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Thurbert Baker is among the most low key Attorney Generals we’ve ever had.  In Georgia, the decisions of the Attorney General are law until a court directly addresses them.  That’s a big stick and Mr. Baker wields it softly.  He’s careful and diligent.  His peers respect him so much that he was elected as the President of the National Association of Attorneys General.  Mr. Baker is one of the last vestiges of Governor Zell Miller.  Governor Miller (as opposed to the less pragmatic Senator he became) looked out for the practical matters of improving the lives of Georgians first.  Mr. Baker has solidly kept that tradition alive. 

Mr. Baker’s opponents rally around hot button issues of whether to post the 10 commandments in schools.  Mr. Baker quietly stands to assure that Georgians can see what our government is doing and that our sunshine laws are preserved.  Mr. Baker knows when to bring the heat and when to keep cool.  The last thing you want is a hot headed Attorney General. 

Keep Thurbert Baker as A.G.

If there is one candidate running for election this year that has absolutely earned your vote, it’s the Honorable Jim Martin. No one running for any office in Georgia has better record of public service, accomplishment, or honesty. This guy is up there with Jimmy Carter.Now he’s running for Lt. Governor and deserves the support of all decent people. Mr. Martin has served as a State Legislator both in the house and the Senate. he’s been a committee chairman, and then he left. Why? Because he was asked to do a very difficult thing. Jim Martin cleaned up the state Department of Human Resources.

Martin is campaigning on 3 key issues: Keep transparency in government, end predatory lending practices, and improve our business climate by strengthening Georgia’s health care and education system.

The primary job of the Lt. Governor is to preside over the Senate. In that role, Martin can directly address the first two points of his agenda. The current Governor and House Speaker very much want the power to hide negotiations from the public over matters with businesses. It’s a bad deal for the public and Jim Martin has already stopped it once. As President of the Senate, he can make sure that nothing passes that will darken the corridors of power.

Financial companies see a gold mine in Georgia. With the growth of the housing market here they see a chance not only to reap the benefits of lending, but lending with the intent to foreclose. They start with a low rate and then raise the rate on undervalued property so they can force the owner to foreclose and read the benefit of selling it out from under the owner. As Lt. Governor, Martin can stop this and assure that lending bills meet a high standard of consumer protection.

Furthermore, should anything happen to the next Governor, You could not ask for a better care taker than Jim Martin. He has executive experience, civic experience, legislative experience, and no one cares about Georgia more.

Vote for Jim Martin.

You have about a week to register to vote.   Your registration must be complete by October 10.  If you don’t vote, then whatever the outcome of the election, you’d better support it because you did nothing.

What’s at stake?  The Governor’s Mansion, Lt. Governor, Agriculture Commissioner, Labor Commissioner, Public Service Commission seats, Attorney General, Judicial Seats, District Attorneys,  The Entire US House of Representatives, The Entire Georgia Legislature, and many local races.

Want more about the people running?  All you have to know is your zipcode and Vote Smart will give you information about everyone running!

A number of issues turn on your vote in the election.  Will we focus more on crime prevention or business development?  Will we change the tax code and how?  Will we continue to just fund road construction or will the state help pay for non-concrete solutions to our transportation problems?  We will re-regulate the natural gas market?

All of these issues are up for grabs and your vote matters.  Election day is November 7th.  Voting is open from 7 until 7.

If you don’t vote, no Chocolate for you for 2 years!  And you can’t vote if you don’t register!

Dear Governor Perdue and Lt. Governor Taylor,

There are less than 50 days until the election. It’s time for you to answer questions about your performance and some of the ideas you’ve presented. Thus far, neither of you have been particularly impressive in your campaigns.

So far, Governor, during your administration, we’ve had a net loss of 4 car plants. GM? Gone. Ford? Gone. Mercedes? You blew that! Kia? Our state is now caught up in one of the largest corruption scams in Korean history. That negative impact is huge! Additionally, only one company has relocated it’s world headquarters here during your tenure, and that’s Arby’s. How are you going to do better by all levels of the workforce here in Georgia? What will you do differently, because what you’re doing has not worked so far.

Lt. Governor Taylor, you’ve said you want to eliminate parole. How are you going to do that when many of our county prisons and jails are already overcrowded? Are you just going to build money at the problem and build jails all over rural Georgia so that we turn south Georgia into Flint Michigan? If you’re going to be smart enough to avoid those financial boondoggles, what sentencing reforms are you going to combine with the end of parole to ensure there is some sanity to the system?

