Georgia Legislature Problems

Georgia House Speaker David Ralston is under attack.

Ralston owns a law firm and has been active in Georgia politics since 1992. He served as a State Senator from 1993 to 1999 and a State Representative from 2002 to present in North Georgia. He became Speaker of the House in 2010.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ralston

Ralston is a top-down Speaker who completely controls the Gold Dome. His tyrannical style guarantees control from the top and that worked for Governor Deal, who also served from 2010 to 2018.  They began their reign in the Obama years and scrambled for federal dollars. They wanted to expand the harbor in Savannah. They did not push back on Obama’s overreach; they just took the federal money.

The culture of the Gold Dome is toxic to reformers, like the Tea Party who opposed UN Agenda 21 implementation in Georgia. We were ignored, but we in the Tea Party did win the TSPLOST vote in 2012 by 66% in most of the 12 Regions to prevent wasteful public transit development and double-the-cost useless road projects. We still want the GA Legislature to repeal the UN Agenda 21 implementation laws of 2008 and 2010 and end unelected Regional Commissions to allow cities and counties to control their own spending. We need to repeal bad law that was implemented in the Obama years.

Group-think has been imposed on the Gold Dome. Republicans and there is no sign that Georgia will advance Trump Populism and reverse Obama’s “statism” and government intrusion and abuse of citizens and property rights.

Democrats love this dilemma, but we cannot look to Democrats to reverse Obama policies. They are Socialists. Republican statists would do well to relax their attacks on Republican populists.

The problems with group-think extend from City Councils to County Commissions and State government. We have elected the wrong politicians. The Deep State is ruling in Georgia and it assures that we have government, of the government, by the government and for the government in Georgia.  Cities and counties are allowed to tax and borrow with no limits. 90% of all Bills are passed to expand government. Land Use, Planning and Zoning are according to UN Agenda 21.

The AJC is part of the Liberal Media. The Ralston problem is fully displayed in the AJC Article below:

Ralston helped write the law allowing him to delay criminal cases, AJC/Channel 2 Investigation, 2/22/19, By Johnny Edwards Chris Joyner, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
 Most lawmakers mum on revelations of AJC/Channel 2 investigation. Ten years ago, a grand jury indicted a Georgia man on charges of illicit sexual behavior with young teens. One of the alleged victims said it’s been so long since he heard from prosecutors, he figured the case was over with.

But it’s not. It’s among dozens of criminal cases repeatedly delayed from going to court — 14 times in this case — by defense attorney and state Speaker of the House David Ralston.

After an investigation by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Channel 2 Action News revealed earlier this month that Ralston was using legislative privilege to delay court dates, he has come under fire from voters, Republican activists and purported victims in the cases. 

“What is most infuriating is the fact that this man’s attorney is one of the most influential people in Georgia politics,” said an alleged victim of one of Ralston’s clients, Derek Key. Key was accused of enticing a child for indecent purposes and electronically furnishing obscene materials to minors.

For more than a week, most of Ralston’s peers serving with him in the House would not touch the issue in the wake of the AJC-Channel 2 investigation, a reluctance seemingly rooted in Ralston’s substantial political power. And Ralston received a spontaneous round of applause at a closed-door meeting of Republican lawmakers Tuesday at the Capitol, the AJC learned from several sources.

But by week’s end, battle lines were drawn. Nine House Republicans signed on to a resolution introduced by Rep. David Clark calling on Ralston to resign as speaker, while such heavy hitters as Gov. Brian Kemp and two former governors signaled they support Ralston.

Now, the AJC has learned how the law came about that Ralston has been invoking to create case delays: He helped write it

For a century, elected lawmakers who make their living as attorneys could only cite the law to delay court while the General Assembly was in session and for three weeks after. But in 2006, lawmakers in the House and Senate passed Senate Bill 503, which expanded the privilege to cover any time a lawmaker’s “presence elsewhere is required.”

Originally, the bill dealt with unrelated legal issues, then passed through the House and Senate in different forms. On the final day of that year’s session, then-House Speaker Glenn Richardson named Ralston, then a state representative who chaired the House Judicial Non-Civil Committee, to a joint conference committee to work out the differences between the House and Senate versions.

