Here’s a sentence I didn’t enjoy reading:
Of the 48 U.S. counties with the highest prevalence rates for HIV infections, 25 of them are in Georgia,
It’s from a Los Angeles Times story about an HIV/AIDS report released today by the National Minority Quality Forum.
I’ve been trying to read the report for several hours, but NMQF’s web site is overloaded.
I’ve always been struck by the similarities between Georgia and South Korea. Always.
Georgia once hosted the Summer Olympics. So did South Korea.
Georgia is resentful of the north. So is South Korea.
Georgia has several excellent Korean restaurants. So does South Korea.
So it was no surprise when I learned today Georgia and South Korea have a nearly identical HDI score.
The HDI, or Human Development Index, is used by the United Nations Development Program to quantify a country’s development by combining statistics on life expectancy, literacy, education levels, and GDP.
The super blog The Map Scroll applied the UN’s HDI’s criteria to each of the 50 U.S. states.
The results are interesting.
Some U.S. states rank as high as perennial quality-of-life superstars Australia, Sweden and the Netherlands. They’re the dark green states.
Other states, mainly clustered in Appalachia and the former Confederacy, are no better-off than Kazakhstan. They’re the light green states.
Georgia is somewhere in the middle — nearly tied with South Korea.
Its makes sense to me.
Not too long ago, Georgia was a poverty-stricken shithole. The state’s HDI has risen above its neighbors thanks to a solid half-century of rapid economic growth. We’re not quite Maryland yet, but we ain’t Mississippi.
In that sense, Georgia is also like South Korea. 50 years ago, South Korea was a war-beaten dirtpile. Today it boasts the second most advanced economy in Asia. It ain’t quite France, nor is it Burma.
Incidentally, if you eyeball the shading on the above map you might notice its resemblance to another map: the red-n-blue U.S. presidential electoral college map.
Almost without exception, the states with the highest HDIs (the darkest green states on the HDI map) voted for Obama.
And the states with the lowest HDIs (the lightest green states on the HDI map) voted McCain.
The only exception I notice is Alaska, home state of McCain’s running mate.
(Hat-tip to Richard Florida, who is subbing for Andrew Sullivan this week.)
Seven spots, to be exact — the largest drop of all the states, says CQ Press. New Hampshire is the safest state in the nation. Nevada, a sizzling den of crime and chaos, is the least safe. (How much you want to bet at least one journalist uses the “when crime happens in Vegas, it stays in Vegas” line?)
To view CQ Press’ study, visit its site. A PDF of state rankings is available here. A PDF of the survey’s methodology is here.
(Photo by Joeff Davis)
Huffington Post reported this afternoon that former Veep Al Gore will campaign here Sunday for Democratic Senate candidate Jim Martin. I’m sure Young Thomas will be getting us more details later.
Meanwhile, here are details on former President Bill Clinton’s visit tomorrow (or today by the time you read this) at Clark Atlanta University on behalf of Martin. For those keeping score, John McCain and Mike Huckabee have campaigned for Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss, while this gun-totin’ man joins him Wednesday and investment banker Mitt Romney stumps for him Friday.
The AJC’s reporting that both candidates aren’t planning to participate in a debate the Atlanta Press Club was to tape on Sunday — Martin because he’ll be campaigning with Gore, Chambliss apparently just because he’s a big ol’ scared-y-pants.
My friend, former Scene & Herd Recurring Character Matt Gove, reports he’s been waiting in line for more than 90 minutes this afternoon to vote at the Fulton County government building downtown.
From the look of the line, he says he expects to be in line for another hour or so.
Our democracy is prepared for all challenges — except voter participation.
UPDATE: Mr. Gove says he waited in line for three-and-a-half hours before he was able to vote.
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3. DA’s flawed Troy Davis argument By Mara Shalhoup
4. Bishop’s Eddie Long commits sin of pride on Real Housewives of ATL By Andisheh Nouraee
5. Freaks and veeps: The L5P Halloween Parade By Andisheh Nouraee
Since Russia invaded neighboring Georgia two weeks ago, Atlanta’s been the target of several cyberattacks from unidentified hackers who are allegedly operating out of the former Evil Empire.
There was this barrage against Tulip Systems Inc., an Atlanta-based hosting company whose CEO, Nino Doijashvili, was born in that other Georgia. Tulip offered to host Georgia President Mikhail Saakashvili’s website after it was overwhelmed by hackers traced to Moscow and St. Petersburg (that’s Russia, not Florida.) According to a domain lookup, the company is still hosting the site.
Tulip Systems wasn’t the only Atlanta outfit to face a cyberattack. The Atlanta Regional Commission’s website was attacked on Friday, causing Google to post a warning to visitors.
GOLD RUSH: American swimmer Michael Phelps wins his third gold medal of the 2008 Olympics, his ninth overall, which ties the world record for most career gold medals in Olympic history. He has a chance for two more golds Wednesday morning.
