Dusty Nix: Not totally random reflections, raves and rants
The tentative plans for the Turner Field site, after the Atlanta Braves leave Atlanta, supposedly involve a mixed-use area of Georgia State student housing, restaurants, retail, greenspace and sports fields.
Now there are other murmurs, accompanied by the sound of huge bags of money dropping.
The Atlanta Business Chronicle reports that MGM Resorts and three other "major casino gaming companies" want to build a casino resort in downtown Atlanta, and the property where The Ted stands is one of the potential sites.
Mayor Kasim Reed said he shares Gov. Nathan Deal's reservations about casino gambling in Georgia (he clearly had no such reservations about collaborating in the flight of his city's baseball team to another town), but "It would be fiscal malpractice not to hear these people out."
So some gambling interests think it would make a good spot for a casino, and others think it would be a great spot for mixed-use development. Personally, I think it's a perfect spot for a really great baseball park.
Speaking of sports venues, the third shoe has dropped. (I know that's anatomically incorrect; just bear with me here.) The Falcons and Braves have demanded, and are getting, spanking new playpens, largely at Georgia taxpayers' expense. Now the NBA's Hawks, who play in the positively antiquated (gasp -- 16 years old) Philips Arena, want theirs, too.
They have at least one PR advantage over the Falcons and Braves -- a winning record.
The Savannah Morning News reported this week that federal prosecutors have recommended life in prison for a Georgia peanut company executive convicted of selling salmonella-poisoned peanut butter that killed at least nine people and sickened at least 700 others. The company was found to have falsified test results and lab screenings, and knowingly shipped tainted goods to food processors.
Here's my sentencing recommendation: Slam the cell door and weld the lock.
Enough. Want real "prison reform"? Then let's use some of that space we're cramming with petty drug offenders and small-time thieves to put away these white-collar thugs who destroy people's lives and fortunes and are never held to account. Time after time, they sign a pathetically inadequate check on their shareholders' money and walk away in silk suits, when they ought to be perp-walked in orange jumpsuits. Enough.
On the subject of accountability (or lack thereof): Another bill seeking to reform the deplorable conditions in VA health care passed a Senate committee last week. The Department of Veterans Affairs Accountability Act of 2015 is an extension of a law President Obama signed last year that empowers the VA secretary to fire senior execs. This new law would extend that authority to terminate any corrupt, incompetent or delinquent employee.
One impetus for the bill was the case of Catherine Henderson, a former supervisor in the VA medical center in Augusta indicted - but not fired - for falsifying patient health records.
Sheesh.
And on the subject of institutional dysfunction: How much more does Georgia need to learn about these private, for-profit probation outfits before reining in a system that is obviously operating as a law unto itself?
A sixth federal lawsuit has now been filed against one of these companies in Georgia, which keep indigent probationers under indefinite supervision despite a state Supreme Court ruling that they have no authority to do so.
Contracting with private companies to handle practical matters related to probationers is a legitimate process. Ceding the judiciary's constitutional authority of sentencing to companies that profit by abusing it doesn't even come close.
The eloquent Kathleen Parker wrote a characteristically eloquent column recently about the mutant murderer of Charleston churchgoers, the gist of which was that, apart from legitimate news considerations, his name isn't worthy of mention or memory.
That column came to mind the other day when another notoriously misbegotten South Carolinian wrote a letter to a Columbia newspaper claiming she never meant to roll her two little boys into a lake strapped into their car seats. What she really meant to do was commit suicide.
Yeah, you can see how that could happen.
I don't fault the paper for reporting the letter; it's news. But hers isn't a name worthy of mention or memory, either.
Dusty Nix, 706-571-8528; dnix@ledger-enquirer.com.
This story was originally published July 25, 2015 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Dusty Nix: Not totally random reflections, raves and rants."