Summer is traditionally a slow season for news, but 2011 promises to be a scorcher, with big-time drama forecast from Atlanta to the International Space Station. Here's a look at what's in store:
Federal debt
As the Aug. 2 deadline approaches for raising the national debt ceiling, expect the mother of all games of chicken, with Republicans threatening to send the United States into default if the president and congressional Democrats don’t agree to trillion-dollar spending cuts. If the tension gets to be too much, recall that both sides have recently shown flexibility on separate but related issues -- the “no new taxes” crowd by abandoning ethanol subsidies, and the “preserve our benefits” gang by opening the door, if only a crack, to trimming Social Security benefits.
Redistricting
On Aug. 15, Georgia lawmakers will gather under the Gold Dome in special session to tackle the issue nearest and dearest to their hearts: redrawing their own districts. Georgia’s robust growth and the continuing population shifts from South to North Georgia mean that the state will gain one congressional seat somewhere in Atlanta’s northern suburbs. In the Legislature, a handful of South Georgia legislators will find themselves sharing districts with other incumbents. Democrats and recent Republican converts, beware.
GOP presidential race
Aug. 13 will see the very first kind-of, sort-of actual vote in the GOP contest: the Iowa straw poll -- giving the remaining fence-sitters (hello, Sarah Palin, Rick Perry) an impetus to get in or get out. If Mitt Romney continues to lead in polls and fundraising, expect him to begin to draw fire from his rivals. And take all prognostications with a truckload of salt. Remember, at this point in the 2008 race, a typical headline read: “Giuliani retains GOP lead as Thompson gains.”
Atlanta Public Schools
It’s crunch time for APS board members, who must hire a new superintendent to replace Beverly Hall while demonstrating enough plays-well-with-others to stave off de-accreditation by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. Also coming: the long-feared GBI report on a possible criminal cover-up of cheating on the CRCT -- a report whose findings, Hall admitted on her way out the door, will be “alarming.”
Immigration law
On July 1, unless a court intervenes, Georgia will become the first state to enforce, in full, a tough new immigration law. (Courts have blocked full implementation of similar statutes in Arizona and Utah. Enforcement of Alabama's law is scheduled to begin Sept. 1.) Even before the law took effect, the state was experiencing a shortage of immigrant farmworkers, which some attributed to fear created by the law.
Health care overhaul
The 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Atlanta, is expected to rule by late summer on the constitutionality of the president’s health care overhaul. In response to a challenge from Georgia and 25 other states, a Florida judge found that, in requiring nearly all Americans to buy health insurance, Congress overstepped the power the Constitution gives it to regulate interstate commerce.
Space shuttle program
The shuttle Atlantis is scheduled to lift off July 8, bringing to a close a 30-year chapter in American space exploration marked by both triumph and tragedy. The 12-day mission to the International Space Station will be the 135th and last shuttle flight. Only three of the five shuttles survive; Challenger, in 1986, and Columbia, in 2003, were lost in flight, along with 14 crew members.
Consumer prices
Gas is expected to average about $3.75 nationwide, according to the Department of Energy, up nearly a dollar from last summer but down from earlier forecasts. Airfares will be about 15 percent higher than last summer, according to Bing Travel. And food is expected to cost 3 percent to 4 percent more than last year, primarily because the wet spring will cut into the corn harvest.
Weather
Despite the spring heat wave, summer temperatures will be cooler than last summer, said Kirk Mellish, a meteorologist for AM 750 and 95.5 FM News/Talk WSB. Rainfall in North Georgia will be normal to slightly above normal, said Mellish, who based his predictions on similarities between this year's global weather patterns and those of previous years, particularly 2008.
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