We appreciate all of our local Cobb County Republican Assembly members and other activists who have spoken out against the proposal and helped to spread the word about this terrible idea. As we posted last week, this proposal is not only anti-Free Market competition for our county’s trash pickup but also as a result will lead to higher prices for residents and lower quality of service! It will hurt the current companies competing for that service and the jobs of the employees working for those companies.
Let us be eternally vigilant on this issue next January when the commissioners plan to take it off the table again and revisit the issue. We should all agree that this is a “solution” far worse than whatever “problem” the Democrats were claiming to want to resolve.
Both Republican commissioners Keli Gambrill (endorsed by the Cobb RAs) of District 1 and JoAnn Birrell of District 3 are up for re-election this November. No Democrats on the commission board are up for re-election this year.
With their new found power, the Democrat-controlled county commission is attempting to take trash service away from the competitive free-market and institute it as a government service. Thankfully, they are meeting with some resistance.
JoAnn Birrell, 3rd Cobb Commission District
In the past “Republican” Commissioner JoAnn Birrell has supported cronyists initiatives such as giving a billionaire over $400 million in tax subsidies for his sports arena. It’s nice to know that her willingness to go along with a County Commission Chair’s proposals for local big government expansion and interference with the free-market has some bounds—at least when it’s a Democrat making the proposal. Birrell didn’t have the same guts to stand up to many other wasteful statist intrusions under previous RINO Chairs Tim Lee and Mike Boyce. Their policies not only stole from the taxpayers but also changed the demographics in our county, which has now led to the recent Democrat takeover.
Keli Gambrill, 1st Cobb Commission District
Meanwhile, our endorsed Commissioner Keli Gambril (District 1) has pretty consistently opposed interference with the free-market and local government waste, while supporting government cuts over tax increases under both Democrat and RINO leadership. Birrell would do well to learn from Gambril’s example. To her credit, Birrell also voted against Mike Boyce’s 2018 tax increase, although that proposal passed with the support of Gambril’s predecessor, who she defeated in that year’s Republican primary.
This trash proposal is not only anti-Free Market competition for our county’s trash pickup but also as a result will lead to higher prices for residents and lower quality of service! It will hurt the current companies competing for that service and the jobs of the employees working for those companies.
This is fundamentally the same type of anti-Free Market intrusion we are accustomed to seeing from RINOs in Cobb. At least this time since the intrusion is coming from a Democrat, Republicans are pretty united against it, and residents in Cobb County are pushing back.
You can learn how to join the effort and stand up for the free-market by opposing this proposal when you go to www.savemytrashcollector.com.
In case you missed our recent special event, you can now watch the video recording of attorney Ben DuPré’s report “Life, Liberty, & Pistols: The Impact of SCOTUS’s Recent Term”! In addition to serving as a lawyer who has worked on many cases over the years dealing with the subject matter involved in the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent rulings, Ben also serves as the Chief of Staff for the Chief Justice of the Alabama State Supreme Court.
Marietta, GA — Participating members of the Cobb County Republican Assembly on Saturday at our county convention debated, discussed, amended, and ultimately passed a county platform listing the county organization’s policy priorities. The convention started at 10:30am at the Cobb GOP Headquarters and lasted until 2pm. Here is the final version that was adopted:
– GOP Accountability: Ensure Republican officers do not donate to or support Democrats.
– Implement Election Integrity: Remove all drop boxes, ditch Dominion, require photo IDs, perform audits to paper ballots, provide access to the people to review paper ballots, shrink time window for absentee voting, and clean the voter rolls.
– Oppose All Tax Increases, including SPLOSTs.
– Oppose All Forms of Cronyism: corporate welfare, government-engineered economic development, (TADs) Tax Allocation districts, and (TIFs) tax increment financing
– Recognize Personhood of Pre-born: Ensure county employee group health insurance plans do not fund abortion, and shutdown the Marietta Planned Parenthood on Cobb Parkway.
– Promote School Choice: Oppose all forms of critical theory including but not limited to CRT, SEL & gender theory indoctrination of the youth, and encourage all alternative private education options (such as vouchers or true tax credits) that foster free market competition in education.
– Implement Health & Medical Freedom: Promote vaccine choice & mask freedom, and oppose mandated quarantines and lockdowns
– Oppose Government & Crony Corporate Internet Censorship: Recognize that the internet is the town square of the 21st century that demands 1st amendment protections from government boards and private government-aligned boards.
