Government
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July 2008
June 2008
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The Shape of Things to Come, if Obama Is Elected
by McGehee
78°F. and partly cloudy in Coweta County, GA
Back in the ‘70s, when “Doonesbury” was still occasionally funny, Garry Trudeau had fun with Jimmy Carter by imagining him with a Cabinet-level “Secretary of Symbolism.”
In keeping with the notion that Barack Obama would be a second Carter term…
Unity, N.H., is not just small, it’s small and out-of-the-way. The town has no major roads, just winding country ones. It has a single school, the elementary school, no large retail center and no parking. It is an hour and a half from the nearest sizeable airport, and hotels for traveling press are nowhere to be found. Who in the world would hold a political rally for several thousand people here? Barack Obama would.
Unity might be one of the worst towns in America in which to hold a major political rally, but symbolically it was ideal for the Obama campaign. Where better to have Hillary Clinton join Obama on stage in a display of party loyalty, showing her supporters that there are no hard feelings for her loss to Obama and urging them to work hard to make him President, than in a town named Unity, where in the New Hampshire primary in January the vote for Obama and Clinton was evenly split—107 apiece?
For the attendees, the choice of location would be a nightmare. For the Obama campaign, a campaign based entirely on symbolism, it was perfect. »
Used in Unity
If America is going to elect its first black president, don’t you think he should be good for something besides symbolism? How is he not making a token of himself here?
[People] [Here's Your Sign] [Government] [Politics] [Elections] [Election 2008]
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12:54 pm Friday
June 27, 2008
No backtalk
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DeGeorge for Coweta County Commission
by McGehee
87°F. and partly cloudy in Coweta County, GA
To paraphrase Don Rumsfeld—and as proved yesterday—sometimes you have to choose your candidate for the reasons you have, not necessarily the reasons you want or wish you had.
I mentioned last month that I didn’t know enough about the two candidates for county commissioner in my district, to really have any idea which to vote for. Well, I think I’m probably going to vote for Gary DeGeorge.
First (and least substantively), he was the one who contacted me seeking my support. That’s one of those little things that make a lot more difference than they should, and which John McCain could stand to think about. Now, DeGeorge admitted that he sought me out because I have this blog, which apparently has some local readership—but his opponent, Rodney Brooks, didn’t even respond to a League of Women Voters survey. DeGeorge, being younger, has some grasp of the possibilities of the “new media” in politics, and is trying to use them. (I do kind of wish he weren’t using MySpace for his campaign site, but at least he has one.)
Two other things have tipped me toward preferring DeGeorge, one being:
Brooks said he doesn’t understand why the county commissioners stopped a Wal-Mart from coming to Ga. Hwy. 154 at Interstate 85.
“We lost a large tax base,” Brooks said. Many residents of the fourth district are going to Peachtree City’s Wal-Mart and taking their sales tax dollars with them. »
Candidates oppose passenger jets here
That Wal-Mart issue was as close as I’ve come in a long time to an outright NIMBY position, but others also opposed it who live nowhere near that interchange. The Times-Herald editorialized against it, citing its proximity to a considerably larger, existing Wal-Mart, and the need for massive road and intersection improvements to handle the traffic—improvements that the developers weren’t offering to cover. The cost of making that location workable for high-impact retail would have eaten a huge chunk of the sales-tax benefit Brooks envisioned. Furthermore, sales tax revenue contributes a great deal to government spending; not necessarily so much to residents’ standard of living. Coweta needs a wider and more balanced range of economic development. Minimum-wage retail has its place, but we’re not exactly hurting for those jobs as it is.
And for the record, if people who live in my part of the county are shopping at a Wal-Mart in an adjacent county, it may be due in part to the fact that so many of my neighbors’ jobs are not in Coweta. Priorities, people.
One more matter that enters into my thinking on county politics is the commission chairmanship. Of Georgia’s 159 counties, only Coweta County does not have a chairman specifically elected to that post by the voters. Rather, each year the chairman is elected by the members of the commission itself. There is some talk of bringing Coweta into line with the rest of the state, and I tend to agree—but it’s not a major issue to me.
This issue has had its profile raised a little bit after Commissioner Leigh Schlumper, the incumbent in my district who is not seeking re-election, was passed over for the chairmanship this year and sued for discrimination. The lawsuit raises other complaints besides the chairmanship, which I think deserve to be aired if they have any basis—but on the chairmanship itself I’m fairly confident what a court would have to rule.
The claim is that the county has a rule prescribing a sequence of rotation that essentially made 2008 Schlumper’s “turn” for a second term as chairman. However the chairmanship remains the subject of a commission vote. The rotation sequence, if binding, essentially dictates the outcome of a commission vote, which I think a court would rule the commission cannot do merely by ordinance. As long as the commissioners elect their chairman, they should be free to use their own best judgment from year to year in making that choice. For his part, DeGeorge agrees. Brooks would prefer that the chairman be elected countywide, so that the power now held by a non-elected county administrator would be wielded instead by an elected official, directly accountable to voters.
As I said, I think the voter-elected chairmanship is probably a better way to go than the current, rotating chairmanship—but a lot would depend on how the powers of the office are balanced against those of the other commissioners. Lacking a definite plan for such a transition I am not inclined to give that issue alone a great deal of weight in deciding my vote.
