Fresh Loaf

Within heartbeats of the Georgia Supreme Court’s 4-3 decision releasing Genarlow Wilson, the statements from officials began hitting the in-boxes.

Thurbert Baker, the state’s lackluster attorney general, quickly whipped out this CYA missive: “I have received and reviewed the decision by the Georgia Supreme Court in this matter, and I respectfully acknowledge the Court’s authority to grant the relief that they have crafted in this case. As the Supreme Court found, the habeas court’s order resentencing Mr. Wilson, however well-meaning, was unauthorized under Georgia law. It was for this reason that I appealed, in order to insure a fair and consistent application of the law not just to Mr. Wilson, but to others similarly situated. I hope the Court’s decision will also put an end to this issue as a matter of contention in the hearts and minds of concerned Georgians and others across the country who have taken such a strong interest in this case.”

Interpreted, that’s a big “Oh, shit!” The first bit of obfuscation basically says the Supreme Court has the authority to be the Supreme Court.

After a judge had ruled that Wilson’s 10-year sentence — recall that while undoubtedly behaving badly, this was a case of teen consensual sex — was cruel and unusual punishment. That ruling was self-evident, but Baker, a black Democrat who does little to protect Georgians but will do anything to appease the neo-Confederate Republicans, quickly appealed the ruling. Wilson spent more time in jail.

The next news release came from Senate President Pro Tempore Eric Johnson, one of those aforementioned Republican neo-Confederates who long for the days of white sheets and all-white juries.

(more…)

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David Horowitz is a racist and wannabe fascist (I use that word because he’s so fond of it) of the first magnitude. The last time I saw him at Emory, in 2004, student Jeff Jackson tried to ask a polite if pointed question during a Q&A period about the Iraq war. After all, Horowitz had earlier gurgled: “It’s a wonderful war. What’s not to like about this war?” Jackson’s question was more than appropriate, and he had waited in a long line to address Horowitz.

However, goons from the campus Republicans didn’t want Jackson to speak. One of the thugs muscled him from the microphone and threatened Jackson with a beating. Horowitz beamed benevolently at this exercise in neo-facism by a reincarnation of Hitler Youth.

Horowitz had spoken previously at Emory, and his race-baiting so enraged blacks on campus that when he returned as a GOP guest in 2004, the student government declined to fund his visit, as was its right and obligation. Horowitz dissembled that he was being “banned.” Not so, he was welcome to speak, and did, but not on someone else’s dime.

The strategy is obvious — and can be found with demagogues throughout history: Claim you’re a victim of “facists” and people may not notice that you’re the real goose-stepper.

(more…)

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The ongoing Grady Memorial Hospital crisis is bringing to the surface many complaints about Emory’s medical school role. In the past, Emory’s response to internal criticism has been to bully and crush the critics, and then try to keep the records sealed.

The latest on the blogosphere is about the persecution of Kevin Kuritzky, who was 41 days from graduation when Emory expelled him from the medical school. Kuritzky claims Emory was retaliating for his blowing the whistle on patient safety — or the lack thereof.

If any of that seems familiar, CL had the story in February 2006.

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In addition to the e-mail Mayor Shirley Franklin sent us responding to my Metropolis column on the nontransparency of her travel records, she has posted another response at http://www.atlantaga.gov/media/medadv_msfethics_092707.aspx.

It reads:

Mayor Franklin provided travel information and a written response to Creative Loafing columnist John Sugg, nearly three weeks ago. While the Mayor responded openly and quickly to Mr. Sugg his column did not reflect that so an updated response is provided here.

“I have requested the City of Atlanta Ethics Officer provide an opinion on the issue. My request was made in writing via email three weeks ago after Ms. Looney and I exchanged emails prior to the Creative Loafing column but following a Creative Loafing Open Records Requests made to Janice Davis, Chief Financial Officer for my travel records. There is ambiguity in the Ethics Code according to written communication I have received from Looney. At her suggestion I requested a formal review and opinion. I await her and the Board’s finding , recommendation and possibly changes to the Code to reflect the clarity that is missing now. Creative Loafing knows all this and received my statement three weeks ago.

I haven’t read the Creative Loafing column and I may not but I suspect Mr. Sugg didn’t like my answer. As someone who has promoted transparency and strong ethical practices for myself and city government I am no stranger to the debate that surrounds developing best practices. Like any other person Mr. Anderson has a right to object or complain. I retain my right to express my opinion as well. It is much easier to complain than to develop and implement progressive, fair and transparent policies than it is to complain. Given the specific circumstances in this case I am not sure Mr. Anderson’s complaint is well founded but instead seems to be a political move since he knows that I have previously requested clarification or recommendations from the Ethics Officer.”

