Insights across an eventful year

“E. Pluribus Unum” is inscribed both on the quarters inside our pockets and the Great Seal of the United States. Its meaning is profound and simple: “Out of Many, One.”

It’s a slogan worth remembering locally as the Atlanta metro ponders the future. It’s easier to do that these days, as the Great Recession slinks further into history.

With construction cranes again adding to the Atlanta skyline and HR departments scrambling to make hires at employers seeing increased business, the Atlanta region and its subcomponents have the luxury of thinking in greater detail about how we position ourselves for tomorrow’s opportunities and growth.

People increasingly want fixes. Righting matters we’ve neglected for decades will require all of us to collaborate if we expect Atlanta to rightfully claim the future’s bounty.

Continuing on with partisan squabbling along geographic lines may make for political entertainment, but it will do nothing to position us for big dollars-and-cents wins in the economy and world of today and tomorrow.

Oct. 4

Keep scrubbing, probing DeKalb

"This document is only an overview of some of our findings … . It is not the 'final report' as envisioned when we were retained … ." From the opening of the DeKalb County corruption report.

Those lines slash rapidly to the chase. Yet, despite last week’s release of a hotly worded report, a “final, ” comprehensive analysis of just what all is amiss in DeKalb remains as overdue as it was last March when special investigators were hired to provide answers.

Citizens still don’t know the full extent of possible wrongdoing in this important county. What was offered instead was an incomplete report that promised more than it delivered.

Worse yet, the document touched off public bickering between the county’s interim CEO and the former Georgia attorney general he hired to get to the core of what was going on in scandal-plagued DeKalb.

This story can’t end with melodrama. DeKalb, metro Atlanta and Georgia warrant much better than the heavy-on-noise, short-on-insight allegations flung by investigator Mike Bowers and interim county CEO Lee May.

Sept. 27

Urging us toward a high calling

It takes an awe-inspiring lot to disrupt the go-for-the-jugular gladiator fest that is political season in America. Yet that is precisely what Pope Francis’ whirlwind visit accomplished last week.

Which is near-miraculous really, considering our national tenor these days. We have become a people for whom spiteful hissy fits at best, and low, ugly blows at worst, too-routinely mark our interactions across the razor-wire barriers dividing us by personal politics, class, race and a host of other things.

Last week’s tarrying on our soil of the leader of the Roman Catholic Church reminds us that we can be better than that. That so many took note of the pontiff’s presence is reason for hope that humankind’s higher nature can somehow trump the base instincts that are in full flower these days.

Sept. 13

Put this matter to rest

As another unnecessary battle over religious liberty law lurches to life in Georgia, so does a question of timing. As in precisely what century’s standards and mores does Georgia desire going forward? Shall we abide by the norms of the 19th, 20th or 21st centuries? There should be only one common-sense answer.

The question may seem ludicrous, but it defines what’s at stake as another campaign spools up that is certain to draw negative, damaging attention to our home. Which is tragic, really, considering both Georgia’s fairly recent history and its concerted, contemporary efforts to create a competitive state to live and work for all Georgians. Not to mention that lawmakers had stopped such legislation this year. There’s no sound reason to restart the fight.

The nation’s current grappling over religious liberty pits heartfelt beliefs against the ever-evolving standards of a diverse, secular society. Many believe as sincerely as is possible that issues such as being forced by law to provide marriage licenses for gay couples go well beyond a governmental matter. For many, faith introduces beliefs of righteousness and sin, salvation or eternal damnation. We cannot think of a more-deeply drawn line between opposing attitudes. This, even as Jesus asked in the book of Matthew, “And why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye?”

Aug. 23

Lessons of a century

A full century has now passed since Leo Frank was abducted from the flimsy confines of a Milledgeville prison farm, driven across the state under the hood of darkness and lynched the following morning in a wooded corner of Cobb County on land owned by a former county sheriff.

Much as there is no statute of limitations on prosecuting homicide, Frank’s murder continues to shock today —- even as the toll of decades has ensured that his killers now lie in their own graves.

