Fresh Loaf

Holy shit! The new flyer by Mary Norwood is by far the dirtiest, most negative message to come out of this mayor’s race so far. In fact, it prompted me to wonder what the legal boundaries are for Constitutionally protected political speech.

As you can see, the headline reads:

Kasim Reed: Late paying his taxes, but wants to raise yours.

OK, it’s clear that Norwood’s not going to let this tax allegation drop, even though the AJC’s Jim Galloway offered a self-described “fact check on taxes” that thoroughly rebutted Norwood’s claims:

My AJC colleague Cameron McWhirter and other reporters spent weeks vetting the major mayoral candidates this summer.

In the course of that reporting, McWhirter checked Fulton County tax records. Reed met with him and provided detailed documentation about his financial holdings, real estate and tax payments. Reed owed no back taxes at the time of the meeting and owes none now.

The flyer provides a link to a story that WSB-TV ran after getting a tip from the Norwood campaign, but even that two-and-a-half-minute piece shows the unpaid tax claim to be a non-story.

Then there’s the other allegation: that Reed wants to raise taxes. I’ve interviewed Reed several times, sat in on numerous debates and forums and read all his campaign material — and yet I have no idea where this claim is coming from.

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From the AJC minutes ago:

Richardson, in a statement to the media, said he has been suffering from depression for the past two-and-a-half years since separating and subsequently divorcing his wife.

“While depression often seems to be resolved on occasion, when personal trials or tribulations arise, it flares back up,” Richardson said in the statement. “That is what occurred with me. My depression became so severe that I took substantial steps to do harm to myself and to take my own life. I am thankful that because of medical intervention that because of medical intervention I have instead been able to now receive help and support.”

And the reactions are already forthcoming. From the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention:

“We are encouraged by Speaker of the House Glenn Richardson’s willingness to speak out about his battle with depression.  We hope his courage will bring much needed awareness to this public health crisis,” said Christina Owens, area director for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, Metro Atlanta.
“Unfortunately, suicide and mental disorders such as depression are surrounded by stigma and misconceptions which prevent many people from seeking the help they  desperately need.”

And from Richardson himself, via the AJC’s Galloway:

“As you know, in an effort to protect my family, I have and will continue to have a practice that I do not discuss my personal and private life. However, in this situation, I feel compelled to speak out in order to possibly help others. For the past two and a half years, ever since my separation and divorce, I have struggled with the disease of depression. Depression is a disease which affects millions of people everyday in this country. Like most people who suffer from depression, I regularly see a physician and take prescription medications.”

(Photo by Joeff Davis)

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I hate to pile on the AJC with regard to their election coverage, because they’ve already taken plenty of lumps for cravenly weaseling out of endorsing candidates in the Atlanta city elections.

But, sweet Jesus, did they screw things up! As my colleague Thomas noted in an earlier post, someone over on Marietta Street just plumb forgot to add in the results from precincts in DeKalb County. (Granted, DeKalb, which is usually very facile with online data, has made it excruciatingly difficult to find said results.)

The snafu is most noticeable in the District 6 Council race, where the AJC online graphic suggests that Tad Christian made the runoff, rather than Liz Coyle:

While the DeKalb numbers didn’t alter who won or who survived in any other Council districts, they did change the percentages in all the city-wide races.

Without further ado, here’s a link to the corrected numbers (PDF).

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This is the pits. We’ve gotten word that Peach Buzz columnist Rich Eldredge quit the AJC last Friday after being told he was being reassigned. Here’s the internal memo that went out to the newsroom — somewhat prematurely, it would now seem:

Jennifer Brett joins the Opinion/Insight group as Peach Buzz columnist and blogger. Jennifer will report on the comings and goings of Atlanta’s celebs and VIPs. Jennifer will start Monday.

Rich Eldredge joins the Breaking News group, bringing a wealth of reporting experience and deep local connections. Rich will start Monday.

Oops, maybe not.

This is bad news for all concerned. I’ve argued before that a society/celebrity column has a place in a major daily newspaper and that Eldredge, who took over the gig full-time in 1996, was “easily the best Buzz-er the paper has had in the last 20 years.”

