Buddy here is a Treeing Walker Coonhound, a noble beast, who is as sweet and gentle as any dog and he is available for adoption from the Athens Canine Rescue. He lives with a two year old child now and is extremely tolerant of the child hugging him, laying on him, tugging on his ears…he also does not jump up at all and plays gently! He is perfect for a family with kids!
Buddy is both housebroken and crate trained and gets along great with the other dogs in the house and they are all shapes and sizes. He is gentle with the small ones and can wrestle with the big ones. He would be great at a dog park! Buddy is a little too interested in tracking down the cats he encounters, so we don’t think he should go to a home with cats.
While Buddy is very laid back, he will need a good walk each day to allow him to put his hound nose to the test! He loves to sniff around and he also loves to lay outside in the sun on the warm days! He is a gentle player with people too and will gently play with toys or wrestle a little with his human family too. Coonhounds are fantastic pets and make excellent hunting dogs if trained. If you want someone to help make sure you get your exercise every day, there’s no better dog than a coonhound.
Parker is a ten-pound miniature dachshund. Wait, aren’t all doxies miniature? Anyway, he’s available for adoption from Athens Canine Rescue.
Juno is a young, female terrier mix who weighs in a 22 pounds of fun and is available for adoption from Athens Canine Rescue. Juno has a sweet, adorable, and goofy personality. When she is happy, she wiggles and bounces all around! She deserves the best of forever homes full of love, playtime, walks, and snuggles! She has the perfect balance of spunk and calmness which will make her a wonderful companion!
Nikki is an adventuresome mid-size Husky/Shepherd mix who is available for adoption from Athens Canine Rescue. She’s already housebroken and is known to be good with people, children, and cats. Look, she’s on a boat!
Like most young pugs and pug mixes, Harvey is always on the go. He is always ready to play, always ready to walk, and always ready to be in the middle of things! He would do great with a family that has other dogs for him to play with. But if not, he will need one that will take him on long walks or to the dog park. If he didn’t have another dog, he will definitely need his family to exercise him. He isn’t overly hyper though, and when it’s bed time, he is happy to snooze! When he’s tired, he loves to have his belly rubbed!
Georgia Politics, Campaigns & Elections
Event Calendar
The Event Calendar is once again active as we plummet toward our State Convention in May. As always, I encourage you to check the details with the host organization.
From 5:30 to 7:00 PM tonight, the Cherokee County Republican Party will host a Forum for the legislative delegation at the Historic Courthouse at 100 North Street in Canton, with all members of the Cherokee County delegation to the Georgia General Assembly invited.
Also tonight at 7:30 PM, B.J. Van Gundy, candidate for Chairman of the Georgia Republican Party and Catherine Bernard, candidate for First Vice Chair of the GAGOP will speak to the monthly meeting of the Barrow County GOP at the Winder Women’s Club.
Tuesday night, Senator Judson Hill will continue his extensive speaking tour of the Sixth Congressional District Fulton and DeKalb Counties at the Buckhead Young Republicans meeting at the Taco Mac at Lindbergh, beginning at 7 PM.
Wednesday, Young Republicans from across the state will gather under the Gold Dome for YRs day at the Capitol from 11:30 AM to 1 PM. Attorney General Sam Olens will be dropping in.
Wednesday evening in Athens, Congressman Phil Gingrey will speak to the University of Georgia College Republicans.
On Saturday, former Congressman and NRA National Board of Directors member Bob Barr will speak to the BuckSprings Breakfast of the Fulton County Republican Party.
2013-14 Elections
Yesterday, we heard from three different sources that former State Senator Seth Harp is running for Chairman of the Georgia Republican Party.
And on Saturday, Twitter lit-up with news about potential (or actual) candidates for the US Senate in 2014.
The moral of the story being that the world is happening now on Twitter and if you’re not on it, you’ll have to wait an hour to hear elsewhere. Of course that means that I may be wrong faster than ever before. Make of it what you will.
Take this as a potential opening salvo in the 2014 and 2016 election cycles: President Barack Obama will deliver the commencement address at Morehouse College in Atlanta this May. Bet you a Krispy Kreme donut that Mayor Kasim Reed, fresh from reelection this November, will be visible at the event. [I’ll accept the first ten donut wagers – email me to participate.]
According to a White House official, Morehouse was selected because it is “one of the nation’s leading historical black colleges and universities (and) is among the best and brightest institutions of higher education in the country. Known for its high standard for excellence in learning and social consciousness, Morehouse is home to a long list of notable alumni that spans the last three centuries.”
Among those alumni is the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Wilson said it was fitting that the president’s visit will be in the 50th anniversary year of King’s “I Have a Dream” speech during the March on Washington. It is also the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation and the 100th anniversary of the name Morehouse College, which was changed from Atlanta Baptist College in 1913.
“The president’s life story trumpets an ethic that we try to instill in all Morehouse men, namely excellence without apology or compromise,” Wilson said Saturday. “It’s a good thing to have him here for that reason.”
Wilson has been on the job as Morehouse’s president for just three weeks. Previously he was the executive director of the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Wilson said he did not lobby for the presidential visit and received the call from the White House not long after he started at Morehouse in late January.
Take note of that last line. Last week, I relayed an interesting suggestion that I’m now making my own. For the GAGOP to have a future in a state that may well head toward the wild blue yonder in 2016, we should consider putting a full-time staffer into the Historically Black Colleges and Universities, where the next generation of African-American leadership is being trained today.
