Good morning! I’m fresh off of a(nother) long car trip, and once again, it’s time to ease yourself back into reality – although, unlike last Tuesday’s mid-holiday fugue, this time, it’s for keeps.
- In what seems like a borrowed page from the Georgia Legislature’s playbook (cough*JQC*cough), House Republicans voted last night to kill the Office of Congressional Ethics because apparently they can to a better job of enforcing Congressional ethics themselves.
- Per Gallup, a majority of Americans don’t think Trump is actually up to the task of being president, and 66% apparently don’t think Trump will avoid any major scandals during his administration.
- HR executives and others who initially championed 401(k) savings plans now lament what those plans meant for more secure defined benefit and pension plans.
- What the suburban south means for 2020.
- Which states won – and lost – the biggest political battles of 2016.
- Bad news for every community that’s embraced luxury rentals as a housing option over the past few years.
- Medicare is penalizing one fourth of Georgia’s hospitals – including several in metro Atlanta – for their high rates of patient injuries and complications.
- Here’s what Chatham Area Transit hopes to achieve this legislative session.
- And here are the cultural events happening in metro Atlanta that you don’t want to miss in 2017.
- I truly intended to lay off the Hamilton links in 2017 but what does it say about this cultural juggernaut that well over a year into this endeavor, I have two links to share this week:
- First, this column that ran in the Washington Post over the weekend about why Hamilton truly preferred his frenemy Jefferson to Burr, the “unruly tyrant” who, he wrote to a friend, “would consider a scheme of usurpation as visionary.” (Somehow, that column relates to 2017.)
- Second, Terry Gross will interview Lin-Manuel Miranda on today’s Fresh Air, which means that if you live in metro Atlanta, it will air for pretty much the entire second half of the day.
- Let it be known that last week when I visited the White House with my family I had a conversation with a Secret Service officer in the Red Room about the merits of Franklin Pierce: Hottie President.
And on that note – onward into 2017! And the rest of the work week!