Georgia

=see GA2 bak 220kemp stole election, appt loefler==an 4.2.20Deadly ignorance’: Georgia GOP governor slammed for falsely claiming ‘we didn’t know’ asymptomatic people can transmit coronavirusAlex HendersonRepublican Gov. Brian Kemp asserted that the realization one can spread coronavirus despite being asymptomatic was a “game-changer” for him.=<a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/something-really-rotten-heres-the-evidence-of-extensive-voter-suppression-in-georgias-notorious-2018-election/">https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/something-really-rotten-heres-the-evidence-of-extensive-voter-suppression-in-georgias-notorious-2018-election/</a>
no lnx
‘Something really rotten’: Here’s the evidence of extensive voter suppression in Georgia’s notorious 2018 election
Written by Common Dreams February 28, 2020As the 2020 presidential campaign cycle grinds on, there’s renewed concern about the 21st century’s newest form of warfare: cyber-sabotage of government systems, including elections and online disinformation intended to incite unrest. But as Suppressed: The Fight to Vote, a documentary from Brave New Films, makes clear, partisan voter suppression tactics with 20th-century roots remain and can thwart multitudes of voters from changing their state’s political leaders.
Suppressed: The Fight to Vote revisits the most visibly unfair election of 2018: the race for Georgia’s governor between Republican Brian Kemp—then Georgia secretary of state and supervisor of its election apparatus—and Democrat Stacey Abrams, an ex-state legislative leader and voting rights activist who led one of the most vibrant grassroots campaigns seen in Georgia in many years.
The election, which put Kemp in the governor’s seat and which Abrams did not concede, is a showcase of how legal technicalities and opaque bureaucracy ended up discouraging, disqualifying, and disenfranchising purple-state voters who sought a regime change.
“Pull back that veneer [of legal but opaque rules and officials who didn’t help voters], and you see something really rotten happening,” Carol Anderson, chair of African American Studies at Emory University in Atlanta, says as the film opens. “It’s almost like termites coming in. They’re in the wood. They’re eating the wood away. And you don’t even realize your house is getting ready to collapse until it’s almost too late.”
Suppressed’s storyline starts earlier in the decade. In 2013, a GOP-appointed majority on the Supreme Court gutted the core enforcement provision in the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965. Its opinion said that racism in American society had passed. Thus, states and counties that had histories of racial discrimination in elections no longer needed to have any change in election laws and procedures vetted by the U.S. Department of Justice.
As Suppressed and many voting rights groups have noted, numerous red-run states that play outsized roles in national elections quickly implemented mundane-sounding, overly bureaucratic—but, as Anderson says, “lethal”—rules to suppress Democratic voting blocs. (The documentary cites Alabama, Arkansas, North Carolina, Ohio, Kansas, North Dakota, Michigan, Wisconsin and Georgia as targets of suppression.)
This history has been told before, but there is an undeniable power with seeing the faces and hearing the words of people who personally bore the brunt of a menu of suppressive tactics—people who are predominantly non-white. One cannot help but note that race and party are almost always synonymous in Georgia, as they are across much of America.
The documentary follows a chronology that peels back layers of GOP-led suppressive tactics, starting with those that laid a foundation for disqualifying Democratic voters. These include efforts to close longtime polling places in predominantly black and lower-income neighborhoods in locales such as Randolph County, Georgia, which, in a rare glimmer of hope, saw the local populace reverse those poll closures. “The incident that we experienced threw the spotlight on everything else that had been going on,” Bobby Jenkins, a retired superintendent of schools, said. As the film notes, since 2012, Georgia has closed 214 polling places, with 75 percent of closed polls in African American communities.
The “everything else” that Jenkins refers to begins with the starting line of the voting process for individuals: voter registration. The voices of people who were infrequent voters but who received postcards saying that they could be taken off of county rolls followed. That little-understood process of purging rolls is legal, but not mandatory, under the 1993 National Voter Registration Act. Nonetheless, the intended recipients were confused, including seniors who started voting in the 1950s civil rights and the 1960s voting rights movements.
When these Georgians and others submitted more than 53,000 paper registration forms to county officials working under Kemp—instead of going online to register or to update their voter file information—they later found out that there was no state law requiring their applications be processed before the election that they wanted to vote in—2018’s governor’s race. That fall, crowds of otherwise eligible voters did not get a ballot.
There were other disqualifying moves that were legal but unethical. Thousands of infrequent voters were removed from official rolls because they hadn’t voted recently. Other voters were delisted because there were discrepancies in the spelling of their names in the state’s databases—notably driver’s license records did not match voter registration files. Other people were delisted if their mailing address and the address on their voter registration (their domicile for voting purposes) wasn’t the same—including soldiers in overseas war zones.
Again and again, the vast majority of those affected were from communities of color, not Georgia’s better-off white communities. One can argue, as Republicans have, that it is a voter’s responsibility to know the fine print of the process and to satisfy it. But the film makes clear that county election boards following Kemp’s directives were not offering customer service to voters—or, later, helping voters to cast ballots that got counted.
Similar barriers were seen with people seeking to vote by mail, but who never received an absentee ballot. The film notes that more than 280,000 people wanted to vote by mail, but “tens of thousands did not receive them.” The documentary has people recounting their phone calls to local election officials, who, in turn, replied that their request for an absentee ballot had been received, but they didn’t know where their ballot was.
The hurdles kept coming. When it came to voting in precincts on Election Day, many precincts in communities of color did not have enough voting machines compared to precincts in white communities. That shortage, atop delays caused when people learned that they weren’t listed on voter rolls—and protested—caused long lines to form. Many voters had to wait for hours. In some cases, people had to leave to take care of their family members or go to work.
When voters who were not on the rolls insisted on voting, they were given provisional ballots. These are ballots that combine registration information with a regular ballot. But the state requires those voters to return to county election offices within a few days with other ID before those votes are counted. For some people, doing that means lost wages, which is akin to a modern poll tax—the 19th-century practice of forcing black people to pay to vote.
