ARCHBISHOP'S RESIDENCE
Buckhead property could serve church, leaders for next century
I received first communion and confirmation at Christ the King Cathedral in the 1960s. I think the Archbishop acted properly to build a large brick home with a nice yard for his use and the use of future Archbishops for the next 100 years. This is not his private property. The home will serve as a site for small conferences and fundraising appeals for years. It will serve as a guest home for official visitors. A $2 million home in Buckhead is not a mansion — it is a proper official residence for a major spiritual and administrative leader. Imagine the uproar if the Archbishop had put a double-wide trailer in that neighborhood.
If you want to see some mansions, look at the homes of some prosperity evangelical preachers. I suspect Bishop Gregory does not even own his own jet.
STAN HURDER, CLEVELAND, TENN.
CITYHOOD
Gold Dome politics improperly derailed local control
The city of Lakeside’s legislative defeat is a compelling “House of Cards” tale about a genuine cityhood movement losing to high-priced lobbyists, gullible and anti-city legislators, counterfeit “cityhood” groups and a perverted legislative process. Unfortunately, the AJC missed this story last week, rushing to print instead a flawed story, “Push to create a city fails,” (News, March 22).
Several factors caused Lakeside’s defeat: bogus information spread by Tucker advocates; lack of appropriate House and House committee leadership; and the strange killing of this local DeKalb cityhood bill by Rep. John Meadows, a powerful House chairman from remote northeast Georgia. Visit www.lakesidealliance.org for more.
Ironic and unreported, however, is that Tucker’s failure to follow House rules helped doom Lakeside. Unlike Tucker or Briarcliff (whose phony “bills” were only 9 lines long), Lakeside produced a 45-page bill along with a map, as committee rules require. Oddly, legislators eventually tied the fate of Lakeside’s Senate-approved bill to Tucker’s sham document. When lawmakers tried but failed to skirt their own rules to move the Tucker bill, Lakeside was dragged down with it.
What a shame the AJC did not report the real story.
KEVIN LEVITAS, FORMER CO-CHAIR, LAKESIDE CITY ALLIANCE
IMMIGRATION
Hard numbers show need to secure border
While amusing, lawyer Arturo Corso’s contention that “for most Mexican immigrants, there is no legal way” to enter the United States is false “Embrace Mexicans” (Opinion, April 2). As usual, the open borders agenda is based on perpetuating fairytales of victimhood.
The truth is, according to the latest figures available from those mean people at U. S. Department of Homeland Security, that Mexico sends us the most legal immigrants each year, with nearly twice as many job-seekers as nation No. 2. The 2012 DHS immigration flow figures show that Mexico sent us 146,631 legal immigrants. Nation No. 2 is communist China, with 81,784 immigrants.
With 20 million to 25 million Americans – including past immigrants – in unemployment lines, facing stagnant wages and a shrinking middle class, immigration sanity would be to reduce the flow of immigration and actually enforce the laws Congress has already passed.
A good “metric”: Striving to protect our own borders, workers, and benefits and services as enthusiastically and efficiently as does … Mexico.
D.A. KING, PRESIDENT, DUSTIN INMAN SOCIETY
SAVANNAH PORT
Expansion is pork-barrel politics, not investment
In “Another bend in the river,” (Editorial, March 30), editors blundered by not presenting both sides.
Contrary to lock-step adherence to the political dogma that Georgia must deepen Savannah’s port, the truth is that it will continue to thrive and the state’s economic prospects will be unaltered without the $652 million project.
In the guise of economic development and competitiveness, Georgia leaders are perpetuating the counterproductive tradition of pork-barrel politics, which results in tax dollars being squandered on woefully deficient public investments.
And, without acknowledging it, they are subverting the national interest in optimizing U.S. transportation infrastructure by diverting scarce funds to parochial beneficiaries here in Georgia, which will contribute little to true public interest.
An objective examination reveals that Savannah’s port, 38 miles upriver from the ocean, simply cannot compete with those ports that are on, or adjacent to, ocean shipping channels – many of which already have a low-maintenance depth greater than the 47 feet that this dubious project will produce.
DAVID KYLER, CENTER FOR A SUSTAINABLE COAST, SAINT SIMONS ISLAND
