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PAGE 5A
ForsythOpinion
Wednesday, June t>. 2012
At a point
of inflection?
Demographic forecasts
generally lake the form of
predicting more of the
same.
Old people have been
moving to Florida for the
past several years, and
old people will move
there for the next few
years. Immigrants have
been streaming in from
Mexico, and they will
continue to do so. You get
the idea.
Most of the time these
forecasts prove right But
sometimes there are
inflection points, times
when some trends stop
and others begin My
read of recent demo¬
graphic data suggest we
may be at such a point.
These inflection poijats
are usually not recog¬
nized at the time For 25
years during and after
World War 11. there w as a
vast How of blacks from
the South to the big cities
of the North. People
assumed it would go on
and on But it stopped,
abruptly, in 1%5, just
after passage of federal
civil rights acts and at the
beginning of a period of
urban ghetto riots in the
North. There has been no
mass movement of blacks
from South to North
since, but rather a slight
net move in the other
direction.
Or consider the migra¬
tion of millions to sunny
California that started
dunng World War II and
accelerated in the post¬
war decades It came to a
halt in the middle 1980s.
just as southern
California’s President
Ronald Reagan w as
opening the 1984 Los
_ Angeles Olympics.
Since 1990. Americans
have been moving out of
California to other states
in large numbers The
Golden State's population
growth in the last two
decades has reached the
national average only
because of l-atin and
Asian immigration.
That immigration, to
California and elsewhere,
is one of the two big
demographic trends that
has reshaped the country
over the past 40 years
The other is the move¬
ment of vast numbers of
people from high-tax
states in the Northeast
and industrial Midwest to
lower-tax and more eco¬
nomically vibrant states
elsewhere.
Both these movements
have halted, at least tem¬
porarily. American
mobility is near an all
time low. As tn the
Depression of the 1930s,
people tend to stay put in
hard times. You don’t
want to sell your house if
you're underwater on
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Kirb Waltara The Toledo Blade
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MICHAEL BARONE
Columnist
your mortgage.
And immigration has
plunged. T he Pew
Hispanic Center esti¬
mates that from 2005 to
2010, more people have
moved from the United
States to Mexico than the
other way around. I sus¬
pect that reverse migra¬
tion is still going on
The question is w heth¬
er those trends will
resume when if —
good times return
My prediction is that
we won’t again see the
heavy Latin immigration
we saw between 1983
and 2007. which aver¬
aged 300.000 legal immi¬
grants and perhaps as
many illegals annually
Mexican and other
Latin birthrates fell more
than two decades ago.
And Mexico, source of
bO peaent of Latin immi¬
grants, is now a majority
middle-class country
Asian immigration may
continue, primarily from
China and India, espe¬
cially if we have the good
sense to change our law s
to let in more high-skill
immigrants
But the next big immi¬
gration source. I think,
will be sub-Saharan
Africa We may end up
with prominent politi¬
cians who actually were
bom in Kenya.
It’s not clear whether
Atlanta and its smaller
kin — Charlotte. Raleigh.
N ash v tile.. J acksonv die
— will resume their
robust growth They've
suffered high unemploy¬
ment lately.
But Texas has been
doing well If you draw a
triangle whose points are
Houston, Dallas and San
Antonio, enclosing
Austin, you’ve just drawn
a map of the economic
and jobs engine of North
America
Texas prospers not just
because of oil and gas,
but thanks to a diversified
and sophisticated econo¬
my It has attracted large
numbers of both immi¬
grants and domestic
migrants for a quarter
century One in 12
Americans lives there
America is getting to
look a lot more like
Texas, and that's one
trend that I hope contin
UCV
Michael Barone is senior
political analyst for the
Washington Examiner
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A gift ban? ...Doesn’t anybody believe in Santa anymore? n
Jim Powall tor the Forsyth County News
Reform a battle fought before
Thi-> is one of those times in
Georgia politics w hen people real¬
ize that the legislative process has
gotten a little off track and needs
to be straightened out
Republicans and Democrats
alike arc calling for ethics reform,
particularly that loophole in state
law that allow s lobbyists to spend
as much as they want to entertain
lawmakers This has resulted in
such spectacles as a speaker of the
House taking his family on a
$17,000 junket to Furopc with the
expenses paid by a lobbyist.
