Perdue’s gotta be kidding
My unemployment benefits — along with those of hundreds of thousands of Georgia’s unemployed workers — are among those that may be cut because of Republican petulance.
The AJC reports that Gov. Sonny Perdue is among the GOP governors who claim to be caught “in a philosophical bind” over accepting money from the stimulus package. Perdue, among others, is perfectly happy to accept the part that builds roads and bails the state out of its Medicaid mess.
But the unemployment portion of the stimulus might actually cause the state to ensure that it’s unemployment insurance program is decent. Here’s a bit of advice for governors whose “philosophical binds” caus them to do something decent for their constituents: Get a new philosophy!
High-speed rail leaving the station behind Beltline
This New York Times article demonstrates how just how silly the state DOT/Amtrak fantasy is that they need to reserve part of the Beltline corridor for high-speed rail.
It may be the longest train delay in history: more than 40 years after the first bullet trains zipped through Japan, the United States still lacks true high-speed rail. And despite the record $8 billion investment in high-speed rail added at the last minute to the new economic stimulus package, that may not change any time soon.
Atlanta sits at the cross-section of two of something like 20 corridors (New Orleans-D.C. and Atlanta-Jacksonville) that the feds have identified as potential high-speed routes. But train experts quoted in the article make it clear that the busy Northeast Corridor makes a lot more sense economically, while a San Francisco-LA route is far ahead in funding and planning.
Then, there are proposed routes in Florida, the Pacific Northwest, and the Midwest — all of which seem to have more local support and demand than the tracks through Atlanta.
Bullet trains would be a great thing for Atlanta. But it would be incredibly silly to put another hurdle in the way Beltline — despite all its own delays — on an idea hasn’t gotten rolling past the vague talking stage for four decades.
My AJC column on unemployed journalists
One of the first calls I got after I was canned as editor of Atlanta’s alternative newsweekly came from a fellow I’d laid off three months earlier. “Hey,” he asked, “you want to go down to the unemployment office together?”
So we headed to the state Labor Department’s North Metro Career Center, a converted supermarket in an old North Druid Hills shopping center. Sympathetic, clerks greeted me, efficiently asking all the pertinent questions.
Now that’s eloquence. Here’s more of it from today’s Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Recession is Georgia lawmakers’ Trojan Horse for special interest tax breaks
Compare the proposed Georgia statehouse Republican “economic recovery plan” to Barack Obama’s stimulus package and you get an idea how disinterested GOP politicians are over the needs of average families.
The only part of their proposal remotely designed to help create jobs is described by the AJC as “a $2,400 income tax credit for each unemployed person that businesses hire before July 2010 and keep on the job for at least 24 months.”
Now, I’m trying to imagine the business owner who would make a decision to hire an unemployed person (and to exclude from consideration any employed candidates) so that two years down the road, if that unemployed person stayed in that job, the business would get a $2,400 tax credit.
“It wouldn’t change how many jobs were created, it would only change who gets the jobs,” one economist was quoted as saying.“You are giving taxpayer money to things that would have happened anyway.” And the recession will be over by the time the businesses will get the credits anyway..
The unemployed-hire’s tax credit is actually just cover for the bill’s more substantive measure: A $1 billion giveaway to businesses, starting in 2012, with the phaseout of the state corporate income tax.
That’s unlikely to do anything to ease the recession (which hopefully will be long past by then), but it will make it much more difficult for future lawmakers to balance the budget without cutting big-ticket items like schools, health care and transportation.
Senate Majority Leader Chip Rogers, R-Canton, and House Majority Jerry Keen, R-St. Simons Island, are all gungho about it, so it seems likely to pass. Ah, well. That’s the way the sausage gets made in Georgia — sort of like the peanut butter.
DOT keeps Beltline doubts alive
The state Department of Transportation board had a chance today to snuff out the uncertainty it created a few weeks back over the future of Beltline. But instead commissioners said, “Nahhhh.” Young Thomas Wheatley offers a nice blow-by-blow of today’s debate on the issue.
Ah, freedom!
They say that when you’re down, you find out who your friends are. Well, I never knew how many friends I had.
Thank you, Atlanta — and especially my old colleagues at Creative Loafing — for being so warm and generous since I was unceremoniously canned by the brass at Creative Loafing Inc.
I’ve been spending most of the past three month rejuvenating and enjoying myself. Silvia and I have had a lot of fun with our dog, Peanut. She (Silvia, not Peanut) has been fixing up our old house to rent it out, so that we can make a few bucks that way instead of spending money on renovating it.
I’ve gotten a few freelance jobs, and that’s been fun. But really I’m still trying to figure out what the long-term game plan is. I know it involves writing and editing, and I know it involves developing an audience online. So I suppose this blog is a step in that direction. I’ll try to post regularly.
Our new website!