These microaggressions kept coming and cascading. The film shows the grassroots energy of Abrams’ campaign, which was history-making when compared to past Georgia elections. Never before was the state poised to elect an African American woman as governor. But come election night, the results reported Kemp leading by more than 50,000 votes.
Abrams would not concede the race. (Afterward, her advocacy group, Fair Fight, filed one of the most comprehensive voting rights lawsuits in recent years to redress a catalog of suppressive tactics.) The film closes with Abrams’ defiant press conference that came after post-election challenges did not find enough votes for her. Recovering 50,000 votes is unheard of in post-election challenges.
“I acknowledge that former Secretary of State Brian Kemp will be certified as the victor in the 2018 gubernatorial election,” she said. “But to watch an elected official baldly pin his hopes for election on the suppression of the people’s democratic right to vote has been appalling. This is not a speech of concession, because concession means to acknowledge an action is right, true or proper. As a woman of conscience and faith, I cannot concede that.”
Suppressed: The Fight to Vote briefly continues to make the point that these partisan suppressive tactics are not unique to Georgia. The documentary is more than a cautionary tale about voter suppression in one state that, had elections been fairer, would be politically purple as its populace has become more multiracial. The film is a reminder that in 2020 there are many ways to tilt the playing field to game election results.
Many of those suppressive tactics have been around for decades and endure because they are effective. These tactics have nothing to do with Russians or cyber-sabotage. They are as old as America itself—but the victims, as Brave New Films has shown so vividly, are ordinary Americans who believe in democracy’s promise but typically are non-whites.
Steven Rosenfeld is the editor and chief correspondent of Voting Booth, a project of the Independent Media Institute. He has reported for National Public Radio, Marketplace, and Christian Science Monitor Radio, as well as a wide range of progressive publications including Salon, AlterNet, the American Prospect, and many others.=<div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" align="left">r<a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://click1.e.alternet.org/qddhfjdydbntnfrrtvsddtdrrvtrygpchbdnsmjvwnmg_ugqqhcmcshnmqfggyyg.html?a=&b=3806&c=21989&d=2">epublicans terrified civil war among 2 Trump allies could sink GOP Senate prospects in Georgia: report</a>

Republicans are starting to worry that the ongoing fight between…=</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" align="left">swing b/c of organizing of AA?</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" align="left">
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</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" align="left"><a href="https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/christian-nationalist-david-lane-seeks-22-million-to-win-2020-battleground-states-and-eradicate-secularism" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: currentcolor none medium;">https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/christian-nationalist-david-lane-seeks-22-million-to-win-2020-battleground-states-and-eradicate-secularism</a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" align="left">
</div><div style="" align="left"><section style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform; transition-timing-function: linear;"><div class="mce-content-body" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform; transition-timing-function: linear;"><div class="layout-constrain--narrow" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 47.2222em; padding-left: 1em; padding-right: 1em; line-height: 1.5;"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform; transition-timing-function: linear; line-height: 1.5;">Christian nationalist political operative David Lane is seeking $22 million for a campaign to boost conservative Christian turnout in 10 battleground states—Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Missouri, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia, Arizona, and Iowa—this year. In a <a href="https://www.charismanews.com/opinion/renewing-america/79760-why-america-s-culture-war-isn-t-about-democrats-and-republicans-mdash-it-s-spiritual" data-auth="NotApplicable" style="background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: currentcolor none medium; box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em;">column</a> published by Charisma, Lane claims that his American Renewal Project increased “Christian turnout” by 5 to 7 percent in half a dozen key states in 2016.<p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform; transition-timing-function: linear; line-height: 1.5;">Lane has a much bigger vision than just helping put President Donald Trump back in the White House. Lane views politics as spiritual warfare necessary to defeat secularists and pagans and make America the Christian nation he says it was founded to be. He teaches that the U.S. has a national mandate to promote the Christian faith and calls the separation of church and state a lie.<p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform; transition-timing-function: linear; line-height: 1.5;">In recent years, Lane has <a href="https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/david-lane-is-mobilizing-1000-pastors-to-run-for-office-because-this-is-our-appointed-time-of-god/" data-auth="NotApplicable" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: currentcolor none medium; box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em;">recruited </a>conservative pastors to run for office and mobilize their congregations as election volunteers. In his new column in Charisma, he imagines hundreds of conservative evangelical pastors running for office in the next few election cycles, “triggering a third great awakening” and “bringing about a full-impact collision between the two rival religions in America of Christianity and secularism.”<p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform; transition-timing-function: linear; line-height: 1.5;">“Since each worldview is expansive and evangelistic, there will be no reconciliation of opposites with God; one will ultimately end in the eradication of the other,” Lane adds.<p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform; transition-timing-function: linear; line-height: 1.5;">As Right Wing Watch has <a href="https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/david-lane-republican-presidential-hopefuls-favorite-christian-nation-extremist/" data-auth="NotApplicable" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: currentcolor none medium; box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform; transition-timing-function: linear; background-color: transparent; outline-offset: 0.111111em;">noted</a> <a href="https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/meet-david-lane-the-anti-gay-christian-nation-extremist-of-the-rnc/" data-auth="NotApplicable" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: currentcolor none medium; box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform; transition-timing-function: linear; background-color: transparent; outline-offset: 0.111111em;">repeatedly</a> over the years, Lane’s divisive Christian nationalist extremism hasn’t prevented Republican officials at all levels from embracing him and supporting his work. They don’t seem to be bothered by his anti-LGBTQ extremism either; he once <a href="https://www.patheos.com/blogs/dispatches/2013/06/11/wingnut-calls-for-martyrdom-to-stop-marriage-equality/" data-auth="NotApplicable" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: currentcolor none medium; box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform; transition-timing-function: linear; background-color: transparent; outline-offset: 0.111111em;">urged</a> conservative Christians to prepare for martyrdom in their fight to “save the nation from the pagan onslaught” of marriage equality and legal abortion. As a presidential candidate in 2016, Donald Trump <a href="https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/donald-trump-to-address-extremist-anti-lgbt-summit-in-orlando/" data-auth="NotApplicable" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: currentcolor none medium; box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform; transition-timing-function: linear; background-color: transparent; outline-offset: 0.111111em;">attended</a> one of Lane’s organizing events in Florida.