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Status:
"Pickleball-Free American"
(set 5 days ago)
Location: St Simons Island, GA
23,466 posts, read 44,100,317 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Saintmarks
Would there be any advantage to the CofA beating the state to the punch and selling to private investors first and keeping the money for the city? Finish the Belt line? Add MARTA HRT lines? Rebuild the sewer system? Invest in other infrastructure and developments?
Just a thought. Thinking of a worst case scenario where this does happen and Atlanta gets nothing out of its premiere (or one of them) asset?
Consider the legacy of graft and corruption associated with the city's largest asset. A great many politicos and their cronies have built fortunes off of it, and quite often by nefarious means. They would be hard-pressed to relinquish their prize cash cow under any circumstances.
Would there be any advantage to the CofA beating the state to the punch and selling to private investors first and keeping the money for the city? Finish the Belt line? Add MARTA HRT lines? Rebuild the sewer system? Invest in other infrastructure and developments?
That money would disappear with the quickness.
Quote:
Just a thought. Thinking of a worst case scenario where this does happen and Atlanta gets nothing out of its premiere (or one of them) asset?
But are any of the major political players in this state (or even the FAA) willing to take on the sleeping giant that is Delta Air Lines? They've been pretty clear as to which way they wish this to swing.
That's a good question.
Georgia Governor-elect Brian Kemp and Georgia House of Representatives Speaker David Ralston seem to be two major state political players who appear to be hesitant to start and engage in a fight with the state's largest single private employer.
The problem for them is that there many deeply conservative rural and exurban Georgia legislators (particularly in the Georgia state Senate) that do not appear to share Governor-elect Kemp's and Speaker Ralston's hesitancy to engage in a bitter public battle with the state's largest private employer in Delta Airlines.
Many of the Georgia Legislature's social and cultural conservatives are increasingly intensely bitter at Delta Airlines because the company's leadership spoke out against the state's Religious Liberty bill during the 2015 session of the Georgia General Assembly and because the airline stopped honoring NRA (National Rifle Association) discounts after the Parkland, Florida high school shooting massacre back in March 2018.
A major part of the motivation for this effort by social and cultural conservatives to push a state takeover of the Atlanta Airport is a desire to significantly reduce the clout of Delta Airlines in Georgia politics because of the airline's outspoken progressive positions on social and cultural issues that are in direct opposition to the positions of the social and cultural conservatives who continue to dominate Georgia's legislature.
Their thinking is that taking control of the airport away from the City of Atlanta would take Delta Airlines political clout several notches and allow social/cultural conservatives to more easily move controversial pieces of legislation on hot-button social issues like guns, gay marriage, religious liberty, abortion, etc.
There is also much resentment and anger towards Delta Airlines by many conservative legislators in the Georgia state Senate after outgoing Lt. Governor Casey Cagle's loss to Brian Kemp in the 2018 GOP gubernatorial primary runoff.
Many conservatives in the Georgia state Senate (seemingly irrationally) blame much of Cagle's gubernatorial primary runoff election loss on Delta's discontinuance of discounts for NRA members after Cagle publicly came out against Delta on the part of gun owners and gun rights activists.
Those Georgia state Senate conservatives that are angry at Delta over Cagle's gubernatorial primary runoff election loss want to exact some significant degree of payback on Delta for Cagle's loss.
Georgia legislative conservatives also want to send a very clear message to other major corporations not to interfere in Georgia legislative politics by speaking out on major issues that are important to conservatives... And they think that taking Delta's political clout down several notches by taking control of the airport away from the City of Atlanta would send that message to other corporations not to interfere or speak out too loudly and openly against issues that are important to conservatives in Georgia state politics.
And how would those conservatives react if Delta threatens to leave Atlanta? You'd better believe cities would be lined up with sweetheart deals to attract Delta.
And how would those conservatives react if Delta threatens to leave Atlanta? You'd better believe cities would be lined up with sweetheart deals to attract Delta.
Yeah, we saw that, both back in 2015 when the Georgia Legislature originally stripped the fuel tax break out of legislation to punish Delta's leadership for speaking out against the Religious Liberty bill that year (a Religious Liberty effort that notably went on to be vetoed by Georgia Governor Nathan Deal after the next year's legislative session), and again in 2018 when Georgia Lt. Governor Casey Cagle openly came out against restoring the fuel tax break for Delta on national TV to punish Delta for discontinuing discounts for NRA members as part of an election year stunt when he appeared to be the early frontrunner for the GOP gubernatorial nomination.
