Archive for October, 2010

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

● President Obama says he’s not on the ballot but his agenda is. True. Vote accordingly, top to bottom.

● A recent poll suggests that a third of potential voters in congressional elections are undecided. Nobody paying the slightest attention to this Congress and to the direction it’s taking this country could be undecided. Undecideds are those who wish to conceal their preferences.

● Critics contend that gubernatorial candidate Nathan Deal has produced too little legislation in Congress. Good. Democrats controlled Congress during most of his time there. Health care. Housing. The economy. Energy. It’s hard to think of a situation Congress hasn’t made or couldn’t make worse.

● The archaic practices difficult to reform are those that serve the interests of politicians. Case in point: Gwinnett County, where Commissioner Kevin Kenerly was indicted on a charge of perjury in a county land-purchase deal. Former …

Continue reading Tuesday can’t come soon enough »

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

● The federal government is borrowing 37 cents of every dollar from the unborn to fund a streetcar project in Atlanta that’s likely to go broke long before the taxes get levied to repay the Chinese for carrying our debt. Surprisingly, and quite commendably, the Macon newspaper, The Telegraph, calls a federal subsidy of $509 per passenger for air service there “cruel and unusual punishment on the nation’s taxpayers” and asks that it be ended. We really must discipline ourselves to stop asking the feds to tax the unborn to pony up for things we wouldn’t finance with our own money.

● A marvelous program that gets too little of the positive attention it deserves is the Georgia Tax Credit Scholarship Program. It offers tax credits to those whose financial gifts enable children in public school to transfer to private and parochial alternatives. The sum is fixed at $50 million per year statewide. But the donations …

Continue reading Pelosi should keep eye on Georgia »

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

● New governors, mayors and school boards should follow the Braves’ example. They hired a good, competent manager in Bobby Cox and left him alone to do his job when the team was both up and down. The result was a team with class and a culture that does Atlanta proud.

● What do Cobb County’s two mules, bought and maintained at a cost of $78,000, have in common with the Obama administration’s $862 billion stimulus debacle? Both are examples of the mess that results when government ventures off on a lark. Cobb paid $7,800 for Jack and Jill, spent almost $70,000 on upkeep, and then sold them for $4,200. Government is really good at planning and building roads. On mules, job creation, economic stimulus and social programs its expertise diminishes quickly.

● I feel the same way about those who steal from the public purse as Barack Obama does those who acquire wealth on Wall Street. It is with pure glee, therefore, …

Continue reading Officials can learn from Bobby »

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

● Forty-seven House Democrats — including three vulnerable Georgians — broke ranks with Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Barack Obama to support extension of all the Bush-era tax cuts that are set to expire at the end of this year. The three Georgians — U.S. Reps. Jim Marshall of Macon, Sanford Bishop of Albany and John Barrow of Savannah — say they support extension for all, even for those who pay taxes on more than $250,000 per year. Yet when it came time to vote on whether to extend the cuts before adjourning last week or to push the vote off until after the election, only Marshall voted to keep the House in session. Had Barrow and Bishop voted the other way, the House would have remained in session to extend the tax cuts. The vote was 210-209 to adjourn without action.

● Announcement. There’ll be a called meeting of all men older than 60 at the McDonald’s on South Cobb Drive to discuss behaviors that …

Continue reading State races go national this year »