Shirley Franklin

Mayor

I’ll leave it to readers to decipher the message. Did she read my column or not? This missive says she didn’t. The one we received implies she did.

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A year ago, I wrote about a bunch of losers called Aryan Nations – once one of the leaders in the violent white supremacist movement. The report noted that Aryan Nations had split, had been evicted from its Idaho HQ, and had lost several of its fuhrers, including founder Richard Girnt Butler.

Now that faction of Aryan Nations has gone to the Great Reich in the Sky. The group’s leader, Jonathan Williams, and one of his lieutenants, Laslo Patterson, have disbanded the outfit. The group’s website is gone. So are the swastikas and Klan robes, according to Williams.

Williams and Patterson have now formed the International United Church of YHWH
(Yahweh) in Alabama. It’s a “Christian Identity” church — a bizarre creed that teaches Europeans (mainly the Brits) are the true Israelites, Jews descend from a union of Eve and Satan, and non-whites are subhuman. Despite those beliefs, Williams told an Alabama paper that his church is not bigoted.

Oh.

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Atlanta officials have requested a clarification of city ethics policies regarding Mayor Shirley Franklin’s frequent traveling. The clarification request follows this week’s disclosure in my Metropolis column that Franklin frequently takes free travel and lodging from groups other than the city without filing disclosures apparently mandated by the city ethics code.

The city’s ethics board discussed the issue Sept. 27, but made no determination. Then, Franklin sent a blistering letter to us accusing me of being “a bully.”

As CL reported, city officials and employees are banned from taking trips and lodging from groups deemed “prohibited” under the ethics code. The mayor has claimed that the code is ambiguous, and has failed to file a single disclosure of gifts involving trips she has taken in 2005, 2006 and 2007.

The code, however, doesn’t appear to be ambiguous on key points. Among the items that qualify a group as “prohibited” is employing “registered lobbyists.” The Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, which has five registered lobbyists for local matters, has paid for Franklin trips, including one earlier this year to several Asian nations. There are no exceptions in the city code that would have allowed Franklin to avoid disclosing the gifts from the chamber — indeed, the city’s ethics board has declared another business association, Central Atlanta Progress, “prohibited.” In an e-mail, Franklin stated that “no” prohibited source has ever paid for a trip. Franklin now claims “ambiguity” clouds the issue of what groups are “prohibited.”

Franklin ripped off an e-mail responding to CL’s report on her travel records.

Here’s the mayor’s return salvo:

(more…)

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Here’s the short form of the Grady Memorial Hospital story: It’s a public hospital whose financial problems have long been ignored by the leaders in the city and the state. It’s also like a buffalo being attacked by wolves — all of the predators want to get a good bite off of the wounded beast.

One of the problems has been leadership — the current politically appointed board isn’t ideal, but it also isn’t the primary reason for Grady’s woes. So, a group of wealthy, mostly white power-hitters — the Metro Atlanta Chamber — proposes solving the problems by shifting control to a private nonprofit corporation. The state’s laws and cases involving such entities are somewhat murky. It’s likely the current Grady board, a public entity, would stay around as a toothless landlord, and the new nonprofit would submit documents to the board, which would be subject to open-records laws. It’s likely, but not completely certain, the nonprofit would be at least partially transparent. Additional joint ventures and subsidiary companies probably would exist outside the sunshine of public inspection.

Considering that this is Atlanta, that scenario should be worrisome.

Now we come to the public forum that wasn’t. WSB-TV Channel 2 — the television arm of the media Coxopoly — hosted a “town hall” meeting on Grady Thursday night (Sept. 13). But as reporters for the upstart Atlanta Progressive News found out, Cox had a peculiar view of who lives in its town.

The event was invitation-only. Community activists had every reason to suspect that only certain opinions would be aired. “It’s a town hall meeting, but the town isn’t invited!” Terence Courtney, director of Atlanta Jobs with Justice, told the media activists with APN. “They’re running from us. We want a [true] public process.”

No surprises there. The Chamber deserves a lot of credit for developing a plan after the community’s and state’s political leadership failed for decades to remedy the hospital’s problems. But the Chamber’s Grady committee had no poor people, no rank-and-file hospital employees — none of the people who direly need to see Grady saved. The Grady activists have a point when they argue that, at best, the Chamber’s approach to the hospital is paternalistic.

