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Bookman: Collins and Loeffler now compete to show fealty to Trump
As part of the purchase price for her U.S. Senate seat, Kelly Loeffler committed to spending $20 million of her own money to help keep it in Republican hands. But of course, money is just money. When you’re as rich as Loeffler, there’s always more coming your way. However, the costliest part of the bargain […]
Bookman: Kemp’s silence on refugee decision says plenty
Will Gov. Brian Kemp try to bar refugees from resettling in Georgia, using powers that were supposedly granted to him under terms of a controversial executive order by President Trump? Is the prospect of accepting fewer than 1,000 refugees a year – mothers, fathers and children, for the most part – from war-torn parts of […]
Bookman: State’s incentives oversight lax, public assistance scrutiny tight
“Scathing” is an insufficiently harsh adjective to describe the state’s recent audit of Georgia’s extremely generous, almost unregulated program to subsidize the film and TV industry. As depicted in the report from the Georgia Department of Audits and Accounts, the program is basically an open invitation to fraud on a massive scale. According to that […]
Bookman: Removing one evil man rarely solves the problem
It’s plausible, even likely, that with Tuesday night’s missile attacks we’ve seen the extent of Iran’s overt, immediate retaliation for the targeting of Qasem Soleimani, one of its most important government officials. Open warfare has probably been averted. However, the long-term, less obvious consequences will play out over months and years to come, and are […]
Bookman: Climate change threat doesn’t get the Y2K urgency
Take a moment to think back to simpler times, to a long-gone era exactly 20 years ago this week, when we celebrated the dawn of a new millennium under the shadow cast by Y2K. Remember all that? Y2K was a universal computer glitch that threatened to shut down power grids, paralyze banking systems and incapacitate […]
Bookman: Republicans’ fear of Trump keeps others off primary ballots
If any Georgian Republicans are feeling a little queasy about Donald Trump and the direction that he’s taking their party and their country, they won’t have a chance to express it at the primary ballot box. That option has been slammed shut. In a quiet decision earlier this month, the state GOP’s executive committee rejected […]
Bookman: Celebrate loosening of purse strings to study gun violence
‘Tis the season for celebration, so let’s celebrate: For the first time in more than 20 years, Congress has agreed to finance research into one of the leading causes of death in the United States, a killer that takes more than 100 American lives a day and almost 40,000 annually. Now, $25 million isn’t much […]
Bookman: Georgia’s anti-abortion law might shift debate to political arena
For decades, conservative state legislatures have passed anti-abortion bills that they knew would never go into effect because under the Roe v. Wade ruling, such laws were considered a violation of a woman’s constitutional right to privacy. Legislators and governors paid no political price for such actions because it was, in effect, a consequence-free vote, […]
Bookman: It took guts for Kemp to openly defy Donald Trump
It turns out that Gov. Brian Kemp is a bit of a gambler. To be honest, he might also be a little smarter and braver than I had credited him for being. After all, it takes guts for a Republican governor to openly defy Donald Trump these days, and that’s what Kemp has done. Trump […]
Bookman: An unaccountable Donald Trump is dangerous in the extreme
Donald J. Trump used the power of his office to blackmail a foreign ally into undermining a political foe here at home. Nothing in U.S history approaches that abuse of presidential power, yet the gravity of the charges apparently does not matter. The overwhelming evidence proving those charges – the sworn testimony, the emails and […]
Bookman: Velocity of Georgia’s swing from red toward blue is stunning
In deep-red Louisiana, the Democratic incumbent just won re-election as governor despite an all-out effort by President Trump to defeat him. In deep-red Kentucky, a Democrat just beat the Republican incumbent for governor, again despite intervention by Trump. In 2016, a Democrat was elected governor of North Carolina. Last year, Alabama elected a Democrat as […]
Bookman: Trump support with Old Georgia leaves New Georgia impatient
With historic impeachment proceedings now underway in Washington, Georgians appear to be deeply torn both about the job performance of President Trump, his re-election and whether his actions in Ukraine justify investigation and perhaps removal. According to a new poll conducted by the University of Georgia for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 54% of Georgians say they […]