There was a similar move for
ethics reform in the (iencral
Assembly 20 years ago that ended
successfully w hen legislators
passed a law that for the first time
required lobbyists to register and
disclose what they spent in the
course of their business
The same arguments we hear
today from veteran legislators
"You can't buy my vote for the
price of a meal" — were the same
arguments made in 1992 against
that ethics bill
The lawmaker at the center of
that storm was McCracken
Poston, a young attorney from
northwest Georgia who defied one
of the most powerful men in state
politics. House Speaker Tom
Murphy, to get his bill passed
Poston left the legislature more
than 15 years ago Kut still lives in
Ringgold, where he practices
criminal law and serves as a juve¬
nile court judge
He agrees that the current
House speaker. David Ralston, is
making the same mistake that
Murphy did 20 years ago in trying
to block the passage of ethics
reform legislation He docs not.
however, depict the opposition to
reform as necessarily evil or cor¬
rupt
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Jett Kotarba The Omaha World Herald
This is a page ot opinion — ours, yours and
others. Signed columns and cartoons are the
opinions of the writers and artists, and they
may not reflect our views
TOM CRAWFORD
Columnist
“In my day with Speaker
Murphy, it was not a battle of
good versus evil,” Poston said.
We do a disservice w hen we
make this into a good versus evil
issue. Tom Murphy, individually,
was a very ethical person He
would be very offended at the
thought that someone was try ing
to buy him "
Poston said that Murphy, like
Ralston, understood that lobbyists
helped the House leadership main¬
tain control over the 180 individu¬
als who make up that chamber
through the money spent to enter¬
tain legislators.
“I realized I was challenging a
very institutionalized lever he
could use on committee chair¬
men." Poston recalled “By know ¬
ing w hich chairmen liked to eat at
the Capitol City Club, and which
ones liked to play golf, he could
keep control of the place a lot bet¬
ter
"The lobbyists were the lever."
Poston said “He could use lobby¬
ists to persuade and pressure
House memberv Otherwise, you
had to actually get down and
argue the merits of the issue,
that's hard to do with 180 people
That is going to make his job of
leadership a lot harder"
Poston persevered against
Murphy 's opposition and secured
passage of a bill that required lob¬
byists to start revealing them¬
selves to the public through the
registration and disclosure pro¬
group may only submit one letter per month for
consideration.
Letters must be submitted by noon Wednesday
for Sunday publication. We do not publish poetry
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ters concerning consumer complaints Unsigned
or incorrectly identified letters will be withheld.
Mail letters to the Forsyth County News, PO.
Box 210, Cumming, GA 30028, hand deliver to
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cess. When he undertook that
struggle 20 years ago, Georgia
was one of just two states that did
not require lobbyists to disclose
the money they spent on lawmak
ers.
Legislators like Sen. Josh
McKoon, R-Columbus, and out¬
going Rep. Tommy Smith,
R-Nicholls. are the ones who
sponsored the latest round of eth¬
ics bills. They have tried to bring
lobbyists under tighter control by
putting a cap of $100, or some
similar limitation, on what they
can spend on each legislator.
Today. Georgia is one of just
three states that does not place any
limitation on the amount of money
that lobbyists can spend to influ¬
ence the passage of legislation.
Poston speaks kindly of David
Ralston, even though he disagrees
w ith him on the need for ethics
reform.
“He's a nice guy, he’s a north
Georgian." Poston said. "I like
David, always have. But we all get
caught in that trap T think we just
have to make the speaker's job
harder.
“It would be unheard of for a
lawyer to show up in court with a
gift for the judge that is hearing
his case.” Poston noted. "It’s a
violation of the judicial canon of
ethics. It's a criminal offense, in
some circumstances.
“Why should one branch of
government be allow ed to do
that?” he asked. “It makes no
sense. 1 am a true believer that we
have to change.”
Tom Crawford is editor o1 The Georgia
Report, an internet news service at
gareport.com that reports on govern¬
ment and politics in Georgia He can
be reached at tcrawford@gareport
com.