Archive for May, 2010

Thinking Right’s weekend free-for-all. Pick a topic:

● Ah, the free press. There’s nothing like it. Lay out the obtainable information that points to wrongdoing by public officials, and a free people will act — as they have in DeKalb County. Former school Superintendent Crawford Lewis, former chief operating officer Patricia Reid and her former husband and her secretary have been indicted on various corruption charges related to school contracts. Kudos to AJC reporters Megan Matteucci, Tim Eberly and others who have pursued the scandal for months. Next to murder and armed robbery, the most detestable crimes are white-collar and public trust violations.

● State Rep. Tom Graves of Ranger, one of the candidates in a runoff to succeed Nathan Deal in Congress, has collected more than $300,000 from Club for Growth members determined to elect fiscal conservatives to Congress. His opponent, State Sen. Lee Hawkins of Gainesville, collects $107,000 from dentists outside Georgia. If …

Continue reading Believe Obama or ‘lying eyes?’ »

Thinking Right’s weekend free-for-all. Pick a topic:

● Candidates opposing U.S. Reps. John Barrow of Savannah, Jim Marshall of Macon and Sanford Bishop of Albany, all potentially vulnerable Democrats, might want to invite President Barack Obama to campaign for the incumbent. So far the president’s 0-4 in the big races. One of those rejected, U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, always struck me as a pretty fair Democrat.

● One reason busy-body government grows and becomes less relevant is that politicians play to the cheap seats. Examples: The Columbus, Ohio, mayor bans city employees from official travel to Arizona. Seattle won’t do business with companies headquartered there. Los Angeles, Oakland and San Francisco have made similar cheap-seat gestures. Meanwhile, the president stands with a foreign head of state — the president of Mexico — on White House grounds to criticize legitimate domestic legislative actions of a sovereign state. This is the government that creeps …

Continue reading Beware busy-body government »

Thinking Right’s weekend free-for-all. Pick a topic:

● One of the General Assembly’s silliest flaps has to be the argument by the interest group AARP that the state is committing grievous financial harm to, they say, about a million Georgians by eliminating gifts from the public purse. About 242,900 of the gifted, given an average of $44.67, have no income tax liability or withholding whatsoever. Another 506,000 have zero tax liability. While they tend to be low-income, they’re not necessarily. This expenditure always made more political than economic sense. Gov. Sonny Perdue should sign the repeal.

● Elena Kagan is Barack Obama’s David Souter. Mystery candidate; thin paper trail. The fear is that, unlike George H.W. Bush, Obama knows. And when liberal commentators tell me not to worry that she’s “conservative” or centrist, at least on some issues, I worry. No liberal rushes to defend an appointee thought to be otherwise.

● Georgia’s finally on the right track in upgrading …

Continue reading Political giveaway needs to end »

Thinking Right’s weekend free-for-all. Pick a topic:

● Gov. Sonny Perdue is absolutely correct in declining to invite the Georgia Association of Educators, a union that represents 43,000 school personnel, to help design Georgia’s proposed reforms in its bid for federal funds under the $4 billion Race to the Top giveaway. The GAE is the state affiliate of the National Education Association union, which vehemently opposes merit pay, school vouchers and other conservative ideas. Its money and endorsements go to Democrats about 90 percent of the time. It’s never endorsed a Republican for president. When the GAE endorses a Republican, that’s a pretty good indicator to primary voters that on education reform, the endorsee is clueless.

● Please, don’t tell President Barack Obama how much former Gov. Roy Barnes is worth. He hates Those People. But wait! It’s OK. He’s a Democrat, a trial lawyer and he doesn’t hold a corporate job. (Both Barnes and Obama made in excess of $5 million …

Continue reading With Jane gone, who’ll we watch? »