Both of you! Where’s the rail? Neither of you have put any of your political muscle towards support of the rail transport you claim to want! Anyone remember Governor Perdue saying the Lovejoy Line would be up and running in his term? This is an 80-20 issue! There is an amazing amount of support for taking some of the money from the DOT budget and putting it into rail. Why not give the people what they want? Moreover, GRTA will soon lose large parts of it’s federal funding. Are you going to make that funding up or let those services lapse?

What are you going to do to assure the long term water sustainability of the region? What laws will you enact so that all commercial and residential builders take steps to use less water? Governor Perdue, what are you willing to give away in your upcoming November 30th meeting with the Governors of Alabama and Florida? What will you absolutely not give up?

Will you add entrepreneurship to curriculums all across the board? We’re behind a majority of the states in the basics. The United States is well behind industrial nations in the quality of basic education we provide our young people. Entrepreneurship and creative thinking is what has let Americans overcome our deficit in math and science, but as India, China, Israel, and others move forward, we’ll lose our edge there two unless we create a culture of people who expect to measure risk, innovate, and consistently create new ways. We need stronger, math, science, and arts education if we’re going to create a nimble thinking set of young people whose ideas and companies will take the world by storm.

Lastly, What will you do to help the City of Atlanta, especially in regard to its homeless population? Right now, homelessness is one of the biggest obstacles to the full redevelopment of lower midtown, Fairley Poplar, and Castleberry Hill. Homeless people are still Georgians. Many of them need more services than any city or county can provide. Will you pledge to provide the resources that would let many of these folks lead more productive happier lives and get themselves off the street? In return, you’ll get an Atlanta with a stronger tax base, more visitors, and as a more vibrant community. That will increase state coffers and revenue and pay for itself. Popular or not, it’s the right thing.

VOTERS: You have just over two weeks to register to vote! Candidates! Stop with the platitudes tell us specifically how you will get your agendas accomplished!

First the Mckinneys and now Andrew Young. Recently, Young was asked whether Wal-Mart was dangerous to locally owned and operated neighborhood stores. He responded: “Well, I think they should; they ran the ‘mom and pop’ stores out of my neighborhood, … But you see, those are the people who have been overcharging us selling us stale bread and bad meat and wilted vegetables. And they sold out and moved to Florida. I think they’ve ripped off our communities enough. First it was Jews, then it was Koreans and now it’s Arabs; very few black people own these stores.”

When you can morally offend a company such as Walmart? You’ve stepped way over the line. His remarks have caused all kinds of repercussions. Gubenatorial Candidate Mark Taylor has had to do a lot of damage control and distance himself from a Civil Rights icon who was the co-chair of his campaign. He has left Wal-marts employ and has again disgraced himself over issues related to the Jewish community.

Korean and Arab folks are not too likely to be happy with him either.

His comments, combined with those of the McKinney family indicate something about the thoughts of at least a subset of Atlanta’s African American communities. While many more socially mobile Black Atlantans enjoy the more cosmopolitan environment brought by diverse groups, many also feel threatened. There is a clear distrust of Asians and Latinos that runs through the humor of much of the Comic View crowd. Rather than using a common set of priorities (increasing social recognition, end to bigotry, fair access to educational opportunities, etc) to build bridges, there is often just resentment.

What is truly sad here is that at no time in US history has there ever been greater opportunities for all people of color to develop and influence the American agenda. Minority based businesses are opening at record levels, and yet rather than desiring the establishment of community based businesses, too many Black elected officials just want someone to come in and put “those people out of business” even if it means being bought off…and induced to resign… by Wal-Mart.

The run-offs are now over and it’s time to make sure people take the elections seriously. One way to get people who have not paid attention, to pay attention is to get them to register to vote. In fact, Lt. Governor Mark Taylor has issued the challenge of getting 100,000 new voters registered by the deadline October 7. That would be about 3/10% of the Georgia voting public and about 1/9% of the Georgia Population.

You can download the forms to vote from the Secretary of State’s office here:

What’s even more amazing is that if you want to vote in only the statewide races, you can get an absentee ballot on line here!

People should get energized to vote. There will be real differences in how various statewide candidates will handle our future and investigating them will make a big difference. The more you learn the madder you’ll be and the more you’ll want to vote.