<p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform; transition-timing-function: linear; line-height: 1.5;">Here’s some more background on Lane from Right Wing Watch <a href="https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/christian-nationalists-dominionists-set-their-sights-on-california/" data-auth="NotApplicable" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: currentcolor none medium; box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em;">reporting</a> in 2018, when Lane teamed up with California-based dominionists to try to “turn California around”:</div></div></section></div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/georgias-gop-governor-to-defy-trump-pick-for-us-senate-seat-after-tense-white-house-meeting/">https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/georgias-gop-governor-to-defy-trump-pick-for-us-senate-seat-after-tense-white-house-meeting/</a>in an attempt to win back women who’ve abandoned the GOP in recent years, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp plans to appoint financial executive Kelly Loeffler to a US Senate seat next week, <a href="https://www.ajc.com/blog/politics/georgia-gov-expected-tap-finance-exec-senate-next-week/qDibvzRR0L6VvyUmjnB1QJ/#" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: currentcolor none medium; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports</a>.The move contradicts the wishes of President Trump and others in the GOP, who pushed for the appointment of Trump loyalist U.S. Rep. Doug Collins. The appointment is intended to fill the seat of Republican Johnny Isakson, who is stepping down due to health issues....<a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/students-burn-a-latina-authors-books-that-addresses-white-privilege-report/">https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/students-burn-a-latina-authors-books-that-addresses-white-privilege-report/</a>rATGERGATE? fedsoc
Republican appointee to the Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections. GA
1/13 https://www.ajc.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/state-investigators-fulton-election-documents-were-altered/RsJBGBIVU8yDVkrC0L3SXI/...Secretary of State Brian Kemp, who is investigating more than 100 voter complaints against the county from last year, said the evidence points to possible document tampering and calls into question the vote totals Fulton reported. His chief investigator, Chris Harvey, revealed the suspect records during the fact-gathering hearing.
The scope of the problem with altered documents, and the significance, remain to be seen, but it’s another troubling aspect of the county’s failure to accommodate all its voters during a major election.
Previously, most of the complaints already aired against the county focused on what appeared to be mismanagement that inconvenienced voters, causing some to give up on their opportunity to vote after lengthy waits in line....---POLITICS Nov 15, 2018By Arielle Kass, The Atlanta Journal-ConstitutionRepublican members of Fulton County’s legislative delegation tried unsuccessfully Thursday to appoint Mary Norwood, the twice-failed Atlanta mayoral candidate, as chair of the county elections board.
After the Senate delegation voted in the morning to put Norwood’s name forward, the House delegation canceled its meeting. Both bodies must approve the nomination and it is supposed to happen in a joint session of the delegation.
Frustrated Democrats said the proper process wasn’t followed.=Terms: Each board member's term is two years (odd number) July 1, 2019 – June 30, 2021
Number of Board Seats: 5
Membership:
The chairperson shall be appointed by the governing authority, the Fulton County Board of Commissioners.
Two members shall be appointed by the governing authority by the Republican chairperson of the county executive committee.
Two members shall be appointed by the governing authority by the Democratic chairperson of the county executive committee.
Current Members:      
Ms. Mary Carole Cooney, Chairperson
Email: mccooney@mindspring.com 
Ms. Vernetta Nuriddin (Democrat)
Email: vernettanuriddin@live.com 
Dr. Kathleen D. Ruth (Republican)
Email: drkayruth@icloud.com 
Mr. Aaron Johnson (Democrat)
Email: aaronvjohnson@yahoo.com 
Mr. Mark Wingate  (Republican)
Email: wingate01md@gmail.com---<div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" align="left">=</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" align="left"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/probe-of-missing-georgia-votes-finds-extreme-irregularities-in-black-districts/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: currentcolor none medium;">https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/probe-of-missing-georgia-votes-finds-extreme-irregularities-in-black-districts/</a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" align="left">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" align="left"><div>no lnx</div><div>
</div><div>Probe of missing Georgia votes finds ‘extreme’ irregularities in black districts</div><div>
</div><div>Written by Andrew O'Hehir / Raw Story August 30, 2019</div><div>A trove of documents turned over in a congressional probe of missing votes in Georgia’s lieutenant governor race — along with other voting issues — revealed serious irregularities.</div><div>
</div><div>The House Oversight and Reform Committee is investigating whether voting machine errors caused a large drop-off in votes in the lieutenant governor race between Democrat Sarah Riggs Amico and Republican Geoff Duncan, who won the election by about 123,000 votes. The probe is looking at why so many fewer votes were recorded in the race compared to other statewide races, as well as the voter suppression issues that plagued the 2018 state elections.</div><div>
</div><div>There were 159,000 fewer votes cast in the lieutenant governor race than in the gubernatorial race between Democrat Stacey Abrams and Republican Brian Kemp. While it is common for down-ballot races to see fewer votes, the lieutenant governor race had twice as much drop-off as other statewide races, even though it was the second race on the ballot, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.</div><div>
</div><div>There were 80,000 fewer votes cast for lieutenant governor than in other down-ballot races, which represents a 4 percent drop-off from the gubernatorial race, compared to a 2 percent drop-off among even less charismatic down-ballot races. For various reasons, this appears illogical. Historically, the lieutenant governor race has had a much lower drop-off rate than other statewide races in previous elections.</div><div>
</div><div>More than 15,500 pages of documents turned over the to Oversight Committee and obtained by the Journal-Constitution shows that the election was plagued by widespread irregularities.</div><div>
