Not much to say about the Alabama judicial follies that hasn't been said. However, I've noticed a lot of commentators, including this one on Bloomberg note that the monument is 5,280 pounds. Is it really that weight, or have commentators just substituted the one number in the 5,000-6,000 range that they know by heart (it's the number of feet in a mile, if you can't remember why you know it too) for whatever the real weight is? Just curious.
The AJC makes big hay out of the fact that not many "NASCAR dads" in South Carolina say they'll be voting for a Democrat in next year's presidential election.
Well, I don't think you'll find too many Bush voters at the SXSW music and film festival in Bush's home state, but I doubt there will be much media coverage about that.
The point is, of course, that independant film artists and musicians and their fans are just as American as the rural whites who attend NASCAR races. Just because someone's not a Republican doesn't mean their votes, viewpoints and culture isn't worthwhile.
My old rival, state Rep. Fran Millar (R - Dunwoody) proposes an interesting fix to the coming crisis at the HOPE scholarship: Make awards contingent on high SAT scores instead of on the basis of inflated grades.
Talk about a real upper-middle class entitlement. If you've really got a problem with grade inflation letting thousands of low achieving students who don't score very well on their SAT's attend college for free, how about telling the state's 'prestigous' institutions not to let them in?
The real fix for HOPE is pretty simple: Start by eliminating fee and book compensation for students who come from wealthy families. If that's not enough, stop paying for fees altogether. HOPE should pay for a college education, but it shouldn't subsidize things like activity fees, which are a fancy way of saying 'athletic club membership'.
If there's still a fiscal crisis, stop paying college tuition for children from wealthy families. Of course, it would be terrible if even one incoming UGA freshman from Dunwoody got a Toyota instead of a Lexus because the state is no longer paying his tuition. But the state has got to compromise somewhere, and tuition for rich kids makes much less sense than Pre-K for poor ones.
Does anyone else notice the irony that Haliburton and other well connected corporations are being paid upwards of $1 billion a month for, among other things, logistical support for the 1,200 intelligence officers hunting Iraqi weapons of mass destruction?
Since there aren't any WMD's to be found, that's a huge revenue source for Cheney's old company that won't dry up anytime soon as the intelligence officers will need help forever because they're never going to find any weapons. Does anybody out there even care about stuff like this?
The Dean campaign has done it again. They've introduced a new feature for the grassroots called DeanLink. It's basically a Friendster rip-off, which is great. Even better, my good friend Clay Johnson had a lot to do with it. So if you volunteer for Dean, go ahead and get linked up to see who else does also.
Sonny Perdue says he won't request any new revenue sources in the 2004 budget. He's somewhat hedged his bets, leaving open the fact that he may accept new taxes if the legislature initiates them.
Here's the problem. Georgia faces up to a $1 billion deficit out of a budget that runs about $16 billion. At the very least (and this is a conservative estimate) half of the budget will be off limits, as it's spent on education and health care. Roads and infrastructure spending is probably also off limits, but for the sake of simplicity we'll say half of the budget is off limits. This means that approximately $1 of every $8 of state spending must be cut, or the economy needs to turn around.
In my experience, state employees do more with less (including technologically outdated and inferior office equipment) than most workers in the large economy private sector. Most major corporations couldn't cut 13% of their budget in one year, and I frankly don't see how the state will be able to.
In the meantime, we'll read more stories about long lines at the DMV and missing children in DFCS. People will no doubtedly complain and partisan tempers in the state house will reach new highs. You've been warned.
Here is a great article on everyday economist Steven Levitt. I think more kids would be interested in economics if they could learn one of his unique lessons, instead of pretending that they'll understand macro or even micro economics after a boring semester in high school or college.