Downsizing your carbon footprint
Saturday, June 14th, Woodruff Park
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AJC staff members are meeting as we post to hear about their future. Below is AJC Editor Julia Wallace’s note telling staff members to attend the meeting. Worries are running rampant within the staff, but we don’t yet know what Wallace and company are announcing. One thing we do know: Like almost all print media, the AJC is quaking over the migration of readers and advertising dollars to the Web. More on this story as we get new developments.
In the inflammatory ruckus about the Atlanta police killing of an
elderly woman, Kathryn Johnston, what’s overlooked is the backdrop to
the tragedy. Cops fired the fatal bullets on Nov. 21 in Johnston’s west
Atlanta home, but the real culprit is the 36-year-old "war on drugs."
That war is just as much a disaster, just as ill-conceived, just as
deadly to innocents and just as big a waste of tons of cash as George
Bush’s "war on terrorism."
Both "wars" fail because they target an enemy that isn’t there.
Terror is a tactic, not a nation or ideology that can be warred
against. In modern terms, terrorism is rooted in disaffected, oppressed
people. It won’t go away until conditions or perceptions change.
Continue reading "Kathryn Johnston’s real killer" at atlanta.creativeloafing.com È
In a July cover story, CL staff writer Scott Henry laid bare
the unfair consequences of a bill that became law last year in Georgia.
The legislation barred "sex offenders" from living within 1,000 feet of
a school bus stop, which in practical terms meant just about anywhere.
Scott profiled offenders who were suing the state, claiming the law
was unconstitutional. Among the plaintiffs were people such as Wendy
Whitaker, who’s listed as a sex offender because she got caught 10
years ago giving a blowjob to a high school classmate. Soon after
Scott’s story was published, a federal judge ruled that the bus-stop
restriction was unconstitutional. He put that part of the law on hold;
I’m betting the courts soon will strike it entirely.
Continue reading "Sex sells" at atlanta.creativeloafing.com È
Taking a sustained beating from bloggers over his comments about Family Day at the Capitol, Rep. Steve Davis, R-McDonough, went on the offensive Wednesday, throwing a couple of testy verbal punches himself … at the dignified, older and retired Sen. Ed Boshears, R-McDonough.
Speaking at a House State Institutions Committee hearing as a member of the Jekyll Island Authority, Boshears bemoaned two development proposals for the southern portion of Jekyll Island State Park. He said he was disappointed to see developers presenting their designs for "luxury" beachfront development on the island, a refuge for turtles and rare birds. As public land, the island was originally envisioned as a place for average Georgians, not as a resort for the affluent, Boshears said.
Light snow was falling on the steps of the Capitol in the frigid cold Wednesday morning as Emory Morsberger, chairman of the Georgia Brain Train Group, yelled to the crowd, "It’s a good day to be on a warm train!"
Activists, many of them brandishing signs supporting construction of a commuter rail line emanating out from Atlanta, roared their approval.
Geoffrey Boyce, a student at the University of Georgia, said he was there to present a petition in support of the Brain Train to the governor, and to lean on his legislators. "UGA students and Athens want and need the Brain Train," Boyce said.
Are you 18-24 years old? Want some free pizza?! Just click on the above banner to voice your opinion on some thangs; we’ll provide the food, you provide your thoughts.
There’s an interesting lesson in the difference between the influence of the New York Times and our hometown AJC. According to Radar Online, the Times did a 6,000-word story on a Clarkston soccer team comprised of refugee children from as far away as Afghanistan and Sudan. The Times writer now has a book deal and a $2 million offer for movie rights.
However, the AJC’s Sheila M. Poole was the first to cover the story in 2005. Her 928-word opus generated no book deals, no movie rights. Nothing.
Contacted by Radar and asked about the Times stealing her thunder, Poole said, "Isn’t that awful?" and declined to comment further.
All the little clutches of power splintered apart as soon as House Speaker Glenn Richardson dropped his gavel Tuesday, sending 156 representatives scurrying to their seats. There was a special visitor in the House chamber from Soperton, his presence dwarfing the miniature turf struggles of state politics with the suggestion of an epic contest just days away.
The mood in the chamber was reverential.
"There is something in the water and something in the soil because our much-coveted Vidalia onions are from down there," said Rep. Mark Burkhalter (pictured; left), R-Alpharetta, speaker pro tem of the House, by way of introduction.
Then he spilled it.
"When you watch the Super Bowl on Sunday it was not grass grown in Florida, it was grass grown in Georgia," he said.
Pam Davidson, a lobbyist who represents commercial trawler fishermen, fought a losing battle Tuesday to stop passage of House Bill 100, which in her view hurts the 100 Georgia shrimpers she represents.
Offshore trawlers pull 3 million to 4 million pounds of shrimp out of Georgia waters each year.
Spud Woodward, who helps oversee coastal resources for the state of Georgia, told the House Game, Fish and Parks Committee he’s convinced the bill, sponsored by State Rep. Cecily Hill, R-St. Marys, adequately balances the needs of recreational and commercial cast and trawler shrimping.
Davidson wasn’t buying it.
The bill, she said, would allow recreational shrimpers with modified nets greater access to immature shrimp in the state’s sounds, where commercial trawlers are not allowed. She’s worried about the environmental impact of those recreational fishermen, who could deplete numbers of young shrimp "before they wander out to sea." She’s also worried that some of those nonprofessional shrimpers will harvest shrimp and sell them, undercutting what Davidson calls a "struggling but thriving $15-$20 million-a-year industry" in Georgia.
