It’s Friday!

Events

Today’s the deadline to register for the Foundation’s
school choice celebration on Tuesday!
January 23: Today is the deadline to register for the Foundation’s first event of 2018 on Tuesday, January 23. About 32,000 events will celebrate National School Choice Week 2018 from January 21-27. The Foundation marks this event annually with a Leadership Breakfast. Keynote speaker Dr. Ben Scafidi will unveil his new study, “Georgia 2020: Educational Opportunity for All K-12 Students in Georgia.” 8 a.m. at the Georgian Club. $30. Registration and information here.

Quotes of note

“Man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the sport of every wind.” — Thomas Jefferson (1822)

“Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” – Thomas Edison

“Those who believe that ‘basic necessities’ should belong to people as a matter of right ignore the implication – that people are to work only for amenities, frivolities and ego. Will that mean more work or less work? And if less, where are all those ‘basic necessities’ coming from that the government is supposed to hand out?” – Thomas Sowell

Technology

Rural broadband: Explaining his proposal for a market-oriented approach to rural broadband deployment, Mark Jamison of the American Enterprise Institute writes, “Policies for rural broadband have seemed random the past eight years: Billions of stimulus dollars were thrown at unneeded and failed projects; the [Federal Communications Commission] expanded failing systems such as Lifeline; the Obama White House and the FCC moved to limit the profitability of rural broadband, and the FCC chose an arbitrary definition for broadband. These failed policies wasted billions of dollars and did little to help rural communities gain broadband connectivity. It is time to let markets lead the way.”

No more snow days? Snow, ice and freezing temperatures closed schools across North Georgia this week. But school systems are wising up. A missed day no longer needs to mean catching up in class, thanks to technology and the Internet. For Gwinnett County Public Schools, brick-and-mortar classes were canceled but students at home got their second Digital Learning Day, with assignments posted online. Source: Gwinnett Daily Post

Entrepreneurship

Vacation rentals: Last year, Airbnb helped Floridians earn $450 million in supplemental income by allowing homeowners to offer up rooms or entire houses for tourists and travelers, according to Sunshine State News. Two Florida legislators have introduced legislation to reduce local government interference. They say their bills are commonsense solutions for property owners who they believe should have the right to rent their private property. A bill barring local government regulation of vacation rentals is also in the Georgia House.

Health care

Do no harm? Increased enrollment and spending on able-bodied adults in states that expanded Medicaid under Obamacare “has threatened resources for the truly needy and other critical public services,” according to a new report released by the Foundation for Government Accountability.

Work requirements: Kentucky became the first state to obtain a waiver to implement work requirements for able-bodied Medicaid recipients, just one day after the Trump administration issued new guidance on Jan. 11 allowing the policy. Writing in The Hill, Justin Haskins of the Heartland Institute points out, “Work requirements help to ensure only those who truly need assistance are enrolled in Medicaid by incentivizing people to move off Medicaid rolls and join the workforce or seek higher-paying employment.”

Federalism: Alex Azar, set to replace Tom Price as Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, told a Senate Committee this week that he favors more flexibility for states to determine what is best for their Medicaid programs. Source: Medscape.com

Stagnant spending: The Affordable Care Act required tax-exempt hospitals to assess community needs and provide community-wide benefits. A study in the journal Health Affairs finds spending in these areas in 2010 was 7.6 percent of total operating costs and was just 8.1 percent by 2014. The bulk of that spending goes toward unreimbursed patient care, such as charity care. Broader community initiatives remained below 1 percent of operating costs. Source: Kaiser Health News

Economy

Race for Amazon: Atlanta is among 20 candidates on the shortlist for Amazon’s second headquarters. Amazon received 238 proposals. The other candidates are Austin, Texas; Boston; Chicago; Columbus, Ohio; Dallas; Denver; Indianapolis; Los Angeles; Miami; Montgomery County, Md.; Nashville; Newark, N.J.; New York City; Northern Virginia; Philadelphia; Pittsburgh; Raleigh, N.C.; Toronto and Washington D.C.

Transportation

Infrastructure: It’s always worth questioning who stands to benefit from proposed solutions to any “crisis.” For example, the Trump administration is targeting the nation’s “crumbling infrastructure,” which the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) report card gave a grade of “D-plus.” Georgia earned a “C” average. A RAND Corporation report, “Not Everything Is Broken: The Future of U.S. Transportation and Water Infrastructure Funding and Finance,” warns that that “needs assessments” such as those the ASCE’s “offer an unreliable guide for policy and priority setting.”

Education

Higher ed: Georgia ranks ninth in the nation for student enrollment in public higher education, and ninth in appropriations for higher education per student, according to Georgia State University’s Andrew Young School Fiscal Research Center.

Taxes and spending

Tax reform: Now that the Trump administration’s tax cuts have been pushed through and corporations can repatriate money at a reduced rate, Apple announced this week it will accelerate U.S. investment and create 20,000 new jobs. The company, reputed to have $250 billion abroad, says it will bring back billions of dollars it has kept in tax havens overseas and will pay a one-time tax of $38 billion on overseas cash holdings. Source: NPR.org

Welfare reform

Work works: California’s per-capita GDP increased roughly twice as much as the U.S. average over the five years ending in 2016, according to the Pacific Research Institute. Despite almost a trillion dollars in welfare spending since 1992, however, the state has the nation’s highest poverty rate. California also has resisted work requirements for welfare recipients. “The generous spending, then, has not only failed to decrease poverty; it actually seems to have made it worse,” Kerry Jackson writes in an analysis.

Friday Flashback

This month in the archives: In January 15 years ago, the Foundation published, “The Atlanta Water Privatization: What Can We Learn?” It noted, “The advantage that privatization has is the contract – it is the mechanism that allows more direct oversight, transparency, and more accountability.”

Visit www.georgiapolicy.org to read our latest commentary, “Lawmakers Have Some Unfinished Business on the Table,” by Benita M. Dodd.