Reclaiming Atlanta’s powerful legacy
Trust of government is in precious short supply here. Such a toxic situation — however well-justified — cannot endure. Not if we want our metropolis in this present day to measure up to its historic achievements.
Metro Atlanta’s future as a place that makes big things happen hangs to a great degree on whether we can power past the mistrust and anger that has descended upon this place, and the entire nation.
The rest of America may have trouble doing so, but we’re confident our Atlanta is more than up to the momentous task of claiming the present problems and working through them toward a better day.
To continue on, mired in the current community mindset, should not be an option. How can it be when a new poll by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution found that six in 10 respondents believe that “not very many” or “hardly any” government officials are honest?
A similar majority believes that our government wastes “a lot” of money.
That’s a double tragedy, and demands change in the halls of politics. If that happens, the people will respond accordingly.
The AJC poll’s findings are not surprising. In fact, they’re consistent with election results from July 31, when the hard-won, long-in-coming transportation referendum was buried by a nearly 2-to-1 margin as groups ranging from the tea party to the transit-friendly Sierra Club of Georgia united in pushing for its defeat.
The widespread message of mistrust of government has been decisively voiced and plainly heard.
That’s where we stand now.
We can’t stay here. We have to move on – and move ahead. Tough work that, but we’ve got to do it.
Doing so requires two very important, broad things to happen. First, our politicians and all other government workers must start behaving as though they’ve taken heed of taxpayers’ plain message. And that, really, will be the easy part.
The second, critical step in our view calls for each of us to examine ourselves and embrace a new civic posture. Metro Atlantans should productively build upon anger at government.
Righteous citizen indignation is powerful, true. But miscontent alone can’t push us toward positive fixes and effective resolution of problems, we believe.
Battling political leaders to a civic standstill on big issues, as happened in the T-SPLOST’s drubbing, may feel good, but it doesn’t at all work for our town’s benefit in a dynamic, free-market economy. Stasis fuels stagnation, then decline, marked by a dying-off of investment, jobs and prosperity.
Yes, it is tempting to oppose civic initiatives — especially ones with big pricetags — in a time when too many of our elected leaders too often seem primarily devoted to the pursuit of corruption, incompetence, buffoonery or all three.
It’s hard to think differently when some pols seem caught in endless bickering or bureaucratic inaction that leaves jails without functioning locks and voters without reasonable assurances that their ballots counted — or were counted.
Ditto for Gold Dome politicians clinging stubbornly to a sky-is-the-limit cap on gifts lavished their way, even as important legislative work remains undone, or haphazardly done, year after year. And don’t forget the long caravan of politicians whose antics have landed them in prison cells.
All of which is profoundly discouraging.
What is exciting, and encouraging, is that We the People still intuitively know what needs to be done around here. The AJC’s poll clearly points out that metro Atlantans understand well our worst problems.
More importantly, they know that effective fixes will cost money and they’re willing to pony up — if our politicians and bureaucrats will but prove themselves as up to the task and worthy of voter trust.
Two-thirds of people polled said they would be willing to pay a new fee or tax to “help reduce traffic congestion in the Atlanta region overall.”
Seventy percent of adults polled even supported funding to expand rail transit service beyond the current two-county system.
So much for anti-transit antipathy. More than three in four respondents said they’d be willing to pay new costs to improve educational quality here.
That metro Atlantans indicate they’re willing to invest to move us ahead may seem surprising. Not to us. We believe it’s in our DNA.
Consider these words of Henry Grady, from the time of a pivotal election in the 1880s: “Atlanta is built in the heart of a united people. Her glory is the comradeship of her sons. Her boast and her strength has been that her name has had the power to fuse all factions, bury all differences, silence all bickerings. To this, more than to all other things combined, she owes her greatness.”
That sums up the powerful civic spirit that led us to greatness. It can do so again if we reclaim it once more.
Andre Jackson, for the Editorial Board.
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15 comments Add your comment
Wishing for Milton County
December 16th, 2012
2:08 pm
This all sounds good!!!! Then the Atlanta City Council votes themselves a 50% pay raise, which the mayor approves. We find out that employees at MARTA are makiing over $200,000 using overtime & sick leave time. All while MARTA pleads it is broke. 25 years of mismanagement, lazy employees, corrupt unions have doomed MARTA to what is is now. MARTA and all its contracts, management, and employees needs to be pushed aside through bankruptcy and a new team put in place. ONE THAT BELIEVES IN THE PUBLIC TRUST.
Then we have the GWCC & the Falcon’s pushing a stadium we don’t need, just so Arthur Blank can charge PSL’s on his fan base and make $100 million dollars. OH, its just the hotel – motel tax. Locals won’t pay it. When we don’t collect enough tax monies to pay the bonds – the tax payer has to cover the shortfall. If this happens there are no consiquences to the leadship of GWCC. They still get paid & a soft pension. Noone looses their jobs, but another small business fails because noone comes to conventions in Atlanta anymore because its to expensive.
