The lure of creating the latest technology high-speed rail network in the United States is intoxicating.
Take the 250 miles separating Atlanta and Savannah, an idea being floated by Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed to connect both cities by rail. Other countries have proven that it’s possible. High-speed trains in Europe, Japan and China can travel at operating speeds of between 180 miles to 270 miles per hour.
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By Guest Columnist ABLE MABLE THOMAS, a resident of the English Avenue community and the newly elected state representative for District 56
Go Falcons! Let me first state that I am a Big Falcons Fan and even attended the Falcons 1999 Super Bowl Game in Miami. And I will be attending the Falcons’ 2013 Super Bowl win. However, not everyone who lives near the Georgia Dome is as fortunate as I am.
Imagine what it is like to spend your entire childhood in the shadow of the biggest sports facility in Georgia and never have the opportunity to attend a football game or other sporting event.
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Saint Nicholas, Father Christmas, Kris Kringle, Santa Claus. He’s called by many names but his mission is always the same – deliver toys to children around the world.
We had the chance to catch up with the rosy-cheeked and eye-twinkling legacy while he was visiting Rhodes Hall, taking notes of children’s Christmas wish lists. As he told us in the accompanying Moments video, his Moment happened following one foggy Christmas Eve when some children nearly received their presents late.
Santa Claus had been delivering toys for hundreds of years and, with the help of his elves and a diet fueled by milk and cookies, he had been able to do so without fail, in one single night – Christmas Eve. He had managed to deliver toys through rain, sleet and snow and during times of prosperity and hardship. While he was able to adjust to the changing world and circumstances, there were several factors beginning to take a toll on the jolly old elf.
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The last line of the great Herman Miller’s poem — “The Martyr”— sums up how the American public should treat the political theatrics regarding the fiscal cliff being acted out by our Democratic and Republican leaders in Washington. “Beware the People weeping when they bare the iron hand.”
U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, U.S. House Speaker John Boehner and other partisan actors performed their one-act plays on the various Sunday political talk shows, declaring the opposite side as unwilling to compromise. Boehner called the Democrats plan to avoid the fiscal cliff as “unserious.”
In a phone interview, Mel Schwarz, director of tax legislative affairs for Grant Thornton, shed some light on the negotiations and what could lie ahead.
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By Maria Saporta
Published in the Atlanta Business Chronicle on Friday, December 7, 2012
Wells Fargo & Co. will donate $1.5 million to the city of Atlanta’s Centers of Hope, the largest single corporate gift the centers have received.
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By Maria Saporta and Amy Wenk
The Atlanta Falcons and the Georgia World Congress Center Authority have agreed to the terms of a business deal to build a new retractable roof stadium.
The GWCCA board approved the non-binding business terms in a special called meeting Monday morning.
In a press briefing before the board meeting, officials from the GWCCA and the Atlanta Falcons explained that the agreement calls for the state convention center to own the building, but for the football team to assume all operations and receive all revenues during the 30-year term of the business deal.
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One of the latest proposals to renew a current cornerstone of Buttermilk Bottoms – a fabled, now-demolished neighborhood of hardscrabble African Americans on the edge of downtown Atlanta – is to go Hollywood.
The Atlanta Civic Center site could be redeveloped “all together to rebrand the facility as a full-service production facility and catalyze neighborhood revitalization,” according to a statement from Mayor Kasim Reed’s office.
In 2004, the previous proposal to revitalize the Civic Center was to build a live-work-play community around it. That concept now seems as long-ago as Buttermilk Bottoms, the blighted neighborhood that was demolished, in part, to make way for the Boisfeuillet Jones Civic Center in the name of urban renewal.
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Terminology matters immensely in the framing of a political debate, but sometimes it falls a little short.
The American people were not convinced in the last election that every cutthroat CEO, coldhearted skinflint and profligate heir deserved to be called a “jobs creator.” Nor does it appear, as plasmas move briskly out of box stores and power-intensive holiday decorations brighten the landscape, that they believe they are headed for a “fiscal cliff.”
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High school sophomore Mollie Simon is used to boiling down history to dates, places, names and civilizations. On paper, the people affected by all those events, even those who survived wars and atrocities, were virtually faceless.
This year, her own history changed when she joined 15 other teenagers from her synagogue set out to interview their congregation’s seven Holocaust survivors. Most of them were teenagers themselves when, without warning, their world turned upside down – all because of their identity as Jews.
The connection between teens and elders turned into “Edim L’Shoah: Witnesses to the Holocaust,” which will be screened free to the public at 4 pm Sunday at Congregation Shearith Israel (CSI).
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Chestnuts roasting on an open fire? Hanukkah acandles blowing in the wind? Little ones with their eyes all aglow?
Dream on. The holidays are hard work for most of us. Do the door. Do the tree. Do the special goodies. And most of all, do the mall.
Who among us doesn’t dread that dive into the 8th circle of hell otherwise known as going to the mall over the holidays?
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