State and Local
While there are plenty of Democrats in Georgia arguing for more spending on education, health care and transportation, Gov. Nathan Deal and his followers are loyal to a strategy of cutting taxes. From Deal’s perspective, he’s doing what he knows works. After all, his whole life, Georgia’s major draw for employers has been cheap land, labor, energy and taxes.
He said it in his state of the state address last month.
“More and more businesses are deciding to make Georgia their home,” he said. “Some of the reasons for these decisions are government policies of low taxes and reasonable regulations.”
He’s not alone. Other policymakers have also kept their eyes on the expense side of the ledger. The Public Service Commission, for instance, only began encouraging Georgia Power Co. to embrace more alternative sources of electricity like solar when the cost of doing so dropped precipitously in the last year or two at the same time new environmental regulations have driven up the price of the formerly cheap, coal-base generation the state has traditionally relied on.
Commissioner Chuck Eaton said, “Solar has now entered the realm of competitive energy. There have been folks that have been critical that we haven’t gotten in earlier, but really what they are saying is, ‘You should have paid three times for the solar what you are paying today.’” Like many Republicans, Eaton campaigned for re-election on the state’s removal of the sales tax on electricity and natural gas used by manufacturers. Deal and legislative leaders were eager to remove the tax.
A point of pride for them is that since the last recession, budget cutting has allowed them to hold taxes nearly level, even as the state’s population has grown. That has resulted in Georgia becoming the state with the lowest taxes per person in the nation, a bragging point sprinkled in many politicians’ speeches these days.
Recently, the three of us have come under fire for imposing a $5 per month charge on the government-subsidized cellphone service known as “Lifeline.” But with documented waste, abuse and fraud in the federal program, we believe this small action will yield significant results — saving Americans millions of dollars. Maybe other states will follow our lead.
[A] number of prepaid wireless providers have become Lifeline-only ETCs here in Georgia providing these “free” phones — most with 250 minutes per month and 250 text messages. In fact, their entire business model is built around the “free” service. The problem is that some people have figured a way to get more phones by using fictitious names and addresses. By setting up a billing system for the $5 charge, companies will have to verify that each person and each address is receiving only one phone.
We recognize that universal telephone service has been a national objective since the enactment of the Communications Act of 1934. We believe $5 per month is reasonable and will help to make this program live another day to help others who really need it.
House Bill 195 may be thought of as the Son of T-SPLOST, but in a good way that learned a lesson from its father’s failure, and would allow adjacent counties to band together and pass a Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax within the counties to be used for transportation projects. Given the history of a similar measure before T-SPLOST, this proposal may have legs:
Lawmakers considered such an arrangement in 2008 in a proposed constitutional amendment. After passing the House, it fell just three votes short in the Senate of the two-thirds majority necessary to approve a constitutional change.
Two years later, then-Gov. Sonny Perdueproposed legislation that divided the state into 12 regions, each voting separately on a 1-cent transportation sales tax. Voters shot down the tax in nine of 12 regions — by an overwhelming 62 percent to 38 percent margin in Atlanta.
The 12-region setup was too rigid to work, said Rep. Ed Setzler, R-Acworth, the new bill’s sponsor. The 10-county metro region, for example, was so large it lumped suburban dwellers interested only in highways with urban transit advocates, he said.
“[My bill] allows areas that have common interests to form districts,” said Setzler, who opposed the metro TSPLOST referendum, arguing it was too heavy on transit projects. “Only counties where there’s a consensus will put themselves in a region for a vote.”
Setzler’s proposal is drawing interest from some of the groups that opposed last year’s TSPLOST votes.
This might be a workable plan to move transportation funding forward in a way that respects the integrity of local governments. Keep an eye on this one.
Curmudgeonly columnist Dick Yarbrough had a sit down with Speaker David Ralston, whom he’s roundly lampooned. While not breaking into Kumbaya together, Yarbrough left the meeting with a greater respect for Ralston’s intent to pass workable ethics legislation this year
If I was looking for a pompous, thin-skinned, self-important politician ready to kick my fanny over my seemingly incessant sarcastic comments on the subject, I was to be surprised. David Ralston was affable and relaxed and even cracked a joke or two about “lizard-loafered lobbyists.” Whew!
The speaker said when you spoke your concerns about lobbying limits during the recent elections, he heard you. Smart move. More than 80 percent of you said you wanted to see the cozy relationship between legislators and lobbyists changed. That, he said, is what he is trying to do.
Ralston said his bill is in no way an attempt to throttle free speech as some have claimed. He quickly revised his proposal after hearing complaints that the measure would discourage individuals from coming to the Capitol to express their personal views. Now, the focus is on those who represent organizations — volunteers and lobbyists — that spend more than five days a year advocating for or against an issue. They would have to pay a $25 fee and file disclosure reports.
One legislator told me that when someone comes into his office — paid or unpaid — and tells him how many members they represent and how many live in his district and suggests strongly that it would be in the legislator’s interest to vote their way — that is a lobbyist, pure and simple. I agree.
While the speaker’s proposal isn’t perfect, it is a good start in the right direction. The bill is certainly better than the State Senate rule that caps lobbyist expenditures at $100 and has more holes in it than my favorite sweater.
To his credit, Ralston has gotten the message he had, up to this time, chosen to ignore. I am glad our mutual friends got us together and that I heard his views firsthand. I don’t think we are ready to exchange Christmas cards yet, but at least we are on speaking terms. That’s a good start.
Sports & Liquor
Kevin Rathbun Steak has been named one of the top steakhouse in the United States by Travel & Leisure magazine. If you like a Maker’s Mark with your steak, you’ll rejoice that the company reversed its decision to dilute its flagship offering in order to avoid shortages. Or you’ll curse when your local is unable to get any because of shortages.
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