Archive for March, 2009

“Under House Bill 480,” an AJC editorial says, “a one-time 7 percent fee would be assessed on all vehicle sales. For the first time, that would include vehicles bought from a neighbor or family member or through classified ads or Craigslist, which are currently excluded from sales taxes. In addition, the bill caps the maximum fee at $1,500.”

The editorial continues: “That means the buyer of a used, $21,500 minivan would pay a $1,500 fee, and the buyer of a $150,000 Mercedes would pay the same $1,500 fee. In effect, most of the value of that Mercedes would be immune to taxation, while all the value of the minivan would be taxed. That’s unfair to the point of being outrageous. It wouldn’t be hard to fix that problem. The most straightforward approach would be to simply remove the cap and make all the value of vehicles taxable.”

Read the full editorial

But Harry Geisinger (R-Sandy Springs), who authored the bill, argues that here in Georgia, “state and local officials have …

Continue reading What do you think of proposed new car fee? »

By MAUREEN DOWNEY

As a longtime fan of advice columnist Dear Abby, I valued her practical answers, especially about raising children. However, one question stumped her years ago, and she threw it out to her readers to answer: Should children who hate piano lessons be forced — even kicking and screaming — to continue because they may eventually find joy in it and even decide that music is their passion?

Abby’s mail was split. Readers wrote that they hated every second of their childhood piano lessons, and the experience soured them forever on music. Others wrote to say that they were now with the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music or the Boston Pops and were forever grateful that their parents held their ground.

One mom maintained that parents force kids to do many things, including bathe, brush their teeth and eat their vegetables. Why should music be any different? Her son begged to quit piano when he was 10. Today, she said, he was a noted conductor and music …

Continue reading Should kids be forced into piano lessons? »

By MAUREEN DOWNEY

This is the time of year when high schools and colleges crank out press releases about their outstanding students. The releases often describe young women, who along with being at the top of their class, are student government president, captain of the volleyball team, a national yodeling champion, volunteer tutor and the local Sweet Potato Queen.
When I glance at their accomplishments, I wonder how these young women can juggle all these roles and remain healthy and sane.

It may be that they can’t.

I’ve had a startling number of conversations with neighbors, friends and college administrators about the stress that female college students face today. Along with eating disorders, many young women are grappling with what used to be called a bad case of the blues. They can’t get out of bed . They can’t focus on their studies.

An admissions director told me that the rise in mental-health problems among female college students has become a recurrent topic …

Continue reading College women running on empty »

Gary Snyder, author author of “Nonprofits: On the Brink,” writes that: “The charitable sector is struggling to keep the public’s confidence because it lacks good governance, financial accountability, transparency and provisions against conflicts of interests. It mirrors the attributes — greed, arrogance and outrageous corporate behavior — assigned to the for-profit sector. Angel Food Ministries is an example.”

Angel Food “may be fulfilling its mission by delivering food, but it is not delivering on credibility,” he writes.

W. Joseph Wingo, CEO of Angel Food Ministries, argues: “At the helm of this ministry is a fairly compensated CEO. My idea to help people grew with 17-hour workdays over 15 years, five of which were wholly unpaid. An independent compensation study in April 2008 determined that my salary and compensation ‘falls within a reasonable range of competitive practices for like positions among like organizations providing like services and is therefore …

Continue reading Is CEO pay at Angel Food Ministries excessive? »

By MAUREEN DOWNEY

I still tense up when I recall the day in fourth grade when my classmate Kenny couldn’t decipher the word “definite” on the blackboard. He stood there for what seemed like hours, his face growing redder, tears welling up in his eyes, while the increasingly irate teacher demanded over and over that he read the word aloud.

Kenny simply couldn’t make any sense of the letters on the board, and it seemed, even to a roomful of 10-year-olds, to be an extreme act of cruelty to insist he do so. Kenny pleaded to be allowed to sit down, to go to the bathroom, to go home. But the teacher made him stand in front of the 40 of us until he literally crumpled to the floor.

In our eight years together in a small, urban, Catholic elementary school, Kenny struggled with reading, and I suspect now that he may have been dyslexic. The words written on the board likely made as much sense to him as Egyptian hieroglyphics.

I think about Kenny whenever people lament to me how …

Continue reading School great in the old days? Not for all »

By MAUREEN DOWNEY

Given what I know now, I would stretch out my college years. I would take a gap year between high school and college to work in a service project or political campaign.

In the last few weeks, my daughter has gone scuba diving in France, climbed mountains in Austria and attended Carnivale in Venice.
She’s not on vacation. She’s on a study abroad program, one of more than 6,000 students in the University System of Georgia who will participate this year. Nationwide, about 250,000 college students will study outside the United States this year.

Myself, I didn’t take the scenic route through college. Quite the opposite. I sprinted through college, finishing in two and half years by piling on extra courses and summer classes. Then I worked two jobs for the next 12 months, wrote one whopping check and sent myself to grad school. A week after I earned my master’s, I began a job in New York City and I haven’t stopped working since.

Given that history, …

Continue reading Gap year enriches college experience »

Advocates for re-creating Milton County in the suburbs north of Atlanta are celebrating their first legislative victory. Recently, the House State Planning and Community Affairs Committee’s voted to pass House Resolution 21. For the previous two years, the bill, which would authorize a statewide vote on the issue, remained bottled up in committee without a vote.

Many steps remain. Georgia’s Constitution allows for only 159 counties, so to create Milton, the constitution would have to be amended through HR21. That would take a two-thirds vote by both the House and Senate. Then, it would be up to voters statewide in November 2010. If the idea passes those hurdles, the General Assembly would still have to come back and write legislation dividing up Fulton and get voters of the proposed new county to approve it.

In an opinion column for the AJC, Rep. Mark Burkhalter (R-Johns Creek) argues for the new county (read his column). John H. Eaves, chairman of the Fulton County Board …

Continue reading Bring back Milton County? »