September 23, 2019 8:01 AM
Morning Reads for Monday, September 23, 2019
Enjoy the morning temps, folks. Because the afternoons are the stuff Georgia falls are made of.
- Have you applied to Georgia’s next U.S. Senator?
- Here’s who you’d be up against….
- Six Georgians, including a former state senator, were served subpoenas for documents this week from a powerful U.S. Senate panel conducting a bipartisan probe into potential abuse of tax-advantaged land preservation deals.
- Georgia’s newest PSC commissioner pushes clean energy.
- A man suspected of killing his wife and four children and driving their bodies into Georgia has returned to Florida to face murder charges, authorities said.
- Governor Kemp declares this week Clean Energy Week.
- Speeding up Georgia’s vocational licensing programs.
- A man convicted of killing his girlfriend in Georgia is getting a new trial after a judge found a court reporter botched the transcript of his first proceeding.
About Author
Theresa Garcia Robertson
Wife. Mama. Foodie. Political Junkie. Southern Enthusiast. Taco Lover.
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Fun facts for the PSC commissioner:
If Plant Vogtle reactors 3 & 4 are completed under the current $25 billion estimate they will generate less than 2.5 GWh of electricity combined. The same amount of money invested in photovoltaic solar farms would roughly generate 10 times that capacity or 25 GWh of electricity. Quit approving our throwing good money after bad.
I find the article by licensing to be some what simplified. The training and public safety of a professional license to practice structural engineering are different then the standards to be a licensed plumber. I agree the system needs to be looked at but it can’t be a one size fits all solution for every board. The 41 boards share a finite number of staff between them (and I expect it will be cut by the governors upcoming budget), and some have different amounts and types of paperwork to be filed. When the amount of paperwork to prove you are a US citizen far exceeds the amount of paper work to prove you have met the standards of you profession or vocation, and the profession has a large number of license seekers, we are going to bog down a fairly straight forward issue with more staff time required and longer waits. I would like to know what Mr. Whitfield would like to prescribe for each type of license to solve the issues.
It seems like the boards in Alabama and Tennessee have it figured out as far as administrative staff. It’s like pulling teeth to get something in Georgia. If I had to rank in helpfulness it would be in order TN, AL, FL, GA. I am not sure if the other states have more staff per profession or what.
You need to look at the number of people who get or renew their license too. I know the number of cosmologists in this state exceeds civil engineers. By default the cosmologist’s board are going to end up using more licensing administration staff time to process new state licensing and renewals then the civil engineer’s board.
Also the renewal time deadline is the end of a fiscal year for most professions, which is also the time most college graduation based completion of test to be licensed occur. If grads complete tests in May/June, getting your state license in June while everyone in the state is renewing their licenses is hard on staff, and creates delays.
Here is the monday weekly reader for this week. 16 historic photographs, dozens of links and comments, and a poem.
Question, How many of you were up in arms over the $12 Billion auto bailout loan program in 2009?
Another Question, How many of you who were up in arms over bailout loans to auto companies are now up in arms over the $28 Billion farm bailout GRANT program happening right now – and if not why?
https://twitter.com/business/status/1175927784499306496?s=20
“All told, the Treasury Department reported that the program cost taxpayers $79.7 billion, of which $70.4 billion was recovered. Under that estimate, the program lost about $9.3 billion.”
https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/jan/22/barack-obama/obama-says-automakers-have-paid-back-all-loans-it-/
Is there a recovery process in the farm bailout?