It’s Friday!
Events
– September 30: Don’t miss the Foundation’s second annual Legislative Policy Briefing on Friday, Sept. 30, at the Cobb Energy Centre. Keynote speakers include Bernie Marcus, co-founder of Home Depot, on entrepreneurial leadership in Georgia and John Goodman, founder and president of the National Center for Policy Analysis, on health care reform. Last year, more than 250 people attended to hear nearly three dozen state and national experts discuss Georgia public policy. Topics this year include education, transportation, tax reform, criminal justice and health care. Information and registration are online at http://tinyurl.com/3kqlfck.
– October 24: Invitations will be mailed soon for the Foundation’s 20th anniversary celebration and Freedom Award dinner, scheduled for the evening of Monday, Oct. 24, at the Renaissance Waverly Atlanta. Speakers include Georgia Governor Nathan Deal and U.S. Senator Johnny Isakson of Georgia. Register online now to join in this milestone celebration at http://tinyurl.com/3kwyxf6.
– September 18: Join the fun and celebrate America’s birthday at the Constitution Day Festival of Georgia in Marietta’s Glover Park from 12:30-6 p.m. The event is open to the public and features 7Sharp9, a Sunset Concert with Men In Blues, student performances, a children’s area with inflatables, a car show, food vendors, MC Melvin Everson, Founding Fathers re-enactors and a Walk Thru The Constitution Challenge! Visit www.ConstitutionDayFestivalofGA.com for more information.
Quotations
– “A universal peace … is in the catalogue of events, which will never exist but in the imaginations of visionary philosophers, or in the breasts of benevolent enthusiasts.” –James Madison
– “The path we have chosen for the present is full of hazards, as all paths are. The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender, or submission.” – John F. Kennedy
– “Above all, we must realize that no arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women. It is a weapon our adversaries in today’s world do not have.” – Ronald Reagan
Education
– A virtual expansion of school choice: Georgia students will no longer be limited in how much they can study online through the Georgia Virtual School per semester, thanks to a change at the Georgia Department of Education. Previously limited to one full unit per semester, students will now be allowed to take their entire course load through the Georgia Virtual School with full-time equivalent funding. (Digital education leader Michael B. Horn, co-author of “Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns,” will discuss “The Promise of Online Learning” for Georgia at the Foundation’s Sept. 30 Legislative Policy Briefing.)Source: Daily Tribune News
Health care
– The U.S. system is actually more egalitarian than the systems of many other developed countries, with this country’s uninsured, for example, getting more preventive care than the insured in Canada, according to John Goodman of the National Center for Policy Analysis. (Register for the Foundation’s Sept. 30 Legislative Policy Briefing and hear Goodman, “the father of Health Savings Accounts,” discuss health care reform.)
– A generic concern: The Food and Drug Administration reported recently that it cannot adequately oversee the safety of chemicals manufactured overseas and imported into the United States. But according to an article in Health Policy Outlook, Chinese and Indian raw materials are found in nearly 80 percent of U.S. pharmaceuticals today. And, “While China’s products are always cheap, they are not always high quality; even perfectly formulated products may be lethal if the ingredients are suspect.” Read more atwww.aei.org/outlook/101061.
Government
– That’s why it’s called “free enterprise:” The Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI) points out a chilling consequence of government ownership of a communications system: the ability to suppress free speech, as San Francisco did recently by shutting off for several hours the cell phone service it provides to transit passengers underground. IPI says officials with Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) claimed that it was well within its rights, to thwart a planned protest after a series of killings by BART police. Whether San Francisco should be paying for municipal communications systems at all is a question for another day, particularly when the city is facing an economic crisis, IPI notes. However, “If this had been a company, then law enforcement, courts and regulatory bodies would act as a monitor; but in this case government retorts that it owns the system and may do as it wants.”
Energy and Environment
– The Department of Energy released its greenhouse gas emissions data in July, showing that energy-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions rose by 213 million tons in 2010, after falling by nearly 500 million tons (or almost 9 percent) in the steep recession year of 2009. The 2010 increase represents a 3.9 percent increase. But the economy only grew by 3 percent in real terms in 2010, Steven F. Hayward of the American Enterprise Institute points out, meaning the nation lost ground on carbon-intensity. For most of the last decade, the economy grew faster than energy use, which meant a steady improvement in carbon intensity. Hayward writes, “investment in technology and efficiency upgrades slow way down when the economy is bad. Economic growth turns out to be the precondition of energy efficiency improvements.”
– Visit www.georgiapolicy.org to read the Foundation’s latest commentary, “Realigning Georgia’s Fiscal Priorities.”
This weekend, take a moment to remember the victims of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and honor our heroes.
Kelly McCutchen
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