I don’t write about national issues that often, for a variety of reasons. Recently, however, one has come up that I decided I wanted to be very frank about.

That issue, if you couldn’t guess from the title, is the Transportation “Security” Administration’s recent decision to begin use of backscatter X-ray machines and enhanced pat down techniques. The first is basically government-sanctioned porn that allows a “security” agent to view beneath clothing to the skin of the person in the machine – and store the images. The second allows a “security” agent to rub a person’s genitals, rather than “lightly” touch them as under older regulations.

Since I first met my wife nearly four years ago, I’ve been trying to get her to fly. There are some places we’d like to go that quite frankly, a flight would be much simpler than driving. I will no longer pursue this, and I ask every other man in America to join me with one simple premise: I am the only person that gets to see my wife nude.

Obviously, this doesn’t apply for doctors or other emergency personnel with a valid reason, or any persons we may choose to allow into our bedroom. (Up front here, that second one isn’t going to happen with us, but I mention it to allow for other couples who may feel differently there.)

I consider it my No. 1 as a husband to ensure my wife’s physical safety. Everything else pales in comparison to that one duty. I will NOT allow some stranger who happens to have the sanction of the government I live under to molest her for ANY reason – and I will oppose them using any force necessary. I am not a violent man, and I prefer the path of peace when it is an option. But if violence is necessary to protect my wife, I will be the coldest, most ruthless SOB you have ever seen, if that is what it takes.

It is not the government’s job to ensure my wife’s safety – it is mine. It is the government’s job to prosecute criminals after the crime has been committed – including the crime of sexual assault (and, in the case of minors, child pornography/child molestation/sexual exploitation of a child) that the TSA now allows.

I encourage those who fly to file improper arrest charges, as well as those above, on any TSA agent who uses these techniques and any of their superiors who allow them to. After all, proper law enforcement officers – from your local PD all the way to the Federal Bureau of Investigation – have to have a proper warrant showing probable cause that a crime has been committed signed by a sitting judge in order to do similar invasive searches.

As it currently stands, I can protect my wife from these government-sanctioned molesters and perverts by simply refusing to fly – and so I shall.

Written by Jeff Sexton. Jeff Sexton co-owns the political blog SWGAPolitics.com and is former chairman for the Libertarian Party of Southwest Georgia

Last week, the Lee County Board of Commissioners appointed Al Crace of Roswell, Ga., as the interim county administrator. Per both Crace and Lee County Board of Commissioners Chairman Ed Duffy, this is to be a temporary position lasting roughly five months or so. In other words, he could well be gone before the end of the year, though before spring break 2011 is more likely.

My problem, which I will be discussing with the board at their meeting and have already privately e-mailed them about, is the secrecy involved in Mr. Crace’s appointment. In the email I sent the commissioners, I did a very basic Google search on nothing more than his name, and I found references to some form of trouble in two of his jobs within this decade (he has held at least three, possibly more). Specifically, apparently he was fired by the mayor of Athens, and he resigned his post as Jackson County administrator barely 24 hours after telling the local paper that he had no intentions of doing so.

Because the board met in closed executive session (and daytime meetings, to boot) for the discussions on who to hire, there is no record of what was discussed. Therefore, we have no way of knowing what was said and no way of knowing whether these issues were thoroughly discussed. On this issue, the Lee County Board of Commissioners has worked in a way we in Southwest Georgia typically expect out of the governing authorities of Albany and Dougherty County – they have been transparent as mud.

Fortunately, I have no intentions of allowing Lee County to be as transparent as mud. We, the citizens of Lee County, have a right to know what our government is doing, and Georgia apparently has some of the best sunshine laws in the nation – laws which I intend to work to make even stronger. J.D. Sumner had an excellent piece on this a couple of weeks ago in the Herald, and a friend passed along some more relevant information that I intend to use.

