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Mar 29, 2007 – Georgia Budget & Policy Institute NEW OPINION
Removing the Wheels from State Government -- How SR 20 Would Immobilize Georgia
Alan Essig, Executive Director of the Georgia Budget & Policy Institute (GBPI), and Sarah Beth Gehl, GBPI's Deputy Director, write that politicians often use car metaphors for government spending: do you want government to buy a new Cadillac or a used Chevy? Meaning, do you want top-of-the-line government services or minimally adequate services. Currently, Georgia leaders will only invest in a Chevy, which partly explains Georgia’s low rankings in education, healthcare, and the status of children, the elderly and the disabled. Senate Resolution (SR) 20, a new proposal moving through the Georgia legislature, would make things worse by offering Georgia residents not simply a Chevy, but one without wheels. SR 20 is a constitutional amendment that would implement a spending cap, a requirement that current year spending only exceed last year’s spending by the growth in population and government inflation. This concept is popularly known as TABOR, after Colorado’s highly restrictive spending limit.
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Feb 15, 2007 – Georgia Budget & Policy Institute Opinion
Health Insurance for Georgia’s Children: Is it a Priority?
Georgia Budget & Policy Institute (GBPI) Executive Director Alan Essig and Tim Sweeney, GBPI senior healthcare analyst, write that Georgia’s PeachCare program, which insures children from low and moderate income working families, is facing an immediate short-term federal funds shortfall and a potential longer term funding problem. This is a dire problem for the program’s 270,000 children; but, it is a fixable problem. Unfortunately, some of Georgia’s leaders are not working towards a solution to the funding shortfall that would protect health insurance coverage for our children. Instead, they are using this crisis as an opportunity to weaken the program.
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Dec 14, 2006 – Georgia Political Digest.com
Radical Georgia Moderate: Believing in the free market when it's convenient
Radical Georgia Moderate Rusty Tanton writes, Your standard-issue Republican legislator will drone on and on about government getting out of the way and letting the free market make decisions. If said legislator really believed his or (rarely) her own dogma, (s)he wouldn't be standing in the way of an increase in the minimum wage.
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Oct 30, 2006 – Georgia Political Digest.com Opinion
Baron: Family decisions should be considered off-limits as political ammunition
My mom’s reasoning was simple. She’d warn me, “Lisa Beth, if you go looking for trouble - trouble is exactly what you are going to find.” Supreme Court candidate Carol Hunstein wants Georgia voters to believe that while the rest of us are sending our moms cards, candy and flowers, her opponent, Mike Wiggins, was sending his mother subpoenas and court documents. But what Wiggins was actually doing, (that Hunstein’s ad dubiously forgets to mention), was saving his family by going to court to try to prevent the removal of his mother’s life support system. The deceptive and intrusive commercials have caught the attention of local columnists, bloggers as well as national heavyweights including Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reily. And that my friend is what my mother referred to as finding the trouble you went looking for.
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Oct 2, 2006 – Georgia Political Digest Opinion
Radical Georgia Moderate: Johnson, Republicans suffer from irony deficiency
The Radical Georgia Moderate, Rusty Tanton comments on the possibliity of a constitution amendment on voter IDs writing that taking the lead from his federal GOP counterparts, state Senate President Pro Tempore Eric Johnson is threatening to demonstrate a total lack of irony comprehension. He said recently that if the courts strike down the on-again, off-again Voter ID law, he will propose it be passed as a constitutional amendment in the next Legislative session. Which means the decision would ultimately come down to a popular vote.
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Sep 12, 2006 – GPD Columnists OPINION
Grayson Hurst Daughters: We’re Not Afraid
No, I was not afraid during the morning of the terrorist attacks of 9/11. I was angry -- angry with a white hot fury I'd never felt, and I haven't since. I wanted to seek immediate revenge. I wanted guns and lots of money to go and get the people who were killing us. I wished, at the time, that I was a member of the military, with a license to kill our enemy - whoever that was. I wanted to DO something. Anything. I remember wishing fiercely I was a fighter pilot in an F-16. Instead, I sat in my cubicle at the Home Depot Atlanta headquarters, where I was working at the time, on the phone with my brother, Christopher, who had walked past the TwinTowers just minutes before the attacks.
