My Morning Wooten

A full plate today.

MARTA hires a new general manager. A year to learn and schmooze, followed by a year to “shake things up” and then one to find another job before the realization sets in that the broken pieces don’t fit back together. Steps one and two may be reversed. In year four, the board finds a marvelous new prospect employed somewhere else. The cycle begins anew. Ho hum.

Guess Jim missed the reports in July of MARTA turning a profit. But why would a forward thinking transportation advocate report the positives of a major mass transit system when instead you can roll out old saws of perceived incompetence? Thank goodness we can always fall back on the ever effecient, never changing DOT.

Any old person who attends a sponsored “free lunch” thinking it’s free probably should have a conservator managing their money. The feds are cracking down on investment firms for luring well-to-do old folks to “free lunch” educational seminars where they’re pushed to open new accounts or make investments. The old people who need protecting are those victimized by con artists such as the one who bilked an 83-year-old north Fulton woman out of $97,000 for a driveway paving. He’d been arrested 40 times in the past 17 years for similar crimes. Lock ‘em up, toss the key in an asphalt truck.

Caveat emptor? Laissez-faire? Jim, did you forget your Adam Smith injection this morning? Or did your heart simply grow three sizes?

Redeveloping Fort McPherson is a boon, a winner every which way. But wait. The good news is bad. Taking the neighborhood upscale could mean that some renters might choose to relocate to places with cheaper rents. This is bad. But on the bright side, it’s another chance for a government remedy. How about a rent freeze?

Ahhhh, there's the free market personality! Perhaps it just took some time for the Adam Smith pill to kick in.

Moveon.org’s full-page ad in The New York Times headlined “General Petraeus Or General Betray Us?” subtitled “Cooking the Books for the White House” demonstrates yet again an eternal truth about America’s loony Left: Unassisted, it will always marginalize itself.

Except not all on the "loony left" agree with MoveOn's tactics. When did Sean Hannity talking points become a primary source for an esteemed newspaperman.

Resistance to allowing Mexican trucks to deliver throughout the United States is driven by pure protectionism, not safety concerns. The administration opts to allow a one-year test. Congress, pushed by the Teamsters and the Sierra Club, balks. Mexico is opening its doors to U.S. truckers.

Wait a minute. We should build a 700 mile long wall because terrorists might walk across a 150 mile wide desert to blow us all to hell but we shouldn't be concerned about trucks crossing the same border and heading to destinations unknown? Oh wait, one argument is an opportunity to attack poor people looking for jobs and the other is an opportunity to attack unions and environmentalists.

Just days after the release of Bill Clinton’s book, “Giving,” wife Hillary lives the sequel, “Giving Back,” returning $850,000 raised by Democratic fund-raiser Norman Hsu. He’s under federal investigation for allegedly paying straw donors to contribute to Hillary and other candidates. When it serves their interests, the Clintons — and especially Hillary — seem to find the company of shady players

Yes, yes. Only Democrats play footsie with questionable characters. Where have you gone Howard Hunt? A lonely nation turns its eyes to you.