Atlanta needs a get-out-of-debt guru

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

> Clark Howard’s not running for mayor of Atlanta. Smart guy, Howard. The time to pinch pennies was when they were accumulating a mountain of debt. They’re now into juggling. The radio personality they need is get-out-of-debt guru Dave Ramsey.

> Proof that a well-thought-out message can persuade those who try to kill us to rethink their efforts: Libya wants to open a new chapter in its relationship with the United States. Moammar Gadhafi has renounced terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, has compensated the families of the victims of the 1988 bombing on Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, and vows to move from a dictatorship to a constitutional democracy while investing some of Libya’s $100 billion wealth in U.S. companies. The message was a bomb dropped near his tent in the Libyan desert in April 1986 at the direction of President Ronald Reagan. That was the beginning of clarity for Gadhafi.

> Disagree if you will on policy, but there can be no disputing that President Bush will be remembered, as he wishes to be, “as a person who, first and foremost, did not sell his soul in order to accommodate the political process… . I came to Washington with a set of values, and I’m leaving with the same set of values.” A decade from now, maybe sooner, the man’s worth as a leader will be measured alongside Harry Truman as a wartime president. A modern politician who can ignore polls to do what’s right for the country is a jewel.

> Cities like Kennesaw that issue bonds for developers that are financed with payment-in-lieu-of-taxes bonds should be required by law to reimburse other governments for taxes lost —- in this case the Cobb County School System and county government. Rep. Earl Ehrhart (R-Powder Springs), chairman of the House Rules Committee and a reliable taxpayer champion, is drafting legislation to prohibit any government from unilaterally stripping another of tax revenues.

> Two state senators who left the legislative arena to seek judgeships, both of whom were probably more temperamentally suited to the judicial branch, lost. Michael S. Meyer von Bremen, an Albany Democrat, lost on Nov. 4 in a crowded field for a seat on the Georgia Court of Appeals. This week, Joseph I. Carter, a Tifton Republican, lost a runoff for a Superior Court seat. Good guys, both. Thoughtful and calm.

> Get out the sniffing salts, Betsy. A Cobb County law firm, Gardner Groff Greenwald & Villanueva, announces that it’ll cut its flat-fee rates up to 12 percent below 2008 and won’t increase hourly rates.

> Now, son, the promise was that college tuition would be fixed for the four years that you’re there. Nobody promised that “fees” wouldn’t be raised in lieu of tuition hikes, as they were —- $100 per semester at research universities, $75 at most other four-year schools and $50 at the two-years. Lesson? Don’t make promises that can’t be kept. And get rid of the fees when the current financial crunch passes.

> The outcome of Tuesday’s U.S. Senate runoff does not bode well for Georgia Democrats in 2010. Barack Obama was a phenomenon. Nobody currently on the scene is capable of matching his appeal to Democrats and independents in Georgia. DeKalb CEO Vernon Jones is right, I believe, when he asserts: “The Democratic Party has to stop putting up these liberal candidates who tend to win in the primary but not in the general.” But I’ve read enough post-election advice from liberals to Republicans that they become Democrat-lite that I’ll avoid the condescension of suggesting that state Democrats become Republican-lite. They should fix it as Mr. CEO and others think necessary to win statewide.

> Honoring the president-elect in the only way government knows how —- by giving public employees another paid holiday —- officials of Perry County, Ala., declare the second Tuesday in November to be a Barack Obama Day holiday from work. Perry County, in central Alabama, is one of the poorest in the state.

> Jim Wooten is associate editorial page editor.

jwooten@ajc.com

Blog with Jim Wooten at ajc.com/opinion.