Governor Deal Visits Dawsonville

Governor Nathan Deal visited Dawsonville in December and talked about how great it was he cut 14,000 jobs.  Then in his State of the State Address he basically ignored the facts that I presented in this editorial in the Dawson News and Advertiser.  HE HAS NOT PLANS TO CREATE JOBS IN GEORGIA!!

Governor Deal, Where are the Jobs?

I read with great interest the two articles in our local papers about Nathan Deal’s visit to the Dawson County Republican/Tea Party meeting two weeks ago.  I wasn’t able to attend but sent in two questions.  From the articles I read it looks like the questions weren’t answered.  One question was why he appointed to the 7 member all male/white board which enforces HB87, Phil Kent, a known member and leader of anti-immigration hate groups (Southern Poverty Law Institute).  That wasn’t answered but this issue deserves a separate column.  The other question had to do with how he planned to create jobs in Georgia.  That wasn’t answered either.   In fact he bragged about the fact that he eliminated 14,000 jobs in our state!

First some facts about what has happened in Georgia since 2001 when Republicans took over the Gold Dome.  This data comes from the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute which gathers its information from places like the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

• Georgia lost 351,400 jobs - third most nationwide - since the financial crisis began, and ranks dead last in job growth since the official start of the recovery in June 2009
• Georgia has lost a greater number of jobs than all but two other states since the recession started in December 2007, and unlike the vast majority of states, has continued losing jobs at an alarming pace
• Georgia's unemployment rate since 2000 has nearly doubled from 5.2 percent to 10.3 percent; September 2011 marked the 50th consecutive month that Georgia's unemployment rate outpaced the national average

The jobs which Deal eliminated were government jobs.  Deal and his friends are proud that he was able to do that!  But what exactly do these lost jobs mean?  It means that teachers, firefighters, police, health care workers, librarians, DOT workers repairing our road and bridges, and social service workers, lost their jobs.  Real people had these jobs!  Sure there were probably some jobs that could have been eliminated, but what he and Governor Purdue did is a big part of why Georgia is near the top in unemployment in this country!  Hey, Gov. Deal and Lt. Gov. Cagle have government jobs!   Maybe we should just eliminate theirs, especially since instead of creating, they boast of eliminating jobs!

Then apparently Deal talked about two other problems our state is facing.  One is the high incarceration rate in Georgia.  He is right, that is expensive.  But if we fixed one of the largest problems we have in education, the high dropout rate, our rate of incarceration would go down also.  I agree with Deal that one way to do this would be to strengthen our dual enrollment and career classes.  But instead of strengthening education, Deal is talking about firing teachers and making the good teachers who remain deal with teaching larger size classes.  I am sure he is drawing his idea from headlines over the past few months that smaller class sizes are not necessarily better.  But he is ignoring the rest of the information from these studies that say for some students, especially average and at-risk students, smaller class sizes are better.  There are many factors to consider with this issue and just raising class sizes across the board is not the answer.  I am sure the teachers trying to teach our young people how to write are thrilled with the idea that instead of trying to teach 150 children they face the prospect of perhaps having 200 or 250 children.  Does Gov. Deal actually think that the best college students are looking at that prospect and choosing teaching over some other field?

So I ask Governor Deal again.  What are you doing to increase employment in Georgia?  It appears that all you have on your mind is cutting jobs.  I am sure when the Heritage Foundation starts working on our budget this winter, they will make the same suggestions—cut programs for the middle and lower income citizens, cut taxes for the wealthy, and give cash incentives to large corporations like the $200,000 he gave to Delta last year.  Same old, same old Republican tactics.  It hasn’t worked in 30 years and I doubt it will work now!  Georgia deserves better!