Here are the documents JD referred to:

n  Sunshine Laws: Red Book – Meetings

n  Sunshine Laws: Blue Book – Law Enforcement

n  Sunshine Laws: Green Book – Schools

Below is the e-mail I sent to the commissioners with everything I found in my very cursory Google search mentioned above. So far, there has been no response from any commissioner.

“First, I want to note that I object to the secrecy involved in this process. It may be legal, but that doesn’t make it right, and y’all are starting to look more like the Albany governing bodies than any of us should be comfortable with. I hope that you will be more open and transparent with the search for a permanent replacement for Mr. Ours.

That noted, these are the results of a basic Google search of “Al Crace”:

Apparently he had some issues in Jackson County which may warrant some investigation on our end to find out the full story:
http://www.avoc.info/info/article.php?article=2145&ENGINEsessID=2b114d48559772d68d9d5a2c061505ed. A year prior to this, it was said that he did a good job with a courthouse project there: http://www.mainstreetnews.com/Arch/03/1203/JackOpinion.html. More news from Jackson: http://gameday.onlineathens.com/stories/101103/new_20031011048.shtml

There were also issues when he worked in Athens, with the mayor forcing him to resign per this letter to the editor, which the author objected to:

http://www.onlineathens.com/stories/092600/let_letter3.shtml

Again, I don’t see the full story here as to all that transpired, but it should be worth looking into.

Sandy Springs: (from 2009): http://www.ajc.com/search/content/metro/stories/2009/01/20/newcitiesbind0120.html. Another: http://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/stories/2005/09/19/story7.html

Gainsville, 1991: http://www.nytimes.com/1991/12/08/us/town-cancels-its-parade-after-klan-enters.html 2 days earlier: http://www.nytimes.com/1991/12/06/us/klan-seeks-to-put-float-in-georgia-parade.html

In 2002, Crace was listed as a “former defendant” on this voting rights appeal: http://www.justice.gov/crt/briefs/hamrick.pdf

All of that (plus Carlton Fletcher’s article this morning) was found within the firstfive5 pages of the above described Google search.

Also found, but irrelevant for his official duties, was a Baptist News article discussing his former church in Athens and their separation from the Southern Baptist Convention due in part to their belief in ordaining women as clergy. http://www.baptistbanner.org/Subarchive_6/600%20GA%20FBC%20leaves%20SBC.htm.

Y’all conducted your meetings in secret, so I don’t know if any of the above was discussed or even mentioned, but hopefully none of this information is new to any of you.

Thank you for your time, and as always I look forward to working with each of you for the betterment of Lee County.”

Written by Jeff Sexton. Jeff Sexton co-owns the political blog SWGAPolitics.com and is former chairman for the Libertarian Party of Southwest Georgia

Condoms are now being made to students as young as first grade in one Massachusetts school. Apparently this story is now getting some play on Fox News (no, I don’t watch that drivel, the headline and link was re-Tweeted by someone in my twitter stream), but I first heard about this story on the Atlanta-Journal Constitution’s Momania blog.

Because it is getting play on Faux News, expect the conservatives to get up in arms about it. Like clockwork.

We’ve actually got two different issues raised in this one story. One is whether schools should give away condoms at all. The other is whether first grade is appropriate for this.

This whole episode is a perfect illustration of the need for separation of school and state. If that happened and parents had to pay for their own children’s schooling, they could pay to put their children in schools where condoms were given away or not, based on the parents’ wishes, without infringing on the rights of other parents who disagree. As is, no matter what decision this school makes, it is infringing on some parents’ rights by forcing them to pay to support a program they do not agree with or by denying them services they want their school to provide.

For the record, I believe sex education should be done at home, and nowhere else. That is one of the most personal decisions a person makes, and it should be the parent that teaches the child about sex – not government schools and not their youth pastor. In an environment where school and State were separated, I would not pay to send my child to a school – of any form – that violated that basic rule.

