Repeatedly over the past few weeks, commentators have remarked that we’re going through a moment. However you define what a moment is, it has a lot to do with the way news gets made in the 21st Century.
Category: Tom Baxter
Posted inColumns
As Georgia regulators ponder Vogtle’s future, more revelations emerge about its doomed twin in South Carolina
From a design point of view, the nuclear projects at Plant Vogtle and the V.C. Summer site in South Carolina were identical. They were to be the first in a new generation of U.S. nuclear reactors, the Westinghouse AP1000s, cheaper, easier to build and safer than their predecessors.
Posted inColumns
In mayor’s races, partisan politics seeps up through the potholes
Across the country, more than 30 big cities are electing or have already elected mayors this year. As we swing into the second round of our own mayoral contest, here’s a look at some of the trends emerging in other cities.
Posted inColumns
For Atlantic Coast states, sea level politics are rising fast
Climate change is a global problem, but for the states of the Atlantic Coast, the rising sea level is a particular problem. But the politics around the issue still teeter on a seesaw between the willingness to ignore the problem and the urgency of finding a way to pay for the solution.
Last week, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster became the latest in a rising tide of politicians united in their denial of, well, the rising tide.
Posted inColumns
Trump backs away from a sacred 401(k)ow
It didn’t take Donald Trump long to shoot down the idea paying for the tax cut in part by radically reducing the 401(k) program. Which, when you look at it more closely, is a pretty good deal for Uncle Sam.
Posted inColumns
Where suicide is easy, it grows more frequent
Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a report which speaks directly to the social turbulence which has roiled the country in so many ways. It’s subject was suicide, which is on the rise in the heartland.
Posted inColumns
Orthodoxy is the easy way in early governor’s race forums
Over the past week or so both the Democratic and Republican candidates for governor have met to air their differences, and it should come as a surprise to no one that they don’t have many.
Sure, the two Staceys jabbed at each other over a couple of points and all the Republican challengers accused their better known rivals of being career politicians, But the overriding impression from this first pair of encounters is that both parties have grown settled in their respective orthodoxies, with very little way for candidates to break new ground.
Posted inColumns
Fun house optics and the fall of Tom Price
President Trump put the matter very precisely last Friday. “I certainly don’t like the optics,” he said, a short time before Tom Price fired himself.
Posted inTom Baxter
South Africa: the roller coaster, the casino and sacred memory
In a more prosperous yet deeply uneasy South Africa, the United States has a smaller footprint than it had in 1994, and other powers are ascendant.
Posted inColumns
In an African mirror, reflections of how we got to where we are
Suppose Donald Trump was president, and George Washington died four years ago. That’s South Africa — although Jacob Zuma might indignantly reply that he’s more like Vladimir Putin.
Posted inTom Baxter
Gone Fishin’
Tom Baxter has gone fishing at the end of summer. Tom’s column will resume when the bass stop biting.
Posted inColumns
‘It’s a hard story to cover, because the weather’s so bad’
My first disaster had a lot in common with the current one. It was a hurricane named Agnes, a storm which weakened but wouldn’t go away.
Posted inColumns
For a cosmic week, news of the distant past and the skies above
For a week when so many eyes have been fixed on the heavens, here’s some celestial news worth a closer look: evidence of a close encounter that didn’t turn out so well.
Posted inColumns
As Democrats seek a new way, the two Staceys become a friction point
The dustup over Stacey Evans’ speech at the Netroots Nation convention in Atlanta Saturday of liberal activists here was nothing approaching what was going on in Charlottesville. It was simply, with no need for exaggerated comparison, dumb.
Posted inColumns
Beyond statistics, the economy intersects with the state of our health
Why are we the only country in the world with an opioid crisis? If we need to create more high-wage jobs, why do so many high-wage positions go unfilled? Why don’t Americans move as much as they used to? There’s a connecting thread to this tumble of questions.
Posted inTom Baxter
‘Adoptive forfeitures,’ ‘equitable sharing,’ and seizing people’s stuff
Can an administration in which the president seldom sleeps have a sleeper issue? If so, this administration’s sleeper issue is civil asset forfeiture.
Posted inColumns
Measuring recovery, and global reach
Georgia’s progress in recovering from the 2008 recession has a lot to do with Atlanta’s continued influence as a business innovator recognized on a global stage.
Posted inTom Baxter
A message made for Trump Country, lost in the stampede
A crackdown on Medicaid fraud associated with opioid abuse sounds like great messaging for this administration. It’s not the lamestream media’s fault the message didn’t go very far.
Posted inTom Baxter
The hunt for technological guano
The history of how we’ve managed to feed ourselves over the past century or so is a dramatic story with many surprising twists, although it has become entangled in and obscured by the more explosive events of our times.
Posted inColumns
An Alabama scandal with a lot of bounce
Next door in scandalacious Alabama, they’ve moved on from the philandering former governor and the former House speaker, currently out on bond. Lately the big question has been, who are “Attorney No. 1” and “Employee No. 1?”
