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Tainting McCain, raising the Barr
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s weekend free-for-all. Pick a topic:
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention releases a study revealing that almost three in 10 households either have only a cellphone or seldom take calls on their land line. This need-to-know insight is brought to you from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Whatever.
The dying gasps of welfare-state financing are revealed by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a post-Reagan Republican, who proposes to borrow $15 billion, pledging future lottery collections. The alternative would be to make unpopular spending cuts. The post-Reagan Republicans can look a lot like the Barack Obama Change-Democrats. That’s where they find common ground.
Get ready. Just as soon as Hillary is driven from the race for the Democratic nomination, partisans and their commentators on the left will make certain that the uttered, printed or e-mailed stupidity or racism of anybody who ever voted Republican is surgically attached to the hip of John McCain. It’ll be nasty. Voter ID times 10. All to drive turnout.
Anybody who steals the wedding and engagement ring of a deceased accident victim in the emergency room, as a Grady Hospital employee is accused of doing, is too immoral to live uncaged. A $20,000 reward has been posted for their return. Surely nobody would take money for doing the right thing in getting the rings back to her family.
The bulk of the $300 billion farm bill —- at least two-thirds —- goes to nutrition programs, including food stamps and emergency food aid. Congress is expanding eligibility, and therefore costs, though the program’s not serving all who are eligible now. It’s being done to attract urban reps in hopes of building a veto-proof majority for this pork-laden giveaway.
Whatever the look of the proposed MLK monument, it’s a far-too-tall 28 feet. That’s the problem with the Richard B. Russell monument on the grounds of the State Capitol. It’s far out of proportion to those added later, including Ellis Arnall and Jimmy Carter.
Bob Barr’s running for president as a Libertarian. First chore is to get the nomination. Then to be something other than a spoiler. No third parties for me, but he’d be my second choice for president among the current field.
“Some people talk about change,” says Rep. John Lewis. “I am change.” Proof yet again that political slogans are devoid of meaning. Lewis has his hands full. Opponent “Able” Mable Thomas, a state rep, is no slouch.
Great week for Gov. Sonny Perdue. He was Thinking Right on the bills he signed and those he vetoed. Guns, yes. Education, yes. Insurance, yes. Pork, no.
Complain all you want about the failure of the General Assembly to create a trauma-network entitlement, but the fact is that unless the Legislature finds a way to avoid that, the funding requirement won’t be $74 million —- the sum to be raised by a $10 tax on cars —- but $250 million or more. No specific tax should be levied for trauma centers. A designated tax becomes the funding base and an entitlement.
Oh, good. Jane Fonda’s finally back in the news again. It’s been forever, a couple of days anyway, since there was a Fonda sighting.
Conservation reduces Fulton County water use by 30 percent. So rates will be increased by 15 percent. Classic monopoly, which is why most liberals would nationalize the oil companies. Take the profits for “social good” and tax up the price to force people out of the hated SUVs.
Please wake the voters in former state Rep. Ron Sailor Jr.’s district in the DeKalb-Rockdale area. They had grown so accustomed to him missing votes that they came to believe they weren’t entitled to representation. In a five-candidate contest to replace him this week, only 523 people voted. A House district population is about 45,500. The top two got a total of 263. I’d tell you when the runoff is, but nobody cares.
The California Supreme Court’s 4-3 decision on marriage is precisely the reason voters in Georgia and elsewhere amended state constitutions. Activist judges willing to substitute their social views for those of legislators exist everywhere. A measure expected to be on the ballot in California in November will declare that “only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.” Some 1.1 million signatures have been gathered to put it on the ballot; 763,790 are required.
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Guns and liberal angst
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The suspense ended Wednesday, the final day for Gov. Sonny Perdue to veto legislation from this year’s General Assembly. He signed the bill that had most stoked liberal angst, agreeing that law-abiding citizens with licenses to carry guns can take them in purses or under jackets on public transportation, in restaurants that serve alcohol and in state parks.
MARTA’s union drivers had said they would demand bulletproof shields, reports the AJC’s James Salzer. The Georgia Restaurant Association, likewise, magnified its distress, arguing that servers shouldn’t be put in the position of asking to see patron’s permit before serving alcohol.
