Georgia's 2012 Amendment 1

I love school choice, and I like charter schools.  Two of my children have attended charter schools.  Back in 2009, I thought Gwinnett County Public Schools was wrong to deny a charter to Ivy Prep, an all girls charter school in Norcross.  When Gwinnett's Board of Education turned down Ivy Prep, I thought the school ought to have some recourse.

The state overruled Gwinnett County, and Ivy Prep opened its doors, leading to a constitutional fight.  The Georgia Supreme Court eventually decided the state didn't have the power to set up an unelected body that could spend local taxpayer dollars against the will of the body responsible to the taxpayers, the BoE. 

(I note here with consternation this whole mess could have been avoided if the Gwinnett County BoE had given Ivy Prep a chance.  There are lots of bad guys in this story)

The solution seemed simple enough: let the voters pass a Constitutional amendment, and then elect a state board that could review rejected charter school applications and have the authority, subject to the checks and balances called elections, to grant charters. 

Did our Governor and legislature opt for that approach?  Absolutely not!  Using language that is twisted six ways to Sunday, they put on the ballot an amendment that would allow Governor Deal to pick his own people, put them on the review board, and allow them to spend taxpayer dollars with no accountability or oversight whatsoever.

Shouldn't we trust the Governor to pick the best folks?  As Exhibit A, I submit the new president and CEO of Georgia's lottery.  The lone finalist and unanimous pick was Governor Deal's budget director, who had absolutely no prior experience with lotteries.  That's not counting, of course, whatever lottery tickets she's bought over the years. 

Amendment 1 raises several questions. Do we need more school choice?  Yes.  Should publicly funded charters be part of the solution?  Indeed, they should.  Should we trust an unelected, unaccountable body to make the best choices about how to spend our tax dollars?  Uh, no.

Amendment 1, as currently worded, is no solution.  And unless you think bureaucrats who are well connected to Governor Deal are the people who should be making decisions about our children's future, you should vote "No" on Amendment 1. 

Let's try again in 2014.  This time, though, let's ask Georgia's government to put forward an honest proposal that keeps the power with the people and protects their ability to reelect or defeat government officials who make decisions about their money.

"Worthless" College Majors

My eldest is a bright kid: 3.8 high school GPA, one correct answer short of a composite 2000 SAT, early admission into UGA, and enough AP and Dual Enrollment credits that he showed up at UGA as a second-semester sophomore. 

Double majoring and finishing in three years seemed like givens, so I gave him what seemed like the sage advice to "major in something you love, and major in something that will make you a living."  In other words, indulge the inner humanities nerd since he is the son of Lee and Alyse Jones.  But take a major in a STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) subject, too.

He's just past the midpoint of  his first semester in Bulldog Town, and he has decided to major in English and classics.  How could I have gone so wrong? 

Then, again, whom am I kidding?  All the college degrees in the Jones household are in English, history, and journalism.  I didn't even bother to earn a teaching certificate because I wanted to load up on undergraduate courses in philosophy and Latin, and those weren't even my majors!

The degrees and skills Alyse and I possess have kept us fed, housed, clothed, heated, and cooled for the past 24 years.  We don't live in the Country Club of the South, but it's not the ghetto, either.  My sister and I were swapping texts the other day and decided that if our mother were alive today, she'd consider us rich.  Which probably tells you a lot more about her than about us.

Look at one of those lists of "worthless" degrees whose graduates earn the lowest starting salaries, and you'll find both English and classics pretty near the top.  That has to exclude the folks who use those mad communicating and thinking skills to go to law school.

Still, I have to wonder if we've become such a technical, specialized society that people who earn a traditional liberal arts education are sentenced to a lifetime of delivering pizzas and packing Happy Meals.  If someone is smart, personable, and incidentally capable of declining the Latin noun mensa, do we really want to say he can't "leverage" his talents into a job in sales, communications, public relations, human resources, marketing, or some other profession?

