Home > Thinking Right > Archives > 2008 > December
December 2008
Year started, ends with partisan games
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The bad-boy governor ends the year with a game — a fitting end to an intensely partisan political year where virtually every public policy observation or action had an underlying Election Day purpose.
Gov. Rod Blagojevich, said to be “defiant,” named a three-time loser in gubernatorial races to replace Barack Obama in the U.S. Senate. The attraction of 71-year-old Roland Burris is that he’s black and therefore puts the Democrats who are trying to keep Blagojevich in a box in the awkward political position of rejecting a guy who’d be the only black in the U.S. Senate.
Senate Democrats have made clear their unwillingness to seat a Blagojevich appointee. Oh, the drama! “In-you-eye.” “No, yours.”
By injecting race, Blagojevich assures that Obama’s replacement will be black, though that was likely the case anyway. What now? Blagojevich will be out by Lincoln’s birthday, as the lieutenant governor predicted. And Senate Democrats can’t back down. If Burris wants the job, he’ll have to run for it.
Republicans, not to be outdone, ended the year with a certain silliness of their own. The former chairman of the Tennessee GOP, Chip Saltsman, is running for chairman of the Republican National Committee. He sent fellow Republicans a CD over Christmas that included “Barack the Magic Negro.”
The parody was based on an observation by a black liberal columnist in the Los Angeles Times. He described Obama as the “Magic Negro” who appealed to white liberals because he helped assuage their guilt over slavery, while allowing them to rejected more authentic black voices.
The CD, in any event, provided liberals the media face-time to declare Republicans to be racists and insensitive. Yea, yea. The year started with silly games; it just as well end that way.
It is, however, a reminder to Republicans that they can’t do race. Liberals and many of those who make decisions about what’s news are very quick to embrace stereotypes about Republicans. And, since blacks are overwhelmingly Democratic, Republicans like Saltsman will never get a pass when it’s possible to perpetuate a stereotype.
2008 started with games. With games, it ends.
Happy New Year.
Permalink | Comments (141) | Post your comment |
3 new loan programs should provide more HOPE
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It’s an interesting idea — one at the core of the HOPE scholarship launched by former Gov. Zell Miller. The idea is that if youngsters know early enough that money need not be a barrier to a college education, they’ll study harder and focus earlier. HOPE said to Georgians that if you take education seriously and maintain a B average, on graduation from high school a stipend will be provided to cover tuition, most fees and some books at public colleges and up to $1,750 at private institutions.
Still, half the students graduating from public and private not-for-profit colleges in Georgia in 2007 had education-related debt averaging $16,628, according to The Project on Student Debt.
While listening five years ago to legislators debate how to keep HOPE solvent long-term, Atlanta attorney Les Schneider concluded that something more was needed for students trying to afford college. An idea sprang from coincidental conversations with an unnamed truck driver and with Harry C. Payne, who at his death earlier this year was president of Woodward Academy in College Park.
The result four years later is a law sponsored by state Sens. Bill Hamrick (R-Carrollton) and Seth Harp (R-Midland), among others, creating a series of three low-interest loan programs. Rates start at 1 percent.
The first is a “loan of last resort” of up to $10,000 per year for up to four years to be made available to students who want to attend college, but who fall just below HOPE eligibility. The intent is to make certain that money is not a barrier to college for the determined.
The second, called “graduate on time” loans, require no specific grade average and offer incentive to get in and get out. At present, 54 percent of full-time students fail to graduate within six years. Taxpayers, who finance the bulk of college costs, have an incentive to get them there and get them out. Starting interest rates are no more than prime, but if students graduate within four years with a cumulative grade point average of no lower than 2.0 — a “C” average — the rate converts retroactively to 1 percent.
The third is an “education for public service” loan program. As with the “graduate on time” program, the initial loan rate is no more than prime. The interest rate drops to 1 percent with employment by the state or by a local government or school system for a specified period of time.
There’s a catch, though. The loan programs have been authorized, but are not yet available. Each loan program is separate and each requires $500,000 in funding before the Georgia Student Finance Authority, which will manage the funds and accept contributions to them, can begin to make loans. Funds can come from donations from foundations, from tax-deductible gifts by taxpayers and from appropriations by the General Assembly.
When the idea of the loan programs was first pitched to Hamrick, then chairman of the Higher Education committee, “he thought it would be a great idea that could supplement what HOPE does and that we could get a reputation in Georgia of not letting money get in the way of getting an education,” said Schneider. “They could go to school, get through, get a degree and then pay it back.”
Another program that makes it possible for Georgians to voluntarily contribute to the education of others was also approved this year. A state income tax credit of up to $1,000 for individuals and up to $2,500 for couples is offered for gifts to organizations offering scholarships to children who enroll in private schools. Corporations can get credits for up to 75 percent of their state income tax liability. It, too, is just getting off the ground.
The tax credits can be no more than $50 million and the Department of Revenue has to confirm that credits are available under that cap — so there’s no way to get credit for 2008 contributions. There’s certainly room under the cap this year, but no time to get approval.
“I am thrilled with the success” of the program so far, said state Rep. Earl Ehrhart (R-Powder Springs), chairman of the rules committee and a major promoter of the legislation, which was written by state Rep. David Casas (R-Lilburn), a public school teacher.
Two programs, both good, allow Georgians to decide where to put their money in education. Time’s running out now, but in the New Year, they’re good investments.
Permalink | Comments (52) | Post your comment | Categories: Column
Bush among ‘worst in history’ ?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
As the Bush Administration draws to a close, First Lady Laura Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice are being asked to comment on the assertions of its critics that it is “one of the worst in history.”
Rice, in an interview on CBS, terms the criticism “ridiculous.” Said she: “I think generations pretty soon are going to start to thank this president for what he’s done. This generation will.”
Both are right.
The Bush haters have been determined since Hanging Chads to see that this administration, which partisans regarded as illegitimate, go down in history as a failure. For about two-to-three months following 9/11 the critics contained their dislike of Bush, but the reality is that the Left would have stood exposed to history had they been forced to acknowledge Bush Administration successes. So they haven’t. And won’t. And when the historians of the Left — those who came of age in the 60s, at least — write history in the next decade, Bush will be cast as a Warren Harding or Herbert Hoover.