Although it is unknown what role Ralston played in conference negotiations, the legislation that emerged included the language that Ralston, who became speaker in 2010, would later apply to his own law practice. It came before the House for approval just 90 minutes before the session’s required end at midnight, passing in the House 158-2, then in the Senate unanimously.

There had been an earlier attempt that year to alter the legislative leave law. Former GOP Rep. Ed Lindsey filed a bill expanding leave to include committee meetings held outside of session. His bill also required the legislator-lawyer to give “the specific basis for the continuance and stay.”

The law that passed out of Ralston’s conference committee has no such requirement and did not limit leave to committee meetings.

Under state law, all Ralston must do to keep a client out of court is to write to the judge, saying the dates would interfere with his lawmaker duties. He can do it year-round, and judges and district attorneys have little recourse.

The AJC and Channel 2 found that Ralston has written some letters in bulk to delay cases. In 21 cases examined over a two-year period, he filed 57 requests for continuances

“Everyone says, hire him, you’ll never go to court. People talk. This is a small town.” —Amanda Mosher, whose husband and child died in a vehicular homicide case that took eight years to go to trial

Asked to respond to the AJC’s findings, Ralston declined to be interviewed by the reporters of this article. However, in an interview Thurday with Channel 2, he said he had not misused the law. “To say that I’m thwarting justice and that I’m putting the public at risk, those are things that are completely not me,” he told the station.

Two Republican leaders the AJC contacted at the recommendation of Ralston’s office responded with statements of support.

House Majority Whip Trey Kelley, R-Cedartown, said he doesn’t believe the North Georgia cases are being delayed by Ralston alone.

“It’s really unfair to the speaker, because he also has a pretty important duty and an absolute right of privilege that exists between him and his client,” said Kelley, who is also an attorney. “So really, in my mind, the (AJC) article does three things: It attacks the constitutional separation of powers, it attacks the constitutional protections that the accused are afforded and then have the right to adequate representation, and it attacks the long-established legal principal of privileged conversations between an attorney.”

While case records reviewed by the AJC and Channel 2 did find occasional delays prompted by prosecutors or by Ralston’s having a conflict with another scheduled trial, his frequent use of legislative delays was what caused them to drag out for years.

Speaker Pro Tem Jan Jones, R-Milton, said in a written statement that Ralston is “a man of integrity” who has devoted his life to public service.

“I trust that the speaker is fully committed to both his demanding professional and public service obligations,” Jones said.

But Rep. Clark, R-Buford, said that after he received numerous messages from concerned constituents, he met privately with Ralston and found his answers about specific delayed cases vague. 

Among the Republicans who signed on to his resolution Friday seeking Ralston’s ouster was Rep. Matt Gurtler, R-Tiger. Ralston supported Gurtler’s Republican opponent in last year’s primary.

“What is wrong remains wrong even if it’s legal,” Gurtler said in a statement, “and Ralston’s abuse on our judicial system and failure to live up to the standard we should expect of our elected officials in this case, and others, is detrimental to the proper role of government: protecting and defending life, liberty and property.”

Some other legislators, on background, described receiving reams of emails and dozens of calls from constituents outraged about the issue.

A code of silence - Most calls the AJC placed to other key House leaders, including Democrats, seeking comments about Ralston’s delays in North Georgia courts weren’t returned.

Rebuke, however, came from right-leaning pundits and activists. Neal Boortz, the former radio talk show host, said Ralston should face ethics charges and sanctions from the state Bar of Georgia. Erick Erickson, the WSB radio host and editor of The Resurgent, accused Republicans of “enabling this and letting it happen.”

Debbie Dooley, president of the Atlanta Tea Party, said Ralston’s prolonging of heinous criminal cases could haunt the Republican ticket in 2020.

“Their silence,” and the applause, Dooley said, “those are people that rubber stamp what he is doing. They rubber stamp him protecting accused child molesters, and rapists, and those that like to beat up women … Is that really what the Republicans in the Georgia House really want to stand for?”

“He will remove them from committees, he won’t allow any legislation passed that they’re interested in. He can kill it. There’s a lot of things that he can do.” —Debbie Dooley, Atlanta Tea Party president 

There is something more basic at work in the silence from the House. A tradition, an informal rule that no one talks. It’s a code of silence in a legislature where members exchange campaign contributions and some have been punished for political disloyalty.

In the past 12 years, Ralston has donated nearly $150,000 to the Georgia Republican Party. He’s contributed nearly $300,000 to various House members’ campaign committees over the same time period.

Ralston supports representatives facing tough or expensive primary or general election challenges, but he also donates to candidates at no real risk at losing their seats. With the exception of Speaker Pro Tem Jones, Ralston has donated, at some point, to the campaign of every Republican member of the House Ethics Committee.

Dooley said few lawmakers are going to challenge Ralston in the midst of a session, when he can directly affect how much they get done for their districts.

“He will remove them from committees. He won’t allow any legislation passed that they’re interested in. He can kill it. There’s a lot of things that he can do,” she said.

A reader who contacted the AJC last week said he reached out to his state senator about Ralston. He provided the Democrat’s emailed response: “I am very worried about this and agree it is problematic. I am coordinating with my colleagues about the proper response. It is tricky because Ralston as Speaker wields a lot of power in state government.”

The Georgia Democratic Party released a statement that, while strongly worded, called for no changes other than for Ralston to keep tabs on himself. It was attributed to the state party’s communications director:

“These revelations show that Speaker Ralston has abused his power as a public servant to delay and deny justice for crime victims. As a legislator who has been given the trust of his constituents, he needs to remember his duty and put the needs of Georgia families before his own self-interest.”

Victims uniting 

Well before last week’s revelations, Ralston’s repeated use of legislative leave had drawn public criticism. Case delays played into a 2012 bar complaint filed by one of Ralston’s own clients in a civil case, who said that he put off his auto accident injury case. Four years later, Ralston agreed to a public reprimand for advancing the client $22,000 from his law firm’s trust account.

Around that same time, Amanda Mosher (a Democrat) was publicly blasting Ralston for delaying a vehicular homicide case. Mosher’s husband and 4-year-old daughter died in a 2005 crash in Ellijay, and Ralston represented the man charged.

The case took more than eight years to go to court — with Ralston’s delays accounting for at least five years of waiting, Mosher said. On multiple occasions, she sat in court waiting for a hearing, only to hear the judge announce that Ralston had put off court yet again. She said that before trial, an investigator with the district attorney’s office told her that evidence had “gone stale” and witnesses had backed out of testifying. Ralston’s client ultimately took a plea deal: one year on probation and a $1,000 fine.

Mosher, who lives in Blue Ridge, said it’s well known that clients who can afford to hire Ralston can have their cases delayed, weakening prosecutors’ cases. One of his current clients explained that strategy to the AJC and said, “That’s why I gave him 20,000 bucks.”

“Everyone says, hire him, you’ll never go to court,” Mosher said. “People talk. This is a small town.” Mosher now wants to organize other alleged victims of Ralston’s clients and file a joint complaint with the State Bar of Georgia. She’s already been joined by a woman in a domestic violence case, the parents of a woman allegedly molested by an evangelist at age 14, and a party in a divorce case.

“If people will stand up to him, we can bring him down I think,” Mosher said. “I think we can make this stop.”

The alleged victim of Derek Key said it troubles him that Key has been free on bond for so many years after his alleged crime. Key is accused of driving him to another county for the purposes of molesting him, and of sending pornographic messages to another teenager.

“I do not want someone else to be enticed into a situation they do not want to be in,” he said in a statement to the newspaper.

https://www.ajc.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/ralston-helped-write-the-law-allowing-him-delay-criminal-cases/fIfNKIgYXXFAAIEiC6NbAJ/

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader

GA 400 Widening

20 Sandy Springs houses would be demolished for GDOT toll lanes project, residents say, by Evelyn Andrews, 2/21/19, Reporter News

A photo taken of map displayed at the private Feb. 7 meeting and provided to the Reporter shows the current design of the toll lanes running over some of the 19 homes that are expected to be taken for the project. Ga. 400 is at the bottom of the map. (Special)

Twenty houses on a Sandy Springs street would be demolished for the Ga. 400 toll lanes project, residents say they were told by the Georgia Department of Transportation in a private meeting.

Four of those homeowners, most of whom did not want to be named, spoke with the Reporter and said they felt the process has been too secretive and that they should have been contacted earlier. They said 19 of the targeted houses are on Northgreen Drive and one is Spalding Drive.

“We feel extremely anxious that we’re certainly going to get the short end of the stick,” said Torry Alexander, one homeowner who was told her house would be taken. “[GDOT] is extremely powerful and has way more resources.” GDOT spokesperson Natalie Dale confirmed the meeting, but did not comment on the number of houses that may be taken.

“Outreach was made to these property owners to allow them the opportunity to view a display showing the potential impacts to their properties, which was specific to parcels that back up to [Ga. 400] at this location,” Dale said in an email.

The $1.2 billion toll lanes project would add two new elevated, barrier-separated “express lanes” or “managed lanes” in both directions on Ga. 400, alongside regular travel lanes. Construction is expected to begin in 2021. A similar, connected project is planned for I-285.

The toll lanes have become controversial for the limited information being released and the property impacts, some of which are privately being discussed with homeowners. Residents on Sandy Springs’ Montrose Lane, just off Long Island Drive at I-285, have previously revealed five of that cul-de-sac’s 12 homes are expected to lose some of their property, but not the homes themselves. Other property impacts under GDOT consideration are demolishing eight homes on Sandy Springs’ Crestline Parkway for an interchange and tearing down part of a Dunwoody townhouse while leaving the rest standing.

GDOT has shown maps of property impacts to property owners privately, but has said in response to open records requests to the Reporter that the documents do not exist or are exempt from disclosure.

A Google map image shows Northgreen Drive running alongside Ga. 400 south of Spalding Drive. (Google Maps) The property acquisition on Northgreen Drive, which runs south off Spalding Drive along the west side of Ga. 400, was the subject of the Feb. 7 private meeting, which was held by GDOT and its design contractor at the North Fulton Government Service Center.

Two residents who attended the meeting said they felt blindsided when they learned their homes would be taken for the project. At the meeting, residents say, a map was displayed and they were told any property with a red dot over it would be taken. The map, a partial photograph of which was provided to the Reporter by a resident, shows a possible alignment of the new toll lanes, with one lane running directly over some of the houses. Nothing on the map directly explains the meaning of the red dots.

The homeowners were told by GDOT the next step would be an appraiser evaluating their property so an offer can be presented. But they have received no other official communication yet and residents are mostly in a holding pattern, Alexander said. “There are…so many holes in the questions of what’s the next step and what’s going to happen,” said Alexander.

Another resident said they were told by GDOT the houses would need to be vacant within six months to a year if they need to be demolished. One homeowner said he was confused by the process the design was presented as conceptual, but the property taking seemed to be a “done deal,” with no way to voice concerns.

The project is being done in a design-build process, which means property acquisition and construction begins before the entire design is finished. “The process is just so baffling to us with the way we found out,” another resident said.

Residents were notified of the meeting by a letter from GDOT saying their houses could be impacted by the project. Some residents said they expected that to be taking relatively small pieces of their back yards for a noise barrier they had heard about, said a resident, who asked to remain anonymous.

“It was not a good feeling. We went in expecting one thing and left feeling like we’d been punched in the stomach,” one resident said. “When we saw the letter, it looked like they would take part of our yard. It was really vague.”

In addition to being told they’re losing their homes, residents expressed disappointment and frustration about what they feel has been a far too secretive process.

“The outcome may be what’s necessary, but the process has been so cloaked and really cruel,” said a resident of Northgreen whose house would not be demolished under the current plan.

GDOT has held some public meetings about the toll lanes plan, mostly at the request of such organizations as Fulton County School System and Dunwoody Homeowners Associations, but has not released property-taking details. Full public open houses where GDOT has said right of way impacts will be presented will begin Feb. 28 in Alpharetta. The local Sandy Springs will come March 12 with a 4:30 to 7:30 p.m. meeting in City Springs, 1 Galambos Way.

https://www.reporternewspapers.net/2019/02/21/20-sandy-springs-houses-would-be-demolished-for-gdot-toll-lanes-project-residents-say/?ct=t(Template_for_Friday_messages_COPY_02)

Comments

These homes should not have been built, because they were too close to GA-400 and would ultimately have to be torn down.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader

Georgia Loses Sun Trust HQ

AJC, 2/24/19 page A1 article, The Banking Capital that Georgia Lawmakers created in Charlotte” is an indictment of how wrong things can go in the Gold Dome. It tells a tale of how Ga Banking Regulations restricted branch banking, favored the big banks and allowed the small banks to fail.