Right now, the eldest says he wants to be a college professor somewhere that emphasizes teaching over the publish or perish climate.  I am immensely flattered, but I am also fully aware he's still a teen. 

The liberal arts have held up pretty well since Alcuin of York brought the trivium and quadrivium to Charlemagne's court some 1200 years ago.  For my family's sake, I hope they're good for at least another generation.   

Facebook "Likes"

I couldn't resist reblogging a post on how to get more "Likes" on Facebook.  From www.theoatmeal.com. 

Comics: Random Most Popular All Cats Grammar Food Animals Tech

OCD and Me

OCD is really cute.  I know it is because Sheldon Cooper on The Big Bang Theory has OCD, and he is as cute as can be.  He's all OCD about where he sits, what time he and his roommate Leonard poop, and exactly how his food is prepared.  Sometimes, his Southern Baptist mother from Texas has to show up and take over, but the rest of the time, we can all laugh at Sheldon.

We know Sheldon won't really care because, first, he isn't real, and, second, he seems to have Asperger's, too, and doesn't bond emotionally with others.  Not even his physicist "girlfriend," Amy Farah Fowler, played by Mayim Bialik, who has a PhD in real life.  How cute is that!

Mr. Monk from the show Monk was a really cute character, too.  He couldn't stand snakes, close spaces, milk, any foods touching on his plate, or a whole lot of other things.  He would interrupt solving a crime to rearrange the papers on a desk.  Adrian Monk had a really serious side because his wife had been murdered, and that triggered OCD so bad that he couldn't officially do his job.

Monk was still brilliant, though, and the SFPD used him to solve about one crime per week.  Come to think of it, Sheldon Cooper is really brilliant, too.  People with OCD are really smart.

Ahem (Lee clears his throat here), what I just wrote was a deliberately simplified version of the impression people who take their information from TV might have about OCD.  As someone who has battled OCD all my life and lived with the diagnosis for 21 years, I don't even find it objectionable.  The Big Bang Theory and Monk have entertained millions of folks and harmed none.

I also find much less to gripe about in the way Sheldon Cooper and Adrian Monk portray OCD than in some of the "helpful" comments I've gotten since I was diagnosed with OCD in 1991.  More than once I've heard that getting right with God was a cure.  Others have learned I require therapy and medication and sighed, "Thank goodness I'm strong enough to cope without all that."

Don't even get me started on Scientology and that fool Tom Cruise.  People who listen to him could die because they deny themselves or others the care they need.

If I could get someone who doesn't have OCD to understand a little bit how it feels, I would start by trying to explain the difference between obsessions and compulsions.  I have obsessive thoughts that I must count, that I'm dying, that the bed covers are not "right."  More often than not, I can fight back against these obsessions and go on living and working.

Too often, however, I give in to compulsive behaviors that my obsessions suggest, or sometimes figuratively scream at me.  I count to 18 (or 60, 100, 864, or any other number my mind chooses).  I Google physical symptoms and inevitably learn any given symptom can indicate a serious health problem, which I almost certainly don't have.

BUT "almost certainly" isn't "certainly," so the worries intensify.  I climb into bed, ignoring -- since I'm NOT a neat freak -- the stacks of books and papers, and turn the covers until they feel exactly right before I can go to sleep.

As long as I take my medications as prescribed and see my psychiatrist and my therapist, I do pretty well most of the time.  I have a wife, children, a job, hobbies, and countless interests.  I have my walking papers.

Sometimes when I am tired, overworked, stressed, or not responding to my current combination of medicines, the obsessions and compulsions take over.  Understand, please, that the obsessions never stop.  I cannot reason or study or argue them away.  They are incredibly stupid but equally persistent.  Distraction doesn't allow me to control them, but it does keep them from controlling me.

That is, until distraction doesn't work.  Then, I sometimes become so obsessed with compulsively counting, checking, reading, and worrying that I cannot get up out of my chair and cross the room for a glass of water.

