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March 2009
New, Improved Thinking Right!
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Coming later today…
It’s the new-format Thinking Right.
Meanwhile, take the floor.
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State’s chips in hands of appointees
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The bid for video gambling in Underground Atlanta, an abominable proposal that should be summarily rejected by the Georgia Lottery Board, is a case study in why elected officials should choose their appointees carefully.
They’re the people who either advance, impede or invite distractions from a governor’s agenda.
Georgia is in the midst of a budget crunch. Gov. Sonny Perdue this week cut the estimate of revenues expected during the fiscal year that starts July 1 by $1.6 billion, from $20.2 billion to $18.6 billion. When more than $961 million in printing-press money coming from Washington and cutbacks, shifts and adjustments are factored in, the additional whack to be taken from agency budgets is $69 million.
It is worth noting, as an aside, that while Georgia wrestles with reduced agency budgets, the spendthrift Congress approves a $410 billion spending bill that increases funding for federal agencies by 8 percent. The major story of this legislative session, then, is the recession and the real prospects that Congress and the Obama administration could manage it into a depression.
The solution to every government’s financial difficulties is to set priorities, cut spending and adjust, as Perdue and others are doing.
The solution is not video poker. It is not casinos in Underground Atlanta. It is not exploiting the weaknesses and addictions of desperate Georgians for the benefit of a few lazy and greedy politicians.
It was no surprise this week that the Atlanta City Council voted 11-0 to embrace a proposal to bring 5,000 video gambling machines to Underground. The city’s cut would be $3 million a year in hotel-motel taxes from a 29-story hotel that is proposed, as well as a slice of the take from gambling. It is hard to imagine a vice that the City Council would not sanction on the promise that it would sustain its spending addiction.
The state, however, and the Georgia Lottery Corp.’s board in particular, have no incentive to feed Atlanta’s addiction — or to open Georgia to casino gambling.
Make no mistake. Allowing the Underground project opens all of Georgia to this blight.
Eight years ago, then-Gov. Roy Barnes led a crusade to prevent video gambling from seeping into Georgia after it had been banned in South Carolina. That state’s frustration in trying to regulate and contain video gambling over two decades finally led legislators to ban the machines outright. They can’t be regulated. South Carolina tried.
In 1993, it imposed an eight-machine limit on any place of business. The response? Operators set up shell corporations, with dozens “owning” eight machines in a single location. In 1991, the state had 11,512 machines. At the end of 1993, after the regulation attempt, it had 24,084 in 6,000 locations.
Barnes and the General Assembly cracked down and outlawed them, effective Jan. 1, 2002. The lottery board does, however, have authority to grant Underground operators that permission.
Underground-only gambling won’t contain it, either. About the time of Barnes’ crusade, a small, federally recognized Oklahoma Indian tribe with roots in Georgia and Alabama, the Kialegee, made overtures about bringing casino gambling to Hancock County. Permission to create the “reservation” comes from the U.S. secretary of the interior.
A prime consideration is what the state has done to create a conducive environment. The fact that Georgia operates a lottery is one strike against it. But — and this may have been the state’s saving grace — it does not allow casino gambling, nor does it allow devices that mimic it. Commercial gambling is illegal.
Perdue has made it clear he doesn’t want casino gambling on his watch. The lottery board meets again April 30. If it met today, the Underground proposals would be easily defeated.
The board, however, may be hoping, naively, that the matter will just go away. It won’t. It’s like Sunday alcohol sales. It’s a distraction.
Here’s the lesson, then, for future governors and for others who appoint members to boards and commissions: They’re making public policy while you’re putting out fires elsewhere. You should know, therefore, that every decision appointees make will be consistent with the values you hold and the legacy you wish to leave.
Call the vote on casino gambling in Underground.
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Weekend free-for-all
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Pick a topic:
• “Stand by for news!”
• The one argument I don’t believe I’d make for another State Court judge for Clayton County is one made by Chief State Court Judge Harold Benefield. Argues he: The judge and support staff would cost $697,908, but he’d generate $764,994 in fines, producing $67,086 in revenue for Clayton. It should be a misdemeanor for any public official ever to connect any justice or law enforcement decision to revenue generation. In fact, when my band of right-wingers takes over, we’ll issue that as an executive order. No legislation needed.
• Scratch my head and try, but I simply cannot remember the veteran Democrat Keith W. Mason being distraught that ideology had reared its ugly head under the Gold Dome when Democrats were running things. Which tells me he either didn’t recognize it or did, but didn’t think it was a problem. He’s calling on a “new generation of business leaders — regardless of party affiliation” to whip this new crowd into shape. If the business crowd has any energy, clout or money, it had better use it to stop the assault coming from D.C., including the so-called Employee Free Choice Act.
• Cobb, blessed Cobb. When all the world panicked Monday and shut down the schools because of a dusting of snow, Cobb school officials stepped outside, observed, used good judgment — and kept them open.
