Home > Thinking Right > Archives > 2009 > January
January 2009
Taxes require a goal besides spending them
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Levying a sales tax on food could be OK with me. So, too, could a legislative decision to take back the property tax relief grants that save homeowners $200 to $300 per year.
They were gimmicks that served the temporary purpose of making an incumbent governor (Zell Miller and Roy Barnes) look good, same as the $100 gift cards for school supplies that Gov. Sonny Perdue begat. They’re not particularly useful tax policy. They don’t entice individuals to do anything that serves the common good that they wouldn’t do otherwise.
They’re gimmicks that have a single, overriding virtue. They keep politicians from spending two sums: $428 million per year, the amount returned to homeowners in property tax relief; and almost $1 billion, the amount that would otherwise be collected on food. You spend it. They don’t. Without compelling arguments to the contrary, that’s reason enough to preserve both. They discipline the undisciplined.
Legislation now before the General Assembly would make the grants conditional. You’d get them when state revenues grow “by 3 percent plus the percent change in the rate of economic inflation on individual taxpayers as determined under the Consumer Price Index for all urban consumers.”
Here I stumble.
Legislators have declined to accept for themselves and their heirs any spending cap, no matter how elastic. A version of a proposed constitutional amendment offered by state Sen. Chip Rogers (R-Woodstock), now Senate majority leader, did pass that chamber, but it never got to the floor of the House. It would have held state spending to that of any previous year plus growth in the state’s population and the rate of state government inflation.
There was nothing draconian about it. It was really just a disciplining tool that, with considerable flexibility, accepted for themselves what they may be about to ask voters to apply to local governments with a 3 percent cap on assessments.
Rather than relying on assessment creep to generate higher revenues, county commissioners would have to take an actual, before-the-cameras vote to increase the millage. That’s truth in governing. Commendable. But what’s good for locals should be good for state officials, too.
On Friday, the House did vote 117-55 to make the $428 million in grants conditional after July 1. Based on current economic conditions, they’d not be funded next year or probably the year after. Or maybe never more after the cycle is broken, since they’re discretionary. As noted by the bill’s sponsor, state Rep. Larry O’Neal (R-Bonaire), revenue increases since 1999 would not have reached that threshold in 2002 and 2003.
The grants are popular, but legislators argue that the grants promote overspending by the locals who add $200 to $300 per homeowner into their budgets knowing that the state will pick up the tab. The state really has no obligation to provide the grants, except that it collects one-quarter of one mill in property taxes from every county — something that it should stop immediately.
The only reason for continuing it is that it allowed a once-powerful political group — local tax commissioners and their staffs — to join the State Employees Retirement System when other local employees couldn’t. The logic was that the quarter-mill made them agents of the state.
They now can collect benefits from the state and from counties for the same day of work. State Revenue Commissioner Bart Graham told budget-writers last month that some retired commissioners draw $13,000 per month just from the state’s system, plus additional unknown sums from local systems.
Conservatives do need to sit down and decide what they want tax policy to achieve or to encourage — and then design the system to do it. Want to draw new business to Georgia? Eliminate the corporate income tax. Want to spread the burden to those who are not paying income tax? Raise the sales tax and exempt working people from paying income tax on the first $50,000 of earnings.
The trick here is not to turn for guidance to those in the bureaucracy, in academia and in advocacy organizations who believe that ease of collecting lots of revenue is the top priority. If the expert’s first recommendation is to extend the sales tax to services, fire him and move on.
It’s OK by me to return a sales tax to groceries. It’s OK, too, to stiff us homeowners. But come with something else that achieves some desirable purpose. Don’t just take our money to spend it with no end purpose or discipline.
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Environmental virtue, trauma care, emissions
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s weekend free-for-all. Pick a topic:
When global warming threatens to destroy life on this planet, as Al Gore would have us believe, rush to the intersection of North Highland and Virginia Avenue in Atlanta. That’s now a “carbon-neutral zone.” In a carbon-neutral zone, the owners of small businesses can feel environmentally virtuous and be identified as such, for fees ranging from $10 a year for a small sweet shop to $600 for a restaurant. It’s the environmental version of the good feeling you get for slipping a few coins to a panhandler.
Absolutely, with all deliberate speed the Georgia General Assembly should pass legislation proposed by state Sen. Preston Smith (R-Rome) to make the board of the Georgia Public Defender Standards Council advisory. Quick, yes, advisory. Board members have too many competing agendas. Their primary one should be to help the director, Mack Crawford, accomplish a difficult job without unlimited access to the public treasury.
I’ve never understood why it’s vital to know who owns my mortgage, so long as I have a competent servicing representatives and my payments are properly recorded. Every time I hear a complaint about the inability to determine the actual mortgage-holder, I’m inclined to believe some deadbeat’s looking for a loophole to avoid paying an honest debt.
UGA’s women gymnastics coach Suzanne Yoculan thinks she’s being kept out of the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame because she’s sharing a home with Don Leeburn, a powerful member of the Georgia Board of Regents who’s still married to somebody else. OK. Reason enough. Next self-declared victim?
Letting California and 13 other states set their own limits on auto emissions does require automakers to build cars for each market, which is inherently inefficient. That, or as the Obama leftists hope, all cars are manufactured to California standards. If that’s the regulation, auto companies should be paid from the public till. This is a future problem, incidentally, with having government get in bed with private companies. Car companies become the manufacturing arms of interest-group political agendas.
Survey sez! Sixty-nine percent of Georgians are willing to pay $25 per year or more to fund trauma hospitals statewide. Ah, but there’s a catch. They mostly want the levy on somebody else — with 74 percent supporting higher traffic fines (as Gov. Sonny Perdue proposes) and 61.3 percent wanting additional taxes on gun sales. The latter prompts the question: Did anybody outside downtown Decatur, Rome, Marietta and Athens get polled? The question on whether people are willing to pay more for this or that should be phrased: “How much in higher taxes are you personally willing to pay to provide…?” Another option is to phrase it this way: “How much are you willing to tax interest groups seeking more of your money for their causes?”
President Obama gets the first dividend check from the Axis of Evil on his new be-nice-and-hope foreign policy. Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad defines “change” as abandoning Israel and apologizing to the Islamic world for past sins, while withdrawing U.S. military forces back to the homeland and presumably diverting them to police anti-Muslim hate speech. Live by the buzzword, die by the buzzword.
State Rep. Austin Scott (R-Tifton) wants to be governor. Starting out that journey with a proposal to add a $10 tax to the purchase of auto tags is an odd way to solicit notice.
If a bank’s stock price is lower than its yield on a three-month CD and together they don’t add up to 5, the economy’s bad.
It’s not been widely noticed, but U.S. Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.) is becoming an important figure in the conservative movement nationally. He’s chairman of the House Republican Study Committee, which had offered a sound alternative to the massive social spending eruption that Pelosi Democrats are passing off as “economic stimulus.” The study committee includes 108 of the 178 House Republicans, same as in the last Congress — except that Republicans lost 20 seats in November. Of 22 Republican freshmen, 20 have joined the policy group Price chairs.
Two coaches who deserved to be fired or removed and were: The one in Texas who had no second thoughts about allowing his girls team to beat another 100-0 and the one in Clayton County who allowed the Jonesboro High School dance team to perform a provocative halftime dance in thigh-high stockings, tiny shorts and tight shirts. The dance team has been disbanded, a proper response from school officials.
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Gas, water and Saturday mail
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Reduce your use of water during droughts and water departments insist on higher fees to cover reduced demand.
Reduce miles driven during a period of $4 gas and politicians and bureaucrats at the state and federal level start pleading poverty, insisting that Georgia needs an additional one percent sales tax statewide and that the federal gas tax of 18.4 cents per gallon be increased by 10 cents a gallon now and by up to 40 cents over a decade.
Now comes the U.S. Postal Service pleading once again for more revenue. Total mail volume dropped by 9 billion items last year to 202 billion, largest single drop in volume in history. E-mail, electronic banking, competition and other changes in customer habits account for the drop.
The price of a first class stamp, now 42 cents, is going up again in May, probably by 2 cents, though the agency could cite “special circumstances” and ask for more.
For years, the postal services’ ace-in-the-hole has been a threat to end Saturday service and to close small post offices in every Congressional district. And, indeed, Postmaster General John E. Potter Wednesday asked Congress to lift the requirement that his agency deliver the mail six days a week. Dropping Saturday delivery is most likely, though another day could be chosen — Tuesday perhaps.