I can attest from experience that being bounced from a comfortable beat can be a jarring, horrendous experience for a journalist. On the other hand, it often goes with the territory. It’s a shame that the AJC management and Eldredge couldn’t work out a mutually agreeable solution. Instead, Peach Buzz loses his wry voice and the paper loses his “reporting experience and deep local connections.”

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For weeks, there have been whispers that the Atlanta Journal-Constitution wouldn’t offer endorsements for the upcoming Atlanta mayoral elections. If so, the move would’ve been a startling about-face from an editorial board made famous by legendary editor Ralph McGill.

Late Friday evening, the paper sent word. In a note to readers, the board said it was done with endorsements.

We have heard from readers — and we agree — that you don’t need us to tell you how to vote. What readers tell us they need is information on who the candidates are, what they have done and what they want to do in the new job.

While this sounds very forward-thinking and probably could be spun as “bold new thinking” in NewspaperLand, we think it’s hogwash.

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It hasn’t been a good couple of weeks for Atlanta Councilman H. Lamar Willis, who stands for reelection in a little more than three weeks. First, the AJC reports that he owes nearly $44,000 in back taxes. Then, Secretary of State Karen Handel trumpets the fact that Willis just got socked with a $25,000 court fine due to his squirrely scholarship foundation.

The most recent AJC story mentions, for good measure, that the state filed yet another lien against Willis in late August to recover about $1,500 in unpaid sales taxes relating to a car he bought four years ago.

So today Willis released a statement trying to put his many financial missteps into, um, context. Here’s a taste:

The [$25,000] fine is related to a failure to properly register as a charity as required by Georgia law. The Court specifically found that there was insufficient evidence that the Foundation had used any artifice or scheme to defraud contributors. The Court also found there was insufficient evidence that the moneys’ [sic] raised were misappropriated. In fact, not a single contributor was called as a witness by the Secretary of State in support of the allegations put forth in her complaint. I did not use any contributions for my personal benefit.

Certainly, it should come as a big relief that “there was insufficient evidence that the monies raised were misappropriated.” Doesn’t that make you breathe a little easier?

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Lamar Willis

Last Monday, the AJC reported that Atlanta Councilman H. Lamar Willis owed the state about $44,000 in back taxes and fines.

Today, Secretary of State Karen Handel sent out a notice alerting the press that Willis has been hit with a $25,000 fine by a Fulton Superior Court judge for misrepresenting his scholarship foundation as a nonprofit charity when it was not.

I’m guessing none of this is going to help Willis get reelected next month.

You may recall that, two years ago, an AJC investigation indicated a number of financial improprieties on Willis’ part, many of them centered on his foundation. If the article’s allegations were correct, Council observers mused at the time, then Willis could end up being charged with tax fraud by the feds.

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As the AJC reported this morning, city prosecutors and lawyers for the Atlanta Eagle were in Atlanta Municipal Court bright and early this morning to face off over a set of misdemeanor charges against eight of the gay bar’s employees and dancers stemming from a now-notorious Sept. 10 police raid.

Not much happened. A January trial date was set, but that’s unlikely to happen. Chances are, the case will be resolved before the Nov. 3 arraignment, when the city is scheduled to file formal charges.

There had been rumors that the city would simply dismiss all charges as a way to avoid prolonging the public-relations headache caused by the heavy-handed, commando-style raid. The fact that this didn’t happen suggests that police don’t want the added embarrassment of going away empty-handed, but instead are holding out for a plea bargain.

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Writing for his AJC blog Friday, Republican-turned-Libertarian Bob Barr touted the overwhelming success and popularity of Canada’s single-payer, government-run health insurance system.

Not intentionally, of course.

Barr was actually trying to assert how lousy Canada’s health care system is. To do this, he noted the number of Canadians he says have sought medical care in the U.S. since Barack Obama’s inauguration:

Since Barack Obama was inaugurated President just over seven months ago, some 17,500 Canadian [sic] have come to the U.S. to receive health care. [. . .] And still there are those in Washington extolling the benefit of a government-controlled, single-payor heath care system .  .  .  like they have in Canada.

17,500 people. That’s abooot enough Canadians to fill a hockey arena, eh?

