Somebody Say, "Amen-dments"!

Having spent all of two hours reviewing the text of the proposed amendments to the constitution of the state of Georgia that appear on the 2008 general election ballot and, having considered a variety (i.e. 2) outside opinions on these matters, I offer this informal voter guide. It may not be much, but it is better than having to figure out how to vote if you enter the polling booth without a clue.

Besides, I have come up with catchy names for the propositions, which counts for something, I hope.

Amendment 1 - The Ransoming Our Forests Amendment
This amendment provides tax incentives for people to not destroy the tracts of forest land - 200 acres or more - that they own, at least not for the next 15 years. Conservationists appear to be uniformly in favor of this measure. The Urban Independents voter guide, admitting that this one is a hard call, suggests a "no" vote, saying,

if our priority is to permanently preserve land we should vote directly to raise taxes or sell bonds to do so.

I agree in theory, but the approach to the problem that they suggest may not be enacted soon enough to preserve the forest land under threat.

• I am going to vote "yes" on Amendment 1.

Amendment 2 - The "How Badly Do You Want the BeltLine?" Amendment
From the same kind of minds that brought you collateralized debt obligations, comes the idea of the TAD, the tax allocation district, a creative way to finance projects such as the BeltLine, which will require billions of dollars to develop over a period of 20 years or more, but is, perhaps, one of the few remaining opportunities to refashion the city of Atlanta as a vibrant urban community.

The question before us is not the legitimacy of TADs per se, but whether school boards should be allowed to participate in them. There are those who believe that the funding of schools is sacrosanct, outside the rough and tumble give and take of "ordinary" politics. I guess I disagree. If school boards decide that it is in their interest to support such projects as the BeltLine, then I won't stand in their way.

• Count me in the "yes" column for Amendment 2.

Amendment 3 - The Mini-Me Government Replacement Amendment
OK, so maybe the mini-me reference from the Austin Powers movies is a little obscure, but how else to characterize this proposal that allows for the effective transfer of traditional government powers - taxation, leaving the government to do the tax collection, no less - to non-government entities, whomever they might be?

The idea of extending the prerogatives of elected governments to so-called infrastructure development districts seems misguided. I had considered calling this one the "Foxes in Charge of the Hen House" amendment, but thought that would come off as too provocative. Maybe not.

• Amendment 3 is a big "no" for me.

Erosion of Our Tax Base Initiatives
Aside from the statewide amendments, there are the usual local homestead tax exemption proposals on the various city and county ballots. I don't investigate these much, since they, in my mind, would be more accurately described as property tax reduction initiatives. They are seldom based on the need of the designated beneficiaries and never prescribe means by which lost tax revenues could be replaced.

• Just say "no" to homestead exemptions, as far as I am concerned.

Republicans and Tigers and Pundits, Oh My!

Chris Rock is not only the funniest man alive, he is also probably the most astute social commentator around. To listen to him do his routine is not only to be entertained, but to be enlightened about the world as it truly is.

During one performance not long after the October 2003 incident at The Mirage in Las Vegas in which Roy Horn of Siegfried & Roy was attacked by a circus tiger, Rock, contradicting the conventional wisdom that such an attack was entirely unexpected, said the following,

That tiger ain't go crazy; that tiger went tiger! You know when he was really crazy? When he was riding around on a unicycle with a Hitler helmet on!

(The set-up for these lines begins at about 1:20 into this absolutely not-safe-for-work YouTube video.)

Rock lets us know that you don't have to be a big game hunter to realize that you could get into a whole lot of trouble when you go messing around with a large, fanged, predatory mammal in an enclosed space.

On a related note, it seems that lately a handful of old-line Republican stalwarts are grumbling about the GOP. Some even say that they will not be able to bring themselves to vote for the McCain-Palin ticket in the November election. The list includes, among others, George Will, Christopher Buckley and New York Times columnist David Brooks. They are "shocked, I tell you, shocked" that the party of their youth has been hijacked by know-nothing anti-intellectuals.

Brooks is a Republican apologist whom I hold in particularly low regard, not for his opinions per se, but for the fact that he presents them with little intellectual honesty. Take this column last Saturday decrying the regrettable disdain that the GOP now directs toward "the idea of the cultivated mind."

If Brooks is to believed, the origin of this shift in Republican thinking is not grounded fundamentally in real people adopting right-wing beliefs and points-of-view. No, not at all. This change is due to a political miscalculation gone awry:

But over the past few decades, the Republican Party has driven away people who live in cities, in highly educated regions and on the coasts. This expulsion has had many causes. But the big one is this: Republican political tacticians decided to mobilize their coalition with a form of social class warfare. Democrats kept nominating coastal pointy-heads like Michael Dukakis so Republicans attacked coastal pointy-heads. [emphasis added]

So what of the southern strategy of the 1968 Nixon campaign, which tapped into racial animosity inflamed by court-ordered school busing, or of the property-tax revolt thrust onto the national scene by California's Proposition 13 in 1978, or of Ronald Reagan's second-coming as an unrelenting anti-government crusader, or of the political rise of Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority and of Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition, or of the assault on science and reason epitomized by the "evolution wars" instigated by the Institute for Creation Research, or of the attacks on the civil liberties of gay and lesbian citizens of this country that masqueraded - and continues to masquerade - as a promotion of "family values"?