That said, for those that see my personal beliefs here as a cop-out, I offer these thoughts:

1)  Should schools give away condoms? Honestly, I think it prudent – but I think the student should have to go to a counselor and ask for them. They should not be simply distributed to every kid, nor should there be some kind of “goodie basket” where any kid can simply take one. Having the counselors give them out would also be both a chance to potentially discuss any issues the student may have as well as somewhat of a cost control. Again, based on my own interactions with students, a teacher/school is NOT going to be able to stop a kid from having sex – nor is it their place (again, it is the parents’). The best a teacher/school can hope to do is mitigate the damage, and having a trained counselor give away condoms upon request is probably the best way to do exactly that.

2) Is first grade appropriate for this? Part of me wants to give a vehement “no” to this, and ultimately I’m going to lean that direction. But I also know the sixth grade students (10-12 years old) that I taught, and they came into my classroom already being sexually charged. Since I saw them on their first day of middle school, that means that their pubescence and all that this entails began while they were still in elementary school. Hence, while first grade may be too young (I hope puberty isn’t beginning at 6 years old these days!), elementary school in general probably is not – whether we like it or not.

When it comes to sex in general – no matter the age of the individuals in question – there are no easy answers. Add in the complexities of childhood/adolescence into the mix, and things become infinitely more complex. Hence the ultimate adage in education:

One size does not fit all.

<p><span style=”color: #888888;”><em>Written by Jeff Sexton. </em></span><span style=”font-family: Verdana; color: #000000; font-size: 10pt;”><span style=”font-family: Verdana; color: #000000; font-size: 10pt;”> </span></span><em><span style=”color: #888888;”>Jeff Sexton co-owns the political blog <a href=”http://www.SWGAPolitics.com”>SWGAPolitics.com</a> and is former chairman for the Libertarian Party of Southwest Georgia</span></em></p>

Christianity was founded roughly 2,000 years ago on the shores of a big lake in the Near East that still exists today – the Sea of Galilee. It has its roots in a small town that still exists today in present-day Israel – Bethlehem. Its foundation was made permanent a city of much strife for thousands of years both before and after – Jerusalem.

It started out as a small sect of Judaism that most in its day found humorous at best, blasphemous at worst. A small group of fishermen, tax collectors, whores, and other assorted scum of the earth claimed to have met the Messiah, and that he taught that to live, you must die. He claimed he was God, a claim that makes him (paraphrasing CS Lewis here) either a liar, a lunatic, or LORD.

The Messiah had already drawn large crowds during his life, but that was nothing new for the era. “Messiah”s of various forms had been rising up for hundreds of years before this one, gaining large crowds during their lives, only to die (usually by execution) and have their names be forgotten in the annals of history.

No, two things made this Messiah different: 1) After his extremely brutal — so brutal that he was no longer recognizable as human — and extremely public — so public that people from thousands of miles away saw it first hand — execution, he was seen by thousands living and breathing, with barely a scar on his body. 2) Because of this resurrection, this Messiah continued to draw large crowds after his death.

But 2,000 years later, his followers have devolved to where many of them – perhaps even most of them – have lost sight of the true Jesus Christ of Nazareth and what he did.

Christianity has become a cult.

Today, Christianity represents a multi-BILLION dollar per year sub culture. You’ve got “Christian” dang near anything you can imagine, from soap to candy to billboards to dating agencies, and that’s not even counting the wildly popular Christian media, including Albany’s own Sherwood Productions. Many Christians today get so lost in this subculture, they make themselves unable and unwilling to reach outside of it – in violation of what they call their “Great Commission”:

Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.

Bringing this into the political sphere, can someone please point out to me where Christ says in the above passage that Christians should use government to spread their message or force people to do what they think should be done?

You want to talk about an “individual mandate”? The Great Commission is one that many Christians – on both sides of the political aisle – forget about completely. Christ never said to use government to force people to not buy alcohol on Sundays. He never said government should dictate who can marry each other. He never said that government should provide for the poor, the sick, and the needy.

