I serve with many of your neighbors on the “We Count Lee Counts” committee here in Lee County. The committee’s sole purpose is to promote the Census and hopefully as a result, improve our county’s citizen’s response to the census mailing in Mid-March. The Census is vitally important to our County, our Region, and our State. It will serve as the primary basis upon which some 400 BILLION DOLLARS is divided up among the communities of our country. Conservative estimates put the value of each citizen we count at $1,700.00. That means if we miss you in the count, it cost Lee County $1,700.00 if we miss a family of 4 it cost us $6,800.00! We can not afford to miss one single person! This same information also determines how many representatives we have in Atlanta and in Washington and even how the lines are drawn in Lee County for the election of Commissioners and School Board Members.
In March, your home should receive a simple, 10 question, census form. Fill it out and send it back. Just a few minutes of your time could mean so much for your community. For every household that does not respond, census workers will attempt to contact and count, so by filling out your form and returning it, you are saving the cost of that census worker trying to track down your household. Money that we save for the Census Bureau is really our money, since all government money comes from you and I! [Continue Reading]
Doug MacGinnitie’s campaign continues to build momentum and support from across Georgia. Today, the campaign announced the endorsement of the Cobb County 912 Project. The Cobb County 912 Project is a grassroots organization comprised of men and women who love their country and who are working to reinforce conservative principles in Georgia based on the 9-12 Project.
“After researching the platforms and background of the 2010 Secretary of State candidates, Doug MacGinnitie was the obvious choice. Doug is not a career politician, but an entrepreneur and business owner who wants to make a difference in our government by applying sound, real-world principles,” stated Tricia Pridemore, chairman of the Cobb County 912 Project. “The office of Georgia Secretary of State is critical to holding free and honest elections. Doug understands the principles needed to secure our electoral process, and we trust him to uphold the pledge and commitments he’s made to Georgia voters.” [Continue Reading]
As Jeff pointed out, Erik Erikson is up to the old fear tactics that both Republicans and Democrats are so fond of. This time, it’s the old chestnut of how a third party candidate will syphon votes. They throw up Clinton, and Woodrow Wilson, and all the evils that ensued. Wah, wah, wah. Continue reading Nope, sorry Eric. Not voting Republican
Full disclosure up front: I am actively working with the Kira Willis for State Superintendent of Schools campaign.
Kira Willis, a 17 year veteran classroom teacher from Roswell, has entered the State School Superintendent race and is seeking the nomination of the Libertarian Party of Georgia.
Kira is running on what she calls the “ABCs of Education”: Accountability, Budget, and Community.
As a classroom teacher, Kira knows that accountability cannot just mean more regulations on teachers and schools, but that each stakeholder in education should be held accountable for their own products. These stakeholders are students, parents, teachers, schools, and communities.
What was once a partnership between the school and home has become a disenfranchised blame game. Parents have been disregarded by the schools and the state as irrelevant to their children’s education. All parents have both a right and a responsibility to their children’s schooling. I can’t think of any parent who does not want his child to succeed. As State School Superintendent, I want to help mend the bridge between the school and the home. This means having parents accountable for their children coming to school ready to learn. It means that parents must help the school in teaching their young people.
Kira wants to eliminate to as much a degree as possible positions that have little to no contact with students. This means minimizing the bureaucracy of the State Department of Education and making it a servant of the local schools rather than a tyrant over them. She will also work to encourage local school systems to follow her lead and eliminate much of the central office bureaucracy that serves as little more than patronage and cronyism. This will help ease Georgia out of its budget crisis as well as help local school systems avoid having to furlough teachers.
Finally, Kira stresses community. Again, from her website:
We need to give the schools back to their communities! What’s best for students in Atlanta may not be best for students in Rome or Valdosta. Our job as educators is to ensure that we are teaching students to reach a specific standard of learning, not to ensure that we teach them exactly the same thing at exactly the same time. Who knows better how to teach students: the state or the teachers within community itself? Taking away the community school was a disservice to the students and to the school community.
Fear. It has been the tool of the Big Government Party – particularly its “Republican” wing – for quite a while.
The entire Big Government Party uses it to subdue and subject the American people with great effect. The Democrat half tells us we should fear Republicans because they will throw our sick and infirm out on the street in a blizzard. The Republicans tell us we should fear Democrats because they will allow America’s enemies to destroy it.
Indeed, Georgia’s own Erick Erickson is one chief fearmonger (and warmonger) here. It is typified in his latest post on RedState, where he states
how many Americans are going to die because of Barack Obama’s handling of our national security?
At its Feb 8 meeting (which happens at 5pm, making it impossible for most working parents/community members to attend), the Lee County School Board approved the purchase of land for a new school – once again, inside the city limits of Leesburg. With this purchase, the record of having every single school in the Lee County School System inside Leesburg continues – for a total of 9 campus locations, counting the new purchase.
This school will be placed at the already-stressed intersection of Robert B Lee Rd and Lovers Lane, right along the new truck route that is being established. (You can see both a county view and a city view of all school locations at the end of this post)
The City of Leesburg already bears the burden of having every current school in the system within our limits, and our infrastructure is already pushed beyond its breaking point in part because of this burden. Furthermore, every acre used for a school within the city limits is an acre that cannot be used for residential, commercial, or recreational purposes. At least two of those three things are features which the City of Leesburg needs more of (much more, in the case of commercial). [Continue Reading]
Gerry Purcell, a GOP candidate for Insurance Commissioner, will be at Sunset Grill in the Albany Mall at 6:30 tomorrow night.
Yes, I know this is an extremely short post, but I wanted to get that information out to you. Look for more detailed posts on other subjects (Lee County School System, Lee County Board of Commissioners, area General Assembly members’ fundraising to date, and a new State School Superintendent candidate) later today and tomorrow morning. For now, I’m off to lunch with my wife and inlaws.
I leave you with the video of Gerry speaking exclusively to SWGAPolitics.com last November at the Tifton Gubernatorial Forum:
As always, if you know of a statewide candidate coming to the area, please let me know and I’ll do what I can to alert the public via this site and social media.
I really like the Sunlight Foundation‘s work. They are working mostly at the National level to bring the same transparency to government that I work for here in Georgia and Lee County.
They’ve got a new campaign they are gearing up for that sounds REALLY good, which is the title of this post.
Lee County’s website is a pretty good source of information, but it still is lacking in one area that I correct via youtube as much as possible – it doesn’t have video records of the various meetings. In Lee County, there is absolutely no way to know for yourself what the Board of Commissioners does outside of the agenda and agenda packets posted online, the reports of the Albany Herald, WFXL, and (sometimes) WALB, and my own efforts unless you actually attend the meeting yourself. There is no way to watch it at home on your television, and there is no way to watch it online even as a streaming live broadcast. [Continue Reading]
Dr. Sandra Cannon Scott of Augusta is the most recent Democrat to enter the contest for State School Superintendent.
Dr. Scott only two months ago finished a campaign for State Senate District 22, where she placed dead last behind two fellow Democrats and the Libertarian, Taylor Bryant. Barely three weeks later, she filed to run for State School Superintendent.
I have not been able to find out much about her so far – the vast majority of what I have is from the sporadicpresscoverage she received in her SD-22 bid. Perhaps the most detailed coverage of Scott is on this page, where she and the other candidates in SD-22 answer several questions about that race. [Continue Reading]