The merger of Sun Trust Bank with BB&T will result in the headquarters leaving downtown Atlanta and going to Charlotte.

Atlanta is a good place to live if you don’t have to go anywhere. We live in continual traffic gridlock, because we ignored expanding our road and highway systems to establish a highway grid. Instead of a grid, we have a circle.

The circle is I-285 that was built as a bypass that wasn’t far enough out of town. This worked well in 1983 when the population of Atlanta Metro was 3 million. We were able to handle local and interstate traffic sharing the highways.

But when I-75 and I-85 were built through downtown Atlanta, it was clear that population expansion was going to cause gridlock.  Now at almost 6 million, we are using roads designed for 3 million. The Gold Dome failed to continue highway development in Atlanta Metro for 40 years and now we’re playing catch-up with toll roads.

Charlotte NC Metro population is 2.4 million with 3,198 square miles of land area.  Atlanta GA Metro population is 5.8 million with 8,376 square miles of land area.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader

Government vs Private Sector

It shouldn’t be a surprise to see government employees voting for Democrat Socialism. Democrats want to grow government and diminish the private sector. Democrats have supported nationalizing the US oil companies like Venezuela did. I expect all government employees to be democrats and believe at least half of them socialists.

I had always believed this was true and continue to see evidence that it is true. In 1980, I attended my first “greet the candidate” meeting in Salina Kansas. There were 3 rookies running for the State House. The room was packed with State employees, who want to ensure that these candidates would fight to get them a lot more tax money. It was a scene out of “Damian and the Lepers”.

Most candidates for elective office are “Statists”, who believe in big, expensive government and want to expand it to solve every problem under the sun. They produce legislation that is supposed to fix the problems, but the often make the problem worse. They are at the beck and call of their campaign contributors who want their businesses protected and advanced.

US GDP is $20 trillion, but the total of all government budgets is $6 trillion; that’s 30% of GDP and it should be less than 20%. Democrats think government is a jobs program and have loaded the US up with expensive government employees with generous pension plans. This needs to be stopped and reversed using “Lean Management” techniques we use in manufacturing to continually lower costs and improve quality.

The waste won’t be stopped as long as legislators are “Statists”.  Those few legislators who are not “Statists” are harassed, ignored and sabotaged by the rest of the pack of “Statists”. This can change, but it will require the removal of special interests from making campaign contributions. I believe only registered voters should be allowed to make political campaign contributions and only for candidates who appear on their ballot.

There are 22 million government employees in the US. The federal government employs 2 million excluding the post office and military. Most government employees are teachers, police officers, fire fighters, clerks and bureaucrats.

There is an additional universe of Non-Profit NGOs who get their budgets from federal grants.

The US has 120 million voters and 60 million are Democrats, Dead People and Illegal Migrants. Socialists have been in charge of US education for 40 years and our brainwashed young people are voting for Democrats.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader

Police State

The Greatest Constitutional Crisis Since the Civil War, By Conrad Black, 2/21/19.

The most immense and dangerous public scandal in American history is finally cracking open like a ripe pomegranate. The broad swath of the Trump-hating media that has participated in what has amounted to an unconstitutional attempt to overthrow the government are reduced to reporting the events and revelations of the scandal in which they have been complicit, in a po-faced ho-hum manner to impart to the misinformed public that this is as routine as stock market fluctuations or the burning of an American flag in Tehran.

For more than two years, the United States and the world have had two competing narratives: that an elected president of the United States was a Russian agent whom the Kremlin helped elect; and its rival narrative that senior officials of the Justice Department, FBI, CIA, and other national intelligence organizations had repeatedly lied under oath, misinformed federal officials, and meddled in partisan political matters illegally and unconstitutionally and had effectively tried to influence the outcome of a presidential election, and then undo its result by falsely propagating the first narrative. It is now obvious and indisputable that the second narrative is the correct one.