When fair-minded historians examine the Bush legacy, he’ll be fine. It may not be “pretty soon,” as Rice believes, but the day will come when generations will “thank this president for what he’s done.”
Permalink | Comments (160) | Post your comment |
Remembering a newspaperman
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
At an uncle’s funeral more than a decade ago, cousins and I recognized that connections dear to us were passing from our lives.
We promised to renew connections. True to the promise, we have.
At Durwood McAlister’s funeral, the newsroom staff of The Atlanta Journal, most of whom Mac had hired, came to the same realization. While our lives have gone their different ways, we once shared something vitally important to each of us, and we should gather again to tell stories and remind each other of that.
The passing of milestone people in our lives always has that effect, jolting us with fear that precious parts of our past are passing.
Mac, who hired me twice at The Journal, was one of those milestone people. I started as one of the droves of young reporters he hired. By the time he retired two decades later, I was a friend who loved him.
I don’t know when friendship evolved into something deeper. Maybe on Christmas Eve. For years, my daughter Jennifer and I had a Christmas compact. I’d match the dollars she earned doing odd jobs for her mother and neighbors. On Christmas Eve, she’d come to the office, and when work was done we’d walk to Rich’s so she could buy presents for grandparents, her mother and I and friends and neighbors.
There was never enough money, so Jennifer had to shop intelligently and creatively. When she was about seven, she bought her mother a cup and saucer from Rich’s marked-down china and marveled at its high price. Twenty-five cents.
Mac was my boss through those years, and at Christmas, he was the doting grandfather children adore. To the little red-haired visitor, he was the living Spirit of Christmas, a joyful reminder that warmth and attention make the ordinary magical in the lives of children.
Maybe the attention was because Fay, Mac’s wife of 58 years, was a red-haired girl. Maybe it was because the excitement of a little red-haired girl on a Christmas Eve shopping adventure filled the room with glee. Maybe both.
Those visits fixed Mac in the little red-haired girl’s heart forever. “Mac’s kind eyes and loving smile always made me feel like the most special girl in the whole world,” the now 35-year-old said on the day of his funeral. “He will forever remain among my treasured childhood memories.”
When did friendship and admiration start to become love? Christmas Eve, maybe? Because love my daughter and I start to love you.
Love takes time. Time to know how people treat others. How they react to tragedy and triumph. How they think and act and behave when they have the advantage and when they don’t. How they treat waitresses and children and unimportant old people. In almost 40 years of friendship, Mac passed all tests, a thoroughly decent, good and selfless man.
As a newspaperman, he had one of life’s most difficult jobs: managing reporters and editors. We are an independent, rebellious lot, as unintimidated by authority as cantankerous three-year-olds.
But the qualities that make journalists hard to manage are also those that make them good public watchdogs. They’re self-directed, skeptical and not easily cowed. If management wants something, they want to know why.
Mac, though, had the gift. Reporters and editorial writers knew from instinct and experience that he could be trusted, that he was never motivated by anything other than the desire expressed in 1939 by Gov. James M. Cox, founder of the chain that owns the AJC, “to tell the truth as only intellectual honesty can discern” it.
Mac inspired people to believe what he believed, that we were trying to build a great newspaper, honestly engaged in trying to discern and tell the truth. He would look at you with that expressive face, the face from an Irish pub sing-a-long that exuded the fullness of life’s joys. But when he gave you that other look, that look of impending displeasure, it was chilling, reducing the most rebellious of the unintimidated to humble submision.
He was a fine newspaperman, a finer human being.
That is the truth as I know it, as Mac taught me to tell it.
Permalink | | Categories: Column
Football shootings and housing musings
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s weekend free-for-all. Pick a topic:
A 79-year-old man in Clayton County is charged with shooting his neighbor after taking a comment the wrong way as they watched the Atlanta Falcons-Minnesota Vikings game on television. I’m guessing the wounded man opined that the Falcons wouldn’t make the playoffs in the elderly gentleman’s lifetime, which the 79-year-old took to be a threat.
KB Home, one of the nation’s biggest home builders, will pull out of Atlanta. The market, and a 12-month supply of homes for sale, dictates that decision. Had Congress been supplying the money — big developers are asking — there would have been no need to react to market conditions. Their instructions would have come from politicians: Stay and continue building “affordable” homes. That’s the future of “public-private partnerships/bailouts.”
None of President-elect Barack Obama’s cabinet selections is from the South. Big deal. The Cabinet is not quota-based.
A West Bank father offers his daughter and a dowry to the Iraqi journalist who threw a shoe at President Bush. Half the lefties in America would match that offer.
Christmas cheers to the Gwinnett County School Superintendent J. Alvin Wilbanks and members of the school board for having the courage to be among the pioneers. They’re signing a contract with the State Department of Education to be measured by the results they produce in return for more freedom from state mandates. It’s always easier to blame something (too little money) or somebody else (state and federal mandates) for failure, as some superintendents around the state are doing. Putting it on the line requires a willingness to take risks. Signing the contract is evidence of confidence in themselves and their abilities to run the system.
More reason for holiday cheer headed into the new year: Another Atlanta law firm, Chorey, Taylor & Fell, announces that it will hold hourly rates to this year’s levels in 2009 as “an appropriate recognition of economic conditions,” said founding shareholder Tom Chorey. “Our rates are well below the big firms in Atlanta and we still think we need to freeze them,” said Tom McLain, another of the firm’s lawyers.
Confidence in the fairness of the nation’s tax system has long been weak. Word from the IRS that it sent out more than $1 billion claimed on returns known or suspected to be fraudulent last year because of “limited resources” further erodes faith in the system. Chances of being audited are about 1 percent for those who report incomes of less than $200,000, about 3 percent for those who report more.
The federal loan to Chrysler and GM will, I fear, turn them into Morris Brown College — never really competitive, never really subject to the marketplace.
This downturn is serious. Toyota lost money. First time in 70 years.
Uh, oh. The company whose executives think 2009 will be hunky-dory is an Atlanta-based rent-to-own furniture chain, Aaron Rents. If you can’t afford to buy furniture, you can rent it. But you may not be able to rent the rims for your automobile so readily. The company is re-evaluating its wheels and rims rental business in light of the current economy. When times are bad, something’s gotta go. Could be the spinning rims.