I surrender. Standing in a post office line on a couple of occasions recently, I marveled at the pace of work. I imagined that somewhere somebody had agreed that clerks would handle precisely 17.6 customers per hour and under no circumstances were clerks allowed to speed up that process or to handle more. If they approached their hourly limit, they simply walked off the job and left stations vacant, no matter how many people stood in line.
Kill Saturday delivery. Fine. But isn’t it time to open up the first-class monopoly to private sector competition?
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Politics in opposing ‘stimulus’?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Republicans are, of course, going to lose the battle to reshape, or to materially influence in any way at all, the $825 billion spending bill that’s being dressed up as “economic stimulus.” That’s $825 billion now. Stay tuned for new totals to come.
The party that runs Washington has, as we all know by now, used the recession as an excuse to bulk up every new spending notion the left ever had and bury it in the stimulus spending bill. For Republicans under the bus, it’s an opportunity to learn how to be an effective minority, even in defeat.
It’s a quick learning opportunity to decide how to deal with the new President. U.S. Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Savannah) thinks that President Obama is, or should be, as eager as they are to corral the runaway spending Congressional Democrats are about to launch. A Tuesday visit with Obama left House Republicans unconvinced. “The only thing it [the pending bill] will stimulate is more government and more debt,” said the number-three Republican in the House, Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana. Democrats did remove $335 million for funding contraceptive programs through Medicaid, but that’s a drop in the bucket and few Republicans are likely to vote for the legislation.
The President has acknowledged that the minority has “legitimate” complaints about the bill, “but I do hope we can all put politics aside and do the American people’s business.”
Here’s where Obama may be able to twist Republicans into a more ineffective minority if they’re not careful. He won in part by selling the notion that he can be a bipartisan President — and indeed he would like an overwhelming show of bipartisan support for the proposed new spending bill to demonstrate that.
The reality is, however, that the bill is filled to the brim with political agendas. By some accounts the liberal activist group ACORN could be in line for billions. The politics is, therefore, seeped through and through. It is a political-agenda document.
So when Obama urges Republicans “to keep politics to a minimum,” that’s a message to Main Street that politics is a one-party game. Clever. Wrong, but clever use of the bully pulpit in effecting the leadership persona of the post-partisan President.
What can Republicans, and the fiscal conservatives among them, do? Continue the battle, even after they lose on the stimulus, to explain to the American people what liberals have done under the guise of economic stimulus. There’s too much coming down now to stop or explain it all, but six months from now when it’s perfectly clear to the unemployed and to those who are still working and paying taxes that it wasn’t stimulus, but instead was more of the same failed approaches from decades past.
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Real Obama stimulus is an old social agenda
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
My theory about why the left so vehemently objected to the war and why, in part at least, they were so vitriolic in their hatred of George W. Bush was that it represented a diversion from their push for a domestic social agenda: single-payer universal health care, in particular; affordable housing and the federalization of k-12 education.
We are now witnessing in Washington the pent-up frustration of eight years of trying to work the angles with the Bush Administration to advance a social agenda here and there — more federal spending on public education, expanding the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) and raising the minimum wage. Under the guise of economic stimulus, that pent-up frustration is erupting in a massive $825 billion spending bill that will significantly transform state and local government.
The value of economic downturns to state and local governments is that they force choices. The so-called American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 relieves that pressure and, furthermore, hooks states into entitlement spending at higher levels. U.S. Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Savannah), visiting the State Capitol on Monday, noted one example.
“If you look at the fact that on the stimulus package, only 13 percent of it is public works, so all of this talk about roads, bridges, dam restoration, building renovation — it’s 13 percent. The rest of it is social spending.” For Georgia, the total for k-12 education, Medicaid and transportation is projected to be $5.6 billion.
It’s substantial, but it’s not immediate economic stimulus. “Seven percent of the total money is all that can be spent this year,” he says. “This shovel-ready myth is nothing but that. Why would a state get all the permitting done to have something shovel-ready if the money wasn’t already there?” Instead, it’s a grab-bag of spending that’s been sitting on the shelf for years.
“There’s three huge steps the Democrats have taken right under our nose on socialized medicine,” says Kingston. One is to expand SCHIP to more higher-income families and to cover the children of legal immigrants who are now obligated to wait five years. Another is to amend the COBRA health benefit for those who are out of work to eliminate the individual’s 20 percent portion. The third is to waive the requirement that states provide a 20 percent match for Medicaid spending and to expand Medicaid eligibility to the unemployed whose income does not exceed 200 percent of the federal poverty scale.
The Medicaid waiver and expanded Medicaid eligibility are supposed to expire in two years. But, asks Kingston, “How are you going to go back to California and all the blue states, plus the swing states of Pennsylvania, Missouri and Florida and tell them that they’ve got to start paying 20 percent again?”
Each of the initiatives can and should be debated. The approach taken, however, is to use the economic downturn to lay the groundwork for what was once called Hillarycare.
Under the stimulus, too, is spending on education that amounts to $142 billion, nearly double spending by the U.S. Department of Education in 2007, while prohibiting school choice.
“An unprecedented federal spending increase for education will not improve economic growth — and past experience strongly suggests that this plan will not improve American educational performance,” said Dan Lips, a senior policy analyst in education at the Washington-based Heritage Foundation, which has taken the lead in analyzing the proposed stimulus package.
In fact, Dr. Ben Scafidi, director of the Education Policy Center at Georgia College and State University in Milledgeville, just conducted a study that found that despite massive increases in public spending on education, graduation rates are lower than they were a decade ago. “This new research is important,” he said, “because it confirms what many suspect. There is no correlation between increased education spending and improved student achievement.”
The stimulus is a social agenda that will lock states into higher spending, creating gimme constituencies that will block future efforts to curtail or control state and local spending. The briefly-delayed march to create the welfare state is resumed.
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Grow Big Government more slowly?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Associated Press Reporter Kevin Freking opines that “Republicans may have overplayed their hand when they blocked the expansion of a children’s health care program last year.”
That’s because, he writes, they now “face the likelihood that Democrats may pass a bill they dislike even more.”
That particular supposition — that Republicans in Congress and President George W. Bush should have been more inclined to grow government, but at a slower pace — is at the core of its dilemma for the next four-to-eight years. The dilemma is whether Republicans regroup around core principles and advocate for them knowing that they are likely to lose or whether they split the baby, as President Bush tried on the prescription drug entitlement.
My vote, without reservation, is that the conservative minority in Congress and the Republican majority in the Georgia General Assembly, define what they’re trying to do with government — that is, to make it an instrument to cultivate personal responsibility and self-reliance — and coalesce around those agendas.
The Democrats who control Washington are, without doubt, using programs like the State Children’s Health Insurance Program to move the nation to universal government-financed health care. Their intent was clear when President Bush vetoed earlier versions that moved the nation to that goal at a slightly slower pace.
We knew then that if Republicans lost a conservative majority that Democrats, who then controlled both houses of Congress but without a filibuster-proof Senate majority and a veto-override House majority, would be back. That’s why they simply put the program off for a few months.
Likewise, nobody should doubt that the ban on expanded off-shore drilling will be reinstated, despite the rhetoric of some, including President Barack Obama, that new drilling areas should be “considered” as part of a comprehensive energy policy.
Elections matter. Except for politicians who are in Washington just for the prestige and the perks, the parties represent distinctly different approaches to a shared vision of a better America. Congress is always moving in one direction or the other. Splitting-the-baby on programs and policy that create a larger entitlement state is a go-along, get-along strategy that will end in certain defeat for conservatives.
One day they’ll look up and discover that, incrementally, we have become Old Europe.
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Questioning pork is vital in lean times
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Painful though these budget times are for legislators who, whether Democrat or Republican, much prefer to be showering the bounties of your labors on those they deem more worthy, there is much to be said for occasional hardship.
It prompts the serious to ask the questions that are brushed aside when Georgians are working, times are good and the public till is filled to excess.
At budget hearings under the Gold Dome this week, Jay Neal (R-LaFayette), a representative from the northwest corner of the state, one of the last true bastions of fiscal conservatism, asked a question of Department of Transportation Commissioner Gena L. Evans.
The commissioner had just finished a plea for more money and for a “new source of money” that is, most likely, a statewide 1 percent sales tax.
Speaking as a taxpayer looking at government from afar, Neal noted the message sent: “We understand times are tough and we have not done a good job” of solving transportation problems, but instead of adjusting, “we provide you less service and charge you more taxes.” That, he said, “is a tough sell.”