The flow of 100 years has likewise failed to obliterate a jagged, at times bloody, line of history stretching from then to now. It remains worthy of consideration. Good and evil. Apathy versus action. Respect for law against mob rule. Prejudice or virtue. Each pair measured along a sliding scale of distance that widens or narrows across time.

The 18th century British legal scholar Sir William Blackstone famously expressed the natural human yearning for justice by noting that “the law holds it better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent party suffer.”

That principle, and the legal system built around it, failed miserably in the Leo Frank case.

Even those who reflexively argue “states’ rights” as the solution to most any policy issue should recoil still at the actions of the long-ago mob that made a mockery of due process, humanity and the judicial system.

June 28

Law of the land is just that

The law of the land governs us all. That’s worth keeping top of mind as Georgia and the rest of the nation absorb, and subsequently act on, Friday’s sweeping U.S. Supreme Court ruling that plows away legal obstacles to same-sex marriage.

The long-anticipated ruling in the bellwether case of Obergefell v. Hodges is certain to sit poorly and offend greatly among vast swaths of this state’s conservative, deeply religious population. Indeed, it’s inevitable that the opposition will prove bipartisan in nature, given that social conservatism runs deep among both the red and blue rivers that run through Georgia.

That is to be expected, and sentiments against gay marriage should be respected. Such dissent is a vital part of our democratic system of debating ideas and ideals, and even right and wrong.

Opposition to same-sex marriage often stems from deep-seated interpretations of religious faith. The Constitution safeguards such beliefs in its First Amendment. The nation’s high court has likewise found that other language in the Constitution grants gays and lesbians an equal right to unhindered marriage in all 50 states.

What is most important now and in coming days is that we remain cognizant, regardless of our beliefs, that this is a nation of laws and well-ordered processes.

May 10

Driving beyond Plan ‘B’

Georgia’s hard-won plan to bolster spending on transportation was signed into law last week with the expected fanfare.

The state’s deteriorating bridges and mounting gridlock in metro Atlanta have for too long reflected draconian underinvestment. The prospect of an additional $900 million-plus directed toward playing catch-up is welcomed —- and overdue.

And to give credit where due, the Georgia General Assembly at long last succeeded this year in staring down an activist opposition to pass new fees and an increase in the state’s motor fuel taxes. Another bill allows counties to put transportation sales taxes up for a vote. A third bill removed outdated shackles on how MARTA divvies up its spending.

Getting that package passed took political courage. We would be disingenuous to minimize that reality.

Even so, as the back-slapping accolades end, and government bureaucrats began transforming legal tenets into a new fiscal reality here, we’d be remiss in not pointing out that the triumvirate of transportation laws cannot be the end. To cite Winston Churchill, “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

April 19

Mirroring our struggle

A spectacularly wild, up-and-down banging of the scales of justice raised enough of a racket last week for the entire world to hear. Such was the magnitude of a two-day sentencing hearing for 10 former Atlanta Public Schools educators convicted of felony charges around a test cheating scandal.

The courtroom arguments quickly devolved into an electrifying emotional debate of wrong and right, and policies around public education. At stake was the future of now-disgraced educators. Also top of mind were cheated children whose prospects for tomorrow were assaulted by this wrongdoing.

It should’ve been no surprise then that emotions surged throughout the proceedings. The APS scandal battered metro Atlanta, shaking our faith in the public schools that should be a cornerstone of our civic commitment to prepare future generations for the world they’ll inherit. That system failed spectacularly in this instance. Staring into that systemic breakdown should —- and did —- shake us all to our core.

Thus, Superior Court Judge Jerry Baxter bore the awesome weight of Atlanta’s dismay as he struggled to make sense of it all. Jail educators —- or not? Side with teachers —- or harmed students? Baxter’s back-and-forth gyrations from the bench were an accurate reflection of the tremendous angst this case piled upon metro Atlanta.

Baxter struggled through, but it was not pretty to watch. Atlanta and the nation must do something similar if we’re to truly find better ways to school poor kids.