chrisishardcore.com

Dork Zone, Baseball Edition

With 5 games to go and the Braves needing to win either 1 of their remaining games or the Phillies to lose 1 of theirs, my brother and I calculated the odds (percentage wise) that the Braves will win their division.

The odds are greater than 99.9%. No lie. I guess we can get used to the Braves being division champs yet again, and cut out some of the suspense of "will they clinch?"

Update I guess I'm batting .500 on predictions this past week. Wrong about the Cobb tax vote but correct about the Braves (they clinched). For what it's worth, I also predict that school will be back in tomorrow and that on average, gas will become $.15 more expensive by next week. Here's hoping I'm still batting .500 a week from now.

Catch a Wave on the News Cycle

So I think we can all admit, whether we know better or not (whether we have any economics training) that Sonny's suspension of the gas tax was good politics. Tampering with the market like that is never ideal from an economic perspective, but a lot of good politics (on both sides of the aisle) does not make good econ, and that's kind of par for the course.

The problem for the GOG gang is that September is rolling to a close and the gas tax suspension will soon be no more. And so I'm afraid my friends that that operation has decided to surf the news cycle. In what can only make me suspect that Bob Shrum is now in charge over there, Sonny's crack squad has decided to respond to the latest hurricane 1,000 miles away by closing Georgia's schools.

And I think, though I reserve the right to be proven wrong, that a large part of Georgia's population just exhaled. Soccer moms (and dads) who have to rearrange their entire schedules so that Sonny can get on the cable news shows may now view him as just a little out of touch. And cynics who never could pin down exactly what his style and philosophy were are now sure -- gimmickry.

So now Georgians breathlessly await the next development of worldwide events to learn how Sonny will reinterpret it to interfere with their daily lives. And Democrats and leery Republicans know that the more often you surf the news cycle, the sooner you jump the shark.

Not so fast, Bill (and some Democrats)

A lot of people seem to have missed something about Bill Stephen's support of paper receipts for voting machines in Georgia. His proposal is only for 3 counties to have the receipts in 2006 (Cobb, Columbia and Decatur) and then if it works to expand it to all of the counties by 2008, which just happens to be when he assumes he'll be in charge to dole out the contracts and upgrade work.

A lot of Democrats have been eager to praise their new friends on the Republican side of the aisle for embracing this issue, but they should keep in mind that this is a piecemeal solution to what they consider is a problem that deserves immediate attention.

Also keep in mind that Stephens is running in a Republican primary for Secretary of State, and he just happens to choose (completely at random I'm sure) the #1 Republican County in the State (Cobb), the #4 Republican County in the State (Columbia) and the home county of current Democratic Secretary of State Cathy Cox to "test" his initiative.

Something tells me that if you're looking for a Secretary of State candidate that will keep the office out of politics (as Cox has) Stephens is not your man. (Cobb and Columbia totals calculated by adding up all votes in the 2004 Republican US Senate primary and sorting by total number of votes, by the way).

Georgia's Newest Senator

Ed Tarver easily won the special election to fill Sen. Charles Walker's (D - Augusta) 22nd district seat. Tarver was recruited to run for the 23rd district by Democratic leaders in the state Senate, but due to redistricting his residence was shifted to the 22nd. He ran against Walker in the primary last year, but apparently he got the bug and when the seat reopened he jumped in early and never looked back.

His victory doesn't get the Democrats any closer to majority status, but he will be an asset to the caucus as they look to recruit other candidates like Tarver to fill Republican held seats. One plus: All 3 candidates for SD 22 were Democrats, which assured that the seat would stay within the Democratic caucus regardless of the winner of Tuesday's election.

My Prediction Du Jour

Today I predict that the Cobb County sales tax increase will not pass. That is too bad for Cobb County government, and also too bad for neighboring counties, where the price of goods would become relatively cheaper (for discriminating consumers) if Cobb's taxes went up.

UPDATE 9/21 Cobb's sales tax barely passed, winning by about 100 votes out of nearly 40,000 cast. Since these things usually pass by healthy margins, I'm guessing a lot of the pro-tax folks were on the edge of their seats during the count. As I said in my original post, I hope this will benefit DeKalb County. How? Goods in Cobb are now 1 cent more expensive (though still cheaper than in DeKalb). However, the incentive to drive to Cobb to make a purchase has been reduced. A $1,000 TV just got $10 more expensive in Cobb. When you factor in driving costs as well as the hassle, if you live in DeKalb it now makes sense just to buy that thing here.

...Since I Rock'n'Rolled...

I've been out of commission for a while, as far as this site is concerned. Stay tuned though, I have a pretty huge upgrade to the Georgia District page coming in the next day or two.

Georgia Gets a Hurricane?

Because of the Georgia coast's unique geography and location relative to Florida and the Carolina coasts, it is very rare for a hurricane to have a direct hit on our barrier islands and port cities. I've got some anecdotal evidence of my own: I lived in St. Simons Island very briefly in 1995, and Atlanta got hit by a hurricane (and even lost power for an extended period in many areas) but St. Simons escaped unscathed, barring some windier than normal days.

