Newspaper Page Text
Page 4A
The Braselton News
Wednesday, July 26, 2017
Opinion
To our politicians: We’ll have
whatever you’re having
Science fiction
now part
of careers
academies
By Ron Bridgeman
Machine shop and cosmetology were
in the “vocational” wing of my high
school, and that was where the trouble
makers were shunted off.
Now, we have “college and career
academies.” Machine shops are “mecha-
tronics” and have to do as much with
computers and math as with grease and
skinned knuckles. Diesel technicians
work on huge engines with computer
diagnostics.
“Pathways” are all over the map. Some
school districts have a dizzying array of
them. The director of Henry County’s
program mentioned 47 last week.
I did the “college” pathway because
I was told to by a sophomore guidance
counselor, who had looked at my junior
high grades and test scores.
Now, kids are being asked to imagine
their own careers in the sixth grade.
Multiple districts in Georgia - Hall
County is one near us - are requiring
those “plans.” The Hall County superin
tendent says, “So what if they change 10
times before they're through.”
I just read where Chicago schools are
going to require such plans for students.
Technical colleges offer “video game
design” courses. Lanier Tech has that. It
is all computers - software that is still
science fiction to me.
It’s a different world - especially if
you can remember The Big Chill as an
adult, as I was reminded over the week
end while on Facebook. (I’m not there
a lot, but I'm gradually moving into the
late 20th century.)
All of the above came up last week
because I heard Jackson County’s dog-
and-pony show about its push for a
college and career academy. It was an
impressive program.
The promoter of the idea in Georgia,
Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle, was the featured
attraction.
Cagle was smart. He talked about Jack-
son County, about the world of possibili
ties through technology, about good jobs
without getting a four-year degree.
He never mentioned he is a candidate
for governor next year. That was quite
deliberate.
The event was to promote the county’s
push for a college and career academy.
Just showing up for it was a campaign
event. Cagle didn’t need to do more.
It was nice to see an understated poli
tician for a change.
As I said to my wife, Cagle has a real
accomplishment he can campaign on.
The idea of college and career academies
is far from new. It has been around for
decades.
But he was smart enough to start pro
moting it years ago. and he was skilled
enough to get money put in the state
budget to help the idea along.
Three college and career academies a
year get the $3 million grants Jackson is
seeking. I covered a similar program in
Putnam County that is now up and run
ning. I saw the beginning of a successful
push for an academy in Morgan County.
Jackson County has the good sense
to follow much of that model. It has an
impressive list of businesses supporting
the push.
In a lot of ways, this is more “back
to the future.” Part of the model for
the academies is the German notion of
apprenticeships - which was popular in
the 1970s.
The difference is the updated version
has strong academic parts to it - it’s not
the “vocational” wing of my youth.
Given the ubiquity of computers in our
lives, that might be natural. But it takes
a bit of getting used to for someone who
used a pencil and eraser in school.
The publicity for Jackson County’s
“EC3” mentions the possibility that
Commerce and Banks County also might
be part of the academy. Why wouldn’t
they?
I wondered why both those school sys
tems were not visibly promoting the idea
at last week’s event. Equally important
was the complete lack of interest or vis
ibility from Jefferson schools? Maybe
that system sends all of its graduates to
colleges.
Cagle has a bruising primary ahead
of him and a number of well-known
political opponents standing before he
can make a general election. But I don’t
know of any candidate who has as strong
a “plus” as he does starting out.
Ron Bridgeman is a reporter for Main-
street Newspapers. Send email to him at
ron @ mainstreetnews. com.
By Zach Mitcham
If I was sitting at a table with a
Washington lawmaker and we were
looking over a health insurance menu,
I’d keep it really simple when the
waiter came.
“I’ll have whatever he’s having.”
That’s all I’d say.
Absurd scenario, right? Yes, but the
sentiment seems sound to me. I want
my family, your family, all Americans,
to be “connected” when it comes to
health care. By “connected,” I mean,
I want that lawmaker to look out for
us, not the pharmaceuticals, not the
donors, not the insurance companies,
not the share prices on Wall Street.
I want that lawmaker to see that if a
system doesn’t work for him person
ally, well, it doesn’t work for the rest
of us either. I want to be in the same
boat as all federal employees. I don’t
want to feel there are protected classes
on a sturdy ship deciding whether to
throw out any inflatable ducks to the
rest of us struggling to keep our noses
above the water.