Another never to remember is failure to recover.  The right treatments, therapies, and medications have always led me back to living my life.  This disorder will not beat me today.  For now, that's enough.

This post is a highly condensed version of one person's life with OCD.  Every other person's story is different.  None of us want to be defined solely by this disorder we happen to have.  OCD Awareness Week and this blog just seem the right time and place to share.  Thanks for reading.

The Twelve-Inch Date

The following is based on a true story as I remember it being told to me.  Names  are changed in case I totally screw up.


Mary met Louis on a dating website.  Internet chat led to a phone call, which led to Louis asking Mary out.  Happy to accept, Mary asked, almost as an afterthought, "Do you smoke?"

Louis replied, "I'm trying to quit."

At the appointed time, Louis arrived at Mary's house.  After they greeted each other, Mary took Louis's arm, and he led her to his car.  When he opened the door, the reek of cigarettes assailed her.

Mary hesitated.  Louis was polite and friendly, and she hadn't been on a date for a while.  A little bit angry about the deception but trying to look past it, she sat in the passenger's seat and buckled her seat belt.

As soon as Louis began to back up his car, Mary realized she could not tolerate the smell.  "I'm sorry," she said, opening her door.  "Thank you, but I just can't."

Fleeing inside her house, Mary took one last look back at Louis in his car, which had moved about one foot while she was in it.  They had been on a date for twelve inches.

The Winner of Presidential Debate #1

Don't you know that (insert candidate's name here) just creamed (insert candidate's name here) last night? What a liar! That creep (insert candidate's name here) wants to destroy America, and he only cares about the (insert group of people here). I can't believe (insert candidate's name here) isn't winning by 30 percent. Wake up, sheeple!

Presidential Debate Drinking Game

I have decided to play a Presidential Debate Drinking Game.  Since I have no intention of actually watching the debate yet do have a sense of fair play, I need some 100% foolproof rules.

I have decided, therefore, that every time Governor Romney mentions the words "job creators," I will drink.  When President Obama, on the other hand, utters "millionaires and billionaires," I will drink.

One sip of Guinness Stout approximately every thirty seconds ought to do the trick. Adjust up or down according to your phrases, drinking preferences, age, and county alcohol laws.  Cheers!

The Real NFL Officials, Continued

National Review writer Daniel Foster has put together an excellent opinion piece, "Dead Ball Fouls," at NRO.  I blogged last Thursday about the real officials returning, but Foster has inspired me to respond to a couple of his points.

"Three: If you don't want to be replaced, be irreplaceable."  Amen.  The union officials worked all the games yesterday, and guess what: they made mistakes!  Whenever we have humans, we have human error.  Still, the quality of the officiating yesterday was demonstrably better than in weeks past, and that makes the crucial point, which is that the "real" officials are the best in the business.

The NFL's locking out the union officials and attempting to replace them gave the B team a chance to show us and the players how good they aren't.  Last Monday night's debacle sealed the deal.

"Five: The refs should have hired AFSCME’s lawyers."  I concur.  I have already written that I consider the new contract much less of a clear win than the officials might have wanted.  Around the country, pension plans are being bargained or simply stripped away in favor of 401(k)s.  For employers, this is an easy choice between offering a defined contribution today and a defined benefit tomorrow.

As a taxpayer, I don't particularly like my county, state, or federal government promising future benefits to current workers that future workers may have to pay at great cost to themselves.  The NFL isn't the same as a county, state, or country, however; it's a group of billionaires who can easily afford to keep paying their officials a guaranteed pension.  Tougher negotiations by the officials may have kept the pension fund for future workers.

If we're early in a 20 year S & P 500 bull market, officials hired in the near future won't feel the effects of the disappearing pensions.  If the market under performs, we might want to prepare ourselves for the sight of 75-year-old referees.  Let's hope they have a good vision plan.