• Associated Press writer Philip Elliott is of the opinion that President Barack Obama’s decision to sign a $410 billion spending bill loaded with 8,600 earmarks totaling $7.7 billion is the “Washington equivalent of officials pinching their nose and swallowing a bitter pill.” Pardon me, but isn’t the president’s party in power? And isn’t he something more than a bystander or victim of a Congress that just does bad things?
• Liberals levy taxes; they don’t pay them. Another of Obama’s appointees, caught, agrees to pay $10,000. This time it’s former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk, nominated to be U.S. trade representative, at the back-tax window. And, had it been done by a rich Wall Streeter, he’d have been skewered, too, for deducting $17,382 for tickets to Dallas Mavericks basketball games without full business substantiation.
• We have Black History Month, followed by Women’s History Month and who knows what in April. Aren’t these you-don’t-know-me months getting a little long in the tooth?
• Who said this? “This government is here to protect the people, not the … rich.” 1) Nancy Pelosi. 2) Barack Obama. 3) Hugo Chavez. All could’a, but Chavez did.
• Whether Georgia Power is allowed to charge customers while nuclear reactors are under construction — a position I support — is neither liberal nor conservative. It’s a matter of guessing about the future, which explains why members of both parties wound up on different sides. The Senate vote was 38-16; the House vote 107-66. It now goes to Gov. Sonny Perdue for his signature.
• In what’s offered as the legislative quote of the week, House Appropriations Committee Chairman Ben Harbin (R-Evans) is quoted as saying, “One of the things I learned is that in a tough economy, everybody wants to cut government. They just don’t want to cut theirs.” My response: “Too many lobbyists, Ben. The majority, the people who don’t have lobbyists, still want cuts.”
• CH2M Hill-OMI, the private-sector company that runs Johns Creek, Milton and Sandy Springs, has some locals demanding to know its profits. Sandy Springs Mayor Eva Galambos offers precisely the correct answer: “I don’t feel it’s necessary to know what their profits are so long as we get good services and that I can compare and see if we have more or less employees than cities of the same size.” If cities are getting good service at a competitive price, its profits are immaterial. It’s liberals who lie awake nights worrying about whether honest profits are “fair.”
• Any “assisted suicide” that involves arm restraint so that a suffocating victim cannot remove a bag from over his head is assisted murder.
• I love John Rosemond’s parenting advice. “Before the psychological parenting revolution of the late 1960s and early 1970s,” the guilt was placed on the misbehaving child. After the revolution, it’s on the parent, he writes. The man exudes good, healthy-adult sense.
• “Good day!”
• Jim Wooten is associate editorial page editor. His column appears Friday, Sunday and Tuesday.
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Pass never-again octuplets law
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The unmarried California woman and her sperm-donor friend who are the parents of octuplets, along with their fertility-clinic physician, have given us a glimpse of the carelessness with which irresponsible adults can create human lives.
That act of child cruelty has drawn the attention of Georgia State Sen. Ralph Hudgins (R-Hull), who has introduced legislation to limit the number of embryos that fertility clinics can implant. The limit would be three for women over 40 and two for younger women. It should be passed into law.
“I think its totally immoral,” said Hudgins. “I think the doctor ought to be prosecuted and the woman should give them up for adoption.” Whether Nadya Suleman and the children’s sperm-donor daddy put them up for adoption is not something that is of legislative concern. Law should be changed, however, so that sperm donors can be held liable for financial support for children born to unmarried women. Every child deserves a mother and a father. When adults carelessly create life, both should be accountable to the child, an accountability that would include a legal obligation to provide financial support and a right to know the father’s name.
Hudgins is right about the physician. His license should be withdrawn and, furthermore, he should be held financially liable for damages done the children by bringing them into the world in a home where they can not get the care, attention and two-parent support that is a newborn’s right.
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Prove citizenship to vote
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Here we go again. Another of those political disputes accompanied by excess drama about voting eligibility looms.
This drama surrounds a bill passed Tuesday by the Georgia State Senate requiring proof of U.S. citizenship — birth certificates, passports, naturalization document or driver’s license — when first registering to vote. Now new registrants simply swear they’re citizens.
As with the photo ID law, which was resisted by advocacy groups like the League of Women Voters, the hand-wringers are in high dudgeon, insisting that somewhere there’s an elderly would-be voter so intimidated by having to prove eligibility that he’ll just not register.
At issue here is the one that played out with ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) in states with close contests, including Minnesota, which has a still-undecided U.S. Senate race. The activist group sweeps the streets for potential voters, eligible or not, and submits registration forms, many of them bogus. One man in Ohio said last year that he registered with ACORN 72 times in exchange for cash and cigarettes, In Lake County, Indiana, registration officials stopped processing 5,000 last-minute ACORN-submitted forms after the first 2,000 were found to be bogus.
Republicans believe their candidates are disadvantaged by fraudulent voting and have begun to tighten the law. Democrats prefer universal eligibility for adults and same-day registration and voting. That would permit them to rent a fleet of vans on election day and sweep the streets for potential voters.