Does anyone in government see how lousy the economy is. NO THEY DON”T – because they don’t work in the economy, they live off the economy. Thousands of Georgians have lost their jobs, yet the politicians talk about a new FOOTBALL STADIUM. Not trimming government. Not making government more streamlined, efficient, or consumer friendly. NO they just figure ways to make sure their pension is safe. They get raises, and they still do the least amount of work as possible.
Fulton County government gives their employees a raise, while thousands are loosing their homes, can’t pay their taxes. THE COMMISSION TAKES PRIDE IN MAKING GOVERNMENT MORE BURDENSOME, NOT LESS.
The area public schools are turning out idiots, but hey we can’t correct this. We can’t hold anyone accoutable. We just need to spend more money that the taxpayer does not have. Great advise AJC
As for the AJC – you are really late to the party. Showing all this concern now while for the last 25 years you were a lap dog to the politicians (mainly democrats). You pushed the T-SPLOT. You pushed the BELTLINE. You ignored public corruption for the sake of political correctness. This you have done time & time again. Hell, you have even pushed MARTA on us.
How about telling us the truth for once. Anyone with half a mind knows the Falcons have to get out of their current lease agreement, so they can charge the PSL. They don’t need a new stadium. The owners needs a new revenue stream and the public is just the patsy to use.
Most of us who can read, know the corruption that has gone on in Atlanta city government and Fulton & DeKalb county government. Yet the AJC has never raised a finger. OH there has been a few stories, but no real investigative reporting. Because the AJC would find that those politicians it endorses and caresses are the most corrupt.
There is over 30 years of lousy corrupt politicians from both sides. Political correctness that blinds the journalist. And outright lying to the public & taxpayers by the politicians and journalist that are suppose to report facts, not opinions. This has built up into a total distrust of our government and our journalist. It is going to take many many years to fix the publics trust.
Until then, don;t look to the taxpayer for any grand schemes. They are tired of paying for the current nonsense as it is!
This is why I am – WISHING FOR MILTON COUNTY!
M.E.
December 16th, 2012
2:55 pm
The pay raise will enable one very good thing for Atlanta—being a city council member really is a full-time position. Paying full-time pay will enable council members to devote more of their time to city matters instead of having to work two or more jobs to make ends meet. It will also encourage more residents to run for election, now that the job will provide a better salary, promoting diversity on the council.
Gene Lorette
December 16th, 2012
2:56 pm
Oh gosh, where do you start. Each and every example cited cries out for serious investigative journalism, a discipline that has disappeared nationally and never existed locally. Don’t forget the mismanagement and scandals associated with several metro school boards, the the shenanigans of past county CEO’s, and how about the election of an indicted county sheriff.
Trust is earned through consistent good effort and decisions made in the public rather than in selfish individual interests.
Public officials owe us that. Until that happens don’t expect citizen support
Ga Values
December 16th, 2012
3:53 pm
I’ll start believing something good will happen when the corruption at the airport is cleaned up.
SAWB
December 16th, 2012
5:02 pm
In the movie The ATL the character of Rashad introduces one of his friends and states, “That’s my boy Teddy right there. He ATL for real. Never been outside of 285 and proud of it”. As humorous as the line is it really does touch on something we have to address – the Atlanta Metro is actually many smaller regions. Why would folks who live in Snellville and work in Dunwoody want to fund the Beltline? Why would folks who live in Inman Park and work in Fairlie Poplar want to fund an extension of Sugarloaf Parkway? The better way forward is for each county to indentify and move forward with their own version of T-SPLOST.
A.M
December 16th, 2012
5:28 pm
IF the repubs and the tea party were in charged 30-40 years ago ATLANTA ,would be BIRMINGHAM, today.Everything that has been successful for ATL. they would be against.especially in the area of race relationship.
Tim
December 16th, 2012
10:47 pm
I understand the need for a TSPLOST, but not that TSPLOST. Something isn’t always better than nothing, not when the something doesn’t work and sucks all the air out of the room for something different that we might actually give us what we need.
MARTA is broken, on a simple fundamental level it is broken. The whole thing doesn’t work. Yeah, there still something there, and we will continue to make do with what we have, but we’ve needed to overhaul the whole thing for thirty years. There needs to be a plan, not a patch job that is full of projects that would require a renewal to be meaningful. Of course something needs to be done about the transit problem. Give me a plan, tell me how this change would address the root causes. Don’t tell me you might do something in my area and ask me to just trust it’ll work out.
The same is true for other issues. The Atlanta City Schools are in terrible shape, the sewers and other basic utilities are a mess, and regular scandals in the way that money is dealt with are all essential issues that need to be addressed now. Yet, no one seems to has a plan. No one tells me HOW they expect to deal with any of it.