Great piece by John O’Sullivan in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal entitled “Conservative Snobs Are Wrong about Palin.” A flavor: Sarah Palin “has survived more media assassination attempts than Fidel Castro has survived real ones.” And to those who say, she’s “no Margaret Thatcher,” Sullivan replies: “As it happens, I know Margaret Thatcher. Margaret Thatcher is a friend of mine. And as a matter of fact, Margaret Thatcher and Sarah Palin have a great deal in common.” Love it.
Memo to Evander Holyfield: Don’t fight guys, like the 7-foot Russian Nikolai Valuev, where you have to stand on a step-ladder and punch up to hit them in the chin. Especially at the age of 46.
Permalink | Comments (36) | Post your comment | Categories: Column
President-elect’s Christmas present
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Christmas is coming — and the early present to or from the incoming Barack Obama administration is that neither his designated chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, nor anybody else connected to the President-elect talked about a deal to fill his U.S. Senate seat with Illinois’s bad-boy governor.
Emanuel spoke once or twice about the seat with Gov. Rod Blagojevich and “about four” times with the governor’s former chief of staff, John Harris, and recommended names, but had no improper discussion, according to an internal review prepared for Obama.
Does this end it? Most likely, yes. It wouldn’t for an incoming Republican, but unless federal investigators’ listening devices have discussions that are clearly improper, this story gets lost in the holiday news shuffle and in the excitement of the pending change of administrations.
Merry Christmas, Mr. President-elect. Your present has arrived.
Permalink | Comments (69) | Post your comment |
Add road capacity for traffic relief
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A group that had difficulty mustering a quorum for its meetings is recommending a $50 billion proposal, more than twice the entire state budget, for commuter rail, rapid-transit bus and street cars in metro Atlanta.
“Whether that’s an urban fantasy or the seeds of Atlanta’s next great rebirth, only time will tell,” writes the AJC’s Ariel Hart about the Transit Planning Board, a group that includes representatives of the Georgia Regional Transportation Authority, MARTA, the Atlanta Regional Commission and local governments.
With the wish list, the group will reform itself next year as the Transit Implementation Board to start searching for money, $2.4 billion per year through 2030.
With the incoming administration of Barack Obama assembling an economic stimulus package that could exceed $850 billion with a goal of preserving or creating 3 million jobs over two years, infrastructure money may flow. More likely, the full debate on transportation infrastructure and funding will come in the next Congress with the reauthorization of a highway and transit funding bill with the garbage title “Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users” due to expire Sept. 30. A higher federal fuel tax, now 18.3 cents per gallon, is one “stimulus” possibility.
Traffic congestion is, no doubt, getting worse in urban areas across the country, including metro Atlanta. The question, however, is whether significant relief comes with an expenditure of $50 billion.
Ronald D. Utt, a senior research fellow at the Washington-based Heritage Foundation, and Wendell Cox, a visiting fellow, offer insights into the effectiveness of transit spending that should be weighed by every state legislator, congressman and policy guru engaged in the transportation-funding debate.
Some of their findings:
While “about 20 percent of federal surface transportation spending is devoted to transit, only 1.9 percent of all urban passenger travel and 4.9 percent of all commuters use transit.”
Portland, Ore., “has made massive investments in a light rail system and transit-oriented development,” yet just 5.5 percent of commuters used transit in 2007, down from an 8.4 percent share of 1980, before light rail was constructed.
While high gas prices are credited with prompting drivers to switch to transit, “detailed analysis of recent trends reveals that only 3 percent of the reduction in auto use shifted to transit by early 2008.” Carpools, smarter trip-planning and working from home accounted for 97 percent of the drop in miles driven.
A single metro area — the New York City area — accounted for 60 percent of the 10.8 percent increase in transit ridership nationwide between 2005 and 2007.
Amtrak requires a federal subsidy of $210.31 per passenger per thousand miles, while intercity buses require $4.66 and commercial airlines $6.18. “Automobiles earn a ‘profit’ for the federal government since only about 63 percent of the federal fuel taxes paid my motorists are spent on roads; most of the rest is spent on transit.”
It is routinely said that “we cannot build our way out of highway congestion.” In a practical sense, that’s true. But if the question is whether traffic congestion relief is more likely to come from added capacity or from “alternatives” that include commuter rail and streetcars, the answer is clear. Nostalgia loses.
Permalink | Comments (67) | Post your comment | Categories: Column
Bad shopping, good shopping?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
An Atlanta businessman who says he has a perfect payment history with American Express and a high credit score is angry that his credit card spending limit was reduce — and that one of the factors used to make the decision is where he shops.
“Other customers who have used their card at establishments where you recently shopped have a poor repayment history with American Express,” the company said in a letter to Atlantan Kevin Johnson. Among other factors considered are debt levels, repayment and credit histories, the letter said. Johnson said none of the latter factors applied to him.
Consideration of where cards are used strikes Johnson as “consumer profiling of the worst kind.” A company representative told AJC reporter Carrie Teegardin that it does not discriminate and complies with all fair lending laws.
My view is that credit card companies or any other lender should put together any profile it chooses that doesn’t discriminate on the basis of legally prohibited categories — race, for example. There’s no evidence that American Express is discriminating unlawfully.
Beyond Johnson’s personal situation, which I don’t know and therefore have no opinion on, his story does touch on larger, more important issue.
The subprime mortgage debacle that has visited this recession on America, got its start in an effort by politicians and advocacy groups to push mortgage lenders to waive credit-worthiness as the primary consideration in making loans. The financial sector, to its ever-lasting shame, was much too eager to comply, due in part to greed and to a system that held nobody accountable for extending bad loans. That chain of irresponsibility has, as we all know, brought down some of the icons of Wall Street.
The credit card industry has its own money-printing machine. When it extends credit to those who may be swamped by too much debt, it invites a second wave of financial disaster that could turn the recession into Depression. It therefore should employ every legal screen to determine whether it’s printed more credit-money than a consumer can repay. If it determines, for example, that people who drive red cars and shop at Joe’s Fruit Stand begin to make late payments when debt reaches $600, it should limit credit to $500.
These are, after all, debts borne by those who are managing credit responsibly. If we believe that computer models can predict global warming, then surely we can believe that computer models can predict consumer financial trouble even before individual borrowers recognize it.
The better companies manage the credit they extend, the less likely that fees and interest rates will be raised for others.
