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Thursday, December 4, 2008
On Clark Howard, Bush, college fees
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s weekend free-for-all. Pick a topic:
• Clark Howard’s not running for mayor of Atlanta. Smart guy, Howard. The time to pinch pennies was when they were accumulating a mountain of debt. They’re now into juggling. The radio personality they need is get-out-of-debt guru Dave Ramsey.
• Proof that a well-thought-out message can persuade those who try to kill us to rethink their efforts: Libya wants to open a new chapter in its relationship with the United States. Moammar Gadhafi has renounced terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, has compensated the families of the victims of the 1988 bombing on Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, and vows to move from a dictatorship to a constitutional democracy while investing some of Libya’s $100 billion wealth in U.S. companies. The message was a bomb dropped near his tent in the Libyan desert in April 1986 at the direction of President Ronald Reagan. That was the beginning of clarity for Gadhafi.
• Disagree if you will on policy, but there can be no disputing that President Bush will be remembered, as he wishes to be, “as a person who, first and foremost, did not sell his soul in order to accommodate the political process. … I came to Washington with a set of values, and I’m leaving with the same set of values.” A decade from now, maybe sooner, the man’s worth as a leader will be measured alongside Harry Truman as a wartime president. A modern politician who can ignore polls to do what’s right for the country is a jewel.
• Cities like Kennesaw that issue bonds for developers that are financed with payment-in-lieu-of-taxes bonds should be required by law to reimburse other governments for taxes lost — in this case the Cobb County School System and county government. Rep. Earl Ehrhart (R-Powder Springs), chairman of the House Rules Committee and a reliable taxpayer champion, is drafting legislation to prohibit any government from unilaterally stripping another of tax revenues.
• Two state senators who left the legislative arena to seek judgeships, both of whom were probably more temperamentally suited to the judicial branch, lost. Michael S. Meyer von Bremen, an Albany Democrat, lost on Nov. 4 in a crowded field for a seat on the Georgia Court of Appeals. This week, Joseph I. Carter, a Tifton Republican, lost a runoff for a Superior Court seat. Good guys, both. Thoughtful and calm.
• Get out the sniffing salts, Betsy. A Cobb County law firm, Gardner Groff Greenwald & Villanueva, announces that it’ll cut its flat-fee rates up to 12 percent below 2008 and won’t increase hourly rates.
• Now, son, the promise was that college tuition would be fixed for the four years that you’re there. Nobody promised that “fees” wouldn’t be raised in lieu of tuition hikes, as they were — $100 per semester at research universities, $75 at most other four-year schools and $50 at the two-years. Lesson? Don’t make promises that can’t be kept. And get rid of the fees when the current financial crunch passes.
• The outcome of Tuesday’s U.S. Senate runoff does not bode well for Georgia Democrats in 2010. Barack Obama was a phenomenon. Nobody currently on the scene is capable of matching his appeal to Democrats and independents in Georgia. DeKalb CEO Vernon Jones is right, I believe, when he asserts: “The Democratic Party has to stop putting up these liberal candidates who tend to win in the primary but not in the general.” But I’ve read enough post-election advice from liberals to Republicans that they become Democrat-lite that I’ll avoid the condescension of suggesting that state Democrats become Republican-lite. They should fix it as Mr. CEO and others think necessary to win statewide.
• Honoring the president-elect in the only way government knows how — by giving public employees another paid holiday — officials of Perry County, Ala., declare the second Tuesday in November to be a Barack Obama Day holiday from work. Perry County, in central Alabama, is one of the poorest in the state.
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Don’t take the bailout road
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Detroit auto execs take their hybrids to DC, determined to convince Congress to provide $34 billion in taxpayer assistance on the promise that all will be glorious in the by-and-by and with the threat that the failure of any one of the Big Three could tip the economy into Depression.
There is a compromise, if not a remedy. Congress could divert the $25 billion set aside in the financial sector rescue legislation already passed that was to help auto makers retool for “greener” vehicles. Then, come January, when Democrats have total control and the intent to pass another “stimulus” package, they can add back $25 billion, $34 billion or any other sum and continue the process of nationalizing the American auto industry, the final stage of the “public-private partnerships.”
For the moment, environmental groups and the United Auto Workers, both core Democratic constituencies, are feuding. The UAW recognizes that bankruptcy would give auto companies the opportunity to rid themselves of agreements and contracts that have made them uncompetitive. The union, therefore, has pledged to reopen contract negotiations with the intent of making concessions. One of those agreements pays laid-off workers 95 percent of their salaries.
Alan Reuther, director of the UAW’s legislative affairs, said if the only way to get the votes needed in the Senate is to specify that the $25 billion come from the program that is to finance retooling for “greener” vehicles, it should be done. “We have a situation here where we need the emergency assistance or the companies are in danger of collapsing,” he said. “We’re confident the Obama administration will make sure the … program is fully funded.”
One of the problems with this bailout and others is that it does put politicians and government bureaucrats in the position of dictating products and services, who gets loans and who doesn’t, and who works and who doesn’t and at what salaries. Now if cars don’t sell, it’s a problem for the company and its shareholders. When politicians make the decisions, they’ll make cars for the subsidies, regardless of whether there’s a market — and if there isn’t, they’ll provide car-specific tax credits. This is a road we don’t want to take.
Congress should not intervene.
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