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Posted inTom Baxter

Politics in a time of computer glitches

Avatar photo by Tom Baxter

Over the past couple of years, three grand-scale computer crashes have made their way into the news: Facebook’s chaotic IPO, the election-day collapse of Orca, the Romney campaign’s “killer app” for turning out Republican voters, and the problem-plagued launch of HealthCare.gov, the federal health insurance exchange portal, which prompted the first-ever Rose Garden speech to deal with a computer crash.

The first big lesson that can be derived from these three disasters is that when a lot is on the line, run a beta test. Team Romney failed to do that before the last election and ended up looking like amateurs compared to the smoothly running Democratic technical operation. That makes the launch failure of HealthCare.gov even more embarrassing for a president who was being lauded only days before for his flinty-eyed resolve in the budget crisis.

Posted inUncategorized

FDR — the face of the New Deal in Ga

by Jamil Zainaldin

When the Great Depression hit Georgia in the late 1920s, most of its population barely noticed, given that the state's own economy still suffered from the ruin of the Civil War.

Sharecropping had become a way of life for many farmers, black and white. In addition to poverty and the plague of pellagra, there were also massive agricultural impediments due to large-scale land erosion, resulting from long-standing poor farming practices.

Posted inMaria's Metro

Atlanta’s own Ted Turner is deserving of a future Nobel Peace Prize

Avatar photo by Maria Saporta

It’s time for Ted Turner to join the most prestigious club in the world — the one for Nobel Peace Prize Laureates.

It’s hard to imagine any private citizen who has had a greater impact on our world and has done more to bring it closer together than Turner.

His impact has been on multiple levels. The world of communications. The United Nations. The environment. The world of sports. And reducing or eliminating the threat of weapons of mass destruction.

Posted inColumns, Michelle Hiskey & Ben Smith

Transformed by refugees, Clarkston takes stage in ‘Third Country’

by Ben Smith

“I just want to know one thing: How do we stop the refugees from coming here?” That faceless voice rings from a cast member planted in the audience at the Horizon Theatre.

The play is“Third Country,” a drama based on the seismic change in Clarkston, which in the past 20 years has transformed from a predominantly white Atlanta suburb into what Time magazine called the most diverse square mile in America.

In this play by first-generation Egyptian-American Suehyla El-Attar, Clarkston is called Sidington, and the plot captures the intense emotions and misperceptions across our country about newcomers and the meaning of home, between ourselves and our shared space.

Posted inDavid Pendered

Atlanta to pay security firm same amount for five months work as for two years of guarding city venues

by David Pendered

The Atlanta City Council is slated to approve Monday a $3.3 million, five-month contract for a security firm to provide guards at city venues, an amount that’s close what it paid the same company for two years of service, city records show.

The pending proposal is to pay $3.295 million for a five-month contract. In May 2011, the council approved a contract for $3.262 million for two years of security guard services provided by Atlanta-based Norred & Associates, Inc.

In addition to the new contract, the council also is slated to approve legislation to pay Norred $109,357 for the work it had done between the expiration of its contract, this past May, and the Aug. 28 date noted as the start of the five-month period outlined in the new contract. The legislation authorizes guards to be armed while patrolling city property.

Posted inATL Business Chronicle, Maria's Metro

Hartsfield-Jackson Airport GM Louis Miller weighing his future

Avatar photo by Maria Saporta

By Maria Saporta
Published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on October 18, 2013

Responding to speculation that he will retire by early next year, Atlanta airport chief Louis Miller says he has made no plans on when he will step down.

Miller, who will turn 66 next April, was named aviation general manager of Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport in September 2010 after a nationwide search to find a successor to Benjamin DeCosta, who ran the Atlanta airport for 12 years.

Posted inGuest Column

Atlanta will prosper if more companies step up to support BeltLine project

by Teresa Johnston

By Guest Columnist JIM KEGLEY, president and CEO of U.S. Micro — the four-year presenting sponsor of Art on the Atlanta BeltLine

Study after study confirms what we instinctively know: talent – particularly young, mobile talent – is drawn to dense, walkable, city neighborhoods. Companies increasingly seek these urban environments that encourage the sort of chance encounters between talented people that lead to innovation and boost productivity.