Permalink | Comments (97) | Post your comment |
Bush’s ‘rescue’ of free market more of a rubout
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
In many respects, the left and the right are of shared sentiment about the presidency of George W. Bush.
The left regrets Iraq and the Bush Doctrine of pre-emptive strikes against rogue states that support terrorists. For the right, it’s the policies that continued this week with Friday’s announcement of a $17.4 billion bridge loan to General Motors and Chrysler.
“Under ordinary economic circumstances, I would say this is the price that failed companies must pay,” Bush said. “And I would not favor intervening to prevent the automakers from going out of business.” But, “if we were to allow the free market to take its course now, it would almost certainly lead to disorderly bankruptcy and liquidation for the automakers. … allowing the U.S. auto industry to collapse is not a responsible course of action.”
Those remarks are consistent with his admission to CNN’s Candy Crowley this week that “I’ve abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system.”
Iraq and Afghanistan never struck me as the quagmire the left feared — and incessantly declared, jumping at every opportunity to find cataclysmic failure, as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid did last year in asserting that “… this war is lost and the surge is not accomplishing anything.” It wasn’t and, promisingly, Barack Obama’s early signals suggest that candidate Obama and President Obama may have different definitions of withdrawal of all combat troops from Iraq in 16 months.
For a president and his party, it’s far easier to favor policies that invite failure, or to declare that it happened during the other guy’s watch, than to have the world and historians know that President Obama and his party are responsible for it. President Bush is obviously guided now by the same sense of historical accountability that is likely to temper Obama on Iraq.
On Iraq, there’s never been any doubt that U.S. combat forces would leave. For the Bush Administration, that timetable was based “on success.” For Democrats, it was a fixed date. In either case, while there was no hard-and-fast exit timetable, there was general agreement that the U.S. should have an exit strategy.
With President Bush’s abandonment of free-market principles “to save the free market system,” conservatives find ourselves in the mode that liberals were and are on Iraq. Having intervened “to save the free- market system,” how do we get back out? What’s the exit strategy?
On Iraq, Democrats would have forced an exit sooner or later had Republicans not. There’s an entrenched anti-war bloc that has existed in this country since Vietnam.
But once business and government merge, as they are now doing, there is no constituency beyond gray-beard fuddy-duddies, Libertarians and a small band of fiscal conservative purists who will demand an exit strategy. Truly, there is no going back. A clean loan to the automobile companies, or better yet as Ronald D. Utt of the Heritage Foundation has suggested, an advance seven-year purchase of vehicles that would provide them about $10 billion, is far preferable to loans that come with car czars and federal rules on executive pay and perks.
I’m offended by sports and entertainment salaries and by outrageous Wall Street bonuses that suck up America’s creativity and employ it to find new ways to make money on debt. Meanwhile, some poor production worker who’s actually building a product suffers job loss because politicians and debt-mongers in the private sector thought it useful to put people in houses they couldn’t afford — and then to mix bad debt and good and sell it off.
But while offended by some marketplace practices, I don’t want politicians who are equally responsible for the economic downturn, determining what athletes, entertainers or business executives should be paid. I don’t want them making executive decisions for car companies. I don’t want them making investments in private-sector companies and then writing regulations or passing trade laws to protect that investment.
The president was right to intervene to contain the financial panic that had gripped Wall Street and the world. That panic would have decimated retirement savings for millions of working Americans.
But every step taken that abandoned free- market principles should have been one that limited future entanglement between business and government. Instead, we’re going the other way. We’re inviting politicians to find some scapegoats and then to manage businesses and industries, politicians who are incapable of designing government programs that work or of holding them accountable.
Bush has abandoned free-market principles, no question. Has he saved the free -market system? I fear just the contrary.
Permalink | Comments (49) | Post your comment | Categories: Column
On the Nichols trial, pet adoptions, DNA samples
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s weekend free-for-all. Pick a topic:
If Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard had chosen to pursue Brian Nichols’ murders one at a time, he’d have three more shots at getting the right jury decision on the death penalty.
Northern states give us people who are kind enough to show and tell us how to drive on snow. We give them our unwanted dogs and cats for adoption.
The Cobb School Board was wise to avoid the temptation to bring construction management in-house, something it considered in response to guilty pleas in Mississippi by three executives of the Facility Group, a Smyrna-based project management firm. A now-sold division of that company managed Cobb school projects for a decade. The outsourcing concept is the right one; the challenge always for government is to make certain that business relationships are transparent and at arms’ length. Don’t put people on the public payroll unnecessarily — especially those needed for gyrating workloads.
How could anybody object to a new Justice Department rule that federal law enforcement agencies will now collect DNA samples from all detained noncitizens and from all people arrested for federal crimes for the FBI’s National DNA Index System? But, to nobody’s surprise, some do. Take a photo, take a saliva sample. Move on.
No, not on a dare should the General Assembly change the formula for spending the one percent local sales tax so that MARTA can spend more on operating costs. The original formula was 50 percent expansion, 50 operations. That’s temporarily raised to 45 percent expansion, 55 operations. According to State Sen. Vincent Fort (D-Atlanta), MARTA’s done expanding. It’s “built-out the system,” he said. In that case, make it 0-100, and await MARTA’s certain return to ask for a second penny of sales tax.
U.S. District Court Judge Marvin Shoob orders the state to find more foster homes for 500 difficult-to-place children in Fulton and DeKalb. That’s the ticket: Order government to be — or find — better parents. It’s far easier to order a government fix than it is to use that activism to change the culture that brings children into the world without a mother and father in the home.
Clayton County schools have lost 3,000 students who took flight because of its accreditation troubles. So it’s gone begging. President-elect Barack Obama is the latest target. Here’s a suggestion: Reduce staff by, say, the number needed to service 3,000 students.
Obama campaign supporters vow to stay organized in Georgia. That’s change. Once a campaign was a year, then two and now they may be up to four.
Two noteworthy examples of judicial restraint: U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton declined in Washington to order the Veterans Affairs Department to impose quicker deadlines on handling disability claims. While sympathetic, he noted that it’s up to Congress and the VA secretary to set rules for processing claims. Noteworthy, too, is the restraint of judges on the Illinois Supreme Court who refused to force Gov. Rod Blagojevich from office. That’s the legislature’s job.