Other cities and states (particularly bluer-purple states like Virginia and blue states like New York) were lining up to offer Delta incentives to move to states where they were expressing that a large major employer like Delta would be more appreciated by their legislatures.
Outside of that, while many business-oriented and fiscal conservatives would react with an extreme sense of loss if a major private employer were to leave the state of Georgia, many social and cultural conservatives likely would be very happy to see a company like Delta leave Georgia and probably would hope that they would take many other politically/socially/culturally moderates and progressives with them so that social and cultural conservatives could start to regain the political, social and cultural clout that they have lost and continue to lose as the state's population continues to grow with newcomers from other less-conservative parts of the country.
Many social and cultural conservatives continue to be increasingly uncomfortable with and even resentful of a major international corporation like Delta Airlines.
To them, Delta represents everything that they increasingly utterly despise politically, socially and culturally (too LGBTQ-friendly, too left-leaning, anti-gun rights, anti-Religious Liberty, too cosmopolitan, they bring too much international attention to Georgia, etc).
And striking a blow against a corporation like Delta would be a major victory for conservatives (both here in Georgia and nationally) in the ongoing culture wars that have heated back up during the Trump era.
Yeah, we saw that, both back in 2015 when the Georgia Legislature originally stripped the fuel tax break out of legislation to punish Delta's leadership for speaking out against the Religious Liberty bill that year (a Religious Liberty effort that notably went on to be vetoed by Georgia Governor Nathan Deal after the next year's legislative session), and again in 2018 when Georgia Lt. Governor Casey Cagle openly came out against restoring the fuel tax break for Delta on national TV to punish Delta for discontinuing discounts for NRA members as part of an election year stunt when he appeared to be the early frontrunner for the GOP gubernatorial nomination.
Other cities and states (particularly bluer-purple states like Virginia and blue states like New York) were lining up to offer Delta incentives to move to states where they were expressing that a large major employer like Delta would be more appreciated by their legislatures.
Outside of that, while many business-oriented and fiscal conservatives would react with an extreme sense of loss if a major private employer were to leave the state of Georgia, many social and cultural conservatives likely would be very happy to see a company like Delta leave Georgia and probably would hope that they would take many other politically/socially/culturally moderates and progressives with them so that social and cultural conservatives could start to regain the political, social and cultural clout that they have lost and continue to lose as the state's population continues to grow with newcomers from other less-conservative parts of the country.
Many social and cultural conservatives continue to be increasingly uncomfortable with and even resentful of a major international corporation like Delta Airlines.
To them, Delta represents everything that they increasingly utterly despise politically, socially and culturally (too LGBTQ-friendly, too left-leaning, anti-gun rights, anti-Religious Liberty, too cosmopolitan, they bring too much international attention to Georgia, etc).
And striking a blow against a corporation like Delta would be a major victory for conservatives (both here in Georgia and nationally) in the ongoing culture wars that have heated back up during the Trump era.
Yet these are the same folks who have their hands out for state funding for their small town infrastructure and pet projects that largely happen because of Atlanta and the progressive-minded companies headquartered there. Good thing the business-minded Republicans would never allow those regressive conservatives to carry the day in Georgia, which means Delta has the most leverage in these discussions which are likely to go nowhere. But I do admit that part of me would like to see the huge economic fallout that would surely occur if the social conservative contingent got their way; it would expose how disastrous their positions really and truly are in modern society. But it's interesting they aren't willing to move to a state like Mississippi which seems like it would be heaven for them.
Delta is strongly opposed to the idea of the State of Georgia taking away control of Hartsfield-Jackson Airport from the City of Atlanta and selling the airport to private investors.
But the state legislators behind this think that they've got public opinion on their side in the rest of the state outside of the 134 square-mile area of the City of Atlanta proper.
The state legislators behind this airport takeover effort probably might also think that they've some kind of other legal and/or financial leverage, beyond just public opinion alone, that potentially might give them an advantage in a possible future legal struggle with the City of Atlanta over control of the airport.
The wild card is what the rest of the metro Atlanta and North Georgia business community outside of Delta Airlines thinks about this effort to have the state takeover Hartsfield-Jackson Airport and sell it to private investors.
I suspect this effort may be picking up some degree of steam with the larger metro Atlanta/North Georgia business community beyond Delta Airlines because of the way that this state airport takeover effort is being sold as a way to both minimize corruption in Atlanta Airport operations and push for a second major airport in metro Atlanta/North Georgia somewhere north of I-20.
It looks like they are going to try and push this effort to have the state takeover the airport as a way of breaking up a City of Atlanta/Delta Airlines monopoly on air travel... A concept that plays really well in the much of the rest of the state outside of the City of Atlanta proper where conservative white voters often may not think all that highly of Atlanta's left-leaning black and progressive political leadership.
There obviously is a lot of resentment amongst conservative whites in much of the state over the largest city in the state being led by blacks and progressives.
There also is much resentment in much of the rest of Georgia over such a large and successful airport being controlled by a black and progressive-dominated municipal government in the City of Atlanta.
This state airport takeover effort plays directly into that lingering simmering resentment by conservative rural and exurban whites towards Atlanta's black and progressive-lead city government.
This state airport takeover effort plays directly into the feelings of anger and resentment by conservative rural and exurban whites who would like to see Atlanta's black and progressive leadership 'taken down a notch' and 'put in their place.'
And what better way for the City of Atlanta's black and progressive leadership to be 'taken down a notch' and 'put in their place' than to have the centerpiece of their massive success gleefully and forcefully taken away from them by the deeply conservative rural and exurban whites who (still) dominate Georgia's state government.
There also seems to be some motivation on the part of more socially conservative rural and exurban legislators to strike back at Delta Airlines in a profound way and put Delta 'in its place' for being so outspoken in its opposition on hot-button political issues like religious liberty and gun rights... Two hot-button political issues that Georgia's deeply conservative rural and exurban voters really strongly and fervently support.
Rural and exurban conservatives who don't like Delta Airlines' progressive political stances on those issues think that the airline's favorable position as the dominant airline at Hartsfield-Jackson Airport gives both Delta and the City of Atlanta too much power and leverage in opposing and stopping legislation strongly favored by social and cultural conservatives in the Georgia General Assembly.
...And rural and exurban conservatives think that taking away control of the airport from the City of Atlanta would take much of that political power and leverage to affect the state's legislative agenda away from both Delta Airlines and the City of Atlanta.
With that said, these state airport takeover attempts do not necessarily seem to have much of a successful track record.
Previous attempts by conservative rural and exurban white Georgia state legislators to control of Hartsfield-Jackson away from the City of Atlanta have often gone nowhere, often because the state was unwilling to come up with even a fraction of the money that would be required to possibly successfully execute such a takeover attempt after years of lawsuits, litigation and compensation were figured in.
In neighboring North Carolina (where there is a similar amount of simmering anger and resentment by conservative rural legislators towards the state's urban municipal governments and large population centers), the City of Charlotte successfully (if not somewhat seemingly barely) beat back a serious attempt by the North Carolina state government to execute a very hostile takeover of Charlotte-Douglas International Airport.
There has also been some talk that the leader of this effort to have the state takeover control of the Atlanta Airport (Republican Georgia state Senator Burt Jones of Jackson) and his family has some kind of financial vendetta against the Atlanta Airport and the CoA and/or some major financial incentive in pushing to have the state take control of the airport away from the City of Atlanta.
All great points. I simply hope that the Democratic leadership in metro Atlanta would take heed of the incredibly small margins with which Kemp won the Governor's seat as a prime example to how the Demographics are in their(Dems) favor.
That is when a united front amongst county, city, state, and federal Democratic leadership must be maintained on the issue of HJIA staying in Atlanta's (and by default Democratic) hands.
Because whether people want to or are willing to recognize it or not, HJIA is solidly a Democratic institution. Time to take ownership of it as such. And play ball.
Any so-called "scabs" who try to break ranks...and get with the Repubs to trade political support for breadcrumbs...must be called out and made to feel eternal punishment.
No more weak milquetoast go-along-to-get-along politics should be entertained for year 2019 going forward.
It has gotten the people nowhere but further down into the abyss.
The so-called corruption at HJIA issue is a false canard.
And I wish that the people who keep bringing it up or indulging in it...would put that same passionate inquisitive attitude into asking what happened to those millions of state and federal dollars that disappeared at the University System of Georgia years ago?
Come on Dems, that is the easiest talking point to beat the conservatives up with.
And for some reason y'all are being silent. You make a big deal about "voting suppression" but $25 million dollars went missing under the purview of the state government, and not one peep?
Why????
Are y'all bought and paid-for token opposition???
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