.
In Dougherty County (Albany), Jones led by 5,000 votes in July and by 1,100 Tuesday.
In Metro Atlanta, it was a blow-out reversal: In Fulton, Jones led by 500 in July and lost by more than 15,000 Tuesday. In DeKalb, he led by almost 7,000 in July and lost by 15,000 Tuesday. In Clayton, Jones led by 6,000 in July and lost by about 3,500 Tuesday. In Cobb, Jones trailed Martin by about 500 votes in July and lost by more than 7,500 Tuesday.
In Richmond County (Augusta), Jones led by 7,500 in July and by 1,600 Tuesday.
In Muscogee County (Columbus) Jones led by 3,500 in July and did unusually well Tuesday, winning by 2,000.
In Chatham County (Savannah), Jones won by 6,000 last month and by less than 1,000 Tuesday.
Across North Georgia it was a blow-out for Martin. Union County went 827-37 for Martin. White County was 235-26, Martin. Towns County, Zell Miller’s home county, went for Martin, 219-9. In Union, Jones got 385 votes in the primary and in both White and Towns, he pulled less than he did in July.
Others may have a different explanation, but absent a great deal of money or some well-publicized news event, fortunes don’t turn as dramatically in major races as they did these three weeks. I don’t think anything either campaign did produced this kind of shift in voter preferences. The explanation here is that the Obama campaign determined that Jones would be a drag on their chances of putting Georgia in play — and got that word out.
So does Martin’s win help Obama? It substitutes a stable, reliable candidate who will show well for one who can be unpredictable and has the potential to do something embarrassing. It helps him by not hurting him. And while Martin can be low-key to the point of lifelessness, he is a Vietnam veteran and that could be a plus for Obama’s Georgia campaign. But still, Georgia is not in play.
Can Martin beat Chambliss? Highly unlikely. But, as unlikely as it is, the Democrats’ chances of picking up the seat are better with Martin than with Jones.
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A Vernon Jones show tonight? Nope.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Update/9:13 p.m.:
I’ve seen enough. Jim Martin has the nomination.
Mr. CEO’s voters stayed home. In counties where Jones was a runway winner in July, he either lost tonight or won by margins insufficient to overcome Martin’s gains elsewhere. And do they love him even in his home county of DeKalb? Apparently not. With 164 of 195 precincts reporting, Jones is losing by more than 14,000 votes.
It’s over.
Update/9:05 p.m.:
It’s beginning to look awfully much like it won’t be a Vernon Jones show tonight. He’s coming nowhere near the margins he had three weeks ago in the large counties. He was a no-show from Cobb County northward. He’s losing Cobb by 3-1.
I don’t see where he can make up the margins. It’s not over yet, but the loss of support for Jones between the primary and today is remarkable.
The Democratic Party establishment supported Martin. And it’s beginning to look that the party has some reach.
Update/8:40 p.m.:
I’m certainly not ready yet to abandon my assertion that it’ll be a Vernon Jones night, but he’s getting clobbered in North Georgia. Jim Martin is rolling up huge margins there.
And with partial returns just beginning to filter in from Douglas and Clayton, Jones is not getting the margins expected. Fulton and DeKalb are still out, though neither of those is a real gap-closer for either candidate.
Posted earlier:
Polls close shortly in the U.S. Senate Democratic primary runoff between DeKalb CEO Vernon Jones and former State Rep. Jim Martin of Atlanta.
My guess is that about 200,00 votes will have been cast today. In the primary three weeks ago, 493,243 Democrats voted for a Senate nominee.
I’m betting that Vernon Jones ends up being the nominee. Why? Fulton, DeKalb and Clayton count for about a third of the Democratic vote statewide. In DeKalb, Jones pulled about 30,000 votes in the primary to 23,000 for Martin. In Fulton, Jones got about 19,500 to 19,000 for Martin. In Clayton, Jones got 12,000 to 6,000 for Martin.
Fulton and Clayton Democrats have sheriff’s races that should help turnout, as does Newton County, where Jones ran well last month. There he took 2,300 votes to fewer than a thousand for Martin.
We will know soon. My bet before the polls close is that it’s a Vernon Jones show tonight.I’d be surprised if he continues writing much longer.
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School needs bold blueprint, not formula fiddling
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Governors one after another have tinkered with public education inputs and funding formulas, promising all the while to succeed where their predecessors had failed. Had those approaches worked —- more inputs and revised formulas recommended by blue ribbon commissions —- schools would be fixed by now.
They aren’t.
It’s the model that’s broken, not the funding formulas.
Across the country industries beset by new marketplace dynamics —- industries that include newspapers, health care providers and all others, automobiles among them, that compete globally —- are frantically at work reinventing their business models.
Education’s marketplace changed decades ago. The best hope now is to stop fighting the marketplace and, instead, let competition work. Give parents choice —- and the means to exercise it. Improve public schools, yes. But don’t keep children prisoners until the system is perfected.
