Ray Strother, who died last month at the age of 81, told me a story more than three decades ago that still comes to mind nearly daily. It’s a fitting time to retell it, as we wait for this year’s election results.
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Georgia Dems decide nominees for top office
Now comes the drama: Will Georgians choose Democrats for top state offices for the first time in nearly a generation?
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When it comes to infrastructure, we’re at the head of the class. A sorry class
Who would have thought that when the states were graded on the sturdiness of their infrastructure, Georgia would be at the head of the class? Unfortunately, that’s more a commentary on the overall rickety condition of the nation’s infrastructure than on anything we’ve done right.
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The nation’s focus has been on Georgia, for way too long; the voting law won’t help that much
Big Media’s searching eye is, in fact, quite lazy. It drifts familiarly over Washington and New York, with an occasional glance toward bad weather or civil unrest in the hinterlands. Only rarely is its gaze trained on one place for as long as it has been, over the past several months, on Georgia.
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The next election won’t be like the one the voting bill is based on
By Tom Baxter If they had been thinking more about the next election than the last one, the voting bill passed by the legislature and signed by Gov. Brian Kemp might have been a lot different. The last election was a contest of giants, with Georgia playing a prominent (though not decisive, as some now […]
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Call it alternative energy or Patriot Power, solar energy is widening its reach
f the subject of solar power makes you think of Birkenstocks and tofu, an advertisement currently going the rounds of conservative email lists will be a surprise. The Patriot Power Generator, sold by a small company in Tennessee, is a solar-powered generator with a continuous output of 1,800 watts, enough to keep the refrigerator running and the lights on for several hours.
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A war we would have lost: looking back on a year in lockdown
Throughout this month there will be countless small anniversaries, as we think back on the day it became clear COVID-19 wasn’t just a big news story but something that would profoundly affect our lives.
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Three counties that are a problem Republicans can’t solve with legislation
Last week, as Georgia legislators were talking about limiting drop boxes and weekend voting, NBC News released an analysis which speaks powerfully to what was going on under the Golden Dome.
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Natural gas hookup bill a sign of things to come
If there’s a bill before this year’s General Assembly which has the shape of things to come, it’s the measure which prohibits local governments from restricting utility hookups to buildings “based upon the type or source of energy or fuel to be delivered,” which means natural gas.
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While voting bills abound, daylight savings bills stir passions
Two issues being considered under the Golden Dome this year illustrate the tremendous power state legislatures have, and the boundless capacity of legislators to fritter that power away.
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To knock out COVID-19, we may have to vaccinate the undeserving
Should the most deserving always be the first to get their shots? It’s an uncomfortable question, but one that does arise as the nation tackles the largest logistical problem it has ever faced.
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In this inaugural week, we have not yet come down where we ought to be
is week in a normal year, legislators across the country would be getting committee assignments and their first look at the calendars for this year’s sessions. This year the calendars have a lot of wait-and-see in them. National Guard units have been called out to protect the capitols in at least 21 states. Police are on alert from Montgomery to Montpelier.
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Sheep in wolves’ clothing head up the docket in riot’s aftermath, as the real wolves lurk
By Tom Baxter Who were those rioters who so unceremoniously ripped Georgia’s stunning election off the top of front pages last week? Watching them on television from the safety of the White House, President Donald Trump is said to have complained that the Capitol invaders looked “low-class,” although he was thrilled by what they were […]
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Georgia couldn’t give Trump what he wants, even if it did what he asks
Suppose that after an hour’s badgering, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger had given in and promised to “find” those 11,760 votes President Donald Trump was asking for. What then? If there even was a “what then.”
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Locked down and increasingly inward-looking, Americans shrug at losing their secrets
Over these long months of lockdown and quarantine, our country has been the target of one of the biggest and most successful espionage efforts in history, one which the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said last week “poses a grave risk to the federal government.”
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Anybody seen Gina Haspel? Long post-election stirs an appetite for alternative facts
Unless you’re among the select few who really know what’s going on, you may never have heard of the 305th Military Intelligence Battalion, or Executive Order 13848, or Scytl. You may not know that CIA Director Gina Haspel was killed last month in a U.S. Special Forces raid in Frankfurt, Germany, which retrieved a server used to control the Dominion voting machines in the U.S. presidential election. Or maybe she was just wounded. Or arrested, and singing like a bird about the global conspiracy to throw the election.
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Between Trump and Trumpism, Georgia Republicans trace a narrow path
You just have to wonder where Sonny Perdue’s shiny bald head is at these days. It was the secretary of agriculture and his former chief of staff Nick Ayers, you will recall, who came to President Donald Trump before the 2016 Georgia Republican primary for governor and convinced him to endorse Brian Kemp. “I did that for Sonny Perdue,” Trump would later say.
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Politics and bad math coalesce to numb our sense of pandemic’s toll
COVID-19, it was said many times during this election year, would go away on Nov. 4. There was that level of cynicism that all the alarm over the pandemic was merely politics, and would magically disappear after the election. This hasn’t proven to be the case.
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What we didn’t know about the economy was bound to hurt us
By Tom Baxter What kind of economy is it, exactly, that we’ll be trying to jumpstart back to life in the coming months? The pandemic has churned up some surprising answers to that question. The Commerce Department reported last month that the nation’s Gross Domestic Product declined by 4.8 percent in the first quarter of […]
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As Senate decision nears, Georgia politics becomes everybody’s business
Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz has shown a lot of interest lately in politicking across state lines. Earlier this year the Fort Walton Beach Republican toyed briefly with the idea of hopping over the state line and running for the U.S. Senate in Alabama. Last week, Gaetz took to Twitter, along with Donald Trump Jr. and others, to advise Gov. Brian Kemp on who he should pick to fill U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson’s seat.
