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Monthly Archive for June, 2008

Education in Georgia: A Dream Within A Nightmare!

Published on June 24, 2008 in Podcast. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

There was a time when just about every parent in America had a dream regarding their child’s education. Prior to WWII the dream was that their child would graduate from high school. After the war, the GI Bill, helped inspire the idea that your kid would, could, should graduate from college. Today, it seems we have progressed backwards, and just hope they don’t drop out of high school

I wanted to interview Tim Callahan, Director of the Professional Association of Georgia Educators (PAGE), to find out what he thought about HB 1133, the bill passed by the Georgia Legislature in 2008, which gave taxpayers (including corporations) a tax credit, up to about $7,500, for contributions to scholarships for private schools. Private school scholarships? Never heard of one, except maybe the $500 one the local civic club has set up. Boy, I bet this kind of tax credit will make private schools scholarship funds take off.

You need to understand this is a tax credit, folks, not a deduction, which means each dollar contributed to the private school is a dollar in taxes that someone else has to pay. That someone else is you and me!

I had previously interviewed Randy Hicks of the Georgia Family Council about this legislation. Randy and GFC think this kind of legislation is just great, and it probably is, but for whom? I don’t think it does anything to make education better in Georgia. I wanted to find out what educators thought about this kind of tax policy and just as I expected, PAGE thinks it is a bad idea.

Tim makes one thing clear: public education in Georgia is underfunded, signficantly so. I am sure a lot of us remember several decades ago when Georgia, under the leadership of Governor Joe Frank Harris, enacted QBE, Quality Basic Education Act. The goal of QBE was to evaluate the needs of our educational system, our public education system, and fund it 100%. The idea back then was probably that Georgia was low in the rankings of states when it came to the funding and quality of public education. Georgia wanted to prepare for the future and passed QBE. And that was the last thought of the future.

QBE has never been properly funded. Education has suffered. We blame the educators for poor results and use the poor results to continue to underfund education. It is a stupid cycle. Groups like the Georgia Family Council are doing everything they can to divert funds from public education to private schools because they, and the interests they represent, send their kids to private schools. They don’t care one iota about public education, which pretty much proves to me that GFC ought to take “Family” out of its name and replace it with “Taxpayer”! They never hesitate to gripe about the quality of our public schools, but they don’t care to fight to improve them. They don’t fight to make the legislature adequately fund QBE. No, they want it to fail or they just don’t care.

Everytime I interview a Republican legislator about education funding, I hear the same old response: we are spending more on education than ever before. So what? I am spending more on gas and food than ever before and I wouldn’t call that progress! The reason we spend more than ever before on education is because we have more students than ever before, but that does not mean we are spending more or spending enough. That is an entirely different question. That is the question that QBE was intended to answer: How much is enough?

Don’t get me wrong, I am not head over heels in love with public education. There are a lot of bad teachers. There are a lot of bad administrators. There is a lot of waste. There is a lot that needs to be done to improve it. My point is that underfunding it is not the answer. Funneling money to private schools is not the answer. Making taxpayers pay to send anyone’s kid to public school violates every conservative principal of government I know of. The people that support such propositions are acting are not conservatives. They don’t have a philosophy of government. All they have is an agenda.

 
 Tim Callahan, Director of PAGE [28:39m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (756)

The Georgia Family Council and Tax Policy in Georgia!

Published on June 19, 2008 in Podcast. 2 Comments Tags: , , .

The Georgia Family Council is a non-profit research and educational organization dedicated to strengthening families and promoting civil society. Those certainly sound like worthwhile goals, but I must admit, I wonder how an organization could accomplish such lofty goals unless it was a church. In this interview with the organization’s President, Randy Hicks, I try to find out.

I came across the Georgia Family Council a few weeks ago when the organization was mentioned in an interview about the cost of divorce and fragmented families. Dysfunctional families mean more families living in poverty and more families qualifying for government payments, you know, like Medicaid, welfare, food stamps, etc. No doubt this is a problem, but how do you fix it?