The realization is dawning across Georgia that the parents who determine where children get medical care, what they eat, wear and watch on TV, should be able to determine how they are educated, too. Two separate polls released last week, one of voters in metro Atlanta and the other of voters throughout Georgia, unsurprisingly reflect a developing consensus. The metro Atlanta poll of 600 voters, conducted in late June by Public Opinion Strategies, found that 69 percent of those surveyed favor vouchers for children in failing public schools.
A statewide poll of 400 voters, conducted about the same time by Majority Opinion Research, reveals 66 percent support for vouchers for the parents of those children and 68 percent support for parents of all children. An important consideration for those who responded, no doubt, is that there be no new costs to taxpayers.
Support is strong among all groups: male, female, black, white, Democrat, Republican, Independent.
The most interesting aspect of last week’s school choice conference sponsored by the Atlanta-based Georgia Public Policy Foundation in celebration of the 96th birthday of Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman, father of the choice movement, was actually not the poll. It merely confirmed what has been obvious in recent years: Support grows for parental choice.
The interesting aspect was a policy speech by state Sen. Eric Johnson (R-Savannah), a likely candidate for lieutenant governor in 2010, when the current occupant of that office, Casey Cagle, departs to run for governor. The speech reflects a vision of a vital government function: assisting parents in educating their children.
The speech is important because it spells out in unusual detail a plan for revamping public education. The blueprint has these seven elements:
Full funding. Determine what it should cost to produce an educated child and how that cost should be shared by parents and state and local governments. “It should be a simple formula,” he said. “There should be no excuses.”
Let the money follow the child. Public or private.
Entice more people into teaching. Use alternative certification to attract second-career professionals. “And pay them based on degrees, experience and placement, with significant bonuses for improved outcomes.”
Maintain discipline. Let teachers remove those who disrupt learning for others. Back them in court, if necessary.
Measure outcomes. “Design a reasonable and transparent method to measure success.”
Provide public school choice. Children are assigned to neighborhood schools, but parents can move them to any other school “so long as they provide transportation and the student and parent sign a contract agreeing to attend class, study hard and behave.” Violate the contract and the student goes back to the neighborhood school. Local systems either buy trailers or fix bad schools.
Vouchers equal to the taxes spent on education should be given to every child to attend any private school that will accept them.
Dramatic. Bold. Visionary.
Not more of the same old inputs or formula-tinkering. A new model.
It’s the kind of marketplace thinking Georgia needs.
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McCain revives campaign with scrappy smarts
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Updated 8:30 a.m. Monday
The entire country noticed the week that the John McCain campaign sprang to life. The polls confirm it. Both the Gallup and the Rasmussen tracking polls released Sunday put the race with Barack Obama as essentially tied. Gallup has Obama 45, McCain 44. Rasmussen has Obama 47, McCain 46.
Obama, starting certainly with his “we are the ones we have been waiting for” speech back in February has solidified an image as somebody who sees himself as larger than mere mortal — a messiah, says Rush Limbaugh.
That continued, certainly, with the knock-off presidential seal that made a brief campaign appearance and with his European tour. McCain is taking note. With humor. His latest Internet commercial captures Obama’s grandiose statements and concludes with Moses (Charlton Heston) parting the Read Sea in Cecil B. DeMille’s 1956 movie “The Ten Commandments.”
This is clearly a race John McCain can win.
For months, I’ve thought Barack Obama has a problem he’s incapable of overcoming. He doesn’t know when to quit talking. He’s really not disciplined, especially when he’s before a like-minded crowd. And he is arrogant. As we saw through the Democratic primaries, he does not wear well. It’s infatuation at first eye-lock. But then, when the potential partners start sizing him up for long-term commitment, the flash fades.
Ummmn, no, don’t think so.
McCain nailed him last week, picking up immediately something the American people clearly sensed from his Berlin rock-star tour: Obama is a celebrity of the Britney Spears/Paris Hilton variety who just says things. Sometimes they sound insightful. Sometimes they hint at profoundity. Always, when prepared in advance, they are a beautifully written script. Connecting Obama to politically dilettantish Hollywood and by inference the Hollywood left is an indication that the McCain organization can get it together and mount a smart, aggressive campaign over the next three months. “He’s the biggest celebrity in the world,” the McCain ad asserts, “but is he ready to lead?”
Obama’s assertion that we won’t need to drill for oil if we just put more air in our tires is a Hollywood-starlet alternative to a national energy policy.
McCain affirmed his intention to play hardball, too, in his response to Obama’s casual use of the race card. After referring to President Bush and to McCain, Obama had said: “What they’re going to try to do is make you scared of me. You know, ‘He’s not patriotic enough, he’s got a funny name, you know, he doesn’t look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills.’”
McCain responded immediately, expressing his disappointment that Obama had chosen to play the race card — the only possible inference to be drawn from his observation that he “doesn’t look like all those other presidents.”