But there are 33 million people in Canada. Bob Barr is telling us 99.91 percent of Canadians will not seek medical care in the U.S. this year. If anything, Barr’s number proves Canadians overwhelmingly prefer their own health care to American healthcare.

Keep in mind Canadians are wealthy and mobile. 75 percent of Canadians live within 100 miles of the U.S and 1.4 million Canadians made overnight visits to the United States in June alone.

With millions of Canadians traveling to the U.S. annually, 17,500 is a shockingly low number.

Some perspective: If a mere one-percent of Canadian visitors to the U.S. sprained an ankle, chipped a tooth, needed Flonase, had a heart attack, choked on a sandwich, or bought prescription sunglasses while visiting the U.S., the number of Canadians receiving medical care in the U.S. annually would be somewhere in the 150,000-200,000 range.

Canadians clearly prefer their system to ours.

Some more perspective: How many Americans travel abroad for medical care?

A Deloitte survey estimates 750,000 Americans traveled abroad in 2007 for medical care. By next year, Deloitte estimates 6,000,000 Americans will go overseas for medical treatment.

750,000 to 6,000,000 is a wide range. But using the Bob Barr Method of Measuring Health Care Satisfaction by Tallying Medical Tourism®, it means America’s 300,000,000ish citizens are 277 to 2,222 percent more likely to travel abroad for health care than Canadians are to travel to this U.S, and therefore much more dissatisfied than Canadians.

Bob Barr is an accidental socialist.

(Photo by Joeff Davis)

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Kasim Reed

Earlier this week, a memo by African-American political operative Aaron Turpeau calling on black leaders to join forces to ensure the election of a black mayor injected controversy into, well, the mayor’s race.

“The view that the times are too serious to stand on the sidelines is absolutely correct from the perspective of a black mayor at all cost. In fact, if a white candidate were to win the 2009 mayoral race, it would be just as significant in political terms as Maynard Jackson’s victory in 1973.”
— Turpeau, from his memo

“These tactics divide the very community that has made Atlanta emerge as a leading city in the South and dishonors the legacies of Mayors Maynard Jackson, Andrew Young, Ivan Allen, Sam Massell, and William Hartsfield.”
— Mayoral candidate Kasim Reed, in an Aug. 27 press statement

“I reject the analysis offered by Aaron Turpeau. He is absolutely wrong. I oppose anyone, of any race, who would distract us from what is important today.”
— Candidate Lisa Borders, in an Aug. 27 press statement

“Mary’s take on all of this is that she is who she is and people are going to judge her on her ideas, value and ability.”
— Roman Levit, campaign manager for candidate Mary Norwood, as quoted Aug. 27 by the AJC

(Photo by Joeff Davis)

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Over the weekend, Congressman Nathan Deal, R-Gainesville, became the second major GOP candidate for governor to be dinged by an AJC investigative piece.

The first, of course, was John Oxendine, when the paper revealed back in May that our state insurance commissioner had accepted $120,000 in arguably illegal campaign contributions from dummy PACs controlled by an insurance company CEO whom Oxendine had repeatedly appointed to an influential industry board.

That didn’t look too good for Oxendine, a politician who’s long been dogged by whispered allegations of influence-peddling.

Deal, on the other hand, is a former judge who’s enjoyed a pretty clean reputation. But his free ride may have ended Sunday. Here’s the lead from the AJC piece:

U.S. Rep. Nathan Deal, a Republican candidate for governor in 2010, personally intervened with Georgia leaders to preserve an obscure state program that earns his company nearly $300,000 a year.

The article goes on to describe how Deal seemed to be using his office and that of Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle — his fellow Gainesvillian — to intimidate state Revenue Commissioner Bart Graham from altering a program through which Deal’s auto-salvage business had enjoyed two decades’ worth of no-bid state patronage.

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1. AJC moving to metro Atlanta’s real downtown (The daily will be abandoning its intown digs for a new, OTP office. Yep.)

2. Lisa Borders up in latest mayoral poll (Though Councilwoman Mary Norwood still holds the lead, Council Prez Borders appears to be making progress. Someone’s pissed.)

3. Creative Loafing Inc. and its largest creditor will duke it out next week (The fate of the six-newspaper chain will be determined at an equity auction TOMORROW. Stay tuned.)