Posted inLatest News

C.T. Vivian gets celebratory send-off at City Hall for receiving Presidential Medal of Freedom on Nov. 20

Avatar photo by Maria Saporta

By Maria Saporta

It was an old-fashion civil rights rally to honor civil rights leader Rev. C.T. Vivian.

In the atrium of Atlanta’s City Hall on Saturday afternoon, a couple of hundred Atlantans came to give Vivian a “Congratulatory Send-off in Celebration of the Presidential Medal of Freedom” that he will receive at a ceremony in Washington, D.C. on Nov. 20.

After numerous friends and dignitaries spoke of the role that Vivian played in the civil rights movement for more than six decades, the lanky leader of justice clapped his hands with a great smile on his face — repeatedly saying: “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”

Posted inDavid Pendered

Willis to Franklin, Woolard, Dickens: Mind your ethics before attacking mine; Franklin fires back

by David Pendered

Atlanta City Councilmember H. Lamar Willis said Friday that former Mayor Shirley Franklin, former council President Cathy Woolard and candidate Andre Dickens are hypocrites for saying that Willis is ethically unfit for public office.

Willis made his remarks on the steps of Atlanta City Hall. Willis, who is seeking his fourth term, said he is a human being who has sought to atone for missteps in his personal life, wants the campaign to focus on governance issues, and is pushing back against the two former elected officials.

Willis raised these ethical issues about his accusers: Franklin provided haven in her home to her daughter and her then-son-in-law, who’s now serving a life sentence for his role in smuggling more than a ton of cocaine in a transcontinental operation; Woolard stopped working for Atlanta half way through her term in order to focus on her (unsuccessful) campaign for Congress; Dickens was a resident of Rex, not Atlanta, when he filed for bankruptcy in 2011 and evidently moved there in order to avoid tapping his wife’s assets to pay his creditors.

Posted inEleanor Ringel Cater

‘All is Lost’ and other movies about man versus troubled waters

Avatar photo by Eleanor Ringel Cater

With apologies to Spike Lee (and the city of New Orleans), there’s Trouble in Water all over the movies recently. “Captain Phillips,” starring Tom Hanks, is based on the true story of an encounter between an American cargo ship and some Somali pirates.

Next week, “All is Lost,” possibly the best thing I’ve seen this year — certainly the most rigorous — opens at select theaters. Robert Redford stars in this one-man show about a man adrift in the Indian Ocean after his yacht hits a submerged cargo ship (not the same one Hanks pilots, in case you were wondering).

Gee, two movies with cargo ships opening in the same month. What are the odds?

Disasters at sea — natural or unnatural — have long been fodder for films. We all know about “Titanic” (there’ve been several versions beside the James Cameron behemoth, the best being “A Night to Remember” from 1958).

I still think of “The Poseidon Adventure” every time I see Shelly Winters near water. George Clooney, who usually survives his pictures, didn’t make it through “The Perfect Storm.” And there are always mutinous crews, hence several versions of the unfortunate encounter between Captain Bligh and Fletcher Christian.

Posted inLatest News

Downtown study group: Improve Underground and Five Points station

Avatar photo by Maria Saporta

By Maria Saporta

Revamping Underground Atlanta and improving Five Points MARTA station are two top priorities that emerged at the final official meeting of the Downtown Development Technical Advisory Group (DDTAG) Thursday evening.

The task force, established by the Atlanta City Council, has included about 25 civic and community representatives who have spent the last five months taking an in-depth look at how to best stimulate new development, improved urban design and a better quality of life in the heart of the city.

A.J. Robinson, president of Central Atlanta Progress, said the major goal of DDTAG was to leverage $2.5 billion worth of planned investment into $5 billion worth of actual investment as long as it was consistent with the community’s plans and visions.

Posted inDavid Pendered

Fulton County, its cities face fiscal cliff of their own creation; Thursday deadline set by state attorney general

by David Pendered

Fulton County and all the cities in it could fall off their own fiscal cliff on Thursday. Atlanta could lose tax revenues that pay for 19 percent of its current year budget.

Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed told the Atlanta City Council in a special session Wednesday evening that the future is uncertain for a major source of sales tax revenues shared by Fulton County and all its cities. Unless Atlanta signs an existing distribution agreement for the 1 percent local option sales tax, Fulton may not be able to continue to levy the tax, Reed said.