Oh, and by the way, your insurance
won’t cover the inflatable duck, which
costs $7 at Walgreens, but since you
got it through the medical system,
that duck will be $348. And you will
get six bills for the duck, two of them
coming after you’ve actually paid.
Ugh!
We are all living, breathing bod
ies with vulnerabilities to time and
chance. We are all patients, whether
now or in the future, because all of our
bodies will eventually fail. And when
that happens, we’ll be at the mercy of
many things, including an increasing
ly hostile medical finance system that
places profits and volume over health.
The fact that the system is crippled
is clear to anyone with a confusing
medical bill and a massive premium
payment that swells each year like a
worsening infection.
Under the status quo, the pus-filled
abscess of our medical finance system
will eventually burst. It can’t survive
like this forever. At some point, most
of us will opt out of insurance, decid
ing that insurance is its own form of
financial ruin, due to its insane esca
lations in cost. Think about it. What’s
better — risking bankruptcy because
you lack insurance, or facing bank
ruptcy because you have it and can’t
afford it? At a certain point, I’d rather
just risk catastrophe than have it guar
anteed in massive premiums.
I wonder if insurance companies
recognize their impending demise.
They can’t continue to jack up pre
miums on people and not have a mass
exodus in years to come.
Whatever your feelings about
Obamacare, I don’t know how you
can argue against one fundamental
tenet of that legislation: People with
pre-existing conditions shouldn’t be
shut out of any insurance help. Other
wise, a kid gets cancer and also catch
es financial ruin for the rest of his life
because of a “pre-existing condition.”
I’m not for that. And correcting that
was morally necessary for this coun
try, which Obamacare did.
But this morally right action has
carried a huge financial complication.
While people with pre-existing con
ditions shouldn’t be excluded from
all help, it’s also completely unfair to
insurance companies to require them
to cover everyone unless you also
require that everyone sign up. If peo
ple can sign up whenever they want,
then they’ll just wait until things go
wrong. They won’t pay until they
need it. Insurance companies would
then collapse.
So, Republicans in the 90s drew up
a “mandate” plan to deal with this
problem. And Obamacare implement
ed that plan by requiring people to
pay fines if they didn’t have insur
ance. This enraged many, who felt it
was government forcing a purchase.
This “mandate” became synonymous
with Obama, even though it began
as a GOP idea. And so, Republi
cans tried to scrap the “Obama” from
“Obamacare” and appease supporters
and insurance companies by side-step
ping a “mandate” and proposing a six-
month waiting period for anyone who
drops coverage. They also looked at
massive cuts to those receiving help
to finance tax cuts. Those plans have
now failed. And a straight repeal of
Obamacare appears dead, too.
Our health care system is terribly
flawed, because pricing is obscene
and not even remotely tied to logical
value. No, what we have is a perver
sion of value. If Republicans passed
health reform or a straight repeal, then
they would have completely owned
health care, as the Democrats did
under Obama. But having power and
failing to do anything is now also a
type of ownership for Republicans.
With the GOP’s failure to create a
new plan, I’d argue that now both par
ties own health reform as it currently
exists. So, can we finally start to act
productively and together on health
care?
Donkeys and elephants are so beside
the point when your child or spouse
has cancer, right? Don’t you just want
a functioning system? Don’t you just
want something that seems clear,
where prices have some roots in real
ity? Doesn’t politics seem absolutely
obscene when your loved one is most
vulnerable?
I believe a failure to address run
away prices and perverted insurance
structures will doom our health sys
tem in its current form. If insurance
companies want to remain in exis
tence, then they need to recognize
their own long-term financial health
requires a fundamental overhaul of
the current business model, where
premiums are out of hand. And they
need to push legislators to look out
for the overall interest of citizens,
because in the long run, it’s in their
business interests. They need to focus
on long-term profits over short-term
ones.
Failing that, a single-payer system
is on its way. And when that comes, it
will destroy private health insurance,
except in supplemental forms. We
have yet to reach a political break
ing point for that to happen, but the
next time Democrats have Congress
and the presidency, I think that will
become agenda item number one.