Haven Trust Bank in Gwinnett County failed, but the story of the immigrant founders’ business triumphs through this land of opportunity — buying and selling hotels, real estate development and commercial insurance — makes you want to stand up and cheer for the free enterprise system. Brothers R.C. Patel and Mike Patel helped found Haven Trust in part to help other Indian entrepreneurs buy and run motels.
Holiday cheer, too, for Georgians like Richard Brimfield of Duluth who, though laid off since Sept. 30 and living off his home equity, shows his gratitude for the blessings he does have by sending his annual donation to St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital.
Permalink | Comments (73) | Post your comment | Categories: Column
On headgear, defective ballots
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Two stories, one local and one national, point to the need to have absolute across-the-board standards that apply to all.
The local story concerns a Douglasville woman who was jailed after being declared in contempt of court for refusing to remove the hijab, head covering worn by Muslims. The court has a “no headgear” rule. It’s not clear whether the expletive she uttered after a bailiff denied her entry escalated the episode into the contempt citation, but the simple fact is that her head covering is at odds with court policy.
On now to Minnesota, where a panel that includes the Secretary of State, two state Supreme Court justices and two Minneapolis area judges are poring over thousands of ballots, mismarked or otherwise questionable, one by one. They’re trying to determine intent, for example, when the voter appeared to change his mind while marking the ballot.
It’s the Minnesota version of hanging chads. It may never be over. Somebody will always be convinced that every vote didn’t count and that the ultimate winner is illegitimate, which of course move the dispute into the U.S. Senate for partisans to decide. As of now, incumbent Republican Norm leads comedian Democrat Al Franken by 188 votes.
Both stories demonstrate the need to develop clear absolute standards. If any form of headgear is allowed, all forms should. The integrity of the justice system and public confidence in it requires clear and uniformly applied rules known to all.
The same should be the case for voting. We should get out of the “count every vote” business when voter intent is unclear or when the voter has failed to follow election law. Say “sorry — next time follow the rules” and ash-can the defective ballot.
There’ll still be controversy — there’s always a remedy. If you don’t like the law as written, change it.
Permalink | Comments (73) | Post your comment |
U.S. Sen. Caroline Kennedy?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The daughter of former President John F. Kennedy, whose family came close to being anointed American Royalty, has conveyed to New York Gov. David A. Patterson that she is, indeed, interested in being appointed to the U.S. Senate when Hillary resigns to become Secretary of State.
Caroline Kennedy, a 51-year-old New York lawyer, surfaced nationally as a supporter of Barack Obama, and not Hillary, during the primaries. Her appointment would is therefore likely to draw opposition from the Hillary network.
Kennedy called Patterson Monday morning to declare her interest. “She told me she was interested in the position,” said Patterson. “She’d like at some point to sit down and tell me what she thinks her qualifications are.”
U.S. Rep. Gary Ackerman (D-Queens), who undoubtedly seeks the seat, too, said in a radio interview Monday that “I don’t know what Caroline Kennedy’s qualifications are, except that she has name recognition, but so does J. Lo.”
The question of the day here is one being debated in New York in connection with the possible Kennedy appointment: What’s a political name worth? And how long does it have value?
For a period of about 30 years, the Talmadge name was golden in Georgia. Within the past couple of years I had suggested that the only two names that mattered anymore, as far as endorsements are concerned, are Zell Miller and Sam Nunn.
The reality is, however, that newcomers flood into this state — U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss started his campaign with commercials introducing himself to the million Georgians who’d come to Georgia since he ran six years ago. And the generations that remember and adore a Sam Nunn pass on. To those under the age of 40, he’s likely not to register at all.
Other than political family name and the liberal fondness for the fading U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy, there seems to be no real reason to appoint Caroline Kennedy.
As for me, I’m real ready to move on and out of the 60s. No nostalgia pick for me for the U.S. Senate.
Permalink | Comments (84) | Post your comment |
Death penalty: fix what’s broken
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
State Rep. Barry Fleming (R-Harlem) was dead-on in his commentary on the Brian Nichols case. Said Fleming:
“We’re in a day and age when people get on a jury and they’ll say they will vote for a death penalty, but simply won’t do it. That has to be accounted for.”
That’s it. Those who most vigorously oppose the death penalty have great incentive to work their way onto capital cases to keep the penalty from being imposed. There’s no way to detect their bias until the deed’s done.
Without question, Nichols deserved death. He’s an evil man, dangerous to every correctional officer he encounters for the remainder of his life. He sets the standard for application of the death penalty.
Henceforth, every death penalty opponent will be able to make the case in the court of public opinion: If Brian Nichols didn’t get death, then no run-of-the-mill mass murder deserves it, lest that constitute unequal justice.
The General Assembly should act to allow judges to impose capital punishment without requiring all 12 jurors to agree on death. All 12 should agree on guilt, but the penalty phase should be a simple recommendation to the judge who could impose the appropriate penalty.
“This case has rocked Georgia’s criminal justice system,” said the state senator who heads the judiciary committee, Preston Smith (R-Rome): “This case has been a poster child for why there needs to be reform in the system.”
In the meantime, yes, federal prosecutors should try Nichols for the murder of off-duty U.S. Customs agent David Wilhelm. And ask for death.
Permalink | Comments (88) | Post your comment |
Auto bailout bound to be a train wreck
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
When it came down to the final U.S. Senate vote Thursday night, the essence of truth was revealed.
While the United Auto Workers have pledged to grant concessions to help save their jobs and the companies they helped destroy, they balked at taking wage cuts next year that would bring the Detroit industry’s wages in line with those of Japanese carmakers. General Motors, facing bankruptcy, reports hourly labor costs of $69, including benefits, while Toyota’s are about $48. Of that, the average hourly UAW worker earns $29.78, in line with Toyota’s roughly $30. Benefits for active and 432,000 retirees and spouses account for the labor-cost gap.
The UAW refused, however, to make the concessions by a specific date next year. Its contract doesn’t expire until 2011.
With the union unwilling to budge, the $14 billion emergency bailout failed. UAW President Ron Gettelfinger blamed — though I would say credited — the defeat of the bailout on Southern senators who are, to his mind, anti-union and anti-Detroit. “They thought perhaps they could have a twofer here maybe,” said Gettelfinger on Friday: “Pierce the heart of organized labor while representing the foreign brands.”
