Imagine, Ladies & Gentlemen, for a moment that you met this wonderful person whom you know from the moment you saw them that that person was who you wanted to be with for the rest of your life (or, at least 33 years of the rest of your life).

You went on a whirlwind courtship with them for 4.5 months of romantic dates, going to the mountains and the beach on the weekends, each of you meeting each other’s parents, brothers and sisters, etc….and, everything is just PERFECT between you two.

And then he (or, you) popped the question to get engaged to start a more serious courtship of working towards holy matrimony…and, within a mere 3.5 weeks of that engagement, you discover your “perfect mate” has been courting someone else that you did not know about…that you had NO inkling of.

And, furthermore, you discovered this news via other people who saw them in public, cavorting about.

Tell me, do you trust that person to have told you the truth in ANYTHING they had claimed during the 4.5 month courtship?

Because that is the situation as it is right now with the Braves and Cobb County.  The Braves, for the record, are the ones who are cavorting with others to duck out of all of their verbal promises made to Cobb County to get the MOU agreed to.

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Rumors have it that the folks over at the Cobb Chamber of Commerce, political consultants with the Cobb Chamber (and other interested parties), along with a PR firm involved in “promoting” the wholesale confiscation of Cobb County taxpayer wealth for the sole purpose of the Atlanta Braves’ benefit, have been going around Cobb County and the inner-halls of Atlanta law firms bragging that they are now in “frequent talks with high-level Tea Party members,” and that those Tea Party members are in the process of being “bought-off” to trade their opposition to the stadium project for money and baubles, and come out in favor of the project in a grandiose press conference.

PV Sez (while ROFLOAO!):  Nothing says to us that our opponents must think they are in deep-sh*t more than learning that they are resorting to theatrical and political stunts to throw a screen up on the situation.

Thank you, Mitchie-Poo, for letting us know that you folks are now taking to engaging in deception and bribes (of whatever nature they are) to defend what may be clobbered in court. Classy move.  Truly, truly.  CLASSY.

So, who will these “top Tea Party leaders” be?  How about Fred Flintstone of the Flintstone Tea Party?

How about Harry Callahan of the National We-Just-Made-Up-This-Tea-Party-And-We-Claim-20,000-Members in Georgia-Group?

Well…we are so looking forward to the circus of bullsh*t claims from the Braves/Cobb County Commission/Cobb Chamber Team.  Can’t wait to see your magical “Tea Party Leaders” whom nobody in Georgia will recognize as a “Tea Party Leader” of any substance relevant to this issue in Cobb County.

Just an update to the story on Sunday, the Bill# passed that did establish the multi-million dollar, taxpayer funded, unconstitutional “venture capital fund” was HB 318.

Here is a link to the Bill: http://www.legis.ga.gov/Legislation/20132014/135871.pdf

Here are the State Representatives who voted for, against, or who were excused or did not vote on this unconstitutional bill:  http://www.legis.ga.gov/Legislation/en-US/vote.aspx?VoteID=11103

Here are the State Senators who voted for, against, or who were excused or did not vote on this unconstitutional bill:  
http://www.legis.ga.gov/Legislation/en-US/vote.aspx?VoteID=11004
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There’s a little bitty story in this week’s edition of the Atlanta Business Chronicle that caught my eye.

For the 2nd legislative session in a row (the first being in 2012), there was an attempt to pass a bill and fund a taxpayer-seeded “venture capital fund.”

I recall arguing against this in 2012, but thanks to all the other crappola going on in the 2013 session, the Senate snuck it in in the 2013 Session.

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INTRODUCTION

Have you ever stopped to think why it is that in the State of Georgia, there really isn’t any headline-making mass of “organized crime” taking place?

By “organized crime,” I mean the stories you hear about coming out of New York City and Chicago, et al. involving all kinds of crimes, drugs, prostitution, payoffs of public officials, etc., and the names of these “crime families” that resemble really good pizza restaurant joints.

Is it because Georgia’s law enforcement community is just so much more stellar an operation than those folks in NY and Chicago? Is it because the Mafia would rather experience brutally cold winters than Georgia winters? Is it because there are few to no unions in Georgia to work with the Mafia to build areas of criminal activity?

Nahhhhhh…it’s none of those kinds of reasons. The basic reason is that there is already in place a very large, very protective-of-its-territory, very paranoid…and, of all things, a very well-funded “crime family” that is firmly rooted in Georgia that scares away any of the ‘normal’ mobsters from any other place in the U.S. or world from thinking about coming here.

