Bad Georgia Law

The Georgia Legislature needs to schedule time to discuss and debate current Georgia Law that is abusive to voters. Property and bank account seizure should top the list. Excessive fees and fines levied by cities and counties should be added to the debate.

Banks in Georgia should not allow customer accounts to be seized without a court order prompting a customer notice. If the account holder claims fraud, the seizure should be stopped. Georgia law needs to correct the laws surrounding government, collection agency and law firm abuse.

AJC 10/23/18, page A1 article “Woman fights back after firm drains account” tells the story of how Jacqueline Morgan from Cumming Ga had her account drained by  rogue Marietta law firm Cooling & Winter because of a debt she didn’t owe. This is the same law firm that used to call itself Frederick J Hanna & Associates and was ordered to pay a $3.1 million fine and agree to federal monitoring for similar abuses. These crooks should have called named their law firm Dewey, Cheatham and Howe.

To ensure that unqualified borrowers are not allowed to become a credit risk to lenders, those lenders must be able to refuse to lend.

Georgia boasts about being “business friendly”.  They need to look at how “resident unfriendly” they really are. $1500 fines for not paying your auto insurance bill on time need to end.

The Georgia Legislature allows cities and counties to over-borrow without limits and impose business-killing ordinances.  Resident abuse comes in the form of excessive and unnecessary fees and fines, rotting infrastructure and property tax gouging due to predatory assessment practices.

The Legislature needs to tighten down on cities and counties who don’t prioritize their spending based on utilization to ensure that water is clean, sewers don’t break, roads and highways are maintained and expanded and gridlock is ended. The utilization of these systems is 100%. All of these priorities need to be up to snuff before cities and counties spend any funds on lower priorities that politicians like, but voters get little benefit.

The Regionalism laws passed in 2010 and 2012, empowering Regional Commissions to be unelected governance need to be repealed.

TADs (tax allocating districts) need to be given a post mortem review to see how many of these “economic development” projects have failed.

No-knock warrants and property and bank account seizures need to be eliminated.

Using Bond sales to fund government entities is a huge waste of money that doubles the cost of everything that is financed through Bonds. There is no reason for governments and school systems to waste money on Bond interest.

The obvious solution to Atlanta gridlock is to either expand the roads and highways or reduce the population density of the affected areas. That means that zoning laws should be amended to defend against gridlock density.  Public transit should be privatized to remove tax subsidies, lower costs and improve efficiency.

Rural Georgia needs manufacturing plants to return to their cities.  This is the only way rural counties will be able to restore their economies to pre-1993 viability.

The costs of government, education and healthcare are unsustainable due to excessive taxpayer funding. These bureaucracies need to be dismantled and costs reduced.

Georgia political campaign finance laws need to be reformed to restrict the right to make legal campaign contributions to registered voters who have these candidates on their ballot. The cost of these campaigns is unsustainable if voters ever hope to remove undue special interest dominance of their governments.  All Georgia candidates would be on the same equal footing. Costly, mud-slinging TV ads could be replaced by extensive candidate websites with full resumes and positions on all relevant issues. All they really need are websites and yard signs.

Georgia economic development should be focused on the production and productivity of the private sector. The legislature needs to ensure that government is not the problem. The Georgia GDP is the best indicator of our success. This requires that we continue to reduce costs and improve outcomes using automation, process improvement and de-bureaucratization.

Judicial Reform - We also need to track crime and the courts to determine why violent criminals are routinely released, so we can stop this.  These judges need websites to summarize their cases, failures and recommendations for solutions. 

Education Reform - We need to reduce the cost of education and improve the outcomes. We need to stop using Bonds to fund school construction.  We need to dispel the myths about education and admit that students are actually responsible for their own education and it will be no better than the effort they invest. We need to recognize that students should identify their motivated abilities as what they do well and enjoy doing, so they can select a successful occupation. We need to get the propaganda out of our schools and universities and ensure that what is taught is a fact, not a politically motivated theory.  We need to agree on what skills are required to function as adults. We should track the successes and the failures do determine what works for students.

Healthcare Reform – We need to reduce the cost of healthcare and repeal all legislation that contributes to healthcare costs. We need to recognize that all patients are different and are responsible for their own preventive healthcare. We need to limit malpractice costs.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader