Editorials and Op-ed

The hidden cost of Georgia’s sales tax 
on energy used in manufacturing
By Chuch Katon
Georgia Public Service Commissioner for District 3

Georgians have made it clear that attracting and retaining jobs should be the No. 1 priority of every elected official. Removing this tax as an impediment to job growth and creation is a great first step.

Late last fall, my colleagues on the Georgia Public Service Commission and I sent a letter asking the Georgia General Assembly to consider removing the sales tax manufacturers pay on energy, including electricity, used in the manufacturing process. Governor Nathan Deal supports this idea, as do Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle and Speaker David Ralston.

Manufacturing is of major significance to the economy of Georgia, employing hundreds of thousands of skilled workers. Georgia, like virtually every other state, does not tax raw materials used in manufacturing. Instead, one sales tax is applied to the finished product to avoid a pyramiding scenario where sales tax is paid on top of embedded sales tax. Georgia is one of only ten states, and the only state in the Southeast, to charge full sales tax on energy.

This places Georgia at a competitive disadvantage when it comes to attracting new jobs and investment. The hidden cost of Georgia’s tax on energy also puts existing manufacturing jobs at risk by increasing production costs.

Before I was elected to the Public Service Commission, I worked in LaGrange as a manufacturing representative. I traveled the Southeast, calling on companies while selling our products. You could say I was on the frontline of the free market. In preparing proposals, I noticed that even within our own company, different plants could produce the same product for different costs. This not only impacted whether our company got certain contracts, but dictated where the actual manufacturing took place when we won an order. Higher-cost plants would inevitably lose out to lower-cost producers. 

Georgia-based manufacturing plants face external and internal competition. Many corporations look at various facility costs daily, shifting business to a different state’s facility just as quickly. Less business means reduced payroll hours and smaller paychecks for the remaining employees. While plant closings garner much media attention, the lead-up to the closing can be more painful and less publicized, as business is shifted away and jobs are slowly cut. 

A large industrial plant’s electrical cost can rival payroll as its biggest expense, so the competitive effect of the sales tax is significant. While Georgia’s electric rates are competitive with other states, the added sales tax can change that dynamic. 

The Albany City Commission and the Dougherty County Commission have stated that repeal of this tax is their highest priority because of its impact on local jobs. Proctor & Gamble’s paper plant is one of Albany’s largest employers and is Georgia’s second largest consumer of electricity. With energy being one of the largest expenses at the Albany plant, and with their constant pressure to lower expenses, failing to eliminate the energy sales tax could easily cost Georgia more in lost jobs and investment than it produces in state income.

In Dalton, the sluggish economy and the moribund housing market have combined to pummel the carpet industry, one of Georgia’s traditional manufacturing powerhouses. Several plants have been closed, costing the area several thousand jobs.

As I travel the state and speak with manufacturers about how to help them grow their businesses and create and retain jobs, managers constantly mention our energy sales tax as a cost that makes them less competitive. The cost of energy, especially in manufacturing processes that require massive amounts, is a major factor as to whether Georgia retains our manufacturing plants. 

We cannot continue to put good manufacturing jobs at risk over an outdated tax policy. Repealing the sales tax on energy used by manufacturers should be at the top of any list of economic growth and job creation measures considered by the General Assembly.

January 12, 2012

* * *

'Supreme Court Vetoes Federal Health Law' – Now What?
By Ronald E. Bachman

In July 2012, the headline that throws the country into turmoil could just be, "Supreme Court Rules Against Health Reform; Now What?" If the 26-state lawsuit succeeds against the federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, then what? 

Part or all of the federal law will immediately be null and void. Insurance laws will revert to the inadequate state laws that existed before. Even before the new law, there was bipartisan agreement that health insurance needed reforms. In Georgia, those laws created 1.8 million uninsured Georgians; fewer than one in 4 Georgians working in small businesses were insured. 

The battle cry is "repeal and replace" from federal politicians, but if the major responsibility for reform goes back to the states, are state officials prepared to implement needed legal and regulatory changes to improve the insurance market and lower the numbers of the uninsured? 

To prepare for that scenario, the Georgia Public Policy Foundation (www.georgiapolicy.org) facilitated a multi-stakeholder, bipartisan, six-month discussion. The result is a detailed plan for comprehensive health insurance        reform for Georgia based on free markets, personal responsibility, competition, choice, transparency and a level playing field for all. If legislators embrace these solutions, Georgia could become a national model for real health care reform that puts the individual, not government, in control. 

The resulting recommendations include three major areas of reform to be pursued simultaneously :restructuring the insurance market to increase competition, transparency, access and portability; strengthening the free-market safety net to keep existing policyholders from losing coverage, and making health insurance more affordable for individuals and small businesses. 

Restructuring the insurance Market 

There are four crucial "pillars" of reform to restructure the insurance market. The state must facilitate competition by enabling a multi state regional insurance market with interstate reciprocity. A larger 24 million- to 50million-person Southeast marketplace will bring Georgia lower cost products, more responsive wellness incentive programs and increased choices through competition. The state must promote transparency and consumer health literacy through the development of private health insurance information market places.Meanwhile, a "Personal Responsibility" High Risk Pool will ensure affordable access to the market and a group conversion option will ensure portability and consistency across group insurance policies. 

Strengthening the Free-Market Safety Net 

There are several opportunities here. The state should equalize standards for pre-existing conditions for Georgians, whether insured or self-insured. It should allow parents to maintain coverage for children up to age26 who are their tax dependents. Plans should be rescinded only for fraud and intentional misrepresentation. For the uninsured, the state should support and expand the Georgia Charity Care Network. COBRA options should be revised to include a lower-cost, HSA-eligible plan and the same continuation-of-coverage options for small group and larger group plans. 

Making Heath Insurance More Affordable 

Comprehensive Health Insurance Reform for Georgia would provide more than 30 specific opportunities to lower the cost of insurance for individuals and small businesses. Current laws add unnecessary costs, limit incentives and unfairly tax individual policies at higher levels than group plans. 

The Foundation has helped draft a broadly accepted, Georgia-centric health insurance reform road map for the 2012 Georgia General Assembly. It provides a chance for the state to say “Yes” now to a positive agenda while awaiting the Supreme Court's “No” to unnecessary federal intrusions on states.

Other states will have their own ideas and may need differentre forms for their unique situations. That is what the out comes hould be if the constitutional challenge to the federal healthcare law is upheld and states truly embrace the 10th Amendment. Ultimately, the ideas for Georgia are practical, free-market solutions to show our policy-makers are prepared to lead and positioned to help their own citizens. And in doing so, Georgia can lead the nation with ideas that could prove useful as more states confront their health insurance challenges. 

Ronald E. Bachman FSA, MAAA, isPresident and CEO of Healthcare Visions, Inc. and a Senior Fellow at the Georgia Public Policy Foundation, an independent think tank that proposes practical, market-oriented approaches to public policy to improve the lives of Georgians. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Center for Health Transformation, the Wye River Group on Health and the National Center for Policy Analysis. Nothing written here is to be construed as necessarily reflecting the views of the Foundation or as an attempt to aid or hinder the passage of any bill before the U.S. Congress or the Georgia Legislature. 

January 6, 2012 

* * *

Robert E. Lee on Traveller

Robert E. Lee: 
Remembering an American Legend
By: Calvin E. Johnson, Jr., 
Speaker, Writer, Author of book ‘When America Stood for God, Family and Country and member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

Sir Winston Churchill once remarked, ‘Lee was the noblest American who had ever lived and one of the greatest commanders known to the annals of war.’

Dear students, teachers, parents, church, community leaders, historians and folks everywhere,

January is the birthday month of War Between the States Generals; James Longstreet born on January 8, 1821, Thomas Jonathan ‘Stonewall’ Jackson born on January 21, 1824, George Pickett born on January 28, 1825 and

Thursday, January 19, 2012, is the 205th birthday of General Robert E. Lee, whose memory is still dear in the hearts of people everywhere.

Many events are planned around the nation that include….

The Georgia Division Sons of Confederate Veterans Robert E. Lee Birthday Celebration in Milledgeville, Georgia on Saturday, January 21, 2012, in the Old Legislative Chambers of the Old State Capitol Building at 11 AM. A Parade will begin at 10:45 AM from the Old Governor’s Mansion to the Old Legislative Chambers.

Did you know that….

During Robert E. Lee’s 100th birthday in 1907, Charles Francis Adams, Jr., a former Union Commander and grandson of US President John Quincy Adams, spoke in tribute to Robert E. Lee at Washington and Lee College’s Lee Chapel in Lexington, Virginia? His speech was printed in both Northern and Southern newspapers and is said to had lifted Lee to a renewed respect among the American people. 

Who was Robert E. Lee?

Robert E. Lee, a man whose military tactics have been studied worldwide, was an Americansoldier, Educator, Christian gentlemen, husband and father. 

Robert E. Lee was born on Jan. 19, 1807, at ‘Stratford’ in Westmoreland County, Virginia. The winter was cold and the fireplaces were little help for Robert’s mother, Ann Hill (Carter) Lee, who suffered from a severe cold. 

Ann Lee named her son ‘Robert Edward’ after two of her brothers. 

Robert E. Lee undoubtedly acquired his love of country from those who lived during the American Revolution. His Father, ‘Light Horse’ Harry was a hero of the revolution and served three terms as governor of Virginia and as a member of the United States House of Representatives. Two members of his family also signed the Declaration of Independence.

Lee was educated at the schools of Alexandria, Va., and he received an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1825. He graduated in 1829,second in his class and without a single demerit. 

Robert E. Lee’s first assignment was to Cockspur Island, Georgia, to supervise the construction of Fort Pulaski. 

While serving as 2nd Lieutenant of Engineers at Fort Monroe, Va., Lee wed Mary Ann Randolph Custis. Robert and Mary had grown up together, Mary was the daughter of George Washington Parke Custis, the Grandson of Martha Washington and adopted son of George Washington. 

Mary was an only child; therefore, she inherited Arlington House, across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C., where she and Robert E. Lee raised seven children.

In 1836,Lee was appointed to first Lieutenant. In 1838, with the rank of Captain, Robert E. Lee fought in the War with Mexico and was wounded at the Battle of Chapultepec. 

Lee was appointed Superintendent of the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1852.

Gen.Winfield Scott offered Lee command of the Union army to Lee on April 17, 1861,but he refused. He said, ‘I cannot raise my hand against my birthplace, my home, my children.’ 

The Custis-Lee Mansion ‘Arlington House’ would be occupied by Federals, who would turn the estate into a war cemetery. Today Arlington House is preserved by the National Park Service as a Memorial to Robert E. Lee. http://www.nps.gov/arho/ 

Lee served as adviser to President Jefferson Davis, and then on June 1, 1862,commanded the legendary Army of Northern Virginia. 

After four years of death and destruction, Gen. Robert E. Lee met Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse in Virginia and ended their battles. 

In the fall of 1865, Lee was offered and accepted the presidency of troubled Washington College in Lexington, Virginia. It is today Washington and Lee University.

Lee was called Marse Robert, Uncle Robert and Marble Man.

Robert E. Lee died of a heart attack at 9:30 AM on the morning of October 12, 1870, at Washington College where he is buried at Lee Chapel.

Dr. Edward C. Smith, respected African-American Professor of History at American University in Washington, D.C., told the audience in Atlanta, during a 1995Robert E. Lee birthday event, ‘Dr. Martin Luther King and Robert E. Lee were individuals worthy of emulation because they understood history.’

On August 5, 1975, 110 years after Gen. Lee's application, President Gerald Ford signed Joint Resolution 23, restoring the long overdue full rights of citizenship to Gen. Robert E. Lee. Read more at: www.ford.utexas.edu/library/speeches/750473.htm 

Lest We Forget!

January 3, 2012

* * *

Improving Visibility Increasingly 
Clouded in Hyperbole
By Harold Brown

That the progress in improving this nation's air quality is hidden in hazy environmental reporting is no surprise: How would one notice improvements when only "problems" are emphasized? Unfortunately, headlines such as, “Kids with asthma head indoors during smog season” and “September smog violations highest in a decade” do nothing to convey the reality; they skew perception. 

Visibility in the Eastern United States, which has always been the worst, has improved dramatically in the last three decades. Yet as late as 2004, the New York Times called the view in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park "a pollution-rich brew of sulfates that scatter light and small particles that obscure it.” It's no wonder 93percent of Americans polled in 2007 by Yale University thought air pollution was a “serious problem,” up from 87 percent in2004 and 84 percent in 2005. 

Visibility is logically expected to be worse in and around (crowded) cities. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported in 2010: “Metro Atlanta's air quality has improved but still ranks among the worst in the nation, a new report shows.” 

Yet air in cities has become remarkably clearer in the last three or four decades. From1980-84, one-third of days from June through August had visibility of less than seven miles at Atlanta's airport. From2006 to 2010, just 4.6 days per summer were that hazy, the fewest since the 1950s. For eight cities spread over the Eastern states the number of days with less than seven miles visibility declined in a linear fashion from an average of 100 per year in the early 1980s to 30 in 2009. 

The haze in Atlanta and through out the eastern United States has been reduced, mainly by reducing emissions of sulfur and carbon compounds that react to form particles smaller than 2.5 micrometers, referred to as PM 2.5.Sulfur compounds (sulfates) make up a high percentage of PM 2.5in Eastern states (nearly half of the weight). Carbon, mostly from fuel combustion, accounts for most of the rest. 

Sulfur comes mostly from burning fuels, especially coal used to power electricity generation. Emissions of sulfur dioxide increased from the 1940s to the1980s, reaching about a million tons per year in Georgia a lone.By 2010, the amount released by Georgia sources was down by 80percent, the lowest in 50 years, despite the great increase in use of fossil fuels. 

Sulfur dioxide is converted in the air to sulfates. The amount of both sulfur dioxide and sulfates has decreased in the air of the Eastern states by over 40percent since 2005. At Griffin, Ga., sulfate deposited in rain fall decreased 24 percent from 1990 to 2006; in the next four years it dropped another 38 percent. 

Low visibility can, of course, be caused by foggy, rainy weather, but long-term trends are apparently caused by changes in PM 2.5. While these tiny particles are regulated mainly because of respiratory health concerns, improving visibility is another large benefit. Because PM 2.5 is made up largely of sulfur and carbon pollutants, they have also decreased dramatically. First measured widely in 1999,PM 2.5 has declined by 30 percent in Eastern states and in Atlanta by 44 percent. 

Haziness caused by small particles prompted governmental efforts in the last three decades to monitor and reduce haze in national parks. One program is Interagency Monitoring of Protected Visual Environments (IMPROVE), which reports on PM 2.5 levels and composition. 

The connection of tiny particles with haziness is so strong that PM 2.5 levels and chemistry can be used to calculate visibility. In three eastern parks with the longest running records, IMPROVE calculations show that visibility increased an average of 77 percent or 28 miles since1990. One of those parks is the Great Smoky Mountains, contrary to The New York Times' assessment. In Georgia’s Okefenokee Swamp Park, calculated visibility has increased 14 miles in the last17 years. 

The decrease in hazy days, lower particle pollution, and greater visibility over the past three decades are testament to the improved technology and cooperation of government and industry to clear the air. Hardly anyone has noticed. The focus on air quality should be more celebration and less denigration.

University of Georgia Professor Emeritus R. Harold Brown is a Senior Fellow with the Georgia Public Policy Foundation and author of "The Greening of Georgia: The Improvement of the Environment in the Twentieth Century." The Foundation is an independent think tank that proposes practical, market-oriented approaches to public policy to improve the lives of Georgians. Nothing written here is to be construed as necessarily reflecting the views of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation or as an attempt to aid or hinder the passage of any bill before the U.S. Congress or the Georgia Legislature. 

December 16, 2011

* * *

ASoldier’s True Spirit of Christmas
By:Calvin E. Johnson, Jr.,
Speaker, Writer, Author of book
 ‘When America Stood for God, Family and Country’ 
and member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

What happened to Christmas?

Christmas was, once, a wonderful time that was celebrated with family, friends and dinner at Grandma's house. Grandpa would gather the children around the fire place and tell them the story about Jesus Christ who was born on Christmas Day. 

Some people, now, call it a "holiday. "People stand in line at at malls, after Thanksgiving, then rush through the doors to buy, buy and buy more.

Is this Christmas? Partly, but the following story is about the true meaning of Christmas. 

The year was 1919, one year after the end of World War I, and the people of Atlanta, Georgia were celebrating the Christmas Season. Many people attended Church and gave thanks to God for his many blessings. Folks, while shopping, were uplifted by sweet sounds of Christmas music played by the Salvation Army Band. There was a friendly and charitable atmosphere during this time of the year. 

There were, however, some who were not as fortunate! 

The aging veterans, in the Confederate Soldier’s Home, were proud men who had braved many a battle in the 1860s. One of these men was former Captain Thomas Yopp who saw such battles as that of Fredericksburg where a cannon shell burst knocked him unconscious. 

The man who stayed with him until he recovered was his servant who had also joined the 14th Georgia Regiment, Company H. Bill Yopp was more than a servant; he and Thomas Yopp were friends who hunted and fished together. 

Bill Yopp, a Black Confederate, was sympathetic to the men of Atlanta's soldiers home who had been his compatriots in arms over fifty years earlier. 

During the War Between the States, 1861-1865, Bill Yopp was nicknamed "Ten Cent Bill" because of the money he made shining shoes. He did this for the soldiers at a dime a shine and ended up with more money than most of his comrades. These men, also, cared for him when sick. 

During the Christmas of 1919, Bill wanted to payback the kindness that was shown to him. He caught a train from Atlanta to Macon, where he was offered help from the editor of a local newspaper [The Macon Telegraph]. He then caught a train to Savannah to raise Christmas money for the old veterans. 

Just weeks before the Christmas of 1919, he had raised the money and Georgia's Governor Hugh Dorsey helped him distribute envelopes of three dollars to each veteran. That was a lot of money in those days. 

The old Confederates were speechless. Tears were shed because of Bill Yopp's good heart and kind deed. Many of these men had little or nothing. Bill was invited to come into the home's Chapel and say afew words. 

Bill Yopp was later presented a medal of appreciation for his support of the old soldiers and also voted in as a resident of the Confederate Soldier's Home. 

Bill died on June 3, 1936, the 128th birthday of Confederate President Jefferson Davis. He was buried at Marietta, Georgia's Confederate Cemetery with his compatriots. 

Christmas is about love, forgiveness, old friends, family and the Child who became a savior. 

Merry Christmas! 

December 9, 2011

* * *

Better Busways Don't Require Exclusive Lanes
By Robert Poole

The idea of Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) has gradually been catching on with U.S. transportation planners. As counter-intuitive as it sounds, in most cases it’s a mistake to develop BRT systems based on exclusive rights of way. 

First, what some have called BRT-Lite can be a highly cost-effective improvement over regular city bus service. The best-known example of this is the highly successful Metro Rapid program in Los Angeles. Specially marked buses operate on regular lanes of major arterials in Los Angeles, with stops between one-half and one mile apart, and often getting through signalized intersections thanks to traffic signal priority. 

Those may sound like trivial improvements, but Metro Rapid routes offer longer-distance commuters considerable time savings and have been so successful in attracting customers that the service has been expanded from its original corridor (Wilshire Boulevard) to 26 routes spanning 450 miles of major arterials. Other than the cost of the additional buses, there is practically no infrastructure cost.

Contrast that with currently planned exclusive-bus way BRT projects. Connecticut's long-planned Hartford to New Britain bus way, 9.4 miles long, would be built on a former railroad right of way, but its cost is now put at $567 million – over $60 million per mile. Far more ambitious is a proposed 150-mile BRT network for Montgomery County, Md., at an estimated cost of $2.5billion (at $17 million per mile, far less than the Connecticut project and much less than an estimated $120 million per mile for light rail). 

That sounds pretty good until you think about how little those exclusive lanes would actually be used.

Even during peak periods, three-minute headways (i.e., one bus every three minutes) would mean only 20 buses per hour. A single lane of highway can handle about 1,600 vehicles per hour without congestion, which many High-Occupancy Toll (HOT) lanes are doing today, thanks to variable pricing. Even if you count each bus as two passenger car equivalents, that is still just 40 of a possible 1,600, leaving more than 1,500spaces unused. 

In the Hartford bus way case, that route parallels congested I-84. If the bus way were instead developed as a HOT lane facility ,it’s quite plausible that 1,500 motorists per hour would  to pay atoll to bypass congested I-84 during peak periods. 

Such shared use would convert the bus way into what I have dubbed a "Virtually Exclusive Bus way" (VEB). From the bus system’s perspective, the VEB would provide the same high speeds and absence of congestion as a physically exclusive bus way, but would serve the additional purpose of providing additional congestion relief for paying motorists. And, in the process, it would generate toll revenues that would cover a significant portion of the $567 million cost.

Such a bus way conversion is under serious consideration in South Florida. This 19.8-mile bus way parallels highly congested U.S. 1 in southern Miami-Dade County. It was developed in 1997 when the state acquired a disused freight rail line alongside the highway. Because the bus way (like U.S.1) is intersected by numerous cross streets, it has dozens of signalized intersections along its route, meaning there is nothing like “express” bus service. Hence, the bus way has done very little to relieve congestion on U.S.1. 

In 2008, the Miami-Dade Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO), that region's equivalent of the Atlanta Regional Commission, conducted a study on the possible expansion of the bus way and its conversion into a HOT/bus facility. Several of the alternatives included grade separations at major intersections. The results were promising enough that the MPO board in 2009 authorized a more detailed study, which got under way last year. A 2009 “vision study” for the Florida DOT included the revamped bus way(as a VEB) as one component of a regional managed lanes network.

The synergy between BRT and priced managed lanes is also being explored in a project that recently got under way in Tampa. Under a Value Pricing Program grant, Hillsborough Area Rapid Transit and Tampa-Hillsborough Expressway Authority are jointly exploring the feasibility of a set of what they call “Bus Toll Lanes” that could be added to selected corridors in that metro area. The idea is also a key element in a forthcoming Reason Foundation mobility study of the Southeast Florida region, which will be released early next year.

Robert Poole is director of transportation policy and Searle Freedom Trust Transportation Fellow at Reason Foundation and a Senior Fellow at the Georgia Public Policy Foundation. The Georgia Public Policy Foundation (www.georgiapolicy.org) is an independent think tank that proposes practical, market-oriented approaches to public policy to improve the lives of Georgians. Nothing written here is to be construed as necessarily reflecting the views of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation or as an attempt to aid or hinder the passage of any bill before the U.S. Congress or the Georgia Legislature. 

December 2, 2011

* * *

When ‘Gone with the Wind’
premiered in Atlanta
By:Calvin E. Johnson, Jr., 
Speaker, Writer, Author of book ‘When America 
Stood for God, Family and Country’ 

Hello America!

The1930s was an exciting time when everyone loved Super Star-Shirley Temple, Baseball Home Run Legend-Babe Ruth, Aviator Pioneer-Amelia Earhart and “Gonewith the Wind” Author- Margaret Mitchell.

The Great Depression was ending but Europe would enter World War II. The United States was only two years away from entering the war but the Christmas Season of 1939was a jubilant time for America, especially in the Southland, when….

The movie “Gone with the Wind” premiered in Atlanta, Georgia, just 74 years after the War Between the States had ended and December 15, 2011, marks the 72ndAnniversary of that wonderful-classic movie that opens with:

“Therewas a land of Cavaliers and Cotton Fields called the Old South. Here in this pretty world, Gallantry took its last bow. Here was the last ever to be seen of Knights and their Ladies Fair, of Master and Slave. Look for it only in books,for it is no more than a dream remembered, a Civilization gone with the wind.”

 Margaret Mitchell saw her book “Gone with the Wind” published in 1936 andthen as a Super-Technicolor movie in 1939 that would help boost tourism throughout Old Dixie land.

Gone with the Wind won 8 Oscars for 1939, including Best Picture, and;

Hattie McDaniel, the first Black American to win an Academy Award, expressed her heart-felt pride with tears of joy, when she was presented the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her unforgettable role as “Mammy.”

Victor Fleming won the 1939 Academy Award for the movies Best Director and even though Max Steiner did not receive an award for his excellent music score, the “Gonewith the Wind” theme song has become the most recognizable and played tune in the world.

Vivien Leigh, who won the Academy Award for Best Actress in a leading role, humbly and eloquently, summed here appreciation by thanking Producer David O. Selznick.

And, who can ever forget Olivia De Havilland as the pure-sweet Melanie Hamilton, Leslie Howard as Ashley Wilkes and Clark Gable as Rhett Butler.

Friday, December 15, 1939, was an icy-cold day in Atlanta, Georgia but folks warmed to the great excitement surrounding the premiere of “Gone with the Wind” ASelznick International Pictures “Technicolor” Production of the Metro Goldwyn Mayer Release of Margaret Mitchell’s novel about the Old South at the LoewsGrand Theater.

Do you remember Thomas Mitchell who played (Gerald O’Hara) telling daughter Scarlett:

“Do you mean to tell me, Katie Scarlett O’Hara, that Tara, that land doesn’t mean any thing to you? Why, land is the only thing in the world worth working for,worth fighting for, worth dying for, because it’s the only thing that lasts.”

And, there was not a dry eye in the movie theater when Bonnie Blue Butler, the daughter of Rhett and Scarlett, was killed in a pony accident.

Anne Rutherford, who played Scarlett’s sister Careen, took time to visit the Old Confederate Veterans at the soldier’s home on Confederate Ave. and the star stoured the famous “Cyclorama” at Grant Park.

The festivities surrounding the premiere of “Gone with the Wind” included a parade down Peachtree St, with over there-hundred thousand folks cheering the playing of Dixie, waving Confederate flags and shouting Rebel Yells.

It was a grand day to witness the lighting of the “Eternal Flame of the Confederacy,” an1855 gas light that survived Gen. Sherman’s 1864 Siege during the Battle of Atlanta. This lamp remained for many years on the northeast corner of Whitehall and Alabama Streets. Mrs. Thomas J. Ripley, President of the Atlanta ChapterNo. 18 United Daughters of the Confederacy, re-lit the great light with Mr. T.Guy Woolford, Commandant of the Old Guard, by her side.

The Time Magazine wrote:

“The film has almost everything the book has in the way of spectacle, drama, practically endless story and the means to make them bigger and better. The burning of Atlanta, the great ‘boom’ shots of the Confederate wounded lying inthe streets and the hospital after the Battle of Atlanta are spectacle enough for any picture, and unequaled.”

You can read the entire article at:
www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,952044,00.html#ixzz0XFQVmsTD

November 30, 2011

* * *

No Kid Hungry in Our State
by Governor Nathan Deal

Childhood hunger is an invisible but very real problem not only in Georgia, but in every single one of our states. Although there is not a lack of food in our country, more than 16 million children can’t count on the nutritious meals they need to lead healthy, active lives. 

Here in Georgia, more than 700,000 children are at risk of hunger. Hunger impairs their health and their ability to learn, and predisposes them to emotional and behavioral difficulties that can negatively affect their families and our communities for years to come. 

Although we have had adequate child nutrition programs to surround our most vulnerable children with nutritious meals at school, after school and in the summer, these programs reach only a fraction of the children who qualify for them. The problem is that we have for too long lacked big-picture strategies to overcome the barriers that keep kids from getting the food they need. 

It is our responsibility to make government work better for our children, but these programs are underutilized for various reasons – stigma, red tape, transportation challenges, and systems – and are too often handled piecemeal by a confusing array of public and private agencies. The end result: Hundreds of thousands of kids in Georgia grapple with hunger, especially after school and during summer when they don’t have access to food at school.

On Nov. 16, Georgia joined the ranks of 14 other states that have committed to ending childhood hunger with the launch of the Georgia Feeding for a Promising Future – No Kid Hungry Campaign. Like its counterparts in other states, our campaign effort involves broad public-private partnerships and comes at a critical point given our current national economic climate. 

The Georgia Feeding for a Promising Future – No Kid Hungry Campaign is designed to connect Georgia’s most vulnerable children with food where they live, learn, and play. And it does so in a way that makes fiscal sense for our state. This public-private partnership is leveraging both private and public funding to ensure more children have access to food and nutrition programs. 

The business community plays a key role in advancing these anti-hunger efforts. In addition to national commitments, The ConAgra Foods Foundation and the Walmart Foundation, along with support from the Arby’s Foundation, are supporting efforts to help end childhood hunger in our state. 

Increasing participation in the programs also increases the flow of previously authorized and appropriated funds to our communities. These funds stimulate our economy and provide long-term benefits to our state.

Through this innovative partnership, we are creating a coalition of officials and organizations that are responsible for or can help connect kids to child nutrition programs. Once assembled and motivated by a common desire to help our kids succeed, the group will work to develop strategies that will surround our most vulnerable kids with nutritious food. By sharing resources, developing specific goals and timelines, allowing nonprofits and corporations to share their strengths, and implementing a strategic plan, we will build a campaign that can end child hunger. 

In addition to connecting kids to the public and private programs that provide food, other No Kid Hungry Campaign efforts include a nutrition education component that empowers families at risk of hunger to help themselves and create lasting change through Share Our Strength’s Cooking Matters TM program. Through hands-on courses, families learn how to make healthy food choices and how to get the most out of limited resources.

The fight against child hunger has long enjoyed bipartisan support, and I implore more government agencies and businesses to support No Kid Hungry efforts for the long-term future of our state and country. This innovative public-private partnership demonstrates what a little ingenuity can achieve, even in the toughest of times, to help our most vulnerable kids. 

November 21, 2011

* * *

Buckle Up During the Holidays 
and All Year-Round

As the holiday season begins at Thanksgiving, more and more Georgians will be hitting the road for a visit to family, friends, or the big game.

Unlike yesteryear, the trip to grandma’s house is a little further than over the river and through the woods for most folks. In the past few years, more and more people have chosen our great state as their new home. This means that grandma and other family members may live in another state or region.

Once behind the wheel, it is easy to get excited about thoughts of turkey, all the trimmings and reuniting with those we love and miss. While we don’t want to diminish the excitement of your holiday car trip, Georgia’s law enforcement professionals are asking that you focus your attention on the most important task of getting there safely.

The first thing we ask is that you buckle your safety belts and make sure all children under the age of 8 are in a proper child safety seat. This is the easiest and most effective thing you can do to protect yourself and your passengers. Georgia's law enforcement agencies will be participating in “Click it or Ticket,” a statewide effort to promote and enforce the state’s seatbelt law.

Please watch your speed and obey the posted limits. Driving five miles per hour over the posted speed limit is not going make a dramatic difference in your arrival time and places you at greater risk if you collide with another car or an object on the roadway.

If you enjoy too much to eat at your family gathering, that's your business. But if you have too much to drink and get back on the road, you are endangering the lives of everyone in your car and other motorists you encounter. Local and state officers take driving under the influence very seriously. If you are charged with having a blood alcohol level of .08 or higher, you'll be taken to jail in handcuffs, fingerprinted and a police mug shot will be taken. Depending on your profession, you could lose your job and the fines and related costs could run into the thousands of dollars.

This is a time that many of us will enjoy. That is accomplished when motorists do their part by driving safely and limiting distractions of cell phones and GPS devices that can take our attention away from the road.

On behalf of Gov. Nathan Deal and the men and women who patrol our roads during the holiday season, we ask for your help in making this a safe time for all. The names of those who will be killed on Georgia roads this season represent families who lives will be changed forever because of the loss of someone they love. Please drive carefully, whether your trip is across town, across the state or across the country. We hope it is a wonderful time for all of you.

Harris Blackwood, Director
Georgia Governor's Office of Highway Safety

November 18, 2011

* * *

Occupy Together not Occupy Bloodlust
By Wim Laven

Precedent

There is an old adage for journalism: If it bleeds, it leads; we are reminded of this sentiment regularly. Earlier this year I wrote about our need to see Osama bin Laden’sbody; the thirst for blood was alive and well after Muammar Gaddafi was killed as well. It is important to avoid such a reaction with the nonviolent Occupy Movement.

Story

On Tuesday Oct. 25th images of police in gas masks, armed with teargas, violently dispersing a crowd in Oakland California, went viral. Scott Olson, Veterans for Peace, was critically injured by a canister that struck him in the face and a subsequent flash grenade appears (very obviously in my opinion) to have been intentionally thrown into the group of protesters coming to his aid. The images are disturbing, graphic and upsetting; resist the urge to fixate on the violence, but don’t ignore it. On Nov. 2nd, the people showed their solidarity and held a general strike and marched to the port of Oakland. But, by midnight, the coverage had shifted; the interest was no longer the thousands of people who peacefully walked. It had turned to the bonfires, destruction and vandalism, and the renewed conflict with the police. 

History

Martin Luther King Jr. famously used American bloodlust to garner attention for the African American Civil Rights Movement. The images of peaceful people—attacked by dogs and hoses turned on them—helped awaken people who didn’t believe things were “that bad.” It was important to show the violence of inequality; it was important to shock people into action. The struggle for civil rights showed the struggle between the oppressed and the oppressor; it was graphic and clear. Many people may not have understood the painful sting of being told “move to the back of the bus,” or “Not Allowed Here,” but the ferocious images of violence weren’t something people were merely “whining about.”

Gandhi didn’t have the advantage of ubiquitous cell phone pictures and film, but he took advantage of all the press he could get. He knew: the more real the violence directed against the nonviolent, the stronger the voice of opposition. The world paid little attention to the challenge to the Salt Tax—it was easy to ignore such a “modest tax”—but, when Webb Miller described “they went down like ten-pins. From where I stood I heard the sickening whacks of the clubs on unprotected skulls. The waiting crowd of watchers groaned and sucked in their breaths in sympathetic pain at every blow. Those struck down fell sprawling, unconscious or writhing in pain with fractured skulls or broken shoulders,” it was too difficult for the world to ignore.

It’s the Principle

The Occupy Movement has many parallels. After all, the challenge many are making is that occupiers are lazy whiners. Others say: if you don’t like the banks—don’t use them, and if you don’t like the corporations—don’t buy their products and services (I suppose the Indians didn’t need salt either). But many are changing their minds and paying attention, because violent responses to nonviolent resistance have always called to the collective human consciousness. At our cores we know: whatever the problem, violence is never the solution. 

The Occupation is about peace and social justice. In my mind it is all about the question of equality. The Declaration says: all men are created equal, and have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This is the Declaration of Independence, the US was built on equality—not a healthy economy (read corporate profits). Occupy Wall Street is only exposing this failure; people want to work, and don’t want to have to make tough choices about things like whether to pay for rent or health insurance or groceries… 

The Hope

I really hope that people can stay committed to the nonviolent struggle that is the Occupy Movement. Change does not come easy (the Montgomery Bus Boycott took 381 days!), and it does not come without sacrifice. At this point, however, itis something the world needs. “America shOWS its soul” reads the cover of The Hindu Magazine in Delhi. This is a year of revolution—anything is possible—and with nonviolent struggle the voice is the loudest. I hope the country rediscovers its democratic voice; we only passed the Voting Act in 1965, in response to the long struggle for equality. We have an oligarchy because our elected officials’ campaigns are sponsored by the very industries they are supposed to regulate. Economists were the ones who told former Pres. Richard Nixon not to sign the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; they said: the right to a job would hurt the economy; we can change this back to a Government for the people.

November 9, 2011

Wim Laven is an adjunct professor in Conflict Resolution, Portland State University.

* * *

Something Is Happening Here
By Sen. Curt Thompson (D-Tucker)

“Something is happening here
But you don’t know what it is
Do you Mr. Jones?”
--Bob Dylan, Ballad of a Thin Man

It feels Dylan-esque these days. Maybe it’s watching the return of the protest movement by Occupy Wall Street that brings Dylan to mind. But sitting at a standstill in my district watching the HOT Lane boondoggle—not reduce—traffic is what really has me asking, “What’s happening here?”

It’s not just the concentration of wealth among a few that is fueling the large scale support of the protestor’s message of “We’re the 99%.” It’s a real sense that the folks running our government aren’t even slightly interested in making government work for us. Sitting on I-85 at 4:30 p.m. looking at an unused and unworkable empty HOT Lane, I see why people think that. We have a crowd that’s so wedded to the ideology of
shrinking government that they don’t care that, in fact, government has to do some things for America and that you cannot fix big problems on the cheap.

You certainly can’t do that with transportation. Painting more lines on a road rather than investing in new construction and smarter methods of moving people is cheap, but doesn’t fix the problem. Creating cumbersome entry and exit points based on costs, not traffic flow, keeps a project under budget but still doesn’t fix the problem. Shifting the costs onto middle class consumers because you won’t ask folks at the top to pay their fair share makes the projected budget look low, but certainly doesn’t fix the problem.

The HOT lane mess shows how a rigid ideology like this never helps Mr. Jones. It’s all about doing as little as possible to help average people’s quality of life and wasting government savings on tax breaks to the chosen 1%, rather than seeking practical, real- world solutions. In fact, Robert Poole, the creator of the HOT Lane concept, told the State DOT that the plan they developed was the least effective option for a city like
Atlanta and that it would likely make traffic worse. However, votes were cast for the plan anyway, just because it was the cheapest. And in order to make the budget look even smaller, high tolls were included to shift even more of the burden onto the middle class drivers trying to get home after a day of work.

Why? The State DOT wanted the “free” federal money offered to create HOT lanes to dole out to wealthy politically connected contractors, but didn’t want the same 1% to have to put up anything to build a project that would work.

If this was just one instance of waste, we would shrug it off as another joke about government fat cats. But what has ordinary folks quietly supporting the Occupy Wall Street message and intensely disgusted at this HOT lane boondoggle is that people know something is happening. They may not know what it is, but it’s bigger than one bad road project, and it’s making them mad.

When people realize their government is making it harder for them to educate their kids, harder for them to get a job, and now making it harder for them to just get home, they get angry. Whether they’re camped out in Woodruff Park or stuck on Buford Highway, people are angry when government isn’t working for them. The question is—will those
running our government start trying to make government work for their constituents before Mr. and Mrs. Jones get what’s happening here?

November 9, 2011

* * *

Morning in Peachtree Corners

You support the City of Peachtree Corners. You believe voting YES is the way to go. But you are really busy and as far as you can tell, it is a “done deal”. You believe “everyone else” will turn out and make up for you absence. Guess again. How will you feel when you wake up on
November 9th and learn from the news that the NO folks prevailed. Where will our community go?

Ronald Reagan’s old foes, those “nattering nabobs of negativity” are going to turn out in force. Why? Because they do not want to live in a city. We have heard their statements. “Don’t want to live in a city, doesn’t matter if it is called Norcross or Peachtree Corners.” “I moved here specifically because I wanted to live in a neighborhood without an HOA and outside city limits.” That is why they are fighting so hard. Where is their vision for the future of Peachtree Corners? “I like things just as they are.” Is this what you really want?

In order to get their way, they are making outrageous claims. “The city is going to issue $1 million in 30 year bonds to build a city hall.” “Once the yes folks get into office, they will add every service possible and raise our taxes. Government always grows exponentially.” “Nobody wants to annex Peachtree Corners.” “Your property values will not increase.” “The YES people are not business friendly. They chased Wal-Mart away.”

These folks are not bad people, but their vision is not ours. They have no desire to make Peachtree Corners a better place to live, work and play. They do not share Paul Duke’s vision for our community. They just want to be left alone. So they follow the old rule, if you say something loud enough and often people will believe it is true. We know better. And we are better than that!

So what will you see next Wednesday if the city vote fails? Well, the sun will still rise and everything will still look OK. But the changes will be subtle and will occur over time. Annexations will continue.

Norcross already has four new properties. Berkeley Lake will annex the area between North Berkeley Lake, South Old Peachtree and Peachtree Industrial. They have agreements from about 60% of the property owners. Based on the 60 Percent Method, the rest of the properties will be annexed without their agreement. Duluth already has Blue Ridge Industrial Park.

Some may say, so what! This is on the edge of Peachtree Corners. The county will lose two parks to Berkeley Lake, the West Georgia Water Park and at least the Pinckneyville Park Soccer Complex. Berkeley Lake is also approaching residential properties along Bush Road. So
annexation is real and it is happening. Annexation will continue until there are just residential islands left. Imagine what this will do to the value of your home. Will the NO proponents step up to stop these annexations?
What will happen to the Peachtree Corners Festival? It was organized completely by volunteers

this year. Volunteers who believed in the city and organized it in the hope that the city would take over the Festival in future. What happens when there is no Peachtree Corners to celebrate? Will the NO proponents take this on?

What about the Peachtree Parkway Improvement Project, affectionately known as PPIP. The state only mows that area twice a year and does not make any improvements, like adding landscaping. This project has been handled by a United Peachtree Corners Civic Association volunteer who goes out and knocks on business doors asking for donations to pay a landscaper who gives us a discounted rate to maintain the area. Will the NO proponents take care of this in the future?

What about the vigilance UPCCA has shown in working with communities and developers to ensure developers can build profitably while at the same time the surrounding community is not negatively impacted. This is almost a full time job, particularly during good economic times. One person has shouldered the majority of this burden. Who will step up to the plate to ensure that smart development continues that benefits Peachtree Corners economically without negatively impacting home values? Will the NO proponents ensure that this occurs?

At one town hall meeting, a young woman stood up and stated that she was “touched” by the volunteers and felt that volunteers should consider doing the jobs that rightfully a city should be handling. Seems she expects others to step up to the job. This individual has never volunteered. Over time, there are fewer and fewer people stepping up to actually do the heavy lifting as volunteers. Will the NO proponents step up to the plate and fill the volunteer gaps?

So when you get up on November 8th and look at your schedule for the day, make an appointment to go to the polls and vote YES! Do you really want to wake up on Wednesday and find that because you did not take the time, you lost the city? Or do want to wake up to a new
morning in the City of Peachtree Corners? 

Vote YES November 8th.

Jeanne Aulbach
Peachtree Corners

* * *

A Veterans Day Remembrance
By: Calvin E. Johnson, Jr., 
Speaker, Writer, Author of book “When America Stood for God, Family and Country” and member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

What does Veterans Day, Friday, November 11, 2011,mean to you? To me it means….

Remembering American Patriots like Thomas Jefferson who said, “ABill of Rights is what the people are entitled to against every government, andwhat no just government should refuse, or rest on inference.”

And General George Washington Father of our country who led his troops in prayer before they crossed the Delaware River on a cold-snowy night to surprise the British and Hessian troops on December 26,1776. They gained a great victory in the worst of conditions.

And teaching our children about Andrew Jackson and arag tag army who defeated the British at New Orleans in 1815. A young officer named Wade Hampton of South Carolina rode 750 miles in ten days to Columbia, South Carolina, and then to Washington, D.C. to tell President Madison and the country of the great victory.

And not forgetting that during March, 1836, a small band of men at the Alamo stood between Santa Anna's 5,000 man army and the unprepared small army of Sam Houston. In the lonely monastery were Davy Crocket, Jim Bowie and less than two hundred men. Just three days before Santa Anna's final assault, these men came into the Alamo, knowing their lives were at great risk.

On their last night on earth the Alamo men prayed that their battle would, somehow, lead to victory even though they would die. Their prayer was answered. A few days later at SanJac into, Houston defeated Santa Anna with the battle cry of, "Remember the Alamo!"

It’s about remembering the year 1861 when our nation became two nations. The South under President Jefferson Davis and the North under President Abraham Lincoln fought for four long, bloody years to decide our future. Both armies prayed to the same God for guidance. This war has many names but the United States Congress would officially name it "The War Between the States." Since 1865, the Confederate Battle flag has been the blood brother of the Stars and Stripes as Southerners have taken their place at the front in all our nation's wars.

And remembering that in February of 1898 the American Battleship Maine blew up in Havana Harbor with nearly 300 dead. The Spanish-American War brought Teddy Roosevelt's "Roughriders" to Cuba to charge up San Juan Hill to victory. Old Joe Wheeler, an ex-Confederate Cavalry General, was there with him. Wheeler got excited and forgot which war he was in. He shouted, "There they are, go get those Yankees!"

In Greensboro, North Carolina a six year old girl named Mary Frances Barker awoke to the shouts of a boy far down the street. It was 5 A.M., November 12, 1918. It was the paper boy shouting, "The War is Over, the war is over!" World War one had finally ended on the 11th day of the 11th hour of the 11th month of November in 1918.

The United States Congress proclaimed "Armistice Day" a year later on November 11, 1919.

Lest We Forget on Sunday, December 7, 1941, the first word of the attack on Pearl Harbor came by radio. Newspapers did run "extras" that Sunday with little information and a lot of fear. This Sunday would become "a day of infamy." On Monday the 8th President Franklin D. Roosevelt, during a special session of congress, told of the attack and declared war on Japan. His speech was broadcast on the radio.

F.D.R.'s closing words were: "With the abounded determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph, so help us God!"

Since that time there was Korea, Vietnam, Grenada, Desert Storm, Afghanistan and Iraq. We cannot forget they we were attacked again on September 11, 2001. 

We have, since World War II, seen prayer taken out of our schools and "Under God" in the pledge of allegiance under attack. Are we still a nation of God as we once were during the times of our founding fathers and mothers? With all that is happening in the world today, it seems like we need God more than ever.

Armistice Day became Veterans Day in 1954. Lest We Forget!

November 7, 2011

* * *

America is Exceptional

by David Hancock
www.RightSideWeekly.com 

Someone named Steven Walt has published an article, wildly posted on the Internet, entitled "The Myth of American Exceptionalism". I don't know who Mr. Walt is, but the bio says he is a professor at Harvard University. Unfortunately we are seeing too much of this type of thinking coming out of America's college professors.

I should take the time to offer a point by point rebuttal to Mr. Walt's article. He listed several points that could be addressed individually. With my own limited knowledge and just a little research I could put together several pages of what makes America so exceptional. But I have found that people like Mr. Walt don't really listen to facts or care too much about history. And, besides, there are many people who would be much better at this type of argument than I could ever be.

Mr. Walt has the right to speak his mind - this is part of what makes us exceptional. But I and most Americans have the right to disagree with him, and in this point disagree quite strongly. Because a large part of what makes us exceptional is the knowledge that we are, and can continue to be, exceptional. Ideas like those from Mr. Walt and the few who consider themselves part of some sort of world society concern those of us who understand not just the privilege but also the responsibility of being an American.

President-Elect John F. Kennedy recognized this when, in 1961, he delivered the following lines:

"I have been guided by the standard John Winthrop set before his shipmates on the flagship Arbella three hundred and thirty-one years ago, as they, too, faced the task of building a new government on a perilous frontier. 'We must always consider', he said, 'that we shall be as a city upon a hill-the eyes of all people are upon us'. Today the eyes of all people are truly upon us-and our governments, in every branch, at every level, national, state and local, must be as a city upon a hill - constructed and inhabited by men aware of their great trust and their great responsibilities."

In my local paper this article ran directly across from the obituaries of several veterans of our military. These words will be facing the children and grandchildren of those who served our country in ways that the children may never appreciate. If, in the future, any paper in the US finds itself with blank space that needs filling I would encourage you to contact a member of our military. There are still enough of the Greatest Generation who would be happy to let you know what America means to them. They left thousands of their friends and brothers buried on foreign soil who understood.

My daughter is a beautiful young lady, but if enough people tell her she is ugly there is a danger that she may start to believe it, despite what she sees in the mirror. Likewise young people today who are no longer taught the roll America has played in saving the world for the past 200 years don't have the foundation to recognize the bitterness of someone like Mr. Walt.

No, Mr. Walt, we haven't always achieved it. But exceptionalism is something that we strive for, something that sets us apart from other nations. Because to be American means more than just enjoying our prosperity. It means always trying to make sure that our country is the shining city on the hill, a true place of hope for all people who can see what can be accomplished in just a few hundred years by a nation birthed in a revolution and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness

Unfortunately to many, it seems, this sounds trite, old fashioned, or not politically correct. But without those values and goals, America starts to lose its identity and uniqueness.

Nobody put it better than Ronald Regan - "I've spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace, a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity, and if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That's how I saw it and see it still"

American Exceptionalism is not mythical, but it is legendary. People around the world believe in it, which is why they continue to try and get here by any means necessary. Now people in America need to start feeling it again and speak out against the few who try to say otherwise. We outnumber them, but we need to make our voices heard.

So if there was an upside to me reading Mr. Walt's article it is that it caused me to sit down and write this letter. Too often I take America for granted. I simply assume that tomorrow I will wake up and she will still be the greatest nation on earth. I guess that every now and then I need someone to come along and poke her to remind me how important it is to fight for what she means to me. 

November 2, 2011

* * *


To create jobs, abolish the death tax now
by Newt Gingrich

There is now less than a month remaining until the so-called “Super Committee” must reveal its plan to eliminate $1.2 trillion from the federal deficit over the next 10 years.

If it fails to produce such a plan, or if Congress or President Barack Obama rejects it, it will lead to a budgetary and national security disaster. Under this incredibly risky scheme, more than a trillion dollars will be cut from defense and domestic spending budgets automatically if the closed-door “Super Committee” cannot agree on a deficit reduction package. If Congress fails to pass whatever proposal these 12 select members of Congress come up with—no matter how bad it is—the same automatic cuts go into effect. 
They better have a good plan.

There are alternatives, some of them painless, if the members of the committee can get beyond partisanship. According to a study released last week by the American Family Business Foundation, almost a third of the needed savings could be achieved merely by repealing the death tax, something that is both ineffective and immoral.

The federal government would take in about $362 billion more than currently projected over the next 10 years if the death tax was eliminated entirely, allowing people to pass the fruits of a lifetime of labor on to their families as they chose. There would be a direct revenue loss but, as the report estimates, U.S. Gross Domestic Product would increase 2.26 percent in a decade just by eliminating the tax. New revenues generated by the economic activity that would result from the elimination of the death tax would be almost twice as much as the revenue derived from it.

How do you fight what could become Obama's $1 billion war chest? 
One key demographic gave Obama all the ammunition he needed to win in 2008. Conservative activists are taking dead aim at them to win them to the Right. But how do you fight what could become Obama's $1 billion war chest? There's a plan. Read more. 

This growth would create thousands of new jobs as families kept more small businesses running through multiple generations and shifted their efforts from avoiding estate taxes to investing in America. 

As economist Art Laffer described the evidence, “Study after study finds that the estate tax significantly reduces the size of estates and, as an added consequence, reduces the nation's capital stock and income.” 

Many small business owners have an incentive to spend their resources wastefully looking for ways to avoid the tax. Many families are forced to close or sell the family business or the family farm in order to raise the funds needed to pay the federal government. 

Hundreds of prominent economists recently added their names to a letter written a decade ago by Nobel-laureate Milton Friedman calling for the repeal of the death tax. They object that it is ineffective—as I have said, the government would be better off eliminating it—but more importantly that it is immoral. 

As Friedman wrote on behalf of the original 276 signatories:
“Spend your money on riotous living - no tax; leave your money to your children - the tax collector gets paid first. That is the message sent by the estate tax. It is a bad message and the estate tax is a bad tax. The basic argument against the estate tax is moral. It taxes virtue - living frugally and accumulating wealth.”

An additional 259 economists signed the letter this year, including another Nobel-laureate, advisors to several presidents, and former Federal Reserve Bank presidents. 

The American people overwhelmingly agree with Friedman and these economists that “death should not be a taxable event.” Even though relatively few Americans will ever pay the death tax, substantial majorities oppose raising it and support its permanent repeal.

They understand it is a question fundamentally about the right to pursue happiness: if you work hard, if you invest wisely, if you save your money, it is wrong for people who did not spend their lifetimes doing that to take it away.

“The death tax taxes yet again a lifetime of savings and investment that has already been taxed multiple times,” Peter Ferrara wrote recently. “It is double taxation on top of double taxation, which often forces loved ones left behind to sell the family farm, ranch or business to pay the taxes just when they are suffering from their loss the most.”

Eliminating the death tax will create more jobs and more revenue for the federal government. That combination should be an obvious choice for the deficit reduction committee. Repealing it is a painless part of the solution. It’s also the right thing to do.

Your Friend,
Newt

October 26, 2011

* * *

Why the City of Peachtree Corners is a good idea:
by Gay Wiley Shook

When one of my neighbors put a “No City” sign in her yard, I asked her to give me her thoughts on the matter. Her first response was, “I don’t want to talk about it!” Upon a little gentle probing, she soon revealed that she really had no accurate details, but thought she didn’t want “another layer of government.”

My response to her and any others like her is this: If you like the way Peachtree Corners looks, thank the dedicated volunteers of the United Peachtree Corners Civic Association (UPCCA). If you like the way Peachtree Parkway looks with its almost four miles of landscaped and mowed medians, thank the volunteers of UPCCA who raise the money for and oversee the yearly commercial landscape contract. If you like the looks of The Forum and enjoy shopping there, thank the volunteers of UPCCA, who diligently and faithfully held the developer to the conditions of the zoning so the place looks as good as it does.

UPCCA has been the de facto government in the Peachtree Corners area of unincorporated Gwinnett County since its inception in 1993, always looking out for our quality of life here and the value of our homes. The concept of being responsible for our own destiny has been paramount throughout and has always justified the hundreds of volunteer hours that have been invested by so many into maintaining the quality of our live, work, and play community that was founded by Paul Duke over 40 years ago.

Peachtree Corners is completely surrounded now by other municipalities which have been seeking the opportunity to annex our tax-rich parkway for several years. The volunteers of UPCCA searched for a way to secure our Peachtree Corners boundaries against annexation by other cities, and ultimately determined that the only legal way open to us was incorporation. Now this question of whether or not to incorporate as a city is on the November 8th ballot for the voters in the area to decide. The charter is for a city with authority in three quality of life areas only: Planning and zoning, code enforcement, and solid waste collection. The tax for this is one mill.

The issue is self-determination here. The choice of doing nothing is no longer available to us because three cities have indicated they want us or parts of us. UPCCA has led the initiative for incorporation now because if Peachtree Corners is not incorporated by the citizens who live here, we will most certainly be annexed and controlled by citizens who do not live here. The millage rate would increase then by far more than one mill. 

If you like Peachtree Corners now, you can thank UPCCA. Why would anybody think that UPCCA would sponsor an effort that was not in the best interest of us all?

October 23, 2011

* * *

141st Anniversary of Robert E. Lee’s death
By: Calvin E. Johnson, Jr., 

Do Americans know more about Fidel Castro and Che Guevara then they do about George Washington and Robert E. Lee? I have been told that some college students wear Che Guevara and Mao Tse Tung tee shirts but are not allowed to wear American History shirts depicting Robert E. Lee, George Washington, the United States flag or Confederate Battle flag. 

Are young folks still taught about America’s past?

Every year, the Lee Chapel, at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, presents a lecture and special events commemorating the Washington College presidency of Robert E. Lee on the anniversary of his death. The 2011 program, featuring Dr. James I. Robertson, Jr., is scheduled for Monday, October 10. Dr. Robertson will give his address entitled “Lee and the Mobilization of Virginia Forces 1861” and is free and open to the public, in the Chapel Auditorium at 12:15pm. Robertson is a War Between the States Historian, Scholar and Author. See more information at.
http://chapelapps.wlu.edu/tertiary.asp?ID=40&Parent=43&NavOrder=1

The headline from a Richmond newspaper read, quote
"News of the death of Robert E. Lee, beloved chieftain of the Southern army, whose strategy mainly was responsible for the surprising fight staged by the Confederacy, brought a two-day halt to Richmond's business activities." unquote

General Lee died at his home at Lexington, Virginia at 9:30 AM on Wednesday, October 12, 1870. His last great deed came after the War Between the States when he accepted the presidency of Washington College, now Washington and Lee University. He saved the financially troubled college and helped many young folks further their education. 