But no worry that the bailout bill failed. The Bush administration will divert money from the $700 billion financial industry bailout fund, which has about $15 billion remaining, until Congress reconvenes “and acts to address the long-term viability of the industry,” said U.S. Treasury spokesman Brookly McLaughlin.
The temporary loan to come should be straight up, without the “car czar” or any other element of the House-passed bailout legislation.
The fact is that Democrats will control Congress next year and any UAW pledge to make concessions is subject to revision, as are the sums of the bailout, the authority of the car czar, or the terms of the merger between politicians using public money and the industry.
Inevitably, the politicians who launched the subprime mortgage disaster by encouraging lower lending standards will dictate the failure of the Detroit auto industry as a free-market competitor to what Gettelfinger derisively calls “the foreign brands.”
The left has long despised the U.S. auto industry because it made cars and trucks that sold, including Hummers and SUVs, instead of the tiny, fuel-sipping car-ettes that it wanted to push on America. The political party where leftists congregate now has full power to write laws and spend public money in ways that will dictate to Detroit not only what vehicles it should build, but what conditions should apply, in terms of other countries’ environmental, wage and labor rules, to the imported parts used to build them. When the cars that politicians prefer don’t sell, they’ll be able to offer tax credits, thus forcing taxpayers to subsidize at the point of purchase the cars they were just forced to subsidize in building.
Politicians will be able to dictate, too, the wages to be paid to union workers here, and they will furthermore be able to use government to drive up the costs of cars made by Detroit’s competitors.
The better alternative is bankruptcy, a clean bankruptcy that forces the industry and its union to confront realistically its uncompetitive operating costs. The Bush White House thinks “a precipitous collapse of this industry would have severe impact on the economy and it would be irresponsible to further weaken and destabilize our economy.”
With bankruptcy, the industry would restructure quickly and regain competitiveness, smaller and with fewer brands.
Except with massive sums of public money, Washington can’t keep private companies in business. Once their executives and unions are no longer desperately in fear of the free market, they’ll be content to turn decision-making over to car czars or any other agents of the poltical ruling class in return for public money. Their mind-set will be: We’ll build or accede to anything politicians are willing to pay for. And if they don’t, the bankruptcy that awaits them now will occur.
The “foreign brands” the UAW finds objectionable are cars and trucks built by non-unionized American workers in the South.
If, however, American buyers are getting vehicles they want that are built in American factories, it ultimately matters little what the ownership structure is.
I’d much prefer Japanese ownership of factories that build cars to compete in a free market rather than have U.S.-owned car companies run from Washington. Once a car czar, always a car czar
Permalink | Comments (66) | Post your comment | Categories: Column
‘Car czar,’ driving, Vick, renters
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s weekend free-for-all. Pick a topic:
Yes, Americans drove 4.6 percent less during the third quarter because of record high gas prices. And yes, ridership on subways, buses, commuter rail and light-rail systems increased 6.5 percent during that period. But, notes transportation expert Wendell Cox, 3 percent of the decline in passenger miles was because people were choosing transit, which had a 1.9 percent market share in urban areas. Transportation money should be spent where it delivers the most congestion relief for the dollar.
It’s a great day for America on two counts. First is that the first Vietnamese-American has been elected to Congress. The second is that Anh “Joseph” Cao, a lawyer, defeated indicted incumbent William Jefferson of New Orleans.
Shocker! When the owners of homes don’t pay their mortgages, the renters therein can be booted out. A problem for the General Assembly to address? No. A charity, yes. Not every problem has a government solution.
The “car czar” is the beginning of the end of the domestic auto industry. Once politicians start exerting control over business decisions, free enterprise is a corpse. Bankruptcy is far better. There’s a way out of that.
Ain’t studyin’ Michael Vick. But who else would buy a $99,000 Mercedes on the day he goes to jail?
Sometimes State Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine can say things that leave me scratching my head. Example: “There is no way to increase competition [in auto insurance rates] when everybody is here already. There is no one else to come into the state.” Companies can now increase rates without first getting government approval. Rates are increasing here and nationally. Unless companies are colluding illegally to fix rates, which nobody alleges, competition comes when existing companies fight for market share. No regulation is good. Promote transparency, not regulation.
Headline for the ages: “Metro Atlanta governments welcome financial handouts” — in this instance from Washington. But they’re just as welcomed from Atlanta or from your household.
When the General Assembly reconvenes next month, they should return to the issue of red-light cameras at intersections. Every intersection with a red-light camera should be required to have warning lights that inform motorists how many seconds remain before the light changes.
Don’t know any of the players in the Norcross City Council election that retired businessman Ross Kaul won by a single vote — described as “one of the closest elections in city history.” But loser Michelle Crofton sounds like a class act. She asked for a recount when the winning vote was a questionable ballot interpreted by the city attorney and then graciously conceded when the recount produced the same result.
The Georgia School Boards Association hands out its media awards for excellence in reporting on education issues. Wonder if anybody ever got an award for reporting suggesting that vouchers might be a good thing? I’m guessing not.
After three months, 36 percent of defaulting borrowers who got mortgage modifications to save their home redefaulted. After six months, it was 53 percent. After eight months, 58 percent. So reports the head of the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. The problem with government is that, unlike charities, it can’t separate the deserving from the undeserving. So for some the helping hand becomes an invitation to irresponsibility.
So in Barack Obama’s home state we have one governor (Rod Blagojevich) allegedly trying to sell a U.S. Senate seat, while in U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton’s chosen home, another governor (David Patterson) is being urged to award one as a legacy to Caroline Kennedy. And it’s not entirely certain yet that Minnesota won’t send a comedian to the Senate. The world’s most deliberative body is in danger of losing its luster.
Permalink | Comments (82) | Post your comment | Categories: Column
Borrow, yes, but limit state spending growth
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue proposed earlier this week that the state create its own public works spending plan to stimulate the economy. “I am going to be aggressive with our bond package to use the good credit and the good name and the good balance sheet of Georgia to do our own stimulus package,” he told legislators.
The size of the proposed borrowing was not announced.
More borrowing and spending in this economy is not necessarily bad — assuming future borrowing is curtailed and that the projects being built are those essential to its growth.
