2024 Georgia General Assembly Review

Thank good­ness, the 2024 Geor­gia Gen­er­al Assem­bly is now over. We can stop hold­ing our breath. Dur­ing this ses­sion I wrote about two bills, the first being the Kemp-backed, “Green-New-Deal” bill, HB206, the sec­ond being leg­is­la­tion for­ward­ed by Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Brad Thomas, Todd Jones and oth­ers, HB986, a bill I termed dis­af­fec­tion­al­ly the “deep-fake-go-to-jail” bill. Ear­li­er in the week, it appeared we might leave this ses­sion 100% vic­to­ri­ous, defeat­ing both of those bills. In the end, how­ev­er, Gov­er­nor Kemp pre­vailed on HB206, leav­ing us bat­ting .500 on the sea­son, good for base­ball, bad for per­pet­u­at­ing Amer­i­can polit­i­cal institutions. 

Regard­ing HB206, please refer to my Feb­ru­ary Sub­stack enti­tled, Kem­p’s Fail­ing Green Com­pa­nies Seek­ing Tax­pay­er Fund­ed Cap­i­tal to Sur­vive. This bill cre­ates a gov­ern­ing author­i­ty in every Geor­gia coun­ty, munic­i­pal­i­ty, etc. tasked with the duty of receiv­ing requests from under-cap­i­tal­ized, strug­gling, green ener­gy com­pa­nies (UCSGEC’s) with­in their juris­dic­tions and pack­ag­ing those com­pa­nies’ requests for tax­pay­er assis­tance to go before their respec­tive gov­ern­ing boards, ie., coun­ty com­mis­sions, city coun­cils, etc. If those gov­ern­ing boards agree, the coun­ty or city tax­pay­ers would back bonds issued by their local gov­ern­ing author­i­ty, osten­si­bly to be paid back by those same UCSGEC’s via agreed increased prop­er­ty tax assess­ments, over and above what would be nor­mal, hope­ful­ly retir­ing each bond issue over time. What I describe here is poten­tial­ly Gov­er­nor Kemp’s Riv­ian deal metas­ta­sized into prac­ti­cal­ly every polit­i­cal juris­dic­tion in the state. 

The objec­tions to this scheme are numer­ous, the most obvi­ous being that tax­pay­ers would be placed at risk to pay off said bonds should these UCSGEC’s fail to turn prof­its suf­fi­cient to sat­is­fy both their investors, keep­ing investors in the game, while also pay­ing back the bonds. Under a cap­i­tal­ist eco­nom­ic mod­el, only the investors in a ven­ture such as I describe would be at risk. That is what cap­i­tal­ism is. The job of a cap­i­tal investor is to judge risk vs. reward and val­ue a prospec­tive invest­ment accord­ing to a for­mu­la designed to price a stock accord­ing­ly. Under this bill, stock prices for UCSGEC’s will become wild­ly distorted. 

HB206, blurs the cap­i­tal­ist eco­nom­ic mod­el, effec­tive­ly sup­ple­ment­ing pri­vate invest­ment cap­i­tal with pub­lic-backed financ­ing, a body of local tax­pay­ers becom­ing a partner/investor in cer­tain cho­sen UCSGEC’s, the only reward for doing so, how­ev­er, being to break even on the retire­ment of pub­lic-backed bonds, to go with what­ev­er pos­i­tive or neg­a­tive impact these UCSGEC’s might muster to aid their local economies. In oth­er words, there is very lit­tle or no upside for the tax­pay­ers in any of these deals. The best the tax­pay­ers might do under this arrange­ment would be to break even should a UCSGEC stay in busi­ness long enough to retire a local bond issue. This is anoth­er rea­son why, year after year, Geor­gia wins the prize as the nation’s best state in which to do busi­ness. Only in Geor­gia, do tax­pay­ers sup­ple­ment cor­po­rate prof­its to this extent with deals like HB206. 