I think DeGeorge deserves a chance.
[People] [Coweta County] [Government] [Politics] [Elections] [Election 2008]
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A Story Four Years in the Making
by McGehee
87°F. and partly cloudy in Coweta County, GA
Barack Obama is “of the system. He’s going to be in the system,” Steele told a morning gathering of the Georgia Association of Black Elected Officials.
“Why are they attacking Michelle Obama, first lady Michelle Obama, and not really attacking, to that degree, her husband?” Steele asked. “Because he has no slave blood in him. He does not have any slave blood in him, but Michelle does.
“This system is an issue. I don’t care what you say. You can’t expect the system that enslaved you save you,” Steele said. »
SCLC head: Michelle Obama treated more roughly than
her husband, because of her slave heritage
This view of Obama isn’t new. Limbaugh has been talking on the radio about how this is the grievance lobby’s effort to ensure that an Obama victory doesn’t eliminate their influence.
I think it could also be a way to not “own” an Obama defeat; after all, he’s not really authentic.
[People] [Government] [Politics] [Elections] [Election 2008]
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And What Direction Might That Be?
by McGehee
81°F. and partly cloudy in Coweta County, GA
I’d say, almost certainly to the left.
The can-do, bootstrap approach embedded in the American psyche is under assault. Eroding it is a dour powerlessness that is chipping away at the country’s sturdy conviction that destiny can be commanded with sheer courage and perseverance.
The sense of helplessness is even reflected in this year’s presidential election. Each contender offers a sense of order — and hope. Republican John McCain promises an experienced hand in a frightening time. Democrat Barack Obama promises bright and shiny change, and his large crowds believe his exhortation, “Yes, we can.”
Even so, a battered public seems discouraged by the onslaught of dispiriting things. An Associated Press-Ipsos poll says a barrel-scraping 17 percent of people surveyed believe the country is moving in the right direction. That is the lowest reading since the survey began in 2003.
An ABC News-Washington Post survey put that figure at 14 percent, tying the low in more than three decades of taking soundings on the national mood. »
Everything seemingly is spinning out of control
If 83 percent of people are not convinced the country is headed in the right direction, it should be a simple matter to fix that in November, by reversing the 2006 congressional elections. A Congress more conservative than the president is capable of a lot. During the 1990s such a Congress enacted major welfare reform and brought about the first deficit-free federal budgets in a half century.
We need a Congress that will focus on the things the Constitution gives Congress to do. We do not need a Congress that will try to micromanage the conduct of a war or hold multi-week hearings into the behavior of professional athletes. We also need a Congress whose members won’t get caught with their hands in the public cookie jar or trying to solicit sex in public restrooms.
If the American people want to feel that events are not spinning out of control, they need to invest some effort in getting and keeping them under control—and that includes devoting more attention to electing public officials than to choosing a winner on “American Idol.”
I’m not optimistic.
[People] [Government] [Politics]
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7:52 pm Wednesday
June 18, 2008
No backtalk
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Halfway Decent
by McGehee
82°F. and sunny in Coweta County, GA
Okay, anybody who favors building new nuclear power plants is actually almost potentially in danger of being considered for my vote.
Sen. John McCain called Wednesday for the construction of 45 new nuclear reactors by 2030 and pledged $2 billion a year in federal funds “to make clean coal a reality,” measures designed to reduce dependence on foreign oil.
In a second straight day of campaigning devoted to the energy issue, the Republican presidential nominee-in-waiting also said the only time Democratic rival Barack Obama voted for a tax cut was for a “break for the oil companies.”
McCain said the 104 nuclear reactors currently operating around the country produce about 20 percent of the nation’s annual electricity needs.
“Every year, these reactors alone spare the atmosphere from the equivalent of nearly all auto emissions in America. Yet for all these benefits, we have not broken ground on a single nuclear plant in over thirty years,” he said. “And our manufacturing base to even construct these plants is almost gone.”
Even so, he said he would set the country on a course to build 45 new ones by 2030, with a longer-term goal of adding another 55 in the future. »
McCain calls for building 45 new nuclear reactors
He’ll need a Congress controlled by Republicans, whose livers lack any similarity whatsoever to lilies, to pull it off.
Getting them elected to support his program is kinda sorta his job…
[People] [Government] [Politics] [Elections] [Election 2008]
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7:45 pm Wednesday
June 18, 2008
No backtalk
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These Are the People Running America into the Ground
by McGehee
Democrats in Congress want to nationalize oil refineries.
House Democrats responded to President’s Bush’s call for Congress to lift the moratorium on offshore drilling. This was at an on-camera press conference fed back live.
Among other things, the Democrats called for the government to own refineries so it could better control the flow of the oil supply.
[...]
“We (the government) should own the refineries. Then we can control how much gets out into the market.” [said Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-NY).] »
House Democrats call for nationalization of refineries
So they’re going to address skyrocketing oil prices by ... what, restricting the flow of oil? How is confiscating existing refineries going to bring prices down?
These are the people who took control of Congress after the 2006 elections. The people whose votes made that possible have no one to blame but themselves.
[People] [Government] [Politics] [Elections] [Election 2008] [Wackadoodle]
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