State Sen. Chip Rogers (R-Woodstock), the incoming Georgia Senate majority leader, joined with the group Americans for Prosperity at a Capitol news conference Wednesday to renew his push for a state constitutional amendment to limit future spending. That is a crucial element. The one he proposed in the last session, SR 20, along with another in the House proposed by State Rep. Tom Graves (R-Ranger), HR 956, were flexible enough to allow the General Assembly to get through revenue downturns. Both tied spending to inflation and population increases.
Borrow, yes, if borrowing now results in less borrowing in the future. But with it should come the discipline of a reasonable cap on the future growth in state spending. Otherwise politicians will find two times where new spending is imperative: To “catch-up” when money is flowing and to “stimulate the economy” when it’s not.
Permalink | Comments (78) | Post your comment |
Change? No. Same old corruption.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Here’s the story, so unreal that it makes Saturday Night Live skits where performers speak lines that the clueless then ascribe to the real people (Tina Fey as Sarah Palin: “I can see Russia from my house.”) seem to be reality.
In this spoof, an attractive politician from the ward politics of Chicago rises to prominence promising to bring about real change — in this case promising to change the notoriously dirty politics that had sent the former governor, George Ryan, to federal prison on corruption charges.
Rod Blagojevich, son-in-law of well-known Chicago Alderman Richard Mell, wins the governorship. And now he, fully aware that the feds are investigating him on suspicions of corruption, is caught on wiretaps, investigators say, scheming to sell President-elect Barack Obama’s vacant U.S. Senate seat for cash or appointments that will position him for great wealth or — get this — to be elected President of the United States in 2016.
Questions whirl. Underlying them all, though, is this: Why is it that some cities and states develop and retain cultures of corruption in politics? Chicago seems to be one of the worst. My guess is that group identity promotes loyalty to politicians who then trade votes for patronage jobs and for services. Over time, generations grow up believing that the way to get a pothole filled is to call the politician rather than public works. The loyalty is not to the city or to the public good, but to the neighborhood or to an ethnic group.
Georgia has for the most part escaped that kind of political corruption. Though political machines came and went, there was never the underlying conditions for corruption to take root and therefore permanence. Too, prosecutors and the media, led by this newspaper, have been vigilant in policing the kind of wrong-doing that gives birth to the corrupting of institutions — vote-buying, greed in public officials, abuse of prisoners and the like.
In systems drifting to corruption,prosecution or media exposure that wrong-doing has occurred is dismissed by voters as an effort to single-out a popular political figure unfairly — think U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska, who came within a hair of winning reelection despite having been convicted of corrupting his public office.
In systems that are reasonably free of institutionalized corruption, whistleblowers step up and voters and prosecutors deal with the isolated abuses.
Illinois Governor Blagojevich was so audacious in what he’s accused of doing that the distant observer has to conclude that the state is hopelessly mired in a culture of political corruption.
Permalink | Comments (125) | Post your comment |
Yes, marriage matters to nurturing of children
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
There can be no dispute that a society fully committed to the well-being of children would not condone a cultural trend that causes 71 percent of African-American, 50 percent of Hispanic and 28 percent of white babies — those born out of wedlock — to enter life disadvantaged.
And yet we do. Such is the society that uses the suffering of abandoned and neglected children as a marketing tool to create and expand social programs, but does nothing to discourage adults from the no-commitments lifestyle choices that bring them misery. We make heroes of those who sue government to build a better foster care system and bestow high esteem on those who advocate “for children.” But almost nobody in a prominent position in public life utters a peep to condemn adults for the irresponsible behaviors that initiate their suffering.
Why? Because fixing government is easy. Fixing us isn’t.
We really aren’t a nation committed to children’s welfare. We’re a nation committed to non-judgmentalism in adult lifestyle choices, even when the evidence is conclusive that some of those choices are ravaging a generation of children.
Robin Fretwell Wilson, a professor specializing in Family Law and Health Law at Washington and Lee University School of Law in Lexington, Va., spoke at the recent Georgia Supreme Court summit on Children, Marriage and Family Law.
Her analysis of research studies should put to rest all questions about what’s best for children. In virtually every study, weighing every variable — family structure, age, income, race, education — the evidence is overwhelming that children do better in families where married adults are rearing their biological children.
One exception noted by Wilson goes to the time and the warmth adults invest in children. Adoptive parents “invest more [of themselves] in adoptive children, on average, than biological parents do in their children,” she found, though those findings are preliminary, based on the small number of empirical studies.
Wilson was adopted as a child and that “has impacted my thinking quite a lot,” she said later. “I am one of the luckiest people on the planet. I think it gives me a perspective into the debate about ‘living with two biological parents in a married family is the best arrangement.’ ” Adoption “shows that adults can be bound to children and protective of them,” she said.
“But what distinguishes adoptees from kids in boyfriend households that are fraught with peril for some kids is that both adults are committing to the child, permanently, for good, and with identical connections to the child. And they mean to be connected to the child, not just to one another.”
With that possible one facet exception, “Marriage tends to instill and bring along with it certain rational benefits for the adults, like permanence, commitment and even sexual fidelity, which redound to the benefit of children in the household,” she wrote in the study: “Evaluating Marriage: Does Marriage Matter to the Nurturing of Children.”
A primary problem with other adult relationships involving children is that they’re premised on impermanence. Cohabiting adults intentionally decline to commit. The evidence she cites is that only 10 percent of adults who live together and don’t subsequently marry are still together after five years, while 80 percent of first marriages survive at least that long.
For children of co-habitants, parting is often the beginning of a life of instability as biological parents move in and out of relationships.
Worse, of course, are adults who casually create life without any intention of marrying or living together, giving children “diaper daddies” who think their fatherhood obligations are met if they occasionally drop off a pack of disposable diapers and a drug-store toy with the mother.
Adults can fantasize that alternatives to marriage are satisfactory for children. That is the self-centeredness of the age.
The research is in.
If we really are a nation concerned about protecting children, we’ll change the national conversation. We can try to build the perfect safety net, yes, the foster homes, the loving adoptive parents, the school system that salvages the daddy-deprived. But more urgently, we need to change the culture that has devalued marriage.
Permalink | Comments (128) | Post your comment | Categories: Column
Grovel for the mob, Mr. CEO
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
This could be a long four years as liberal politicians use the economic downturn that flows from the world financial panic as excuse to nationalize major industries. But first, it’s necessary to force CEOs to come forth and admit their sins, real and imagined, grovel before the petty ward-heelers, and then perform a kind of perp walk in disgrace from their corporate jets.