No, on those last three in particular, He said that WE (the individuals) should help them. WE should reach out to them and show them Christ in us. Not government stealing our money to do our job, but us doing our job out of the kindness of our hearts, in service to Him.

Christ did not come to establish a new set of laws; he came to fulfill the ones He was born into, thereby abolishing them once and for all.

No more laws about how far you could walk on the Sabbath. No more laws about what you could and could not eat. No more laws about who you could marry. No more laws about what was “clean” and “unclean”. (Modern equivalents: No more laws about mowing your lawn on Sunday. No more laws restricting alcohol sales on Sunday. No more state-sanctioned marriage – of ANYONE. No more safety laws, of ANY form.)

Christ came to “set the captive free”. The Cult of Christianity wants to twist that, pervert it into something it is not.

The “evangelical Christians” (typically Republicans) want to pervert Christ’s message into the very same religious dogma that the Pharisees of Christ’s day represented. The very same law that bound the people of Christ’s day and reminded them daily of how depraved they were, with no hope of genuine redemption – ever. The “social justice Christians” (typically Democrats) want to pervert Christ’s message into a mandate that government must make everyone absolutely equal, so that there are no sick, needy, or poor among us.

God’s greatest gift to humanity, the one that necessitated Christ coming, was Free Will. The Cult of Christianity doesn’t like Free Will though, because people can do things it doesn’t like – including marrying “other” people or being “greedy”.

God wants Free Individuals. The Cult of Christianity wants a Nanny State. Free Will is messy. It really is. But it is how God created us, in His Image. Only two beings in existence have this ability – the Creator, and His Image Bearers. It is a complete travesty that the very people who should be proclaiming this the loudest have instead devolved into a cult.

Written by Jeff Sexton. Jeff Sexton co-owns the political blog SWGAPolitics.com and is current chairman for the Libertarian Party of Southwest Georgia

Republicans or several years now have consistently played the “fear” card when it comes election time. They consistently set up some Democrat – be it Al Gore, Roy Barnes, John Kerry, Mark Taylor, or Barack Obama – as some kind of Big Evil that is out to destroy us all, and then try to make us so afraid that we HAVE to vote for the Republican to avoid the Boogie Man. They tell us that if we vote for some “third” party that is more in line with our personal values rather than Their Candidate, the Boogie Man will win and all hope will be lost.

The problem is, Georgia is a “Runoff State” in every election other than the actual Presidential Election. In every race in this State other than President of the United States, a single candidate MUST receive 50 percent of the votes plus one vote in order to win the election.

It is due to Georgia being a Runoff State that the case for third parties is actually made easier, upon any amount of thought.

You see, because a candidate MUST get 50 percent plus one, and EVERY candidate is in the election to win it (at least they will claim to be), more choices almost always guarantees a runoff election. One need look no further than this year’s Governor race to see this. The Democrats currently have five candidates in that race, and the Republicans currently have eight. Due to this high volume of candidates, BOTH races are expected to go into runoffs. However, the Libertarian Party has also consistently shown that when it runs candidates, those candidates force runoffs, a la Alan Buckley’s 2008 US Senate campaign that forced a runoff between Saxby Chambliss and Jim Martin.

If Georgia had Equal Ballot Access for all Parties, this would be even MORE true. Splinter parties such as the Constitution Party of Georgia AND the Green Party of Georgia would run more candidates, and while the Libertarian Party draws votes from “both” established Parties, the Constitution Party tends to draw primarily Republican voters and the Greens tend to draw primarily Democratic voters. (The 2008 Presidential nominees of these two parties were Chuck Baldwin and Cynthia McKinney, for example.)

Because these candidates invariably force runoffs, a person can genuinely vote their conscience in the General election without fear that the Boogie Man will automatically win. Then, the voter can vote their fear in the Runoff, and have the best of both worlds – they BOTH voted their conscience AND their fear, without sacrificing EITHER.