The authors, accomplices, and dupes of this attempted overthrow of constitutional government are now well along in reciting their misconduct without embarrassment or remorse because—in fired FBI Director James Comey’s formulation—a “higher duty” than the oath they swore to uphold the Constitution compelled them. Or—in fired FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe’s words—“the threat” was too great. Never mind that the nature of “the threat” was that the people might elect someone he and Comey disapproved of as president, and that that person might actually serve his term, as elected.

A Long List of Offenders—and Offenses - The extent of the criminal misconduct of the former law enforcement and intelligence chiefs is now notorious, but to make the right point here, it has to be summarized. The fact that the officially preferred candidate lied to federal officials about her emails and acted in outright contempt of Congress and the legal process in the destruction of evidence, was simply ignored by the FBI director, who announced that she would not be prosecuted, though he had no authority to make that determination.

The dossier of salacious gossip and defamatory falsehoods amassed by a retired British spy from the lowest grade of intelligence sources in Russia, commissioned and paid for by the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee, was circulated to the media by high public officials and cited in illegal and dishonest applications to authorize surveillance of the campaign of the other presidential candidate. A special counsel was empowered on the false pretext of the necessity to get to the bottom of Trump-Russian collusion in the election, of which there was and remains no evidence, because it did not occur and was a complete partisan fabrication.

The special counsel then packed his staff with militant Clinton partisans, and acted very late and only when his hand was forced by the media to remove two officials who referred in texts to each other to the Bureau’s ability to smear and provoke the impeachment of the winning candidate as “an insurance policy” against his filling the office to which he was elected.

Large sections of the media colluded with the Democratic campaign and produced the doctrine that anything was justifiable, no matter how dishonest, to destroy the incoming president’s reputation and damage him in public opinion polls to legitimize attempts to remove him from office. Large sections of the media deliberately deluged the public with stories they knew to be false about the new president and referred to him in terms of unprecedented vituperation in what purported to be reportage and not comment.

This unorganized but widespread campaign of defamation was taken up by a great number of ordinarily newsworthy celebrities and was accompanied by false, unresearched stories denigrating President Trump’s supporters, such as the false claims about Catholic school students’ treatment of an elderly native American and the false claim that actor Jussie Smollett had been beaten up and reviled by Trump supporters. The former intelligence chiefs of the nation under President Obama repeatedly have accused this president of treason, the most heinous of all crimes, and have asserted with the authority of their former positions that the Russians determined the result of the 2016 presidential election. They knew this to be entirely false.

Distracting Public Attention - The special counsel has failed to find any evidence of the collusion and electoral interference that was the justification for establishing his inquiry, and the Democrats are already expressing disappointment in his failure to produce such evidence when the leading Democratic members of congressional investigative committees still robotically claim to have at least prima facie evidence of such collusion.

The dishonest attempt of much of the opposition and what even left-leaning media-monitoring organizations record as 90 percent of the national media, continued for more than two years to try to condition the country to believe that the president had committed the “high crimes and misdemeanors” required by the Constitution for impeachment and removal from office.

The special counsel, apart from smearing the president, distracted public attention from or tended to justify the ever more evident misconduct of the president’s enemies. And we now know that Comey, despite his “higher duty,” lied to the president about his not being a target of an FBI investigation, illegally leaked to the New York Times the contents of a self-serving memo he purloined from the government, and lied to Congress by claiming 245 times in one sitting to be ignorant of recent matters that no one of sound mind could have forgotten.

And now we have Andrew McCabe’s proud confirmation that he and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein not only continued the illegal counterintelligence investigation of President Trump, but actively discussed methods of securing his removal from office by deliberate misuse of a variety of laws, including the Emoluments Clause, the 25th

Amendment to deal with mental incompetence, and the Logan Act of 1799, which has never been used successfully and has not been tested in 150 years.