We are talking here about law-abiding citizens, those who have submitted to fingerprinting and to a criminal background check. MARTA drivers, we can reasonably assume, transport riders carrying weapons without permits without thinking they need bulletproof shields. So all of this to-do is a reaction to lawful citizens without criminal records who pose no danger to Atlanta’s banks, liquor and convenience stores or to its public safety.
We over-react to the lawful, as the MARTA union and restaurant association do, not because it’s the population that poses the threat, but because it’s the one that can be controlled. Go figure.
I own guns. Three of them. Rifle, shotgun and pistol. Even with a permit I wouldn’t take a weapon on public transportation or in parks or restaurants. But I’m not the least disturbed by the prospect that others with carrying permits would. Perdue made the right call in signing this bill into law.
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Think Right, Move Right.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Results from two races — Hillary Clinton in West Virginia and Democrat Travis Childers in Mississippi — offer a window into November’s general election.
“The White House is won in the swing states, and I am winning the swing states,” Clinton said after her West Virginia blow-out, 67-26. Sure, the demographics were favorable to her. The state’s 95 percent white, poorer and more rural than most. But it was an impressive win, nevertheless.
Barack Obama’s inability to sell himself to voters across the country who fit the demographics of the West Virginia Democratic voter will sink him in November. Once past race, he is the standard-issue liberal Democrat that the nation rejects repeatedly. Hillary’s point is valid. The states she’s taking are the ones that will determine whether she, Obama or John McCain occupy the White House next January.
Obama, looking past Hillary, appears determined to run against George W. Bush — something the campaign’s obviously polled, but hardly makes any sense to those of us who see a world of difference between Bush and the maverick McCain. “This is our chance,” said Obama in swing-state Missouri Tuesday, “to build a new majority of Democrats and independents and Republicans who know that four more years of George Bush just won’t do.”
And then, said the broken record: “This is our moment to turn the page on the divisions and distractions that pass for politics in Washington.” Take a look at this Congress, where Obama’s party dominates, and identify one program area that represents an effort or even a willingness to “turn the page.” Pages may turn, yes. But back to the earlier how-to chapters on building the welfare state.
Interestingly in West Virginia, half of the voters polled believe Obama shares, to some degree, the views of the Rev. Jermiah Wright. Six of seven of those voted for Hillary.
The other race that offered insights into November was in the 1st Congressional District of Mississippi, where Democrat Childers defeated Republican Greg Davis in a special election to replace Roger Wicker, who was appointed to fill Trent Lott’s Senate seat.
Childers won 51-49 in a district Republicans have held since 1994. He won the way Democrats win statewide in the South: As a pro-life conservative who appeals on gun rights and social issues. Republican may be a tarnished brand this election cycle but in the South at least, Conservative is not.
The message for the general election: Think Right, Move Right.
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Congress deserves to reap veto of farm bill
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Everything most Americans —- and all fiscal conservatives —- hate about Congress is contained in a five-year, $300 billion farm bill headed to a certain presidential veto.
It’s dishonest. Congress claims that it’s only $10 billion more than the administration wants. In reality, though, said Deputy Secretary of Agriculture Chuck Conner in a conversation Monday, it’s about twice that.
“It’s about $20 billion over budget because they have managed to hide the true cost of the bill quite a bit.” They are doing it, he explained, by moving payouts beyond the time frame used to calculate costs while moving up revenues from things like crop insurance.
Congress did the same thing last year in projecting the cost for the State Children’s Health Insurance program. Spending on that bill, which the president vetoed, was projected to go from $5.6 billion per year to $13.9 billion in 2012, and then —- as Congress employed the game it now plays on the farm bill —- would “drop” 69 percent in 2013 to $7.8 billion and further to $4.8 billion in 2014. Dishonest.
To hide the true cost of the farm bill, “they take a program that they know has to be funded, like disaster money and a couple of others that they know they will have to come back to extend,” said Conner.
In addition to dishonesties, it contains outrages, one after another. An example is the sugar program, which costs taxpayers in excess of $2 billion annually. “The sugar program is essentially a producer cartel run out of Washington,” said Chris Edwards, director of tax policy at the Cato Institute.