But this brings up an even more interesting possibility: Instead of setting up the “Boogie Man” and demanding that Libertarians and Constitutionals help the Republican Party, would it not be moreso in the interests of everyone – including the Republican Party – if the Republican Party helped the Libertarians and Constitutionals?

Think about it: In the runoff, the top two vote-getters in the General election face off. If your argument is that the Republican Party is “an ideological cousin” of the Libertarian Party and/or Constitution Party, does it not make sense for the Republican Party to work to ensure that BOTH of the combatants in the Runoff are some form of “conservative”? After all, if the Boogie Man is SOOOOO bad, should not the Republican Party work to ensure that the Boogie Man never makes it to the General, but that instead one of its “cousins” does?

Or is the Republican Party just after its own control and power?

Written by Jeff Sexton. Jeff Sexton co-owns the political blog SWGAPolitics.com and is current chairman for the Libertarian Party of Southwest Georgia

I don’t know if y’all have seen this one, but over the past couple of days a story has come out about a certain high school senior in Mississippi. Seems this student likes to date girls and wants to wear a tux to prom.

The problem? The student’s name is Constance rather than Conrad.

Yes, Constance is a lesbian, and rather than just showing up at her prom wearing a tux with her girlfriend on her arm, she checked with the school to make sure she would be allowed to attend when she did. (There is a bit of debate over what she should have done here, and I’ve heard from both sides. Personally, I think she probably did the smart thing at this point in the story.)

The school refused, and when she threatened a lawsuit, the school cancelled prom altogether.

Up to this point, I’m with Constance all the way. She should have been allowed to attend that prom wearing the formal wear of her choice and accompanied by the person of her choice. The school had NO right to dictate otherwise. In a public education environment (ie, government school), ALL viewpoints MUST be held as equally valid. After all, viewpoints are opinions, and everyone has their own opinions about things. I don’t buy the whole “social chaos” argument, as that has been used for generations to do nothing more than tyrannically oppress those outside the majority. (And is currently being used in the ongoing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell debate, but that is a whole other discussion.)

But here’s where I side with the school:

Rather than organizing her own prom, as people have done for the past 50 years in similar situations, Constance is now suing the school to force them to hold the prom.

In so doing, she crossed the line from defending her personal rights (association, religion, etc) into attacking the rights of others (association).

Both Constance and her school are now in the wrong. At least the school made the right choice of either accepting everyone or canceling the event for everyone, rather than only excluding “certain groups”. (I disagree with the ACLU position here, as canceling for everyone ALSO meets the Constitutional requirement of equal protection.) Constance, once a person I would have championed without reservation, has now acted in such a way that I have to qualify my support with the note about her own actions restricting freedom.

But yet again, this brings up the true point: If we separated schools from government, none of this would happen. She could be at a private school more accepting of her sexual orientation, and the homophobes at her school could be at a private school where they can continue their cult. No government involvement in either decision, so no room for anyone on the outside (such as a blogger in SWGA) to decry any aspect of what happens.

Written by Jeff Sexton. Jeff Sexton co-owns the political blog SWGAPolitics.com and is the current chairman of the Libertarian Party of Southwest Georgia

I was tipped off that Georgia gubernatorial candidate John Oxendine had contributed to at least one statewide candidate through his PAC, Better Georgia. (Both the PAC and Ox’s State Ethics Commission reports show the same address.) I started looking into this – and was somewhat shocked by what I found.

Money is the lifeblood of politics, but there are different views on it. Some have said that if you give a person money, you’re going to vote for them the vast majority of the time. Others have said that it is more of an appearances thing, that sometimes you have to give to certain party leaders to keep up appearances within the party. Still others have said that money is sometimes used to build relationships with people you hope will be your friends down the road.