</div><div>In one case, a voting machine in Kemp’s home precinct recorded that Republicans won every race, while the other six machines in that same precinct showed that Democrats won every race. The machine showed Republicans winning by roughly the same margin by which Democrats won on the other machines. A statistician’s analysis cited in court documents said “odds of an anomaly that large are less than 1 in 1 million,” the Journal-Constitution reported.</div><div>
</div><div>But the problems were far more widespread. The documents show a decline in votes on electronic voting machines in 101 of the state’s 159 counties, even though paper absentee ballots in the same districts did not show a significant decline.</div><div>
</div><div>An analysis by the Democratic data-tracking firm TargetSmart found that the drop-off “grew even more extreme in precincts with large African American populations,” according to the report.</div><div>
</div><div>“I’ve never seen a drop-off pattern like this, ever,” TargetSmart data analyst Chris Brill told the Journal-Constitution.</div><div>
</div><div>The Georgia election as a whole was marred by Republican voter suppression efforts and aging, vulnerable voting machines. The Coalition for Good Governance, an election security group that sued to contest the lieutenant governor race, issued a report alleging that the extreme drop-off in black districts suggests the undervote could not be explained by voters simply skipping that race on their ballots.</div><div>
</div><div>“The rates of touchscreen machine–reported undervotes in such precincts in the Lt. Governor contest are far greater than the undervote rates in non–African American neighborhoods regardless of whether those neighborhoods lean Democratic or Republican,” the report said. “The undervote problem did not happen at the same exaggerated levels in many primarily White neighborhoods that overwhelmingly voted for Stacey Abrams and other Democrats, rebutting the argument that the difference can be explained by party-driven voter behavior.”</div><div>
</div><div>The group’s analysis found that the drop-off rate in some African-American areas was as high as 13 percent, much higher than the 4 percent statewide figure, The Root reported.</div><div>
</div><div>Brill told The Root that TargetSmart’s analysis showed that “as the percentage of the African-American vote would get higher, the undervote would also get higher.”</div><div>
</div><div>Brill said in an affidavit filed in court that the results are “extremely suspect and irregular and cast a serious doubt over the accuracy of the final vote and the certified outcome of the lieutenant governor’s contest,” adding that he “finds no reasonable, plausible explanation other than machine malfunction.”</div><div>
</div><div>Phillip Stark, a statistician at the University of California, Berkeley, said in a court filing that the undervote rate “strongly suggests that malfunction, misconfiguration, bugs, hacking, or other error or malfeasance caused some DREs [direct recording electronic voting machines] not to record votes in the lieutenant governor’s contest.”</div><div>
</div><div>Georgia is one of five states that exclusively uses electronic machines, with no paper backup. Most of the machines in the state are outdated touchscreen devices that are considered vulnerable to hacking. In a ruling earlier this month, federal Judge Amy Totenberg called the state’s machines “unsecure, unreliable and grossly outdated.” Totenberg ordered the state to start using machines with paper backups by next year.</div><div>
</div><div>Although there is no clear explanation for what happened to the votes in the lieutenant governor’s race, the Georgia Supreme Court is considering a lawsuit filed to challenge Duncan’s election.</div><div>
</div><div>Republican state officials, meanwhile, have been opposed to any sort of review. Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has refused to open an investigation into the matter and state officials claimed that the undervote may have been caused by “low interest,” the Journal-Constitution reported, even though other races did not see anywhere near the same drop-off. The secretary of state’s office previously denied Amico’s request for a recount, arguing that it was common for voters to skip down-ballot races without addressing the much higher vote total in other races nor the racial disparity.</div><div>
</div><div>Eddie Perez of the Open Source Election Technology Institute, which has pushed for Georgia to adopt hand-marked paper ballots, questioned why officials were so resistant to investigating an election with an inexplicable vote total.</div><div>
</div><div>“I don’t know why the state of Georgia appears to be resisting an examination,” Perez told the Journal-Constitution. “They’re not getting any closer to the truth. This really is unusual, and it begs explanation.”</div><div>
</div><div>The Coalition for Good Governance is asking the Georgia Supreme Court to consider their lawsuit challenging Duncan’s election after a county judge dismissed the case, even while conceding that there were issues with the entire voting system.</div><div>
</div><div>“There is a real wall up and real obstacles to prevent sunshine from coming in and having any kind of election transparency,” Marilyn Marks, the executive director for the Coalition for Good Governance, told the Journal-Constitution. “Let’s find some facts. It’s crazy to think that the paper-ballot voters felt one way about the candidates and the machine voters felt another way.”</div><div>
</div><div>Stark, the Berkeley statistician, said in a court filing in the lawsuit that the irregularities are too large to ignore.</div><div>
</div><div>“Based on my analysis, described above, and my knowledge of Georgia’s DRE voting system used in the November 6, 2018 election,” he said in an affidavit, “it is my opinion that the certified results of the lieutenant governor’s race are in substantial doubt.”</div><div>
</div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" align="left">=</div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/probe-of-missing-georgia-votes-finds-extreme-irregularities-in-black-districts/">https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/probe-of-missing-georgia-votes-finds-extreme-irregularities-in-black-districts/</a>=<div class="mag-header" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 19px; padding: 0px; position: relative; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" align="left"><h3 class="magcat-titlte entry-title" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; letter-spacing: 1px;"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/08/georgia-gop-senator-will-resign-at-end-of-year-setting-off-a-crucial-2020-special-election/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; display: block; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.4;">Georgia GOP senator will resign at end of year, setting off a crucial 2020 special election</a></h3><div class="grid-post-box-meta mag-meta" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 7px 0px 0px; padding: 0px;"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/author/jeff-singer/" title="Posts by Jeff Singer" class="author url fn" rel="author" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Jeff Singer</a> / <a href="https://www.alternet.org/author/daily-kos/" title="Posts by Daily Kos" class="author url fn" rel="author" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Daily Kos</a></div></div><div class="mag-excerpt entry-content" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" align="left">In huge news for the battle for the Senate , Georgia Republican Johnny Isakson announced Wednesday that he would resign from the chamber at the end of 2019 because of health reasons.