“We have shut down everything we can shut down,” replied Evans, citing travel, equipment and vehicle purchases, maintenance, and vacant and unfilled-position eliminations.
Earlier, Department of Juvenile Justice Commissioner Albert Murray was defending his bailiwick, noting that among the spending reductions is a wilderness program in Early County for troubled young males. As structured, its effectiveness is marginal, Murray said. To which, he got two questions from committee members. One questioned the decision because of its impact on a county he represented. The other wanted to know whether girls had a wilderness camp program, too.
State Rep. Ed Rynders (R-Albany) suggested that it’d be a good time to examine all programs and measure them as to their effectiveness. “In these tough budgetary times, now is the time we ought to look at every program, and if we are going to eliminate them, we should look at the data and determine their effectiveness.”
The purpose here is to make the point that spenders need the discipline of hard times, or of caps that limit the growth of government. Hard times permit, too, real insight into how bureaucrats and politicians govern when money’s free-flowing.
An example from Gov. Sonny Perdue and the DOT is a boondoggle rail project from Atlanta to Lovejoy that exists only because $83 million in federal money was earmarked. This proposed commuter rail line is a pork-barrel project kept alive because the money was earmarked and is therefore not available for actual congestion relief. It’s another reason, incidentally, to fear the proposed $825 billion “economic stimulus” program that’s about to dump money willy-nilly.
Perdue, prudently, did not divert $15.1 million in state money to the White Elephant — prompting U.S. Rep. David Scott (D-Atlanta) to go bonkers. “We have $119 million sitting there in the bank,” he said, urging reconsideration. “Communities around this nation would give their right arm to have that money.”
Evans said the department is “looking for” $83 million for commuter rail, implicitly inviting legislators to pony up.
We come now to the proposed 1 percent statewide sales tax, which would generate $74 billion over 20 years.
The burning question is: What do we buy, what actual, measurable congestion relief, do we get for $74 billion? An actual list of proposed purchases will come within weeks, she said. In total, though, the need is $250 billion, Evans said.
Hard times and short money should — combined with a plea for an additional $74 billion planned spending — produce a no-boondoggle project list that should stand up to honest cost-benefit analysis. But yet, commuter rail does survive, prompting the concern that every interest group’s wish list is the driving force behind the request for a new tax statewide.
Times are tough. People are out of work. Don’t take their money and buy them toys, and don’t take it to spend on programs that are marginally useful.
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Chef fascination, health care consumers, Bush
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s weekend free-for-all. Pick a topic:
Atlanta seems to have a fascination with restaurant chefs and what they do when they’re not fixing food. I’m thinking it started with Guenter Seeger. Why do we never hear about what mechanics are doing when they’re not fixing cars — or which head mechanics they worked under before they fixed mine.
Need evidence that adults are capable of making responsible choices? Health care spending grew last year at 6.1 percent, the slowest rate since 1998. The reason? Consumers turned to generic drugs instead of brand names. Generics are now about 67 percent of dispensed drugs, up from 63 percent the year before. The lesson? Give consumers information and options and they’ll act in their responsible self-interest.
George W. Bush could not have been more gracious to his critics or to the new president in his final days in office. A crowd that declined to applaud when President Obama said “I thank President Bush for his service to our nation, as well as the generosity and cooperation he has shown throughout this transition” had no class. The crowd that heckled him as he departed had even less.
Imagine, too, the outrage if minister Rick Warren, or any other prominent speaker at a presidential inauguration, had stereotyped and denigrated an entire race, as Atlanta minister Joseph Lowery did when praying for a day “when white[s] will embrace what is right.” Lowery got laughter.
The death of a 4-year-old struck by a car while crossing South Cobb Drive with her mother and three siblings is a tragedy, no question. Interesting response, though, from a group called Pedestrians Educating Drivers on Safety. It wants concrete medians built on multi-lane roads with bus stops. Couldn’t we save more lives by educating pedestrians to cross at intersections? Or require buses to locate stops there?
There really are two Americas. One is scary. It’s the one represented by this sentence from a story about a Gwinnett County murder: “A teenager who was shot dead at a gas station parking lot in August 2007 [where he was at work painting lines] was targeted by rival gang members because he showed them disrespect during a prior confrontation …” The word “respect” is defiled in this context in the same way that “father” is defiled when describing a walk-away inseminator who caused life.
Michigan law gives inseminating males the option: Marry the female or pay hospital birth expenses. Georgia should follow suit. And then follow the male to the ends of the earth to collect child support.
From Thursday’s AJC business section: “Eaton … cutting 5,200 jobs.” “Disney offers 600 voluntary buyouts.” “Intel plans to cut 5,000 to 6,000 jobs.” “Van Heusen closing 175 stores.” Now find an equivalent story in the public sector. Ah, there it is on the other page: “Higher state tax could wipe out Two Buck Chuck,” a popular California wine that sells for $1.99 there, but is the target of a proposed 29.6-cent tax, up from 4 cents. Governments just demand more money — and let the private sector add that to its economic misery. California projects a $42 billion gap between revenue and spending over the next 18 months. High-taxed people and businesses are fleeing.
Underground operators start the sales job for casino gambling. The pitch? Georgia’s losing money to nearby states. Some of our armed robbers may be crossing over from Columbus to Phenix City, Ala., too, but that doesn’t mean we urge businesses on our side of the river to turn off their security cameras. Once again: The state has no business exploiting the weakness and addictions of its people.
Clayton County is giving free help to “senior citizens” on how to connect an analog television to a digital converter box. I knew that old people were automatically presumed to be poor for discount purposes. But I didn’t know they were presumed to be too befuddled to handle any change in technology. Surely a young dunce deserves help, too, assuming there are any such.
Didn’t I read that the Arizona Cardinals were a lucky playoff draw for the Atlanta Falcons? And is that the same Cardinals in the Super Bowl? I could be confused. Professional football is not really my game. I’m more into political horse races.
When we’re rushing to protect those forced to pay exorbitant interest because they were considered bad-credit risks, shouldn’t we say a word, too, for The New York Times? Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim agrees to lend the company $250 million. But at 14.1 percent interest. Government or payday and subprime lenders could have offered better rates. Troubled banks get loans at 8 percent.
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Obama, the CIA and Gitmo
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The difference between the Bush Administration’s approach to the events of 9/11 and his critics’ is that Bush saw the attack on the homeland as an act of war. Most of those who opposed him on the war that followed saw it as a criminal justice matter, something akin to gangland killings on a larger scale.
We’re reminded on the first full day of the Barack Obama administration how little has changed in the views of the two groups. U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, reiterated his long-held view that terrorist combatants being held at Guantanamo can be brought here. The U.S. can handle them “just as it has handled the worst criminals and other terrorists before,” he said.
Americans will go bonkers when the Obama Administration chooses to bring the worst of the terrorists to these shores and treats them as it would pick-pockets, shop-lifters, armed-robbers and kook bombers or repeat murderers, like Eric Rudolph or Brian Nichols. And if we thought the Brian Nichols trial was a circus of never-ending motions, diversions and expense before it was handed off to Cobb Superior Court Judge James Bodiford, we ain’t seen nothing yet.
In one day, and in the week that preceded inauguration when Obama’s nominee for Attorney General, Eric Holder , foolishly declared waterboarding to be torture, the U.S. has announced to the world, friends and foe alike, that our official policy is to play by recess-rules. No running. No rough-house. No insensitivity. No name-calling. No hurtful behaviors.
Guantanamo will be closed, although only Portugal has agreed to accept any of its cargo. Too, CIA procedures that allowed terrorists to be held in secret and some of the agency’s interrogation techniques that could be considered mean-spirited or at least insensitive to the dignity of the ladies and gentlemen attempting to kill us, are to be banned. White House Counsel Gregory B. Craig acknowledged that the new restrictions on the CIA might be unwise and hinted that the Administration would be open to review later.
The first days of a new administration are far too few to draw conclusions about what’s ahead. But the first few days of this one feels a lot more like the Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton administrations than John F. Kennedy’s or those of other presidents since him.
Quick, let’s get Hillary on the job. This Administration needs a toughie on board.
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Where next?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Today marks the first full day in the wilderness for Republicans and for conservatives — the start of the long process of defining the principles on which the party stands. And, when that is done, finding a way to frame the message to a nation that has begun to divide roughly 50-50 on whether we want more or less government.