Tuesday’s run-off election between Hank Johnson and Representative Cynthia McKinney will tell us alot of about Atlanta’s black community. The 4th district is a majority African American and transcends educational and class lines. What we will learn is whether the will is there to engage real leadership on behalf of the fourth of whether the leadership of victimhood will continue.

The question stems from Bill Cosby’s speech on the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Topeka Board of Education. In that speech, Cosby declared that the legacy of Brown had been squandered by large segments of the Black community that rejected the value of education, speaking proper English, and and the power of toil.

In a new series on African American Leadership, NPR’s Juan Williams declares large sections of African American leadership working to advocate victimhood for Black people rather than for their further success. “I think it’s a terrible signal to our young people about who black people are to have us constantly wrapped in the cloak of victimhood, and to have black leadership that in a knee-jerk fashion defends negative, dysfunctional behavior.”

“Negative Dysfunctional Behavior” you say? Representative McKinney has to be among the top 5 of all the folks in U.S. House in that category! This is not about ‘Telling truth to Power’, John Lewis does that just fine. This is about behaving in a dignified way and intelligently representing your district. All over Washington, Representative McKinney is a joke. If she is re-elected, her constituents will show that she represents the leadership they want, and that’s a sad joke indeed.

Years ago the Atlanta Braves already had baseball’s largest network of radio stations broadcasting their games (in 1995 there were 200 stations in 9 states) and Ted Turner’s invention of the Superstation enlarged the Braves fan base even more. An intriguing website called CommonCensus attempts to measure that effect. Thousands of fans enter their address and favorite team and software groups the locations together to produce the image. Take a look at this map showing the Braves with the largest geographic fanbase.

Using the same methodology, they attempt to show spheres of influence of America’s cities. This is similar to the concept of hubness that was floating around usenet a few years ago but with more of an eye to see where people actually feel they live rather than population densities or our current, almost arbitrary lines drawn by history and politics. A tool like this could be a path to ending gerrymandering.

What does this mean for Atlanta? Take a look at how far our influence stretches. People talk about us as a blue island in a sea of red, but it’s clear that a great portion of Georgia and the South identifies with our fair city.

I woke thinking about what this weekend means .. I know of no one in my family that is a casualty of war. http://icasualties.org/oif/ In Iraq there has been 2460 to date from the US and 75 from Georgia. The local news has not even mentioned this this morning. All I hear is stuff on the weather, fires for apartments, etc. Maybe the news just wants us to forget the war? No one wants to talk about things that are that painful. I hope and pray that you all have a great holiday. If you have family or friends that have been a casualty of war or they are serving now in the war then I pray that you may find peace of mind.

The Secretary of State of Georgia has put up the list of people who have qualified to run for office this year. 
Among the highlights,  Sonny Perdue has competition!  It’s not serious and the guy who is running against him is young and to the right of Atilla, but at least it will force the Governor to have to answer some questions. 
Also of interest is that only two Republicans are running for Lt. Governor.  Given the weakness of Ralph Reed due to his connections to the Jack Abramov scandal, it’s surprising that more Republicans are not at least testing the waters.
Denise Majette has also returned to politics.  Two years after losing statewide in her effort to become the first Female African American Senator from Georgia, Majette is again committing to a state wide election.  This time she’s running for State School Superintendent.   She stands a good chance of at least winning the Democratic Nomination and may win the race given that Kathy Cox, the incumbent has primary competition. 
Two office holders who were considered likely to seek other office are sticking where they are.  First, Attorney General Thurbert Baker has re-upped for this campaign.   Also re-upping is Mike Thurmond, who is the Labor Commissioner.
In the Congressional Races, only John Lewis has already won.  No one would dare run against him.  Cynthia McKinney may have lucked out.  She has two primary opponents.  They may split the ABC vote and give her the opportunity to again garner the needed majority to win.  The closest race will be in Savannah where Max Burns will try to capture the seat held by John Barrow. 
State Legislative races are not yet clear.  A Federal Court has demanded that qualifying extend to noon on May 5. Republican redistricting plans have been challenged in Athens and it will be some time until the appeals and constitutionality of the lines can be considered.  If Athens suit is successful, election results may only be temporary as hundreds of other suits may follow. 
If you are not registered to vote, there is still time!  Just Click Here to download a registration form. 
If you want to know more about those seeking to represent you and those who do, Just Click Here!