</div>=gov signs, criminalize women (ga has record maternal death rate, esp aa<h2 class="posttitle" style="box-sizing: inherit; line-height: 1.35em; margin-bottom: 0.25em; margin-top: -7px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" align="left"><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/georgia-legislature-sends-6-week-abortion-ban-to-governor-kemp-to-sign-into-law-bc3ba9cf6ca5/" rel="bookmark" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word;">Georgia legislature sends 6-week abortion ban to governor to sign into law</a></h2><div class="postmeta" style="box-sizing: inherit; letter-spacing: 0.15625rem; line-height: 1.5em; text-transform: uppercase; margin-bottom: 0px; display: flex; -webkit-box-orient: vertical; -webkit-box-direction: normal; flex-direction: column; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" align="left"><a class="url fn n" href="https://thinkprogress.org/author/amanda-michelle-gomez/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; white-space: nowrap;">AMANDA MICHELLE GOMEZ</a><a href="https://thinkprogress.org/georgia-legislature-sends-6-week-abortion-ban-to-governor-kemp-to-sign-into-law-bc3ba9cf6ca5/" rel="bookmark" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; word-break: break-word; white-space: nowrap;"><time class="postdate" datetime="2019-03-29T15:17:29-04:00" style="box-sizing: inherit; letter-spacing: 0.15625rem;">MAR 29, 2019</time></a></div>bunch of movie co's boycott
<table helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" margin="margin" auto="auto" width="550" align="left"><tbody><tr><td width="5"> </td><td width="410" valign="top"><a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="http://click1.e.alternet.org/jtffmzncndswsmkkwtjnnwnkktwkcvqpfdnsjbzvtrf_izghyczcwymmcgngdmh.html?a=&b=248&c=21989&d=2">Netflix vows to work with ACLU in fight against draconian Georgia anti-abortion law</a><p style="font-family: Georgia, " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" font-style="font-style" italic="italic" color="color" rgb="rgb" margin="margin" padding="padding"> On May 7, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed into law…</td></tr></tbody></table>solar big
kemp bigly<div align="left"><ul style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 20px 0px 0px; padding: 0px;" helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" text-align="text-align" center="center" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><li class="hidden-xs" style="box-sizing: border-box; list-style-type: none; padding: 0px 0px 23px; font-weight: 700; line-height: 1.33;"><a data-ga-action="Home Headlines: Headline" href="https://www.democracynow.org/2018/10/12/headlines/georgia_voter_suppression_efforts_under_fire_in_heated_governor_race" style="box-sizing: border-box; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; border: 0px;">Georgia Voter Suppression Efforts Under Fire in Heated Governor Race</a></li></ul></div>privatized probation<a href="http://www.allgov.com/news/controversies/outsourcing-probation-a-lucrative-and-growing-industry-140129?news=852293" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">http://www.allgov.com/news/controversies/outsourcing-probation-a-lucrative-and-growing-industry-140129?news=852293</a>Privatization of the criminal justice system has extended beyond prisons that are run for profit and now includes probation operators making a buck off Americans who have violated the law.Quietly over the past four decades, private probation companies have gone into business in 40% of U.S. states, most of them in the South. Georgia alone has 34 businesses providing probation services.These entrepreneurs have replaced county offices that used to oversee individuals given probation instead of jail time for their offenses.But the switch from public to private probation has resulted in excessive financial costs levied on probationers, some of whom have been threatened with incarceration for not paying these companies on time.Circuit Judge Hub Harrington called the private probation system in Harpersville, Alabama, a “judicially sanctioned extortion racket.”Take for example <a href="http://www.sentrak.com/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: inherit; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: normal;">Sentinel Offender Services</a>, a $30 million enterprise operating in four states. An investigation by NBC News found that Sentinel demanded payments for fees from low-income probationers and resorted to arrest warrants to force the issue, regardless of the individuals’ financial status.All of this despite a <a href="http://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/461/660/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: normal;">1983 federal ruling</a> that said that people on probation cannot be imprisoned for being indigent.In Florida, private firms can add as much as 40% in surcharges on top of the debt owed by probationers. In Illinois, the add-on fees can amount to 30% of the standing debt.The <a href="http://www.brennancenter.org/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: normal;">Brennan Center for Justice</a> says that at least nine states allow companies to charge probationers excessive fees.Former law enforcement officials control this industry—at least in Georgia—having leveraged their connections into profitable contracts. “This is completely dominated by retired state probation people and wardens of state prisons,” Putnam County Sheriff Howard Sills told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “They created this industry for themselves.”They did so after Georgia passed a law in 2000 that transferred state probation services to the counties, thereby allowing local courts to outsource those services to private companies. They are allowed to handle all probation cases other than those involving felons.Bobby Whitworth, the former head of the <a href="http://pap.georgia.gov/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: inherit; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: normal;">Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles</a>, accepted payoffs in return for helping to pass that law. He was eventually imprisoned on public corruption charges for having done so.“My problem [with private probation services] is with…the fact that people are getting rich off the poorest people in society,” Steve Bright, senior counsel for the <a href="http://www.schr.org/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: inherit; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: normal;">Southern Center for Human Rights</a>, told the Journal-Constitution. “Many private probation companies don't do anything but collect checks from people. Perhaps someone who has run a loan company would be better qualified.” by -Noel Brinkerhoff, Danny BiedermanTo Learn More:<a href="http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/how-private-probation-companies-make-money-americans-they-trap-criminal-justice?paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: inherit; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: normal;">How Private Probation Companies Make Money From the Those They Trap in the Justice System</a> (by Aaron Cantú, AlterNet)<a href="http://www.correctionsone.com/probation-and-parole/articles/6754523-Connections-matter-in-Ga-private-probation-industry/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: inherit; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: normal;">Connections Matter in Ga. Private Probation Industry</a> (by Rhonda Cook, Atlanta Journal-Constitution)<a href="http://investigations.nbcnews.com/news/2012/10/24/14653300-cash-register-justice-private-probation-services-face-legal-counterattack?lite" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: inherit; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: normal;">'Cash Register Justice': Private Probation Services Face Legal Counterattack</a> (by Hannah Rappleye and Lisa Riordan-Seville, NBC compiled a bit of info in my petition to End For Profit Probation: http://www.change.org/petitions/end-for-profit-private-probation-of-misdemeanor-cases-in-the-united-states =ref
