While reading this article, I was all set for an amen session.  Until I got to this:

In any case, it’s clear we need to change our laws to catch up with technology.

A great illustration of why change is needed now is the story of Phillip Alpert, of Orlando, Florida. He didn’t ask, but his girlfriend sexted him naked pictures of herself, according to the Orlando Sentinel. When they broke up, he mass e-mailed the photos to get back at her. Alpert, 18, was convicted of transmission of child porn and he will carry the label of “sex offender” until he is 43. He lost friends, was kicked out of school, he can’t even move in with his dad because his dad lives near a school.

Should Phillip be punished? Yes. Should the six teens in Pennsylvania face consequences? Yes. But let’s kick them off cheerleading squads and sports teams. Make them do community service and take classes on sex crimes. Educate other teens on the dangers of sexting. Pay a price, yes, but these young people shouldn’t pay for this for the rest of their lives.

And if you think this couldn’t happen to your kid, think again. Sexting is more prevalent than you think.

Mr. Galanos, with all due respect, Phillip maliciously and intentionally spread the pics his ex-girlfriend sent him privately to harm her.  These kids know exactly how long-lasting the internet can be.  As a result of her bad decision to take and share a picture in the first place, she will forever have to worry about those pictures resurfacing.  Kicking him off a football team and making him take a class is DEFINITELY not an adequate solution.

Mr. Galanos goes on to say:

The bottom line: We need to educate, not incarcerate, our teens and it has to start with parents.

Don’t let the culture indoctrinate your little boy or girl about sex before their time. So strike first as a parent. If your kids are older, let them know a digital record is for life. When little Suzie tries to win the affection of little Bobby by sexting him a picture, she is putting her future at stake. There is no control over that image or video once it gets out. But that doesn’t mean little Suzie should be charged as a child pornographer.

Education and better parenting is the solution for this new phenomenon of sexting itself.  These kids need help with their self-esteem, with handling peer pressure, and with knowing how long-reaching the consequences of internet negativity can be.  In the examples of the kids who are being charged with child pornography because they shared the images of themselves with people they selected and who agreed to see, child pornography is a bit much since there is no malice or intentional harm.  They need to be punished but not so severely.  However, when “little Bobby” or “little Suzie” decide to prank someone, seek revenge on someone, and/or intentional inflict harm on someone, by all means, they need to suffer the consequences.  It is NOT at all okay to mass email someone’s pictures–that is pornography and I don’t care what age the offender is.

I liken this to those situations where an 18-year old senior is dating a 16-year old sophomore and they have consensual sex.  Is it right?  Maybe not.  But is it a crime?  Heck no.  However, if either party raped the other–it is a crime, and I don’t care what age the offender is.  And yes, the child label should be on it.  The suffering lasts a lifetime and has all kinds of effects on the victim’s life for the long haul.

Education is needed to curb this propensity to send out naked pictures to friends or boos of the moment.  But that still does not give recipients the right to forward it on later.

Now, as many folks know, I’m not a huge of fan.  And I have a right to an opinion since I ride it at least twice a day, five days a week and have been doing so since I moved here in 2002.   I’ve ridden public train/tram systems in D.C., Boston, New York, Strasbourg, and Paris–I have several points of comparison.  MARTA is inefficient as a whole.  It has oodles of bus lines and only 3.5 train lines.  The bus stops aren’t even well-marked.  You have to study the website to understand routes and times.  The Southbound train to the airport comes much more frequently than both Northbound trains put together.  There have been times that during lunch if it’s nice outside, I’ll just choose to walk to my destination because waiting for a train sucks up all of my time.

Please understand that I know all about densities and demand and the like–but Georgia, particularly Metro Atlanta, hasn’t created the right incentives to get people off the road and to get places like Cobb and Gwinnett off their fannies to cooperate rail-wise, instead of depending on all these dern buses that folks don’t want to ride anyhow.  I think, for the most part, MARTA is doing what it can with what it has.  The state of Georgia needs to quittrippin.com and move into the 20th (yes, I meant to say that, and not the 21st) century and realize that transportation can make or break this state.  Atlanta is the money maker for the state, and I can’t for the life of me understand why the establishment will stop spending so much time worrying that Atlanta has too much power and spend its energy making sure that it grows in a sustainable manner that ensures competitiveness against other metro areas.

And now, due to the recession, the folks at MARTA are considering cutting a weekday of service.  Or most of the weekend.  Um…  people depend on MARTA to get to work.  Yes, I have a car, but I would have to pay for a full day of parking downtown, which is not a small fee.  And what about the many folks who don’t have cars??  What are they to do?  This article just announced that a bill that would free up some money so that they don’t have to stop service was left on the table when the legislative session ended.  So what will Gov. Perdue do?  Will a special session be called?  I doubt it, but we’ll see.

This has become an issue surrounding demographics because that’s what works in Georgia.  Yes, MARTA has become a saving grace for many low-income people who can’t afford cars in a geography that has designed everything around cars.  But, MARTA can be so much more.  There are already several people who live intown or who just can’t deal with the traffic or who would rather read in the mornings and the afternoons than drive or who don’t want to pay to park to go to the airport or to sports events.  If Georgia creates a condusive environment for the investment of the infrastructure that MARTA needs to become a robust system that the average person can rely on to get around the huge land mass that is metropolitan Atlanta, I know that MARTA will defeat some of the stereotypes that exist about its ridership and will become a distinctive asset to a thriving metro.

Something needs to be done about transportation in Atlanta ASAP.  Making our “regional” transit system efficient and competitive with those of other metropolitan areas should be a top priority.  As ugly as traffic is in Atlanta and as bad as our smog can be, there are several reasons  that transforming MARTA into the transportation hub it should be is imperative.  The first step would be allowing MARTA to use its capital reserves to weather this economic crisis without adversely affecting its ridership.

{UPDATE: 4/8 @ 9:16 a.m.}

I can’t BEGIN to tell you how pissed I am about this.

{UPDATE: 4/8 @ 9:31 a.m.}

I’ll be attending this press conference today.  Kudos to State Rep. Rashad Taylor for not letting it go.