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There’s an analogy that keeps popping-up in my mind with regards to the Cobb County Commission and the Atlanta Braves deal, so bear with me a moment while I appear to go off on a tangent (but trust me, there’s a purpose in this little story).

I recall an episode of Seinfeld in which Cosmo Kramer went to the movies with a large cup of hot coffee jammed into his pants. Sure enough, he slipped, fell, and burned his nether regions. He got a lawyer to take his case to sue the maker of the coffee for making it too hot. When it came time to a settlement being offered by the Big Deep-Pockets Corporation (the “BDPC”), the scene before the lawyer and Kramer step into the room is that BDPC will offer $50,000 and free coffee to Kramer for life.

First thing out of the mouth of the BDPC side was “We are prepared to offer you free coffee at any of our stores in America for life…PLUS…” and right after the “PLUS”, Kramer jumps up and says “I’ll take it!”…thus not bothering to 1) hear the entire offer, and 2) negotiate a better deal.

Well, in this Cobb-Braves deal, Cobb County Commission Chairman Tim Lee is this county’s Cosmo Kramer. I’m going to lay 5:1 odds that the moment State Rep. Earl Ehrhart called Tim Lee to introduce him to the Braves’ team that Tim Lee’s instant thought in his head was “YES! Whatever they want, we’ll agree to it!”

And, so, as more of the talks occurred, and Tim Lee got more and more excited, he was ready to agree to ANYTHING to get the Braves to come to his county, regardless of the cost to the residents and stakeholders of the county and state.

Two people I know have written some very good pieces regarding both the traffic issues and the financing of the deal: Ron Sifen has a piece in the Marietta Daily Journal that objectively looks at several of the traffic issues. Hopefully, the other 4 members of the county commission will read it with a thoughtful eye to the issues he brings-up.
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The following is excerpted from an article by The Perspicacious Conservative blog:

“It’s that icky topic that makes you cringe when you even hear the term: child molestation. It’s a devastating and disgusting crime, one that society condemns so much, we often convict the accused in our hearts and minds before we even hear the evidence. Often times these are just and sound assertions, but what about the times when it is not?

What would you do if the police showed up at your door and accused you of child molestation? What would you do if you were then arrested for charges that spawned because of the actions of someone else? And how would you handle being incarcerated for two years with 18 left to serve? And after conviction, would you find faith to push forward to continue to fight for your freedom and the vindication of you and your innocence? And one last thing to ponder: how would you cope if you were denied a new trial after the evidence used to convict you was found to be false?”

Read more about the case of Scott Dean here…

MEMORANDUM

To:
Shannon Wallace
Cherokee County District Attorney

From:
Bill Simon
PoliticalVine.com

RE: Your Office’s “Mission Statement”

Date: October 7, 2013

On the Cherokee County website, the DA’s page has the following 3-bullet points under “Our Mission”:

To seek justice.
To act with integrity.
To protect the citizens of Georgia.

Based on former prosecutors I have spoken with, you have a key point missing from this list, and it should be the first one listed: To seek the truth.

Because without actually knowing the “truth” about a matter, you cannot possibly “seek justice” of any matter. You cannot “act with integrity” either if you don’t know that the primary purpose of a DA’s office is to “seek truth,” as opposed to “seeking justice” first.

To merely ‘seek justice’ means to assume that the facts presented are true, and the DA’s job is to then ‘seek justice’ based on “facts” that may or may not actually be “factual.”

It will be a bit difficult to truly ‘seek justice’ and ‘protect the citizens of Georgia’ if you are discovered to be prosecuting a case based on falsehoods, wouldn’t you think?

Rather than talk in esoteric terms, let’s examine the case you are grappling with: the case of the Canton Police Department vs. Barbara Knowles, Kelly Marlow, and Robert Trim.

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So, in looking at other states on whether or not a) they have “sunshine laws”, and b) how they handle them, I came upon a case in West Virginia decided in 2009 by their Supreme Court. Kind of a fascinating case, but I didn’t find the details of the case (as in the decisions being rendered) to be what held my interest so much.

It was the fact that the judges that sat on the Supreme Court in West Virginia in 2009 appear to be…approximately…not exact, mind you, but just approximately 50 times more intelligent than the judges who sat on the Supreme Court bench of 1975 in Georgia, or the ones who sat on the Court of Appeals in Georgia in 1992.