Some write that Robert E. Lee suffered a cerebral hemorrhage on September 28, 1870, but was thought to greatly improve until October 12th, when he took a turn for the worse. His condition seemed more hopeless when his doctor told him, "General you must make haste and get well---Traveller---has been standing too long in his stable and needs exercise." 

Virginia Military Institute (VMI) Cadet William Nalle said in a letter home to his mother, dated October 16, 1870, quote

"I suppose of course that you have all read full accounts of Gen Lee's death in the papers. He died on the morning of the 12th at about half past nine. All business was suspended at once all over the country and town, and all duties, military and academic suspended at the Institute, and all the black crape and all similar black material in Lexington, was used up at once, and they had to send on to Lynchburg for more. Every cadet had black crape issued to him, and an order was published at once requiring us to wear it as a badge of mourning for six months." unquote

Read entire letter on Virginia Military Institute website at: www.vmi.edu/archives.aspx?id=5517  

The rains and flooding were the worst in Virginia's history on the day General Lee died. On Wednesday, October 12, 1870, in the presence of his family, Lee quietly passed away. 

The church bells rang as the sad news passed through Washington College, Virginia Military Institute, the town of Lexington and the nation. Cadets from VMI College carried the remains of the old soldier to Lee Chapel where he laid in state. 

Memorial meetings were held throughout the South and as far North as New York. At Washington College in Lexington eulogies were delivered by: Reverend Pemberton, Reverend W.S. White--Stonewall Jackson's Pastor and Reverend J. William Jones. Former Confederate President Jefferson Davis brought the eulogy in Richmond, Virginia. Lee was also eulogized in Great Britain. 

Many thousands witnessed Lee's funeral procession marching through the town of Lexington, Virginia, with muffled drums and the artillery firing as the hearse was driven to the school's chapel where he was laid to rest.

Booker T. Washington, America’s great Black-American Educator wrote in 1910, quote “The first white people in America, certainly the first in the South to exhibit their interest in the reaching of the Negro and saving his soul through the medium of the Sunday-school were Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson.” Unquote

The Georgia Division Sons of Confederate Veterans joins the nation in commemorating the 150th anniversary of the War Between the States. See more information at: www.150wbts.org  

Calvin E. Johnson, Jr., Speaker, Writer, Author of Book ‘When America Stood for God, Family and Country” looking to re-publish and member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. 1064 West Mill Drive, Kennesaw, Georgia 30152, Phone: 770 428 0978

October 7, 2011

* * *

Going from good to great in early childhood education 
By Nathan Deal 

Our state bears a fundamental responsibility to prepare our children to be college and work ready in a global economy. Not only do we owe this duty to each and every child in our care, but we know that, collectively, education is our No. 1 economic development tool. 

On a long-term basis there is no more forward-looking or strategic place to invest taxpayer dollars. 

Within education, the birth-to-age-8 timeframe is increasingly critical. When we fail to strategically invest resources in our youngest students, we are forced to spend more money trying to remediate them later, regularly taking great pains to simply drag struggling students across the finish line to a diploma. By prioritizing early childhood education, we ensure that our youngest students are positioned for academic excellence. 

Student literacy serves as the foundation. Evidence shows that children who do not read by third grade often fail to catch up and are more likely to drop out of school, go to prison, and have higher unemployment rates later in life than their reading-proficient peers. 

It is critically important that students are “learning to read” in order to be able to “read to learn,” and we can help them prepare both mentally and socially for reading proficiency by instilling language skills at a young age. We must fix our focus and resources on critical benchmarks in early childhood literacy and then do everything in our power to ensure that we are meeting them year after year. 

In Georgia, we are already making tremendous strides toward improving outcomes for children. We are fortunate to have a lottery funded pre-k program that is the envy of the nation and a dedicated state agency to address the needs of our earliest learners. However, we cannot stop there. We must work to better coordinate the efforts and resources of our state, nation, and private partners to more efficiently and effectively deliver services to this critical age group. 

That is why I look forward to the opportunity to submit Georgia’s application for the Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge. Should we win this competitive grant, it will enable us to leverage our efforts to provide a high-quality early childhood education, particularly by increasing access and outcomes across the state. 

In uncertain economic times, we must be increasingly prudent with limited resources. Early learning helps us get the most out of investments in education, health, public safety and economic development by fostering better outcomes for our students and for our state as a whole. Working today to ensure that our youngest students are reading-proficient will help us create a future Georgia with more diplomas and good jobs, badges of pride and achievement that every Georgian deserves. 

Nathan Deal is the governor of Georgia.

September 30, 2011 

* * *

2nd Annual Legislative Policy Briefing Focuses on Georgia's 2012 Issues
By Benita M. Dodd

One of the greatest compliments paid to the Georgia Public Policy Foundation after the first Georgia Legislative Policy Briefing last year came from a representative of the think tank trailblazer in educating policy-makers: the Texas Public Policy Foundation.

Marc Levin, panelist in a criminal justice session that highlighted the progress in his home state of Texas, declared Georgia's foray an "incredible conference!"

"We’ve been doing this for eight years in Texas and I can’t believe this was your first one," said Levin, whose Texas policy group's two-day legislative policy briefings draw more than 600 participants annually. Specifically, Levin was impressed at how many of Georgia's legislators attended: "We have to put them on panels in order to get them to come!"

This year, the Georgia Public Policy Foundation's second annual Legislative Policy Briefing promises even greater depth than the first, which drew more than 250 attendees. Co-hosted once again by the Conservative Policy Leadership Institute, the daylong event on Friday, September 30 at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre will feature sessions on tax reform, digital education, criminal justice, tort reform, transportation and health care.

The bipartisan panels in the day's five sessions draw from the business world, academia, national think tanks and leaders in the medical and education field. In keeping with the theme of "Wisdom, Justice and Innovation," these state and national experts will bring new ideas to Georgia legislators and re-energized voters as the 2012 General Assembly approaches.

Keynote speakers are Bernie Marcus, co-founder of Atlanta-based Home Depot; John Goodman, president and founder of the National Center for Policy Analysis, who is known as the father of Health Savings Accounts; and entrepreneur Lee Hicks, founder and CEO of Georgia-based C Port Solutions. Hicks will tell policy-makers and legislators how to stop the bleeding as Georgia loses jobs with three-quarters of its start-up companies leaving the state.

Georgia Rep. Lynne Riley (R-Johns Creek), who attended the inaugural event last year, said participants were provided with "fully researched, fact-based information that is the basis of sound policy."

"We benefited enormously as experts in multiple areas shared their insights on the best courses of action to implement while holding government in check," Riley added. "The event is definitely on my schedule again this year.

"North Georgia radio talk show host Al Gainey of W-DUN Newstalk 550, who interviewed speakers and panelists before and during last year's event, will again be interviewing speakers to spread the message to Georgians. Gainey said the briefing attracts both voters and elected officials because, "If Georgians are to hold their legislators accountable, they need to be armed with the facts and ideas, too.”

"Last year's speakers initiated the conversation on innovation in Georgia's struggling economic climate," said Kelly McCutchen, president and CEO of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation. "This year, we look forward to furthering that conversation with commonsense proposals that can be built into legislation based upon the foundation of limited government. And the depth and knowledge among our speakers this year promises to provide that." The cost to attend this year's event is $100, which includes breakfast and lunch. The event is open to the public. Find out more about the 2011 Georgia Legislative Policy Briefing at http://tinyurl.com/3mhvam2. 

Benita M. Dodd is vice president of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation, an independent think tank that proposes practical, market-oriented approaches to public policy to improve the lives of Georgians. Nothing written here is to be construed as necessarily reflecting the views of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation or as an attempt to aid or hinder the passage of any bill before the U.S. Congress or the Georgia Legislature. 

September 16, 2011

* * *

Realigning Georgia’s Fiscal Priorities 
By Kelly McCutchen

Fifteen years ago it was almost impossible to drive by a public school in Georgia without seeing at least one classroom trailer in the parking lot. Parents viewed those trailers as a threat to their children’s education, so in 1996 voters approved E-SPLOST – the special purpose local option sales tax for education that has funded hundreds of new schools and improvements to existing schools.

Today, Georgia is in a much different landscape than in 1996. The migration of new residents to the state has slowed and, with few exceptions, school facilities are now more on par with needs. Today, the challenge is to get to the new and improved schools on time: We’re stuck in traffic. To help the state's economy stay competitive, Georgians now must address traffic congestion. And the solution could be found in those dollars that have been allocated to school construction.

The E-SPLOST has essentially become a statewide sales tax. It is levied at 1 percent in all but one of Georgia’s 159 counties. The $1.5 billion the E-SPLOST raises annually is nearly identical to the targeted dollars for transportation improvements – the transportation sales tax, or T-SPLOST – that Georgia voters will be asked to approve next year. It isn't likely that a major tax increase in the middle of the worst economic recession in recent history will have much success at the polls. The best chance for success may hinge on our ability to redirect capital spending from education to transportation.


Here’s how it could work. The state would either pass a constitutional amendment or incentivize local governments to sunset the 1 percent E-SPLOST, which is a local tax, and replace it with a 1 percent statewide sales tax dedicated to education. Local governments would be required to roll back property taxes by an amount equal to their share of the $1.5 billion anticipated from the statewide sales tax. (For a table showing the potential property tax reduction where you live, go to www.georgiapolicy.org/pub/ESPLOST.pdf .) The school board would then decide how much additional money, if any, is needed for existing or future capital improvements. Based on current law, citizens would then approve a referendum to authorize the bonds to fund these projects.

                                            Capital           Possible Georgia
                                           Spending              Savings 
                                          per Student       
                
            Georgia                      $1,642
            North Carolina           $1,243           $658,139,200
            Tennessee                  $737              $1,492,531,760
   Source: 2010 Digest of Education Statistics

Is this reasonable? Georgia spends more money per student for capital improvements than all but seven states. As the chart shows, realigning our capital spending to the level of similar states would result in as much as $1.5 billion a year in savings. For comparison purposes, the T-SPLOST is expected to raise about $1.5 billion a year statewide, of which $700 million a year would be raised in the metro Atlanta region.

Assuming Georgia could reduce education capital spending by just 25 percent, the state would still be spending an amount equal to North Carolina each year. In this scenario, $850 million of the new state sales tax revenue would continue to be spent by local school boards on local capital projects. The remaining $650 million would be used to reduce property taxes. That’s a net tax cut of $650 million. It also clears the way for $650 million in funding for transportation projects – without a net tax increase.
Nearly every school system has a "Taj Mahal" tale, whether of grand buildings or fancy stadiums, because they are forced to spend E-SPLOST revenue on capital projects. But Georgians, like all Americans, have been hit hard by the recession and are ready to see government prioritize needs. Our top ten ranking in capital spending for education is a good place to start. Addressing problems like traffic congestion will require more money. But we must first take every available opportunity to realign spending to limit the tax burden on our families and businesses. 

Kelly McCutchen is president of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation, an independent think tank that proposes practical, market-oriented approaches to public policy to improve the lives of Georgians. Nothing written here is to be construed as necessarily reflecting the views of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation or as an attempt to aid or hinder the passage of any bill before the U.S. Congress or the Georgia Legislature. 

September 9, 2011

* * *

Kansas City Here It Comes: 
A New Nuclear Weapons Plant!
By Lawrence S. Wittner

Should the U.S. government be building more nuclear weapons? Residents of Kansas City, Missouri don’t appear to think so, for they are engaged in a bitter fight against the construction of a new nuclear weapons plant in their community.

The massive plant, 1.5 million square feet in size, is designed to replace an earlier version, also located in the city and run by the same contractor: Honeywell. The cost of building the new plant—which, like its predecessor, will provide 85 percent of the components of America’s nuclear weapons—is estimated to run $673 million. 

From the standpoint of the developer, Centerpoint Zimmer (CPZ), that’s a very sweet deal. In payment for the plant site, a soybean field it owned, CPZ received $5 million. The federal government will lease the property and plant from a city entity for twenty years, after which, for $10, CPZ will purchase it, thus establishing the world’s first privately-owned nuclear weapons plant. In addition, as the journal Mother Jones has revealed, “the Kansas City Council, enticed by direct payments and a promise of ‘quality jobs,’ . . . agreed to exempt CPZ from property taxes on the plant and surrounding land for twenty-five years.” The Council also agreed to issue $815 million in bond subsidies from urban blight funds to build the plant and its infrastructure. In this lucrative context, how could a profit-driven corporation resist?

Kansas City residents, however, had greater misgivings. They wondered why the U.S. government, already possessing 8,500 nuclear weapons, needed more of them. They wondered what had happened to the U.S. government’s commitment to engage in treaties for nuclear disarmament. They wondered how the new weapons plant fit in with the Obama administration’s pledge to build a world free of nuclear weapons. And they wondered why they should be subsidizing the U.S. military-industrial complex with their tax dollars.

Taking the lead, the city’s peace and disarmament community began protests and demonstrations against the proposed nuclear weapons plant several years ago. Gradually, Kansas City PeaceWorks (a branch of Peace Action) pulled together the local chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility, religious groups, and others into a coalition of a dozen organizations, Kansas City Peace Planters. The coalition’s major project was a petition campaign to place a proposition on the November 8, 2011 election ballot that would reject building a plant for weapons and utilize the facility instead for “green energy” technologies.

The significance of the Kansas City nuclear weapons buildup was also highlighted by outside forces. In June 2011, against the backdrop of the Obama administration’s plan to spend $185 billion for modernization of the U.S. nuclear weapons complex over the next ten years, the U.S. Council of Mayors voted unanimously for a resolution instructing the president to join leaders of the other nuclear weapons states in implementing U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s five-point plan for the elimination of all nuclear weapons by the year 2020. It also called on Congress to terminate funding for modernization of the U.S. nuclear weapons complex and nuclear weapons systems. Addressing the gathering, the U.N. leader declared that “the road to peace and progress runs through the world’s cities and towns,” a statement that drew a standing ovation.

Even more pointedly, Archbishop Francis Chullikatt, the Vatican’s ambassador to the United Nations, appeared in Kansas City in July 2011. According to the National Catholic Reporter, Chullikat “came to this Midwestern diocese because it is the site of a major new nuclear weapons manufacturing facility, the first to be built in the country in thirty-three years.” In his address, the prelate remarked: “Viewed from a legal, political, security and most of all—moral—perspective, there is no justification today for the continued maintenance of nuclear weapons.” This was the moment, he declared, to address “the legal, political and technical requisites for a nuclear-weapons-free world.” Highlighting Chullikatt’s speech, the National Catholic Reporter declared, cuttingly: “The U.S. trudges unheedingly down the nuclear path. Now more than ever we need to attend to the messages of the often marginalized peacemakers in our midst.”

Actually, peace activists in Kansas City looked less and less marginalized. Nearly 5,000 Kansas City residents signed the petition to place the proposition rejecting the nuclear weapons plant on the ballot, giving it considerably more signatures than necessary to appear before the voters.

Naturally, this popular uprising came as a blow to the Kansas City Council, which put forward a measure that would block the disarmament initiative from appearing on the ballot.

At an August 17 hearing on the Council measure, local residents were irate. “You cannot divorce yourselves from the hideously immoral purpose of these weapons,” one declared, comparing the city’s subsidy for the weapons plant to financing Nazi gas chambers “for the sake of ‘jobs.’” Referring to the Council’s charter, which provided for the appearance of propositions on the ballot when they secured the requisite number of signatures, the chair of PeaceWorks asked: “Are we a government of laws or of . . . corporations and special interests?”

Since then, the situation has evolved rapidly. On August 25, the City Council voted 12 to 1 to bar the proposition from the ballot. The next day, the petitioners went to court to block Council interference. Honeywell, CPZ, and their friends dispatched a large legal team to Kansas City to fight against the citizens’ initiative, securing a court decision that might delay redress for years. In response, Peace Planters seems likely to speed up the process by crafting a new petition—one that would cut off city funding for the plant.

Whatever the outcome, the very fact that such a struggle has emerged indicates that many Americans are appalled by plans to throw their local and national resources into building more nuclear weapons.

Dr. Wittner is Emeritus Professor of History at the State University of New York/Albany. His latest book is Confronting the Bomb: A Short History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement (Stanford University Press).

September 5, 2011

* * *

State Properties Commission is Sold
 on Best Deals for Taxpayers
By Steve Stancil 

Innovation is nothing new for Georgia's State Properties Commission. As the state’s real estate portfolio manager, the agency with its staff of 12 is responsible for the management of all state-owned and leased space and the acquisition and disposition of all state-owned property. 

Since its reorganization in 2005, the commission has applied strategies and approaches to improve state services in space, asset and transaction management. This includes a Web site to identify potential sites for state agencies’ space needs and an electronic tracking system. Additionally, an interactive, Web-based data warehouse includes more than 1,900 leases, 15,000 buildings and 1.1 million acres of owned and leased land.
Last year, the commission began a study of underutilized and surplus properties to determine ways to generate revenue for the state; reduce maintenance, operations and insurance costs; and provide benefit to local governments by potentially adding to their tax digests. 

The commission applied filters in the data warehouse inventory to highlight buildings with square footage greater than 2,500 square feet, occupancy of less than 50 percent and insured value of at least $85,000. In addition, the commission reviewed land greater than five acres outside metropolitan areas and one acre within metro areas. The review identified more than 100 properties (buildings and land) with an estimated value of up to $43 million for potential sale. 

Commission officials have been meeting since the spring with state agencies about disposal or re-purposing of the identified properties and to identify any hurdles, such as outstanding bonds. While the commission is preparing the "disposition pipeline," it’s not as easy as posting "for sale" signs and waiting for offers. In fact, the process can take the better part of 18 months, which often delays market demand and revenue and incurs ongoing maintenance expenses. 

First, the commission must formally request approval from the General Assembly to sell property. Once the resolution is passed, the State Properties Commission Board must approve the sale. Next, two appraisals and any due diligence must be competed before the property can be put out for bid. Then the commission board must meet again and approve the recommended bid. Finally, the Attorney General’s office must approve the sale. 

The challenge is the existing process treats all properties alike, whether the estimated value is $10 million or $10,000. The sealed bid process does not allow for negotiation, nor does it allow for the industry practice of marketing and bidding – otherwise known as "best and final offers." 

For these reasons, the commission is now surveying best practices in the nation's seven other AAA bond-rated states that could streamline the process in Georgia. The commission also received responses from 11 other states that completed a survey by the National Association of State Facilities Administrators. After the survey is completed in the late fall, the commission plans to propose legislation that ensures the process better serves Georgia's taxpayers by leveraging its position in the real estate market. 

The proposals could include making the commission board the sole authority to approve the sale of state property. They may also include simplifying the approval process; engaging third-party real estate professionals to actively market and network properties to national and international investors; linking up with local economic development councils to increase interest, and adopting the standard practice of "best and final offers" used in the private sector.

The State Properties Commission is cautiously optimistic that the real estate market will strengthen in the next 18 months or so. The commission intends to not only dispose of surplus property and generate revenue for Georgia's taxpayers, but also to fulfill its vision of being a national leader by exemplifying stewardship, accountability and integrity.

Steve Stancil, Georgia’s State Property Officer, leads the Georgia Building Authority and State Properties Commission and wrote this commentary for the Georgia Public Policy Foundation. The Georgia Public Policy Foundation is an independent think tank that proposes practical, market-oriented approaches to public policy to improve the lives of Georgians. Nothing written here is to be construed as necessarily reflecting the views of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation or as an attempt to aid or hinder the passage of any bill before the U.S. Congress or the Georgia Legislature. 

September 2, 2011

* * *

Do you remember the crisp-cool 
autumn days of high school 
and college football when….
By: Calvin E. Johnson, Jr., Speaker, Writer, Author of book “When America stood for God, Family and Country.” 

The Ole Miss Cheerleaders and school Mascot Colonel Reb lifted the spirit of fans who waved Confederate flags and cheered to the band playing Dixie? Today, however, Colonel Reb has been replaced and flag waving discouraged. Some call for sensitivity and understanding toward some people but apparently this respect does not apply toward Southern-American’s who love God and are proud of the old traditions of their native South land of which many books and movies are written about.

And, do you remember the aroma of hot dogs and fries and fairs during those lazy fall days when….

School bands from North and South of the Mason-Dixon Line played Dixie during school sports games? Do you know the history of the Dixie that is a joyful sound of inspiration and pride for many people?

In 1859, Ohio Native Dan Emmett first performed “Dixie” in New York City to an enthusiastic-cheerful crowd.

Two years later, on February 18, 1861, the band played Dixie at the Inauguration of Confederate President Jefferson Davis in Montgomery, Alabama. 

And on April 14, 1865, after General Robert E. Lee’s surrender, President Abraham Lincoln said: “Now Let the Band Play Dixie; it belongs neither to the South, nor to the North but to us all.”-—New York Times Sunday Magazine, August 11, 1907. 

For 150 years American school bands have played Dixie including the Milton High school “Dixie Eagles” Band who performed Dixie at the invitation and inauguration of the late Lester G. Maddox as Governor of Georgia in January 1967. 

Dixie was played in 1976, during America’s Bi-Centennial birthday, at the Old Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium in Atlanta, Georgia and the late Johnny Cash sang Dixie at the Ford Theater in Washington , D.C. to then President Jimmy Carter and members of the United States Congress. 

Dixie has been performed by many great musicians including; Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, Lawrence Welk, Louis Armstrong, Dinah Shore, John Phillip Sousa, Osmond Brothers, Boxcar Willie, Jane Froman, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Mitch Miller, Johnny Hartman, Patsy, The Rebelaires and in 1943 the late great Bing Crosby portrayed Dan Emmett in the wonderful Paramount movie “Dixie.”

Roz Bowie, a proud Black Southern Lady, sang Dixie in 1986 at the reburial of a Confederate Soldier in Columbia, South Carolina. 

So, what happened to the song Dixie that has lifted the souls of students, teachers, parents and fans? Many of our institutions of learning have stopped playing Dixie even though the song is universally loved. 

What happened to “Dixie" that was the official band music of the Confederate and Union Armies? What happened to this song that Northern and Southern children sang from their schools standard song book? 

Today, men and women serve overseas to free the people of Iraq and Afghanistan....But school bands are no longer allowed to play “Dixie" and "Under God" is under attack in the pledge of allegiance. 

In a cemetery in Mount Vernon Ohio lies Dan Emmett, the Composer of Dixie, whose headstone reads: "Daniel Decatur Emmett 1815 - 1904 whose song ' Dixie Land' inspired the courage and devotion of the Southern people and now thrills the hearts of a reunited nation." 

Three miles North of Emmett’s grave are the graves of Ben and Lew Snowden of a Black musical family. On their tombstone are the words “They taught “Dixie” to Dan Emmett.

Dixie is a song for all people of all races and backgrounds. Let the band play Dixie!

August 25, 2011

* * *

Service Impact Felt by People 
with Developmental Disabilities 

In times like these, we’ve all learned to do more with less. The truth is that’s nothing new for those of us who provide quality and caring services to the thousands of Georgia citizens who have developmental disabilities. 

Service providers of people with developmental disabilities are experiencing unreasonable requirements that will damage our state’s service provider safety net. Families are faced with a harsh reality as services dwindle and doors close. 

Over the last 8-10 years, the State of Georgia has cut funding for certain people with developmental disabilities by 40%. This staggering cut was difficult for providers. For a while, some were able to use alternate funds to supplement the inadequate funding. However, due to the downturn of the economy, that funding has now disappeared. This year, several providers desperately attempted to avoid closure by revising services to more appropriately meet reimbursement rates -- the hope being to preserve services overall for a community versus risking complete financial disaster, closure and a total void of services in a community. 

Providers’ attempts to address the financial crisis were met with a memo from the Georgia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities notifying providers that they are required to provide services in excess of an individual’s funding. They are not allowed to revise or reduce services – in other words, they will have to continue to absorb losses without being allowed to make any adjustment to the services provided. 

This service mandate ignores the very real and dire economic and financial circumstances we all face. And the state’s unwillingness to engage with Georgia’s service providers in a discussion about these issues is tantamount to sticking its head in the sand. 

What is more frightening is that the Georgia Department of Behavioral Health & Developmental Disabilities announced it will revise service rates for implementation in 2012 -- but without sharing the methodology of how rates will be assigned to people with developmental disabilities. Provider organizations like the Georgia Association of Community Service Boards (GACSB) and the Service Providers Association for Developmental Disabilities (SPADD), have made research, financials and case studies available to the state to assist in the process, but fear the department will continue its history of arbitrarily assigning rates with no method or consistency, leaving people with developmental disabilities out of the process. 

If providers are forced to close doors… How will people with developmental disabilities have a meaningful life? Where will they develop the skills necessary to navigate the rough waters of life? What will our families do without the special care and guidance their loved ones need? Who will care for them, as we have for the past 30 years? 

Simply put, rates must rise, or services must be allowed to adjust. We must meet the needs of people with developmental disabilities and preserve the financial viability of our providers. Our providers are eager and willing to work with the state to develop that compromise. Our families’ health and welfare depend upon it. 

Ralph Herndon, President, 
Georgia Association of Community Service Boards 

August 25, 2011

* * *

Service Impact Felt by People 
with Developmental Disabilities

In times like these, we’ve all learned to do more with less. The truth is that’s nothing new for those of us who provide quality and caring services to the thousands of Georgia citizens who have developmental disabilities. 

Service providers of people with developmental disabilities are experiencing unreasonable requirements that will damage our state’s service provider safety net. Families are faced with a harsh reality as services dwindle and doors close. 

Over the last 8-10 years, the State of Georgia has cut funding for certain people with developmental disabilities by 40%. This staggering cut was difficult for providers. For a while, some were able to use alternate funds to supplement the inadequate funding. However, due to the downturn of the economy, that funding has now disappeared. This year, several providers desperately attempted to avoid closure by revising services to more appropriately meet reimbursement rates -- the hope being to preserve services overall for a community versus risking complete financial disaster, closure and a total void of services in a community. 

Providers’ attempts to address the financial crisis were met with a memo from the Georgia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities notifying providers that they are required to provide services in excess of an individual’s funding. They are not allowed to revise or reduce services – in other words, they will have to continue to absorb losses without being allowed to make any adjustment to the services provided. 

This service mandate ignores the very real and dire economic and financial circumstances we all face. And the state’s unwillingness to engage with Georgia’s service providers in a discussion about these issues is tantamount to sticking its head in the sand. 

What is more frightening is that the Georgia Department of Behavioral Health & Developmental Disabilities announced it will revise service rates for implementation in 2012 -- but without sharing the methodology of how rates will be assigned to people with developmental disabilities. Provider organizations like the Georgia Association of Community Service Boards (GACSB) and the Service Providers Association for Developmental Disabilities (SPADD), have made research, financials and case studies available to the state to assist in the process, but fear the department will continue its history of arbitrarily assigning rates with no method or consistency, leaving people with developmental disabilities out of the process. 

If providers are forced to close doors… How will people with developmental disabilities have a meaningful life? Where will they develop the skills necessary to navigate the rough waters of life? What will our families do without the special care and guidance their loved ones need? Who will care for them, as we have for the past 30 years? 

Simply put, rates must rise, or services must be allowed to adjust. We must meet the needs of people with developmental disabilities and preserve the financial viability of our providers. Our providers are eager and willing to work with the state to develop that compromise. Our families’ health and welfare depend upon it. 

Ralph Herndon, President, 
Georgia Association of Community Service Boards

August 19, 2011

* * *

The Wrong Road to 
Transportation Solutions
By Benita M. Dodd

An annual survey of the nation's roads by the Reason Foundation reveals a lot about congestion in Georgia. The state is ranked 10th in the nation for spending on maintenance, but 39th for capital spending. It was No. 1 for the condition of its interstates, but at 31 in the nation for the percent of urban congestion. 

Put simply, Georgia's roads are in great condition because they're well maintained. But they're congested because the state lags in adding capacity. And the state's most congested urban region seems set to miss the best opportunity yet. 

A committee is finalizing a list of transportation projects for the 10-county metro Atlanta region based on an anticipated $6.14 billion pot of money if voters approve a 10-year penny sales tax for transportation in next year's referendum. That list includes 12 transit projects that will gobble up nearly 56 percent of the pot, a recipe that does not promise congestion relief. 

Where Does Georgia Rank?
Rank, Capital Disbursements per Mile                   39
Rank, Maintenance Disbursements per Mile          10
Rank, Total Disbursement per Mile, 2008              37

Rank, Rural Interstate Percent Poor Condition         1
Rank, Rural Other Principal Arterial Percent Poor    1
Rank, Urban Interstate Percent Poor                        1
Rank, Urban Interstate Percent congested              31
Rank, Percent of Deficient Bridges                         15
Rank, System Performance                                      4
Source: Reason Foundation, 2010 (based on 2008 data) 

Data from the federal Bureau of Transportation Statistics underline why spending 56 percent of the funds on transit is a wasted opportunity: In Georgia, just 2.4 percent of workers travel by public transportation (excluding taxicab); nearly 90 percent drive alone or carpool. In metro Atlanta, according to a 2010 survey by the Department of Transportation, 94 percent of workers drive alone, carpool or telecommute. Three percent travel by rail and 2 percent by bus.

The project list ignores this reality. One transit project alone consumes 14 percent of the transportation sales tax proceeds: the biggest project on the list, nebulously described as a "fixed guideway transit" between Cumberland Mall in Cobb County and the MARTA Arts Center station. The committee allocated $856.5 million toward this project, which is expected to cost $1,234,9000 and would be the first phase of a project that would eventually extend to Acworth in Cobb. 

Voters deserve more answers. The project fact sheet vaguely states that "specific details will be determined in an Alternatives Analysis Study" still under way by Cobb County – but that study is unlikely to be completed before voters go to the polls. The fact sheet adds that "Numerous studies over the past decade support the feasibility of this project for the northwest corridor," and, "Economic and traffic benefits would be great for Cobb County and the region as a whole."

A "recent update" of a 10-year-old light rail study paid for by the Cumberland and Town Center Community Improvement Districts (CIDs) anticipates 92,600 boardings by 2025. Interestingly, the project delivery assessment shows a high probability that the first phase would not even be completed by 2026 – an unfortunate situation for a 10-year tax. Cobb County Transit (CCT) buses run every 15 minutes on weekdays between the Marietta Transfer Station (via Cumberland Mall) and MARTA's Arts Center Station, with average daily boardings of 3,827. But CCT says it has no breakdown of the specific boarding numbers between Cumberland and the Arts Center Station.

Lofty ridership projections and nebulous "great" benefits read more like a public relations campaign than a justification for a $1.2 billion project that gobbles 14 percent of the pie. Ridership depends on more than projections. It depends on defining the mode: Light rail or heavy rail? Light rail is slower than heavy rail, and because it may not operate in dedicated right of way, it will add to congestion by pre-empting traffic signals and stop vehicular traffic at every road it crosses. 

It depends on the trip schedule: Will the service run all day as CCT buses do now, or merely at peak hours? It also depends on the fare, the trip time and the number of trains. 

It depends on the route and the stations. The alternatives include I-75; I-75 to U.S. 41 State Route 3; and 17th Street to Northside Drive to Marietta Boulevard/Atlanta Road to I-285. No matter what route is selected, the uproar over property condemnations, noise, neighborhood and environmental impacts is certain to affect cost and delivery. 

What voters need to know, too, is the ongoing commitment to funding operations. What percent of the cost of service will be recovered from the farebox? The $1.2 billion total cost of the first phase includes a 30 percent cushion for cost overruns, and voters can almost certainly expect it to be higher than that. How is the next phase funded? 

Voters are not looking at "just" a penny tax. It's an average 14 percent increase in the sales tax rate, and the region's voters and taxpayers deserve honesty and transparency. Transit is a necessary mix in the plan, but commuters deserve a focus on flexible, cost-effective transit projects that more effectively meet their transportation needs, not planners' desires. If this is the final list, hope that regional leaders have a Plan B.

Benita M. Dodd is vice president of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation, an independent think tank that proposes practical, market-oriented approaches to public policy to improve the lives of Georgians. Nothing written here is to be construed as necessarily reflecting the views of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation or as an attempt to aid or hinder the passage of any bill before the U.S. Congress or the Georgia Legislature. 

August 19, 2011

* * *

Seven Taxpayer-friendly 
Strategies for Transportation
By Samuel Staley, Shirley Ybarra, 
Erich W. Zimmerman and Nick Donohue

In the 20th century, the United States built some of the world’s pre-eminent transportation systems, including an interstate highway network that’s second to none. The challenge for the 21st century is to maintain this infrastructure while expanding our ability to efficiently move people and goods. We face multiple challenges. 

Money is tight, as the gasoline tax we rely on to build and maintain our transportation network loses its earning power due to improved fuel efficiency and rising costs. Meanwhile, transportation needs are increasing, as many of our roads, bridges and railways fall deeper into a state of disrepair. All of this is occurring in the context of trillion-dollar annual budget deficits and a $14 trillion national debt. There has never been a more critical time to do more with less.

In central Virginia, transportation planners presented a variety of scenarios to citizens to illustrate how future growth in the area would impact their transportation. These scenarios allowed citizens to realize that encouraging future growth and development near existing infrastructure would reduce future congestion by more than 50 percent, at half the cost of other growth scenarios. 

This type of scenario planning, which resembles considerations made by the military and private corporations for decades, takes into consideration a broad range of concerns – from infrastructure costs to quality-of-life benefits – while ensuring that a community’s transportation investments are made with both fiscal constraints and the desires of its citizens in mind. 

Once planning is complete and communities are prepared to tackle their transportation challenges, many are finding that high-occupancy toll (HOT) lanes are cost effective and widely beneficial. HOT lanes allow single-occupant drivers to access high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes for a fee. The fee is varied throughout the day to ensure that HOT lanes remain uncongested and move at a minimum speed. The tolls collected from users fund maintenance of the highway corridor and, in many cases also pay for express bus service that would not have otherwise been possible in the congested lanes. Meanwhile, drivers in the free non-HOT lanes experience reduced congestion and have the option to use the uncongested HOT lanes.

Often, the installation of HOT lanes allows for the introduction of bus rapid transit (BRT), an express bus service that can be implemented at relatively low cost and provide riders with more comfort, faster travel times, and increased reliability compared to typical city transit bus service. BRT typically runs on separate rights-of way or on congestion-free HOT or HOV lanes and uses modern buses that allow for boarding at multiple doors. Passengers usually gain access to the system through modern stations that collect fares in advance to increase efficiency and minimize time spent in the station. BRT can be used along primary corridors or to supplement existing transit service. It holds great promise for communities looking for cost-effective and efficient transportation solutions.

One important aspect that makes HOT lanes and BRT possible is the increasing development and deployment of transportation system technologies. Known as Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), these tools allow a HOT lane user to pay the toll without ever slowing down or a BRT rider to pay a fare in advance. They also help optimize coordination of traffic signals or deliver messages to signboards telling transit riders when the next vehicle will arrive. Many of these systems can be implemented at minimal cost relative to the resulting benefits and have a tremendous impact on congestion and safety.

The nation’s privately owned intercity and motor coach bus services account for more than 750 million passenger trips each year – more than the nation’s airlines. They do so with an extremely low level of federal subsidy, making this form of transport a taxpayer’s dream. Intercity buses provide transportation for many rural Americans and help move thousands of suburban dwellers into nearby cities and other job centers. They also play an increasingly important role in connecting densely populated urban centers, particularly in the Northeast and Midwest. Each intercity bus can keep as many as 55 cars off the nation’s highways, playing an important part in reducing congestion and providing transportation choice for many Americans.

Telework, or telecommuting, is an increasingly popular choice for those wishing to avoid rush hour and work from their home or a nearby telework office. 

High-speed, reliable Internet access has reached most of the United States, making it possible for a number of employees to carry out their work responsibilities without the commute. When employers allow their employees to telework, it helps reduce the traffic load at the times of the day when congestion is at its worst, and it may have a beneficial effect on an entire region’s transportation system.

Another way to reduce congestion on interstates and highways is to improve the connectivity of local roads to offer multiple routes, rather than forcing local traffic onto the interstates and other major highways. 
When local decisions have a major impact on nationally important transportation corridors, Congress can help ensure that state and local governments are making decisions that preserve the federal investment, alleviate vehicular congestion, and extend the capacity of the nation’s interstates and highways.

This commentary by Samuel Staley, Shirley Ybarra, Erich W. Zimmerman and Nick Donohue is excerpted from a Reason Foundation study and published with permission by the Georgia Public Policy Foundation. The Georgia Public Policy Foundation (www.georgiapolicy.org) is an independent think tank that proposes practical, market-oriented approaches to public policy to improve the lives of Georgians. Nothing written here is to be construed as necessarily reflecting the views of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation or as an attempt to aid or hinder the passage of any bill before the U.S. Congress or the Georgia Legislature. 

August 12, 2011

* * *

Airport Privatization Could Take Off
By Benita M. Dodd 

For years, Georgia has been trying to site an airport to supplement Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, the busiest passenger airport in the world. Suggestions have been all over the map, from Dawsonville to Macon to Chattanooga. Now a plan to make a Gwinnett County airport a regional relief valve – by privatizing it – finally holds promise. 

The 600-acre Briscoe Field is a general aviation airport about 37 miles northeast of Atlanta and a mile outside Lawrenceville. Owned by Gwinnett, its 6,001-foot runway and parallel taxiway can handle light general aviation and most corporate jet aircraft. The airport handled 83,458 aircraft operations and served as a base for 236 aircraft in the most recent 12-month reporting period ending March 2009. Its 2010 total economic impact was about $79 million, with $47 million in direct impact.

Under the 15-year-old Airport Privatization Pilot Program, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) can select up to five airports for privatization. Despite the program's age, the privatization process has not been easy. 

A deal to privatize Chicago's Midway Airport fell through in 2009. This week, Chicago asked the FAA for a sixth extension on its application. 

In September 2009, the FAA accepted the city of New Orleans’ preliminary application for Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport. In October 2010, the airport withdrew from the program. 

In December 2009, the FAA accepted the preliminary application for Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The airport, the busiest in the Caribbean, continues to actively pursue privatization. 

Outside Miami, Hendry County Airglades Airport's preliminary application was accepted last year. 

The FAA gave preliminary approval to Briscoe's application in May 2010 and the Gwinnett County Commission is expected to announce a request for proposals soon.

Qualified private investors must deal with local political power struggles and neighbors' concerns, win support of airport carriers and cope with the fallout of the economic downturn. 

In Briscoe Field, Gwinnett County faces a promising opportunity and the potential to become home to a secondary commercial airport, an origination-to-destination airport. At Hartsfield-Jackson, more than 75 percent of passengers are taking connecting flights, just "passing through" the airport. 

Opponents cite the downside of Briscoe's privatization as increased traffic congestion, more flights and noise, all of which they say would hurt property values nearby. But a recent study found that no homes would be affected by noise from additional flights. 

That study, commissioned by Hartsfield-Jackson for the FAA to seek out a reliever airport, also dismissed Briscoe as an unsuitable site. The study maintained that the runway was too short; the airport's proximity to Atlanta's would interfere with Hartsfield-Jackson's flight path and it would cost $2.2 billion to upgrade. 

Given that Briscoe's proposed 10-gate commercial service would relieve Hartsfield-Jackson, not replace it, and serve aircraft no larger than 737s, the study's assumptions – including a 9,000-foot runway– appear to be costly overkill. 

Proponents see the privatization and scheduled service approach as an enormous economic boost for Gwinnett and the region, and evidence from across the nation indicates they are correct. Privatization will take the cost of operating the airport off taxpayer books and create a positive revenue stream for Gwinnett County, whose shrinking tax digest shows no signs of improving soon. While Gwinnett maintains its AAA bond rating, it owes nearly $160 million, making it the county with the third-highest debt in Georgia, according to Moody's.

The FAA pilot program streamlines privatization and enables the expansion to commercial scheduled service, leading to growth in jobs and related industries at and around the airport. Tourism could grow through international flights. Now, international passengers headed to Briscoe must first land and clear customs at DeKalb-Peachtree Airport. Briscoe falls outside the current Port of Atlanta customs clearance boundary, which was drawn in 1962, when Atlanta's population was smaller than the current population of Gwinnett.Three companies have expressed interest in Briscoe's privatization and commercial scheduled service. Propeller Airports Briscoe Field, Inc. appears the likely successful bidder. Its parent company's executives and advisors have lengthy experience in the aviation industry. Transportation expert Robert Poole of the Reason Foundation notes that the company claims access to $4 billion in investment capital, "which is plausible, given the $100-plus billion amassed by various infrastructure investment funds over the last several years."

A recent Economist magazine article focused on airport management and "grim" airports. It quoted Andreas Schimm of Airports Council International, an umbrella group, saying that in the past airports were "administered rather than managed" to serve state-owned airlines. "Governments now try to run airports on commercial lines, but few do it well. Privatization could help." It can help in more ways than one, for Gwinnett and metro Atlanta.

Benita M. Dodd is vice president of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation, an independent think tank that proposes practical, market-oriented approaches to public policy to improve the lives of Georgians. Nothing written here is to be construed as necessarily reflecting the views of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation or as an attempt to aid or hinder the passage of any bill before the U.S. Congress or the Georgia Legislature.

August 8, 2011 

* * *

Lessons from Georgia's Education Scandal
By William Smith

The cheating scandal plaguing the Atlanta Public Schools system is yet another black eye in Georgia’s dismal education record. As Interim Superintendent Erroll Davis moves forward in the pursuit of justice and accountability, it is time for Atlantans – and all Georgians – to move forward and ask how we can improve our schools. 

Obviously, ensuring teachers follow the rules is not enough to create a quality education system. What makes for a successful education system is a complex issue and, while there are no silver bullets, there are measures that can improve the quality of education. One such measure is the development of digital learning. 

Many schools using the digital-learning approach are accredited, public k-12 schools. These schools come in a range of forms, from hybrid models where time is split between working on computers and studying with teachers to home-centered learning. There are also organizations developing computer-based material to supplement both traditional and digital teaching. One notable example is Khan Academy, which uses colorful videos to explain a huge list of subjects ranging from fractions to “oxidative phosphorlyation and chemiosmosis.” 

Digital education may seem like the latest fad in education, and there is no doubt that students have suffered from many well-intentioned but counterproductive educational trends. Is digital learning destined to become the latest of these? There are several reasons suggesting “no.” 

Most importantly, there are digital-learning schools that have shown impressive results, such as Carpe Diem, a hybrid school in Yuma, Ariz., and Florida Virtual School. Carpe Diem serves primarily low-income students and has posted high test scores; Florida Virtual School, which serves almost 100,000 students, has received an “A” rating from the Florida Department of Education for four consecutive years. 

Digital learning benefits both students and teachers by enabling personalized learning. Students can focus on the areas where they need the most improvement, and teachers enjoy increased time, flexibility, and knowledge of individual students' progress, allowing them to teach more efficiently. 

Digital media is an omnipresent reality in our lives, and will continue to be so in the future. Educational methods need to be able to capture students' attention and actively engage them in learning. Since children are so used to interacting with digital media, successful teaching methods will involve computer-based learning. 

Another reason to pursue digital learning is that it can save money. Last December, Georgia approved spending $5,800 per pupil for online charter schools; the nationwide average is about $6,500. According to the Georgia Department of Education, Georgia spent an average of $8,761.39 per (public school) pupil in 2010. Growing Georgia’s digital learning capabilities can save substantial amounts of taxpayer money. 

There are currently three major digital learning operations in Georgia: Georgia Cyber Academy, Georgia Virtual School and Georgia Connections Academy, the first serving approximately 6,000 students. This a healthy start, but through increased support we can save money and help children escape the one-size-fits-all approach proven to be a failure.
The digital learning approach is not for everyone and by itself cannot provide an optimal learning experience. Accountability, quality content, sound teaching methodology and educational philosophy, and physical education are all crucial components of a healthy education. Digital learning models must incorporate these if they are to be successful. For most students, blended-learning (computer learning paired with in-person teacher/student, student/student interaction in a traditional school setting) is likely to be the most effective choice. 

Ultimately, the most important factor in a successful education is the motivation to learn. Fostering this desire is the most important task in education, and in this regard, digital learning can only do so much. That said, online learning can – and will – be an important component in a healthy, successful education system. The sooner parents, educators, entrepreneurs and policymakers realize this, the sooner Georgia can be on its way towards academic excellence.

William Smith, a graduate student in Political Science at the University of Georgia, is a summer fellow at the Georgia Public Policy Foundation. The Foundation is an independent think tank that proposes practical, market-oriented approaches to public policy to improve the lives of Georgians. Nothing written here is to be construed as necessarily reflecting the views of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation or as an attempt to aid or hinder the passage of any bill before the U.S. Congress or the Georgia Legislature. 

July 29, 2011

When Rucker called the roll—A Soldier’s Story
By: Calvin E. Johnson, Jr., 
Writer, Speaker, Author of book, looking to republish “When America Stood for God, Family and Country” and member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

The following should be included in American History studies in schools.

Mrs. Daisy Anderson was the last widow of a Black Union soldier whose husband Private Robert Ball Anderson served in the 125th United States Colored Troops. She and Mrs. Alberta Martin, the last widow of a Confederate soldier, met in Gettysburg, Pa. in 1997. Both of these grand ladies have sadly passed over the river to rest in the shade of the trees.

The Confederate flag, which continues to come under attack, was the proud banner of Black, White, Hispanic, Jewish and Native American sons and daughters of Dixie who stood nobly in defense of their homeland and way of life during the War Between the States. Once upon a time neither the Confederate nor the Union Veterans or their blood stained battle flag needed any defense.

The following is one of over 50,000 stories of the Black Confederate Soldier, slave and free, who stood honorably and proudly for Southern Independence, 1861-1865. After the war many of these men attended the reunions of Confederate soldiers including that at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. 

On August 10, 1905, Amos Rucker, an ex-Confederate soldier and proud member of the United Confederate Veterans, died in Atlanta, Georgia. His friends of the UCV had previously bought a grave site and marker for him and his wife Martha who had a limited income. 

Amos was a servant and best friend to Sandy Rucker. Both men joined the 33rd Georgia Regiment when the South was invaded. Amos fought as a regular soldier and sustained wounds to his breast and one of his legs that left him permanently crippled.

Amos Rucker joined the W.H.T. Walker Camp of the United Confederates after the war in Atlanta, Georgia. He faithfully attended the meetings that were held on the second Monday of each month at 102 Forsyth Street. He was able to remember the name of every man of his old 33th Regiment and would name them and add whether they were living or dead. 

Amos Rucker and wife Martha felt that the men of the United Confederate Veterans were like family. Rucker said that, "My folks gave me everything I want." The UCV men helped Amos and wife Martha with a house on the west side of Atlanta and John M. Slaton helped with his will and care for his wife. Slaton was a member of Atlanta's John B. Gordon Camp 46 Sons of Confederate Veterans and was governor of Georgia when he commuted the death sentence of Leo Frank.

A funeral service for Amos Rucker was conducted by former Confederate General and Reverend Clement A. Evans. An article about the funeral related that Rucker was clothed in a gray Confederate uniform and a Confederate flag covered his casket. It is written that both white and black friends of Rucker came to pay their last respects. There was not a dry eye in the church when Captain William Harrison read a poem, entitled, "When Rucker called the roll."

A grave marker was placed in 1909 by the United Confederate Veterans that for many years marked the graves of Amos and Martha Rucker but some say it was taken many years ago. A few years ago the Sons of Confederate Veterans remarked Rucker’s grave.

The Georgia Division Sons of Confederate Veterans joins our nation in remembering the 150th Anniversary “Sesquicentennial” of the American War Between the States. See additional information at: htttp://www.150wbts.org/

Information for this story came from the book "Forgotten Confederates- A Anthology about Black Confederates" compiled by Kelly Barrow, J.H. Segars and R.B. Rosenburg." 

072611

Time to Rethink Education Funding
By Kelly McCutchen

Technology is poised to fundamentally transform education over the next decade. It offers the opportunity to provide every child in Georgia with access to a high-quality education and new abilities to address long-term challenges such as dropout rates and remedial education. To benefit from this technological revolution, Georgia must remove the barriers to innovation – starting with funding.

As with most things, the adage of “follow the money” is appropriate. State funding formulas have become more complex over the years, pulling schools in multiple directions in order to maximize their revenues. Students and taxpayers are often the losers. 

Why debate details such as the level of funding for textbooks, for example, when the question should be why specifically fund textbooks at all? Instead, treat school funding as we do charter schools, focusing on results rather than micromanaging inputs. A lump sum of funding, determined by the student’s educational needs, should follow each child, allowing each school to determine its own funding priorities.

Georgia students already can choose to take classes from outside their own school. The Georgia Virtual School offers a wide variety of choices, from foreign languages to Advanced Placement courses, but the availability of these classes is constrained by a limit on the number of classes funded in the state budget. 

The Florida Virtual School is a promising model for Georgia. Funding flows directly from the state’s funding formula, allowing the school to easily meet increased demand. One unique difference between the Florida Virtual School and traditional schools is that it only receives funding for students who successfully complete their courses. 

In addition to the Georgia Virtual School, the Georgia Cyber Academy provides full-time enrollment for K-12 students throughout the state. Cobb, Gwinnett and Forsyth school systems have also created their own virtual schools. Finally, high school students can take dual credit classes online from Georgia’s many technical colleges and universities. Unfortunately, schools are not encouraging these options because they “lose” funding. As these options expand, the state should develop an easy way for students to review their many options and provide for a seamless funding process.

As efficiency and slower population growth reduce demand for facilities, we should consider expanding the flexibility of the Education Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax or ESPLOST. First passed in 1996, this law has funded more than $15 billion in capital improvements. Today, Georgia spends more money per student on capital outlays than all but six states, and more than every Southeastern state except Florida. 

The ESPLOST filled an important need to replace aging facilities and keep up with a fast-growing student population at the time, but this may no longer be the most efficient use of scarce resources. ESPLOST funds are restricted to capital improvements, so could not be used to avoid the furloughs, reduced school days and other cost-cutting efforts implemented over the past few years. 

One option to examine would be to convert the current ESPLOST into a state sales tax that could be spent on capital or operating expenses. Just one county in Georgia has no local ESPLOST, so it is essentially already a statewide tax. To the extent that a school system no longer would need to continue spending large sums of money on facilities, this would amount to a sizable property tax reduction.

Shifting funding from local capital projects to state revenues would increase the state’s share of education funding from 50 percent to approximately 60 percent, where it was a decade ago. As an added benefit, this would also fully fund the state’s virtual schools, enabling every child in the state to access a wide variety of high quality educational options.

This shift would create winners and losers, but adjusting the “local fair share” portion of the state funding formula could offset the impact. School systems would still be able to hold a local property tax referendum to fund necessary capital improvements.

Georgia’s children will benefit greatly from digital learning that enables them to learn at their own pace, customizes each lesson to their learning style and offers them a wide variety of choices without needing to leave their local neighborhood school or move to another school district. With Georgia’s per student spending already 23rd highest in the nation, there may be no need to spend more money. But there certainly is a need to spend more wisely. Let's ensure that “following the money” in Georgia leads to innovation, not to the status quo.

Kelly McCutchen is president of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation, an independent think tank that proposes practical, market-oriented approaches to public policy to improve the lives of Georgians. Nothing written here is to be construed as necessarily reflecting the views of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation or as an attempt to aid or hinder the passage of any bill before the U.S. Congress or the Georgia Legislature. 

July 22, 2011

* * *

Technology: Georgia's Secret Economic 
Weapon by Tino Mantella
By Tino Mantella.

Georgia is home to more than 250,000 technologists and 13,000 technology companies. Even during the depths of the recession, Georgia's technology industry remained fairly stable and even grew in some segments. And it is now rapidly picking up steam. In June alone there were a record 5,200 technology jobs open (up nearly 2,000 jobs from the same time last year). In fact Georgia's technology industry is poised to lead the state to economic recovery.

Georgia's growing technology prowess is strongly tied to particular industries that are expanding at a faster rate than others, including health IT, financial technology, information security, IT communication and logistics. These are the clusters where Georgia leads. Combined, our top clusters bring in more than 80-billion dollars in revenue each year. And software and IT communications companies alone supply state with more than 70-thousand jobs-or one-third of the high-tech jobs in our state.

Several other industries in Georgia are picking up steam as well, including SmartGrid, entertainment and interactive marketing. From high-tech to tech-enabled, the expansion of these industry clusters will lead to new opportunities for Georgia and help fuel our economy.

On July 11, Governor Nathan Deal spoke to the technology community about the importance of the industry to our state economy and the need for the community to work together to promote our innovative companies and people. He helped launch TAG's "Where Georgia Leads" campaign to raise awareness about Georgia's technology prowess and encouraged community participation.

But, when people think of destinations for technology business, Georgia isn't usually top of mind-even among those of us living in the state. So how do we change this perception?

First, we must support initiatives that attract and keep technology companies in our state, including targeting venture capital and determining the incentives that will attract new companies to Georgia.
We also need to promote our children's interest in science and technology. Parents, teachers and all Georgians in fact should encourage the development and expansion of science, technology, math and engineering (STEM) education as it not only develops a strong, future workforce, it helps create an environment attractive to businesses looking to relocate.

Finally, it is imperative that we each take responsibility for our state's image and reputation. Boast to friends and family not living here about all the great things Georgia has to offer. Share stories on your social media channels about positive events and news from the state. And support and patronize the companies that operate and do business in Georgia.
Technology is poised to lead our state's economic recovery. And together we can make sure that happens.

July 21, 2011

* * *

Global Warming Goes Around, Comes Around
By Harold Brown

An August 20 change of weather assessment for metro Atlanta: "The daily temperature since January 1 has averaged almost three degrees a day above the normal figure." It's a routine statement amid today's global warming hype. This report was in The Atlanta Constitution ... in 1925. 

A July 4 headline in the same year sang the same song. "All Heat Records in Atlanta Broken At 101.2 Degrees, High Point For 50 Years Established."

All weather, like politics, is local. Change is the norm. It is hard to imagine mobilizing the world's people to prevent the euphemistic "climate change;" people all over see the weather changing regularly. If people are told the earth is warming; they think it's happening elsewhere. At their location, they only know it cools and warms, pours rain and turns dry, in the familiar cycles of their neighborhoods.

If they're uncomfortable, inconvenienced or endangered, they anticipate, even wish for, a change. But it is unreasonable to expect them to volunteer to pay for a stop to world-wide climate change as visualized by "experts." They also should not have to pre-pay for adaptation to predicted but doubtful futures when they see similar changes in the climate all around them.

Interest in a global warming fix is inevitably dampened by local frigidity. Imagine residents of Georgia and Florida complaining about a warming world during December 2010, the coldest on record. The Tulsa (Oklahoma) World was not likely to editorialize against global warming in early February when record snow and low temperatures caused the daily's first cancellation since their newspaper began in 1905. Guess what climate problems crossed the minds of federal legislators when congressional sessions were cancelled because of record Washington snowfall in February this year?

Uncertain symptoms also complicate the diagnosis. What kind of change is "climate change" as opposed to a change in the weather? Atlanta's temperature changed more from the 1950s to the 1960s than that of the earth changed in the 20th century – and in opposite directions. Atlanta's annual average temperature was 2.38 degrees (F.) cooler from 1960-69 than from 1950-59. At Dawson in Canada's Northwest Territory, average temperature rose 3.5 degrees from the 1930s to the 1940s and then dropped back in the 1950s and 1960s. Did these fluctuations qualify as climate change? 

Why believe that climate changes but humans don't? The doomsayers disregard the adaptability of humans. In the unlikely event the world is warming because of human use of fossil fuels, people will adapt. They always have; mostly to colder temperatures. Humans are, after all, tropical animals, having originated there.

Projected increases in global temperature for this century range from 3.6 degrees to 10.8 degrees. That is like moving from Atlanta to Savannah or Orlando. Moving from Atlanta to Acapulco, Mexico, would be a change of 19 degrees. The predicted global temperature increase of 10.8 degrees in the 21st century is hardly likely, but humans regularly adapt to much larger changes.

Two calamities assigned to global warming are increased tropical diseases and heat-related deaths. Tropical diseases have decreased dramatically amid warnings of global warming, because humans adapted to these diseases by understanding their nature and finding cures. As a result, malaria, yellow fever and other tropical diseases have disappeared from many tropical and sub-tropical zones of the world.

Despite the media hype, deaths in the United States are lowest in the summer; since 1979, twice as many people died from cold as from heat. We adapt to heat even in unplanned and imperceptible ways. Populations adapt to their locale, and more people can "take the heat" in warmer climates.

In a study of temperature and death in 11 Eastern cities from 1973 to 1994, the fewest deaths occurred at 69.7 degrees in Boston but 80.9 degrees in Miami. The "optimum" (fewest deaths) is nearly the same as their respective average summer temperatures, 71.0 degrees and 82.3 degrees.

So people don't sweat 80 degrees in Miami, but Bostonians do. Southerners tolerate the heat better than Northerners, maybe because of what they do, perhaps because of acclimation they don't even understand.

Human adaptability to climate change is well known throughout history. Adaptation is not about to end and it has never been planned decades or centuries in advance, as the United Nations and many national governments now try to do. Planning now to control future climate and adaptation to it are likely to be as inadequate and futile as they are expensive.

University of Georgia Professor Emeritus R. Harold Brown is an Adjunct Scholar with the Georgia Public Policy Foundation and author of "The Greening of Georgia: The Improvement of the Environment in the Twentieth Century." The Foundation is an independent think tank that proposes practical, market-oriented approaches to public policy to improve the lives of Georgians. Nothing written here is to be construed as necessarily reflecting the views of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation or as an attempt to aid or hinder the passage of any bill before the U.S. Congress or the Georgia Legislature. 

July 1, 2011

* * *

A Fundamental Disconnect on Ethics
By Todd Rehm

  I was speaking to a member of the General Assembly last year in the wake of a series of ethics scandals that led to the former Speaker of the House resigning, and he said, "we've passed an ethics bill that greatly expands the disclosure of campaign finance and lobbyist spending."

  I asked him what section of the new bill would prevent the lobbyist scandals that rocked the Gold Dome. He didn't have an answer.

  I understood that what Capitol insiders mean when they say "ethics" is completely different from what laypeople mean by the same word.

  The American Heritage New Dictionary of Culture defines ethics as "[t]he branch of philosophy that deals with morality. Ethics is concerned with distinguishing between good and evil in the world, between right and wrong human actions, and between virtuous and nonvirtuous characteristics of people."

  As unwieldy as the name "Georgia Government Transparency and Campaign Finance Commision" is, it is more accurate than its former moniker, "State Ethics Commission," because the Georgia Ethics in Government Act (.pdf) never undertook to regulate what most laypeople think of as ethics.

  When citizens think of ethics in government - after they finish laughing at the notion - they may think of a former Speaker who allegedly slept with a lobbyist at the same time he sponsored legislation that favored the lobbyists client, or they may think of a legislator threatening a state university after his girlfriend was fired as their lobbyist, or they may even think of Weiner pictures on twitter. Or that ethics laws should prevent county commissioners from receiving kickbacks in exchange for favorable zoning decisions.

  But not a single section of the   Ethics in Government Act addresses any of these issues.

  A better statement of what most people would consider ethical conduct is found in §45-10-1, the "Code of Ethics for Government Service."

  Any person in government service should:

I. Put loyalty to the highest moral principles and to country above loyalty to persons, party, or government department.

II. Uphold the Constitution, laws, and legal regulations of the United States and the State of Georgia and of all governments therein and never be a party to their evasion.

III. Give a full day's labor for a full day's pay and give to the performance of his duties his earnest effort and best thought.

IV. Seek to find and employ more efficient and economical ways of getting tasks accomplished.

V. Never discriminate unfairly by the dispensing of special favors or privileges to anyone, whether for remuneration or not, and never accept, for himself or his family, favors or benefits under circumstances which might be construed by reasonable persons as influencing the performance of his governmental duties.

VI. Make no private promises of any kind binding upon the duties of office, since a government employee has no private word which can be binding on public duty.

VII. Engage in no business with the government, either directly or indirectly, which is inconsistent with the conscientious performance of his governmental duties.

VIII. Never use any information coming to him confidentially in the performance of governmental duties as a means for making private profit.

IX. Expose corruption wherever discovered.

X. Uphold these principles, ever conscious that public office is a public trust.

  That this ethics code and the "Ethics in Government Act" cover different subject matter is shown by the Ethics Code's inclusion in Title 45 of the Georgia Code, while the Ethics in Government Act lives in Title 21.

  In yet another code title, bribery and other abuses of the public trust are dealt with as criminal offenses, and as such, responsibility for enforcement lies with our District Attorneys. Various sections attempt to prevent or to punish conflicts of interest.

  The problem here is twofold. First, when the public sees the General Assembly trumpeting "ethics reform" but no prosecutions of well-publicized potential crimes, citizen confidence is eroded. Second, whether we are discussing criminal prosecutions or timely filing of campaign disclosures, enforcement is left to elected officials or state employess whose purse strings are held by elected officials.

  Proposals have been made to create a statewide grand jury system to investigate complaints of campaign disclosure violations. Perhaps we should consider broadening this to also cover alleged cases of public corruption.

  Todd Rehm is a Republican political consultant from Atlanta .

June 30, 2011

* * *

What Mitt Romney Should Be Saying about Mass. Health Care
By John C. Goodman

This is a speech Mitt Romney should have given last year. It may even work this year. If he waits until next year, I'm afraid it will be too late.

My fellow Americans, as governor of Massachusetts I presided over the most important state-level health reform in our nation's history. From that experiment I've learned a great deal about what works and what doesn't work in the ongoing effort to lower costs, raise quality and improve access to care.

We accomplished four things that are worth emulating nationwide.

First, we cut the number of uninsured by more than half in my state. If that were replicated nationwide, we would have 25 million newly insured citizens.

Second, we insured the uninsured mainly by using money already in the system (for Medicaid and emergency room care), not by raising taxes or cutting benefits for the elderly and the disabled – as ObamaCare does.

Third, we created tax fairness. Massachusetts is the only state in the union where employees get the same tax relief for health insurance, whether it is provided at work or they purchase it on their own. This is in contrast to the arbitrary and unfair way the tax system treats people in other states and the much greater unfairness people will be subjected to under ObamaCare.

Finally, we put partisanship aside and sought everyone's help in achieving these goals. Left and right, Democrat and Republican – all worked together toward a common end.

On the other hand, there are things we did that I would not recommend to others.

First, there is no need for a mandate. In Massachusetts, as in other states, people pay lower taxes if they insure and higher taxes if they do not. We have added additional subsidies and fines to make being insured even more attractive. These financial incentives alone account for almost all of our success in insuring the uninsured. Once the government starts dictating the content of everyone's insurance plan, however, the special interests set in, bloating the benefit package and making it prohibitively expensive. By making health insurance expensive and one-size-fits-all, mandates actually defeat the goal of universal coverage.

Second, while increasing the number of people with insurance, we did not create one new doctor or one new nurse. Nor did we deregulate and allow insurers and providers of care to get out from under a mountain of regulations that prevent cost-effective products. As a result, the wait to see a new doctor in Boston is longer than in any other U.S. city. Our emergency room traffic is higher today than before the reform!

I believe the supply side of the market can accommodate a large increase in the number of insured, but only if we give them the freedom to meet the new demand efficiently.

Third, in Massachusetts we adopted the same model of managed competition that is in HillaryCare and in ObamaCare. I like the idea of people choosing among competing health plans. But under managed competition, the premium is the same for everyone, regardless of expected health care costs. That means insurers try to attract the healthy and avoid the sick. After enrollment, the health plans face perverse incentives to overprovide to the healthy (to keep the ones they have and encourage the enrollment of more just like them) and underprovide to the sick (to encourage their departure and discourage enrollment by any more of them).

A better model is the Medicare Advantage program, where seniors also have choice and competition. But in that system, the federal government goes to great lengths to try to ensure that the premium paid for each person matches as closely as possible that person's expected costs. Because the amount the government pays for each senior can differ by 10-to-one or more, insurers compete just as aggressively to enroll a cancer patient as they do to enroll a healthy patient. I believe we can do something similar for the nonelderly population.

Finally, you cannot allow people to game the system. In Massachusetts, some folks remain uninsured while they are healthy, obtain insurance after they get sick, and then drop their insurance again after they get their medical bills paid. We call these folks "jumpers and dumpers." Under ObamaCare we are about to repeat this mistake nationwide. We do not allow people to game the insurance system with impunity in other federal programs. It's not allowed in Medicare Part B, in Medigap insurance or in the Medicare drug coverage program.

Were I president of the United States, I would take these lessons to heart. I would replace ObamaCare with a workable health system — copying what works and avoiding what doesn't work, based on my experience in Massachusetts.

I believe I am the only candidate who actually knows how to do that.

John C. Goodman, Ph.D., is president and CEO of the National Center for Policy Analysis and a Senior Fellow for the Georgia Public Policy Foundation, an independent think tank that proposes practical, market-oriented approaches to public policy to improve the lives of Georgians. Nothing written here is to be construed as necessarily reflecting the views of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation or as an attempt to aid or hinder the passage of any bill before the U.S. Congress or the Georgia Legislature. 

June 24, 2011

* * *

Global Deforestation, a Statistical Thicket
By Harold Brown

It's all about forests: The United Nations declared 2011 "International Year of Forests;" the U.S. theme for World Environment Day on June 5 was, "Forests: Nature at Your Service." This is an ideal opportunity to stop those barking up the wrong tree and debunk a long-running legend: the deforestation of the earth.

The lead-off sentence of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) first survey of world forests in 1948, encapsulated the purpose, "The whole world is suffering from shortages of forest products."

So deforestation was a concern even before mid-century. But environmental activism has since given the issue more appendages than a mother pig. This diffusion of purpose led to a conclusion in a 2000 FAO document that, "National and local forestry planning is seldom dominated by wood production and utilization," a clean reversal since 1948.

Earth prophets have been relentless in predicting calamity. A 1979 New York Times article said, "The world’s forests are disappearing at an alarming rate, a loss that poses potentially dire economic and environmental problems for most of humanity ..." The "alarming rate" description was epidemic in the 1980s and 1990s.The alarm was partly about the demise of species; a 1985 report predicted "10 to 20 percent of the earth’s animal species" would disappear by 2000. It was also about loss of potential drugs for known and unknown ailments, unstable water supplies, increased global warming, increased soil erosion, desertification, even poverty.

Fortunately, as with so many environmental doomsday predictions, the reality is infinitely brighter. In its 1948 report, FAO estimated that the world had 4 billion hectares (a hectare is 2.47 acres) of forest. In 2010 the estimate was 4.03 billion hectares.

How did the "alarming" deforestation of four decades disappear? The answer is that FAO’s own estimates have been contradictory almost from the beginning. Two estimates given for 1963 differ by over 300 million hectares. But radical reassessment really began for the year 1990, after FAO tallied 3.4 billion hectares of forest and a loss of nearly a half-billion hectares since 1960.

FAO has repeatedly cautioned about the difficulty of estimating world forests and repeated revisions of the 1990 survey illustrate. Five FAO publications give different estimates, and the most recent (2010) listed 4.17 billion hectares of forest for 1990, the second highest estimate since 1948. The re-estimates wiped out the deforestation of 42 years.

Nevertheless, FAO continues to estimate large areas of deforestation. Its 2010 report claims: "The rate of deforestation shows signs of decreasing, but is still alarmingly high." Eighty-three million hectares were reportedly lost in the 1990s and 52 million hectares since then.

The "alarming" loss of forest feared for so long appears to be 633 million hectares, yet hasn’t reduced the amount of forest since the 1960s. The change in forested areas reported since 1948 is not statistically significant. It is a maze of numbers, definitions and revisions that boggle the mind.

Definitions for some surveys have required that forests have 10 percent tree cover, but for others (even in the same year), 20 percent cover. Forest area in Australia almost quadrupled from 1990 to 2000 because the definition of forest was changed from 20 percent cover to 10 percent cover.

Forest clearing has occurred throughout history. Land for food has always had precedence over forests. But there are encouraging trends. Modernization and economic progress holds hope for future forests. Countries that are replenishing their forests today are those that can afford to; because they can grow more food on less land.

A recent analysis in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ties forest regeneration to economic progress. It noted the transition from net deforestation to reforestation that has occurred over the last 200 years in Europe and in America. France’s forest, for example, reached a low point of less than 15 percent of the land area in about 1830, and has since rebounded by one-third, while its population nearly doubled.

Among 50 nations currently with large forest areas, the analysis showed that every nation with a per capita gross domestic product of over $4,600 had a positive rate of forest growth.

So the good news about world forests is that, if they are declining, it is not much, and in some areas they are increasing. Europe (including the former Soviet Union) has 15 million more hectares of forest than in 1990 and China’s has grown by one-third. Alarmed “global deforesters” can relax after 30 years, that is, if they can see the trend through the statistical thicket.

University of Georgia Professor Emeritus R. Harold Brown is an Adjunct Scholar with the Georgia Public Policy Foundation and author of "The Greening of Georgia: The Improvement of the Environment in the Twentieth Century." The Foundation is an independent think tank that proposes practical, market-oriented approaches to public policy to improve the lives of Georgians. Nothing written here is to be construed as necessarily reflecting the views of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation or as an attempt to aid or hinder the passage of any bill before the U.S. Congress or the Georgia Legislature. 

June 10, 2011

EPA Regulations for Utilities an 
Expensive Exercise in Futility
By Benita M. Dodd 

The federal Environmental Protection Agency was in Atlanta on May 26 to hold a daylong hearing – one of just three nationwide – on its proposed Maximum Achievable Control Technology (MACT) regulations for utilities. The passionate – if sometimes misguided – comments came from representatives of utilities, power plant neighbors, Native Americans, environmental activists, grassroots groups and the Georgia Public Policy Foundation.

The Foundation's comments focused on three aspects of the proposed MACT rules: 

The cost to industry and consumers in Georgia

The time frame, both in the limited opportunity for analysis of the 945 pages of regulations and in the compliance deadline

The basis for the EPA's tougher regulations.
The cost to industry and consumers: The utility MACT is the most immediate threat. The rules would affect power plants responsible for nearly half of the power generation in the nation. EPA says this rule will provide employment for thousands, by supporting 31,000 short-term construction jobs and 9,000 long-term utility jobs. IHS/Global Insight estimates that every $1 billion spent on MACT upgrade and compliance costs will put 16,000 jobs at risk and reduce U.S. Gross Domestic Product by as much as $1.2 billion.

When production costs get higher here, industries will lose their competitive edge and begin to move offshore and more Americans will lose their jobs while the cost of living will get higher. The EPA says it will cost $10.9 billion a year. Industry estimates are much higher; estimates for the utility MACT alone are as high as $100 billion.

Meanwhile, the cost to ratepayers in the Southeast are expected to increase as much as 25 percent. A December 2010 Pew survey found 48 percent of respondents said they had difficulty paying their home heating and electricity costs.

The time frame: The EPA has asked for comments to be submitted by July 5. The regulations include a 171-page proposal, 19 technical support documents and more than 500 pages of regulatory impact analysis. While the EPA is operating under a court-ordered schedule, the judge noted that the consent decree allows for a change of schedule and she was willing to allow EPA more time to "get it right."

These are some of the most significant and costly rules the EPA has proposed. That enough should motivate the agency to allow ample time for industry experts to analyze the conclusions and to comment on their impact – especially the cost versus the benefits. 

The compliance window for these rules will also burden industry. Utilities have three years to comply. They have a legitimate concern about the compressed time schedule, especially given that it applies to the entire industry at once.

The basis for EPA's tougher regulations, given that the air quality is the best in 40 years; that power plants account for less than a half percent of mercury emissions and that this is a global issue. Regulations exist to cover particulate matter emissions. Since 1970, coal-fired electricity generation increased 57 percent; at the same time, particulate emissions from coal-fired power plants are down 93.1 percent; sulfur emissions are down 56.6 percent and nitrogen oxide emissions are down 38.7 percent. 

Utilities have cut emissions of mercury by about 40 percent. Today, the nation's power plants are responsible for fewer than 50 tons of mercury emissions per year. Chinese power plants alone emit 400 tons. Natural sources produce up to 10,000 tons.

Mercury, cited as the issue of greatest concern, is just not that hazard that it once was. Today, there is certainly no indication that mercury is increasing in Georgia’s environment; it is just the opposite: Mercury in largemouth bass, for example, has dropped by half since the 1960s.

Eighty percent of the advisories against eating fish from U.S. waters are based on mercury, and the number of fishing places with those advisories has increased over 350 percent since the early 1990s. Increasing the number of advisories would lead one to think the danger of mercury pollution is increasing. What's increasing, however, is the disincentive to eat fish as part of a healthy diet. Mercury emissions overall have decreased 60 percent since 1990 and no documented case of harm from mercury in fish has ever been reported in this country.

Burdensome, costly regulations are no way to encourage competition, investment or job creation. Georgians are struggling to recover from the economic downturn and don't want intervention in returning to a more secure lifestyle. That includes an affordable cost of living and a thriving job market. Taking money out of Americans' pockets needlessly to implement air quality regulations that are unnecessary in order to force this country off reliable, affordable and cleaner than ever fossil fuel power generation is no way to a better quality of life. 

Benita M. Dodd, vice president of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation, wrote this commentary based on the Foundation's public comment at the federal Environmental Protection Agency's Utility MACT hearing in Atlanta on May 26, 2011. The Foundation is an independent think tank that proposes practical, market-oriented approaches to public policy to improve the lives of Georgians. Nothing written here is to be construed as necessarily reflecting the views of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation or as an attempt to aid or hinder the passage of any bill before the U.S. Congress or the Georgia Legislature. 

June 3, 2011

* * *

Memorial Day Remembrance of 
Last Confederate Widow
By: Calvin E. Johnson, Jr., Speaker, Writer, Author of book “When American Stood for God, Family and Country” 

On Monday May 30th, Memorial Day, let’s remember the men and women who sacrificed all to keep our nation free and Mrs. Alberta Martin, last Confederate Widow, who died on Memorial Day.

The nation lost an historic lady in 2004. Mrs. Alberta Martin, the last known widow of a Confederate soldier, passed away on Memorial Day 2004. She was 97 and a living link to history of which most people know little or nothing. 

Mrs. Martin was born on December 4, 1906, at Dannely’s Crossroads, Coffee County, Alabama. The small country intersection has changed little since her birth. 

“Miss Alberta” was born into a sharecropper’s family. They went wherever there was work for planters and pickers. She learned the hard work of picking cotton at a young age. 

Miss Alberta Martin married W.J. Martin in 1927. Martin was 82 and Alberta was 21. He had been a Confederate soldier over sixty years before they married. 

In July of 1997 Mrs. Martin made a pleasant trip to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania to a gathering of descendants of Confederate and Union soldiers. There, Mrs. Martin met Mrs. Daisy Anderson who was the last widow of a Black Union soldier. The two ladies had a good conversation at the historic Dobbs House. Mrs. Anderson passed away in 1998.

She was the widow of Private Robert Ball Anderson who served in the 125th United States Colored Troops. 

The last Union widow, Mrs. Gertrude Janeway, died on January 2003. 

Mrs. Martin spent much time with the Sons of Confederate Veterans and she believed in flying the Confederate Battle Flag “Cross of Saint Andrew.” In 2000 she participated in a rally in Columbia, South Carolina with 20,000 friends to support the flag which flew on the state capitol. Though in a wheel chair, Miss Martin held her Southern flag and proudly waved it. 

In 1996, Miss Alberta was escorted to the National Convention of the Sons of Confederate Veterans in Richmond, Virginia for their 100th birthday. As she entered the meeting hall, everyone came to their feet and began singing “Dixie” to her honor. 

People tried to hold back the tears of memory as they laid this Southern lady to rest in Alabama. She is now with Jesus, her family and General Robert E. Lee. She had entered the gates of Heaven, she is home. Happy Memorial Day, Lest We Forget!

May 23, 2011

* * *

A Temporary Setback for 
Education in Georgia
By Kelly McCutchen

It took more than 100 pages to debate the meaning of just one word. In the end, Georgia’s Supreme Court ruled in a 4-3 vote this week that most state-authorized charter schools do not meet the definition of the word “special.” Barring other actions, 15,000 public school students who faced uncertainty for months must now search for another school to attend before the new school year begins in August. One thing is certain: We cannot allow Georgia to be known as the state that shuts down quality public schools.

In addition to two schools for the deaf and one for the blind authorized by the Georgia Department of Education, the Georgia Charter Schools Commission has authorized 16 charter schools. (There are also more than 100 charter schools authorized by local school boards.) These schools cover the state, from Cherokee County in North Georgia, Calhoun County in southwest Georgia, Bulloch County in southeast Georgia, several in metro Atlanta and three virtual schools open to students throughout Georgia. Families are literally standing in line to attend: In one school more than 2,500 students applied for 995 openings. 

These commission-authorized charter schools, like all charter schools, are public schools in every sense. They are publicly funded, cannot charge tuition, must administer all state-mandated tests and must admit any student who applies until enrollment is filled. 

Georgia is one of 15 states that allow their State Department of Education or another public entity to authorize charter schools. Without this option, local school boards have monopoly power over decisions to provide students with public school options. Local control is important, but the ultimate form of local control should rest with parents: Sound public policy should ensure parents have the opportunity to pursue the best educational options for their children. 

One size does not fit all. In fact, Georgia’s leadership in encouraging education innovation through the Georgia Charter Schools Commission and other pro-charter laws was a critical factor in winning the Race to the Top grant from the Obama Administration. 

Limiting the ability to authorize schools is an industrial-age policy developed when most schools were very similar and limits on transportation and technology made school choice impractical. The digital age creates options that few could have imagined. Virtual schools, for example, use technology to connect certified Georgia teachers to students anywhere in the state. 

Many education leaders recognize the movement to “digital learning” as a tremendous new opportunity. One exciting possibility is the combination of face-to-face traditional teaching and digital content in “blended” or “hybrid” schools. The “any time, any place” capability of virtual schools also provides students with flexible alternatives to dropping out of school.
The ability to obtain a statewide charter avoids the impractical requirement for virtual schools – with students in nearly every county – to endure a separate, lengthy approval process in each of Georgia’s 180 school systems. The Supreme Court ruling could move Georgia from a leader in digital learning to the back of the pack very quickly.

Where do we go from here? Representatives from local school systems were quick to say this lawsuit was not about charter schools, but about local control. Local school boards can prove this by fast tracking approval of these schools as local charter schools. Meanwhile, the Governor and General Assembly should create a new funding mechanism so full funding can follow the many children who have crossed school system lines to attend these charter schools. Finally, the court should stay this ruling or otherwise delay the effects until the General Assembly and Georgia citizens are allowed the opportunity to amend the Georgia Constitution, clarifying the State’s authority to authorize public schools. 

The Supreme Court’s ruling was a direct blow to educational and economic opportunity for many Georgia students and families. In just three years, the Georgia Charter School Commission succeeded in destroying the artificial geographic barriers to quality public education. Whether it was young, predominantly minority girls crossing district lines to attend Ivy Preparatory Academy in Gwinnett County or rural students seeking high quality options through statewide virtual schools, thousands of families embraced the choice to better their education and their lives. Georgia can ill afford to put up more barriers between our children and a good education.

Kelly McCutchen is president of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation, an independent think tank that proposes practical, market-oriented approaches to public policy to improve the lives of Georgians. Nothing written here is to be construed as necessarily reflecting the views of the Foundation or as an attempt to aid or hinder the passage of any bill before the U.S. Congress or the Georgia Legislature.

May 20, 2011 

* * *

Memorial Day farewell to Jefferson Davis
By: Calvin E. Johnson, Jr., Speaker, Writer, Author of the Book “When America Stood for God, Family and Country”

Monday May 30th is Memorial Day!

Jefferson Davis, born June 3, 1808, served the United States as a soldier, statesmen and Secretary of War. He was also the first and only President of the Confederacy.

On Sunday, May 28, 1893, a few days before "Memorial Day" in New Orleans, a story began that overshadowed all other news events.

Jefferson Davis died in 1889 and was buried at Metairie Cemetery in New Orleans. Four years later, May 27, 1893, his body was removed and taken to Confederate Memorial Hall to lay in state in preparation for the 1,200 mile trip to Richmond for final interment.

At 4:30 p.m., May 28th, a Memorial service was held for Mr. Davis and a moving address was delivered by Louisiana's Governor Murphy J. Foster as thousands listened. A reverent silence fell among the people as the casket was given to the commitment of veterans from Virginia.

The procession then formed for a slow march to the railroad station on Canal Street. The caisson drawn by four coal black horses came to a halt by the glassed in observation car. 

Train No. 69, with Engineer Frank Coffin, waited patiently as the casket was taken to the platform and passed through an open observation car to a catafalque. 

Train engine No. 69, of the Louisville and Nashville Railroad slowly pulled out of New Orleans Station at 7:50 p.m.. L and N Railroad later became CSX Railroad. 

After a brief stop at Bay Saint Louis, and a slow-down at Pass Christian, where hundreds of people lined the tracks, the Jefferson Davis Funeral Train stopped at Gulfport, Mississippi, near Beauvoir which was the last home of Jefferson Davis. It was here that Davis wrote his book, "The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government." 

Uncle Bob Brown, a former servant of the Davis family and a passenger on the train, saw the many flowers that the children had laid on the side of the railroad tracks. Brown was so moved by this beautiful gesture that he wept uncontrollably. 

In Mobile, Alabama, the train was met by a thousand mourners and the Alabama Artillery fired a 21-gun salute. Locomotive No. 69 was retired and Locomotive No. 25 was coupled to the train. The new train's Engineer was C.C. Devinney and Warren Robinson was its fireman. 

Church bells rang in Montgomery, Alabama when the train pulled into the city at 6:00 a.m. on May 29th. A severe rainstorm delayed the funeral procession to about 8:30 a.m.M when a caisson carried the body of Davis to Alabama's state capitol. A procession carried the casket through the portico where Jefferson Davis, in 1861, had taken the oath of office as President of the Confederate States of America. 

The casket was placed in front of the bench of the Alabama Supreme Court. Above the right exit was a banner with the word "Monterrey" and above the left exit was a banner with the words “Buena Vista." During the War with Mexico Jefferson Davis was a hero at Monterrey and wounded at Buena Vista.

All businesses and schools closed, and church bells tolled during the procession to and from the capitol. In final tribute, thousands of people of Montgomery, including many ex-soldiers and school children filed by the casket. 

At 12:20 p.m. the funeral train departed over the Western Railway of Alabama and Atlanta and West Point Railroad for Atlanta. At West Point, Georgia the train stopped under a beautiful arch of flowers to pick up Georgia's Governor William J. Northen and staff. 

At 4:30 p.m. the funeral train pulled into Union Station in Atlanta, Georgia. It is estimated that 20,000 people lined the streets as the funeral procession made their way to the state capitol. Atlanta’s Gate City Guard, which had served as Company F, 1st Georgia (Ramsay’s) during the War Between the States, stood guard over the president. 

