$114.83 of gas in one day? Really?
Thinking Right’s weekend free-for-all. Pick a topic:
● What do Barack Obama and TV newscasters have in common? Both speak words on current events that don’t reflect their beliefs. “We simply cannot continue to spend as if deficits don’t have consequences; as if waste doesn’t matter; as if the hard-earned tax dollars of the American people can be treated like Monopoly money; as if we can ignore this challenge for another generation” he emoted. “We can’t.”
● I’m sick of public officials who exploit the perks of office, especially the little stuff like cars and gasoline. DeKalb School Superintendent Crawford Lewis visited one gas station three times in one day, using his district-issued credit card to buy gas in the sums of $32.83, $32 and $50. Explanation: He accidentally put premium in the tank, pumped it out and refilled with regular, drove to visit his mother in Monticello, and then refilled. If I’m on the DeKalb school board, he’s outta here. …
Meaningful ethics reform a must
Thinking Right’s weekend free-for-all. Pick a topic:
● Bush. Bush. Bush. It’s all Bush’s fault. Man up, Mr. President. You own it now. You’re not a facilitator leading a government seminar, nor a deal-detached observer, with no responsibility for the Louisiana purchase of Sen. Mary Landrieu or the Cornhusker Kickback to Sen. Ben Nelson. If it’s bad, he inherited. If good, he did it.
● President Obama listened to those on the left in drafting his State of the Union. More government. More spending. More hyper-partisanship. More cap-and-tax. More health care cram-down. No move to the center. Another year of deep national divisions loom.
● State Rep. Mary Margaret Oliver of DeKalb County uses the recent troubles of former House Speaker Glenn Richardson as opportunity to push a bill to limit the value of gifts from lobbyists to $25, which is fine with me. But she also leaps to propose public financing of judicial races. That’s incumbent-protection. A challenger …
Health care cram down is over
Thinking Right’s weekend free-for-all. Pick a topic:
● What a difference a week makes. The Massachusetts uprising against Congress and this administration lifts the spirits of those, like me, who are concerned that we’re weakening America and stealing from future generations to fund current consumption. And then a conservative Republican wins the “Kennedy seat” in ultra-liberal Massachusetts. Blow me down. The health-care cram down is over. Over-reaching Democrats are in shock.
● The nation wants jobs, economic recovery and national security. The Left wants control of energy, autos, financial and the health care and insurance industries. They win. We lose. Example: The Environmental Protection Agency proposes stricter standards for ground-level ozone — stricter than standards just imposed in 2008. There’s a cost, certainly, that industry and utilities pay that they pass on in the form of higher consumer prices. But the real value of the stricter standards is …
We pay for Nebraska’s Medicaid?
Thinking Right’s weekend free-for-all. Pick a topic:
● The post-partisan president has the country divided 50-50. No end in sight. Gotta tell you. I’m coming to hate politics as exemplified by the deal with U.S. Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Nebraska) to exempt that state forever from the higher taxes imposed by the new health care legislation now being hashed out in Congress. The Georgia Department of Community Health estimates that Georgians would be forced to pay up to $200 million in higher taxes for an expanded Medicaid program starting in 2013 and increasing to $500 million per year over the following six years. We pay for Georgia, plus Nebraska. That’s bound to be unconstitutional.
● I am becoming so radicalized by the direction this country is being taken that, much as I hate cold weather, I’d fly to Massachusetts to vote in Tuesday’s special election to replace Sen. Ted Kennedy if that state allowed same-day registration and voting. It’s a solidly Democratic …
Farewell to a darn good judge
Thinking Right’s weekend free-for-all. Pick a topic:
● Finally, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi acknowledges reality. Says she of our president: “There are a number of things he was for on the campaign trail.” At issue was whether negotiations over the final health care legislation would be opened to C-SPAN cameras, something the president embraced as a candidate. They won’t.
● Republican gubernatorial candidate Karen Handel says the men running against her can’t clean up a culture of “sex, lies and lobbyists” under the Gold Dome because they “created the mess.” Men, as the lady knows, are not monolithic. That’s the view of liberals. The men running against her were not born when the culture of “sex, lies and lobbyists” took root under the Gold Dome. Their sin is that they and the women, too, perpetuated it.
