Archive for the ‘Leadership’ Category

Moderated by Tom Sabulis

The Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has begun researching the new strain of bird flu recently discovered in China, where people get the virus from infected poultry, and where it’s spreading to other cities. More than a dozen people have died. Today, CDC Director Tom Frieden talks about how this flu is different and how the CDC is working on it. In our second column, an expert from the Georgia Department of Public Health addresses says disease-fighting on a local level.

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CDC fights China’s bird flu

By Tom Sabulis

CDC Director Thomas Frieden talked recently about the latest Avian flu health scare to hit China. The big fear with bird flu virus is that it develops the ability to go from person-to-person and trigger a pandemic.

The scarier aspects of this virus (H7N9): “The first is the severity of illness. A significant proportion of the people who have been diagnosed had severe illness or have died. We …

Continue reading Bird flu risks »

Moderated by Rick Badie

Georgia and Tennessee are in a standoff as it relates to water and state boundary lines. Georgia, in search of a long-term solution to quench its thirst, wants to tap the Tennessee River. Volunteer State officials refuse to grant access. Today, we present both sides of the ongoing dispute.

Good-faith effort avoids litigation

By Brad Carver

For nearly 200 years, Georgia and Tennessee have been disputing the location of their border.

Georgia House Resolution 4 is the Peach State’s effort to be a good neighbor to our Volunteer neighbors, encouraging them to put the proverbial fence in the correct place.

Flowing through the Tennessee River are more than 1.6 billion gallons of Georgia water, arriving from rills, creeks and rivers in Georgia’s Blue Ridge, among the rainiest parts of the continental U.S. The Tennessee Valley Authority estimates the river has at least 1 billion gallons of excess capacity each day. Just half of that daily excess would meet …

Continue reading Georgia-Tennessee water dispute »

Moderated by Rick Badie

Is Atlanta poised to become the Silicon Valley of biotechnology? Executives of Galectin Therapeutics, a bio tech firm that recently located here, think the city possesses the infrastructure and business climate to make it happen. Meanwhile, a hospital executive writes about the local growth of urgent care centers, medical facilities that offer patients convenient hours and free up emergency rooms.

The world needs a biotech Silicon Valley

By Gilbert F. Amelio and Rod Martin

America’s Founders sought to unleash the creative energies of every citizen, not just the privileged few. They created a system designed to encourage and protect commerce and innovation.

Alexis de Tocqueville described the new nation essentially as a classless society wherein all were treated equally, and individuals rose by merit. Though imperfectly applied to some, the difference between Tocqueville’s America and the rest of the world, in his time or ours, was and remains as …

Continue reading Atlanta: The Silicon Valley of biotechnology? »

The need was clear. Pass a law that would rein in limitless spending by lobbyists on members of the Georgia General Assembly.
That’s what the people wanted. In the end that’s not what Georgians got. Our lawmakers let us down.
When the behind-closed-doors, last-moment angling, maneuvering and arm-twisting ended late Thursday, the Legislature had managed to pass a bill on ethics reform. There’s little therein to praise, except that perhaps, in the broadest sense, passing something is preferable to doing nothing this year.
At least there is now on the record a most skeletal of limits on some lobbyist spending on lawmakers. That is better than no limit at all. And passage of House Bill 142 does change the tenor of future debate on this issue. Ethics reform advocates can and should build on that opening.
By passing such a weak, flawed law, the Capitol’s elected class have most likely managed to ensure that the push for ethics reform won’t end anytime soon. What lawmakers …

Continue reading Progress, but not much, toward ethics reform »

By William Perry

Like a slap to the face, the 2013 legislative session ended with ethics bills that leave Georgians rubbing our cheeks. Don’t get me wrong, there is some good in this year’s bills, but the bad still leaves a sting.
As to the good, House Speaker David Ralston deserves praise for restoring rule-making authority to the state ethics commission. Restored will be the important function that allows the commission to create rules where gray areas exist that are not addressed by state law. Rulemaking was stripped from the agency and has handcuffed the commission in certain situations since 2010, prior to Ralston becoming speaker. Common Cause Georgia, along with the Georgia Alliance for Ethics Reform, has pushed for three years to bring it back, and the speaker answered that call in his first draft of HB 142, and kept it there in every draft that followed. He deserves a round of applause for that.
Other good things that happened – the appearance of a $75 cap, no …