4. Threesome assault defense, ‘Ah jest wanted to watch’ (Total weirdness.)

5. Troy Davis deserves hearing, says Supremes (Somebody — the U.S. Supreme Court, no less! — is finally granting the longtime death row inmate a hearing on his innocence claims.)

(Photo by Joeff Davis)

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Some headline writer at the AJC had fun with today’s article about the impending CL bankruptcy auction. Before it was corrected, the headline read thusly:

Yes, that’s right — apparently, CL president Ben Eason and his two sisters will also be going on the auction block next week. Do we hear $1,000? Who’ll give me $1,500?

The online headline has since been changed to read:
“Creative Loafing chain up for auction,” which is more accurate, if less amusing.

Anyway, kidding aside, the article portrays the auction as a showdown between Eason and the company’s main creditor, Atalaya Capital Management, a New York-based investment fund. Those who’ve breathlessly followed this ongoing saga will recall that, last month, all parties agreed to end the bankruptcy proceedings with a so-called equity auction in which the newspaper chain would be sold to a qualified bidder who provides the best combination of money and a suitable management plan. The auction is scheduled for next Tuesday, Aug. 25, in a Tampa courtroom.

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Obviously, by leaving its Marietta Street headquarters and heading north, the AJC is leaving the City of Atlanta’s Downtown business district.

But before one declares the AJC is abandoning the city, ask yourself a question: what city?

Perimeter Mall area is actually more of a city center to more metro Atlantans than the area we actually call Downtown.

Take a look at Colliers Spectrum Cauble’s most recent report on Atlanta’s office market and you’ll see there are as many offices above the top-end of I-285 as below. The office submarket to which the AJC is moving, Central Perimeter, has more office space than either Downtown, Midtown or Buckhead. It’s been that way for a long time.

Commerce isn’t the only thing that defines a downtown, but it’s arguably the single largest factor. Like every other society in the developed world, the geography of our lives is determined by the geography of our livelihoods. People generally want to live close to where they work. People shop, go to school and recreate close to where they live. Remember, 90 percent of the people who call themselves Atlantans live in the suburbs.

The AJC’s new Perimeter office will be closer to where more Atlantans sleep, work, eat and poop than Marietta Street. Like it or not, Perimeter is the real center of town.

I’m not saying I approve of the AJC’s move. I’m suggesting we acknowledge a reality about our city: Downtown isn’t downtown.

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1. Hundreds of fish die in Piedmont Park’s Lake Clara Meer (Turns out it was more like thousands of fish that perished, reportedly from dissolved oxygen. Who knows what Sir Paul thought?)

2. AJC may abandon Marietta Street (Today we learned the paper’s new HQ will be in the action-packed ‘burbs come next June.)

3. Why I want a public option (Andisheh Nouraee clearly states why there needs to be an alternative to private health insurance.)

4. Columnist’s solution to gay sex in parks? Attack dogs. (Marietta Daily Journal resident curmudgeon enlightens us with his wonderful idea of how Marietta City Council should send gays “back to Atlanta where they belong.”)

5. Fulton, Forsyth ban chaining your dog (Beginning Sept. 4, dogs in Fulton County cannot be chained or tethered to a fixed object unless held by an attendant or by the owner.)

(Photo by Thomas Wheatley)

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White elephant

And it’s … Perimeter Center. Specifically, 223 Perimeter Center Parkway, which is, as far as I can tell, a fairly anonymous office building a stone’s throw from the plush Cox Enterprises headquarters.

Newsroom employees were alerted mere minutes ago to their impending relocation by an interoffice memo. The timeframe for the move is apparently “the end of the second quarter”— in other words, June-ish.

One intown AJCer we spoke to said being forced to commute outside the Perimeter will be offset by the fact that the new location is essentially across the street from the Perimeter Center MARTA station — and Perimeter Mall, with its busy food court.

I’m told editor Julie Julia Wallace was just seen strolling the newsroom to gauge the reaction of the staff. I’m further told most folks are just glad they won’t have to schlep up to Gwinnett.

