SWGA Politics

Ethics in Government Law.[ December 14, 2009 – 11:05 pm]by Publius Posted in » 2010 Campaigns

Note from Jeff: This is Gary Horlacher‘s ethics article. He is running for the Democratic nomination for Secretary of State.

Broken and in dire need of repair.

Georgia’s government has a responsibility to function openly, honestly, efficiently, and with integrity. The conduct of public officials is important when entrusted to oversee the public’s affairs. Transparency and Accountability have been intentionally erased in recent years by our current leadership. We need a much sharper focus on ETHICS. Over the last several years, there has been a serious erosion of the public’s trust in government, at every level, national, state, and local, because of an incredible number of cases of corruption and serious ethical and moral breaches.
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Open Government and Georgia Republicans[ December 14, 2009 – 8:55 pm]by Jeff Posted in » State

The above is 11Alive Atlanta’s coverage of the Georgia House of Representatives Republican Caucus meeting Friday, the one that was meant to be beyond reproach and a “clearing of the air”.
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Clearing the Woods[ December 14, 2009 – 11:01 am]by Tom Posted in » Albany Dougherty County

Lajuanna Woods has resigned her position to avoid possible prosecution according to an email from WALB received just moments ago. Woods, you may recall, received one of the controversial fascade grants despite her restaurant being outside of the downtown redevelopment area.

We will continue following this story throughout the day as more information becomes available.

When should government step in?[ December 14, 2009 – 8:00 am]by Tom Posted in » Editorial

Some out there may well wonder if I’m some kind of anarchist, hoping that government goes away forever, leaving us to just muddle through our lives.  I’ll be honest, there’s some appeal to something like that, but it suffers from the same problem as any other utopian ideal.  It expects people to be something other than they actually are.  The only way for it to work is for people, as a whole, to become decent beings and so far I haven’t seen any evidence of that one happening.

So, the question becomes, when should government step in?  Otherwise, what would be the point of government if it doesn’t do anything at all? Read More …

Lee County Censors Political Speech[ December 14, 2009 – 5:52 am]by Jeff Posted in » Lee County

This past week at the Lee County Board of Commissioners meeting, a policy was implemented without it being on the Agenda – at least the online version of it, as it exists at the moment I type this, nearly a week later.

I’m working on getting the video right now – like I did with the Tifton Forum, my plan is to put the SWGAPolitics.com logo in the bottom corner, then cut it for upload to our youtube account – but one of the last items discussed at the meeting was use of the Opal Cannon Auditorium for candidates running for public office. Basically, the policy says (apparently, I haven’t seen a copy of it yet) that candidates running for public office can’t use the building – yet Nathan Deal did back in August! Per County Administrator Alan Ours’ comments during the meeting, the proposed (at the time) policy is “consistent with County policy for other buildings”.
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