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Thursday, February 26, 2009
DeKalb drama, the best for free
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s weekend free-for-all. Pick a topic:
DeKalb. More drama. Where do they find these fellows, like fired DeKalb police Chief Terrell Bolton, who seems to think himself entitled to a public job? Oh. In Dallas, where he’d been fired. There’s no good reason to have department heads protected by a merit system. Police chiefs shouldn’t punch a clock, keep tabs of comp time or serve a day longer than the elected boss wants.
• “If I’m standing before the bar [of justice] with my life in the balance I want the most extensive defense I can get,” explains Georgia Senate Minority Leader Robert Brown (D-Macon). This is where liberalism has wandered: An expectation of entitlement to “the most extensive defense I can get” at the public’s expense. No need ever to work a day. From cradle to grave, the best of everything, at no cost.
I’ve always marveled at the world-class people small towns produce. Case in point is Michael Guido, seen on 100 television stations and whose voice and simple stories of faith were heard on 435 radio stations and read in 1,500 newspapers. He died this week in Metter at the age of 94. The evangelist, originally from Ohio, married a Metter woman and decided on the broadcast ministry in 1957 while Audrey, his wife of 66 years, recovered from an auto accident at an Atlanta hospital and he couldn’t find good religious programming on the radio dial.
Let D.C. have voting representation in Congress. Give it back to Maryland. Otherwise, no.
Georgia Legislature take note: The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld an Idaho law prohibiting local governments from using payroll deductions to collect dues that are to be used for political activities. Anticipate troubles and act before they come.
Barack Obama is the pleasant face and soothing voice the hard left has long needed. Believe it when he declares an intent to implement government-managed universal health care. And local schools? Consider them federalized. Get in a little, as the feds did decades ago with impact grants to local systems with a heavy burden caused by military and federal civilian employment, and sooner or later the central government will dominate. Under Obama, that’ll be sooner.
The trillion-dollar “stimulus” and the $410 billion spending bill that follows profess to lift up the poor. But not from failing schools. Language in the omnibus spending bill would end the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program which allows school choice to 1,700 poor children in D.C. The education workplace unions, like the Georgia Association of Educators, which is vehemently opposing Senate Bill 90 here, are terrified by the prospect of giving parents choice. SB90 would allow parents to take about $5,000 of the money allocated to their child’s education and use it to buy services in the private sector, or from other public schools or districts willing to take them. Lose in D.C., win in Georgia.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke suggests that the recession might end this year. Why might it? Just ‘cause it might. My confidence is now buoyed.
There’s no reason at all for members of the Public Service Commission to represent districts. The Legislature should deep-six that requirement, as Commissioners Doug Everett and Lauren McDonald propose. Partisan politics was the motive behind the requirement.
If ethics watchdog-gadfly-nuisance George Anderson can file complaints that aggravated politicians think are harassment, he should be equally free to level them against judges. Fulton Superior Court Judge T. Jackson Bedford is threatening to file an “abusive litigation” lawsuit. Anderson thinks Bedford has a conflict in ordering people with cellphones that ring in court to make a contribution to certain charitable organizations, one of which is run by Bedford’s family.
Urban scene: Panhandler, about 35 with no visible physical limitations, approaches passersby outside restaurant. One, obviously a young Georgia State student, hands the panhandler his take-out. When he’s out of sight, panhandler glances inside and drops the meal in the trash. Minutes later, I leave the restaurant. Panhandler approaches. “Could you buy me some soup, please.” Now all’s clear. The student offered no cash — or soup.
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Why work?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Obviously convinced to strike quickly while the opposition’s still dazed, and while the country’s distracted by the bummer economy, President Barack Obama unveils his first budget today.
HillaryCare never went away. Democrats chipped away, narrowing the number of people outside the system of taxpayer-provided health care, and now Obama proposes to close the loop with a budget requesting $634 billion over 10 years as payment towards single-payer universal health care. The yearly cost of health care in this country is $2.4 trillion and rising.
We are racing toward the day where citizenship becomes an entitlement to an income, medical care, lawyers if needed, retirement care — and no real need to work. The differences, in fact, between working and not working, saving and not saving, being responsible and irresponsible, and practicing thrift or funding immediate gratification of every want and whim, are quickly being eroded.
Part of Obama’s budget request, too, is a tax increase on those who earn in excess of $250,000, with proposed income tax rates of 39.6 percent, up from 35 percent. That is just the beginning, of course. Obama, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi cannot possibly finance their programs, much less reduce the deficit by the end of Obama’s first term, on the taxes now being collected.
The day will come when entrepreneurship in America is directed toward moving and hiding income and assets, where enterprise is capped at $249,000 yearly, and where industrial production is shipped overseas, forcing Obama-Reid-Pelosi Democrats to find yet more creative ways to control economic activity. Once industry flees Obama taxes and regulations, that’ll mean liberals have to resort to trade barriers and import restrictions to punish them — or else to force them to pay American wage rates on production abroad and to abide by U.S. environmental and labor law.
Oh, my. America is on the wrong road home.