Enter the Georgia Family Council. One thing the GFC does is try to get churches within a community to pledge that couples cannot use the church to get married unless they agree to participate in something akin to an educational and counseling course to learn what it means to be married. If they don’t want to take the course, fine, they just can’t get married in the church. Interesting. I guess I am a skeptic. I have never thought that getting people to spend a few hours taking a course would result in some permanent change in their lives. If that is what a church wants to do, it certainly can’t hurt, but I still that, in the long run, this is the appearance of virtue without the heart of virtue.

To my surprise, Randy mentioned that Chattanooga had great success in reducing its divorce rate when it initiated similar efforts several years ago. I did find an article describing Chattanooga’s success. I would love to know the details and how the statistics were compiled.

Counseling seminars and programs are one thing, but the Georgia Family Council also seeks to influence public opinion and shape laws. Now, that really surprised me, but I don’t guess it should have. Everybody is trying to influence public opinion and shape laws, even me. But, how do you strengthen families influencing public opinion and shaping laws, i.e. lobbying? There are lots of ways actually, some good, some bad and some not so good. If you would like to see what the GFC tried to accomplish in the 2008 Georgia Legislative Session, you can read its 2008 Legislative Year in Review.

Randy and I had a pointed discussion about one of the GFC’s 2008 legislative successes: HB 1133. This is how the GFC Legislative Overview describes HB 1133:

HB 1133
Final Status: Signed by the Governor 5/14/08
The approval by the General Assembly of a state income tax credit for individuals and corporations who donate to student scholarship organizations was a big victory for those who believe that parents know how best to educate their children. The idea of education tax credits was introduced in HB 400 during the 2007 Session, but after that bill stalled, Rep. David Casas took the idea and helped to reformulate it into HB 1133. This bill was controversial throughout the process but has been approved by the Governor and becomes law.

Now, what the hell does a tax credit (according to Randy, as much as $7,500 worth) have to do with parents knowing how best to educate their children? I don’t care if you want your child to go to a private school. That is fine with me, but I don’t think I, as a taxpayor, should have to pay you for your child attending private school. If you can’t afford to send them on your own, join the rest of us down at the public school. The more the merrier.

I sure don’t think ABC corporation or Joe Neighbor should get to pay less in taxes because of a donation of money to a private school scholarship fund so your kid can get a scholarship to go to private school.

The people who pay taxes have to make up the difference. So, a few get a tax credit that very few people can afford to take advantage of, and the great majority have to pay more to make up for the decrease in tax revenue.

Sorry Randy, but I have given this a lot of thought since the interview and this is BS. It is a deception. Randy even argues that this will be good for the public schools because they will have the same amount of money and less students. Randy, if you think public schools get more money when they have less children, you are sadly mistaken, but I suspect you know this is total BS.

GFC also supported those ridiculous proposals in the 2008 legislature to do away with the property tax.

Folks, let me tell you the goal of this legislative agenda: to spread the idea that payng taxes is bad and starving the educational budget is good. Tax credits, particularly like this one, are nothing but a means of letting a small group of people decide whether or not they want to pay taxes.

In most situations like this I would think that GFC was misguided, but I think they know exactly what they are doing. This is not unintentional. Under the guise of promoting family GFC is out to cut taxes at the expense of education.

Now, for all of you who think the educational system is broken, you are right to some extent. But if the goal is to make it better, it is going to take two things: leadership and money. We are not going to make education better for our children by putting in our pocket the money needed for education.

As I pointed out to Randy, if GFC wants to strengthen families it ought to be out there fighting for higher wages for working parents so that maybe they don’t have to work two or three jobs. That certainly seems more likely to keep families together than giving people tax breaks for giving money to private schools.