Sec­ond­ly, the Kemp-backed HB206 places gov­ern­ment into the busi­ness of pick­ing not only win­ners and losers in the selec­tion of com­pa­nies to par­tic­i­pate in these ill-con­ceived pub­lic-pri­vate part­ner­ships, but it also makes a win­ner out of an entire pre­ferred indus­try, that being the green ener­gy indus­try. That is not a prop­er role of gov­ern­ment under cap­i­tal­ism. The sys­tem we are dis­cussing is bet­ter under­stood as “cor­po­ratism,” where cor­po­ra­tions increas­ing­ly influ­ence pub­lic pol­i­cy to the extent that cor­po­rate enti­ties even­tu­al­ly dic­tate pub­lic pol­i­cy, effec­tive­ly trans­form­ing “cap­i­tal­ism” into “cor­po­rate fas­cism.” Cor­po­rate fas­cism is a nec­es­sary step, pro­vid­ing the eco­nom­ic pow­er nec­es­sary to build a com­mu­nist state. That is where all this goes. That is where Chi­na is and how it gen­er­ates the eco­nom­ic pow­er to sup­port its com­mu­nist con­trol systems. 

On Tues­day of this week, on the floor of the Geor­gia House the HB206 Sen­ate sub­sti­tute bill had been defeat­ed, utter­ly, 91–72. It was dead, the only “Yea” vote from the Forsyth Coun­ty del­e­ga­tion com­ing from Kemp’s “floor leader,” Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Lau­ren McDon­ald. Vot­ing against his boss’ instruc­tions would put the rep­re­sen­ta­tive in an unen­vi­able posi­tion with the gov­er­nor next year. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Carter Bar­rett, seem­ing­ly could not make up his mind, and abstained. 

HB206 was dead. It had tak­en its last breath and was about to be thrown on the ash heap of bad ideas, when in an orches­trat­ed maneu­ver the bill’s spon­sor stood rec­og­nized in time to make a “motion to recon­sid­er.” That is when a most curi­ous vote took place. All those NO votes, includ­ing the votes of every Forsyth Coun­ty house mem­ber, Brent Cox, Carter Bar­rett, Todd Jones and Rick Jasperse, became YES votes. All four had just vot­ed to KILL HB206, or at least abstained from sup­port­ing it. Then all four vot­ed to let HB206 live for one more day. They let HB206 up off the mat, giv­ing the gov­er­nor and every green ener­gy lob­by­ist one more oppor­tu­ni­ty to make back­room deals to save the bill. And that is what hap­pened. Yes­ter­day, on the last day of the ses­sion, the gov­er­nor received one more chance to pass the bill, and the House passed HB206 by an over­whelm­ing mar­gin, 142–22, Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Brent Cox, Carter Bar­ret and Todd Jones once again vot­ing NO, despite their votes to recon­sid­er, leav­ing Rick Jasperse the only orig­i­nal Forsyth Coun­ty NO vote to switch in sup­port­ing the governor’s bill. 

Why did they let HB206 up off the mat? Why did our leg­is­la­tors not vote to dri­ve a stake in the heart of HB206 when it was com­plete­ly defeat­ed, lying on the floor, help­less, with no chance of vic­to­ry? The only expla­na­tion I received from any of them was that vot­ing to recon­sid­er the bill demon­strat­ed col­le­gial­i­ty. In oth­er words, vot­ing to recon­sid­er the bill was a nice way to let the bill spon­sor down. “It’s just what you do.” 

Bull­shit.