Cox is even less likely than the Chamber to mingle with the masses. And those masses — well, about 50 people — demonstrated in front of WSB, voicing their displeasure at being excluded from the discussion.

Meanwhile, Grady lingers on life support. And what could pull the plug is the lack of real public input — something neither the Chamber nor Cox seem much interested in.

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There’s an old cliche that a Democrat governor will promise (and sometimes deliver) to leave the citizens of a state better off than when he took office. A Republican governor measures success by whether he is better off. Certainly Gov. Sonny Perdue, with his Florida land deal, plays to type.

And it appears poor Georgians are feeling the pain. Census Bureau information released Tuesday shows 13.5 percent of Georgians were poor, compared to 12.4 percent in the 2003-2004 period, and 12.5 percent in the 2000-2001 period, when the state was in a recession (and when a Democrat was governor).

Alan Essig, executive director of the liberal-leaning Georgia Budget and Policy Institute, points to even more discouraging news from the Census. About 17.6 percent of Georgians did not have health insurance coverage in the 2004-2006 period, giving Georgia the 10th highest uninsured rate in the country, according to Essig’s review of the Census data. Nationwide, the number of uninsured was 47 million (15.3 percent), up 2.2 million since 2005. An additional 600,000 children nationwide were uninsured in 2006 compared to 2005.

“Despite American families’ continued struggle to afford health insurance for their children, some of Georgia’s representatives in Congress continue to oppose legislation that would extend health insurance to millions of uninsured children across the country,” Essig said in a statement. “As they return to Washington, Georgia’s leaders should rethink that position,” said Essig.

The Census Bureau data shows that 470,000 of Georgia’s children were living in poverty in 2006. The 2006 related child poverty rate was 19.7 percent, up from 15.7 percent in 2001. Child poverty was unchanged as compared to last year.

Essig said it is particularly disappointing that five years after the recession, child poverty rates in Georgia are not improving.

In 2006, median household income in our state stood at $46,832. This was not a statistically significant change from the 2005 level, but was still $1,566 below the 2001 level in inflation-adjusted terms. This shows that despite five years of recovery since the 2001 recession, many low- and moderate-income households have not regained ground lost during the downturn.

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OK, I’m biased. I’m Sugg.

But Monday, I hinted that the news about Attorney General Alberto Gonzales finally being run out of office might have been timed to coincide with Michael Vick’s crash and burn in a Richmond, Va., federal court. I wrote: “I’ll bet … the cable and network news devote much more time to the dog abuser than they do to the Constitution abuser.” My only error was not including the AJC in the list.

In the Tuesday paper, Vick rated about twice as much space on the front page as did Gonzo. Inside, the Constitution abuser got about five-sixths of a page, while the dog abuser got more than 1.5 pages — plus about two-thirds of a page in the Sports section.

Yep, ol’ Rove knew how to time this one.

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It must be a coincidence. I’m sure the Bush regime wouldn’t try to time the announcement of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ resignation with today’s circus in Virginia involving Michael Vick pleading guilty to charges stemming from dogfighting. Nah, Bush wouldn’t be so craven, would he?

An old spin tactic is to announce bad news at a time when the media are distracted. Bush has been good at that. Gonzo, who likely has committed perjury more than once in recent months, and who has been unrelenting in his attacks on Americans’ constitutional liberties, finally has been run out of office. His likely replacement, Michael Chertoff, will be worse.

But Vick rides to the rescue, press-wise, by falling on his sword in Richmond today. The suspended NFL star rightly deserves every bit of punishment he gets, and much more. But I’ll bet (or as Vick does, I’ll give some money to associates who will bet) the cable and network news devote much more time to the dog abuser than they do to the Constitution abuser.

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So, should Georgia gun dealers be the targets of sting operations and lawsuits by New York City? Lawyers working for the Big Apple’s mayor (and possible independent presidential wannabe), Michael Bloomberg, have sued 27 gun shops in other states — primarily Georgia, South Carolina and Virginia. For the full background, see the article I wrote last month.

The gun dealers are fighting back on two fronts:

• Challenging whether New York has “jurisdiction” to pursue civil lawsuits against legitimate businesses in other states.
• And filing their own countersuits charging, among other things, that Bloomberg and his aides have committed libel and slander. One Smyrna store, Adventure Outdoors, is seeking $400 million in damages from New York.

