By all accounts, the Texas State Republican Convention earlier this month was a red-hot mess. As such it was an ominous warning to both parties as they prepare for their pandemic national conventions.
Tag: politics
Posted inColumns
Democrats scramble to name the successor to a legend
John Lewis was so widely regarded as a saint during his life that it might seem a sacrilege to remember him as a politician now that he’s gone. But not to do so would miss something about this great man. He was a saint by calling, but he was a politician when he had to be, and a good one, too.
Posted inMaggie Lee
Georgians can arrest each other. But should they be able to?
A fire that started in Brunswick over citizen’s arrest has reached the Georgia state Capitol.
Posted inColumns
Can an election be too small to foul up? August runoff will tell us
The primary runoffs next month will be an easy-peasy test of how challenged the state’s new voting machine system really is. It didn’t fare well in the June 9 primary, and everybody expects the November election to be difficult. There shouldn’t be any problems in an election as small as the runoff, with four congressional races and a scattering of local races being decided around the state. But if there are, we’ll have a forewarning of just how bad November is going to be.
Posted inLatest News
Transit expansion in Gwinnett County: ATL to hear presentation Thursday
Gwinnett County voters could get an early indication Thursday as to whether a transit tax could be added to the Nov. 3 ballot. A heavy rail line is eligible for consideration for sales tax funding, to reach from MARTA’s Doraville Station to a future facility in Norcross.
Posted inTom Baxter
With summer, the realization the pandemic will be with us for a while
The big news in the week before the Fourth of July is, depressingly, the same as the big news the week before St. Patrick’s Day. Some Americans have decided it’s time to move on from the coronavirus, but the coronavirus has not moved on from us.
Posted inMaggie Lee
Georgia Legislature goes home. Here’s a wrap of health care and criminal justice bills.
Limits on businesses’ COVID-19 liability, a micro-Medicaid expansion and more.
Posted inLatest News
Legislative campaigns: Environmentalists set sights on coal ash, factory livestock farms
The handling of coal ash and livestock manure, when it is a byproduct of factory farming of cows, pigs and chickens, are among the environmental issues that may emerge on this year’s campaign trail, now that the focus on state lawmakers has shifted from lawmaking to campaigning.
Posted inLatest News
Georgia Legislature approves hate crime bill
“I’m glad we’ve finally gotten together.”
Posted inColumns
Torn in two by COVID-19, General Assembly session enters its final days
By midnight Friday, the greatly reduced denizens of the General Assembly will have thrown whatever there is to throw in the air at the end of a session as contracted as this one, and departed.
They’ll be going home in an election year to a state beginning to feel the effects of budget cuts so sweeping the legislators even cut their own pay.
Posted inMaggie Lee
Hate crimes proposal drives Georgia legislators apart — but consensus may be near
Not all the splits in the Legislature are partisan.
Posted inColumns
Georgia’s new voting machines, ‘fragile and error prone,’ get their first test
The good news last week was that in spite of an election system that failed them miserably, with a pandemic lurking and unrest in the streets, large numbers of Georgians came out to vote. Equipped sometimes with lawn chairs and umbrellas, they were determined, no matter the inconvenience, to make their voices heard. The bad news is they may have to make the same effort and more this fall.
Posted inTom Baxter
Early voting totals reflect the pent-up energies of this pandemic year
ver the past couple of elections, data miner Ryan Anderson has churned up lots of interesting information from early voting returns in his blog GeorgiaVotes. This year, like a geologist making the lucky tap that reveals a new rock face, he’s found as clear and clean a line as you’re likely to find in politics.
Posted inMaggie Lee
Voices in Georgia streets demand change. That usually takes a while.
If these protests “feel different,” it’s also true that change is liable to be slow.
Posted inColumns
Whatever it is we’re going through, it isn’t ‘just like the ’60s.” We’re far past that
What’s happened these last few days was not “just like the ‘60s,” or anything which has come along since. There are many elements of the past, but this is something new. We don’t really know yet what it is.
Posted inColumns
A crowded summer calendar, as the nation struggles to get back to business
No summer in our lifetimes has been awaited so eagerly as this one. But their expectations for relief this summer don’t hang on much.
Posted inColumns
Kemp’s numbers lag, even as the coronovirus curve flattens
The curve has begun to flatten, the public responded enthusiastically to his lifting of stay-at-home orders — judging by the crowds who came outside, at least — and everybody digs Sign Language Santa. So far, however, none of that has given Gov. Brian Kemp the big bump other governors have enjoyed during the pandemic.
Posted inColumns
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 […]
Posted inColumns
Let’s restart America: Here’s how
I’ve given a lot of thought to the best way for us to restart the economy. … We need a new strategy for investing in America to recover from record unemployment and shattered business dreams. Here’s the way we can do it.
Posted inLatest News
Tom Cruise could be filming on Space Station before rockets launch from Camden County
Tom Cruise might be filming a movie on the Space Station before the first rocket is launched from a proposed spaceport in Camden County, north of Jacksonville.