The case was Associated Press vs. Canterbury (available here). Feel free to read it as you wish, but I will cover the salient points here.

In West Virginia, their “sunshine law” is referred to as FOIA (Freedom of Information Act). From this case, I conclude that the WV legislature did not leave anything to chance when it wrote its sunshine laws regarding the public’s right to know how their tax dollars are being spent.

From the bottom of Page 4 of this case (and going over to Page 5), it states the following with regards to what WV wanted in terms of sunshine laws (and, I have bolded the law part w/o all the cites getting in the way):

“W. Va.Code § 29B-1-3 (1992) (Repl. Vol. 2007) provides that “[E]very person has a right to inspect or copy any public record of a public body in this state, except as otherwise expressly provided by [§ 29B-1-4] of Associated Press v. Canterbury, 688 S.E.2d 317, 224 W.Va. 708 (W.Va., 2009) [688 S.E.2d 324] this article.”

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Case #2: Fathers Are Parents Too v. Hunstein – Court of Appeals of Georgia, Decided Feb. 7, 1992

Here is a link to this case.

The gist of the case is that Fathers Are Parents Too (“Fathers”) filed a request under the Open Meetings Act to have the meetings of the Georgia Commission on Gender Bias in the Judicial System, chaired by Judge Carol Hunstein, open to the public.

The trial court disagreed and found in favor of the Commission, citing Coggin as their basis. The second paragraph of the link above to the Court of Appeals case describes this thinking process:

In its first two enumerations of error, appellant claims the trial court erred in ruling that the Act
does not apply to the Commission or to the judicial branch. In Coggin v. Davey, 233 Ga. 407, 410-411,
211 S.E.2d 708 (1975), the Supreme Court held that the former Act (as enacted by Ga.L.1972, p. 575),
although applicable to the executive branch of government, was not applicable to the legislative [202
Ga.App. 717] branch or its committees. Though not part of its holding, Coggin also rejected the argument that the Act applied to the judicial branch [emphasis added]. Id. at 410-411, 211 S.E.2d 708. The Court reasoned that the Act was not intended to apply to the legislative branch since the Legislature had historically exercised the authority to adopt its own internal operating procedures, and had subsequently adopted the procedures at issue inconsistent with the Act. Id. at 411, 211 S.E.2d 708.

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Sunshine Laws, et al.

Whether it is legally defined as the ‘Freedom of Information Act’ (“FOIA”), or a “Sunshine Act” or the ‘Open Records Act,’ the concept behind all of these laws is to make the people who work in government become more accountable to the taxpayers who pay their salaries and expenses.

The primary purpose of these types of laws is to provide disclosure to the public of government activities, and not, as some like to interpret it (in this state and others, including the federal government), to allow governments to withhold things from the public’s eye.

In 1972, Georgia’s legislature passed the first “Sunshine Act.” If you compared the 1972 Act to what is currently Georgia’s “Open Records Act” law, you might notice a couple of similarities of significance: 1) There is no specific exemption specified to exclude the Legislative Branch of Georgia from either of these acts, and 2) There is also no specific exemption specified to exclude the Judicial Branch of Georgia from having to follow these laws.

And yet, in EVERY other part of Georgia law, in order for anyone to be exempt from having to follow the law, there must be a specific, codified exemption written into the law. No written exemption written? Then you have to follow that law to the letter.

And, yet, today, neither the judicial branch of Georgia, nor the legislative branch of Georgia, has to “open their books” to the sunshine of government transparency. Why is that? Well…let me take you on a little case study journey to discover why…that involves two Georgia cases.

Case #1: Coggin v. Davey – Supreme Court of Georgia, Decided Jan. 6, 1975

Coggin v. Davey (“Coggin”) was a lawsuit filed in 1974 by three radio reporters and Common Cause for access to meetings of General Assembly committees.

This is a link to a copy of the full Supreme Court decision.

There are two parts of this decision that you should pay attention to. The first one appears in a yellow highlight [emphasis by me] on Page 3:

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***** UPDATE #2 ON UGA PLAYER FAKING INJURY *******

Well, the only thing we have to say about this story in the AJC where Coach Mark Richt spins the “groin injury” bullshit is that he is demonstrating that he thinks he can lie and people (and God) will believe him.

In the “Comments” section below that AJC article is a comment that occurs here:

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