At 7:00 p.m. the train went north on the Richmond and Danville Railroad, which later became Southern Railway and, today, Norfolk Southern Railroad. The train traveled through Lula, Georgia, Greenville, South Carolina and stopped at the North Carolina capitol at Raleigh.

A brief stop was made in Danville, Virginia where a crowd of people gathered around the train and sang, "Nearer My God To Thee" as city church bells tolled. 

Finally, the train reached Richmond, Virginia on Wednesday, May 31, 1893, at 3:00 a.m.. It was Memorial Day. Mrs. Davis met the train and her husband's casket was taken to the Virginia State House. 

At 3:00PM, May 31st, the funeral procession started for Hollywood Cemetery. 

With Mrs. Jefferson Davis were her daughters, Winnie and Margaret. Six state governors acted as pallbearers. It was estimated that 75,000 people attended this final salute to President Davis. The ceremony concluded with a 21-gun salute and "Taps. 

May 17, 2011

* * *

Medicaid Program Needs a Dose of Reality
By Benita M. Dodd

Much like the tale of the blind men and the elephant, proposals to reform Medicaid are influenced by the perspective: Taxpayers see lighter paychecks; beneficiaries see increased coverage; state budget writers see a spiraling commitment. Liberals see a need for a bigger program to cover more people and conservatives see an opportunity to do better with less government. Still, all are aware of this elephant in the room.

Without a doubt, the entitlement program for qualified low-income elderly, disabled, children and families is consuming an increasing portion of the state budget. That was one reason that former Gov. Sonny Perdue implemented a managed care program for Georgia to cover low-income Medicaid and PeachCare beneficiaries. Three HMO-like organizations receive more than $2.6 billion for the more than 1 million covered. The requirements of ObamaCare are set to bring a huge increase in Medicaid beneficiaries – up to 600,000, by some estimates – so the state is rethinking the program's structure. Evidence suggests flexibility is the key to quality and affordability.

Medicaid is funded by both federal and state dollars. Eligibility levels vary for the 1.4 million adult low-income Georgia residents covered by Medicaid and 200,000 children who receive coverage for dental and medical care under PeachCare because their parents earn too much to qualify for Medicaid. Federal dollars typically account for 65 percent of Medicaid spending in Georgia. In other words, for every 35 cents Georgia spends, the feds pitch in 65 cents. 

Around the nation, the federal match has proven a perverse incentive for states to spend more to get more, expanding eligibility levels and increasing enrollment. But Washington's gift comes with strings attached, dictating how and where the money is spent. The inflexibility limits a state's ability to innovate and thwarts the opportunity to tailor the program to enable beneficiaries to receive improved care and taxpayers to receive better bang for their buck. 

The costs and the demand for services will spiral with the expected increase in the Medicaid rolls if ObamaCare were to pass muster with the courts. 

Beneficiaries of this entitlement will see access to care shrink while taxpayers will pay more to fund poorer quality care for a growing number of patients. 

A Kaiser Family Foundation study released May 10 warned that Georgia would be one of eight states to lose more than 40 percent of their federal funding for Medicaid over the next decade under the a U.S. House Republicans’ plan to repeal the 2010 federal health law and convert Medicaid into a block grant program. The researchers predict the planned federal cuts would mean fewer people covered and increased state spending.

Given the waste, fraud, abuse, overregulation, bureaucracy and inflexibility the federal role engenders, excluding the feds is more likely to help the states. A 2009 Heritage Foundation study found that if Georgia continued the Medicaid program with just state dollars, it would save the state $2.2 billion from 2013-2019. Continuing to fund Medicaid at unacceptable levels – it consumes more than 16 percent of Georgia's budget already – will bankrupt states, which unlike the federal government, must actually balance their budgets.

Hope springs from an unlikely quarter: the otherwise liberal bastion of Rhode Island, which has blazed a trail in Medicaid reform since receiving a global waiver in 2009. In exchange for relaxed federal rules, the state received a block grant totaling $12.075 billion to work with through 2013.

This "budget certainty" also became a spending cap that motivated cost containment measures. Flexibility allowed Rhode Island to cut spending and improve quality. In the first 18 months, Medicaid's rate of spending growth shrank from more than 8 percent to 3 percent – without reducing patient eligibility. Healthy behavior is being incentivized and inappropriate use of services discouraged, with incentives including a premium assistance holiday, a gift card, a bonus payment or a health club membership. In an article in Health Reform Report, Rhode Island's Secretary of Health and Human Services explained the goals that led to success: "rebalance and reduce institutional bias; mandate care coordination and implement a primary care medical home for all recipients; institute competitive and value-based purchasing approaches and ensure all payers and recipients contribute an appropriate and fair share; obtain federal matching funds to support the continuation of state-funded programs that delay high-cost institutional care; and focus on program integrity to combat waste, fraud and abuse."

"We've seen savings because control of the program is now held by local politicians who are more accountable to the taxpayers," said Bill Felkner, director of policy at Rhode Island's Ocean State Policy Research Institute, which produced a Medicaid study, "Doing Long Term Care Right."
"The federal government continues to dictate who receives the benefits, but at least state control of the services provided can lead to greater efficiencies."

Through fiscal year 2011, the waiver saved the state about $100 million. And Rhode Island is on track to only spend approximately $9.3 billion of the allotted $12.075 billion. A growing number of governors are asking the feds for what Rhode Island got. So should Georgia. A healthy Georgia won't come from a federal regimen but from a state-specific solution. 

Benita M. Dodd is vice president of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation, an independent think tank that proposes practical, market-oriented approaches to public policy to improve the lives of Georgians. Nothing written here is to be construed as necessarily reflecting the views of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation or as an attempt to aid or hinder the passage of any bill before the U.S. Congress or the Georgia Legislature.

May 13, 2011 

* * *

Health Care Reform: 
Treat Disease, Not Symptoms 
By Brian E. Hill, M.D.

If physicians treated symptoms, they would never cure. Prescribing a cough suppressant to a patient with an intractable cough without searching for an underlying cause, for example, is obviously foolhardy. If cancer were present, it would inevitably progress and take that patient’s life. Cure comes through recognizing symptoms and parsing them to diagnose and treat disease. Problem-solving in health policy should employ the same approach.

The ideological banter surrounding health care reform has mistakenly focused on symptoms, however, missing the disease that inhibits the system's ability to provide readily accessible, high-quality, cost-effective health care. Unsustainable costs and access problems do exist, but these are merely symptoms of the underlying disease. 

Other symptoms are readily apparent. According to Gallup, 62.6 percent of Americans were overweight or obese in 2010. Obesity is associated with high blood pressure, elevated cholesterol, diabetes, heart disease, degenerative joint disease and various cancers. As a result, the annual medical costs for an obese person are $1,429 more than a person of normal weight, adding about $147 billion in costs to the health care system in 2008. 

The societal and personal costs of unhealthy lifestyle choices extend beyond obesity. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 90 percent of lung cancer deaths in men and 80 percent in women result from cigarette smoking, and a total of 446,000 people die annually from smoking-related diseases. Yet about 21 percent of adults continue to smoke, adding $96 billion annually in direct medical costs to society.

The overall prevalence of illness in our society is avoidable. The CDC notes that four modifiable health risk behaviors – lack of physical activity, poor nutrition, tobacco use and excessive alcohol consumption – are responsible for much of the suffering and early deaths related to chronic diseases. Physicians' waiting rooms and hospital beds are filled with patients there not because of a genetic predisposition to disease or a random stroke of bad luck, but because of poor lifestyle choices. 
If avoidable illness, unsustainable costs and inadequate access are symptoms, then what is the disease?

The disease lies in the construct of the current health care system: We snub our noses at the laws of basic economics and ignore the subtleties of human motivation. 

Under the current system, most people do not directly pay for health insurance. They obtain it through an employer or the government. This is not to say that individuals do not pay for their insurance. An employer develops a compensation package commensurate with a worker’s production, and that package is a combination of salary and benefits. In the employer-sponsored model, the average worker loses $2.40 in hourly wages to cover health insurance. This is money that the worker no longer personally manages. It removes a cost-control barrier: No one spends others’ money as wisely as they spend their own. 

The current system's comprehensive approach to health insurance further separates patients from control of their health care dollars. The model is arranged to minimize the cost of using the system, which shields people from the financial impact of unhealthy lifestyle choices and promotes moral hazard. Insulating people from the outcomes of risky behavior allows them to pursue that risky behavior. It becomes easier, and often cheaper, to avoid lifestyle modification by taking a pill for elevated cholesterol instead of joining a gym or changing eating habits. 

While the individual’s personal costs are minimal, the explosion of cost for the health care system comes from the new medication, additional office visits, monitoring tests and likely future development of associated illnesses such as heart disease and hypertension.

The cure won't come until the illness is addressed. The new federal law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, does little more than attempt to treat the symptoms of access and cost through greater central control. It expands the current dysfunctional model and exacerbates the moral hazard: It further separates the person from control of health care dollars and removes ownership of health care decision-making from the individual. 

The attempt to cure requires models that empower patients as active participants in their health care to promote personal responsibility. Models that adhere to the principles of every other functioning market: the premise that individuals can better control their health care dollars and purchasing
The data from the enactment of consumer-driven health plans demonstrate the potential to truly begin to treat the disease. This regimen focuses on curing the disease behind the unsustainable cost, inadequate access and general level of unhealth. This cure moves society toward that end so desperately needed: a readily-accessible, high-quality, cost-effective health care system. 

Dr. Brian E. Hill, a Georgia urologist and author of "Stop the Noise: A Physician's Quest to Silence the Politics of Health Care Reform," wrote this commentary for the Georgia Public Policy Foundation. The Foundation is an independent think tank that proposes practical, market-oriented approaches to public policy to improve the lives of Georgians. Nothing written here is to be construed as necessarily reflecting the views of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation or as an attempt to aid or hinder the passage of any bill before the U.S. Congress or the Georgia Legislature. 

May 6, 2011

* * *

Six Ways to Sunday Drives in Georgia 
By Benita M. Dodd

Transportation policy may not have been the priority during the legislative session, but in the long shadow of the Gold Dome, proposals, plans, ideas and reports were moving right along. And now that the regular legislative session is over, expect greater focus on the good, the bad and the ugly of future transportation decisions for Georgia.

There's no denying Georgia needs to spend more on transportation infrastructure. Congestion that is currently mitigated by economic woes will worsen as more people go back to work and companies grow again. The devil, however, is in the details. Taking transportation policy down the wrong road – a prime example is metro Atlanta's spending wish list of $13.5 billion for mass transit and just $8.5 billion for roads – is worthless. Happily, there are tried-and-tested approaches that can improve mobility and add capacity, for the economic engine that is Atlanta, as well as across the state.

Fast-forward with technology: From toll roads to transit, policy-makers should contract with the private sector to ensure transportation dollars are focused on cutting-edge technology. Government planning usually begins with a simplistic "what if we do nothing" model then continues with increasingly complicated/costly "what if we ..." assumptions. But just because government does nothing doesn't mean innovation stands still. And private-sector technological ingenuity usually outpaces government (case in point: municipal broadband). Today, there's an "app" for almost everything, from where to buy cheaper fuel, to real-time alerts for travelers with route alternatives and cell-phone text messages that help transit riders schedule their trips.

Divert unnecessary traffic. Ignore the adage that "you can't build your way out of congestion." Adding capacity is not just a matter of building roads, it's also relocating vehicles that don't need to be crowding roads. Some surrounding counties already are thinking outside the box, with Paulding County leading the charge for a $2 billion Western Commercial Connector toll road that diverts traffic around metro Atlanta. An estimated one-third of freight traffic on metro Atlanta roads is passing through; a viable detour would make a significant dent in congestion. That, along with a network of toll lanes offering an option in congested corridors, would encourage travelers to consider the value of alternative routes, modes and times for their trip. 

Fund needs, not notions. If metro Atlanta's regional wish list is anything to go by, local officials are looking at what they'd like, not what residents need. Georgians will consider a regional transportation special local option sales tax (T-SPLOST) in July next year. It's crucial that local governments offer them bang for the penny. Cobb County, for example, is cutting bus routes because of budget shortfalls, but seeks a billion-and-a-half dollar rail line from MARTA's Arts Center to Acworth. Atlanta would like $1.6 billion for its Beltline "transit and trail," after embracing light rail over more cost-effective bus-rapid transit. (Hint: 78.5 percent of Georgians drive alone; 2.5 percent use public transportation.) 

Focus on freight, not passenger, rail. Georgia's ports are gearing up for massive expansion and the state needs to be ready to accommodate the freight increase – or neighboring states will. Clogging freight lines with costly commuter and "high-speed" trains will divert cargo, resulting in more truck traffic and reducing mobility on roads.

Wherever possible, welcome the private sector to the table: Numerous private coach operators are chomping at the bit to bid for intercity transportation needs. Outsourcing mass transit operations can improve efficiency and cost-effectiveness. As managed lanes become part of a high-occupancy toll (HOT) lane network, private-sector involvement can save taxpayers money, expedite improvements and free much-needed funds for use elsewhere in Georgia's transportation infrastructure.

Promote federalism instead of fawning to the feds. He who pays the piper calls the tune. Cobb County asked for a federal assistance for its promising Northwest Corridor HOT lane project and was rejected, as was a grant request for Savannah's port connector road. Yet MARTA was given money for solar panels and Atlanta for an unnecessary street car. Plus Georgia is a "donor" state in the federal highway program, according to a Heritage Foundation analysis: Over the past half-century, the feds have returned just 86 percent of the federal fuel taxes Georgia motorists paid into the trust fund.

Ultimately, restoring decisions to the state will allow local priorities to take precedence over projects tailored to Washington's whims. Because until mobility drives Georgia transportation policy, Georgians will go nowhere fast.

Benita M. Dodd is vice president of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation, an independent think tank that proposes practical, market-oriented approaches to public policy to improve the lives of Georgians. Nothing written here is to be construed as necessarily reflecting the views of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation or as an attempt to aid or hinder the passage of any bill before the U.S. Congress or the Georgia Legislature.

April 29, 2011 

* * *

Georgia Among More than Half the Nation's States Shortchanged by 
Federal Highway Program 
By Ronald Utt

Under the laws governing the federal highway program, the federal fuel taxes paid into the trust fund by motorists (18.3 cents per gallon) and truckers are returned to the states by a series of mathematical formulas that attempt to match the scope and usage of each state’s surface transportation system with payments received from the trust fund. These formulas, however, embody a number of serious flaws that cause many states (called donors) to consistently receive shares that are less than they pay in, while others (called donees) consistently receive more.

In FY 2009 (the most recent fiscal year for which data are available), Georgia was among the 28 donor states, receiving a smaller share of money from the trust fund than they paid into it. Over the past several decades, states shortchanged by the program have been concentrated in the Southeast and the Great Lakes region, as well as California and Arizona. 

The states receiving more than their fair share have been concentrated in the Northeast and Middle Atlantic states and the sparsely populated Mountain states. States with a share ratio less than 1.0 are donors and are receiving a smaller share back compared to what they pay in. Those whose share ratio exceeds 1.0 are getting back more than the share of taxes they contribute to the trust fund.

In 2009, there were 28 donor states and 22 donee states, although many states were close to being even in their return ratios. In 2009, for example, Texas received only an 83.5 percent payback, costing it $672 million in underpayments that year. Also in 2009, Florida received just 86 percent back, Arizona received 92 percent, and South Carolina received 85 percent. Many of the losing states in 2009 have been consistent losers since 1956. Tabulating return ratios over the past 53 years reveals that, among some of the 24 long-term losers, Texas received just 80.5 percent, Oklahoma received 86.3 percent, and Georgia received 85 percent. 

One reason for the persistence of these equity problems is that the U.S. Department of Transportation does not accurately calculate and report state-by-state equity shares and instead measures each state’s share by comparing the sum of dollars paid in to the sum of dollars paid out. Because the trust fund in recent years has paid out more than it receives in taxes and is now subsidized by general revenues, this way of measuring equity implies that all states earn an above-average return on their payments into the fund. This, of course, is a mathematical impossibility. 

This reporting flaw was corrected by the Bush Administration, and accurate numbers were reported for 2007. But the new Obama team has reverted to the incorrect equity calculations and did not report the correct ones when the 2008 and 2009 data were released.

Under the correct methodology of share-return ratio calculations used here (and briefly adopted by the Federal Highway Administration in its 2007 report), Texas experienced an 83.5 percent return ratio in 2009, reflecting the fact that its tax revenues accounted for 9.616 percent of the money flowing into the fund, compared to the 8.031 percent of trust fund spending it received (8.031 is about 83.5 percent of 9.616).

The current laws governing the federal highway and transit programs expired in September 2009 but have been extended repeatedly and are now set to expire in September 2011, thereby allowing more time to develop replacement legislation. To date, only the White House has offered a compromise plan for reauthorization, albeit one that is exceptionally costly and focuses its financial support and new programs on transportation modes that are consistently rejected by the traveling public. Despite its 48 pages, the President’s plan is silent on the equity issue.
Although a formal “turnback” plan has not yet been introduced, two bills have been introduced that address the problem: the Highway Fairness and Reform Act of 2011 (H.R. 632), and the Surface Transportation and Taxation Equity Act (H.R. 3595). While much remains to be done in completing a new highway reauthorization bill, the 28 donor states should begin to work together to seek an end to the inequities embodied in current law. 

This commentary was written by Ronald D. Utt, Ph.D, Herbert and Joyce Morgan Senior Research Fellow in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation, and published with permission by the Georgia Public Policy Foundation. The Georgia Public Policy Foundation is an independent think tank that proposes practical, market-oriented approaches to public policy to improve the lives of Georgians. Nothing written here is to be construed as necessarily reflecting the views of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation or as an attempt to aid or hinder the passage of any bill before the U.S. Congress or the Georgia Legislature.

April 22, 2011 

* * *

Old Times not forgotten in Dixie
By: Calvin E. Johnson, Jr.,

Tennessee Senator Edward Ward Carmack said in 1903, “These Confederate soldiers were our kinfolk and our heroes.” He also said, “The people of the South have the right to teach their children the true history of the War Between the States, the causes that led to it and the principles involved.” 

Black, White, Jewish, American-Indian and Hispanic Americans who served the Confederacy during the War Between the States are indeed worthy of our emulation.

The original Constitution of the Confederate States of America will be on display, Tuesday, April 26, 2011, Confederate Memorial Day, in the Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library {on the 3rd floor of the Main Library} at the University of Georgia, in Athens. See details at: http://www.libs.uga.edu/hargrett/index.shtml  

The United Daughters of the Confederacy, Ladies Memorial Association and Sons of Confederate Veterans still remember the Confederate soldier and proudly fly his blood stained flag of many hard fought battles.

The first Memorial Day took place in the South where Northern and Southern soldiers were remembered.

Ideal Memorial Day for Atlanta Confederates. Thin lines of Gray-Clad soldiers of the sixties were met with enthusiastic applause all along the route of the parade.—April 27, 1909, The Atlanta Journal and Constitution.

The State of Georgia has officially recognized April 26th as Confederate Memorial Day since 1874....And proclamations have been signed by Southern governors, commemorating April as Confederate History and Heritage Month since 1995. For additional information see: http://confederateheritagemonth.com  

Southern newspapers once reported Confederate soldiers marching in Confederate Memorial Day parades and sounding off with a husky Rebel Yell of "Yip, yip, yip, which turned the tides of many battles. 

Businesses and schools once closed on Confederate Memorial Day as thousands of people congregated at the Confederate cemetery for the day’s events that included: a parade, memorial speeches, military salute and children laying flowers on the soldiers' graves. 

Efforts to mark Confederate graves, erect monuments and hold memorial services were the idea of Mrs. Charles J. Williams. She was an educated and kind lady. Her husband served as Colonel of the 1st Georgia Regiment during the War Between the States. He died of disease in 1862, and was buried in his home town of Columbus, Georgia. 

Mrs. Williams and her daughter visited his grave often and cleared the weeds, leaves and twigs from it, then placed flowers on it. Her daughter also pulled the weeds from other Confederate graves near her Father.

It saddened the little girl that their graves were unmarked. With tears of pride she said to her Mother, "These are my soldiers' graves." The daughter soon became ill and passed away in her childhood. 

On a visit to the graves of her husband and daughter, Mrs. Williams looked at the unkept soldiers' graves and remembered her daughter as she cleaned the graves and what the little girl had said. 

Mrs. Williams wrote a letter that was published in Southern newspapers asking the women of the South for their help. She asked that memorial organizations be established to take care of the thousands of Confederate graves from the Potomac River to the Rio Grande. She also asked the state legislatures to set aside a day in April to remember the men who wore the gray. With her leadership April 26 was officially adopted in many states. She died in 1874, but not before her native state of Georgia adopted it as a legal holiday.

The Georgia Division Sons of Confederate Veterans joins the nation in commemorating the Sesquicentennial--150th Anniversary of the War Between the States now through 2015. See additional information at: http://www.150wbts.org/  

Mr. Calvin E. Johnson, Jr., of Kennesaw, Georgia, is a speaker, writer, and author of “When America Stood for God, Family and Country” and Chairman of the Sons of Confederate Veterans Confederate History and Heritage Month Committee.

April 18, 2011 

* * *

Let the Asthma Blame Games Begin
By Harold Brown

Earth Day (April 22) has slowly expanded to Earth Week, and this year it brings to Georgia the administrator of the epitome of government mission creep, Lisa Jackson of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). But don't expect a celebration of this nation's environmental advances. It's more likely to be an indictment of industry, power plants and Georgians' lifestyle choices (driving) for "asthma-causing pollution."

This criticism happens every year as the May-September “Ozone Season” arrives. Newspapers tie high ozone days to asthma, as they have for nearly 30 years. Headlines such as, “Kids with asthma head indoors during smog season” reinforce the association. Unfortunately, it's largely a myth, built mainly on statistical associations between high ozone on hot summer days and hospitalizations for asthma. Yet summer is the season of fewest asthma hospitalizations.

Hundreds of experiments show associations between ozone and asthma. Most show weak associations, probably confounded with unknown factors that affect asthma. Some studies of air pollutants showed no associations with asthma. A throw-away phrase in a recent publication by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says a lot about the malady: “[T]he etiology of asthma is unknown. ..." Etiology is the “the set of factors that contributes to the occurrence of a disease.” 

Singling ozone out as the cause is nearly impossible, even using complicated statistical models that “control for other factors.” Often, other controlling factors are unknown, especially in the large and diverse populations that are studied.

By far the best association is the change from 1980 to 2009 in U.S. asthma prevalence and the U.S. average peak 8-hour ozone concentration. The statistical correlation is -0.86 (0 equals no association, 1 is perfect.) But this correlation is negative: Even as ozone declined, asthma increased. 

The simple interpretation is that cleaner air causes asthma. What it really shows, though, is the fallacy of cavalier interpretations of associations. 

Interpretations based on associations lead to conflicting facts. Jackson's EPA estimated that one of the benefits of reduced air pollution under the 1970 Clean Air Act was 850,000 “asthma attacks” avoided annually by 1990. Yet the CDC reports the number of doctor’s office visits for asthma increased by about 3.9 million per year from 1975 to 1990-92. Did reducing pollution decrease or increase asthma? (Unfazed, the EPA last month proposed new power plant mercury and air toxics standards, aimed at "preventing 120,000 cases of childhood asthma symptoms.")The weakness of the ozone-asthma connection is shown by other associations. After all, asthma experts consider dozens of “triggers” and “modifiers” for asthma, ranging from dust mites and cockroaches to household income and even violence. The complications make definitive statements about asthma and its causes dicey. And physicians don't usually tell patients to stay inside. They know that most triggers are indoors, where EPA has concluded air pollution is often much higher than outdoors.

Urban areas are expected to have higher asthma rates because ozone, other air pollutants and traffic are higher there. But a CDC study of 2005 U.S. data concluded that, “Asthma prevalence is as high in rural as in urban areas.”

This is further complicated by low asthma prevalence in some countries with high pollution. East Germany was found, in the early 1990s, to have much lower asthma prevalence than West Germany although its air pollution was at least twice as high. A global report on asthma in 2004 cited prevalence for asthma symptoms for U.S. adults as 10.9 percent, but 2.1 percent for China and 2.2 percent for Russia, countries not known for their clean air.

A 2001-2004 CDC survey showed 14.6 percent of U.S.-born women reported that they had ever had asthma, versus 4 percent of women born in Mexico. For immigrants born elsewhere, it was 6.8 percent. The results were similar for men. The country of birth, and therefore the conditions of birth, was influential.

Associations with asthma are easy to find. Among Georgia counties, for example, it's hospitalization rates and the percentage of land in cultivated crops. The correlation coefficient is statistically significant (+ 0.59) and as large as most of those for the asthma-ozone association. Yet nobody would conclude that crop cultivation causes asthma.A further paradox in this paradox-laden condition: Several recent studies, mostly in Europe, show that children born on a farm, and especially those in contact with livestock, are less likely to have asthma, even as adults. The reason is speculated to be their contact with bacteria associated with farm conditions, especially animals.

It may be an example of the “hygiene hypothesis,” which holds that too “clean” conditions prevent childhood development of resistance to disease organisms or allergies and later cause serious problems. This may explain growing asthma rates as Americans moved from the farm and into cleaner houses. Clean houses are supposed to make children healthier, but perhaps that exposure on the farm strengthened earlier generations. It certainly holds more logic than blaming declining ozone and other air pollutants.

University of Georgia Professor Emeritus R. Harold Brown is an Adjunct Scholar with the Georgia Public Policy Foundation and author of "The Greening of Georgia: The Improvement of the Environment in the Twentieth Century." The Foundation is an independent think tank that proposes practical, market-oriented approaches to public policy to improve the lives of Georgians. Nothing written here is to be construed as necessarily reflecting the views of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation or as an attempt to aid or hinder the passage of any bill before the U.S. Congress or the Georgia Legislature.

April 15, 2011

* * *

Simplifying Taxes a Complicated Matter
By Kelly McCutchen

Just hearing the words "dependent exemption," "itemized deductions" and "tax credit phase out" makes most of us want to run screaming to our friendly CPA for help. As policy collides with politics in the tax debate, these concepts have moved to center stage.

An almost universally held principle of good tax reform is the goal of Foadening the tax base and lowering tax rates. Easier said than done. The screaming from special interests begins the moment you begin to take away the credits, exemptions, deductions and loopholes.

Critics have raised two primary concerns with Georgia's soon-to-be finalized tax reform plan: reduction of the dependent exemption (primarily benefitting families with children) and the capping of itemized deductions.

Both the dependent exemption and itemized deductions are higher in this plan for low- and middle-income families, but decline to zero for the highest income levels. For families making over $200,000 there are no exemptions or deductions -- just multiply your income by 4.5 percent. It doesn't get much more simple than that.

There should be no questions that this proposal is pro-family. In addition to eliminating the marriage penalty, deductions for children have actually increased for most families. In addition to the dependent exemption of $2,000, there is also a $150 per child credit. Added to the $2,000 exemption, that's the equivalent of more than $5,000 per child and a large increase compared to the current $3,000 exemption. This credit covers more than two-thirds of Georgia's children before it begins to phase out for incomes above $60,000.

The limits on itemized deductions have raised the ire of numerous interest groups. In the latest proposal, itemized deductions are capped at $22,000 for families with income below $75,000 and $17,000 for families up to $160,000. That covers 96 percent of Georgia's income tax filers.

Does $22,000 in itemized deductions cover most low- and middle-income Georgians? Based on data from the IRS, the average mortgage interest deduction for incomes of less than $100,000 (90 percent of Georgians) is $9,155. The same data shows the average charitable contribution is $3,083 and the average property tax paid is $1,979. That adds up to $14,218, with room for deductions for other taxes paid and higher charitable contributions.

Consider a specific example such as a married couple who both teach. The average Georgia teacher salary is $48,300, so we will assume their total family income is $96,000 and they have itemized deductions of $17,000. They save $601 under this tax reform proposal.

Every $1,000 in deductions saves $45 at a 4.5 percent tax rate. For the family above, the $601 savings is equivalent to adding an extra $13,000 of itemized deductions (601 / 45 = 13). Adding this to the $17,000 already allowed equals equivalent deductions in the new plan of $30,000. If one of these teachers is promoted to principal, their income could easily reach $150,000. They would then save $1,412 or the equivalent of $48,000 in itemized deductions. Here is the fundamental difference. Under the current system, the government taxes you unless you document that you spent money in ways the government deems acceptable to deduct. In the proposed system, the government taxes you less (with a lower rate) and allows you the freedom to decide how you spend your money.There is a concern that limiting itemized deductions might limit charitable deductions. Ask your favorite charity or your church if their donations are up or down over the last two years. People give more when they have more to give. Driving higher economic growth is the goal of this tax reform.This new proposal strikes a fair balance by allowing a reasonable amount of itemized deductions for low- and middle-income taxpayers. The money saved by capping these deductions is then used to lower the income tax rate for everyone.

This tax proposal takes a solid first step toward broadening Georgia's tax base and significantly reducing the personal income tax rate. While it's disappointing many of the bolder ideas never emerged from the cutting room floor, state tax systems, like battleships, do not change course quickly or easily. This pro-growth reform will be a boon to small businesses and entrepreneurs, foster job creation and put us in a position to take another major tax reform step in the near future.

Kelly McCutchen is president of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation, an independent think tank that proposes practical, market-oriented approaches to public policy to improve the lives of Georgians.

Nothing written here is to be construed as necessarily reflecting the views of the Foundation or as an attempt to aid or hinder the passage of any bill before the U.S. Congress or the Georgia Legislature. 

April 8, 2011

* * *

April 7, 2011

To the Editor:

America Must Lead

The Libyan people rose up against their dictatorial and murderous president, and asked for world help to overthrow the tyrant and establish a democracy in Libya, but the world, including the U.S., delayed taking any action. The western world wanted to study the situation.

Finally, about a month later, the U.N. agreed to impose sanctions, including a no fly zone around Libya, and coalition missiles and planes attacked Gadhafi’s military forces. They were able to halt Gadhafi’s drive to retake Bengazi and eastern Libya. The opposition forces in the east were saved from annihilation, but unfortunately Gadhafi;s forces had penetrated many cities and had the opposition on the run.

The dithering and dathering by the U.N., including the U.S., inhibited the momentum of the rebel forces, and it has resulted in a potentially long drawn out stalemate in Libya. The stalemate might be broken if we employ helicopter gun ships against Gandhafi’s military in and around the cities; and provide the rebels with anti-tank weapons.

The U.S. finally acted to avert a humanitarian disaster in Libya, and we continued our quest to promote democracy in the region. We also might have contributed to the establishment of some stability in the Middle East, which is necessary to calm fears of disruption to the flow of oil, and the impact on world oil prices.

It is our duty to provide leadership to countries and populations in the world who cry out for help when they are threatened by the dark forces of totalitarianism.

Donald A. Moskowitz
Londonderry, NH

* * *

Building Authority Builds a Better Agency
By Steve Stancil

The core mission of the Georgia Building Authority (GBA) is to provide a clean, comfortable and safe environment on Capitol Hill. Much like former Indianapolis Mayor Stephen Goldsmith suggests in his "Yellow Pages test," the authority recognized several years ago that some services are not part of that core mission of essential services: The state and taxpayers would be better and more efficiently served by third-party private enterprise or specialty agencies. 

Today, of 18 services under GBA auspices, only three are wholly implemented by the GBA. Six services are provided by a blend of GBA and contracted services and nine are entirely contracted out. Additionally, police protection, construction project management on bond-funded projects, van pool services and child-care services have been transferred to the Department of Public Safety, Georgia State Financing and Investment Commission, Georgia Regional Transit Authority and Georgia State University, respectively.

By eliminating non-essential services, transferring or outsourcing non-core services and streamlining operations (reduction in workforce through attrition), the GBA was able to reduce its budgeted staff by 66 percent, from 631 in Fiscal Year 1998 to 212 this year. 

Initiatives the GBA has tackled include:

■ Food service operations. These were competitively bid out in 2007, and the contract went to Eurest Dining Services. Eurest improved food services and variety on Capitol Hill by offering Starbucks, Chick-fil-A, Quiznos, Willy’s Mexicana Grill and Sonny’s BBQ. The outsourcing did not provide a significant net savings to the agency, but enabled the GBA to reduce its operating budget by $4 million while customer service ratings have improved from a 58 percent favorable rating in FY 2007 to 81 percent in FY 2010.

■ Parking. Providing affordable and accessible parking to state employees is part of the GBA’s core mission; selling daily parking and special event parking is not. In the past two years, the authority has identified opportunities to outsource non-core parking operations and expects to increase revenue by nearly $650,000 annually.

The first parking lot to be privatized was the Department of Driver Services Lot near Turner Field. In the first year, revenue from this Braves Lot went from $55,000 to $120,000. And Polk Plaza, next to the Freight Depot, recently was converted to daily parking then privatized. Revenues are projected to increase by $90,000 annually. Additional benefits were a reduction in GBA administrative and personnel costs.

■ Utilities. Utilities are the second highest budgeted cost for the GBA. They were at $8.2 million for FY 2011, up from $7.8 million in FY 2010, primarily due to a 12.5 percent water rate increase by the city of Atlanta and an estimated 9.3 percent rate increase in electricity rates. Fortunately, utility conservation efforts that began more than five years ago have positioned the agency to manage the increased rates without significant increases to the bottom line.

Following a technical energy audit of 16 buildings in 2007, the authority launched two energy conservation measures focusing on lighting controls and water conservation. The GBA spent approximately $1.1 million of its capital reserves for the first phase of energy service company (ESCO) projects. 

In FY 2009, the authority was allocated $5.4 million of General Obligation Bonds to complete further ESCO projects identified in the audit. They included replacement or modification of lighting fixtures, installation of occupancy sensors and upgrading heating and air conditioning equipment. 
The result is a decrease of more than 26 percent in electricity consumption since 2007. The GBA is one of just four state agencies that has achieved the Governor’s energy reduction goal of 15 percent by 2020. 

With 2010 federal stimulus funds of $4.4 million allocated to the GBA via the Georgia Environmental Financing Authority, more conservation projects are under way. 

Ongoing conservation efforts thus far have saved taxpayers nearly $5 million. Operating under today's economic challenges, the agency continues to seek innovative ways to do more with less so that it is ready for tomorrow. 

Steve Stancil, the State Property Officer for Georgia, wrote this commentary for the Georgia Public Policy Foundation. The Foundation is an independent think tank that proposes practical, market-oriented approaches to public policy to improve the lives of Georgians. Nothing written here is to be construed as necessarily reflecting the views of the Foundation or as an attempt to aid or hinder the passage of any bill before the U.S. Congress or the Georgia Legislature.

April 1, 2011

* * *

Not-So-Happy Birthday for ObamaCare
By Ronald E. Bachman

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) commonly referred to as ObamaCare was signed into law on March 23, 2010. One year later, the law remains unpopular with the public and a core fiscal concern for many voters, while many are learning just how intrusive are the government mandates. 

Supporters believed that once passed, the law would gain in popularity. It has not. This law of the land may not be for long. In January this year, Senior U.S. District Court Judge Roger Vinson ruled the individual mandate in the new law to be unconstitutional. He further declared that the entire bill is unconstitutional because the act lacks a "severability clause," typically part of any major legislation. 

The severability clause is intended to ensure that if any portion of a bill is found in violation of other laws (or unconstitutional), only that section of the act is voided. But Congress deliberately eliminated the severability clause from an earlier version of the health reform legislation, so the new law is a unified whole. The Congressional structure and the legal arguments from the U.S. Department of Justice mean that the act stands or falls as a single entity. 

The Department of Justice is appealing Vinson's ruling to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals; its attorneys must file their appeal by April 4. The law's challengers have until May 4 to respond. Five of the state attorneys general are asking that the entire Appellate Court hear the case, versus the typical three-judge panel. A broader hearing could accelerate progress to the U.S. Supreme Court, which will ultimately decide the case probably during the 2012 election campaign season. 

Vinson’s ruling was both simple and academic, historically referenced and legally founded in precedence. The Cliff’s Notes version of the arguments and the rulings are easy for any non-lawyer to understand. The law's supporters argued that the government can indeed require the purchase of private health insurance under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution. They argued that previous court rulings allowed the federal government to regulate business transactions both across state lines and even those within a state that could have financial impacts across state lines. Opponents argued that the Commerce Clause does not apply and that the government cannot force individuals to purchase a private product of any type. 

The judge boiled it down to a simple concept: The government can regulate commercial "activity" under the Commerce Clause, not "inactivity." An individual's decision not to purchase private health insurance is inactivity. One cannot be regulated or penalized for inactivity. Therefore, the individual mandate has no basis in our Constitution. 

While Vinson intimated that the goal of health reform is laudable, his role was to determine the constitutionality of the act. He observed that there are many ways to accomplish health reform:
“[W]hile the individual mandate was clearly 'necessary and essential' to the Act as drafted, it is not 'necessary and essential' to health care reform in general. It is undisputed that there are various other (Constitutional) ways to accomplish what Congress wanted to do." 

In his ruling against the individual mandate, the judge quoted President Obama’s own words: " ... in 2008, then-Senator Obama supported a health care reform proposal that did not include an individual mandate because he was at that time strongly opposed to the idea, stating that 'if a mandate was the solution, we can try that to solve homelessness by mandating everybody to buy a house.'" 

Vinson applied the Constitution, which protects not only individuals from individuals, but individuals from government. His ruling concluded that the individual mandate was an over-reach of the government’s constitutional authority to rule the lives of Americans. He quoted James Madison's observation: "If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself." 

A year after enactment, ObamaCare's legislative and legal survival remain uncertain. Candidate Obama declared he would not sign a health reform bill unless it included broad bipartisan support. As president, he signed the most divisive partisan major bill in this nation's history. Too few found reason to celebrate, and now the party may be over. 

Keep up with legal challenges and the rapid regulatory implementation releases from multiple sources at www.CDHCSolutionsMag-HRN.com.

Ronald E. Bachman FSA, MAAA, is President and CEO of Healthcare Visions, Inc. and a Senior Fellow at the Georgia Public Policy Foundation, an independent think tank that proposes practical, market-oriented approaches to public policy to improve the lives of Georgians. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Center for Health Transformation, the Wye River Group on Health and the National Center for Policy Analysis. Nothing written here is to be construed as necessarily reflecting the views of the Foundation or as an attempt to aid or hinder the passage of any bill before the U.S. Congress or the Georgia Legislature.

March 25, 2011

* * *

High-Speed Rail and Livability: Pie-in-the-Sky Transportation Policy 
By Ronald Utt

One of the more fiscally irresponsible components of President Obama's budget proposal for fiscal year (FY) 2012 is the plan to increase surface "transportation" spending by more than 84 percent – from $58 billion to $107 billion – over FY 2010 spending levels.

To put this in context: Overall spending totals for the same period would rise by 7.9 percent, so transportation spending would rise more than 10 times faster than all programs combined. One reason for the explosion in proposed transportation spending is the President's commitment to create two new programs – Amtrak/high-speed rail (HSR) and livability – that have strong appeal to unions and environmentalists.

As is apparent from the President's first two years in office, he and his team believe in a primitive form of Keynesian economics, one of the tenets of which is that government can spend its way to economic prosperity. Despite the revolving collection of euphemisms to define these varied schemes – "stimulus," "jobs," and now "investments" – this proposal would fare no better than the first several efforts. 

Added to this is the political allure of federal transportation spending that disproportionately benefits members of labor unions and their leaders. All workers on federally supported construction projects must be paid "prevailing" wages in accordance with the Davis–Bacon Act, and these wages are higher than those in the competitive market. Such wages are common to union contracts. A recent Heritage Foundation study found that the Davis–Bacon Act increases the cost of federal construction projects by 9.9 percent and that its repeal would create 155,000 more construction jobs at the same cost to taxpayers.

Davis–Bacon is not the only cost problem. All federally funded transit systems are operated by unionized workers who are paid wages and benefits, and provided costly job protections under Section 13(c) of the Federal Transit Act and other federal statutes, well above those of comparable workers in the private sector, whether unionized or not.
While the President promises high-speed rail (HSR) service (top speeds of at least 150 mph), most of his projects involve signal and track improvements on privately owned freight rail systems that would provide marginal improvements in the Amtrak service sharing those tracks. 

Despite his State of the Union proclamation to spend $56 billion on HSR over five years, the President's transportation budget offers no such plan. Of the $8 billion of "HSR" money for FY 2012, "$4 billion ($15 billion over six years) fully funds Amtrak's national network operating, capital, and debt service requirements," while the other $4 billion ($38 billion over six years) "funds competitive grants for development of core express, regional and feeder corridors, to advance the President's goal to provide Americans with convenient access to a passenger rail system featuring high-speed rail service."

The key word here is featuring. What does “convenient access” to something featuring HSR mean? As written, this program could subsidize Washington, D.C.'s deficit-ridden Metro system because it provides "convenient access" to Union Station, where Amtrak's so-called HSR Acela trains run. If so, spending on real HSR will account for (or feature) a relatively minor amount of the $38 billion that the President proposes.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has been pressing for an expansive and costly "livability" effort and formally defines livability as "being able to take your kids to school, go to work, see a doctor, drop by the grocery or post office, go out to dinner and a movie, and play with your kids in a park, all without having to get in your car." In order to achieve the LaHood vision for America, government must nudge/force/coerce people into buses or trolleys and create tighter living arrangements.

The President proposes a total of $7.8 billion in livability spending for FY 2012 and $48.1 billion over the next six years. More than half of these funds would come from shifting money from roads.
Reflecting how little confidence the Congress has in the U.S. Department of Transportation, the House of Representatives cut a greater percentage from the remaining FY 2011 transportation budget than it cut from any other account. Nor are Republicans the only opponents: In the last Congress, the Democrat-controlled Senate and House Appropriations committees rejected the President's infrastructure bank proposal. Now he is asking for it again, and the price tag is $30 billion over six years. 
With federal transportation programs becoming little more than political slush funds, perhaps it's time to turn the program back to the states. 

This commentary is excerpted from a WebMemo by Ronald D. Utt, Ph.D., Herbert and Joyce Morgan Senior Research Fellow in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation and published with permission by the Georgia Public Policy Foundation. Read the full WebMemo at http://tinyurl.com/4ogo2qc. The Georgia Public Policy Foundation is an independent think tank that proposes practical, market-oriented approaches to public policy to improve the lives of Georgians. Nothing written here is to be construed as necessarily reflecting the views of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation or as an attempt to aid or hinder the passage of any bill before the U.S. Congress or the Georgia Legislature. 

March 18, 2011

* * *

The Runaway Youth Safety Act: 
Why We Must Take Action 
 Co-Authored by Senator Renee Unterman (R-Buford) and Allison Ashe of Covenant House Georgia

As we near the completion of another legislative session, time is running out for the Georgia General Assembly to enact laws that protect Georgia’s youth from the horrific nightmare of child exploitation. We must act now so that we can help those who are already caught in this vicious cycle and prevent others from going down this dangerous path. I would like to share a story with you that will help illustrate the severity of this problem. 

At 15, Natalie ran away from home to escape the sexual advances of her mother’s new boyfriend. A few days later local law enforcement picked her up and returned her to her mother. The Division of Family and Children’s Services came to investigate. Upon finding no actual physical abuse, the mother and daughter were left to sort out a very complicated situation alone. Not surprisingly, Natalie ran again. 

Unable to find shelter or food, Natalie was thankful when a seemingly friendly young man approached her and offered her a place to stay. He was a good caretaker and boyfriend at first, but then he asked her to help pay her way by providing sexual favors to his friends, beginning the sexual exploitation and abuse that will likely haunt her for the rest of her life.

Children like Natalie see a child protection system that failed to reach them in the moments when they needed it the most. And when they give up on waiting for those around them for help, they leave home in search of something better only to find that even those organizations that would like to protect them are unable to as a result of state law. 

Nearly a third of children who flee or are kicked out of their homes each year engage in sex for food, drugs or a place to stay according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness. Georgia is certainly not immune to these problems.

Under our current law, it is a misdemeanor to assist children who have run away because it may contribute to their continued status as a runaway and interfere with parental custody. Children who are kicked out of their homes by their parents are turned away as well because shelters cannot reliably distinguish between a child who has run away and a child who has been thrown out. 

Representative Tom Weldon has introduced legislation in the General Assembly that will help get runaways off the streets and into safe, temporary shelter. HB 185 allows shelters to provide emergency services to runaway youth without fear of criminal liability. Also, it provides a limited exemption from criminal liability for registered or licensed service providers that contact a child’s legal guardian within 72 hours of the child’s acceptance of services or make a child abuse report pursuant to the mandatory reporter statute. Since Georgia does not have a statewide reporting system for runaway and missing children, the Act also provides one of the only mechanisms for heartsick parents to locate their children. 

Georgia currently ranks 49th in the country in child homelessness. We can do better. Natalie needed better. The Georgia General Assembly needs to pass HB 185 and open the doors to shelters for the safety of our children. I encourage my colleagues in the Senate and the House to stand with me and support this legislation. By failing to act, we are failing to protect this state’s most valuable resource: the youth that will lead us to a brighter future. 

March 15, 2011

* * *

Editorial
by Gay Wiley Shook

After watching four Board of Commissioners' Chairman candidates' forums and one Commissioners' Listening Tour in which all of the chairman candidates spoke, it is glaringly obvious that there is only one candidate who is superbly qualified to lead Gwinnett County and that is Charlotte Nash. 

The other three candidates may possibly be well-intentioned men or not, but none of them are experienced in the particular skill set that our county requires now. None of them! None of them have ever managed a billion-dollar budget before or four thousand employees. Their responses to forum questions consistently revealed that they are either unfamiliar with the details of a particular issue or they have a poor or restricting solution that will likely thrust Gwinnett County backwards a decade or two. I actually heard Mr. Kissel say that "transportation is not a high priority" for him. It does not appear to me that he is able to think outside the box! Mr. Gause and Mr. Costa have run unsuccessfully for other offices before, but failed to impress voters. They just want to be elected to something.

Only UGA magna cum laude Accounting graduate Charlotte Nash provides the background for the serious issues, the regional experience, the law when pertinent, the intellect, and the innovative new ideas that will begin Gwinnett's financial and emotional healing. It is she we need! 

Many voters might not think about the importance of Gwinnett County's triple AAA bond rating for the county's general obligation bonds. This top-drawer investment-grade bond rating from all three of the national bond-rating agencies saves the county millions of dollars in interest when we must go to the bond market for funds. I am very sure that the New York bond lawyers are watching the outcome of this crucial election very closely and will grade Gwinnett's bonds accordingly. Please remember that Chairman Wayne Hill had an audit performed in 2004 when he left office and Charlotte Nash, County Administrator, retired. The two of them left Gwinnett County with ONE BILLION DOLLARS in cash and investments in 2004. We need Charlotte's stewardship and expertise again! She knows how to balance the county's budget in these times of revenue shortfall. She also knows how to explain what needs to be done to the other commissioners because as most of us know, anything accomplished needs three votes.

Please vote at your precinct in the Special Election on Tuesday, March 15th. And, for the benefit of us all, please cast your vote for Charlotte Nash. It is the only item on the ballot. It would be a needless expense to the county of an additional $500,000 if Charlotte Nash does not win outright on the first ballot and we are forced to hold a runoff election and man all those precincts once again.

March 14, 2011

Energy Solutions in Pursuit of a Problem
By Benita M. Dodd

Georgians are nervously watching petroleum prices climb amid ongoing unrest in oil producer Libya. Under the Gold Dome, legislators are again subjected to the perennial push for home-grown alternatives to fossil fuels. Just this week, German experts took a new tack at the Capitol with a promising presentation on renewable sources of energy and their economic benefits. The temptation is great, but legislators must focus on commonsense policy that promotes cost-effective, clean energy. 

Germany has made remarkable inroads into renewable energy generation. Renewables have grown from 4 percent to about 10 percent of Germany's energy portfolio over the past decade, German scientist Christine Woerlen told legislators. Not the least of the benefits, according to Woerlen, is German economic development: 350,000 jobs are now in "green" energy, about half as many as in Germany's auto industry. One in three electrical engineers is involved in renewable energy. 

Renewables have also helped Germany, whose only domestic fossil fuel source is lignite, reduce its energy dependence and its greenhouse gas emissions, Woerlen added. But it comes at a price: Energy prices have increased over the past 10 years. In fact, a 2010 study found Germany's average energy rates (about 32 cents U.S. per kilowatt hour) and energy taxes (41 percent) to be the second highest in the European Union, behind Denmark. Georgia's rates averaged 9 cents per kwh. 

"Utilities are increasing their prices; we don't know why," Woerlen told legislators. 

Here's a possible explanation: Renewable energy sources, especially wind and solar, are unreliable, inconsistent and often unavailable when customers might require the energy. This fact causes the greatest underestimation of the true cost of renewable energy. While German utilities must buy the electricity that "green energy entrepreneurs" produce at a government-set price, the utilities must also maintain operating levels as though renewable energy sources are not on the grid in order to be able to provide a consistent, reliable source of electricity for industry, hospitals and homeowners when necessary. If fewer customers routinely buy utility-generated energy, utilities must increase prices to the remainder to cover generation costs. 

Georgia, which incidentally provides biomass pellets to Germany for energy generation, is lagging the nation in job recovery. But electric power should invite jobs to Georgia, not be the source of jobs, especially not at German energy prices. Diversity in energy is important to competition and reliability, and advancements in solar and other renewables in Georgia are occurring. But they must move forward within the competitive constraints of the free market, not through artificial subsidies. 

Energy generation in the United States is the cleanest it has ever been. Energy productivity is the highest ever: Americans are producing so much more per capita with less energy output. The search for clean, efficient and cost-effective energy sources should be encouraged, but not by mandate. "Renewable" energy – solar, wind, biomass and hydropower – is not necessarily clean energy. There is no global energy shortage; that is evident in the new sources of fossil fuels being discovered almost daily. 

If the challenge is emissions, science-based regulatory measures can limit pollution without limiting options. Technology continues to make energy utilization cleaner than ever, from power plants to auto engines to home appliances. If the issue is clean and reliable energy, nuclear energy provides the best option, and Georgia is already leading the pack in the race for the next generation of nuclear facilities. If the issue is global instability, legislators must apply pressure on the administration and Congress to streamline the process to allow safe and responsible exploration of America's own energy resources, from vast off-shore reserves to federal lands. If the issue is efficiency, encourage research into more energy-efficient options. 

There is always more that can be done to produce cleaner energy. Given the opportunity, America's spirit of innovation has produced more for its citizens' advancement and quality of life than government ever has. Germany's admirable but expensive venture into renewable energy is by government mandate. Americans, on the other hand, pride themselves on their freedom of choice – and their ability to choose wisely. 

Benita M. Dodd is vice president of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation, an independent think tank that proposes practical, market-oriented approaches to public policy to improve the lives of Georgians. Nothing written here is to be construed as necessarily reflecting the views of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation or as an attempt to aid or hinder the passage of any bill before the U.S. Congress or the Georgia Legislature. 

March 11, 2011

* * *

Are Georgia’s OPEB 
Liabilities a Problem?
By Allen Buckley

The media often reports about the funding problems of state and local pension plans, such as the plans maintained by Illinois, California and New Jersey. Georgia’s pension plans have also received significant press as well, although most of it has been positive. Regularly overlooked are liabilities relating to post-retirement medical obligations.

In a February 28, 2006 press release titled “Georgia Named One of Top Five Best States for Pension Funds,” Governor Sonny Perdue boasted: “I am proud of Georgia’s high pension fund ratio.” The article stated the State’s pension funding ratio was 101 percent, trailing only Florida and North Carolina.

Like most pension plans, Georgia’s plans have been hit hard by the recession and the stock market drop that accompanied the recession. According to the state’s June 30, 2010 financial statements, the overall funding ratio for the state’s two major plans, the Employees’ Retirement System of Georgia (ERS) and the Teachers’ Retirement System of Georgia (TRS) had dropped to 86.9 percent on a combined basis. This figure is still well above the GAO minimum recommended funding ratio of 80 percent. So, with respect to pensions, bravo!

To complete the post-retirement employee benefits analysis, “other post-employment benefit” (or “OPEB”) obligations must be considered. OPEB benefits are benefits provided to employees outside pension plans. The vast majority of OPEB obligations relate to post-retirement medical coverage.

In a Governing article by Girard Miller dated February 3, 2011 and titled “Misplaced Pension Hysteria,” Mr. Miller states that while the state and local pension funding deficiency hysteria is overblown, the “OPEB cancer continues to metastasize, unabated and untreated.” Mr. Miller states:
For perspective, the pension deficits accrued to date will cost every man, woman and child in America about $2,000 over the next 15 years (about $10 per month per capita), based on current funding ratios. For OPEB, where half the nation’s public workers receive a substantial retiree medical benefit and half do not, the $2 trillion national liability works out to six times that number for the unfortunate 75 million taxpayers who bear the burden of these bills. 
Mr. Miller has proposed three steps for dealing with the problems. Step one is ramping up employer contributions over the next five years. Step two is charging employees up to half the normal actuarial costs of the benefits. Step three is to adopt new policies for surplus funds. 

How does Georgia’s OPEB liability situation stand? According to the state’s financial statements for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2010, as of June 30, 2009, the funding ratio was 4 percent. Thus, considering OPEB on its own, Georgia is doing very poorly in terms of funding.

The Pew Center on the States examined underfunded state health care obligations in its March 2010 national study, “The Trillion Dollar Gap.” Pew reported the latest available numbers showed Georgia with a $19.1 billion retirement health care liability and nearly all of that, some $18.3 billion, was an unfunded liability using actuarial assumptions. Pew said Georgia would need a $1.58 billion annual required contribution to meet the obligation.

However, state funding has declined. From 2008 to 2010, funding of OPEB obligations was cut from $242.5 million to $19.5 million. Perhaps the state’s recent financial crunch justifies a reduction in funding. However, the reduction is drastic considering the funded status.

In dollar terms, the state’s two main pension plans combined (ERS and TRS) had assets and liabilities of $68.4 billion and $78.7 billion, respectively, as of June 30, 2009. For OPEB obligations, assets were $810 million and liabilities were $20.3 billion as of such date. 

Combining the pension and OPEB figures, the total assets were $69.2 billion and the total liabilities were $99 billion. Thus, the combined funded ratio is 69.9 percent -- well below the GAO’s recommended 80 percent funding ratio.

It must be realized that the federal government’s unsustainable and imprudent path will, absent substantial changes, necessitate substantial tax increases in the near future (i.e. within the next decade). Does Georgia wish to be adding to the tax burden it will place on Georgians at that time? Funding now means the need for less taxation later.

The question is whether now is the time to follow Mr. Miller’s advice, and begin acting to eliminate the deficiency by substantially increasing funding. It would seem prudence requires, at a minimum, some plan to cause the combined pension/OPEB liability to be on track to hit the 80 percent funding standard sometime within the next decade. It must be done without doing what we see at the federal level -- fiscal debauchery now with promises of prudence later.


Allen Buckley is an Atlanta attorney and CPA, with a specialty in tax law and employee benefits. The Georgia Public Policy Foundation is an independent think tank that proposes practical, market-oriented approaches to public policy to improve the lives of Georgians. Nothing written here is to be construed as necessarily reflecting the views of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation or as an attempt to aid or hinder the passage of any bill before the U.S. Congress or the Georgia Legislature. 

March 4, 2011 

* * *

Mission Creep at EPA
By Harold Brown

Any bureaucracy worth its name seeks to increase its reach and budget, sometimes expanding the former to justify the latter. Nowhere is that tendency more apparent recently than in the federal Environmental Protection Agency.