Anyway, Hurricane Ophelia is brewing in the Atlantic Ocean near the Georgia coast, and it's projected 5 day path has it making landfall right near Savannah, about 50 miles away on the South Carolina coast. Here's a picture of it's projected track:

I can't imagine that any of the folks who read this blog aren't already familiar with the National Hurricane Center's website but if you're not you should definitely check it out. Thousands upon thousands of competent, intelligent and hard working people work for local, state and federal government agencies, which can be hard to remember when most of the government agencies on display in the last two weeks have been utter disasters. The NHC is one of those organizations.

We should remember that as we move forward and the instinctive response of some political observers will be to privatize and eliminate government agencies throughout (such as Rick Santorum, who wants to eliminate the National Weather Service, which runs NHC) because of the poor response of FEMA that a lot of brilliant people want to dedicate their lives working for the government to help people in need, it's just that they need good managers and administrators so that they can do their jobs.

Blame Blanco?

One of the thing conservatives have been doing is compiling the reasons why you should blame Louisiana officials instead of the feds for the hurricane disaster in New Orleans. And hey, I'm sure Louisiana officials deserve at least part of the blame, maybe half of it.

But, regardless of how bad Louisiana officials have handled this, it is without question that the federal government has bungled their response as well. And that is the key thing to remember, going forward. If Atlanta has a natural disaster, Kathleen Blanco and Ray Nagin will not be in charge of the local response. Shirley Franklin and Sonny Perdue will. And while I have more faith in our Georgia officials to handle something that goes wrong here, I have very little faith in the how the federal response will be managed.

So in summary, if you live in New Orleans, and you're trying to prevent a future catastrophe, it matters very much that you sort out the problems on the local, state and federal level. If you live anywhere else and you're worried about a future disaster, it doesn't matter how much Blanco or Nagin messed up, because they won't have anything to do with the response in your state, but the team at FEMA and the rest of the federal government that joined the incompetence at the state level will likely still be very much in place.

Voucher Guy

The AJC had a typically lame he said she said argument about the education sales tax. Arguing in favor, Glenn Delk. The AJC describes him as an "Atlanta attorney." That's true, but he's also an attorney who has sued to overturn the entire Georgia school system that he wants to replace with private school vouchers.

You see, Delk was the leader of a pro-voucher group called Georgia Parents for Better Education. His mission in life is to devote less money to public schools and divert more money to private schools. So, excuse me AJC, but I find it hard to believe that he'd now credibly argue that an education sales tax would be somehow "fair" or revenue neutral to the public school system in this state.

It seems to me that Delk and others who've long campaigned for vouchers and the dismantling of the public school system have just attached themselves to the latest vehicle that gives them hope -- the education sales tax. They think Georgians will be snookered by Jerry Keen's smooth talking into thinking we're just shifting around some numbers to improve our school system, when the real goal (that they just won't come out and admit) is that they want to cut the size of public education and get it down to the size where they can drown it in the bathtub.

Anger Rises

You read stories about people who were unable to evacuate and it is just amazing how the protective measures that are supposed to be in place for a disaster such as this failed. Here's a man talking to the Washington Post about why he didn't leave when he had the chance:

"But then I said, 'If we do take the car, some of us would be sitting on one another's laps.' And the state troopers were talking about making arrests."

It is shameful for the America hating right wing crowd to talk about what the refugees should or shouldn't have done when the world they live in (even before the storm) is incomprehensable to the people commenting on it. How many times do you think Rush Limbaugh goes somewhere where there aren't enough car seats or cars to accomodate all the people there? My guess is probably never in his life.

Bush looks bad

I'm watching Bush's press conference with Clinton and his father on CNN right now. He looks bad. Confused. Like he did on September 11th. The big difference is that he won't have Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein's ass to kick after this. Could be the beginning of an even bigger tailspin for this Presidency.

This Guy is Our Governor?

It is almost amazing to read this, but here it goes. During the 2002 campaign, when it was announced that Georgia's SAT's were last in the nation, Sonny Perdue proposed the following: He said he'd set up a system in which every student taking the SAT would be supported by a five-person team: a fellow student, a parent, a teacher, a business representative and a state legislator.

Last year, 59,842 Georgia students took the SATs. There are 236 legislators. That is a ratio of 1 legislator to every 253 students taking the SAT. How can anyone expect Perdue to come up with a plan to improve education when he clearly did not know what he was talking about when he was running for office -- and he said this in a debate where he was prepped!

Is it any wonder that his solution to Georgia's education problems have been to a) cut education, b) make a website about the SAT and c) give out a trophy to a school that sees the best SAT average score increase? He had no idea what he was talking about during the 2002 campaign and he clearly has no idea how to fix the problem now that it's actually his problem.

Bonus Quote: "We're dead last in the nation in SAT scores. If that doesn't convince you we need to try something new, nothing will." -- Perdue television ad that began airing Oct 22, 2002.

Bonus Quote 2: Dan McLagan: "Sonny voted against the Barnes plan to make Georgia 50th out of 50 in SAT scores. He'd do it again."

Bonus Quote 3: "The SAT is a fairly tricky test" -- Perdue to the Augusta Chronicle Sept 18, 2002.