RUSSIA VS. GEORGIA: Russia announced today that it will stop attacking Georgia, but Georgian leaders say they’re still being attacked. An Atlantan and native of the country Georgia is hosting governmental websites from here during the siege, and says those sites are still being cyber-attacked by botnets on the U.S.-based servers. The Times of London lays out the historical context of the war.
WATER USE: In metro Atlanta and North Georgia drops 20 percent, which Environmental Protection Division Director Carol Couch says is a sign that conservation efforts and watering restrictions are working.
GUNS AT AIRPORT: Won’t fly, says a federal judge.
ESCALATING TENSION: In response to frequent “shoe entrapment,” Hartsfield-Jackson begins announcing, at five-minute intervals, the dangers of wearing soft shoes such as flip-flops or Crocs on escalators.
NBAF: Federal officials seem to be favoring a Mississippi site over Athens for the National Agro- and Bio-defense Facility, which will study foot-and-mouth disease and other highly infectious diseases, even though the Mississippi site scored the lowest numerical evaluation among all contenders.
— As Clayton County tries to rebound from four years of chaos, B. King over at Terminal Station writes a thoughtful analysis on how Eldrin Bell borrowed from his experience in Atlanta politics to put together a successful coalition of candidates.
— After a long absence, DriftGrift offers up yet another “Morning Wooten”. Fortunately, he saved up all those lost Morning Wootens and combines them all into one.
— Over at Going Through The Motions, Sara treats us to a few of her random thoughts. Most notably, she’s not happy with John Edwards. Especially because he was cheating on his wife as she battled cancer. Sort of like a former Georgia politician of note handed his wife divorce papers while she was in the hospital being treated for cancer. Call us, John; we’ll put you in touch with Mr. Gingrich so the two of you can commiserate.
— Mingaling is getting married in a DIY ceremony, and she’s sharing with us. Today’s topic: How to make a Boutonnière for the boys.
— Most have applauded the city’s recent crackdown and people hanging out in Barbara Asher Square at Five Points. But Arc of Time has a different perspective, arguing that it gives the city character and diversity.
— And, finally, it turns out we’re not the only ones confused by this Russian invasion of Georgia. On the Georgia (that’s state, not nation) feed for Lefty Blogs, are such headlines as: “Cheney: Russian aggression must not go unanswered” and “Russia versus Georgia; the reality of Obama’s candidacy” and, our fav, “Is Georgia the last Iraq casualty?” Time to get the hell out of here, ya know?
The New York Times weighs in with a hilarious take on state Sen. David Shafer’s and Rep. Harry Geisinger’s twin resolutions calling for the citizens of Georgia to rise up and reclaim our God-given land, dammit.
From the New York Observer:
And so—after all the concept groups, focus groups, guinea pig couples—in August 2005, the first Trojan vibrating ring was given a slow, gentle rollout; except in Texas, Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana, Kansas, Colorado and Virginia, where sex toys are illegal in all-purpose pharmacies.
I’m aware Georgia’s anti-pleasure laws pre-date Republican rule in the state, but no intellectually honest person will ever think of Republicans as promoters of freedom and personal responsibility until they decide vibrators are less of a public danger than firearms. The self-proclaimed party of getting government off our backs needs to get off our fronts.
Alabama, Florida and Georgia will not be able to meet the Feb. 15 deadline set by the White House and come to a settlement about how water would be shared among the three states, the Associated Press reports. Officials involved with the talks say they need some more time. From the article:
Officials said the states have made progress in recent months after the president sent Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne to mediate a compromise as a record drought threatened Atlanta’s drinking supply. But instead of announcing a long-term pact on Friday as planned, they will offer more of a status report.
“I believe there’s a sincere effort being made,” Kempthorne said Thursday on Capitol Hill before entering a budget hearing. “I am encouraged, but I will keep pushing as well.”
Kempthorne, who said he was briefed on the talks Wednesday night, said he would wait to get details on how close the parties are before deciding whether to set a new deadline. If they remain far apart, he said, he will not.
How much more time do we need, Atlanta? I say, “two weeks,” but that’s just me, and my useless talent to remember classic scenes from Arnold Schwarzenegger films.
From zero to 100, Georgia’s overall state grade for public education: 80.2
Mississippi’s overall state grade for public education: 68.9
National average grade for public education: 75.9
Average dollars spent annually on each student in Georgia: 8,658
Rank of Georgia in United States for per-pupil spending: 27
Georgia’s grade for K-12 achievement: 68.1
K-12 achievement grade for Massachusetts: 85
Percentage of Georgia high school students who graduate: 56.1
Number of states with higher high school graduation rates than Georgia: 48
Source: EPE Research Center 2008 Quality Counts public education survey
What does 270 miles of traveling south and a day in Tallahassee get you? According to today’s meeting of the governors of Florida, Georgia and Alabama, just some more time.