An EPA announcement concerning the STAR (Science to Achieve Results – what other kind is there?) program cited a $7 million award to study the effects of “Pollution Exposures” and “Social Stressors” on communities. Six studies were funded. According to the announcement, “This groundbreaking research will focus on environments where people are exposed to multiple stressors such as chemicals, anxiety and poor nutrition.”

It is not a new area of research, but “anxiety and poor nutrition” is certainly a stretch for an agency whose reason for creation was “environmental protection.” And it is not the only indication of “mission creep.” In defending its proposed 2010 EPA budget, Director Lisa Jackson declared that, “this budget is designed to meet our most pressing economic and environmental needs.” Undoubtedly, it helped meet the agency’s economic needs: The EPA’s proposed 2010 spending was 40 percent higher than in 2009; other documents put it at 35 percent. An agency press release announced recently that its 2012 budget proposal "represents about a 13 percent decrease" from FY 2010. You can find out at the Whitehouse Web site (www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/Historicals/) that the 2010 budget was EPA’s highest, by far, since its creation.

After a year in office, Director Lisa Jackson propounded seven priorities for the agency. The first was “Taking Action on Climate Change.” Another was “Expanding the Conversation on Environmentalism and Working for Environmental Justice.” Implementing this priority includes, “building strong working relationships with tribes, communities of color, economically distressed cities and towns, young people and others, but this is just a start.” This is the language of environmental activists – solving economic, social and racial problems in the name of environmental protection.

Mission creep didn’t begin with Director Jackson. In 1992, the EPA established an Environmental Equity Office to deal with environmental impacts on racial minority and low-income communities. Even old people received emphasis in a 2003 Aging Initiative to “develop a national agenda for the environment and the aging.” 

This search for a mission is symptomatic of an agency with increasing budgets and the shrinking of problems for which it was created. The 2010 EPA budget was 29 times as high as 1970's, when the agency was created, even though pollution is a tiny fraction of the problem it was then. Carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide and particle pollution have decreased by over 70 percent. Lead in the environment has plummeted, decreasing 89 percent in the air from 1984-1995 and by 90 percent in the blood of Americans.

Every major pollutant has gone down, most by more than half. Acid rain was never the threat it was claimed, but rain has become less acid. The main cause of acid rain, sulfur dioxide in the air, has decreased 60 percent since 1980. Pesticides are much less toxic to non-pests today than in the days of DDT and Toxaphene, and much less persistent in the environment. Wetlands have changed less than 1 percent since 1986. 

There are 25 times as many nesting bald eagles in the United States as in 1963. The number of hawks in Georgia has tripled. Other wildlife have increased as dramatically, partially because of decreased pollution, but also because of the increased value society has placed on the environment. Deer have become a nuisance and danger, causing over 50,000 automobile crashes per year in Georgia. That is four times as many crashes as the number of deer in 1937.
More mission creep at the EPA is evident in the moving of goalposts for environmental cleanup. National standards were set for the six most serious air pollutants in 1971. All of those goals have been met, then standards for five of them were tightened in the past 10 years. It seems the air will never be clean enough.

Eighty percent of advisories against eating fish from U.S. waters are based on mercury, and the number of fishing places with those advisories has increased over 350 percent since the early 1990s. Increasing the number of advisories would lead one to think the danger of mercury pollution is increasing. But mercury emissions have decreased 60 percent since 1990 and no documented case of harm from mercury in fish has ever been documented in this country.

For a science-based agency, emphasis on “equity”, “justice” and “anxiety” seems out of place. Warnings should not increase as danger decreases. But so it goes with big agencies pushed by special interests and a federal government that wants to be all things to all people – especially when money is easy.

University of Georgia Professor Emeritus R. Harold Brown is an Adjunct Scholar with the Georgia Public Policy Foundation and author of "The Greening of Georgia: The Improvement of the Environment in the Twentieth Century." The Foundation is an independent think tank that proposes practical, market-oriented approaches to public policy to improve the lives of Georgians. Nothing written here is to be construed as necessarily reflecting the views of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation or as an attempt to aid or hinder the passage of any bill before the U.S. Congress or the Georgia Legislature. 

February 25, 2011

* * *

Full Speed Ahead: Widening the Pathway 
to College and Career Success
By Dean Alford

Our "flat" world is a global economy in which other nations race to surpass American dominance in every area, including higher education. The competition is rapidly intensifying, the stakes are enormous and the implications are sobering. 

Countries including India and China (which just surpassed Japan as the world’s second-largest economy) are measuring their economic futures by the scope of their investment in education. Today's measure of power is no longer a simple matter of military might but is rooted in a country’s ambition and plan to educate its youth. Today's children are tomorrow’s highly skilled 21st-century workforce that will steer a nation’s fortunes. Yet Americans and Georgians still struggle to diverge from the narrow, one-size-fits-all pathway from high school to college. 

This path leads many bright and ambitious high school students to miss out on early opportunities for advancement to college-level courses, and far too many at-risk students to drop out because they do not see their education as interesting or relevant. In between, there are too many students who do graduate from high school and enroll in college only to discover, too late, that they need remediation. 

The cost of learning support pulls millions away from Georgia's HOPE funding that is intended to help advance children’s education, not help them catch up. Creating multiple pathways to college and career success, however, helps improve student achievement, raise graduation rates, and ensure that every student has the opportunity to grow and be a vital part of the workforce.

Expanding the narrow education career pathways between the high schools and postsecondary institutions was among the recommendations of Gov. Sonny Perdue’s "Tough Choices, Tough Times" working group, which I co-chaired. The Move on When Ready Act of 2009 was a significant step in that direction. The law gives rising 11th- or 12th-grade students the option of taking all of their courses through a state college, university or technical college. 

The law was landmark, but it can be improved upon in two ways to accelerate learning and college and career preparation to Move on When Ready-Full Speed:

· Add a mandatory test for all 10th-grade students to determine their level of readiness for college. 

· Build in a career academy component into Georgia high schools that elevates the campus to a small, centralized learning community. 

The test is existing: The COMPASS test, a skills assessment for students entering their freshman year in college, helps administrators place those students in classes. Moving the testing to the 10th grade will provide Georgia’s high schools with an early-warning measure of each student’s reading, writing and mathematics skills as they relate to readiness for entry-level college courses. 

The test results would be shared with the parents, and students deemed ready can begin taking a college or career curriculum in line with their goals and interests. An accompanying report would explain college and career options open to the student, including Move on When Ready, Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate, traditional dual enrollment and more. 

Students the test identifies as needing additional support will receive the resources and attention that they need to graduate and advance to a postsecondary education. Learning support will be addressed in high schools where it needs to be, instead of in college or, worse, not at all. 

The entire cost of the testing materials for all of Georgia’s 125,000 10th-graders would be a little over $500,000 a year. That is, the average cost for a 10th-grade class of 500 would be about $2,000 a year, a minimal investment in their future. 

Move on When Ready enables a qualified a student to take courses on a college campus. But for the college-ready student who prefers to attend classes at the high school, the solution is to take the college to the student. The College and Career Academy component of Move on When Ready-Full Speed is based on the career academy model that has demonstrated exceptional success in Georgia. 

Through a contract, the post-secondary institution – college, university or technical college – would provide classroom instruction, online learning and other experiences not normally available in a traditional high school, and the college credits earned also count toward the high school graduation requirements. Overall, the cost is for the high school is low, which does not have to hire a full-time teacher and instead contracts with the college only for the instructor’s time in the classroom. The high school retains a large part of its QBE and local funds while successfully providing high school and college dual enrollment credits.

Among the many benefits of this approach are the advanced curriculum for the 11th and 12th grades and expanded learning opportunities to keep school relevant and interesting to the student, increasing graduation rates. More of those graduates, too, would have a head start at college on both their credits and less remediation would be required for college freshmen. College would be completed faster, at less overall expense to the students, their families and the state. 

This global economy makes no allowance for foot-dragging. It's time to move full speed ahead along pathways to educational success that better prepare Georgia's children to take their place as leaders of the 21st century workforce.

To respond to this Foundation commentary, click on this link: http://tinyurl.com/64vgwm9. 

Dean Alford, a former member of the state Board of Education and current chairman of the State Board that oversees the Technical College System of Georgia, wrote this commentary for the Georgia Public Policy Foundation. The Foundation is an independent think tank that proposes practical, market-oriented approaches to public policy to improve the lives of Georgians. Nothing written here is to be construed as necessarily reflecting the views of the Foundation or as an attempt to aid or hinder the passage of any bill before the U.S. Congress or the Georgia Legislature. 

February 18, 2011

* * *

Black History Month’s Forgotten Story
By: Calvin E. Johnson, Jr., 
Speaker, Writer, author of book “When American Stood for God, Family and Country" 

The following true story should be part of Black History Month tributes in February.

In 1989, a magazine article caught my eye which I had to read from beginning to end. This was not an ordinary story but about a black child, a Confederate President's First Lady and the Southern Presidential Family. The story was written by Gulfport, Mississippi freelance writer Mrs. Peggy Robbin's and is entitled, "Jim Limber Davis."

While Black History Month mostly focuses on black adults in history, this story is about a black child. This is a summary, in my own words, of Mrs. Robbin's splendid story.

On the morning of February 15, 1864, Mrs. Varina Davis, wife of Southern President Jefferson Davis, had concluded her errands and was driving her carriage down the streets of Richmond, Virginia on her way home. She heard screams from a distance and quickly went to the scene to see what was happening.

Varina saw a young black child being abused by an older man. She demanded that he stop striking the child and when this failed she shocked the man by forcibly taking the child away. She took the child to her carriage and with her to the Confederate White House.

Arriving home Mrs. Davis and maid 'Ellen' gave the young boy a bath, attended to his cuts and bruises and feed him. The only thing he would tell them is that his name was Jim Limber. He was happy to be rescued and was given some clothes of the Davis' son Joe who was the same size and age.

The Davis family were visited the following evening by a friend of Varina's, noted Southern Diarist-Mary Boykin Chesnut, who saw Jim Limber and wrote later that she had seen the boy and that he was eager to show me his cuts and bruises. She also said, "the child is an orphan rescued yesterday from a brutal Negro Guardian." and "there are things in life that are too sickening, and such cruelty is one of them."

There were some children who addressed Jim as Jim Limber Davis for fun. This was fine with him because he felt he was indeed a member of the family. The Davis letters to friends are indication of his acceptance and they said he was a member of their gang of children.

The Christmas of 1864, would be memorable for the Davis family and probably the best Christmas Jim Limber would ever have. A Christmas tree was set up in Saint Paul's Church, decorated and gifts placed beneath it. On Christmas evening orphans were brought to the church and were delighted with the presents they got. Jim was happy that he helped decorate the tree.

Mrs. Robbin's wrote, in her story, that Mrs. Jefferson Davis was a very good story teller who was able to make sounds of different animals in the stories about the critters. Jim was always eager to help.

The end of the War Between the States was coming and Richmond was being evacuated. Varina and the children left ahead of Jefferson Davis. The president and his staff left just hours before the occupation of Union troops.

Varina and the children were by the side of Jefferson Davis at his capture near Irwinville, Georgia and again the family was separated. Jefferson Davis was taken to Virginia to spend two years in prison.

Mrs. Davis and her children were taken to Macon, Georgia and later to Port Royal outside of Savannah. At Port Royal their Union escort, Captain Charles T. Hudson, made good at his earlier threats to take Jim Limber away.

As the Union soldiers came to forcibly take young Jim, he put up a great struggle and tried to hold onto his family as they to him. Jim and his family cried uncontrollably as the child was taken. His family would never again see him or know what happened to him. The Davis' tried in later years to locate Jim but were unsuccessful. 

The Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond, Virginia is home to a portrait of Jim Limber Davis in the Eleanor S. Brookenbrough Library. I thank Mrs. Peggy Robbin's who wrote the Jim Limber Davis story in 1989 and the Southern Partisan Magazine for publishing her story in the second quarter Issue-Volume IX of 1989.

February 14, 2011

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Home Remedies for What Ails Health Care
By Benita M. Dodd

In a week in which the crafters of the new federal health care law probably needed trauma care, two of Georgia's best known physicians were attending a Georgia Public Policy Foundation event focused on what's next. Both are known more for their passion than their profession. Both are authors of new books inspired by this ongoing controversy; both offer solutions, not snake oil.

Three-term Georgia Congressman Tom Price, a speaker at the Foundation event, is a key opponent of President Obama's cornerstone legislation. Just this week, in a 26-state challenge that included Georgia, a Florida judge ruled the entire health care law unconstitutional because of the mandate that everyone have insurance. A Virginia judge had ruled in December that the individual mandate violated the Constitution; two other judges have ruled that the law is constitutional. The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to have the final say. 

An orthopedic surgeon who was medical director of the Orthopedic Clinic at Atlanta's Grady Memorial Hospital before his election to Congress, Price authored the Empowering Patients First Act, legislation he believes will help provide access for all Americans to afordable, quality health care.

Price's new book, co-authored with businessman L.Gerald Davis, was released this week. "Saving the American Miracle: The Destruction and Restoration of American Values," maintains that America is moving "inexorably toward totalitarianism" and offers a strategy for "citizens who reject the tyranny of neo-totalitarianism, and who hope for a restoration of traditional American values." 

"All of us who have been confounded by what's happened in our country – in the last four years with focus, but for a longer time – have been frustrated by what appear to be solutions but don't embrace fundamental American principles," Price said this week.

He maintains Americans start with the wrong question: What is government going to do? And he traces that deterioration of American values to the New Deal era which, "by creating government relief and work programs, encouraged our population to become dependent on government."

The book proposed getting America off the dependency track, including changing the tax system or "dependent voters will outnumber taxpaying voters, and then it will be too late to vote at all." Outreach to those under age 30, the patriotic "Millennials," is critical; they will shape America's future.

"Health care is one of the epicenters of the challenge to our liberty and freedom," Price says. "We can't have a central system that responds to patients' needs; none of the solutions require putting the federal government in charge of our lives."

Price finds a kindred spirit in Atlanta urologist Brian Hill, whose new book, "Stop the Noise," was written out of a desire to deliver the quality care that his patients need without ideology and emotionalism getting in the way. 

Hill speaks from experience: He is the physician known for his exchange with Congressman David Scott's at an August 2009 town hall meeting. When Hill asked Scott about his stance on Obamacare, Scott angrily accused him of hijacking the meeting and insinuated Hill wasn't from the congressional district. Ironically, Hill points out, it was Scott who was not from the district. 

Politics, not patients, came first as the health care plan was crafted, Hill writes, "And that was a shame because we have a tremendous opportunity to ... bring about that which we all desire: to increase access to a highly efficient, high-quality health care system in a cost-effective manner."

Hill doesn't blame government. "We as individuals are to blame ... We have abdicated our duty to be the caretakers of our government and to maintain a level of our accountability from our lawmakers," he writes. 

Hill examines who best manages the system, and how to create quality and efficiency by pursuing the outcome data that will give the government direction on healing the broken system. 

Doctors' orders: Individual accountability, or as Hill puts it, "The patient becomes the consumer at the center of health care model, moral hazard is minimized and the system becomes more in line with basic economic principles."

It's inspiring to see these two Georgians taking the lead in health care solutions and the bigger problem: Americans acquiescing to government the liberty hard won by our Founding Fathers. 

To buy "Saving the American Miracle," by U.S. Rep. Tom Price and L. Gerald Davis, go to http://tinyurl.com/4rbh6ta
To buy "Stop the Noise," by Brian E. Hill, MD, go to www.stopthenoisehealthcare.com/purchase.html

To comment on this Foundation commentary, please go to http://tinyurl.com/4cwepmr.

Benita M. Dodd is vice president of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation, an independent think tank that proposes practical, market-oriented approaches to public policy to improve the lives of Georgians. Nothing written here is to be construed as necessarily reflecting the views of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation or as an attempt to aid or hinder the passage of any bill before the U.S. Congress or the Georgia Legislature. 

February 4, 2011

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Foundation's Role Pivotal in Georgia's 
Lessons in School Choice
By Benita M. Dodd

National School Choice Week is Jan. 23-29. The Georgia Public Policy Foundation, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year and was a pioneer in the push to expand education choices for all Georgia’s children, joins a dozen organizations at the state Capitol on Tuesday for a School Choice Celebration and Rally. 

Long before the Obama administration’s Race to the Top grants, long before the Bush Administration’s No Child Left Behind law, the Foundation was championing the right of parents to have a greater say and choice in how best to educate their children. In 1991, when the Foundation was established, school choice became one of its first priorities. Its first major publication was, “Reach for the Stars: A Proposal for Education Reform in Georgia.” 
“The remedy for true public school reform will be painful to the entrenched bureaucracy,” the Foundation warned. “What we need is to change the tests, cut the bureaucracy and create choice and competition among the schools.” Put another way, the Foundation promoted “three integral and inseparable concepts that will ‘free the teachers’ and ‘free the parents’ – Deregulation, School Autonomy and Parental Choice.”

Of the three, nothing levels the playing field and initiates competition for excellence as well as choice does. Preventing a family from seeking out the best education for their child is intolerable. Why force a child into a school simply based on where they live? Low-income families often can't move into a better school district. Children have varying needs. Uniformity encourages mediocrity. 
"Reach for the Stars" urged: “One of the guiding philosophies of this plan is that government funding for K-12 education should be targeted to the child – not to the school district. Each and every school-aged child will be entitled to public support for his or her education. Parents can use that child’s publicly funded ‘scholarship’ at any school where the child meets admission requirements. Exceptions would be to schools that fail to meet state performance standards, or private schools that choose not to participate.”

The Foundation championed site-based management and charter schools, which are public schools of choice that receive greater flexibility and independence than traditional public schools in exchange for a performance contract.

It took time, but policy-makers slowly implemented Foundation ideas. As Georgia struggled with academic achievement, charter schools took hold. Georgia's charter school law was passed in 1993; Cobb County’s Addison Elementary became the state’s first charter school in 1995. Today, 135 charter schools and programs enroll about 4 percent of the state's public school population. In a report released this week, the state Department of Education found that charter schools show slightly higher Adequate Yearly Progress than traditional schools and most charter schools performed better than their district as a whole.

Other milestones: 

1996: The Foundation launches its vaunted Education Report Card for Parents. 
2005: The Georgia Virtual School becomes the first state online school, offering courses to public, private and home-schooled students. Last year, 5,547 students took 8,923 courses. Online offerings are increasing in Georgia. 

2007: Georgia establishes Special Needs Scholarships, taxpayer-funded scholarships for eligible special-needs students so parents could choose the public or private school that best served their needs. Now, 190 private schools and 2,550 students participate. 

2007: The Charter Systems Act enables entire school districts to apply for charter status. A dozen systems have. 
2007: Legislature implements funding for career academies. Today there are 21, linking high schools, technical colleges and universities and businesses to advance work skills. 

2008: Creation of the Georgia Charter Schools Commission, a state-level, independent charter school authorizing entity. 
2008: Student Scholarship Organizations (SSOs) allow Georgia taxpayers to donate to an SSO of their choice and receive a dollar-for-dollar state income tax credit.
The Foundation was at the table in the 2000s to promote higher expectations and accountability as Georgia developed its lauded Georgia Performance Standards. 

Choice and academic performance will improve further as Georgia takes greater advantage of digital learning opportunities and courts approve the funding following the child. The state hasn't reached the stars over these 20 years, but it has come a long way. And it’s a journey the Foundation will continue to navigate.

Benita M. Dodd is vice president of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation, an independent think tank that proposes practical, market-oriented approaches to public policy to improve the lives of Georgians. Nothing written here is to be construed as necessarily reflecting the views of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation or as an attempt to aid or hinder the passage of any bill before the U.S. Congress or the Georgia Legislature.

January 21, 2011 

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Tax Reform Council Delivers a Promising Package 
By E. Frank Stephenson 

When Georgia’s Special Council on Tax Reform and Fairness released its recommendations on January 7, headline writers trumpeted the council’s proposal to eliminate the sales tax exemption for groceries. That proposal is but one part of a far-reaching reform that would enhance the state’s economic competitiveness and streamline Georgians’ taxes. 

The council wisely began by adopting a set of “Guiding Principles.” These principles include creating a tax system that is more stable during changing macroeconomic conditions; does not distort individual behavior; is easy for taxpayers to understand and for the state to administer; levies roughly equal tax burdens on similarly situated taxpayers and, per the council’s mandate, is growth-enhancing. All are worthy goals. 

Applying the guiding principles led the council to call for significant changes to Georgia’s sales, income and other taxes. The personal and corporate income taxes would be phased down to a single rate of 4 percent. Marginal tax rates affect economic behavior, so this reduction should foster more commercial activity, especially because many small businesses are taxed at personal income tax rates. 

The council also proposes that existing credits, exemptions and deductions be largely eliminated. Only an exemption for dependents and a low income credit would remain. Federal adjusted gross income would become the starting point for Georgia’s income tax, thereby eliminating the page of additions and subtractions from tax returns. The resulting tax code should be simpler for both taxpayers and tax administrators. 

Similarly, the council recommends ending many current sales tax exemptions, including groceries, and broadening the sales tax base to cover many untaxed personal services. These are all worthwhile suggestions. Many existing exemptions have no proven economic benefit and some appear to be sops to politically favored industries. Exempting groceries made sales tax revenue more volatile during economic downturns. (Both the proposed low income tax credit and the continued exemption of food purchased with food stamps would prevent the taxation of groceries from unduly burdening low income citizens.) And the base broadening modernizes the sales tax to reflect shifting consumption patterns over time. 

The recommendations also call for avoiding taxing business inputs. Thus current exemptions for business inputs would remain and new exemptions would be created for energy used in manufacturing, mining and agriculture. This would make Georgia’s business climate more attractive and avoids the tax compounding that arises from taxing both inputs and outputs of firms with multi-stage production processes. These changes should also reduce businesses’ cost of tax compliance. 

On gasoline taxation, the council calls for a straightforward cents-per-gallon gasoline levy to replace the current combination of 7.5 cents per gallon plus 3 percent of the selling price. Today’s odd structure makes it difficult to forecast available revenue for road construction and has the perverse effect of increasing gasoline taxes as gas prices rise. Regarding cigarette taxation, the council recommends a modest increase but correctly avoids a large hike that would spur Georgians to buy their smokes from neighboring states with lower taxes. 

Past governors’ pet tax provisions did not escape the council’s examination. The council proposes eliminating both Gov. Barnes’ sales tax holidays and Gov. Perdue’s exemption for retirement income. The former merely shifts the timing of purchases while there is no proof of a positive economic impact arising from the latter. 

The council also calls for eliminating many “economic development” credits that favor specific industries. It recommends that the General Assembly create a new economic development fund instead. The transparency and fixed dollar amount of the new fund would be an improvement over existing policy while recognizing that modern industrial recruiting often requires financial incentives in addition to a good overall business climate. 

The recommendations do produce one cause for concern: The council calls for the broadening of the sales tax to become effective July 1, 2011, with the income tax reductions being phased in beginning January 1, 2012. The net effect appears to be a significant tax hike over the short run that diminishes somewhat as the income tax cuts are fully phased in. Immediately implementing all of the income tax cuts and adding a tax-expenditure limitation to the council’s recommendations would help reassure Georgians that these tax reforms are not a stealth tax increase. 

Overall, the council has put forth a commendable plan that is pro-growth, less complicated and less riddled with special exemptions and credits. If implemented so it avoids a large tax increase, it will be an improvement over Georgia’s existing tax structure. 


E. Frank Stephenson is chairman of the Economics Department at Berry College in Rome, Georgia, and is a senior fellow with the Georgia Public Policy Foundation, an independent think tank that proposes practical, market-oriented approaches to public policy to improve the lives of Georgians. Nothing written here is to be construed as necessarily reflecting the views of the Foundation or as an attempt to aid or hinder the passage of any bill before the U.S. Congress or the Georgia Legislature. 

January 14, 2011

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Eight Affordable Ideas for Georgia
By Kelly McCutchen

The General Assembly gathers in Atlanta next week facing a deficit of well over $1 billion. Across-the-board budget cuts are no longer sufficient to bridge the budget gap. Georgia needs more innovative, transformative ideas. The budget would appear to limit the state’s options, but there are still several progressive reforms that won’t break the bank. 

Tax Reform: Pro-growth tax reforms that shift taxes to consumption and away from taxing work and investment would improve Georgia’s competitive position without costing money. Simplifying the tax code would also have positive effects. Finally, providing local governments with the flexibility, with voter approval, to temporarily shift sales tax proceeds to operations could avoid damaging property tax increases.

Regulatory Reform: In 2006, Governor Perdue signed an executive order creating the Governor’s Small Business Regulatory Reform Initiative, putting in place a process to ensure proper review of new regulations. But Georgia can and should be much more proactive in identifying existing regulations that are outdated, burdensome or redundant and need updating or elimination. Georgia’s new governor should expand the scope of this initiative and enlist the help of Georgia’s small business community.

Pension Reform: Nearly every public pension fund has outperformed Georgia’s over the past decade. A task force of financial experts working with the Commission for a New Georgia recommends broadening the asset allocation of our pension funds, as every other state in the nation has done. Diversification is designed to reduce overall portfolio risk and increase returns over time. An increase in investment earnings would protect benefits for future retirees and reduce contribution requirements for teachers, whose mandatory contribution rate has gone up by more than 10 percent over the past two years. 

Criminal Justice Reform: One Georgian in 13 is under some form of correctional supervision – the highest rate in the nation. According to the Georgia Constitution, protecting “person and property is the paramount duty of government.” Georgia should be tough on crime and it should also be smart. The state of Texas has saved more than $2 billion and reduced their recidivism rate by adopting a series of common-sense measures. Georgia should move forward with programs designed to bring corrections costs under control, reduce crime, make victims whole and put more offenders on the path to becoming productive, taxpaying citizens.

Tort Reform: This critical driver of health care costs was left unaddressed by the recent federal health care law. Defensive medicine needlessly drives up costs without improving patient safety. Studies indicate that statistically, Americans are just as likely to be a victim of medical malpractice today as they were 30 years ago. Georgia should take a serious look at reforms such as medical malpractice review panels.

Expanded Online Education Options: Budget cuts have forced many schools to eliminate arts, foreign language and Advanced Placement course offerings. The Georgia Virtual School (GAVS), managed by the Georgia Department of Education, provides a wide variety of online courses taught by certified teachers to any school in the state. Unfortunately, the number of classes offered by GAVS is capped. Georgia should eliminate the cap and every student to take advantage of these high-quality, online courses.

Incentives for Healthy Behavior: About half of all health care costs are related to behavior. Implementing health care incentive programs for state employees would save $180 million in the short term, and as much as $1.5 billion over five years, according to an actuarial projection. Incentive programs provide rewards to individuals who make measurable progress in improving their health. Their success has been demonstrated in the private sector. Now it’s time for the state’s largest health care plan to take action. 

Health Care Price Transparency: Actuaries and consumers both believe that more transparency within the U.S. health care system is the key to bending the cost curve downward, a recent survey found. With the state insuring over 600,000 lives, Georgia is well positioned to jumpstart price transparency. This wealth of real time claims data can be used to provide state employees with the true average market price for everything from drugs to MRIs to medical procedures. Georgia would become a national leader in this area and the state’s health care costs would shrink.

Georgia should continue to push the reforms that have made this one of the best managed states in the nation, but innovation is the best opportunity for true reform. Tax, regulatory and tort reform will create the right conditions for innovation in the private sector while the state pursues innovation in the areas of criminal justice, education and heath care. 

Kelly McCutchen is president of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation, an independent think tank that proposes practical, market-oriented approaches to public policy to improve the lives of Georgians. Nothing written here is to be construed as necessarily reflecting the views of the Foundation or as an attempt to aid or hinder the passage of any bill before the U.S. Congress or the Georgia Legislature.

January 7, 2011 

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