Yarbrough: Governor's priorities are embarrassing

In the midst of one of the worst economic crises in memory, the members of the Georgia General Assembly have to make some extremely difficult financial decisions. I don't envy them.

To make their challenge even harder, up pops Gov. Sonny Perdue with some budget add-ons. This time we aren't talking about concrete fishponds. While teachers are being furloughed, state employees laid off and budgets slashed to the bone, news reports say our chief executive desires to spend $9 million to finish a horse show complex at the fairgrounds in Houston County, his home county. He also has $67 million proposed for a rural economic development program that includes a more than half-million-dollar grant to move Little League Baseball Inc. to -where else? - Houston County.

There's more. The governor wants $10 million to help move the College Football Hall of Fame to Atlanta after it fumbled opportunities in South Bend and Kings Mill, Ohio.

The reasoning coming out of the governor's office for the pork projects is that the expenditures will help "economic development." Hogwash.

You want to talk economic development? According to a study by the Atlanta Regional Council for Higher Education, Georgia college graduates average twice the income - and half the unemployment - of high school graduates. On average, college graduates pay 72 percent more in state and local taxes than non-graduates.

ARCHE says one-fourth of Georgia adults who did not finish high school live in poverty, and 86 percent of prisoners in Georgia did not continue education beyond high school. Their incarceration costs you and me nearly $800 million annually, the report states. I could go on, but I think you get the drift.

How does one attend college and successfully attain a degree and contribute his or her tax do

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