Yeah, yeah, I'm relieved Obama won, hopeful he'll manage to do what needs to be done in spite of the same old GOP obstructors sitting in Congress. I'm actually pretty excited about Elizabeth Warren joining the Senate as well.
But here in Georgia, there's nothhing I see to be cheery about.
We spent 8 years with a corrupt, thickheaded governor named Sonny Perdue, then replaced him with the seemingly smarter yet much sleazier Nathan Deal (you may recall that CREW ranked him among the 15 most corrupt members of Congress--then we made him Governor.
Between them (and our GOP-dominated Legislature) they gutted our state ethics commission. It's much easier to break the laws when there's no one to enforce them, right?
So nothing good happened in Georgia on election day, which had me a bit glum, but what really set me off was trying to deal with a bill for my son's recent hospital stay.
It was a broken arm, and a pretty bad break at that, which necessitated a couple of nights in the hospital. His treatment was good, and he seems to be healing quite nicely.
However, seeing how much we have to cover out of pocket threw me for a loop--it's in the thousands.
Now, my wife is a public school teacher, and our insurance is through a pool that includes govt. employees throughout the state. So the state decides what our coverage is, and how much premiums and copays are. And, probably like most folks lucky enough to have insurance, we've seen premiums and copays increase steadily for many years now.
This year's was the worst. Our premiums are going up close to $150 per month--not because of insurance costs, but because the state decided to pay less of the premium! Of course, due to salary freezes and furlough days, my wife's salary is actually less than it was 5 years ago.
But does the state give a damn that they're squeezing the lifeblood (and most every red cent) out of the middle class? Of course not! They can't be bothered with such trifling concerns when there's millions in tax cuts and tax dollars to be given to big corporations!
Local governments lost tens of millions in funding when the state decided to repeal a sales tax on energy used in manufacturing.
In other news, they "mistakenly" gave away $64 million to Georgia Power in a Port Tax Credit.
Of course, if that didn't pad the Southern Co.'s bottom line enough, they changed state law so that Southern could charge us in advance for two new nuclear reactors we neither want nor need. Consequently, Southern has been boasting huge profits off that windfall.
And don't get me started on the one tax increase the GOP seems to favor--$300 million in hotel taxes to help poor little rich boy Arthur Blank build a new stadium--a project which the vast majority of Metro Atlantans oppose, and while it's seen as less than a break-even deal for the state's taxpayers, billionaire Arthur Blank would see a huge windfall from it.
And to bring it back to election day, there was the charter school amendment. This deceptively worded turd will create a committee to oversee approval of charter schools, usurping the power and oversight of local school boards. Tellingly, huge money to support this came from Michelle Rhee's lobbying group, Students First. My general suspicion is that this has much more to do with giving for-profit charter schools easier access to taxpayer $$$$ than it does with improving education in this state. Other backers may have equally unaltruistic motivations as well.
But basically it means our state's education system will get even worse (did I mention that the GOP over the last decade has underfunded our schools to the tune of over $5 Billion??), teacher salaries will suffer (because corporate profits always come first!!), and our already staggering middle class will get smaller and poorer every year.
So yay Obama--here's hoping he brings a little blue sunshine to the blood red darkness of Georgia.