https://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/how-private-probation-companies-make-money-americans-they-trap-criminal-justiceMarietta Conner watched the judge expectantly. The 63-year-old assistant minister had just pled guilty to “fail[ing] to yield to a pedestrian”—a criminal misdemeanor in Georgia—and did not have enough money to pay her $140 fine. The judge ordered that she be put on probation. But instead of county probation, Conner was assigned a private probation company supposed to mimic normal court probabation: meet with her once a month through a probation officer, collect payments and confirm her work and address. In the end, the company sapped Conner of well over the original amount of the fine, and even dangled an arrest warrant over her head when it erroneously claimed she had missed a payment.Conner was lucky. She knew someone at the Southern Center for Human Rights who helped her escape the trap the correctional corporation tried to put her in. Yet for hundreds of thousands of others on probation through a private company, the experience routinely entails prolonged harassment, indebtedness and even imprisonment—and sometimes all with the blessing of a judge.To be ensnared in America’s system of mass incarceration is to be in prison, on parole, or on probation. In 2012 <a href="https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/cpus12.pdf" style="text-decoration-line: none;">1 in every 35 American adults</a> was trapped in the criminal justice system. The surging number of people whose lives necessitate constant surveillance and management has exploded the coffers of state and federal budgets, and rather than reform heavy-handed laws to ease this burden on public funds, elected leaders have contracted incarceration services out to companies with a moneyed interest in jailing more Americans. The private prison industry has stoked the outrage of progressives and civil libertarians for years, as has the practice of prosecutors pushing plea bargains with heavy parole, but an equally dangerous phenomenon is the rise of private probation businesses across the country.  Since the 1970s, the private probation industry has expanded into at least 20 states—most concentrated in the South—and nearly all of its companies are entirely supported by the fees paid to them by the probationers they “serve.” In the last few years, many of these businesses have been given more power to pursue and imprison probationers, playing a starring role in what one federal judge called a “<a href="http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21589903-if-you-are-poor-dont-get-caught-speeding-new-debtors-prisons" style="text-decoration-line: none;">judicially sanctioned extortion racket</a>.”When someone is convicted of a misdemeanor crime, he or she is often placed on probation by a judge either in lieu of minor prison time or as part of a payment plan to pay off court fines levied for his charge. Traditionally, the purpose of probation has been to facilitate the rehabilitation of the probationer through constant contact with a representative of the court (a probation officer), although this concept may be farcical in an age when an adult can be placed under “community supervision” for jaywalking. With privatized supervision, the offenders are required to report monthly to a contractor acting in the same capacity as a probation officer, and they must also pay a monthly fee to the company on top of the fines they owe the court.The distinction between fee and fine is important because, as <a href="http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21589903-if-you-are-poor-dont-get-caught-speeding-new-debtors-prisons" style="text-decoration-line: none;">noted by the Economist</a>, it is through fees that private probation companies can afford to pay the salaries of their staff. A report from the Criminal Justice Review <a href="http://www.sagepub.com/hanserstudy/articles/05/Schloss.pdf" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none;">explained that</a> “Private agencies…rely on the probationer’s paying a supervision fee to remain solvent.” Solvency, however, is hardly a concern for many of these corporations, some of which have amassed tens of millions of dollars annually off the fees they charge probationers.One such company is Sentinel Offender Services, whose combined operations in four different states brought in $30 million in 2009, <a href="http://investigations.nbcnews.com/news/2012/10/24/14653300-cash-register-justice-private-probation-services-face-legal-counterattack?lite" style="text-decoration-line: none;">according to an investigation by NBC</a>. The company has faced many legal challenges on the grounds that its employees demand payment for fees from poor probationers and then issue arrest warrants when they cannot pay, without consideration for their financial situation. Marietta Conner, the impoverished pastor, was under the supervision of Sentinel.Although a <a href="http://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/461/660/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">1983 federal ruling</a> said that probationers cannot be jailed for being indigent, Sentinel has regularly issued arrest warrants for probationers delinquent on their payments, and has even extended the probationary sentences of thousands—illegally—in order to wrest more money from them. Sentinel has terrorized so many lives a <a href="http://chronicle.augusta.com/news/crime-courts/2013-09-16/private-probation-company-dealt-costly-blows-judges-ruling" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Georgia court recently ruled</a> that the company might have to refund thousands of payments to former probationers who had the unfortunate luck to be supervised by a company that “links its probation officers’ performance evaluations to the amount of money collected from probationers,” <a href="https://www.aclu.org/files/assets/InForAPenny_web.pdf" style="text-decoration-line: none;">according to a 2010 ACLU report</a>.Sentinel is just one in a vanguard of 34 probation corporations in Georgia pushing to have more power to hunt down delinquent probationers. <a href="http://www.legis.ga.gov/Legislation/20132014/134192.pdf" style="text-decoration-line: none;">A new bill up for a vote</a> in the Georgia’s House of Representatives, greased for quick passage by funds from industry lobbyists would give private probation officers increased “immunity from liability” and grant them more discretion to extend a person’s probation—and by extension, prolong a probationer’s “payment period.” Some courts have actually been complicit in the racket. A circuit court in Alabama <a href="http://order/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">ruled in 2012</a> that the local municipal judiciary in Harpersville, Alabama had operated “debtor’s prisons” together with the private probation firm Judicial Correctional Services by turning over poor misdemeanor defendants to JCS and then allowing the company to fleece them for every cent they had.