Gov. Sonny Perdue trekked down to the Sunshine State’s capital to meet with Governors Charlie Crist of Florida and Bob Riley of Alabama and, according to a statement from Crist’s office, agreed to send high-level staff members to Washington, D.C., in mid-January to hammer out a deal between the three states regarding reduced water flows in the Alabama-Coosa-Tallapoosa, and Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint River Basins. The governors said they would then meet again in February to conclude the 17-year-old tri-state dispute over the precious resource. That deal would then be presented to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services. FWS officials would have the right to object to any changes in releases that may be harmful to endangered marine life located downstream, such as the mussels that have played such a prominent role in the entire water shortage drama.
The governors also decided today to move up to March 15 a June 1 deadline imposed by the Corps for the states to agree to a water-sharing strategy.
According to the statement from Crist’s office, “representatives from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service also participated in today’s meeting to provide factual information on current conditions of both the ACF River Basin and the ACT River Basin.”
No word yet if David Ratcliff, chairman, president and CEO of Southern Company, was in attendance, as he was at the Nov. 1 D.C. sit-down between the governors.
While folks were waiting for next year’s big federal court battle over the state’s harsh new sex-offender law, the Georgia Supreme Court on Wednesday quietly ruled a big chunk of it — the residency restrictions — unconstitutional.
What’s surprising about the case is that the plaintiff isn’t someone who committed a technical violation of the law and got unfairly lumped in with child molesters, as was the case with federal plaintiff Wendy Whitaker. (See CL’s cover story.) No, this plaintiff, one Anthony Mann of Hampton, is a genuine convicted child molester. Yet he managed to convince the court that the state law is so restrictive that it effectively doesn’t allow him to buy and occupy a home.
Quoth the ruling:
It is apparent that there is no place in Georgia where a registered sex offender can live without being continually at risk of being rejected.
Some would say that was the idea when the law was written by state Rep. Jerry Keen, R-St. Simons. But that doesn’t make it legal.
TRIP, a nonprofit organization whose initials stand for who-knows-what-’cause-they-sure-don’t-tell-you-on-their-website, released a report Thursday outlining our congestion problems and the transportation hurdles Georgia faces during a time when finances are hard to come by. We’ve got some structurally deficient bridges and well-paved roads, and we better build more of the latter and update all of the former, the report says, lest we face a catastrophe like the crumbling of a Minnesota bridge earlier this year or an economic standstill. Who funds TRIP? You guessed it:
TRIP is sponsored by insurance companies, equipment manufacturers, distributors and suppliers; businesses involved in highway engineering, construction and finance; labor unions; and organizations concerned with an efficient and safe highway transportation network.
In other words: businesses who have an interest in seeing more roads. But what’s that you say, Smart Growth America? A majority of Americans think that transportation funds should go toward maintaining roads and investing in transit alternatives rather than building more concrete swaths that are sure to just fill up in a few years?
Something left out about the “we-must-build-roads” philosophy is how planners and politicians are not addressing the issue of the price and supply of oil and how the added number of motorists will affect Atlanta’s notorious air quality problems. As more and more roads are built allowing more and more development of the city’s outer reaches, more and more people will be driving. Doesn’t the Urban Land Institute already view Atlanta as “chronically overdeveloped”?
Our roads may last a good while, but that’s a worthless superlative when a majority of motorists can’t afford to use them.
What say you, people? More roads or more options? And here’s the hitch … you gotta say why.
Indian software giant Wipro is expanding its operations.
Wipro, another hi-tech titan, has been on a spending spree, buying up companies in America, Finland, Portugal and Europe for hundreds of millions of dollars. Azim Premji, Wipro’s chairman, raised eyebrows on Wall Street when he talked this year of setting up divisions in Idaho, Virginia and Georgia – US states he said were attractive because they were “less developed.”
Less developed than India.
That’s nice.
The regional water crisis story is stepping more into the national spotlight, with links to articles on Drudge Report and now some attention from the New York Times. Click here for the Times‘ overview of the drought, what has — or hasn’t — been done and what still needs to be.
For an in-depth look at the water-supply crunch in the West, read Jon Gertner’s piece from this Sunday’s New York Times Magazine. It’s a lengthy, solid read and worth printing out and poring over later.
The Birmingham News reports that Alabama Gov. Bob Riley sent a letter today to President Bush asking him to deny Gov. Sonny Perdue’s recent request that the president halt the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ water releases from Lake Lanier. (Wow, that was a lot of nouns.) Riley says areas of his state were proactive in facing the oncoming water crisis and that shutting off the water would paralyze a nuclear power plant and numerous industries along the Chattahoochee — all of which rely on the resource to run efficiently. He even adds his own number to the countdown-to-doomsday clock currently ticking down to our water crisis. He says Georgia is overstating the severity of the crisis and that Lake Lanier has 260 days of water left, a number he says was confirmed by the Corps last week. That’s more than double the number I was told when I spoke with Maj. Daren Payne of the USACE’s Mobile District.