After the interview, someone from GFC sent me a “study” that “proves” that tax credits for private school scholarhips save school districts money. So that Randy can’t say I didn’t pass this piece of crap along as well, here it is. I haven’t taken the time to read this, but I have a pretty good nose for BS, so in order to head off any accusation that I don’t want to know the facts, let me make this offer to Randy, the GFC and the people that did the study: Let’s do an interview and discuss your statistics. I think they are based on fuzzy math. However, before the interview you have to provide me with all the research data and a list of contributors to GFC with the amount given.

Just let me know when you are ready.

 
 Randy Hicks, Georgia Family Council [30:53m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (693)

“Founding Faith: Providence, Politics and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America”

Published on June 11, 2008 in Podcast. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

I thoroughly enjoy history. I remember the first time someone tried to convince me that Thomas Jefferson and George Washington were “born again Christians.” That phrase has a fairly specific meaning in today’s America, and I knew that neither Jefferson, nor Washington were “born again” as I understood the term 20 years ago. People can believe what they will or what they want, but when you screw with history, you are no friend of mine. I remember when all the church schools started teaching kids (mine included) that our “Founders” were all Bible toting Christians who made sure America was founded as a Christian nation based on Christian principles. I didn’t have the time, nor the desire, to refute this malarky.

Finally, someone has written the book that I needed back then, “Founding Faith”, by Steve Waldman. Waldman is the Founder of beliefnet.com, the largest spiritual web site, dedicated to helping people in their spiritual walk whether it be Christian, Islam, Buddhist, Hindu or whatever. In this interview Steve explains the impossibility of referring to the faith of our Founding Fathers as if they were one homogenous group who believed just alike. They were anything but. Just as people today cannot agree on matters of religion and faith, our Founding Fathers, and the colonies from which they came, were all over the place. Don’t you remember? Puritans had their state, while Quakers had theirs, Catholics theirs, and they sent all the debtors to Georgia.

So what does this have to do with today? As Steve points out, there are those today who invoke the “faith of our fathers” to argue that these ancestors never intended for their to be a separation of church and state. If you repeat this a thousand times, it still will not be true.

Steve’s purpose in writing the book is probably a little more altruistic than my purpose in interviewing him. His desire is for each of us to have a better understanding, historically and practically, about the relationship between religion and government, separation of church and state. My purpose is much more sinister: to squish underfoot the idea that church and state should not be separated.

Actually, if there were a consensus among the Washingtons, Jeffersons, etc., it was that the federal government should stay the heck away from religion, while the states could put you in jail if you didn’t attend church on Sunday. You have to remember the guys that came up with the Constitution and the Bill of Rights intended it to apply to the federal government, only. So back in those days if the State wanted everyone to attend church, nothing in the constitution prohibited them from passing such a law. They had some pretty weird laws back then. By today’s standards they were harsh, cruel laws which would shock most of us by today’s standards. Things change! Thank the Lord!

It took the Civil War and the Fourteenth Amendment for the “freedom of religion” of the First Amendment to apply to the States. Of course, the States didn’t give up their monopoly on religion just because the Fourteenth Amendment was passed and that is why ever since 1868 the courts have had to deal with a progression of cases which emphasize the tension between the original intent of the First Amendment and the restrictive intent of the Fourteenth Amendmant.

Maybe this explains why all (at least as far as I can recall right now) the laws that try to make us do religious things (like pray in school and at graduation) are state laws, not federal. It’s that old state power trying to exert dominance over the freedom granted to the individual under the First Amendment. If we could understand and appreciate that this supposed controversy over separation of church and state, is really a battle between us (as free individuals) and the state (that stupid entity that can’t get the garbage picked up on Monday), we might realize that this is a battle I (us) (we) (the individual) am supposed to win!

I think our Founding Fathers understood this, much, much better than we do. They prized individual freedom over everything else. They fought a losing battle and won against all odds because they preferred freedom to tyranny.

Tell me again. Why do you want to pass a law that makes me listen to you pray?

If you want to have some fun and find out more about the religion of Jefferson or Washington or Madison, just go to Steve’s archive about our Founding Fathers. You will be amazed at what those crazy guys were thinking!

 
 Steven Waldman, Founder BeliefNet.com [32:06m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (675)

Georgia vs. Tennessee: A River, It’s Water and the Law

Published on June 2, 2008 in Podcast. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

This interview with Sen. David Shafer (R-48) is a good example of the benefits of communication. Lord knows I have my issues with Republicans (as a party, that is) and I am sure Sen. Shafer didn’t vote my way on tort reform in ‘05. But, when I set up this interview with him to discuss the resolution he sponsored urging Gov. Perdue to get the northern boundary of the State with Tennessee settled after 180 years, I was pretty sure this was one of those hairbrained ideas that made no sense. I have certainly joked about joining the militia and invading Chattanooga. Jokes aside, this interview convinces me that it is a legitimate dispute which needs to be resolved.

There have been a lot of newspaper editorials and other commentaries criticizing the resolution primarily because it is what it is: a rather blatant power grab for water. Sen. Shafer doesn’t deny as much. Those that criticize it probably think it is a sleazy way to try to solve the water shortage in metro Atlanta. The idea is that Atlanta should resolve its water problems by realistically evaluating its ability to support development and growth and live within its means, water included. I don’t disagree with this either, but I am not sure it is a valid reason to ignore the northern border issue.

If you would like to know the history of this dispute, you can listen to the interview or you can read Senate Resolution 822 which enumerates the various surveys, resolutions and litigation between Georgia and Tennessee since 1818. There is one fact I want to make sure you are aware of: a lot of north Georgia land drains into the Tennessee River but, with the present location of the border, has no access to that water once it gets to the river.

Unless someone can add something to the factual scenario, it seems to me that two things are beyond dispute: (1) Congress established Georgia’s northern border and Tennessee’s southern border as the 35th parallel and that has never been changed, and (2) part of the Tennessee River flows through Georgia because the legal border runs along the 35th parallel.

Because these two statements are true, I cannot think of a single reason not to get the location of the northern border correctly established. If you are concerned about suddenly changing the citizenship of people who thought they were living in Tennessee, that is probably a legitimate concern. However, as Sen. Shafer makes clear, he has no real desire to annex citizens of Tennessee into Georgia. All Tennessee has to do is negotiate a resolution that gives Georgia access to the Tennessee River and only squirrels and possums will have to find a new polling precinct.

I doubt there are many of us who would agree to give up our land without a fight. People fight over boundary lines all the time. People fight over inches, feet and acres and spend thousands enforcing their claims to land they believe they own. While in any particular case, the cost might be considered a waste of resources, the same cannot be said of what is at stake with regard to correctly locating Georgia’s northern border.

What is at stake? The future. This issue has waxed and wained for 190 years and has yet to go away. Ignoring it once again will not make it disappear this time. I appears the main reason it has once again come to our attention is directly related to the impact of the drought in Georgia. Do you think this is the last drought? If the current drought ends tomorrow, it will not be forever. In 20 or 30 years there will be twice as many people in Georgia, and most of them will not be in Buckhead. As populations increase worldwide and within each of the United States, competition for scarce resources, including water, will only increase.

With the climate changing, droughts recurring, none of us know the needs of the future. To fail to secure a legitimate resource, to fail to even try, may well be looked upon as a disatrous failure 30 years from now. Until the issue is resolved, once and for all, this issue of access to the Tennessee River will come back, again and again. Talk about a waste of resources. If anyone thinks Georgia’s claim is invalid or barred by the passage of time, fine, but until the Supreme Court of the United States says so, it ain’t so. Thirty more years of delay will not make Georgia’s position more justified. Whether the issue is resolved by a negotiated settlement or by a Supreme Court decision, it needs to be resolved, sooner, not later.

That seems to me to be the only responsible course of action.

 
 Sen. David Shafer (R-48) [30:21m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (575)

Georgians for Gun Safety: The Other Side of the Mountain!