Obama’s legislation didn’t do enough
to heal this sick system. Even Dem
ocrats recognize it’s in need of an
overhaul, where pricing is more trans
parent and reasonable. I would like to
see both Republicans and Democrats
working on this in a bipartisan way
for the good of us all. But that seems
like such a pipe dream, doesn’t it?
In the meantime, we should just
all repeat our menu wish to our pol
iticians: we’ll have whatever you’re
having.
Zach Mitcham is editor of The Mad
ison County Journal, a sister newspa
per of The Braselton News.
It’s time to show
common sense
on tax breaks
By Tom Crawford
Is Georgia doling out too many tax breaks?
You could certainly make that argument.
In this year’s General Assembly session,
lawmakers passed 10 bills granting various
forms of tax breaks and exemptions that
totaled nearly half a billion dollars: $483
million over the next five years, by one
estimate. Gov. Nathan Deal signed them all
into law.
The people receiving the tax breaks are
primarily Georgia’s wealthiest citizens.
One of the bills passed this year, for exam
ple, grants a sales tax exemption for repairs
or renovations of luxury yachts that cost at
least $500,000.
There’s also a tax break for the Woodruff
Arts Center in Atlanta, tax credits for finan
ciers who invest in rural businesses, and a
reduction in the corporate net worth tax.
Who’s not getting these tax breaks? Peo
ple like you and me. We’re the ones who
will be expected to make up the $483 mil
lion in lost revenues that result from all the
tax breaks the Legislature handed out.
In the same session where they okayed a
tax exemption for luxury yachts, legislators
passed another bill that increased the fees
you pay for boat registrations. In other
words, a tax break for yacht owners, but a
higher registration fee for people who take
their outboards to Lake Lanier.
Legislators declined to renew another tax
break that for years provided benefits to mil
lions of middle-income Georgians: the sales
tax holiday during the summer for buying
personal computers and back-to-school sup
plies. That tax break was taken away.
That’s typically the philosophy of the Gen
eral Assembly: tax breaks for the favored
few, but not for the many.
There are some legislators from both sides
of the partisan aisle who criticize these tax
giveaways, but most are only too happy to
keep granting them.
“My experience has been that most folks
are opposed to all of them, except for the
one they’re for,” observed Sen. Jack Hill
(R-Reidsville).
But finally, there is at least one study
committee that is taking a look at the matter.
The Special Tax Exemption Senate Study
Committee held the first of several hearings
last week, and some of the committee mem
bers actually suggested that it may be time
to start reining in these tax breaks.
Sen. John Albers (R-Roswell), who chairs
the committee, said the panel might very
well look at “those (tax breaks) that are
actually not providing the value they were
originally intended to. We want to look at
those and see if it makes sense in the future
to sunset those to make sure we’re spending
each and every tax dollar as wisely as we
can.”
“I am more interested in lowering every
one’s income taxes and not having credits be
so prevalent in Georgia,” said Sen. Hunter
Hill (R-Atlanta), who’s running for gover
nor next year.
Albers also wants the study committee to
develop a process for evaluating the poten
tial payback of proposed tax breaks before
lawmakers take the final vote on them, so
that the unproductive ones aren’t passed in
the first place.
That would be a first for Georgia, where
tax breaks have long been enacted with no
followup evaluation to determine whether
they actually accomplish their purpose.
Chaaron Pearson of Pew Charitable Trusts,
which studies the impact of tax breaks
nationwide, told the study committee that
tax incentives for economic development
purposes cost state and local governments
$40 billion a year in foregone revenues.
Georgia is one of 23 states “that lacks a
well-designed evaluation plan” for these tax
breaks, Pearson said.
In other words, legislators pass tax breaks
but the revenue department doesn’t try to
determine whether these exemptions are
really creating jobs or generating economic
development. Lawmakers are just flying
blind.
It could be that some of the tax breaks
passed in recent years have really been pro
ductive. An oft-cited example is the tax leg
islation that is credited with luring TV and
movie production companies to the state.
Under the current system, however, there’s
little way of knowing whether tax breaks
really work or not.
I wish the study committee all the luck in
the world as it undertakes this Herculean
task. It would be great to see lawmakers
demonstrate some common sense on the
issue of tax breaks - but don’t hold your
breath.
Tom Crawford is editor of The Georgia
Report, an internet news service at gare-
port.com that reports on state government
and politics. He can be reached at tcraw-
ford@gareport.com.