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Sep 8, 2006 – Georgia Budget and Policy Institute Guest Opinion
The State of Working Georgia 2006
When people talk about the economy, they often measure its health through business-oriented gauges, such as number of jobs, gross state product, number of business expansions, and other data. While those measures can provide some insight into the economy, they don't mean much if the benefits are not being felt by the workforce. For instance, if twenty new businesses move in yet the poverty rate rises simultaneously, are we experiencing a healthy economy? If profits and exports are up, and so is the number of uninsured workers, is our state doing better or worse?
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Aug 25, 2006 – Georgia Political Digest COLUMN
Radical Georgia Moderate: Good night, Herman, and good luck
The Radical Georgia Moderate, Rusty Tanton, weighs in about Herman Cain's choice of words in the Wal-Mart War, writing that by going the Ann Coulter route and juxtaposing an anti-Wal-Mart position with Hezbollah sympathizing, his creativity and mental capacity comes into question.
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Aug 22, 2006 – Georgia Daily Digest.com Opinion
Baron: Cynthia McKinney -- table for one
It’s easy to bash Cynthia McKinney. Some take issue with the haunting look in her eyes. Others are appalled by those big eighties bows and hats more often seen at Easter egg hunts than campaign stops. And then there’s her father, who blamed her defeat for the Democratic nomination for the 4th congressional district and his State Senate seat on the J-E-W-S. But being an easy target doesn’t necessarily mean that everybody is out to get you.
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Aug 16, 2006 – Georgia Political Digest Opinion
Kent: Immigration hearings perform great public service
Americans for Immigration Control national spokesman, Atlanta author and GPD Columnist Phil Kent writes that the U.S. House of Representatives is performing a great public service by holding field hearings in Georgia and other states to address border security and especially the impact of immigration -- legal and illegal -- on American workers and their wages. The hearing in Gainesville, where this author testified on behalf of the organization Americans for Immigration Control, particularly focused on S. 2611, the Senate-passed and deeply-flawed Hagel-Martinez immigration bill.
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Aug 8, 2006 – Georgia Political Digest.com Opinion
Atlanta, You’re Getting A Wal-Mart!
A funny thing happened on the way to the “Let’s Hate Wal-Mart” rally; I was distracted by a conversation. Let’s call this conversation a “social reality.” I found myself chatting with a Wal-Mart executive about organic milk; turned out, we both liked the same brand. The perception I’d held about Wal-Mart, the one that had been stewed and stirred within my particular social network, slowly morphed into a new reality built on a solicitous, open-minded, participatory stance from Wal-Mart management.
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Jun 29, 2006 – Voices for Georgia's Children Guest Opinion
Do Kids Count In Georgia?
In this guest opinion column, Pat Willis, executive director of Voices for Georgia’s Children, writes that, on Tuesday, the Annie E. Casey Foundation released its annual Kids Count report on child well being in the United States. Based on 10 measures of children’s health, education, economic and family status, Georgia ranked 44th out of 50 states. This shouldn’t be news to many as the state has been ranked no higher than last year’s 39th since Kids Count began reporting results in 1990. Yet these heartbreaking numbers haven’t compelled us to undertake any dramatic change. Another political season is upon us; a season for big ideas, promises to the people, passion for Georgia. If kids really do count, we should see campaign platforms that set goals and strategies to pull our children out of the cellar of the nation. Ask the candidates, ask the incumbents and ask yourself: do kids really count in Georgia?