The urgency is arising because Atlanta’s lawyers evidently were unprepared for a ruling last week from the Georgia Supreme Court. In a case out of Turner County, in south Georgia, justices tossed out an arbitration process concerning LOST distribution formulas that Atlanta intended to use to seek a bigger bite of LOST revenues.

Posted inDavid Pendered

Willis unfit for office, say Franklin, Woolard; Attack ads possible against Franklin for role in council campaign

by David Pendered

Former Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin and former Atlanta City Council President Cathy Woolard said Tuesday that Councilmember H. Lamar Willis is unfit for public office because of his ethical misconduct and should be replaced by challenger Andre Dickens.

Franklin and Woolard, who passed strict ethics legislation in 2002, made their comments at an endorsement event for Dickens, a first-time candidate who seeks to unseat Willis from a citywide post in the Nov. 5 election.

Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed remains a major backer of Willis, who on Oct. 7 was disbarred from the practice of law by the Georgia Supreme Court for ethical breaches. Recent telephone polls reportedly have tested Franklin’s popularity, an indication that the sitting mayor who backed candidate Reed in the heated three-way 2009 mayoral campaign may come under attack for her involvement in this 2013 citywide council race.

Posted inLatest News

Hopeful environmentalist Porritt sees beauty in sewage and toilets

Avatar photo by Maria Saporta

By Maria Saporta

It’s not often that one hears from an environmentalist who has a hopeful view of the world.

After all, with climate change, income inequality, overpopulation, limited natural resources and political conflicts, most environmentalists would have you believe we’re headed to that point of no return — an earth that we have damaged so much that it could become uninhabitable to human beings in the foreseeable future.

And yet Sir Jonathon Porritt refuses to take such a gloomy view of the future. Porritt was in Atlanta on Oct. 9 to participate on a program with Laura Turner Seydel of the Turner Foundation, Howard Connell of Georgia Tech’s Scheller College of Business and John Gardner of Novelis at the Academy Medicine.

Posted inLive Healthy, Atlanta!, Thought Leader

Exercise Key to Reducing Your Risk of Breast Cancer

by SaportaReport

By David Martin, President and CEO of VeinInnovations October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month and organizations everywhere have “gone pink” to support the cause. Advocates will highlight risk factors, detection, treatment and prevention of the disease. Other than skin cancer, breast cancer is the most common cancer among women in the United States. This month, […]

Posted inTom Baxter

An anger so deep it gets down to the tailgate party

Avatar photo by Tom Baxter

Want to know how screwed up politics in Georgia has become? A story in a column by my old AJC colleague Jim Galloway kind of says it all.

Gov. Nathan Deal, whose nagging ethics problems have become the stuff of regular headlines, invited Sen. Johnny Isakson, who has tried to be a voice of reason in an increasingly unreasonable Washington, to tailgate with him at the Georgia-Missouri game. There were a lot of protests on Facebook, but they didn’t come from voters criticizing Isakson for associating with an administration which is beginning to attract fruit flies, not to mention the FBI.

Instead, they came from voters livid over Deal inviting Isakson, who had the nerve to say the Republican strategy of holding up the rest over the budget, to stop a program that is separately funded, was a dumb idea. Deal’s invitation was, in fact, an act of some political courage in the current climate, and in the end, Isakson had to cancel because of the ongoing negotiations in Washington.

Posted inDavid Pendered

As Wall Street buys houses as investments, local leaders plan response to protect affordability

by David Pendered

Now that it’s no secret that Wall Street investors are buying distressed houses in metro Atlanta for the emerging homes-for-lease industry, the question is what that means for the surrounding neighborhoods and the future of homeownership.

John O’Callaghan, who heads ANDP, the region’s major non-profit focused on the foreclosure response, suggests that local leaders try to leverage the private sector’s investments to benefit the rest of the community.

There’s a lot to leverage. Just one firm, the Blackstone Group, has purchased more than 1,400 homes in metro Atlanta as part of more than $4 billion the firm has invested in 24,000 houses nationwide since 2012, according to a story in April in businessweek.com.

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