What of these?

David Brooks would have us believe that these are side-effects, unintended, secondary consequences that have accompanied the shift of opinion orchestrated by "Republican political tacticians" as their line of attack against "coastal pointy-heads".

Give me a break!

Brooks (and Will and Buckley) may long for the golden age of Rockefeller, county-club Republicanism, but they can't deny the reality that they, along with the rest of us, have been living in the days of the Joe-Six-Pack GOP for the last two decades or more. Sarah Palin, far from being a surprise to them, should have been anticipated as the inevitable result of a philosophy adopted and embraced by the very party with which they aligned themselves years ago and which they continued to support until very recently.

Or as Chris Rock might say,

the Republican Party ain't gone crazy; that party went Republican! You know when it was really crazy? When it was riding around in a golf cart with a pork-pie hat on!

Right on, Chris!

Being on the Alert Alert

This post presents an "October surprise" scenario, which, in itself, may be improbable, but serves to illustrate a way that the current administration might abuse its power in a last minute effort to influence the outcome of the November presidential election.

This mid-October afternoon is sunny, mild and breezy, the kind of weather Atlantans pray for all summer long. Barack Obama is up in the national polls and, more to the point, is developing a significant lead in the electoral college nose count. The McCain-Palin character assassination machine has been revving its engine, but so far has succeeded only in further damaging the public's opinion of the Republican candidates, themselves.

It would seem that we Obama-backing Democrats would at last be able breathe a sigh of relief, or, at least, be able to let down our guard a bit. Sadly, that is not the case. Although the McCain campaign team may have shot its political wad, the man in charge at the White House - Dick Cheney, that is - has a couple of tricks left up his sleeve, and, if his track record is any indication, he won't hesitate to use them.

The Cheney-Bush administration has played fast and loose with the law - both domestic and international - these past 8 years. They have brazenly defied the Constitution (for example, with presidential signing statements) when it suits them, but they have, at times, preferred to exploit the cloaks of executive privilege and of national security to provide them with the political cover and, more importantly, the get-away time that they need to accomplish their goals. Thus they cooked the intelligence community books with regard to Saddam Hussein and his alleged possession of nuclear and chemical arms, knowing full well that by the time their claims about WMD were revealed to be false, the invasion of Iraq would be a done deal.

Dick Cheney is not the sort of man to sit on his hands with the election of Barack Obama looming. If he can do anything within the limits of the law (at least, his interpretation of the law), anything that provides him with sufficient plausible deniability to dodge accusations of wrong-doing in the short run, he will act to attempt to frustrate a Democratic victory. The question remains is how he might manipulate circumstances to such an end.

Here is one scenario among many possible ones.

On October 8th Judge Ricardo Urbina of Federal District Court in Washington ordered the release of 17 Uighur detainees, Chinese nationals who had been taken into custody by U.S. forces during its invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and held in detention at Guantánamo Bay since then. From all appearances, they have not violated any U.S. laws or could they be construed in any demonstrable way to be combatants against this country. Meanwhile Judge Urbina's order has been stayed by an appeals panel, and the timing of a resolution of the question of the release of these prisoners remains in question.

What happens if the panel's stay is rescinded by late October and the decision to proceed with the release of the prisoners is upheld by a higher court? What happens. then, if the administration refuses to comply with the orders of this court by claiming, that the ruling undermines the security interests of the United States and will lead to the release of all prisoners from Guantánamo? What happens, next, when outraged citizens take to the streets of Washington, D.C. to protest these egregious violations by the administration of the Constitutional protections of individual liberty and the established balance of power between the three branches of government?

What happens is this. The Department of Homeland security, accountable to no one outside the executive branch, with the active encouragement of the Vice President of the United States, makes a determination that, because of civil unrest in the nation's capital, and because of the threat posed by the impending release from Gitmo of a large number of declared enemies of this country, and because of other reliable intelligence reports, the national threat level be raised from yellow to orange, indicating a high risk of terrorist attack.

What happens is this. John McCain, who has by now become an old hand at suspending his campaign, does just that so that he can rush back to Washington and assume the role of acting anti-terrorism commander-in-chief, hoping, of course, for better results than his previous auditions as acting market meltdown bailout deal closer and acting Hurricane Gustav emergency response manager during the Republican nominating convention.

There's no telling whether creating such an atmosphere of fear, which would leverage off the slander of Obama "palling around with terrorists" that Sarah Palin has been spreading this past week, will play to the GOP advantage, but the effectiveness of this kind of maneuver is consistent with the widely held belief that, once people enter the voting booth, fear trumps reason. McCain's military service experience will once again be marched front and center in a last-ditch attempt to resuscitate his dying presidential bid, and some undecided voters will find that reassuring enough.

This kind of corruption of our national security and intelligence apparatus exploited by this administration to support the invasion of Iraq might not prove to be a winning tactic for Cheney and his neocon crew in their attempts to influence the general election, but it may be the only card that they have left to play come the end of October. It seems that as election day approaches we should genuinely be on alert - alert that is to the potential abuse of the national threat level alert system.