On politicians’ pay, parents’ responsibility

Thinking Right’s weekend free-for-all. Pick a topic:

> Atlanta’s next mayor should be paid $225,000, up from $147,500, advises one of those commissions that politicians appoint to provide pay-raise cover. Ostensibly the higher pay is to attract better candidates. That assumes, of course, that losers know their worth and won’t qualify for jobs that pay them more. That’s never been documented in politics.

> Children are more likely than their parents were to drop out of school. Schools are blamed. Stop trying to solve problems caused by absent and uninvolved parents by trying to pump more money into the same failed models. It’s no longer the teacher’s fault, nor the principal’s. When adults don’t marry and parent their children, a government institution that has them eight hours a day for half the year can’t. Either change the model or conduct a smoking-type campaign to salvage marriage and two-parent families.

> Save this headline: “Israeli, Egyptian leaders to talk about peace plan.” And this one too: “Governors, mayors ask Congress for cash.” Both are as durable as my John Deere 4230 tractor.

> Money matters. The candidate with the most money won in virtually every race from Congress through the presidency, according to a group called the Center for Responsive Politics. Money won in 93 percent of House races and 94 percent of Senate. Public financing is toast. The best solution now is disclosure of money and of practices that evade full, timely and honest disclosure.

> During lunch at a meat-and-three, the television blares. It’s Divorce Court. Almost every commercial is a law firm hustling clients. So does this mean that only the mindless are harmed by medicines or that they’re the ones easily convinced that their ailments or their subprime mortgages are somebody else’s fault?

> One of the options for homeowners who bought more house than they could afford, or lied about their income, and were forced to pay the risk-appropriate interest rate is that they now have the chance to get a rate reduction. Yet, the fiscally prudent who sacrificed pleasures to save for a down payment, who bought the house they could afford, who paid their mortgages on time, get nothing. Government should reward people for desirable behaviors that build strong communities. That is, they should get interest rate reductions. Instead, we reward people for scamming the system, thus buying irresponsible behaviors that harm families and communities. A real problem in this country is that social policies reward people for failing to save, or buy insurance, manage their finances or delay gratification. Thus is work —- as in, “do a good day’s work for a fair wage” —- diminished, as are the consequences of freeloading. Nobody works whose lifestyle requirements are met by not working.

> I agree with my colleague, Mike King, that Cobb County is the place to look for well-managed elections and vote-counting —- as he notes, thanks to Sharon Dunn and her staff at the Board of Elections & Registration. As a longtime watcher of partial returns from vote-counting across Georgia, Cobb almost always gets it done quickly while Fulton County almost never seems to be up to the challenge.

> Headline: “Stomach bug found to be too common.” My sentiments exactly on the winter sniffles, unaccompanied children serving themselves at food bars, reporting on the sexual preferences of entertainers and other celebrities, the can’t-let-it-go assertions by the left of George W. Bush’s alleged incompetence, and liberal commentators telling me what conservatives believe and how to fix the Republican Party.

> It’s entirely news to me that Dr. Julie Gerberding is a Bush administration toady —- or some such nonsense. The problem is that those who hate Bush would burn at the stake all of his appointees involved with issues —- global warming, for example —- where they disagreed. The real politics in the CDC occurred before she got there —- and that’s when they got into the root causes of social problems, the stuff of liberal arts faculties, not scientists. It’ll be pure vindictive politics if she’s replaced.

—- Jim Wooten is associate editorial page editor.