Thinking Right's weekend free-for-all. Pick a topic:
Having NCR's headquarters and a new ATM factory in Georgia are good. For us. But there is considerable irony in asking for federal stimulus money to renovate a factory in Columbus to make ATM terminals now being made in South Carolina for a company that worsens Ohio's job base to improve Georgia's.
Georgia should eliminate the corporate income tax —- and incentives to relocate from one part of America to another. This is one area where I've never agreed with Democrats or the Republican governor. Snaking jobs from my fellow countrymen is not my thing.
Just curious. Does anybody believe the hundreds of millions in federal "stimulus" money coming into Georgia will either stimulate the economy or leave legacy accomplishments? I don't. And, by the way, what exactly did the $250 million that the feds poured into Atlanta, starting in 1994, as "empowerment zone" grants and tax credits accomplish? Federal money just disappears. Nobody thinks it's real.
Apology Window open. The U.S. Supreme Court finds nothing worthy of challenge to the 11th Circuit decision upholding Georgia's photo ID law.
To those partisans who insisted the law was an effort to suppress Democratic voters, line up now. No pushing. No back-biting. The ACLU, Common Cause/Georgia, the League of Women Voters of Georgia, the Legislative Black Caucus and the NAACP are first up.
The most important public policy achievement in metro Atlanta in the past 25 years has been the destruction of public housing ghettos that held women and children in boxes for exploitation by older men and other predators generation after generation.
It's a major life achievement for Atlanta Housing Authority executive director Renee Glover.
There's nothing at all inconsistent in Gov. Sonny Perdue embracing high-speed rail through Georgia when it's financed with federal money, as President Barack Obama proposes, and thinking it's too expensive and won't attract enough passengers as the best solution to Georgia's intrastate transportation needs.
A fired bigwig should be ashamed to play some bogus discrimination card. Former DeKalb Police Chief Terrell Bolton will file a federal claim that he was fired because he'd recently been diagnosed with diabetes. Everybody's a victim.
Kooks, acting individually, representing nobody or no political philosophy or movement, are always with us. That includes the murderers of the guard at the Holocaust Memorial Museum, the soldier at an Army recruiting station in Little Rock and the late-term abortion doctor in Wichita. In times of stress, kooks finish cracking.
Those on the left are in a deep funk. An opportunity to police lifestyles and one news peg for promoting an environmental agenda has passed. "The drought is over," declared Georgia Environmental Protection Division director Carol Couch.
Interest groups sit around silent phones for years waiting for the news peg to get their agendas on the front page or at the top of the newscasts.
As White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel advises, in pursuing agendas, never let a serious crisis go to waste.
Another prime example of Emanuel's advice, following on the $787 billion "stimulus" porker, is the administration's determination to give a new government-run health care plan the bum's rush through Congress.
Two respected physicians and conservatives —- U.S. Reps. Tom Price (R-Roswell) and Phil Gingrey (R-Marietta) —- and the American Medical Association demand second opinions. "A government 'option' would cause as many as 119 million Americans —- three out of every four individuals with employer-sponsored health insurance —- to lose their current benefits," opines Gingrey. I believe him to be right. Be wary. Very wary.
Atlanta may be the Pettiness Capital of the World. Example: The locals who carp that Gwinnett County Transit buses are idling too long in downtown Atlanta.
Blog with Jim Wooten at ajc.com/opinion.
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