SWGA Politics

John Oxendine Speech at Tifton Forum

Just and FYI on formatting here: For this series from the Tifton forum, I will put the video first followed by my comments.

“If you wanna know what someone is going to do in the future in another elected office, look to see what they’ve done in the past.” (right at the 1:40 mark). Gee, Ox has accepted $120K in potentially illegal campaign contributions, told a person they had to remove a private sign from their private property, and bullied a 15 yo kid. Does he REALLY want to be making statements about looking to the past to see what a person will do in the future?

Ox also discusses how his office continues to waste taxpayer money by being open 12 hrs a day rather than 10 and having receptionists answer the phone rather than automated phone trees that save taxpayers money by not having to pay someone 20K+ per year to answer routine phone calls. Note that I wouldn’t mind his office being open until 7p if they didn’t open until 10a. I actually think that would be a GOOD idea, as it would allow his workers to skip congestion in Atlanta traffic at both ends of their workday, thus alleviating at least some of Atlanta’s traffic.

Ox then throws in a comment pandering to the nativists.

In Ox’s defense (seriously, how often do you hear THOSE words on THIS site?), he actually has a good point about Atlanta’s traffic issues impacting the entire State. He also flat out calls inter-basin transfers stealing (which it is) – though I would be very interested to see if he makes the same comment in say Gwinnett County. He then makes a valid point about Alabama having higher SAT scores and lower drop out rates than us, and thus businesses choose to locate there rather than here.

I also agree with him that an income tax is fundamentally wrong – though I think the “Fair” Tax is also fundamentally flawed. As I’ve shown recently, he’s also a complete idiot when he says that GA can be run without an income tax. We can – if all of our other taxes and fees are increased DRAMATICALLY. Personally, I’d rather pay one time than die a death of a thousand cuts. He specifically mentions Florida and Tennessee, and as I showed in the post where I discussed this, FL and TN have very different resources than we do. Indeed, the GSU study specifically rejected the FL and TN taxation models.

Clearly, Ox opposes life support machines, as when he is pandering to the pro-life crowd he specifically states life continues until the “natural termination” of that life. Something to consider when your wife has cancer and has to have a feeding tube or is in a car wreck and has to be on a ventilator for a few days. Under John Oxendine, those services would be removed, if he had his way.

As always, he concludes with a bit about needing the “right Republican to beat Roy Barnes”, and a commenter on PeachPundit yesterday said it best there:

All the sudden his campaign is all about “who can beat Barnes”. Apparently he doesn’t believe that he can win as the “most qualified” candidate.