Those who carry its financial burden want less, as do those who accept the responsibility to provide for themselves and their families. Those who want more see government as the second provider to the family — or in many cases the first — as well as the co-signer on every note, whether the note is a mortgage or a business loan.
Dependency has grown to the point, too, that banks, auto companies, developers and others in the private sector are lining up to transfer risk and bad debt to taxpayers. Pocket profits, pawn off risk. Not a bad deal if we’re all willing to pay the ultimate tax burden that’ll be required.
There are many ways to read President Barack Obama’s inaugural address of Tuesday, specifically as it relates to the economy and to the government activism to come. One way is to read it as a free enterprise system call to action. Another is to read it as a blueprint for a federal government of gigantic proportions. You decide:
“Everywhere we look, there is work to be done. The state of the economy calls for action, bold and swift, and we will act — not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and the digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together.
“We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age. All this we can do. And all this we will do.”
U.S. House Republicans, while too few to represent any real check on a Nancy Pelosi majority determined swiftly to enact and to expand her vision of government social programs, have begun to develop and promote alternatives. That’s a start.
Conservatives in defeat can’t stop everything they find objectionable — such is the consequence of losing elections. But they can, as House Republicans are doing on the proposed $825 billion “stimulus” proposal, begin to use alternatives to define again what conservatives stand for in government.
And if the majority Democrats over-reach, as is their custom, the public will embrace the alternative ideas of the party in exile.
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Let’s truly bury racism
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
On ground where no black man has ever stood to take the oath, Barack Obama raises his right hand today to assume the office of president of the United States.
It is an extraordinary historical moment, a measure of how far this nation has come.
What does it mean? Plainly this: People and systems change. The political system that discriminated and the people who designed it are dead and gone. But that fact hasn’t been fully recognized yet.
Just days before the inauguration, for example, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear an important case regarding the Voting Rights Act, first passed back in 1965. The case involves a utility district in Texas created in 1987 with no history of discrimination, and whether its election laws should be subject to oversight by the U.S. Justice Department.
Such provisions under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act apply to nine states, including Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Virginia, in addition to cities and counties in seven others. All had been determined to have a history of discrimination, but that was long ago.
“The America that has elected Barack Obama … is far different than when Section 5 was first enacted in 1965,” argued a former solicitor general of Texas, Gregory S. Coleman, who brought the challenge on behalf of Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District Number One.
Indeed, every state in the nation is so dramatically different that “Congress cannot forever rely on findings of conditions that existed 30 years ago” to infringe “on the rights of an entire generation of voters who were not even alive when those discriminatory practices were ended,” lawyers for the district argue.
Continuing those burdensome provisions requires a belief that plots of earth are irredeemably stained by their history, a view that would forever taint much of the world’s space.
In 2006, however, Congress voted to extend federal oversight requirements for another 25 years. It did so not because of any evidence that conditions of two generations earlier still existed, but because of the politics of race and party advantage.
We see the same forces at work in Georgia today with the decision by the chairman of the Legislative Black Caucus, state Rep. Al Willliams (D-Midway), to reintroduce a resolution insisting that the state offer an official apology for slavery. If such an apology was necessary, the new president or the Democratically controlled Congress could speedily issue it or make any other gesture that Williams and other Democrats think useful.
But, then, this is really not about apologies, is it? It’s about partisan advantage. In Georgia, the party in power is Republican.
That same sort of partisan gamesmanship has been at the core of the enormous hype Democrats have brought to the issue of proper voter identification.
The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta ruled last week that Georgia’s voter ID law is entirely proper. Yes, the court acknowledged, presenting a government-issued ID is a bit of a burden. But it’s an “insignificant burden” when balanced against the state’s interest “in detecting and deterring voter fraud,” wrote Judge William H. Pryor Jr.
The decision relied on an April decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in an Indiana case that found, quite sanely, that “counting only the votes of eligible voters” is a legitimate state interest. Is, was, has been.
But then, the photo ID brouhaha was never about who votes and who doesn’t among the eligible. It was about stirring the racial pot for partisan advantage.
The hope of today’s historic milestone in the U.S. Capitol is that the nation can begin to move beyond the partisan games of race. The full force and authority of the United States is invested in Barack Obama. He and the Congress controlled by his party have the power to repair grievances if they are believed to be legitimate, to watch and prosecute those who are in fact attempting to corrupt the voting process, whether that occurs in Chicago, Minnesota or a utility district in Texas.
Then is not now and the law should recognize that.
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Be a conservative columnist
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Here’s your chance. Be a columnist at the AJC. If you’re a conservative, that is.
Some of yesterday’s contributors expressed concern that when I leave the editorial board June 30, the replacement won’t be a conservative. The chances of that are nil.
These are tough times in the newspaper business, as most everybody knows. Staff reductions have occurred here and are occurring in news organizations across the country. Even so, the commitment from the top at the AJC is to diversity of editorial opinion and that includes staff-written conservative commentary. I’ll be involved in interviewing and choosing my successor, along with the newspaper’s publisher, Doug Franklin, its editor, Julia Wallace, the editorial page editor, Cynthia Tucker, and the public editor, Matt Kempner. The public editor is, in a sense, the reader’s representative. He talks daily with readers who think stories or headlines are unfair, inaccurate or misleading, along with those who call to offer praise for something we’ve done.
One of the concerns some readers have expressed is that people who aren’t themselves conservative will be choosing the paper’s conservative voice. If you allowed me to pick the liberal columnists, I’d likely pick the liberal who appeals to conservatives or possibly even the liberal who makes liberals look ridiculous, God rest Molly Ivins’ soul.
That’s a concern I once shared. But no longer. It will be fair. It’s open to non-journalists who can write and meet deadlines. At some point in the process, you’ll be allowed to read and react to the opinions of potential replacements.
To start, I would like to solicit some opinion from contributors here. Is a college degree essential?
Here’s more on the New Columnist selection process.
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Intervention in market stirs Bush debate
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Grant George W. Bush this: “While there’s room for an honest and healthy debate about the decisions I made … there can be no debate about the results in keeping America safe.”
Even among Republicans and especially among fiscal conservatives, there is honest disagreement and healthy debate.
My greatest regret is not that he accepted a costly new entitlement in prescription drugs or that he expanded the federal role in K-12 education, a state and local responsibility. It’s that the necessary intervention to stem panic in the financial sector — and “necessary intervention” is an assertion much in dispute among conservatives — has given cover to the most frightening and consequential entanglement of government in the private sector in my lifetime. Pray tell, how do we get back out?
The cover provided by Bush has allowed Democrats in Congress to dust off every spending fantasy that ever struck their fancy or imagination. At most recent count, it adds up to $825 billion and will undoubtedly grow. It’s no wonder that state Sen. Emanuel Jones, a Decatur Democrat and automobile dealer, called a news conference Friday to urge the president-elect to “issue an executive order granting ethnic minority automobile dealers immediate financial assistance.” Line up. Big or small. Find an angle to demand a bailout.
For those fiscal conservatives who supported Bush’s initial action in dealing with the financial crisis — I am among them — the principled ground is washed away. Opposition to massive public engagement in the private sector is dismissed as partisan. It’s explained by persistent Bush critics on the left as merely an extension of the effort he started.
And as Libertarian Party spokesman Andrew Davis warned last month, “Government programs tend to linger with disastrous economic consequences.”
In his farewell address Thursday night, the president reiterated the irrefutable fact of his success in keeping the nation safe. “America has gone more than seven years without another terrorist attack on our soil,” he said.
He asserted, too, that “facing the prospect of a financial collapse, we took decisive measures to safeguard our economy. These are very tough times … but the tolls would be far worse if we had not acted.”
Granted, the first. Even his most vicious critics cannot refute the reality before our eyes. As commander-in-chief, he faced that crisis magnificently and never once betrayed the men and women in uniform who sacrificed for their country. History will be kind to him as a wartime leader.
On the domestic front, we’ll not know for perhaps another decade whether “the tolls would be far worse if we had not acted.”
While I would be perfectly willing to allow companies to fail whose corporate culture encouraged recklessness in lending or borrowing, the country could not tolerate the economic suffering that obviously would have been wrought by the failure to arrest the panic. In hindsight, the intervention put the government in the position of picking winners and losers while doing little to keep the free market from taking its course.
The makings of President Bush’s legacy were bookends to his presidency. He did not invite Sept. 11 and could not have avoided it. No action that he took caused or perhaps could have prevented Wall Street’s meltdown. He inherited a culture created by post-Reagan politicians who cleverly sought to hide in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac the social programs they lacked the courage or cover to create outright. Ultimately, that system evolved into one where, top to bottom, nobody suffered the consequences of irresponsible behaviors. Not lenders. Not borrowers. Not investors.