The list of who John Oxendine has contributed to through Better Georgia, for whatever reason, is fairly interesting. Among those Ox has contributed to, we have:

• State Reps: Rich Golick, Fran Millar, Bobby Reese, Michael Harden, Steven Allison, Jill Chambers, Billy Horne, David Casas, Charlice Byrd, Barry Loudermilk, Martin Scott, Matt Dollar, Katie Dempsey, Mike Jacobs, Amos Amerson, Mike Hatfield, Roger Lane, Tom Graves, Jerry Keen, Sean Jerguson, Steve Davis, Earl Ehrhart and Ed Setzler
• State Sen: Chip Rogers, Jeff Mullis, Bill Cowsert, Dan Weber, John Douglas, Ronnie Chance, Dan Moody, Renee Unterman, and Bill Heath
• Former Peach Pundit front page contributor: (and current State House candidate) Jason Shepherd
• PSC Commissioner: Lauren “Bubba” McDonald
• State Rep: (and current Labor Commissioner candidate) Melvin Everson
• State Sen: (and Insurance Commissioner candidate) Seth Harp
• State Sen: (and Insurance Commissioner candidate) Ralph Hudgens
• State Rep: (and current Governor candidate) Austin Scott

• State Sen: (and current Governor candidate) Jeff Chapman
• Lt. Gov: (and former Governor candidate) Casey Cagle

Now, the vast majority of these donations have been during the 2008 cycle and have been in the $250-$500 range, described to me as “good” to “real good” for state House races by several people.

Outliers to that general rule include the Cagle donation – $5,000 in 2006; the Shepherd donation — $1,000 in 2009; the Hudgens donation – $500 in 2009 and part of a controversy involving Hudgens shifting money between a Senate account and his Insurance Commissioner account; the Amerson donation –$2,000 in 2008; and the McDonald donation — $1,000 in 2008.

Also interesting are the GAGOV race connections here – direct donations to two candidates that would later announce to challenge him in the GAGOV race and a contribution to one person who would be among the first members of the General Assembly to endorse one of his other GAGOV competitors, and a contribution to the one person on Peach Pundit who used to be among his most vocal supporters on that forum which largely dominated by anti-Ox (and specifically, pro-Handel) sentiment.

And his largest donation to a single candidate went to a man who would engage in a bitter early primary fight over GAGOV with Ox before resigning from the GAGOV race for “health reasons” to concentrate on his own re-election.

Written by Jeff Sexton. Jeff Sexton co-owns the political blog SWGAPolitics.com and is a candidate for the Leesburg City Council.

Before getting into the meat of this post, I want to thank Lee County Clerk Christi Dockery for being so responsive to my requests and being pro-active in making sure I get all announcements sent to the local media. She, Alan Ours, Bob Alexander, Marshall Wilcox, and the rest of the county staff have been GREAT whenever I’ve called with a question, and I really appreciate it.

Yesterday, I got an e-mail announcement that was sent to the local press that the county commissioners would be retreating to Callaway Gardens for two days “discuss goals for 2010″.

I’ve got two issues with this:

First, why do the Commissioners need to have a taxpayer-funded weekend vacation AWAY from the taxpayers to discuss their goals for 2010? Why couldn’t that discussion happen as part of the regularly scheduled work session meeting that was held Tuesday night? What are their “goals” that they are so afraid of the public knowing about?

Second, there are a number of facilities much closer to Lee County that would be much cheaper on the county budget (re: taxpayer dollars) than Callaway Gardens. This includes one facility they bought – Grand Island! Chairman Duffy continues to praise county staff for doing more with less, but apparently he is not interested in saving money when spending it means he gets a taxpayer funded weekend vacation.

Not only would these facilities be cheaper, they would also allow the public to attend, due to their closer proximity to Lee County. But the ommissioners aren’t interested in genuine public input, apparently.

My final point is directed at a single commissioner, who announced in this week’s Lee County Ledger that he intends to run for re-election this year. Commissioner Dennis Roland continuously haggles county staff over the smallest penny, and has stated repeatedly that he would not vote for the new library because it was over his arbitrary limit. But where was his opposition to this taxpayer funded vacation to one of the prime fishing spots in Georgia?