Bloomberg won one round this week. A federal judge in Brooklyn, Jack Weinstein, ruled that “there are a significant number of traces linked to criminal investigations in New York that are attributable to the defendants’ conduct; and that defendants’ distribution practices have a substantial effect on crime in New York.” In English, what the judge was saying was that the original sale of guns used in crimes could be traced to gun dealers. The judge stated that it could be inferred that the original sales were illegal.

(more…)

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Every Georgian has anted about $1,470 to support the war in Iraq. Or, as the group Georgians Against Escalation in Iraq has calculated, Georgia’s share of the $456 billion war cost is $13.2 billion. There are about 9 million Georgia residents.

The anti-war group, supported by MoveOn.org, released its report today.

Other than the monetary cost, more than 100 Georgia military personnel have been killed in Iraq.

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MAYOR FRANKLIN AND CHIEF PENNINGTON AT PUBLIC SAFETY MEETING SATURDAY: “Omigod, ‘Reno 911!’ last night was a trip!”

(Photo by Joeff Davis)

It was supposed to be Mayor Shirley Franklin’s launch of a high-spirited public relations campaign on behalf of her under-fire police chief, Richard Pennington. But Saturday’s community forum at the Georgia Power HQ auditorium was decidedly ho-hum.

Citizens wanted to know why some police districts were huge and under-staffed; others wanted to know why cops from their district were temporarily assigned to the overly large districts. The mayor and chief offered no insights as to why a crime wave is sweeping the city, and Pennington shouldered no responsibility for the department’s management and morale problems.

Franklin said it was hard to recruit officers, and touted four years of raises she’s given to cops. Police union leader Scott Kreher said after the meeting that until this year those were only cost of living increases, and that officers’ “step increases” – the way police financially advance during their careers — have been frozen. However, the city in June did give the cops a 3.5 percent increase plus a 2 percent cost of living raise. Even Kreher in a note to his officers conceded this was one of the biggest increases in recent history.

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In 1968, I returned to the University of Florida after a gig with the Navy. While in the military, I’d become decidedly anti-war, and subsequently helped lead the peace movement at UF. But I also was thinking about how to break into journalism when I graduated. So, I went to the student-run Florida Alligator and told one of the editors that if he didn’t hire me, I was going to bring 200 chanting hippie demonstrators and have a sit-in in the office.

I was joking, sort of, but the editor at first took me seriously. Then he smiled, “Well, that would solve the problem of what to put on the front page tomorrow.”

That editor was David Osier, another veteran (he was Army), which gave us some common ground for dialogue even if, at first, he believed in the war. Ultimately, he came to agree with me on the Vietnam War, but beat me into accepting his position on many other issues.

Dave was my first mentor in this screwed-up profession. He thought I wrote passable opinion columns, and put me in charge of the editorial pages — with the caveat that I dig up a conservative columnist to balance my rants.

We both graduated in 1970. He went to the Palm Beach Post, and I moved to Atlanta to help organize national anti-war marches — and to eat, I worked as assistant sports editor in a two-man sports department at the Marietta Daily Journal. I earned the staggering sum of $115 a week (while paying for my own gas covering high school football all over North Georgia). One day Dave called and told me, “You gotta come down here to the Post. We’re raising hell.” Close to starvation, it sounded good to me.

For a few years after Cox Newspapers acquired the West Palm Beach paper in the late 1960s, the company dumped money into building the publication. Two of the nation’s star editors — Gregory Favre, who would retire as top editor at McClatchy Newspapers, and David Lawrence, who eventually became publisher of the Miami Herald — turned the Post from a sleepy little rag into the hottest paper in Florida. Dave and I reported to John Schaffner, who would later become managing editor at the Atlanta Constitution and who recently retired as editor of the Story, which is owned by Creative Loafing founder Debbie Eason. Small world.

After I worked for the Post for a few years, I went to Europe as a freelancer, returning to Florida to work for the Miami Herald. Dave called me while I was on a special assignment in Columbus, and told me about his latest job at the Atlanta Constitution. That was before the days when the Atlanta newspapers had acquired their current description (along with so many other American newspapers) of “formerly great.” In the late 1970s, the Constitution and Journal, despite common ownership, were fiercely competitive. Competition always makes better newspapers. I followed Dave again, and worked as the news editor at the Constitution — it was a great time with the paper enjoying a tight relationship with Jimmy Carter’s White House. Dave eventually became an assistant managing editor.

Dave — David Rollan Osier, 62 — died Aug. 5 of cancer. (more…)

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