Beginning tomorrow, April 4, the Bookman blog will be moving to its new headquarters and URL at http://www.ajc.com/weblogs/jay-bookman/. Please bookmark that site, and change your RSS feeds if you follow the blog through that approach (http://www.ajc.com/rss/weblog_entries/jay-bookman/).

The change also means that those wishing to comment will first have to register a user ID, complete with a working email address. Registration can be accomplished at the homepage, ajc.com — the link can be found at the upper right. I’m told that user names cannot have spaces in them, so Joe Hussein Obama, to pick an example, would have to register as JoeHusseinObama. Once you have registered a display name, you can use it on any ajc.com blog.

The change is needed to make the blog accessible to readers across a variety of modern platforms, from smart phones to I-pads to Kindles to laptops to PCs. I know that most of you have become comfortable with the way we’ve been doing things — I have as well, to be honest — but change is inevitable.

Hope to see you all in the new digs tomorrow!

– Jay Bookman

On the final day of the 2013 legislative session, a group of Republican legislators introduced “The Georgia Fair Taxation Act.” By doing so, they set the stage for what may prove to be the most important legislative battle of next year’s session, or potentially the decade.

“This bill is the beginning of the discussion to eliminate the income tax in the state of Georgia,” state Rep. Tom Kirby of Loganville said in announcing the legislation. According to Kirby, he has already conferred with and agreed to work with Senate President Pro Tem David Shafer, who has proposed similar legislation on the Senate side.

To offset the billions in revenue that would be lost by eliminating both the personal and corporate income tax in Georgia, Kirby says, the state sales tax would have to jump by three to 4.8 percentage points. In metro Atlanta, that would produce a combined state and local sales tax of roughly 11 or 12 percent. (As we’ll see, the actual number would be higher still.)

In addition, the reach of the state sales tax would be expanded considerably, perhaps to food and other items. The national version of the so-called “FairTax,” cited by Kirby and others as a model for Georgia, would apply the sales tax to items such as rent, health care and tuition.

Such a proposal creates many problems, but here are three of the largest:

1.) The change would mean major tax increases for the vast majority of Georgians, and major tax reductions for the wealthy and corporations. There’s no dispute among economists: As a revenue system becomes more reliant on the sales taxes, it hits the poor and middle class harder while providing large tax breaks for the wealthy. The single step of eliminating the corporate income tax would shift $735 million in taxes onto consumers.

2.) When asked about that massive shift in tax burden in a press conference last week, Kirby brushed it aside, asserting that greater prosperity and more jobs would more than compensate for higher taxes on the non-wealthy. “We bring this piece of the puzzle, and we can see an exponential increase in the number of businesses looking at Georgia,” he predicted.

The problem is, there is no evidence to support that claim. For example, in announcing the legislation, Kirby repeatedly cited competition from Tennessee and Florida, pointing out that those neighboring states have no income taxes. Given the economic miracles that an absence of an income tax is said to produce, those states must be booming, right?

Wrong. Per capita GDP in both Tennessee and Florida is well below the national average, and below that of Georgia as well. Tennessee has lost 3.5 percent of its jobs in the last five years, compared to 5.9 percent in Georgia and 7.2 percent in Florida. So the absence of an income tax doesn’t seem to have done them any great favors.

3.) The sales tax increase needed to keep the system revenue neutral will be considerably higher than the estimate of 3 to 4.8 points. That estimate was derived through “dynamic economic modeling”, which is a fancy way of saying “just making numbers up.” “Dynamic modeling” assumes that Georgia’s new tax system will create an economic boom, which in turn will generate a lot of new revenue. It is pure conjecture.

If that magic revenue doesn’t appear, as it probably won’t, Georgia’s battered budget would suffer even more whacks with a meat ax.

If Republican leaders are being honest about their commitment to reform, they have the muscle to force it through. Shafer, the Senate’s top leader, is championing the concept. As a congressman, Gov. Nathan Deal was a strong supporter of the FairTax at the national level. And among the co-sponsors of Kirby’s bill in the House are Ed Lindsey, the House majority whip, and Donna Sheldon, chair of the House Republican Caucus.

And once put to a floor vote, such a measure will be hard for GOP legislators to oppose. As state Rep. Buzz Brockway pointed out in last week’s press conference, “It is tough to win a Republican primary in the state of Georgia and be against the FairTax. So I think on the Republican side there is broad support for the FairTax model.”

Brockway’s correct: Much of Georgia’s Republican base harbors a cult-like obsession with the FairTax. But I don’t believe it is true of the electorate in general.

In conservative Louisiana, for example, Gov. Bobby Jindal has proposed a sweeping tax-reform proposal much like that championed by Kirby, Shafer and others. It too would replace the state income and corporate tax with a broader, higher sales tax, among other changes, and the rhetoric used to defend the change is familiar as well.

“Eliminating personal income taxes will put more money back into the pockets of Louisiana families and will change a complex tax code into a more simple system that will make Louisiana more attractive to companies who want to invest here and create jobs,” Jindal said in announcing the effort.

However, according to a new poll, 63 percent of Louisiana residents oppose the proposed tax reform, and strong opposition to the plan helps to explain a 22-point collapse in Jindal’s job-approval numbers. In fact, Jindal is now less popular in deep-red Louisiana than Barack Obama, a fact that does not bode well for the governor’s presidential ambitions.

To complicate things further, the poll cited above was taken before the Jindal administration was forced to admit that it had badly underestimated how high the sales tax would have to increase to keep the plan revenue neutral. That too should sound familiar.

As the Shreveport Times reports:

“They may call it reform of the tax system but two-thirds of Louisiana sees it as a tax increase,” (pollster Bernie) Pinsonat said. “We did the poll before his revenue secretary increased it. (Opposition) would probably be 70-72 percent now.”

In other words, this is yet another idea that has been planted and carefully nurtured within the right-wing’s intellectual hothouse, but that withers and dies once it is exposed to real-life political conditions.

– Jay Bookman

Barack Obama has never claimed that his political opponents were motivated by racism. Others may have occasionally made that argument on his behalf, but Obama himself has never done so. However, his conservative opponents love to condemn him for it anyway.

Ben Carson, the black neurosurgeon from Baltimore who has become the latest conservative flavor of the month, clearly doesn’t hesitate to play the race card. In a radio interview Tuesday, he claimed that liberals who criticized his recent comments on gay marriage “are the most racist people there are because they put you in a little category, a box. ‘How could you dare come off the plantation?’”

“They want to shut us up completely, and that’s why the attacks against me have been so vicious,” Carson said in a talk radio interview. “I represent an existential threat to them. They need to shut me up, they need to get rid of me, they can’t find anything else to delegitimize me, so they take my words, misinterpret them, and try to make it seem that I’m a bigot.”

His self-aggrandizement aside, Carson poses an existential threat to nobody in politics but himself. As impressive as he is as a neurosurgeon, he is no more qualified for high public office than he is to play center field for the Baltimore Orioles. In fact, Carson is more interesting because of what his sudden Fox-driven popularity tells us about the conservative movement than he is as a political neophyte with no future.

Take, for example, his comments on gay marriage. As Carson put it:

“(Marriage) is a well-established fundamental pillar of society. And no group, be they gays, be they NAMBLA, be they people who believe in bestiality — it doesn’t matter what they are. They don’t get to change the definition.”

Now, there is certainly a market for people in public life willing to equate gay Americans to child sex abusers or to those who have sex with animals. However, that market is not large enough to make a person a serious or even marginal candidate for president, and in fact that market is shrinking by the day.

There is also a small market for politicians — and that’s what Carson is acting like — who say silly and stupid things and then play victim when they’re called on it. Sarah Palin is one example; Herman Cain is another. Such behavior plays into a conservative world view that holds that their failure to dominate the political world can be explained only by a liberal media out to get them, by an ACORN-led voting conspiracy, by a 47 percent bought and paid for by the government, by the fact the sun got in their eyes, etc.

Their real problem is the silly things they do and say, but that explanation isn’t to be considered –ironic, given their rhetorical emphasis on taking personal responsibility.

To cite another example, let’s look at Carson’s suggested alternative to invading Afghanistan in the wake of Sept. 11. According to the neurosurgeon, President Bush should not have responded militarily back in 2001 but instead should have made a speech in which he promised to wean the United States from foreign oil within a decade.

As Carson put it:

“And that would’ve been much more effective than going to war because, first of all, the moderate Arab states would’ve been terrified. And they would’ve handed over Osama Bin Laden and anybody else we wanted on a silver platter to keep us from doing that.”

Now maybe I’m a racist. Maybe I’m just trying to shut Carson up because he poses “an existential threat” to liberal policies. But in the wake of Sept. 11, I do not believe that a speech on oil imports would have been a sufficient response by President Bush. I think it reflects a startling naivete.

Carson has also said that of course he supports giving illegal immigrants a pathway to citizenship, because “that’s the only humane and reasonable thing to do.” I happen to agree with him on that issue, but the fact that many conservatives either do not know where he stands or do not care — they’re more excited about the validation he offers to them as victims — says a lot about how seriously to take him as a political leader.

– Jay Bookman

That has been the root of this issue from the beginning. Through the 1990s and 2000s, the same political pressures that are now demanding a continued supply of cheap labor had also prevented government from active enforcement of immigration law both at the border and in the workplace.

It was about money and power. Those who had money and power wanted more of both, and illegal immigrants were a tool for achieving it. I mean, what part of “profitable” don’t you understand?

Georgia provides a great example: The housing boom created a need for cheap construction workers, and as long as politically powerful developers and farmers needed their labor, neither the state’s congressional delegation — yes, I’m looking at you, Saxby — nor the state Legislature made even a peep about wanting tighter enforcement. The result is that we now have one of the larger illegal-immigrant communities in the nation, not to mention a Legislature worried about the long-term demographic and political impact of a migration that that they had tacitly welcomed, if under different circumstances.

– Jay Bookman

It’s a massive financial scam.

As she told the Marietta Daily Journal:

“Say you had a great job with the government where you had this wonderful health plan. I mean, what would prohibit you from saying that you’re gay, and y’all get married and still live as separate, but you get all the benefits? I just see so much abuse in this it’s unreal. I believe a husband and a wife should be a man and a woman, the benefits should be for a man and a woman. There is no way that this is about equality. To me, it’s all about a free ride.”

That’s the kind of weirdness you get when irrational bigotry tries to rationalize itself. Rather than acknowledge to yourself that yes, you are indeed treating people as second-class citizens, you invent a reason that you find less threatening to your self-image:

“I’m not a bigot. I’m just …. concerned about fraud. Yeah, that’s the ticket. Fraud! Abuse!”

Everhart also made it clear that “I’m not saying that we ostracize (gay people) or anything like that. I’m just saying I’m against marriage because once you get the gay marriage you get everything else.”

I’m not sure what that “everything else” might be. I’m not sure I want to know.

– Jay Bookman

In a “cri de couer” published in the Wall Street Journal last week, Liz Cheney rallied her fellow conservatives to the true cause, warning darkly that “if we don’t defend our freedoms now against the onslaught of President Obama’s policies, we won’t have to wait until our sunset years for American freedom to be a distant memory.”

Among other things, she writes:

“President Obama is the most radical man ever to occupy the Oval Office….

The president has so effectively diminished American strength abroad that there is no longer a question of whether this was his intent. He is working to pre-emptively disarm the United States. He advocates slashing our nuclear arsenal even as the North Koreans threaten us and the Iranians close in on their own nuclear weapon. He has turned his back on America’s allies around the world and ignored growing threats.”

It’s one thing to disagree with and criticize a political opponent. However, it takes a special type of paranoia-laced arrogance to publicly claim that your opponent, the twice-elected president of the United States, has taken it as his mission to undermine and weaken the country. People who believe and say such things disqualify themselves as credible participants in government.

And if ever backed by power, that degree of self-righteousness becomes very, very dangerous.

– Jay Bookman

2009 Superintendent of the Year Beverly Hall

It shouldn’t be so stunning, but it is.

Former Atlanta School Superintendent Beverly Hall — a one-time national superintendent of the year who ran the Atlanta school district with an authoritarian hand — has been indicted on racketeering and other charges, as have 34 other administrators, principals, teachers and others, in the Atlanta cheating scandal.

If convicted, Hall faces as much as 45 years in jail, and the grand jury has recommended that bail be set at $7.5 million. Given that Hall is not a great threat to flee the country and poses no danger to anyone, that bail recommendation sounds exorbitant. Frankly, it sets off warning signals that the case itself may be an overreaction, but we will see.

I’m not trying to defend Hall by any means. If she did do the crime, she should do the time, although it is possible that the charges will be bargained down if she admits guilt and returns the bonuses “earned” through cheating. As it is, the charges imply that Hall took an active and knowing role in the scandal or in the coverup. That is certainly plausible, but I’m not aware of any evidence to that effect.

On the other hand, I also didn’t sit on the grand jury.

In that light, it’s interesting that Hall’s top assistant, the much-feared Kathy Augustine, is not among those indicted, suggesting that she may have agreed to testify for the prosecution. To borrow the cliche, Augustine had the reputation as an administrator who knew where the bodies were buried because she had put them there.

There is certainly a lot of evidence — overwhelming evidence, to my mind — that Hall willfully chose to ignore proof of cheating because it served her purposes to do so. I vividly remember two telephone conversations with Hall in which I hung up the phone startled by the degree of denial that she demonstrated. It was also troubling to see the lives and careers of underlings being ruined in the scandal while Hall, the person who had previously made no bones about being in charge, looked to be walking away scot-free.

But again, we’ll have to see how this plays out in the judicial system. At the very least, we’re going to learn a lot more about how the mess went down, and perhaps about how it can be avoided not just here in Georgia but around the country.

– Jay Bookman

“My, oh my, you sure know how to arrange things
You set it up so well, so carefully
Ain’t it funny how your new life didn’t change things
You’re still the same old girl you used to be.”

– Jay Bookman

Because when that happens, as it did this week in the Georgia Legislature, bad things happen. You get a bill that masquerades as reform but in reality changes little and in important ways makes things worse.

Let’s begin with the “attorney loophole.” In a last-minute change to House Bill 142 — a change that had not been included in previous House or Senate versions of the bill — legislators in effect exempted attorneys from the state’s lobbyist disclosure and ethics law. Because the language was changed in secret, we don’t know who is responsible for it. But we do know that it creates a massive loophole in the law, because some of the most influential people lobbying our elected officials have law degrees.

In fact, the bill itself is evidence of that influence. As a result of the change they apparently sought, attorney/lobbyists do not have to abide by the much-ballyhooed $75 spending limit. Even worse, attorney/lobbyists are exempted from even having to disclose their lobbying expenditures to the public.

Here’s another nice little goody tucked into the bill:

Back in 2011, shortly after legislators gave Delta Air Lines an extension of a sales-tax exemption worth some $30 million, it was discovered that the airline had given top state officials a free upgrade to platinum or gold flying status. Delta officially valued those upgrades at a value of $1,588 to $2,831, but consumer advocate Clark Howard said at the time that they were actually worth more like $10,000 to $15,000.

House Speaker David Ralston, the chief sponsor of HB 142, was one of those who received the benefit. State Sen. Jeff Mullis, who led Senate negotiators on the ethics bill, was another beneficiary. Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle was a third. Senate Majority Leader Ronnie Chance was a fourth.

Under the “ethics reform” of HB 142, such upgrades will be exempted from the $75 gift cap. Even worse, the bill specifically states that such upgrades no longer even have to be reported.

You want another such outrage?

One of the prime drivers of ethics reform was public anger at legislators and their spouses being wined, dined and put up in fancy resorts by lobbyists and special interest groups, often at pricetags of $1,000 or more. Rather than try to address that problem or put controls on it, HB 142 explicitly legitimizes it.

The result is rather hilarious, if by hilarious you mean downright ridiculous. If this bill becomes law, a (non-attorney) lobbyist will be forbidden to spend more than $75 on a dinner for a legislator in Atlanta. However, if that same lobbyist pays to fly that same legislator — and his or her spouse, and his or her staff member(s) — to a resort somewhere for an “educational, informational, charitable, or civic meetings or conference”, the $75 limit no longer applies.

In fact, suddenly there is no limit whatsoever.

Then there’s the question of how this $75 cap will really work. It has been sold to Georgia voters as a limit on what can be spent on a legislator at any one event, occasion or gift purchase. However, in language added to the bill in secret, last-minute negotiations, the cap is defined as a $75 expenditure per gift “from any individual lobbyist.”

That language wasn’t added by accident. Again, somebody put it there, and they did so for a reason. As a result of the change, if you have two individual lobbyists, the gift limit jumps to $150. With three, it’s $225.

Gov. Nathan Deal ought to veto this bill and force legislators to do it again, this time in the open.

– Jay Bookman

“This bill is the beginning of the discussion to eliminate the income tax in the state of Georgia,” state Rep. Tom Kirby of Loganville said in announcing the legislation. He also said that he has already conferred with and agreed to work with Senate President Pro Tem David Shafer, who has proposed similar legislation on the Senate side.

To offset the revenue lost by eliminating both the personal and corporate income tax in Georgia, Kirby says it would be necessary to increase the state sales tax by three to 4.8 percentage points. In metro Atlanta, that would produce a state and local sales tax of roughly 11 or 12 percent. And as we’ll see, the actual number would be higher still.

In addition, the reach of the state sales tax would be expanded considerably, perhaps to food and other items. The national version of the so-called “FairTax,” cited by Kirby and others as a model for Georgia, would apply the sales tax to items such as rent, health care and tuition.

Such a proposal creates many problems, but here are three of the largest:

1.) The change would mean major tax increases for the vast majority of Georgians, and major tax reductions for the wealthy and corporations. There’s no dispute among economists — a revenue system heavily reliant on sales taxes hits the poor and middle class hard while providing large tax breaks for the wealthy. Merely eliminating the corporate income tax would shift $735 million in taxes onto consumers.

2.) When asked about that massive shift in tax burden this week, Kirby brushed it aside, asserting that greater prosperity would more than compenasate for higher taxes on the non-wealthy. “We bring this piece of the puzzle, and we can see an exponential increase in the number of businesses looking at Georgia,” he predicted.

The problem is, there is no evidence to support that claim. For example, in announcing the legislation, Kirby repeatedly cited competition from Tennessee and Florida, pointing out that those neighboring states have no income taxes. Given the economic miracles that such a system is said to produce, those states must be booming, right? Wrong. Per capita GDP in both Tennessee and Florida is well below the national average, and below that of Georgia as well.

3.) The sales tax increase needed to keep the system revenue neutral will be considerably higher than the estimate of 3 to 4.8 points. That low-end estimate is derived through “dynamic economic modeling”, which is a fancy way of saying “just making stuff up.” “Dynamic modeling” assumes that the new tax system creates a burst of economic growth, which in turn generates a lot of new revenue. It is pure conjecture.

If that magic revenue doesn’t appear, as it probably won’t, Georgia’s battered budget would suffer even more whacks with a meat ax.

The scary thing about these proposals is that they could actually pass. The Senate’s top leader has embraced the concept. As a congressman, Gov. Nathan Deal was a strong supporter of the FairTax at the national level. And now Republican members of the House are championing the move as well. Among the co-sponsors of Kirby’s bill are Ed Lindsey, the House majority whip, and Donna Sheldon, chair of the House Republican Caucus.

“It is tough to win a Republican primary in the state of Georgia and be against the FairTax,” as state Rep. Buzz Brockway, R- Lawrenceville, pointed out last week. “So I think on the Republican side there is broad support for the FairTax model.”

He’s probably right.