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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
On Nov. 3, the citizens of the City of Leesburg will have a choice between two competing visions. My vision takes the best of the old ways and implements them using fresh, new methods to achieve the best combination of both old and new.
One great thing about the old days was that people could sit around and talk to each other about ideas and events. Due to a variety of factors, you really don’t see that too much these days – but we can. I’ve been a pioneer of that over the past 10 months or so with my work in creating and operating SWGAPolitics.com, a forum for anyone in SWGA to talk politics in a manner that we try to keep generally civil. As the newest Leesburg city councilman, I will continue to push for this genuine open forum to discuss any issue that arises. I’ve also already begun using my personal site, JefferySexton.com, as a way to discuss campaign-specific issues, and I will continue to use it as my “official” site once in office.
A great thing about the new ways is our commitment to professionalism and openness in government. We now expect council members to be at meetings and we expect websites and other resources so that we can keep tabs on our government. I can honestly say that the only meeting I have ever missed once I committed to doing something was last week’s County Commission meeting that fell on my anniversary – and that is from any position I have ever held, going all the way back to my college days. That is a record I intend to keep intact as the newest Leesburg City Councilman. I also intend to create a new website that has at a minimum the agendas and minutes of every City Council meeting, as well as contact information for every City of Leesburg Department head and other relevant information about City government.
The era of good-ole-boy politics is dead, and it should stay dead. I have been working for openness, transparency, professionalism, and civility since beginning my political involvement one year ago, and I will continue that work as the newest Leesburg city councilman.
Jeff Sexton.
Written by Jeff Sexton. Jeff Sexton co-owns the political blog SWGAPolitics.com and is a candidate for the Leesburg City Council.
Tuesday, Jun 28
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