Written by Jeff Sexton. Jeff Sexton co-owns the political blog SWGAPolitics.com and is a candidate for the Leesburg City Council.

Wow. 2009 is over. We saw quite a bit happen during the year.

We’ve seen one of the top-three most powerful politicians in the state drop out of the Georgia governor’s race under the auspices of his health, only to have the rumor come out later in the year that it was actually over a sex scandal.

We saw another of the top three most powerful politicians in the state admit to attempting suicide, and fall from power with the revelation weeks later that he had threatened to beat his ex-wife. The chaos caused by that double-whammy led to a near-total shakeup of the Republican leadership in the state House of Representatives.

We’ve seen several constitutional officers announce their intentions to run for governor, including the commissioner of insurance, the secretary of state and the attorney general.

And we’ve seen several members of the General Assembly announce plans to run for various statewide offices.

In the 2009 session of the General Assembly, we saw the influence of the Georgia Power lobby with the sweetheart deal whereby the General Assembly took on the role of the Public Service Commission and allowed Georgia Power to charge its customers for its profits on a facility that hasn’t even been built yet. We worked to prevent a blatant money-grab by the state in the form of a new “super speeder” law, but failed – and that law goes into effect Friday.

We were able to stop a gross violation of privacy in the form of the Prescription Drug Monitoring Act, and we saw an epic battle between State Sens. Preston Smith and David Shafer where Smith almost directly quoted George Orwell’s 1984 in speaking against the bill. I ran live blogs of both Crossover Day and Sine Die, and this is something I hope to be able to continue to do, as it was an absolutely crazy-yet-amazing experience.

With the close of the 2009 session of the General Assembly, more focus was put on the various 2010 campaigns for statewide offices, and I’ve had the chance to meet quite a few of the candidates for the various offices. Austin Scott was the first, and I was one of about a handful of people around the State to walk 10 miles with him on his Walk of Georgia. I’ve also had a chance to meet Eric Johnson, Karen Handel, Kathy Cox, Steven Northington, Richard Woods, Gerry Purcell, Ray McBerry, Sam Olens and John Monds in person at various events.

With the statewide races, the scandals have gotten the most press, and John Oxendine certainly leads that particular pack. In April, his chief political strategist verbally threatened me. In May, it came out that he had accepted $120,000 in potentially illegal campaign contributions. In late June, his chief political strategist was accused of verbally threatening a wife and mother over her private property. In mid-August, this same man threatened a 15-year-old Lee County High School sophomore. Also over the summer, John Oxendine and his wife celebrated the birth of their newest son – and John promptly used his literally hours-old son in a campaign commercial shot that day, showing his newborn son and wife still in the recovery room

Not to be outdone, however, news came out of Nathan Deal’s sweetheart deal that has netted him millions of dollars in the nearly two decades it has been ongoing, since he was a member of the state Senate. Karen Handel has had issues with her voter verification program, with both the Bush and Obama justice departments reprimanding her, and both Bush and Obama courts deciding against her in lawsuits filed relating to this debacle. Eric Johnson was tainted by the fallout of Glenn Richardson’s fall from power, and Ray McBerry has had to deal with a campaign manager (who he recently fired) who had said she was “thrilled” a private businessman was murdered in his church

In late summer, I began covering Lee County politics, and began attending most Lee County Commission and Leesburg City Council meetings. In September, I decided to give the citizens of Leesburg a voice at the ballot box and ran in the only contested race for Leesburg City Council this year.

But the single biggest story this year, the one that ties all of the rest of that together – at least for the SWGA area – is the emergence of SWGAPolitics.com onto the scene. I started this site not having any clue what I was doing. I only knew that people should be able to know more about the politics that affect them than they had available at the time, and that I could do something about that via a political blog of some form.

As the year progressed, this site hit its stride and I found my voice. I also found a solid group of political friends and allies, and a solid business partner in Tom. Tom and I have graced the front page of the Albany Herald, we both have columns in the Albany Journal, and I’ve also appeared on WFXL a few times talking about various local and national issues.