The pass-the-risk, borrow-to-get-rich culture collapsed on Bush’s watch. He responded as any president would: Put out the fire and worry about the drought tomorrow.
On keeping America safe, an A-plus.
On legislating conservative ideas, such as health savings accounts or education choice and accountability, a D. Congressional Democrats will rip those out before the next election. No lasting accomplishment.
On Supreme Court appointments, an A-plus. On responding to economic crisis, an incomplete.
Pray tell, how do we get back out? We won’t.
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Limiting lawsuits, college access, bike theft
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s weekend free-for-all. Pick a topic:
Gov. Sonny Perdue is dead-on correct. When the federal Food and Drug Administration, as the final authority on the safety of drugs and medical devices, grants approval, it should mean something. Approval should free companies from pursuing product-liability claims in state courts. Such legislation, he said, will make the state more attractive to biotechnology companies. Another good proposal: A limited loser-pays law to discourage frivolous lawsuits.
No problem here with paying higher rates for nuclear power plant construction before the facilities are finished. Georgia Power wants to build two reactors at Plant Vogtle near Augusta and to charge customers $1.6 billion of its $6.4 billion share-cost before they’re finished. We need the power. We’ll pay ultimately anyway. Why wait?
The bicycles owned by former President and first lady Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter were stolen from the Carter Center. The thousand-dollar bikes were gifts, prompting the giver to declare that they’ve “probably been sold for a $10 rock of crack.” To the conservative, this is a crime warranting pursuit. What would a liberal do? Choose one:
1) Blame the Bush Administration for cutting funds for community policing.
2) Create a new federal program to provide free or low-cost bicycles to those who don’t have them.
3) Create new federal counseling and treatment programs for druggies.
4) All of the above.
- Which will we find first?
1) Oil and gas in Georgia, for which State Sen. Chip Pearson wants a bigger bounty.
2) A casino in Underground Atlanta.
3) An Atlanta politician who thinks his or her financial problems are not caused by somebody else.
4 ) None of the above.
Mistake. Bad mistake. Letting bankruptcy judges rewrite home mortgages, as Democrats in Congress propose, means simply that the risk that a mortgage contract can be altered will be written into everybody’s loan as fees and higher interest rates. Congress loves to hide the cost of its social programs in the private sector and in your household budget.
Not a bad idea, actually. The Chancellor of the University System of Georgia warns that with tax revenues down, public colleges may have to limit enrollment to maintain quality. Some private colleges may well identify as their market niche serving students who aren’t college material. A ceiling on public enrollment based on merit is an idea worth exploring. A quarter of incoming freshmen aren’t ready for college. At some point in life the burden shifts from “your failure is my problem” (public education) to “your failure is your problem” (those who aren’t qualified for college).
When Democrats in Congress freeze the death tax at this year’s level rather than allow it to drop to zero next year, that’s a tax increase. When they choose next year not to extend or make permanent the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, that’s a tax increase. When Gov. Sonny Perdue opts not to include the existing $428 million in tax-relief grants to homeowners in next year’s budget, that is a tax increase of $200 to $300 per homeowner.
On torture, a new definition emerges from Susan J. Crawford, the top judge overseeing trials for enemy combatants. According to her, the combination of techniques that singly are not torture — loud music, long periods of restraint in uncomfortable positions or exposure to uncomfortable chill — are torture. Therefore, the case against the suspected terrorist believed to be the “20th hijacker,” Mohammed al-Qahtani, cannot be brought to trial, she said. The administration denies the torture allegations. Soon failure to provide a new toothbrush every three months will constitute torture, and sooner if Obama takes his cue from the left.
Fascinating how the “culture of corruption” disappeared once the election was over. Once upon a time, a failure to pay taxes by a presidential appointee would have been evidence of its existence. Now it’s an “innocent mistake.”
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Block it up: ‘Cash for clunkers’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Got leftover food in the refrigerator that’s about to go bad? Consuming it could make you sick. And if you get sick, you drive up the nation’s health care cost. So sit tight. Any day now, U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) or some other creative economic stimulus guru in Congress, will devise a plan to issue vouchers for nearly-spoiled leftovers that can be used to purchase more nutritious meals at Whole Foods or at a certified health foods store.
That’s coming, for sure, just as soon as her new plan to get gas guzzlers off the highway gets off concrete blocks. Under “Cash for Clunkers” legislation introduced Wednesday in both the House and the Senate, motorists could get a voucher for up to $4,500 for turning in an old, fuel-inefficient vehicle, which would then be scrapped. A “clunker” is one that had a fuel-economy rating of less than 18 miles per hour when new.
The voucher could be used for a new or used vehicle costing $45,000 or less with a fuel economy rating that exceeds by 25 percent the federal targets for that particular class. The vouchers could also be used for transit fare credit.
“This is an even better trade-in offer than they could get from any car dealership,” said Your Friend in the Fuel-Efficient Car Business, Smilin’ Chuck Schumer, the U.S. Senator from New York, a co-sponsor.
This is one reason, incidentally, that we never wanted to make taxpayers partners with Detroit in the car business. It encourages politicians, spending other people’s money, to dabble in investment-connected social policy.
The bill, said Feinstein, “would be an important part of helping getting America’s struggling automobile industry back on its feet, and help consumers who are concerned about covering the cost of buying a more fuel-efficient vehicle.” Too, said Republican Susan Collins of Maine, another co-sponsor, this keen idea helps reduce our dependence on foreign oil.
Today’s market tip to savvy Thinking Right blogsters: Corner the market on clunkers. Politicians with sacks of cash are on a spending spree. And, yes, putting a clunker on concrete blocks in your front yard is today’s symbol to the neighborhood that you are committed to energy independence and to revving up the nation’s economic engine and getting American moving again (in a socially responsible, fuel-efficient way).
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Casino gambling and Sunday liquor
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Here we go again. At the first downturn in the flow of revenues into the coffers of state and local government, the tax-sin crowd unveils a new gambling proposal that’s guaranteed to get the riches flowing again.
In this cycle, the developers who operate Underground Atlanta on a 50-year lease from the city are proposing a $450-million redevelopment of the trinkets-for-tourists enclave near Five Points in the old downtown business district. Business and the big law firms, for the most part, abandoned the area years ago, leaving it to Georgia State University students, state employees and the usual assortment of panhandlers and lounge-abouts who convene daily around the Five Points MARTA station.
It’s really not very appealing to conventioneers and tourists, though some do make their way to Underground. On most days when there’s no big attraction at Phipps Arena or at the Georgia World Congress Center that draws lots of tourist types, Underground is a pretty dead place.
The solution Underground operators propose is casino-type gambling with video lottery terminals. Conventional casinos are prohibited in Georgia, but the Constitutional amendment that opened the door to state-monopoly gambling does not expressly prohibit video casinos. With 5,000 terminals in a redeveloped Underground, gamblers would be separated from an estimated $600 million of their butter-and-egg money per year. Of that, the state’s cut would be half.
All together now in our “Tax Sin to Save the Children” chorus: Video lottery will rescue HOPE at a time when the state budget is suffering. Shouldn’t we also be touting horse racing now, too? Nobody’s yet proposed it as the solution to our financial ills during this downturn. It’s overdue.
Surely the Legislature will not allow itself to be sidetracked on questions like Sunday beer, wine and liquor sales — the pet legislative agenda item of convenience store operators — or video gambling in Underground or elsewhere. (I do wish for leaders who set public policy agendas and not merely shuffle paperwork into law for special interest pleaders.)
Dispose of both quickly, within days. And make it clear to gambling proponents that — in the case of video lottery — that the state draws the line somewhere on the exploitation of its vulnerable and, more seriously, of its addicts.
Underground needs to find another way to save itself.
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Take a Gitmo terrorist, please
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Perhaps as early as his first week in office as the 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama will order the closing of the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, transition-team advisers have speculated.
It’s unlikely the prison could be closed within the administration’s first few months, but it would start the process of disposing of the 250 al-Qaida and Taliban fighters and loyalists who are being held there, including 15 considered most dangerous. European nations have made it clear to the Bush administration and to United Nations representatives that they don’t want them — nor do many of the detainees’ home countries.
Obama advisers are optimistic that the new President can find just the right persuasive arguments to convince the leaders of other nations to change their minds.