Published on June 1, 2008 in Podcast. 3 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

The Second Amendment, the right to bear arms, is one of those “issues” where people on both sides believe they are right, as well as misunderstood. In case you have forgotten, it provides: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

In my recent interview with John Monroe of Georgia Carry.org, he explains the confusing and restrictive nature of Georgia’s gun laws. In this interview, Alice Johnson, Founder of Georgians for Gun Safety, makes it clear, her organization is not against the Second Amendment, but does have legitimate concerns about the new Georgia law, HB 89, that allows people to carry concealed weapons into restaurants, public parks and onto public transportation.

I may be wrong, but as I understand the threshhold issue, defenders of the Second Amendment believe that if the right to own a gun is a constitutional right, then just about any infringement or regulation of that right is unconstitutional. There is some degree of logic to that argument, but it certainly flies in the face of common sense. Common sense tells me that guns are dangerous. Experience tells me that there are a lot of crazy, nutty people out there. Logic tells me that I don’t want some people to have a gun, constitutional right or not. I don’t feel the same way about any of the other rights bestowed by the “Bill of Rights.” I want people to have the absolute most freedom of the press and freedom of religion that there can possibly be. Same for freedom from searches by law enforcement. Take a double portion, please.

As Alice points out, it makes little sense that the people that use a gun everyday as part of their job, law enforcement, are required to undergo a significant degree of training in the handling of a gun, BEFORE they use it. And yet, in Georgia, unless you are disqualified from buying a gun (felony conviction, etc.), once you own it there is no requirement that you undergo any training before you get a permit to carry it as a concealed weapon. The reason this makes no sense to me is this: Assuming that the only reason for carrying a concealed weapon is personal safety, isn’t some degree of training essential to that safety, if not for you, then at least for me? Is your carrying a gun supposed to make me (everyone else that is around you) less safe?

Alice gives a lot of reasons why the new Georgia law (as well as others) doesn’t do anything to balance gun ownership with gun responsibility. The one that really makes you think is the fact that under the new Georgia law, law enforcement has no input into the decision as to whether or not any particular individual should or should not get a permit to carry a concealed weapon. I am sure we all know people who may have never been convicted of a felony, but who are constantly in trouble with the law for this or that, or who are just mean, short-tempered, hot-headed and maybe even nuts. The fact there are such people certainly should not prevent me from owning a gun, but that doesn’t mean they should own one, much less have a permit to carry it concealed.

If you know such people, think what law enforcement knows, who they know, who is always involved in domestic violence, who is a trouble maker, who has no business carrying a gun. And yet, the Georgia legislature (which would certainly seem to be pro-law enforcement generally) has completly castrated law enforcement in this instance. In doing so, they have endangered all our lives.

Without a doubt, giving law enforcement power over who can carry a gun has the potential for abuse. Without a doubt there is a mechanism by which that abuse can be lessened: the courts. But my point is simply that it defies reason to make the knowledge and information of local law enforcement irrelevant to the determination of who should have a permit to carry a concealed weapon.

Now, this does not mean that once the new law goes into effect on July 1, 2008 there is going to be a rash of shootings involving people carrying concealed weapons into public parks, restaurants, and onto public transportation. Probably won’t be. But, I think it can be said without a doubt that someone will get a permit to carry a concealed weapon who shouldn’t, someone that local law enforcement would know should not have a concealed weapon (maybe any weapon). And, I am equally certain that at some unknown time in the future such a person will misuse the gun they never should have had. There will be at least one killing, one life taken.

I don’t know whether it will be you, but I doubt it will be me. We never think it will be us. We always think it will be someone else. I guess it will be you! And when that death occurs, the spouse, the children of the innocent victim won’t be able to sue Tim Bearden, (R-68) the legislator (and member of Georgia Carry) who sponsored the bill or anyone associated with the passage of this legislation. They won’t be able to do anything about the fact that by simply giving law enforcement input into the process might have prevented their personal tragedy.

But maybe, a few unnecessary deaths will get the law changed. I just hope it ain’t mine.

 
 Alice Johnson, Georgians for Gun Safety [29:10m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1035)