On Wednesday, pro-life activists disrupted the status quo of Kennesaw State University exposing hundreds of students to images of abortion victims. The activists were staff and volunteers for the Center for Bio-ethical Reform.
“We’re here with the Genocide Awareness project which is a graphic display depicting the victims of historically recognized genocide alongside the victims of abortion in our modern day. The whole point of that is to draw attention to the inhumanity of abortion and to draw attention to the humanity of the pre-born,” said Lincoln Brandenburg, spokesman for the organization.
Lincoln Brandenberg, Center for Bio-Ethical Reform Project Director with his display at Kennesaw State University
“Ultimately the reason our society tolerates it, really comes down to the fact that it’s invisible and that because it’s invisible we’re able to salve our conscience and not have to confront the worldviews that we use to justify it and the slogans that we use to justify it.”
At any point throughout the day a crowd of some fifty students surrounded the display having conversations with the pro-lifers and each other. The display met with a very mixed and emotionally-charged reception.
Jessica Szilagyi is a journalist investigative reporter who was a Republican activist in Cobb County for a while, and now reports regularly for several newspapers and forums across the state, including The Georgia Virtue. She published an excellent article today critiquing how the Republican-controlled state legislature has approved and financed contracts with a private company to facilitate the promotion of traffic tickets as a means of “cash cow” revenue for local government.
She writes: “The placement of privately-owned speed detection cameras in cities across the state are helping municipalities generate revenue with no effort or investment while private businesses profit off of otherwise criminal traffic offenses.
“As the prevalence of these cameras grows, however, so does the scrutiny under which they fall.…
“The entire process is authorized under OCGA 40-14-18, which was approved via HB 978 in 2017. The law took effect on July 1, 2018.
The article entitled “Limits On Policing For Profit Circumvented In GA Cities With Outsourced Traffic Citations” focuses especially on how the law is being applied in the city of Stillmore in southeast Georgia. Apparently, the city gets its name because the officials think there’s “Still More” ways they can tax its citizens other than by the normal usual methods.
Jessica writes:
“In Stillmore, a small town in southeast Georgia’s Emanuel County, the private company RedSpeed – Georgia reached out about installing cameras in the school zone inside the 3.2 square mile city limits. The town’s population is a mere 530 people, but the city is home to David Emanuel Academy and Cryder Foods, which place exponentially more vehicles in town than would be traveling through otherwise. …
“RedSpeed’s contract is for a period of five years with an automatic one year renewal after year five, up to five times. The contract allocates 67% of the fines collected to the City of Stillmore and RedSpeed retains 33%, plus any service fees. An additional 2% service fee for each violation is paid for a License Plate Reader. RedSpeed keeps video data for 25 days unless asked by the governing bodies to keep the footage longer. …
“According to public records obtained by The Georgia Virtue, since September 2020, a total of 564 violations have been paid due to the camera installations, resulting in $42,525 fines collected and $27,641.25 paid to the city. It is not clear how many violations were issued but had not yet been paid, nor does RedSpeed report to the city how many violations resulted in a lien.”
Photos of RedSpeed’s speed detection machines from Jessica’s article.
Photos of RedSpeed’s speed detection machines from Jessica’s article.
Photos of RedSpeed’s speed detection machines from Jessica’s article.
These cameras are currently also in use in other cities in Georgia, such as Vidalia, Brookhaven, and Dunwoody.
Jessica continues:
“RedSpeed Georgia, LLC was incorporated in September 2018 – three months after the legislation took effect in Georgia. Since November 2020, a total of $48,500 has been donated to representatives, senators, the Governor, Lt. Governor, and a Public Service Commissioner. …
List from Jessica’s article.
Read more about what Jessica un-covered and exposed in her investigation on this subject in her full article “Limits On Policing For Profit Circumvented In GA Cities With Outsourced Traffic Citations,” which you can see here.
By working at the local level to defeat mask mandates we will bring freedom to our state while building a coalition of pro-freedom Georgians to make sure the mask mandates stay gone.