The last place for them is on U.S. soil. There are many decisions that a President makes that start the clock running on their political capital leading, perhaps, to their ineffectiveness and ultimate rejection by voters. Mishandling terrorists is one of those.
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Akerman’s soundness leaves impression in print
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Dr. Bob may have been the last editorialist in the country who wrote his opinions with a No. 2 pencil on a yellow legal pad.
And yet when you go back and read them 15 years after he wrote his last column or editorial for The Atlanta Journal, their intellectual soundness stands the test. The No. 2 pencil allowed him to reflect as he wrote, to approach his commentary with the calm judgment of a superb historian who fully understood the ramifications of public policy decisions.
Dr. Robert Akerman of Kennesaw, a former dean of Kennesaw State College whose commentary appeared on the editorial page of The Atlanta Journal twice a week for almost 20 years, made a final journey back to his hometown of Orlando last week at the age of 80. During most of those years on the Journal, he was chief deputy to Editorial Page Editor Durwood McAlister, who preceded him in death by less than a month. He and wife, Jean, had 60 years together and three children, including Mary Virginia Akerman Frazier and Georgianne Nabors, both of Kennesaw, and Robert H. Akerman Jr. of Largo, Fla.
How quickly in life we find ourselves our parents and our elders.
Back in the days when smoking was allowed, Dr. Bob and his pipe were a welcomed sight at the office door. He’d stand, puffing occasionally on his pipe, and offer follow-up commentary and historical perspective on an issue in the news. He was the wise elder, the historian by training, whose brief conversations were just the touch of restraint often needed by a brash young editorialist who lacked the long view.
Dr. Bob was born into a Southern Republican family, though he found himself at odds with the party of Richard Nixon on its Southern Strategy, which he believed exploited racial division. His great-grandfather, Amos T. Akerman, who practiced law in Elberton, was U.S. attorney general under President U.S. Grant, and a fierce opponent of the Ku Klux Klan. An uncle of Dr. Bob filed suit in 1949 to integrate the University of Florida. On civil rights, therefore, his views and those of most Southern whites were in conflict. Just out of high school in Orlando he took a job as a copy boy, though, as he wrote on retirement from the Journal in 1993, “my journalist ambition was to be an editorial writer and columnist. I knew it would take time and experience, as well as more education, but I thought it would be great to be paid to express my opinions — and I had a lot of them.”
He found early experiences as an editorial writer frustrated by beliefs, especially on civil rights, that were at odds with editors or owners. So he left to pursue a career in higher education, never expecting to return to editorial writing.
As a historian, he spent 15 years in higher education, serving as chairman of the social science division and as chairman of the history department at Florida Southern College in Lakeland, and as dean of Kennesaw State College, then a two-year school. While he loved the classroom, college administration was not particularly satisfying, so he “sort of blundered into an offer to become a writer for The Atlanta Journal editorial page” in 1973, he once wrote.
“These 20 years have been the best of my professional life,” he wrote on retirement. With Dr. Bob, opinion writing was a professor’s opportunity to educate from another pulpit. His commentary was never personal, never hurtful, never ruffled, never written in anger. It was for the reader, as it was when he dropped in to elaborate on the historical perspective that reinforced a point he’d argued earlier, a chance to step back and reflect on the choices we were about to make.
Read his commentary now. Read it tomorrow. It has endured and will.
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Governor in 2010?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Wild Hog Supper, the traditional kick-off of the legislative year, drew a crowd of thousands, reported the AJC’s Aaron Gould Sheinin.
The Thinking Right blog was, no doubt, represented by Mid-South Philosopher. I was elsewhere. Thousands of people packed into the former railroad depot at the lower entrance to Underground Atlanta puts them all in the position of standing in each other’s face shouting or of pulling pork already pulled by hundreds. It’s a fun place, alright, a place ambitious politicians dare not miss.
Among those in attendance were most of the declared, or near-declared, candidates for governor and lieutenant governor in 2010. For Republicans the crowd at the top includes Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, Secretary of State Karen Handel and Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine. State Rep. DuBose Porter of Dublin, a probable candidate for the Democratic nomination, was there too.
Today’s topic is a survey of sorts, especially for those inclined to vote in the Republican primary. The question is which of the three, or whether any of them, excite? Why or why not?
For me, I’d like a low-tax, small-government visionary who’s willing to experiment on service-delivery alternatives. No finger-to-the-wind Republicans for me, thanks.
Is there a chance, still, that U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson could rethink 2010? The national landscape could change quickly, but it’s not looking good for the GOP in the U.S. Senate. George Voinovich, the two-term senator from Ohio, is expected to announce today that he won’t seek reelection in 2010. He’d be the fourth Senate Republican to announce other plans. Kit Bond of Missouri, Mel Martinez of Florida and Sam Brownback of Kansas are not running for reelection in 2010. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas could leave earlier if she decides to run for governor of Texas.
If the Democratic Party comedian is eventually given the U.S. Senate seat from Minnesota, Majority Leader Harry Reid will control a Senate that’s within a single lukewarm Republican of being filibuster-proof. Republicans, then, are spectators.
Isakson may recognize that a couple of terms as governor would be more fun. Besides, based on November’s outcome it’s pretty obvious that barring scandal, Republicans have a far better chance of retaining an open U.S. Senate seat here than they do in, say, Ohio, Florida or Missouri.
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Lawmakers: Don’t hide from tax hikes
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Another of the few years that Republicans under the Gold Dome have remaining in power starts on Monday with the dominant issue being how best to raise taxes. History provides the answer for Republicans. Cleverly.
For the Dems, the answer is to exhibit much angst and hand-wringing before, darn it, they are moved by civic obligation to “enhance revenue.” For Republicans, it is to profess opposition to higher taxes, while disguising them as “fees” or gallantly standing aside and allowing voters to decide whether they wish to spend a token sum to cure a grievous public problem — poor schooling, jobs or traffic congestion.
Both the mislabeled fees and the stand-aside posturing reflect a lack of leadership, political gutlessness and the gamesmanship that breeds cynicism and distrust among voters. It’s the weasel politics that so alienated the conservative base about Congress.
If legislators want to raise the sales tax and use the money to fund transportation projects, for example, they should do it straight-up. Make the case. Tell us what we’re getting for the penny. And then raise taxes. No games. No bogus studies without context showing that voters are clamoring for higher taxes or for more spending.
It’s worth noting that the gallant men and women who oppose higher taxes but do support the voters’ right to choose never think it appropriate to let them decide whether to choose a cap on state spending or some other spending-restraint device.
As Republicans go, you have to give it to state Rep. Ron Stephens of Savannah, who is said to be one. He prefiled a bill for a tax of $1.37 per pack on cigarettes and 25 percent of the wholesale cost on loose or smokeless tobacco. That would be up from 37 cents per pack now and 10 percent of the wholesale cost on loose and smokeless.
On taxes, one is inclined to think of Stephens as the young soldier in the movie “Patton” who arises from the floor in a somnolent military headquarters in response to the question, “What are you doing there, soldier?” “Trying to get some sleep, sir,” he replies.
“Well, get back down there, son,” responds Patton. “You’re the only [expletive deleted] in this headquarters who knows what he’s trying to do.”
That’s not exactly apt. The invective has no specific application here, and plenty of those under the Gold Dome know what they’re trying to do. They just don’t want you to know that they did it when they do it.
Stephens for his part sounds like the generic politician, one who offers his proposed tax increase as “a sound solution to the state’s fiscal crisis that will help, not hurt, the state’s ability to operate responsibly while continuing to serve all its residents.” It would serve all its residents by making smoking prohibitively expensive and by reimbursing the state for some of the costs of treating those with tobacco-related illnesses, he has argued. Therefore, to the clever Republican, it is a kind of “user fee.”
State Sen. Jack Murphy (R-Cumming) offers a kind of user-fee argument with legislation he’s considering that would impose a surcharge of $3 to $5 each on strip-club patrons. The money would go, he says, to services for sexually-exploited youngsters.
Tax strip-club patrons as you will, but don’t pretend it’s a user fee and don’t offer the excuse that it’s to be spent on some particular program. If a program doesn’t stand on its merits, it doesn’t warrant a linked tax.
State Rep. Chuck Sims of Ambrose proposes to tax groceries for two years, a tax increase of just under a billion dollars a year. It’s a bold proposal from one not given to adventurism in drafting legislation unsought by higher-ups. To such signals, the lay fiscal conservative should be alert. Sims’ concern, expressed to reporter James Salzer, is that budget cuts to be proposed by Gov. Sonny Perdue will be “too drastic.”