Now, I am glad to have good rela­tion­ships with leg­is­la­tors. I am glad to be friends. And I am glad to have hon­est dis­agree­ments on pol­i­cy. If we see things dif­fer­ent­ly, I can accept that. And I can sep­a­rate the “friend” from the “politi­cian.” But do not bull­shit me. I do not care if I have one “friend/politician” left, I will not endure bull­shit. And politi­cians should not expect that I won’t see BS for what it is. I see it. I smell it. I see it round­ing the cor­ner. If a leg­is­la­tor screws up, fine. Admit it, TO EVERYONE. Nobody is per­fect. But I warn them all, the minute any politi­cian starts down the road speak­ing bull­shit to defend his or her actions in the role of rep­re­sent­ing the pub­lic, that becomes a very long, dark road, one he or she will nev­er be able to exit and remain in pub­lic life. That is what hap­pens to good peo­ple think­ing they want to go into pub­lic ser­vice. It’s almost like it hap­pens to ALL of them, even­tu­al­ly. I see it. I warn every­one hop­ing to become a pub­lic ser­vant against it. Yet, there it is, over and over. For what it’s worth, here is my stan­dard speech to every new leg­is­la­tor I come in con­tact with: 

“Do not trust any­one. Do not trust the leg­is­la­tor who shares your office. Do not trust the smil­ing faces walk­ing in the door to speak with you. Do not trust the sys­tem. Your friends in pub­lic life are not your friends. They will turn on you at a moment’s notice. You have one job, and one job only. And that is to keep your head down and rep­re­sent the inter­ests of the peo­ple in your dis­trict to the best of your abil­i­ty. That’s it. That is the job. If you do not like that job, quit. The job is not to rep­re­sent your­self, spe­cial inter­ests or the inter­ests of peo­ple in oth­er dis­tricts. It is not to have a big­ger pic­ture of the world than any­one else. The job is not to do what you think might be good for the state as a whole, unless it is in the inter­ests of the peo­ple of your dis­trict. You are a REPRESENTATIVE. You REPRESENT. That’s all you do. And if you do that, you will be well-regard­ed when you walk down the street where you live. If you do not, you will not.”

Here endeth the ser­mon on HB206. 

Now, we did win one on HB986, the “deep-fake-go-to-jail” bill I wrote about, spon­sored by Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Todd Jones and Brad Thomas. That bill passed the House, but died in the Sen­ate, thank­ful­ly. Because this is the sec­ond and final year of this leg­is­la­ture, that bill would have to be rein­tro­duced in a new leg­is­la­ture after the Novem­ber elec­tions. I thank every­one who had your voic­es heard on HB986. They were heard, and the result was a total vic­to­ry for the 1st Amendment. 

Final­ly, I want to tip my hat, per­haps uncus­tom­ar­i­ly, to Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Todd Jones, a Forsyth Coun­ty leg­is­la­tor with whom my dis­agree­ments are wide­ly known. Along with Rep’s. John LaHood, Vic­tor Ander­son, Rob Lev­erett, Shaw Black­mon, James Burchett and Sen. Max Burns, Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Jones spon­sored mean­ing­ful leg­is­la­tion, HB976 by Sen­ate sub­sti­tute, which if signed by Gov­er­nor Kemp would require “water­marks” on all Geor­gia bal­lots, mak­ing it much more dif­fi­cult, albeit not impos­si­ble, for flawed or fraud­u­lent bal­lots to be count­ed. HB976, as passed by both hous­es, would also add need­ed secu­ri­ty to han­dling and chain-of-cus­tody pro­ce­dures in man­ag­ing bal­lots once count­ed, and pro­vide for pub­lic access to both low res­o­lu­tion, but also also high res­o­lu­tion images of those bal­lots. On the neg­a­tive side, none of those very mean­ing­ful changes will come into affect until AFTER the 2024 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. It will be anoth­er five years before any of those pro­vi­sions might pos­i­tive­ly affect a pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. And one can­di­date we know will not be on the bal­lot that year is Don­ald Trump. I’m not sure why those pro­vi­sions could not have includ­ed the most impor­tant elec­tion in our nation’s his­to­ry, an elec­tion which if fraud pre­vails again could set Amer­i­ca on a path toward irrev­o­ca­ble destruc­tion. Per­haps there is a world­wide short­age of water­marked paper on which to print ballots.