This is how we fought and won in Whitfield County, and how we can help you win in your community. Read More
In a great example for Cobb and other counties in Georgia, on January 11th the Whitfield County Board of Commissioners voted to repeal a controversial mask mandate imposed on all citizens within county facilities and vehicles. Reconsideration of the mask mandate was not originally on the meeting agenda, but after receiving stacks of petitions, calls and emails from constituents decrying the mandate the week prior, the Commissioners amended the agenda to address their concerns. Supporters of the repeal are calling it a “huge win for freedom and personal responsibility in Whitfield County.”
Billy Jo Wilson delivers End the Mask Mandate! petitions to County Clerk Blanca Cardona
Billy Joe Wilson spoke at the meeting in favor of the repeal “I have heard the comments that this is only for county buildings, this is still a mandate that I can’t use these buildings which are tax payer funded unless I abide by your arbitrary mandate.”
Wilson is a life-long resident of Whitfield County and when asked why he chose to do something about the mask mandate replied, “The almighty God does not force me to obey His righteousness, He convinces me that His way is better. Just because you have a good idea doesn’t mean you have the right to give a man a gun and force it.”
It’s not over yet. Not by a long shot. For at least the next two years in Georgia, Republicans still have control of the State Capitol. There’s no time to waste!
With the legislative session in Atlanta having just begun, our elected Republican state legislators need to get serious and address the horrendous holes in our state’s election system that led to concerns about probable voter fraud and abuse in the previous general election and runoff!
Here are some things they should prioritize:
Georgia should have NO absentee ballots issued in an election that do not require proof of I.D. and/or a notary.
DeKalb & Fulton Counties should NOT be allowed to submit their vote totals hours after everyone else! They are the most urban counties in the state. If anything, they should be more high-tech and the first to report.
Cobb County RA Chair Nathaniel Darnell volunteering as a poll worker on January 5th.
After all of the complaints expressed about ballot counting for the November presidential election, our Cobb RA Chairman Nathaniel Darnell volunteered as a poll watcher at a precinct for the U.S. Senate runoff. “Having paid very close attention to how the Dominion voting system worked,” Nathaniel said, “I see no reason why, if Fulton and DeKalb are using the same system, it should take them so much longer to report than it did for Cobb. As soon as the polls were closed, the poll workers at our precinct in Cobb showed me a printout receipt that had the exact totals of all the votes each candidate received in our precinct. It was instant.”
Fulton and DeKalb should have had the same instant totals. The only thing left to be done would have been adding those numbers to the absentee ballot totals and early vote totals, which should have been ready to add very simply and just as instantly. Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger should require each county to have all early votes and absentee ballots counted and ready to add to the day-of election votes so that there is no delay that could feed concerns about about counties such as Fulton stuffing ballots to change the outcome.
Lt. Governor Geoff Duncan demoted three Republican senators who called for a special session and more thorough investigations into the alleged voter fraud.
In addition, there have also been calls for the legislature to re-evaluate the security of the Dominion Voting System, and this should receive due scrutiny.
However, our leaders in Georgia are off to a bumpy start in addressing these and other related concerns dear to the hearts of thousands of Republican voters across the state. To his credit, Governor Brian Kemp has declared that making Photo IDs required for absentee ballots will be “front and center” this year.
On January 8th, U.S. Congressman Jody Hice (R GA-10), Cobb County’s GA State Rep. Ginny Ehrhart (R HD 36), and Cobb’s GA State Sen. Bruce Thompson (R SD 14) joined with a panel of doctors and child and parental rights activists to host a webinar about the “Vulnerable Child Protection Act,” a bill to be introduced in the 2021 legislative session of the Georgia General Assembly. If successful, this bill would provide protection for children who are gender confused by making it a felony for a doctor to prescribe sex-altering drugs or perform sex change surgery on a minor.
State Rep. Ginny Ehrhart
State Rep. Ehrhart represents West Cobb County’s House District 36, which is still one of the reliably “red” areas remaining in Cobb. As the bill’s sponsor in the State House, she said this legislation “would place critical parameters for the medical community to protect our children.” She reported that a poll showed 92% of Georgians support protection of this kind.“There are harmful, dangerous, unproven, irreversible effects of sex change drugs and procedures,” she warned. (The GRA has not yet scored Ginny Ehrhart as a state legislator.)
She writes: “The placement of privately-owned speed detection cameras in cities across the state are helping municipalities generate revenue with no effort or investment while private businesses profit off of otherwise criminal traffic offenses.