U.S. Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” Sunday that Rick Wagoner, the chief executive of General Motors “has to move on” as a condition for a bailout of the Detroit-based auto industry. There’s speculation that same sentence would apply to Ford and Chrysler LLC.
“I think you have got to consider new leadership,” said Dodd of GM specifically. “I think it [a change at the top] is going to have to be a part of it [the bailout].”
It doesn’t occur to anybody in the majority to insist that the head of the United Auto Workers step down or that Big Labor is guilty, too, of what President-elect Barack Obama called a “head-in-the-sand approach” to the industry’s worsening financial troubles. Had they not buried their heads in the sand they might have dealt sooner with looming financial disasters, something Congress has failed to do with Medicare and Social Security. But of course nobody expects politicians to actually heed the sermons they preach.
In the long term the country will be far better off if the auto industry chooses bankruptcy now as an alternative to turning their executive offices, and indeed their planning, manufacturing and human resources decisions, over to Washington. Both taxpayers and shareholders will be far better off in the long run.
I hate this pandering to the angry mob that liberals are now doing. Either help the auto industry or don’t, as the nation’s interests dictate, but don’t throw executive-office offerings to the angry mobs to “prove” that you’re tough guys.
I’m getting the sense that we have another administration on the way that’s high on symbolism and low on effective action — the domestic version of Bill Clinton’s missiles-to-mud-huts national security policy.
Permalink | Comments (112) | Post your comment |
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.
Permalink | Comments (193) | Post your comment | Categories: Column
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.
Permalink | Comments (27) | Post your comment |
Tuesday’s lesson for 2010
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
After all that, the results from the runoff for the U.S. Senate seat held by Georgia’s Saxby Chambliss was about what it would have been had nobody spent a dime.
Thanks go to the partisan and to the advocacy groups for aiding the Georgia economy with their campaign stimulus checks. But the surprise in politics sometimes is how little money matters after the candidates and the stakes become known.
In this race, both incumbent Saxby Chambliss and challenger Jim Martin were sufficiently known and the stakes were more widely known to Georgians than the charges that put Michael Vick in the slammer were to dog lovers. Had Democrats gained a 60-seat filibuster-proof Senate, lower taxes, less government and center-right judges would have faced the prospects of a losing pit bull in Vick’s kennel. (Hey, different subject, but I’m ready to let Vick go; he’s paid a high price already.)
When the votes were counted in the U.S. Senate race where tons of bigwigs politicked and tons of money was spent, the outcome was essentially the Republican base vs. the Democratic base. In any statewide election, the Republican with any name-recognition should get 55 percent and the Democrat, 45. The GOP is the majority party, with a base of about 50. Democrats are 40-42. The candidates add or subtract a few percentage points.
For the seat on the Georgia Public Service Commission, a race that did not attract money or attention, Republican Lauren McDonald pulled 56.5 to 43.5 for Democrat Jim Powell.
Two messages can be drawn from the voting Tuesday and three weeks ago. One is that Barack Obama was wise not to return to Georgia for the runoff. He couldn’t have made a difference in the outcome.
The more important message is sent to Democrats planning to run for governor or for the U.S. Senate in Georgia in 2010. Under the best of circumstances, with a candidate at the top of the ticket who inspired masses of new voters, Democrats still could not carry the state in a presidential election. And, coming off that General Election, with organization and money to burn, they could not break out of the mid 40s. Barring scandal or some extraordinary turn, their prospects are not promising for 2010
Permalink | Comments (159) | Post your comment |
Sarah! They love her down South.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Brown-eyed Madelene Fyke of Byron is only three years old.
Already, though, says her mother, Andrea, she’s a Sarah Palin fan.
Whether the adoration of Palin does sweep down to the pre-kindergarten set is subject to debate, but in the Middle Georgia town of Perry, it’s a real as Christmas. When she came here Monday afternoon to urge support for U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss, she was greeted by a wildly cheering crowd of about 2,000 with the now-familiar chants of “Sarah, Sarah, Sarah.”
Among the women interviewed, one theme was constant — an appreciation of her ability to juggle the demands of a family, her duties as governor and a national political campaign.
Liberal commentators and other partisans recognized her appeal, which is why they were so quick to trash her presumably inadequate education and experience.
Four years is a long time, but a Sarah Palin-Bobby Jindal ticket would be dynamite — assuming, of course, that the country’s not yearning then for another Bush. I’d readily offer up former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush for top-of-the-ticket.
Today is the reason she was here. It is, as she and others pointed out, a U.S. Senate runoff of national importance. In Minnesota, Republican U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman hangs to a 270-vote lead over comedian Al Franken, with a Friday deadline for the recount to be finished.
A win for Democrats there would give them 59. A win here would give them the filibuster-proof Senate that would allow President-elect Barack Obama to take the courts as far left as he chooses and to raise taxes and social spending as high as he chooses.
Chambliss should win and my guess is that he will, 56-44. Georgia doesn’t intentionally elect liberals statewide. Occasionally it has, but only because the electorate was fooled. There’s no fooling here.
Vote today. It’s all about turnout now.
Permalink | Comments (157) | Post your comment |
Hillary, yes; Bill, no.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
President-elect Barack Obama might have found a better choice for Secretary of State — but, frankly, he did fine by me with Hillary Clinton.
Throughout the campaign, she clearly inspired greater confidence than did any of the other top Democrats. With Joe Biden, you had the impression that he could name all the state capitals and remember all the important dates and treaties, but as John McCain observed in one of the debates, he gets the big questions wrong.
As for Obama, he’s always been the mystery man — and that makes him the most frightening of the lot. Most frightening is that mystery men, especially those who project weakness in leadership and decision-making, invite testing.
To Obama’s credit, he is assembling a national security team that sends all the right messages to friends and enemies.His decision to continue Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense and to bring on retired Marine General James L. Jones, a McCain supporter, as national security adviser, aggravate the looney Left, but they send the right signal on Iraq and Afghanistan that this administration is not inclined to manage for defeat.
Hillary is tough enough to be Secretary of State. The first order of business will to keep husband Bill in a box; Nobody wants a two-fer. Nobody wants to hire her and get him. The nation is, we all hope, past that missiles-to-mud-huts era of national security that he represents.
Services »