In the Georgia Senate, the debate followed predictable lines. “This is about the poor, the elderly, the infirmed who have a hard time getting out to vote,” said State Sen. Steve Thompson (D-Marietta). Added Sen. Gail Buckner (D-Morrow), “the elderly see this as an affront to their honesty.”
Surprise. Some aren’t honest, young and old. That’s why photo ID and proof-of-citizenship laws are necessary.
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Ending state corporate tax would be right move
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Faced with a national government that’s on a forced march to socialism, it is encouraging to note that the Georgia General Assembly has begun to stake a different course — one that could actually provide economic stimulus.
An example is a bill introduced last week by state Rep. Harry Geisinger (R-Roswell) that would charge a one-time tax of up to $1,500 on the purchase of an automobile. The kicker is, however, that once the tax is paid, there’s no property tax levied on the vehicle. Ever.
It’s incentive, certainly, to buy a new car. In Cobb County, where the sales tax is 6 percent, the purchaser of a $30,000 vehicle would owe $1,800 just in sales taxes. Thereafter, the car’s owner would pay property taxes with tag renewals.
Incentive to buy a new car? Absolutely.
As introduced by Geisinger, the changeover would be phased in, starting next Jan. 1.
The new system, which applies to both new and used cars, would take effect for individuals when they first register a vehicle. Until that time, owners continue paying ad valorem taxes when they renew tags.
The state gains by initially collecting half the tax on sales of both new and used cars, a percentage that will drop to 45 percent. Local governments will get the other half, rising to 55 percent. In the 2010 year, locals will get at least the sum they collected from motor vehicle taxes this year.
One possibility, and one danger, is that once the “birthday tax” is eliminated, legislators will rush to add new levies onto personal vehicles.
One such possibility is a tax that would go to subsidize hospitals providing trauma care, an idea advanced by House Speaker Glenn Richardson (R-Hiram).
These things are routinely called “fees,” even by Republicans who know better. If a service — trauma care, for example — is financed only by users, it is a fee. If it is financed by others, it is a tax. Language aside, the bill would spur new-car sales and is, therefore, needed stimulus — though the effective date does need to be pushed forward.
The other legislation that sets Georgia on an independent course comes from state Rep. Tom Graves (R-Ranger), an up-and-comer who until it was disbanded last April headed the 216 Policy Group, a band of fiscal conservatives who got together to study pending legislation.
His proposals include some business tax reductions designed to promote job creation.
One is an income tax credit of $2,400 for every unemployed person hired and kept on the payroll for at least 24 months.
The biggie, though, is the declaration that starting in 2012, the 6 percent corporate income tax, which nets up to a billion dollars per year, would be reduced by half a percentage point per year for the next 12 years, when it will be gone completely.
For conservatives, it’s a bold, straight-up and unapologetic statement of a policy objective: the eventual elimination of the corporate income tax. It’s good policy that will make Georgia more competitive and should eliminate the need for most tax giveaways now employed to lure new businesses. Besides, businesses pass taxes along as higher prices.
Declaring intent up-front should, too, keep the critics from taking cheap shots when Republicans grant a business tax break, such as the one now pending to give a tax exemption to Savannah-based Gulfstream on parts used in repairing out-of-state aircraft.
The stereotype is that Republicans sneak around to give tax breaks to their buddies in Big Business. It’s a staple every year, fed by groups on the left that want more money for social programs.
Trying to reduce corporate taxes one piece at a time — the same strategy by which Obama Democrats are creating universal health care — is political suicide for Republicans.
Declare it and do it so that every piece is not deviousness, but intentional movement toward a declared purpose.
Congress heaps mandates, regulations and other pass-along costs onto business. Georgia’s aim is to get part of their burden off.
Good policy, recession or not.
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Power bills, watch out!
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Most Americans, except those at the grade-school level, know by now that when liberals start railing against the rich and insisting that they be taxed into more desirable behavior, that there’s another shoe to drop.
And, indeed, in Barack Obama’s proposed budget, there’s a whopper levy coming for the rich and poor alike in the form of higher utility bills. The President proposes a carbon cap-and-trade tax that’s projected to cost consumers about $80 billion per year starting in 2012.
The budget assumes the carbon tax will produce $645 billion between then and 2019. The government will keep about $120 billion of it to subsidize the development of low-carbon technologies — windmills, electric cars and building design — and then transfer about $525 billion to chosen individuals and businesses, presumably to help them pay for the higher costs. This is another aspect of the left’s politician-empowement, wealth-transfer agenda.
Far be it from me to second-guess the American people, but we have made a serious mistake in giving liberals unchecked power in Washington. The real problem is that there are consequences to every scheme they devise, including cap-and-trade. It’s a hidden tax that drives up the price of energy and encourages investment in projects with little economic and energy value, like windmills. And, because the built-in energy costs drive up the cost of manufacturing and services, government will have to tinker and manipulate more to even out the effects of their manipulation.
If the carbon tax makes it into law, as it most certainly will when the radical wing of one party has unchecked power, the new money will become a slush fund for the pet causes of politicians and lifetime employment for bureaucrats.
