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The Georgia State Legislature has gone home for the year, and left Atlanta’s mass transit system dead in the water. Addressing this critical issue would not have cost a dime of state funding. MARTA has never taken state funding. All they had to do was pass one measly bill.

Services have already been cutback in many areas, and MARTA has said that a fare hike of 25 cents (total price, $2) is all but guaranteed. But there’s another more complex problem, one the legislature could have easily fixed. More than half of MARTA’s revenue comes from a 1% sales tax levied in Fulton and Dekalb Counties. And across the nation, sales tax revenues have plummeted, leaving MARTA with about a $20 million budget shortage.

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No matter how far we may have come as a society, there’s always a local yokel to remind people, “we’ve still got a ways to go”:

Marietta tavern owner Mike Norman says the T-shirts he’s peddling, featuring cartoon chimp Curious George peeling a banana, with “Obama in ’08” scrolled underneath, are “cute.” But to a coalition of critics, the shirts are an insulting exploitation of racial stereotypes from generations past.

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While January has been marginally less busy than last month was, I’ve still been letting you down here, Dear Reader. So here’s a few locally related things that caught my eye/ear over the weekend.

My state government and my federal government are fighting over “Real ID,” with the end result being that come next May, they say I won’t be able to get on a plane or enter a federal building. On top of that, the feds think I’m (nearly) too old to be dangerous:

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It’s been seven weeks since I last wrote about the local NFL franchise I now call The Atlanta Btfsplks. Three of those seven weeks, they managed to not lose a game.

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It’s hard not to have heard about the severe drought affecting parts of the Southeast. You see, CNN is headquartered in Atlanta, and I have long suspected that “local” stories get more air time on this “international” network. It’s my understanding the Piedmont area of the Carolinas has suffered a severe drought for years, but, well, CNN isn’t located in Cary, N.C.

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I suppose this site has seemed like “Vick Central” lately, and to help wrap that up, I thought I’d make a trip down to the Georgia Dome tonight, to take in the atmosphere before the first home game of the Falcons preseason, and maybe bring back a few interesting photos.

I can sum up that atmosphere in two words: hot and boring. There were supposedly going to be some “protests” by those supporting Vick, and some by those against him. For forty five minutes I walked around outside the Dome, hitting each of the four corners of that very big block, looking “off property” for any nearby activity. I saw about a dozen media trucks, with satellite dishes or microwave towers, but very little for them to cover outside the Dome.

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The attempted spin on events was clear from the moment the news hit the wires Friday afternoon. The word was that Michael Vick would plead guilty, but would not outright admit to either gambling or killing dogs. Talking heads with legal degrees were saying this was a major coup by Vick’s lawyers.

Steve Sadow, a prominent Atlanta defense attorney who has followed the case, said he believes Vick’s attorneys agreed to the careful phrasing in the summary of facts to help them with their negotiations with the NFL and for public relations.

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At the end of the Falcons season a mere nine months ago, their quarterback chart showed perhaps as strong a combo of quarterbacks as you’d find on any NFL team. So how are those same three QB’s doing now?

Today, Matt Schaub is the starter in Houston.

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There’s some major ongoing developments in the Michael Vick case. And you might say the AJC buries the lead, nine paragraphs deep, wrapped in understatement: “This week, Vick learned that in the criminal justice system, friendship only goes so far.”

Because his “buds” are about to turn him out as a liar, and worse:

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At 4pm today, Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank, GM Rich McKay, and coach Bobby Petrino started a press conference over the Michael Vick situation. It’s 5 as I type this, and they’re still going. They said they’d stay and answer questions about Vick as long as they asked them, even bring in dinner. They said there were a lot of things they couldn’t talk about … but they talked a lot. There was a lot of “tone” between the lines. However, after answering everyone’s questions today, from now on they only want to talk about the team and the coming season.

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Lately, I’ve been wanting to write something about Iraq (“Again? must you?”). Pointless? Yes, I know. But on my mind nonetheless.

However, you shall be spared that thanks to the words of Undersecretary of Defense Eric Edelman:

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You probably saw the jubilation on CNN today, as Genarlow Wilson’s mother and his lawyer, B.J. Bernstein, celebrated a judge’s ruling that voided his sentence, complete with a release order. It was quite a moment of joy for many.

Until my state stepped in:

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It sounds almost like a romantic list of favorite trees; pine, oak, sweetgum, sycamore and birch. But it’s not romantic. In Atlanta, it’s what’s up your nose:

“We have never seen such high pollen counts so early in the year,” said Dr. Stanley Fineman, an allergist at the Atlanta Asthma and Allergy Clinic. Fineman said his office has been packed with patients seeking relief. “It is serious business, and it is causing a lot of symptoms.”

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