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Thursday, February 19, 2009
Sunday booze buying, Ill. politics, wild pets
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s weekend free-for-all. Pick a topic:
Headline on a story about whether to sell beer, wine and liquor on Sunday: “Could booze boost state economy?” If that doesn’t, should we try prostitution? Or crack? “Boosting the economy” and “helping education” are the two bogus arguments most often employed to sell a vice. “Somebody else pays” works to sell tax hikes. Sunday sales? I don’t care in the least. I buy Monday to Saturday. I do hate, however, that lobbyists and not legislators decide what the people of Georgia “need.”
Love Illinois politics? It has an impeached governor. And a replacement Senator for President Barack Obama who conveniently remembers, when word leaks that the feds have it on tape, that indeed he did discuss fund-raising for the appointing governor with Rod Blagojevich’s brother, Robert. (And we should not be alarmed that the product of Southside Chicago politics intends to move the 2010 Census out of the Commerce Department and into the White House? “How many people are huddled in the dark?” ask the census-takers. “Oh, about 7,851.” “No, make that 78,510.”)
The North Dakota House recognizes human rights. A fertilized human egg has the legal rights of a human, the House declares. The bill moves now to the Senate. The male and female whose actions caused the birth of octuplets pulls me to the North Dakota House’s position.
I love living in a city (Smyrna) and county (Cobb) that’s governed without drama. Residents are said to be sick of it in DeKalb. Who can blame them? Public officials should be like body parts: They’re best when functioning painlessly.
Based on my memories of the ’60s, I’m thinking more “civil rights activists” are dying now than were living then, especially among whites. Among blacks, I really can’t say. Seems more, though.
The Associated Press declares President Obama a winner for using “his popularity and bully pulpit to get the notoriously sluggish Congress to work through the huge” alleged stimulus “package in relatively short order.” Some bully pulpit. Pelosi-Reid Democrats got to write the bill and the bully pulpit produced three Republicans in the entire Congress to support the $787 billion eruption of social spending. The AP also declares Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) a winner. That requires a certain point of view.
MARTA’s smarta. General manager Beverly Scott says she’ll take the federal giveaway money and use it on neglected repairs and maintenance. Nothing should be funded from the “economic stimulus” money that’s not already on a to-do priority list.
Drive west from the Atlantic Station-Georgia Tech area, view the massive unfinished condo projects, and you’ll see first-hand why Forbes.com ranks Metro Atlanta behind only Detroit and Las Vegas in vacant rental units. Look at that condo excess and wonder: What were they thinking? Banks. Developers. Speculators. Metro Atlanta will be years getting out from under the excessive housing inventory. Future bargains for buyers; deep woes for banks. The marketplace, not government, has to solve this problem — or it’ll still be around a decade from now.
Holy cow! General Motors says it’ll need $30 billion in taxpayer loans. The welfare state is here.
Quote of the week: “At the end of the day, they are not human and you can’t always predict their behavior. …” A lesson for people who try to turn animals into little humans. In this case the domesticated 200-pound chimp savagely mauled the owner’s friend.
You really have to hand it to the Republicans who run Georgia. Last year, and the year before, they were PR disasters. Now they end any promise of homeowner property tax relief, and the news is that the grants survive for this year. You have to give them credit, too, for declaring up-front that they intend to eliminate the corporate income tax some day, as they should. Have a vision. Be bold. Do it.
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Let Washington keep money
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
My candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012 may come from one of these six states: South Carolina, Alaska, Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana and Idaho.
Those are the states with governors who are debating whether to take the federal dollars that are being run off the printing press and/or stolen from future generations. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, a promising candidate for one of the top two offices in 2012, says his state may not opt to take all $4 billion of the social spending directed to Louisiana in the $787 billion bill signed last week. “We’ll have to review each program, each new dollar to make sure that we understand what are the conditions, what are the strings and see whether it’s beneficial for Louisiana,” said Jindal, who will deliver the Republican response to next week’s address to Congress by President Obama.
One concern a number of governors have, and state legislators should too, is that the federal money encourages states to expand programs with no promise that federal funding will continue after two years.
My belief is that the state should take money for any existing program that requires no expansion at state taxpayers’ expense, either now or in the future. If the federal money’s not guaranteed after two years, take it but don’t use the “economic stimulus” money to enlarge the program. Rebate it, dollar-for-dollar to Georgia taxpayers. One option for that is the $200 to $300 in state grants per homeowner for property tax relief, which are not likely to be continued after this year.
One other rule should be that the state takes no money for any project — rail, roads and bridges, among them — that it didn’t intend to construct anyway. Nobody should build anything just because a portion of the money’s there.
The pressure will be intense on legislators to take and spend. Now is when we see what this Republican majority in Georgia is made of.