Inconvenience aside, the real news here is that the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the daily newspaper for one of the country’s largest metropolitan areas, is abandoning downtown for the ‘burbs after 141 years. I’m told several other major dailies have done the same thing, but I can’t imagine how this could be a positive trend. But then, in the newspaper biz, very little is positive these days…

Oh, while I was writing this, the AJC posted its own article about the move.

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Atlanta Constitution, circa 1890

We’d heard this rumor a couple weeks back, but former AJC bidness columnist Maria Saporta had the inside contacts to nail it down first: Atlanta’s daily newspaper is considering relocating its offices out of downtown Atlanta for the first time in its 141-year history.

Saporta, now a contributor to the Atlanta Business Chronicle, got her mitts on an Aug. 3 internal memo written by new AJC publisher Michael Joseph:

“The cost of operating the downtown building is very high. Since moving production out to Gwinnett, we occupy less than 30 percent of the facility. As a result, the expense to operate the building is exorbitant. No decision has been made at this time, but we are looking at options including maintaining our current downtown location or relocating to a new, smaller site in the greater Atlanta area. I will keep you informed and share any updates on this issue.”

Keep in mind that the company owns — not leases — the building at 72 Marietta St. While Joseph doesn’t specifically rule out finding another building downtown, it’s tough to imagine the AJC could find suitable rental space that would be cheaper than property it already owns.

(Or did own. There’s another rumor swirling around that the Marietta Street building has already been sold, but that will have to remain unconfirmed for now.)

If the newspaper is to move outside downtown, there are a couple of obvious choices, both of which Saporta mentions and both of which are OTP — one OTPer than the other.

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Rep. Paul "Nutter" Broun

By all accounts, last night’s town hall meeting on health care reform in Clarkston, hosted by U.S. Rep. Hank Johnson, D-DeKalb, proceeded very amiably. (Presumably, young Tom Wheatley will be posting his account soon.)

According to the AJC:

Johnson set the tone for the evening when, from the stage, he said, “We are here to have an open and respectful dialogue.”

In the main auditorium that held 500 people, applause for health care reform clearly outweighed any boos or jeers. Some people attributed that to the demographic of this area.

Some people said there are numerous people in this area who live on the margins and need universal health care.

But among the 1,000 people in a nearby gymnasium where there was a close-circuit feed and among the more than 500 people milling outside, there were active, respectful debates.

Respectful. Civil. And clearly weighted in favor of health care reform. Keep in mind this was in suburban DeKalb.

Over in suburban Augusta, however, with U.S. Rep Paul Broun, R-Fruitloop, setting the tone, it was a different scene, according to the Augusta Chronicle:

Dr. Broun called the pending Democratic legislation an “abomination” and “a stinking rotten fish” and said Democratic efforts are the “steamroll of socialism.” He did offer up his own idea for reform, including a Medicare health savings account that would follow the beneficiaries, allowing them to spend what Medicare would have spent on them in their own way.

“America is mad as hell, and we’re not going to take it anymore,” said Joyce Jamison of Evans.

The crowds at the Columbia County Board of Education building — organizers had to add a second event to accommodate the hundreds of people initially turned away — egged him on.

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Apparently, not enough people are having sex with animals in Atlanta, so the AJC had to go with a wire story out of South Carolina.

I don’t usually read “The Vent,” but this reader offering caught my eye:

Yeah they replaced the ‘man having sex with a dog’ with ‘man having sex with a horse’. Something is very wrong…

I can’t tell if the reader is complaining about people’s F’ed up sexually proclivities or the AJC’s coverage choices, but sure enough, following its staff-written piece about a Jonesboro man who’s a little too fond of his dog, the AJC picked up a lovely wire story about a 50-year-old South Carolinian charged with — I kid you not — “buggery” after horse owner Barbara Kenley caught him molesting her mare. Here’s the kicker: The perp had pleaded guilty to the same charge last year after being caught forcing himself on the same damn horse!

Here are more details than you need:

“Police kept telling me it couldn’t be the same guy,” Kenley said. “I couldn’t believe that there were two guys going around doing this to the same horse.”

She spent several nights at the stables, which are about four miles from her home, but didn’t find anything. So she installed surveillance cameras, and when she reviewed the footage from July 19, she couldn’t believe she was seeing the same man doing the same thing to her horse.