“Many people thought you could not get more heavily involved than the government already is under the current program,” said Conner. That program exists solely to benefit sugar beet producers, mostly in Minnesota, Michigan, California, Idaho and North Dakota, and sugar cane producers, mostly in Florida and Louisiana.
It’s designed to keep sugar prices high by requiring that 85 percent of the sugar sold in America be produced here. Taxpayers buy sugar at roughly twice the world price and, heretofore, stored it for sale back when supplies were tight. “This bill says, ‘no, you can’t store sugar, you have to sell it immediately for ethanol,’ ” said Conner.
The value of sugar for ethanol production is about 2 cents per pound. The world price of sugar is about 12.5 cents per pound. “We are buying it at 23 cents a pound and are required to sell it for 2 cents a pound,” explained Conner. “What kind of deal is that for U.S. taxpayers?”
Lousy, of course. Outrageous, certainly. Insane public policy. “I am not talking about a few million bucks here,” said Conner. “This is hundreds of millions of dollars.”
Outrages are evident, too, in a much-publicized provision that would give the owners of thoroughbred racehorses a $93 million depreciation write-off. It is a first, said Conner, the first time that a farm bill has been used to write a tax bill. “These are provisions that would never have passed on their own.”
Outrageous, too, is the provision that suddenly appeared requiring taxpayers to spend $200 million to buy land in Montana that has no farm-related value.
Most outrageous of all is the refusal of a Congress that denied $600 stimulus checks to some in the middle class but now refuses to expunge even the wealthiest of farmers from the dole. The administration proposed to start weaning farmers whose nonfarm income exceeded $200,000. Congress raised that to $500,000 or $1 million for married couples. For those whose income is solely from farming, it’s $750,000 and $1.5 million. “We only targeted the top 2 percent” of farmers, said Conner. As rewritten, “this is going to deny benefits to virtually no one in America,” he said.
“Scarce tax dollars are hard to come by. The notion that people whose annual income is in the million-dollar range, the idea that we have got to use tax dollars to help them, is beyond explanation. We should say to them that ‘there is an American Dream out there and you are living it, but don’t expect any more tax dollars from people who are struggling to find dollars to put gas in the tank.’ “
Within days, Congress will pass this bill. It’s atrocious legislation deserving of the quick veto it’s certain to get.
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Obama, McCain in the mushy middle?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Is this presidential election evidence that the nation is determined to move to the middle?
Wall Street Journal reporters Gerald F. Seib and John Harwood speculate that the campaign of ‘08 may yield a new political center, something akin to the alignment that existed two generations past when conservative Southern Democrats and liberal Northeastern Republicans formed a center that constituted “a kind of human bridge between the partisan extremes.”
The premise is that John McCain and Barack Obama are running as candidates who can bridge the partisan divide — something we know to be true of McCain, as evidenced by his participation in the Gang of 14, campaign finance reform and other efforts to chart his own course.
But while Obama talks the talk, there’s no real evidence I’ve seen that the speeches translate into anything more than campaign bromides. He’ll set a firm departure schedule on Iraq, raise taxes on capital gains, create universal health care and, most assuredly, appoint judges in the mold of John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Despite the talk, the policies that emanate from them are pretty much from the “partisan extreme” that’s supposedly to vanish if he’s elected.
The mushy-middle is certainly useful in public office — if, in fact, there’s a strong leader in the White House or in the governor’s office who has a strategic vision. Otherwise, if Obama proposes a fixed pull-out from Iraq in 10 months and the mushy-middle causes him to make it 12 or 15, what’s gained by compromise? Bad policy executed more slowly.
Likewise, If he proposes to raise the capital gains tax from 15 percent to 28 and the mushy-middle settles at 23, we’re still enroute to big government and high taxes, just on a slower train. And if the compromise on judges gets us David Souter, an unknown from the left, rather than Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whose leanings were known, the train’s track reaches the same destination.
Rebuilding the middle is a lot like campaign finance reform. It’s usually more appealing in the abstract than in practice. It’s wishy-washiness as a virtue.
If Obama and McCain have distinctly different visions for America and distinctly different ideas about what’s best for the country — and they do — the solution is not to split the difference. One solution often precludes the other.
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