<div align="left">In the event that the probationers couldn’t pay their monthly fees to the company—as was the case for many probationers in the nation’s fourth poorest state—they were thrown in jail without a trial at the behest of JCS and under the blessing of the Harpersville court, who would then doom already-indigent defendants to an inescapable pit of debt by piling even more fines and fees. The presiding judge who ruled against Harpersville was scandalized so deeply by the JCS-judiciary collusion that he accused the local court of “violating almost every safeguard afforded by the United States Constitution [and] the laws of the state of Alabama.” Meanwhile, JCS <a href="http://www.judicialservices.com/officelocations.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">continues to operate</a>in 69 cities throughout four different states.Perhaps the most pernicious feature of these businesses is how they enable local municipalities to perpetuate debtor’s prisons across the country. In Florida, birthplace of modern privatized probation, courts permit correctional firms to tack on a 40% surcharge on top of the debt a delinquent probationer already owes, <a href="http://final.pdf/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">as detailed in an investigation</a> by the Brennan Center for Justice. The investigation also found that courts in Missouri regularly condemn people to prison when they cannot pay off the fees imposed by probation companies, and in Illinois, corporations shakedown impoverished probationers for 30% more of their standing debt if they miss payments. In total, the report found that nine states charged probationers excessive fees “payable to private debt collection firms”—in other words, private probation companies.Efforts to resist the abuses of the private probation system have been scattered and slow building. In addition to the class-action lawsuits filed against Sentinel in Georgia and JCS in Alabama, an Idaho-based probation company <a href="http://boiseguardian.com/2011/10/06/probation-agency-defendant-in-class-action-lawsuit/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">was sued in 2011 for perpetually increasing probationer’s sentences</a>by manipulating the results of drug tests (testing positive for drugs is usually a violation of probation and can mean further penalties). That same year in Tennessee, a group of former probationer’s <a href="https://www.courthousenews.com/2011/01/27/33674.htm" style="text-decoration-line: none;">filed a successful lawsuit</a> against the owner of a company called Providence Community Corrections for having “forced them to overpay” and holding them on probation “longer than necessary.”Yet despite a proliferation of lawsuits across the country, municipalities seem to show no less willingness to contract out probation services. In addition to the 20 or so states that now allow some form of privatized probation, a state senator in at least one other place—Nebraska—has inquired with policy experts about implementing the correctional model in his home state. It does not take a legal expert to discern how for-profit correctional services threaten the freedom of Americans. Private probationary companies exist only as long as there is a steady supply of probationers from whom to extract payment, and these companies grow only if the number of people on probation grows. As evidenced further by the case of prison contractors, some of which have compelled state governors to keep prisons 90% full, a privatized correctional model maintains the American system of mass incarceration by further building it into an industry. </div>--also refhttps://www.correctionsone.com/probation-and-parole/articles/6754523-Connections-matter-in-Ga-private-probation-industry/
2014 Rhonda Cook The Atlanta Journal-ConstitutionATLANTA — Many private probation companies in Georgia are controlled by former law enforcement officials, and they're leveraging their connections into lucrative contracts."This is big business," said state Rep. Gerald Greene, R-Cuthburt, a key player in the passage of the 2000 law that gave the industry a kick start."There are many individuals out there seeking to own these private probation companies," Greene saidThe idea of allowing private probation companies to take some of the load off overburdened state probation officers was first proposed in 1992, but the best backers could do then was push through a law that would at least relieve state probation officers from supervising misdemeanor traffic offenders.Then in 2000, with support coming from powerful politicians, the Georgia Legislature agreed that only felons should be supervised by state probation officers. The others would be watched by local governments, which could hire private companies to do the work."This is completely dominated by retired state probation people and wardens of state prisons," said Putnam County Sheriff Howard Sills, who was recently appointed to the council that hears complaints related to the public and private probation supervision. "They created this industry for themselves."Steve Bright, the senior counsel for the Southern Center for Human Rights, said he doesn't necessarily have a problem former law enforcement officers dominating the industry."My problem is with the companies themselves and the fact that people are getting rich off the poorest people in society," he said. "Many private probation companies don't do anything but collect checks from people. Perhaps someone who has run a loan company would be better qualified." Tony Moreland, a co-owner of Georgia Probation Services, said the job of supervising probationers requires "someone with experience.""We saw an opportunity ... and we wanted to have a positive impact," said John Prescott, vice president of operations with Southeast Corrections and a former probation officer in the Department of Corrections.The industry will have a presence during this year's legislative session.The president of the Private Probation Association of Georgia, Danna Philmon, said the industry trade group was still working on its legislative plans. They most likely will include a measure concerning the practice of tolling, essentially stopping the clock when a probationer absconds and extending the term of his probation. A Richmond County judge has found tolling to be unconstitutional, but that question is being appealed to the Georgia Supreme Court.Private probation companies would have no power without tolling, Prescott said."If we don't have the ability to do that [toll], that person can hide out for 12 months," he said.Politics have figured in the private probation movement from the beginning.Two of the most powerful allies of the idea were Board of Pardons and Paroles Chairman Walter Ray and board member Bobby Whitworth, also once the commissioner of the Department of Corrections.Whitworth and Ray were accused of taking money from a company founded by two former Department of Corrections officials. Whitworth said the $75,000 that Detention Management Services paid him was for consulting and not lobbying, but he was still convicted and sentenced to six months in prison, but he was sentenced as a first offender so he has been cleared of the conviction. Ray was forced to resign.DMS, headed by two former prison officials, Lanson Newsome and Bud Black, was then sold to Sentinel Offender Services for $8.2 million just a few months after the law took effect.Another official who left his government job to start a private probation business was former Deputy Corrections Commissioner Walter Zant, who died in 2009. He secured contracts for ZSI Probation Services with several small towns just south Atlanta -- Barnesville, Hampton, Jackson, Locust Grove and Molena to name a few.The chief executive officer of Judicial Corrections Services is Robert McMichael, who was Fulton County's