● Economists gathered in Atlanta debate why so few of them saw this economic meltdown coming. Why? Because they were of follow-the-pack consensus, …
Don’t let Detroit be our future
Thinking Right’s weekend free-for-all. Pick a topic:
● Incoming Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed — he takes office Monday — has been handed a 300-page binder identifying problems the outgoing mayor leaves behind. Reed’s designated chief operating officer Peter Aman says, “The shortage of funds is a theme that runs through every department.” That’s a surprise. The binder should have included a Wall Street Journal interview with Mayor Dave Bing titled “Can Detroit Be Saved?” Clue: Yes, but downsized and with payroll costs brought under control. There, union employee benefit costs run 68 percent of base salaries. Keys to Mayor Kasim Reed’s success will be payroll costs. Unless he can gain control of future pension liabilities, he’ll simply be another in that long line of politicians who roll over exploding personnel costs to the next guy. The solution is to immediately close existing pension plans to new employees and start over with defined-contribution, as …
Rx reform compromise: Let it die
Thinking Right’s weekend free for all. Pick a topic:
● Al Gore and those who attended the Copenhagen conference on global warming should have read Atlanta-based Grier’s Almanac, continuously published since 1807 and once a bible of farmers: “No mathematician or astronomer can possibly cipher out the weather. When such predications are seen in almanacs, they should be regarded as near guesswork entitled to no confidence and as likely to fail as succeed. As with the influence of the Zodiac, however, we put forth the best guesswork for the benefit of those who believe in it.”
● A man robbing the SouthTrust Bank on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive says he needs the money to pay the mortgage. All who think that to be the actual reason the bank was robbed would be very disappointed to know the truth about Santa. Yes and the men who stole 30 cases of beer from a truck making a delivery to Kroger on Monroe Drive were merely thirsty. Ah, Christmas.
● Headline: “Crime …
Georgia’s GOP owns the culture it inherited
Thinking Right’s weekend free-for-all. Pick a topic:
● Had the Obama administration delivered on swine flu vaccine, it could claim credit for success in halting the spread of the illness. Across the nation, and in Georgia, it’s fading away, even though the vaccine never arrived for most. Democrats in Congress and the administration porked-out $789 billion in “stimulus,” and while the jobs saved or created are pure fiction, the administration will claim credit when the economy recovers, as it eventually will. Economic recovery, swine flu. Same-same.
● Linking Ga. 400 north of Atlanta to I-675 on the south by tunneling, and making it a toll road, is a cracker-jack idea. It’s one of the top toll projects the state Department of Transportation is pitching to private investors and road-construction companies. But watch how quickly opponents will inject race, a staple of Atlanta policy-making. Already, it’s cast that way because the tunnel would go under old, …
Continue reading Georgia’s GOP owns the culture it inherited »
Close teacher-student loophole
Thinking Right’s weekend free-for-all. Pick a topic:
● The property tax system is inherently unfair to somebody and sometimes — like now — to lots of people. The fairer way to do it would be to let the homeowner, as well as the assessor, declare a value. Then when the home’s sold, the homeowner would be liable, or get a rebate, on the total difference between selling price and the homeowner’s declarations, plus interest. Sign that contract and all disputes are over.
● But: A homeowner who paid more than $1 million for a house in 2002, puts it on the market for this year for $1.3 million, and objects because it was appraised for $857,500 in 2004, leaves me a tad unsympathetic. With property taxes, the unfairness exists in all directions.
● Good question posed by Christopher Johnson of Atlanta in the AJC’s Letter’s column: Why do teachers miss more work than others? Concludes Johnson: “There is no credible reason why teachers should use sick leave at the …
World peace first, global tax next
Recognizing the obvious — that taxes and regulations imposed by this government push American jobs overseas — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wishes to tax the world.
U.S. Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) has introduced legislation to levy a tax on all stock and related financial transactions, including futures contracts and options. The levy would start small, as they always do, at one quarter of one percent. As proposed, the levy would give Congress another $150 billion per year in spending money.
The problem, however, is that in the absence of a “global nation,” business takes flight from overly burdensome taxes and regulation. Even the Left has come to recognize that. Her solution, therefore, is to try to head business flight off by extending the tax abroad. ”I believe that the transaction tax still has a great deal of merit,” said Pelosi, but “the concern that many of us or others have had is that it will send…transactions overseas.” The remedy, therefore, is a …
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