We have affected policy at the state level already via our work with other political blogs on the Prescription Drug Monitoring Act and others, and we have affected a number of policies at the local level, including the recent repeal of a Lee County policy limiting free speech once we came out opposing it.

2009 truly was the year both myself and SWGAPolitics.com became “Awake and Alive”, and I genuinely look forward to seeing what 2010 has in store for us.

Written by Jeff Sexton. Jeff Sexton co-owns the political blog SWGAPolitics.com and is a candidate for the Leesburg City Council.

At the very front of what I’m about to say, let me note that this is just an idea I’ve been thinking about that may or may not work. Based on my own thinking right now, I think it might, and it is certainly a different approach than what we’ve got right now, which is largely a paper tiger. Obviously, the point in writing this at all is that I would like public discussion on it, so feel free to have at it!

Sam Olens told me a couple of weeks ago that if the Cobb County Commission violates the State’s transparency laws, they can be fined a whopping $100 per occurrence, and suggested that for the laws to have any real teeth, there needed to be an extra zero on that number.

That was the quote in particular that has stuck with me since that interview, floating in the back of my mind. As with many of my solutions, after percolating back there for a while, it finally comes to me, as this one has:

What if we take off a zero?

But when we take off that zero – making the fine a maximum of $10 – we also switch out how often it can be levied. Instead of per occurrence, let’s make it per registered voter affected per occurrence. For example, if the City of Leesburg violated the State’s Open Meetings law, instead of being fined $100 for the meeting that violated the law, they could be fined $10 x ~ 1600 voters, or $16,000 for every meeting that violated the Open Records law. If the Lee County Commissioners violated the Open Records law, the fine could be up to $10 x ~18,000 voters, or $180,000. Dougherty County Commissioners would face up to a $10 x ~56,000 = $560,000 fine for every violation of the Open Meetings law.

Even a $1 per registered voter per occurrence fine would be a dramatic deterrent in the current economic times, as the elected officials would not want to have to raise taxes because they violated an Open Meetings law – talk about a political gold mine for their opponents!

But wait – we can go even further with meaningful transparency reform! If we could force all county and municipal boards to meet when the majority of the public could actually attend all the meetings (say no earlier than 6 p.m. on a weekday?), more people would have the opportunity to be at the meetings, and thus more sunshine is allowed in via people becoming truly informed, active citizens in their communities.

Furthermore, if we forced local governments to be more proactive about letting the public know about special called meetings – say by announcing them in the legal organ of the county and on the organization’s website (if available) for at least one week prior to the time of the meeting – we could add some further sunshine in there. Obviously, any violations of these provisions would be subject to the same per registered voter, per occurrence fine as described above.

Finally, what if we subjected all politicians to this same type of fine – up to $10 per registered voter in the district, per occurrence – for all ethics violations, including failure to file required disclosures on time? Would this not send a clear message to politicians at all levels that if they didn’t shape up, they would pay dearly out of their own checkbook?

The “solutions” we have are being shown to have failed us. It is time we go back to the drawing board and come up with new, more stringent ideas, and I think the ideas I’ve proposed here are a good step in the right direction. As I said at the beginning, I’d love to hear what you think.

If you are a legislator reading this and I’ve caught your eye with some of it, I would love to talk to you about the possibility of introducing one of these bills this session – I’ve got bill proposals already written for at least one of the ideas I’ve discussed here (the after hours meetings), and I can write the others up if I can find anyone willing to actually sponsor it in the General Assembly.

If you are just a concerned citizen reading this, and want to help, talk to you legislator about these ideas. If you let me know who you’ve contacted, I will also contact them directly and make my case.

Who knows, we might just be able to pass meaningful ethics reform in Georgia in 2010!

Written by Jeff Sexton. Jeff Sexton co-owns the political blog SWGAPolitics.com and is a candidate for the Leesburg City Council.