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May 30, 2006 – Georgia Political Digest.com Opinion
End unfair Voting Rights Act sections
GPD Columnist Phil Kent writes that it was August 6, 1965 when the Congress-- reacting in no small measure to televised images of mounting black civil rights protests and pressure from President Lyndon Johnson -- passed the Voting Rights Act. The political landscape of the South changed forever, and thousands of blacks have been elected to city, county and statewide offices in Southern states since then. It is now time for a majority in Congress – if it has any spine whatsoever-- to dump all of those unconstitutional stipulations into the dustbin of history.
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May 26, 2006 – John Konop for Congress Guest Opinion
John Konop: Rep. Tom Price Outsources Immigration Law
6th Congressional District Candidate John Konop writes that America is no longer in charge of American immigration laws. Huge multinational corporations have built in a loophole by lobbying Rep. Tom Price and other members of Congress to pass the CAFTA trade agreement.
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May 22, 2006 – Georgia Political Digest Opinion
Radical Georgia Moderate: Cowards or bigots? Slim pickings in the governor's race
In this week's column, Rusty Tanton writes, I can describe the current political climate in Georgia only as harnessed moral bankruptcy versus unharnessed moral bankruptcy. Republicans want to ride into office on a wave of bigotry and pandering. Democrats can't find a wave of their own to ride, so they're content to just get out of the way of the Republican wave so as not to be crushed by it.
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May 9, 2006 – Georgia Political Digest Opinion
Phil Kent: GA Tech Speech Code Tramples Free Speech
In his first column for Georgia Daily Digest, Phil Kent writes that once again college administrators have brazenly implemented a restrictive unconstitutional speech code for use when students don’t show obedience to their dogma, and it should concern every Georgian. The latest example of politically correct intolerance is occurring at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
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May 3, 2006 – John Konop for Congress Guest Opinion
John Konop: Congress Sold You Out to Big Oil
6th Congressional District Candidate John Konop writes that the 2005 Energy Bill is another shameful example of government of, by, and for big-money lobbyists. Rep. Tom Price and most of the other incumbents in Congress passed it because of lobbyist campaign contributions. Business as usual: say one thing and do another. When elected, John Konop will have the courage and independence—that Tom Price has not demonstrated—to stand up and vote no on embarrassing legislation like the 2005 Energy Bill.
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May 1, 2006 – Georgia Political Digest Guest Opinion
Senator Sam Zamarripa's comments for today's historic rally: Remarks of April 10th: The day of dignity and respect for immigrants
A national boycott and marches planned for today, May 1, will flood Georgia's and America's streets with millions of Latinos who demand amnesty for illegal immigrants and hope to shake the ground under Congress as it debates reform. Georgia Political Digest invited the Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials (GALEO) to submit an op-ed column commenting on immigration reform. GALEO, which is supported by individuals, organizations, and business who believe in supporting the state's growing Latino Community and the mission of increased civic engagement by that community, believes that the words of its Chairman Sen. Sam Zamarripa given on the April 10 "day of dignity and respect for immigrants" are very relevent to today's march and bear repeating.
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May 1, 2006 – Georgia Political Digest Opinion
Grayson Hurst Daughters: Casting the Roles of Illegal Immigration Reform In Georgia
Grayson Hurst Daughter writes that here in Georgia, the emerging Mouth of The South on matters of illegal immigration reform, D.A. King, conveniently fills a seemingly necessary, stereotypical position of oppressive white person as racist jerk – in real life, real time. Granted, D.A. King is not a particularly charming man. This might have something to do with the fact that D.A. King is no southerner. Nor is he a politician. And he could care less what you think of him, or when you eat your own damn lunch.
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Apr 28, 2006 – Georgia Political Digest Opinion
Extortion? We need to stop everything until we get an answer!
The Georgia Oracle writes that we need one question answered before we give another moment of consideration to any gubernational candidate, attend another rally, read another news story or make another contribution. Did Mark Taylor extort money from Casey Cagle in exchange for protecting Republican senators and their legislation? Either Mark Taylor is unfit to be Governor, or Casey Cagle is lying.
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