You want me to trust. Well, I still have trust to give but you need to give something worth believing in. Just give me something, anything, that I actually believe has a chance at working. I swear, if I had any idea how to make these things happen myself I’d do it.
Fred
December 16th, 2012
11:51 pm
I’m sure Andre Jackson means well, but he apparently does not understand human nature. The ONLY way to have less corruption and featherbedding in government is to have a smaller government, with less bureaucratic layers, and fewer phony-baloney jobs. Managers at Walmart have incentives to save money, and fire non-performing employees. Atlanta /Fulton county functionaries and employees, including the teachers, have very little reason to be economical, and very large incentive to take whatever they can get.
Shrink the government, fire the bad workers, put the thieving miscreants in jail, farm out everything possible to small businesses, and cut the remaining employees pay and benefits.
Then you will begin to see restored trust in local government.
And as far as the “light rail” support”? That’s only because most people have no idea how godawful expensive it would be, and what a completely environmentally destructive porkbarrel the whole scheme is. It would be far cheaper and more ecologically sound to buy a million new Honda Fits and sell them at half price to everybody who would stay put and pay local property taxes for the next 5 years.
Big government is not the answer, big government IS THE PROBLEM.
Will Jones - Atlanta Jeffersonian Exegesis
December 16th, 2012
11:58 pm
Save the hogwash. Atlantans trust our own government, and know we are blessed to be in this New Jerusalem, the best city in the world, with great city workers and police, and our mayor has just made us all proud by the magnificent, classy, and gracious way he regularly and successfully hammered the RapeNazis, on national television on President Obama’s behalf, whose faction committed 9/11 to turn us into False Zion’s “golem,” and to shore up the Vatican banker Rothschild/Rockefeller-Bush faction’s satanic Fed Scam, soon to expire, JFK ended before they ended him.
When the AJC starts telling the Truth required by the canons of journalism, helping its readership understand the same faction blew up the Murrah Bldg., slaughtered the innocents at Waco, and at the World Trade Center and Pentagon on 9/11 to send us to false war…and killed Dr. King and President Kennedy to keep us dying as papal catspaw in Vietnam, then talk to us about Atlanta highways and transit issues.
The AJC’s failure to expose the satanic evil on Our Land, that which Th. Jefferson warned is “the real Anti-Christ,” “an engine for enslaving mankind,” leaves it with marginal, if any, moral authority. The best that can be said of the truth-withholding AJC is that it is Atlanta’s newspaper. Trying to con the people by filching more money for corrupt families and businesses is not the path toward progress. Work for Truth and Justice and America’s Sovereign, G-d Almighty, will then bless us all even more.
“Annuit Coeptis,” remember? Or are you not Americans?
SocialismRules
December 17th, 2012
12:18 am
I am all for BIG government and fat salaries of government workers. I am so glad that government has grown so big and has completely taken over America. This is the path to true freedom, happiness, and security. I want my free Obama Phone, free health care, free food, free gas, free housing, and a free welfare check. I want my government to take money from the rich and give some to me so I can get all those things. I do not think I should have to get up and go to work every day because it is just too hard. I no longer want to take care of myself plus it is so easy just to print more money and give it to everyone (not just the big bankers on Wall Street). I think Obama is sending the right message and Socialism is very cool even if it means we have to have a lot of fascism to get it. Now we just need to take all the guns off the streets. Our forefathers had it all wrong.
Al Bartell...Candidate for Mayor
December 17th, 2012
5:24 am
The editorial board will have an opportunity to write about “different” leaders in the upcoming mayoral election. Editorial “leadership” would be a great context to start “reclaiming the legacy”.
skipper
December 17th, 2012
11:15 am
The inner-city school system of Atlanta will not now or ever attract the kind of folks needed to turn things around. Hard to get through much of Atlanta without getting accosted practically by pan-handlers, etc. Call it what you will, but until things “upgrade” ,starting with the pathetic school system, things will flounder.
Tancred
December 17th, 2012
11:29 am
I’m trying to figure out what Jackson means by “reclaiming Atlanta’s powerful legacy.” What legacy is he talking about? The only legacy we have is of a sprawling, unplanned, racially divisive MSA where, as many point out here, government jobs are entitlements for a black populace that sees itself (whether true or not) as the contemporary victims of slavery and Jim Crow. Add to that the layer of Good ol’ Boy conservatism on the state level, you have the worst of two worlds. That Grady quote is just the same kind of empty rhetoric we hear today. People are now talking about “branding” again, as if the only problem here has to do with an “image” problem. Every day is opening day. That worked out well. What a joke.
Whirled Peas
December 18th, 2012
8:20 am
“Battling political leaders to a civic standstill on big issues, as happened in the T-SPLOST’s drubbing, may feel good, but it doesn’t at all work for our town’s benefit ”
It works to the benefit of the tax paying citizen, which seems to mean little here.
Raisin Toast Fanatic
December 18th, 2012
9:05 am
When someone has to use word like “reclaiming”, that means its already too late.