The lay fiscal conservative should be alert, too, to the prospect that Republicans will maneuver cleverly to get rid of the $428 million in state tax relief grants that go to offset local property taxes. If done, it would come in the 2009-2010 fiscal year starting July 1.
There’s no clever way to take the break back. Legislators could try to couple withdrawal with a cap on the growth of assessments. If so, not a one of them will have the moral authority to call the national Democrats to task for raising taxes when they allow the Bush tax cuts to expire.
State Sen. Jack Hill (R-Reidsville), chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, thinks the sluggish economy makes it time to re-examine the sales tax structure. That means spread the tax to services, an idea that never goes away. Just be honest and aboveboard. Make the case for new money and levy the taxes, straight-up. No games. No deceit.
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Costly china, SEC football talent, Obama dilemma
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s weekend free-for-all. Pick a topic:
New 320-place setting White House china selected by the Bushes cost almost $500,000. So what? It was paid for by a privately-funded trust. Let the man go.
The Georgia General Assembly should write a legal definition of “blight” based on the 1300 block of Joseph E. Boone Boulevard (formerly Simpson Road) in northwest Atlanta — and then limit the creation of tax allocation districts to those that fall within it. Creating them in the path of development that’s occurring anyway is nothing more than a taxpayer giveaway.
Alabama embarrasses the Southeastern Conference in the Sugar Bowl, losing to Utah. How in the world can we continue to hang on, breathlessly awaiting an announcement by some 17-year-old football prospect that he’s chosen a Southeastern Conference school, preferably Georgia, when the talent is employed as poorly as it was then by the Crimson Tide?
Hamas leader Nizar Rayyan insisted on martyrdom and made himself readily available. Israel complied. Properly so. Best suggestion for Gaza and the Palestinian Authority comes from former U.N. Ambassador John R. Bolton, writing in the Washington Post. Argues Bolton: “We should look to a ‘three-state’ approach, where Gaza is returned to Egyptian control and the West Bank in some configuration reverts to Jordanian sovereignty.”
MARTA’s projected deficit of $57 million may prompt higher fares (up 25 cents to $2), higher parking fees or service reductions. One other proposed “solution” is more tax. My suggestion would be to consolidate MARTA as a mass transit-only agency. Spin off the buses into the private sector and let them provide service where and how the market dictates.
Grady Memorial Hospital officials start off the new year right, trying to save the hospital by getting a handle on expenses. CEO Michael Young proposes, quite responsibly, to charge a discounted rate to the near poor that’s less for patients from Fulton and DeKalb than for patients from elsewhere. It’s an eminently defensible proposal and management and politicians, sometimes one and the same, should stick to their guns in implementing it.
Kudos to Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle for his vow — I think it’s a vow — to resist higher taxes. “The time is not for raising taxes,” he says. “The time is for right-sizing state government.” Hear, hear! And for dismissing all the interest groups with their palms up.
Interesting dilemma for President-elect Barack Obama, who vowed to shut the Guantanamo military detention center. Turns out no nation wants the bad guys. Take ’em, pleas U.N. torture investigator Manfred Nowak. Many, he says, are harmless. Maybe. But many aren’t.
Griffin Bell was one of the truly great men that Georgia, or any state, produces. He’s monument material.
A commentary on life offered by Ohio State coach Jim Tressel, whose team lost 24-21 to Texas in the Fiesta Bowl in the final minute. “That’s the problem with tight ballgames like this… Sometimes you finish it [and] the game ends when you are the one ahead and sometimes the game ends when you’re not.”
The recession prompts the state to permit slightly larger class sizes in core elementary and middle school classes, up to two students more for the coming school year. One fine day the state will get out of the business of dictating inputs, like class size, to local school officials. Ideally, local systems will sign contracts, like the one Gwinnett is inking, that would commit them to performance outcomes. The state should set standards, provide experts and advice, and let the locals deliver the goods. Or, if they can’t, give the money to parents and let them find a provider who can.
Calling Atlanta’s neighbors to the north “northern suburbs” requires a definite perspective. For those of us who live there, Atlanta is our suburb. Wonder why you never see it described as Cobb’s southern suburb.
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Earmarks, no, but problem’s bigger
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Without question, a spending stampede from Washington will plant thousands of little boondoggling spending programs across the country. A prime example is the money allocated to local governments to stave off foreclosures while saving neighborhoods.
Atlanta, to use an example from today’s AJC, has $16 million and applications from 37 fund-seeking organizations requesting $20 million. Some version of this story is in newspapers all across the country. The reality will be that the so-called federal Neighborhood Stabilization Program is a play-thing for politicians, a place to park their buddies until the economy gets better with a fund that allows them to be pretend wheeler-dealers doling out pork to favored individuals and neighborhoods. Check back in three years and you’ll find waste, fraud, abuse and ineffective spending to be the legacy of this program nationally.
President-elect Barack Obama, meanwhile, announces that a follow-up economic stimulus package estimated at $775 billion, will mark a “new higher standard of accountability, transparency and oversight.”
By that he means that earmarks will be banned and that details of the plan will be available online “so the American people will know where their precious tax dollars are going and whether we are hitting our marks.”
Earmarks are the symbols of wasteful spending, no doubt. The proposed commuter rail line from Atlanta to Lovejoy, a White Elephant boondoggle that may very well get built, came to life as an earmark. There was never any examination of its transportation value prior to its insertion in a spending bill. And it lingers because the money’s been allocated, or at least a token sum to get it started.
The Neighborhood Stabilization Program, while not an earmark, is the equivalent of the rail line to Lovejoy. It plants a bad idea and keeps it around with a never-satisfied appetite for more public money.
It’s worth noting that a bipartisan group of U.S. Senators, including Oklahoma’s blue-chip fiscal conservative Tom Coburn and Wisconsin’s liberal Russ Feingold, are proposing what they call “major earmark reform.”
“Congress has a 9 percent approval rating because broken processes like the earmark process have caused us to lose the trust and confidence of the American people,” said Coburn.
Called the “Fiscal Discipline, Earmark Reform, and Accountability Act of 2009” (I hate the dishonest names politicans bestow on programs; it’s political trickery.) Nevertheless, it does propose to do three useful things.
One would be to allow senators to object to “unauthorized earmarks on appropriations bills” and 60 votes would be required to overcome that objection.
Secondly, all appropriations and authorization conference reports would have to be online and electronically searchable at least 48 hours before full Senate consideration.
And, finally, those who get federal dollars would be required to disclose any money spent on registered lobbyists — something that could curtail business for professional lobbyists while creating more junket opportunities for lobbying politicians.
Earmarks are a symbol. But given the sums of money that’s pouring out of Washington without real oversight and direction, earmarks are hardly the major worry for fiscal conservatives and for taxpayers.
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Republicans, journalists are spectators
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The new Congress convened Tuesday. For Republicans, it looks like a chance to get front-row seats to the Nancy Pelosi-Harry Reid Show.
They’ll be a lot like journalists who cover Congress and the General Assembly: They’ll have some really good stories to tell of political intrigue, a chance to see the games up-close and to rub shoulders with those who are making law. But otherwise, they are spectators.
In the House, Democrats rewrote the rules to virtually guarantee that Republicans will be bystanders who are given limited access to the microphone and possibly C-SPAN. One rule change, approved 242-181, would prevent Republicans from attempting to block bills by directing that they be sent back to committee with instructions to add new provisions that Democratic leaders didn’t want, but some rank-and-file Democrats did. The effort mostly just succeeded in annoying Pelosi and other Democratic leaders. So they changed the rules.
A Republican reform that limited committee chairmen to three terms was also reversed.
In the Senate, Democrats may be on the verge of gaining 59 seats - if, heaven help us, the comedian Al Franken is allowed to count just the votes he needs in Minnesota. If so, Republicans there will be bystanders, too, within six months. During the honeymoon period, Democrats are not likely to run roughshod, as Reid demonstrated in declining to seat Franken over a threatened Republican filibuster until court challenges are exhausted.
Otherwise, though, Democrats do effectively have a filibuster-proof Senate. There’s always the prospect that Maine’s Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins or Pennsylvania’s Arlen Specter will be the 60th vote needed to prevent Republicans from filibustering legislation or nominees.
Welcome to the new world where Republicans in Washington become the equivalent of journalists. They get to be where history is being made and to observe it up-close. But except for their ability to draw attention to specific outrages, they aren’t in the game.