Gov. Sonny Perdue announced Monday that a bill has been introduced that will completely eliminate state income tax on retirement income of Georgians 65 and older by the year 2013.
State representatives Rich Golick and Larry O’Neal will sponsor the bill in the Legislature. Once completely phased in, the Senior Income Tax Credit will result in $142 million a year in tax relief and adds to the more than $2 billion in tax relief that the governor has delivered since taking office in 2003, according to a press release issued Monday by the governor’s office.
Gov. Sonny Perdue announced Monday that he will testify before the U.S.
Senate Finance Committee about the State Children’s Health Insurance
Program on Thursday, Feb. 1, in Washington, D.C. Perdue will represent
the 17 states that comprise the Southern Governor’s Association, which
he chaired in 2005.
"The State Children’s Health Insurance Program, known as PeachCare in
Georgia, is an important partnership between the federal government and
state government that insures over 270,000 children in Georgia alone,"
Perdue said in a press release issued Monday by the governor’s office.
"We stand ready to meet our commitment, and I will use this opportunity
to ask Congress to continue to fund this important program."
The State Children’s Health Insurance Program is a federal program
created by the Balanced Budget Act of 1997. Georgia is one of 17 states
projected to experience a federal-funding shortfall while more than $1
billion remains unspent in the federal SCHIP program. This is enough
funding to cover the federal-funding shortfalls in all 17 states.
Rep. Jill Chambers, R-Atlanta, hopes to pass her House Bill 91, which would give the Legislature greater access up front to how money is being absorbed and allocated by the executive branch.
As it stands, the joint appropriations committee gets a bulk report of department finances. Chambers’ bill would require that each agency submit to lawmakers a detailed statement of all tax revenues and operating revenues received by the agency during the immediately preceding fiscal year, and also a statement of total expenditures. The bill also demands from each agency an itemized list of contracts.
Chambers, who is chair of the MARTOC Committee that oversees MARTA’s finances, said she learned about the necessity of more detailed itemization from her work on the MARTOC Committee, and now wants to apply that to the broader legislative budgeting process.
Georgia Democrats on Saturday elected Labor Commissioner Michael Thurmond (pictured here with U.S. Rep. Jim Marshall) to serve as the party’s first vice chairman. Thurmond, who defeated Sen. Doug Stoner, said, "I come to re-affirm one fact. The Georgia Democratic Party is not dead and it’s not dying either. … Sorrow lasts just for the night and joy comes in the morning."
It was old-timey Democratic Party politics.
You had Jane Kidd in the front of a union hall getting a bear hug from Tommy Irvin of all people: agriculture commissioner and icon of the old Democratic Party of Georgia. In the back of the hall and surrounded by a small band of supporters you had insurgent candidate Mike Berlon of Gwinnett County.
Up at the podium was Bobby Kahn announcing that the delegates were going to have to recast their votes for state party chair. Again.
The first vote count had Berlon at 100 to Kidd’s 84. The other three contenders for the office trailed in a pack, with inside-the-Perimeter candidate Hattie Dorsey receiving 23 votes, evangelical Jim Nelson getting 19 votes and hinterlander Carol Jackson receiving 15.
"We have no clear majority," declared the outgoing party chair.
Freshman state Rep. Kevin Levitas, D-Atlanta, says he isn’t outright opposed to Sen. Eric Johnson’s, R-Savannah, Senate Bill 10 that would enable the parents of special-needs students to use vouchers to enroll their children in private schools.
But Levitas believes the bill is on a fast track to passage, and that worries him.
"The bill has already been favorably reported out of the full committee," Levitas says. "If it’s passed in the Senate and comes to the House this week, that’s quick."
Too quick, by Levitas’ estimation.
"This is a complicated issue," the state representative says. "I don’t think we can possibly vote on this bill in such a short time frame. We’re a deliberative body for a reason. My hope is that we would take the time to give this bill its full assessment. Let’s slow it down. Let’s hear from everybody."
When he ran as a candidate last year, Levitas said education was his top priority. As he has considered Johnson’s bill in anticipation of its appearance in the House, the new legislator says he recently attended a Tucker Parent Council event, along with Sen. Steve Henson, D-Tucker.
"Reaction to special-needs vouchers was mixed," Levitas says. "There were parents who said, "÷I support vouchers.’ There were parents of special-needs children who don’t support it."
Seeing the ragtag forces on street corners back in early 2003, there was the sense that the antiwar/anti-empire movement was doomed. There was that one big blast of a protest in New York City right on the eve of the Iraq invasion, reinforced by protests around the world, but after that, with a few exceptions, those who knew Iraq was a mistake stayed out of no man’s land, stymied by the post-9/11 blues and the useless exercise of shaking signs at passing cars while American men and women in uniform were already running across the sand between Kuwait and Baghdad. The streets were largely empty, and the sense was so many would-be Cesar Chavez/Che Guevara/Tom Hayden/Amiri Barakas in the making were slumped in front of computer screens somewhere with saliva dribbling onto their shirt fronts, leaving the ground to a handful of radicals and resisters who’d already been beaten up 40 years ago.
Rep. Rich Golick, R-Smyrna, does not favor acting now with state legislation to pay for a potential federal government shortfall of funds for PeachCare.
The assistant House floor leader for Gov. Sonny Perdue says the federal government owes Georgia $130 million t