Continue reading Some good, mostly bad in gift cap smackdown »

Moderated by Rick Badie

Metro Atlanta’s poverty rate is growing worse, notably in the suburbs. There, poverty increased 5.9 percent between 2000 and 2010, outpacing the city’s 1.7 percent gain, according to the Atlanta Regional Commission. Today, we present three views on how Georgia and the nation can curb poverty.

Compassion begins with individuals

By Kevin Conboy

In the March 16 Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Rev. Joanna Adams reminded us in her guest column of a wonderful parable from the New Testament in which Jesus Christ answers the question, “Who is my neighbor ?”

The question arose from Jesus’ explanation of the greatest commandments — to love God and to love one’s neighbor as oneself. And thus came the answer in the story of the Good Samaritan: Everyone is your neighbor.

The Rev. Adams speculates that the Good Samaritan may have left the inn where he left the injured traveler and “headed back to Jerusalem, the place where public policies and …

Continue reading Curbing poverty »

Continue reading Time for statesmanship, not showmanship »

Moderated by Tom Sabulis
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Don’t cut back on cancer fight

By Walter J. Curran Jr.

We’re at a point in the fight against cancer where decades of discoveries are translating into new diagnostic and treatment tools at an accelerated rate. Unfortunately, this comes as agencies that fund cancer research face dire cutbacks.

There’s an urgent need to account for the tax dollars that feed our federal budget. Because Congress faces difficult decisions on how to cut that budget, I went to Washington recently to speak to lawmakers about the relationship of the National Institutes of Health to our nation’s cancer centers.

It is important to offer tangible proof of the great strides that have been made in treating and curing cancer due to NIH-funded cancer research. I’ve already seen how budget cuts are slowing the progress toward finding new cancer treatments.

I spoke on behalf of not only the Winship Cancer Institute but the American Association of Cancer …

Continue reading Research funding vital »

Moderated by Rick Badie

An advocacy group has said people should be allowed to vote on the plan to build a new home for the Atlanta Falcons using some public funding. But with a referendum looking increasingly unlikely, an official with that group questions the way city officials and leaders have handled the issue. Meanwhile, a hotel executive gives the history and structure of the hotel-motel tax in question.

Editor’s Note: The print edition of Perry’s story had an incorrect figure for Arthur Blank’s contribution to infrastructure costs for the new stadium. It is $70 million, not $50 million. 

Let voters have say on stadium

By William Perry

As the head of a nonprofit government watchdog group, I hear comments about people’s cynicism toward elected officials all the time. No doubt trust in government is at an all-time low. I try to convince people to find reason to keep believing, but it is truly like pushing a boulder up a hill.

Look no further than Monday approval by the …

Continue reading Public vote on Falcons stadium? »

With three-quarters of Georgia’s 2013 legislating days now done, the General Assembly should resolve to do whatever’s necessary to ensure comprehensive ethics reform becomes law his year. This important topic for Georgians and for our state’s system of government cannot fall by the wayside.
That means no “Oops” moments, legislative missteps of various sort or last-minute sleight-of-hand maneuvers should derail the cause of strengthening laws around how lobbyists interact with elected officials. Our state deserves better — the people have made that abundantly clear. An ethics law with teeth should be headed toward Gov. Nathan Deal for signing into law by the time the final gavel falls — this year.
We’re at least halfway there already, and lawmakers seem to have taken to heart the advisory questions from the July ballot that showed a tsunami of support for substantive change.
The Georgia Senate is expected as soon as this week to take up the cause of ethics by …

Continue reading Winning final leg of ethics race »