A photo in Wednesday’s AJC shows three members of the Georgia delegation — Nathan Deal, Phil Gingrey and Paul Broun — being sworn in. They all look grim. We know why.
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Return taxing authority to states
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The trouble with commissions, especially those related to transportation and taxes, is that their reports represent everybody’s wish list.
Take, for example, the final report of the National Commission on Transportation Infrastructure Financing, a 15-member panel created by Congress. Since motorists are driving less, the gas tax should be raised by 10 cents per gallon and the diesel fuel tax by 12- to-15 cents per gallon, the commission’s majority concludes. The higher tax should, too, be put on automatic pilot to increase with inflation, a majority of the group recommends.
Here’s an example, though, of why commissions are little more than covers for politicians who want to take an unpopular action — raising taxes, for instance. “In addition to putting more money into the system,” the report declares, “we also must create a system where investment is subject to benefit-cost analysis and performance-based outcomes. We need a system that insures each project is designed, approved, and completed quickly; one that provides a fully integrated mobility system that is the best in the world; one that emphasizes modal balance and mobility options; one that dramatically reduces fatalities and injuries; one that is environmentally sensitive and safe; one that minimizes use of our scarce energy resources; one that erases wasteful delays; one that supports just-in-time delivery; and one that allows economic development and output more significant than ever seen before in history.”
And then, to the disbelieving and to the confused, it adds this bromide: “The good news is that we can do it. Our people need such a system and they deserve it.”
That bad news is that the to-do list contains so many mandates that none of them instruct. They’re the gibberish of assembled interest groups shouting out slogans for a facilitator to write on a blackboard. In the end, Congress has cover — an urgent call for new infrastructure revenue because “the future of our Nation’s well-being, vitality, and global economic leadership is at stake” — and everybody goes away feeling good that the bicyclists, and the road, rail and environmental interests have found “common ground.”
I promise you: there’s always common ground to be found when the various agenda-competitors find themselves on the wish list for somebody else’s money. When the lion and the lamb are forced to reach consensus, it is that neither will go hungry and that a third party provides dinner satisfactory to both.
As with an earlier version of the commission’s report, it is the minority report that warrants attention. It was offered by Transportation Secretary Mary Peters and by two other Bush appointees, Maria Cino, the deputy secretary, and Rick Geddes, a Cornell University professor.
The surface transportation system’s greatest challenge is not connecting places or providing farm-to-market roads, but “the consistent, precipitous decline in transportation system performance and the increased politicization of transportation investment decisions,” the three write. “Throughout the recent history of our highway and mass transportation systems, engineering and political considerations have trumped economic ones.”
Their recommendation would not be to raise taxes, but to try approaches such as congestion-pricing based on time-of-day usage. That, which according to Brookings Institute economists, could yield $120 billion a year if applied in the 98 largest urban areas. Private-sector toll roads, charges based on vehicle miles traveled and real cost-benefit analysis with priorities set based on performance, are also among their suggestions.
They would, too, phase out the dominant federal role and the 18.5-cents federal gas tax except for “truly federal objectives, such as preservation and improvement of the Interstate Highway System,” interstate freight movement, safety programs, and projects of national or regional significance.
The latter argument is the most immediately compelling. Taxing authority should be returned to the states. State officials, and not Congress, should be making decisions about what projects are built where. The first money should be spent on improving major transportation corridors.
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Presidential Obama, Campaign Obama
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
In the spirit of New Year cheer, let the record show that Thinking Right’s official position, declared at the start of the first week of the year that will begin the administration of President-elect Barack Obama, is upbeat, positive, optimistic and filled with the aforementioned good cheer.
So far there’s not a lot to criticize. He appears to have backed off the hard-and-fast timetable for retreat from Iraq. His Cabinet appointments — except for the selection of U.S. Rep. Hilda Solis (D-Calif.) as Labor Secretary — range from not-alarming to fully-acceptable. And with Solis, what’s the worry? It’s not like she’ll be making labor policy. And besides, the proposed Employee Free Choice Act now before Congress would do far more harm to the economy than anything a Labor Secretary could propose.
And in the spirit of getting rid of potential trouble before it becomes Obama’s problem, he’s canned his announced candidate for Commerce Secretary, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, before he goes before the Senate for confirmation. A Grand Jury in New Mexico is investigating the link between campaign contributions to Richardson and a state transportation contract for more than $1 million. Richardson withdrew his nomination Sunday, denying that he’d been pushed.
The latest evidence that Obama may be more policy-centered than his hard-Left supporters can endure are reports that he and congressional Democrats are considering a package of tax cuts amounting to about $310 billion as part of a two-year stimulus package that could reach $775 billion. The package would be about 60 percent spending, 40 percent tax cuts.
If so, as Jonathan Weisman and Naftali Bendavid report in The Wall Street Journal, the two-year impact could exceed the first two years of President George W. Bush’s 2001 tax cut ($174 billion) or his 2003 tax cut ($231 billion). Details are not out, but business tax cuts to spur job creation would be an element.
The Democratic Congress is still a concern (please tell me the comedian Al Franken is not the winner in Minnesota). The party’s leaders are discussing how to proceed quickly with legislation on equal pay for women, more aid to homeowners, stem cell research, offshore drilling and more spending on children’s health insurance.
The New Year’s optimism could — and probably will — vanish in policy disagreements to come. But for now, the presidential Obama is far superior to the campaign Obama.
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Children’s crisis reveals family’s value
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The traditional family consisting of a mother, father and an average of 2.3 children “is becoming a dated notion in an America with more single parents, unwed mothers and blended families,” conclude reporters for McClatchy newspapers, a chain of 30 U.S. dailies.
A dated notion? Interesting proposition.
The point of the story is that President-elect Barack Obama and wife Michelle are the “perfect nuclear family” with two Ivy League-educated parents “supportive of each other and their two children.” The Obamas are, therefore, either “an unrealistic ideal, a midcentury throwback, a false standard” or “an inspirational example of what the African-American family can be — even a post-racial example of the new 21st century American Family.”
If it’s the former — a throwback, a false standard — then God save America. Its demise will come from within.
Children are in crisis. Almost 70 percent of black children, almost half of Hispanic children and a quarter of white children — a third of all children born in this country — are the result of adults’ self-centeredness and/or irresponsibility. It’s a cruelty with destructive consequences.
A study released this week by researchers at Northeastern University finds that while the crime rate for the United States is falling, the trend masks an alarming reality. The number of young black males between the ages of 14 and 17 who were shot to death rose almost 40 percent to 426 in 2007 from 2000. The number responsible for shooting deaths rose 38 percent to 964, reported criminologist James Alan Fox, who co-authored the study with fellow criminal justice professor Marc Swatt. The numbers rose for young white males, too, with a 17 percent increase in victims and a 3 percent increase in perpetrators.
Researchers placed part of the blame on the Bush administration for inadequate federal spending on local police and juvenile crime prevention programs. A better bet would be to check the homes into which the young men were brought.
A direct correlation exists between marriage and the outcomes for children. As the chief justice of the Georgia Supreme Court, Leah Ward Sears, pointed out in convening a summit on “children, marriage and family law” in November, “the decline of marriage in America has had a dramatic impact on the well-being of our children.”
“Children born out of wedlock are more likely to live in poverty, be incarcerated later in life, suffer from physical and sexual abuse, abuse alcohol and drugs, and engage in early sexual activity and premarital child-bearing,” she said, citing a Bureau of Justice Statistics analysis that 72 percent of jailed juveniles came from a fragmented family. While the Obamas will occupy the White House as the first black president and first lady, their race conveys no particular calling to rescue the American family. This president and every other who occupies the Oval Office has an urgent obligation to try to change the culture that causes so much harm to children.
It’s not role models we need. It’s leaders willing to confront Hollywood and the rest of the entertainment industry for their depiction of what’s “normal” in marriage and families. The industry would burn film before it would allow a modern Katharine Hepburn to light a cigarette on screen, as she did in “Woman of the Year” in 1942, with Spencer Tracy, because of the bad example it would set. But in today’s Hollywood, the long-running affair between the two actors would have been on-screen and public. That’s important because children, especially those without a married mother and father in their lives, turn to the media for their role models.
Many of this nation’s prominent voices, including sometimes Obama’s, are in a panic about global warming. They’re convinced that it’s real and that it’ll be the death of us all.
Give me half those voices willing to speak to the self-centered, irresponsible adults who are doing far more harm to this country, and it would have far more impact on this nation’s future.
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