Make Those Responsible Pay at the Polls - This entire monstrous travesty is finally coming apart without even waiting for the horrible disappointment of the special counsel’s inability to adduce a scrap of evidence to justify his replication of Torquemada as an inquisitor and of the Gestapo and KGB at rounding up and accusing unarmed individuals who were not flight risks. The collapse of this grotesque putsch, under the irresistible pressure of a functioning attorney general and Senate committees that are not hamstrung by Never-Trumpers, will cause a revulsion against the Democratic Party that will be seismic and prolonged.

The disgrace of their misconduct is profound and shocking. Richard Nixon, against whom there is no conclusive evidence that he broke any laws (although a number of people in his entourage did) never did anything like this. J. Edgar Hoover in 47 years at the head of the FBI and its predecessor organization, never tried to meddle in a presidential election. Those responsible will pay for this, including at the polls.

Without realizing the proportions of the emergency, America has survived the greatest constitutional crisis since the Civil War. All those who legitimately oppose or dislike the president, including traditional high-brow Republicans who find him distasteful, should join in the condemnation of this largely criminal assault on democracy, and then, if they wish, go out and try to beat him fair and square, the good old-fashioned way, in a free election. But they must abide by the election’s result.

.

https://amgreatness.com/2019/02/21/the-greatest-constitutional-crisis-since-the-civil-war/

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader

US Trending Conservative

Gallup: Liberals outnumber conservatives in only 6 states, down from 9, by Paul Bedard, 2/22/19.

The number of states where liberals outnumber conservatives has dropped more than 30 percent, with just six now in that category: Massachusetts, Hawaii, Vermont, Washington, New York, and New Hampshire.

According to the latest Gallup survey, in every other state but California, where conservatives and liberals split 29 percent to 29 percent, conservatives lead.

Nationally, those who identify themselves conservative hold a nine-point lead. 

Before conservatives start to cheer, Gallup said the gap used to be 21 points and a handful of the state numbers fall in the margin of error.

But the survey still shows a large swath of red and pink states bookended by the whole West Coast, New England, and the mid-Atlantic, including the Washington, D.C. area. 

“The residents of most U.S. states are more likely to identify as conservative than as liberal in their political ideology. In 25 states, the conservative advantage is significantly greater than the national average, including 19 ‘highly conservative’ states in which conservatives outnumber liberals by at least 20 percentage points,” said Gallup. 

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/gallup-liberals-outnumber-conservatives-in-only-6-states-down-from-9

Comments

In the most conservative States, the percentage of respondents identifying as Liberal averaged in the high teens.  Conservatives averaged in the 40% range. Moderates averaged in the 30% range. Trump needs to convince moderates to vote for him in 2020.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader

Government Overreach History

In ancient times, thugs from neighboring clans would attack your village to kill you and take your stuff.  If you had a skilled group of tough guys in your clan who would watch your neighboring thugs and would attack them first, you avoided the attack.  Eventually your tough guys became your government whose job was to protect your village.

The next logical step for your Tribal Chief to take is to enlarge the clan militia to deter any further attacks on their villages. When citizens were trained to fight they added their militia duties to their other tasks like hunting, gathering and farming.

Determining when danger approaches and alerting the militia to form was done with lookouts, spies and signals like bells, horns and drums. When the signals were sent, the militia members would mass. These clans would grow, because they were protected. Successful clans would eventually gain a reputation for being dangerous to attack and would experience long periods of peace. 

Squabbles in the clan posed a problem for the Chief as clan members complained. This marked the beginning of making a Militia Chief a King. Blame the complainers.

The settlement of the US starting in the 1600s posed a different problem.  The clans who would attack the settlers were American Indians and the settlers had moved in to the land.  Settlers had to defend themselves because they were ultimately trying to settle over 3 million square miles of land. The only signal the next farm could see was the smoke from their neighbor’s house burning. The Indians used smoke signals because of the vastness of the land.

As the West expanded settlers became accustomed to settling their own disputes. Large ranches also had their own militias and bullied everybody. Everybody carried guns. US military bases were not everywhere and few towns had Sheriffs to keep the drunks from burning down the towns.

The Law of the West was risky and tough but was working.

Self-defense was determined when witnesses could testify that the bad guy drew his gun first. Eventually the bullies were defeated.

Now we have a different problem, the bullies are in the government.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader