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5 days ago | 
saportareport.com | Tom Baxter
Suppose that in answer to a dramatic escalation of the Trump administration’s drive to take over Greenland, Denmark launched a surprise attack on the United States. With a little help from Canadian and Mexican border authorities, the Danes would already have in place the drones that would carry out the attack.
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1 week ago | 
saportareport.com | Tom Baxter
Georgia finished in early April, but around the country, a number of state legislatures are concluding their sessions about now. They may not know it yet, but these could have been the happiest days this generation of state legislators will ever know. While the headlines are mostly about the federal budget deficit, the number of states with healthy budget surpluses has been growing in recent years.
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2 weeks ago | 
saportareport.com | Tom Baxter
As the Texas legislature grinds toward a June 2 sine die, T. Boone Pickens must be turning over in his grave. In 2008 Pickens, a Texas oil man with a voracious appetite for the next bonanza, became a high-profile convert to wind energy and set out to build the world’s biggest wind farm in West Texas. His plan went bust when natural gas prices fell, but he turned out to be a prophet concerning wind.
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3 weeks ago | 
saportareport.com | Tom Baxter
Push has come to shove in American politics, and that famous location turns out to be somewhere down on the Coweta County line. When the Coweta County Board of Commissioners approved a rezoning request for a 320-acre data center in April, there was a heated response not only from Coweta residents but from the South Fulton town of Palmetto, which sits across the county line almost directly adjacent to Project Peach, as the $1 billion enterprise is called.
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1 month ago | 
saportareport.com | Tom Baxter
With so much high-level pressure on him to run, Gov. Brian Kemp’s decision not to challenge U.S. Senator Jon Ossoff next year has to be considered something of a surprise, but really it wasn’t. A race between the state’s two most talented politicians would have been great fun to watch, but in pondering his options, Kemp would have to have thought carefully about what was in it for him. The latest Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll has Kemp in a very narrow lead over the Democratic incumbent.
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1 month ago | 
saportareport.com | Tom Baxter
With so much high-level pressure on him to run, Gov. Brian Kemp’s decision not to challenge U.S. Senator Jon Ossoff next year has to be considered something of a surprise, but really it wasn’t. A race between the state’s two most talented politicians would have been great fun to watch, but in pondering his options, Kemp would have to have thought carefully about what was in it for him. The latest Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll has Kemp in a very narrow lead over the Democratic incumbent.
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1 month ago | 
saportareport.com | Tom Baxter
U.S. Rep. Austin Scott is the longest-serving of Georgia’s nine Republican congressmen, but you wouldn’t know it from the headlines he’s generated. Nothing in his 15 years in Washington has caused as much of a stir as the time when, as a young state representative, he voted to remove the Confederate battle emblem from the state flag.
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1 month ago | 
saportareport.com | Tom Baxter
Compared to other federal agencies, President Donald Trump’s dealings with the Tennessee Valley Authority haven’t drawn much attention outside the giant utility’s service area, but they have been stormy. Begun in 1933 at the dawn of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, TVA provides electrical power to some 10 million people over most of Tennessee and parts of six other states, including the northwest corner of Georgia.
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1 month ago | 
saportareport.com | Tom Baxter
It’s easy to muster sympathy for CDC scientists doing critical research and National Park rangers protecting the environment, but this April, the nation’s tax collectors could use some love as well. Last week the acting head of the Internal Revenue Service, Melanie Krause, resigned over an agreement reached without her knowledge that will allow the Department of Homeland Security to access IRS files of people suspected of being undocumented immigrants.
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2 months ago | 
saportareport.com | Tom Baxter
This year’s General Assembly got off to a late start due to inclement weather and ended unexpectedly with a number of issues still unresolved. In times as dangerous as these, what more could a sensible lawmaker ask for? It may have been a disagreement over legislation restricting the use of school zone speed cameras that prompted Lt. Gov. Burt Jones to abruptly declare the Senate adjourned shortly after 9 p.m. Friday, while the House was still grinding sausage.