Click here for Riley’s letter to Bush.
Riley makes the point that Perdue, as of this writing, has not addressed in his talks about the drought:
“Georgia has repeatedly framed its request as a contest between people in the Atlanta area and endangered mussels in Florida. Nothing could be further than the truth….Georgia ignores the fact that the Farley Nuclear Plant sits on the banks of the Chattahoochee River and requires colling water.â€
And the people down in Valdosta? The AJC’s Political Insider reports that those folks think this whole drought crisis, weather aside, is the consequence of the metro area’s penchant for rampant growth.
Here’s a caustic snippet the AJC pulled from an editorial in the Valdosta Times.
Gov. Sonny Perdue’s temper tantrums against the Army Corps of Engineers, the state of Florida and anyone else associated with not giving into his demands continued through the weekend, with meetings at Lake Lanier and declaring northern Georgia a disaster area Saturday to further enforce what everyone else has long known — Atlanta is a greedy, poorly designed behomoth of a city incapable of hearing the word “no†and dealing with it.
The wasteful ways of Atlantans continued through the past decade of severe drought in the state. The water restrictions meant little to them “up there†as they had plenty of water at the time, while rural Georgia and farmers were watching their crops burn in their fields, listening as Atlanta politicians who apparently do think their food originates in a grocery store passed policies designed to prevent them from accessing the water literally beneath their feet.
These same politicians can’t bring themselves to tell their greedy constituents complaining about the low flows in their toilets this week that perhaps if they didn’t have six bathrooms, it might ease the situation a bit. That watering your lawn isn’t as important as watering crops. Or that their greedy overbuilding has taxed their supplies of natural resources beyond their capabilities.
However, all of that requires a degree of common sense and we’ve seen precious little of it from any politician in this state this year. So South Georgia, watch out. What Atlanta wants, Atlanta gets, and right now, they want our water. If our legislative delegation wakes up, perhaps they can have the state agree to at least let us keep what falls from the sky, even while they suck our ground, and our pockets, dry.
Total value of fraudulent loans pinned to broker Phillip E. Hill for various mortgage-fraud crimes committed in Georgia: $112 million
Amount of cash Hill pocketed in his schemes: $14 million
Number of years Hill received at his Sept. 21 sentencing in federal court: 28
Amount of restitution a federal judge ruled Hill must pay: $41 million
Georgia’s rank in mortgage fraud in the nation: 4
Total number of foreclosures in Georgia in August 2007: 13,931
Percent increase of foreclosures in Georgia from August 2006: 134
Georgia’s rank in the nation for total foreclosures: 4
Sources: AJC, RealtyTrac.com, Mortgage Asset Research Institute
What you’re looking at above is not a map showing which states had the hottest summers, most incidences of horrendous animal-cruelty cases, or even political leanings. This map, dear reader, is a state-by-state illustration of foreclosure increases in the nation. The redder you are, the more you had. Note Georgia.
According to RealtyTrac.com — where this map came from — Georgia is ranked fourth in the nation for foreclosure filings in August 2007, up 133.47 percent since the previous year. One out of every 271 households filed for foreclosure.
Just about the time I happily smack Georgia’s economic development gurus for presiding over a plunge in Forbes magazine’s annual rating of states as places to do business, another survey comes along that’s much brighter for the state. CNBC, which bills itself as a business network, ranked Georgia at No. 4 in its survey. The network has taken somewhat of an “American Idol” approach, dragging out announcing the big winner until today — the safe bets are on Florida, however.
The categories used by Forbes and CNBC differ, and even when the categories have the same names, the criteria vary. However, CNBC rated Georgia at No. 2 for “workforce.” This includes evaluating state programs that train workers, where Georgia has achieved recognition. The category also calculates — negatively — unions. Indeed, the state’s relatively low wages stem from the plantation mentality of business and government leaders — we’re $6,400 less per capita than Virginia, for example, which topped the Forbes study.
Georgia also ranked high on transportation — based on such factors as the state’s rail lines, seaports and, of course, Hartsfield-Jackson. Just don’t try to drive to our transportation hubs during rush hour.
As with Forbes, the CNBC poll panned Georgia on such points as “quality of life.”
I’d have a little more faith on CNBC’s study if the network seemed to know a
little more about Georgia. But about all CNBC could say was that we raise
peanuts (in dollar volume, we grow more marijuana than nuts, which the network somehow overlooked) and as a summation discloses this amazing fact: “The cotton gin was invented in Georgia two centuries ago by Eli Whitney, who moved there from Massachusetts.” Wow.