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Number of years since Buford Dam began operations on the Chattahoochee River, creating Lake Lanier: 53

Number of years since Alabama filed the lawsuit that began the “tri-state water wars”: 19

Daily volume of water Atlanta withdraws from the Chattahoochee, in million of gallons: 180

Daily volume of water Gwinnett County withdraws from Lake Lanier, in million of gallons: 150

Duration of metro Atlanta’s most recent drought, in years: 3

Time between official end of drought and state’s lifting of water restrictions, in months: 2.4

Year that Atlanta’s water demands are projected to exceed river capacity: 2030

Daily per capita indoor water consumption in metro Atlanta, in gallons: 69

Daily per capita indoor water consumption for a water-conserving home, in gallons: 50

Sources: Atlanta Department of Watershed Management, Upper Chattahoochee Riverkeeper, AJC.com

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AJCers, meet the new boss

While we at CL are anxiously waiting to see who’ll own this newspaper by the end of next month, the folks at the AJC are now already on their third publisher this year.

Here’s the part of the release that went out minutes ago:

Cox Media Group announced today Michael Joseph is being promoted to publisher of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC), effective immediately. Joseph currently serves as the AJC’s general manager and president. He will continue reporting to Doug Franklin who will continue his role at Cox Media Group as executive vice president.

Actually, none of this should come as a surprise. You may recall that, back in January, AJC employees were told that their longtime publisher, John Mellott, had suddenly “retired” and that Franklin was now their new boss.

Franklin had already earned a reputation as Cox’s designated hatchet man, a downsizing specialist who’d overseen mass staff cuts at the company’s other two flagship papers, the Dayton Daily News and the Palm Beach Post. And he wasn’t coy about why he’d been sent to Atlanta. In his very first staff meeting, he told employees that the AJC was losing $1 million a week and he was there to stem the tide of red ink.

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The AJC reported yesterday that the city of Columbus just won a big lawsuit against Expedia over the question of whether the online travel agency was cheating the city out of a portion of the hotel occupancy tax. The Georgia Supreme Court ruled 4-3 that, yes, the company was doing just that.

This is very good news for Atlanta, which is currently suing 17 travel websites — Travelocity, Orbitz, Priceline.com, etc. — over just the same issue. Says Atlanta City Attorney Jerry Deloach:

“Atlanta is pleased with the Supreme Court’s decision and looks forward to recovering past due occupancy taxes in its pending case, as well as securing compliance with state and local tax laws going forward.”

The way online travel agencies make money is they buy up blocks of hotel rooms at a discount, then market those rooms to consumers at a higher rate.

The cities, however, are claiming that while the websites pay the local hotel tax — 7 percent in Atlanta — based on their discounted price, they charge the customers the tax based on the full retail price, and pocket the difference. The argument is that cities should be collecting taxes that correspond to the final rate that a customer pays to stay in a hotel room.

Look for Atlanta to announce a legal settlement in coming months.

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State Sen. Don Balfour, R-Snellville, opposes a proposed Gwinnett County tax hike, arguing that an economic downturn is not the time to raise taxes. But, during the recent General Assembly, he successfully pushed legislation to start billing Georgians next year for two nuclear reactors that won’t be completed until 2017.

“A tax increase … amounts to more financial strain on the taxpayer. People do not have the ability to pay more for government services right now.”
—    Balfour, from a June 11 AJC op-ed

“If we pay for the interest now, we’re saving money.”
—    Balfour, as quoted in the AJC Jan. 16, defending his plan to bill Georgia Power ratepayers upfront for the nukes

“The pre-payments would force current customers to subsidize future customers. … It is real money that they must pay years before it would otherwise be due.”
—    From the Feb. 6 report on Balfour’s bill by the Public Service Commission staff

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From “You Can Never Have Too Many Mothers” , today’s top story at Salon.com:

Cambodians need coupons, too, but it’s actually a different Julia Wallace.

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This is disgusting.

The AJC today accused R&B singer Erik Lockett of living a “bi-coastal lifestyle.”

I swear these vultures in the news media will do and say anything to sell papers these days.

Live and let live. That’s what I say. As long as he doesn’t try to recruit my kids to this bi-coastal stuff, it’s none of my business.

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