Obama’s a tough guy to run against for any Republican. The hit squads of the left are positioned on the periphery of the campaign battlefield to pounce at the first use of a word or phrase that can be interpreted as calling attention to Obama’s race. Republicans are stereotyped. Even straightforward efforts to curtail voter fraud like, for example, requiring legitimate proof at the polls of a potential voter’s identity has created a cottage industry among Democratic partisans determined to establish it as evidence of racism.
Be prepared: Any clumsy or stupid utterance by anybody who ever voted Republican that can be interpreted as racism between now and election day will be represented as an extension of the McCain campaign. It’s standard drive-the-vote business.
McCain, in any event, demonstrated that he’ll not allow this advantage to be one-sided. Calling Obama’s hand early on the use of the race card is a signal that he won’t be intimidated on the issue.
McCain recovered well, too, on the issue of higher taxes. For a Republican to indicate an openness to higher taxes with a Democratic Congress is suicide. McCain appeared to do precisely that in speaking with reporters on the campaign bus and later in an ABC interview.
When asked whether he would support higher payroll taxes to fix Social Security, he responded that nothing is off the table. “Nothing” includes, of course, higher taxes.
McCain thus appeared to have given away the franchise. Any Republican who agrees to a dollar of new taxes with this spendthrift Congress will get a thousand.
McCain quickly recovered.
When asked on Tuesday by a young girl in Sparks, Nev., whether he would raise taxes as president, McCain gave a one-word reply: “No.”
He’d promised that repeatedly, before appearing to drift away. The simple, emphatic “no” is the correct answer.
It was a good week. He can win.
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Good guys, trade talks, a facilitator
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s weekend free-for-all. Pick a topic:
Anybody who stereotypes Republicans as low-tax fiscal conservatives doesn’t recognize the true diversity that reigns in the party, both here and nationally. Example: State Rep. Ron Stephens of Garden City, the first Republican to hold that seat, thinks the tobacco tax should be raised by a dollar. He’d fall into that category of Republicans who don’t mind more government, if it can be used to punish targets of their choosing —- in this case, smokers.
Praise be the five Georgia congressmen who oppose earmarks —- the pork barrel projects that go through no cost-benefit or need competition. The good guys on this issue are Reps. Tom Price of Roswell, Paul Broun of Athens, Nathan Deal of Gainesville, John Linder of Duluth and Lynn Westmoreland of Grantville. The political bosses can’t own you if you don’t want anything.
Saddest —- and most depressing —- quote of the week comes from Kevin Wiggins, who operated a mortgage-loan scheme that defrauded lenders of $7 million. He used straw borrowers and phony appraisals to obtain inflated loans for 88 rundown houses. Reasoned Wiggins: “Most of the homes are in gross states of disrepair. Although our fraud has contributed to some negative consequences, we were able to change the face of that entire neighborhood by our actions. We were there every day.” Wiggins got 12 years and was ordered to repay $6.5 million.
A record deficit, $482 billion, is projected for the 2009 budget year. So what does Congress do? Spend. There’s method to the Nancy Pelosi-Harry Reid madness. Run up the deficit and then argue that the Bush tax cuts, set to expire in 2010, are “unaffordable.” Barack Obama will do his part, too. Part A of most every speech he makes is fluff. Part B is a new spending proposal. Thank goodness for U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and a handful of other fiscal conservatives. Without them, it’d be worse.
The dip in state tax collections —- down 1.1 percent in the last fiscal year —- is a reminder that tax cuts require spending cuts, too. Pass spending caps.
Conserve water, rates are increased. Drive less, and some in Congress see it as a need to raise the gas tax. Don’t raise it. Cut it, as well as the federal programs funded by it. Let states have that taxing capacity for their own priorities.
Save this headline, since it has a thousand more times to run: “Agriculture disputes torpedo trade talks.” Print it in a dozen languages. Works everywhere.
When a news account of the Jim Martin-Vernon Jones debate on public broadcasting says it was “carried live,” one should not necessarily infer that the candidates were, you know, live. I’m thinking Tuesday’s turnout drops by half. One more live debate and it’ll be in the single digits.
Interesting to note, as The New York Times does in a profile of the Barack Obama years at the University of Chicago Law School, that he lectured on rights, race and gender and in a dozen years on its faculty “never completed a single work of legal scholarship.” The Times quotes a colleague, Richard Epstein: “His entire life, as best I can tell, is one in which he’s always been a thoughtful listener and questioner, but he’s never stepped up to the plate and taken full swings.” He’s a facilitator, not a decision-maker. He’s where he belongs. Outside the Oval Office. No fingers on triggers. No instant to decide whether America’s at fault when bad things happen.
A national study that reports that young black men in DeKalb County are at greater risk of being homicide victims without reporting who’s doing the killing or why gives us little of value. The study, funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, was done by researchers at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Meanwhile, one wonders: Why couldn’t the source of the salmonella that sickened 1,300 people across America and that cost tomato growers $300 million have been identified sooner?
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