sheriff and the U.S. marshal for the Northern District of Georgia.In Gwinnett County, two companies with politically connected leaders have contracts with the various courts. Former state Rep. Clay Cox, a Lilburn Republican, is the CEO of Professional Probation Services. Developer and former County Commissioner Wayne Mason has ties to Southeast Corrections in that a family trust owns shares in the company.The other co-owner of Georgia Probation Services Inc. is the brother of the district attorney in the four-county Lookout Mountain Judicial Circuit in northwest Georgia, Herbert "Buzz" Franklin. Franklin, who prosecutes misdemeanors in two counties that do not have state courts or a solicitor, was one of the company's founders. But before he took office, he sold his share to his brother, a former municipal court judge and another of the company's co-founders."The primary benefit is it costs local governments less money," said Franklin, who was in private practice when he went into the private probation business in 1994. "The cost is borne by the probationers. To the extent I'm familiar with them, they provide pretty good service. We haven't had any issues."<div align="left"></div><div align="left"><a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/coal-ash-oklahoma-pruitt-2579396022.html">https://www.ecowatch.com/coal-ash-oklahoma-pruitt-2579396022.html</a></div><div align="left">
</div><div align="left">Pruitt Grants Oklahoma Leniency to Dispose of Toxic Coal Ash Without Federal Oversight</div><div id="utm_campaign" style="margin-top: 10px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" align="left"><div class="body js-expandable clearfix js-listicle-body js-update-url" data-elid="2579396022" data-authors="Olivia Rosane" data-headline="Pruitt Grants Oklahoma Leniency to Dispose of Toxic Coal Ash Without Federal Oversight" style="margin: 10px; line-height: 24px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="body-description">On Monday, Oklahoma became the first state to be granted a permit from the Environmental Protection Agency (<a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/epa" target="self" style="text-decoration-line: none;">EPA</a>) to dispose of its own <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/coal-ash" target="self" style="text-decoration-line: none;">coal ash</a>, <a href="https://www.seattletimes.com/business/apxepa-shifts-oversight-of-coal-waste-to-a-state-for-1st-time/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">The Associated Press reported</a>.The move displaces the federal government as the body responsible for coal ash disposal in EPA head <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/scott-pruitt" target="self" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Scott Pruitt</a>'s home state. Coal ash is the residue left over from burning <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/coal" target="self" style="text-decoration-line: none;">coal</a> for power that often contaminates groundwater. It is a change that industry has lobbied for and environmental groups have opposed.States have demonstrated that "they don't care about the health and safety of communities near coal ash dumps," Earthjustice attorney Lisa Evans told The Associated Press.About 100 million tons of coal ash is produced by U.S. plants every year, often left in disposal ponds that leak into groundwater, contaminating it with pollutants like arsenic and radium. Tests ordered by the EPA this spring of groundwater around plants in various states found elevated pollution levels, according to The Associated Press.Despite this, "industry has asked for leniency, less stringency. That's the direction they're going," Evans said.According to documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, switching coal ash oversight to states was part of an "action plan" proposed by coal industry executive Robert Murray this spring to Pruitt and other officials in the Trump administration.Pruitt defended the decision, saying in a statement that the move empowered "those who are best positioned to oversee coal ash management—the officials who have intimate knowledge of the facilities and the environment in their state."Pruitt also <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/epa-coal-ash-disposal-2541726001.html" target="self" style="text-decoration-line: none;">moved to weaken</a> Obama-era coal ash disposal regulations in March, but the rule change allowing states to control coal ash disposal was actually passed by Congress and signed by former President Barack Obama in 2016, according to <a href="https://stateimpact.npr.org/oklahoma/2018/02/16/environmental-groups-fight-states-effort-to-regulate-coal-ash-on-its-own/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">NPR</a>. The law said that state rules had to be "as protective as" federal guidelines."I am pleased that Oklahoma is the first state in the nation to receive approval of its Coal Combustion Residuals permit program. We actually incorporated the federal rule into our state permitting rules program over a year ago," Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) Executive Director Scott Thompson said in an <a href="https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/epa-approves-first-nation-state-coal-ash-permit-program-oklahoma" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">EPA press release</a> about the decision.But at a hearing in February, Oklahoma environmental groups said the DEQ was not prepared to adequately regulate coal ash."The DEQ rules are weaker than the EPA rules," Oklahoma Grand Riverkeeper and activist Earl Hatley told NPR in February. "This is just a boon for industry to do what they want."Waterkeeper Alliance senior attorney Kelly Foster further expressed concerns that the DEQ plan did not provide enough information on how companies would be made to comply with regulations and how the DEQ would take on new responsibilities with existing resources.Georgia and Texas are following Oklahoma in taking steps to control coal ash disposal, The Associated Press reported....</div></div><div></div><div>=</div><div><a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/14062018/georgia-solar-power-renewable-utility-scale-clean-energy-investments-2018-election">https://insideclimatenews.org/news/14062018/georgia-solar-power-renewable-utility-scale-clean-energy-investments-2018-election</a>

</div><div>Over the past five years, Georgia has become one of the nation's leading states for solar power, but it didn't get there in the usual way.</div>It doesn't offer tax credits, and the legislature has never created a state renewable portfolio standard requiring utilities to sell renewable energy. There is no net-metering law to let solar homes sell excess energy back to the grid at retail prices.Instead, an early Trump supporter who leads the state's Public Service Commission has been pushing Georgia Power, the state's largest utility, to invest in clean energy by ensuring that solar is included in the utility's long-term power plans, updated every three years. Lauren "Bubba" McDonald, Jr., saw other states moving toward solar, looked at Germany's record-setting solar investments, and concluded that Georgia was being left behind with its focus on nuclear and coal. He wasn't going to let it stay there.McDonald could have more solar support joining him on the regulatory commission soon. Solar advocates expect a voter backlash this fall against the all-Republican, elected commission over a costly nuclear power plant expansion.If voters boot one or both of the PSC members on the ballot and replace them with pro-solar Democrats, that would solidify a solar-friendly block on the commission—likely leading to more utility-scale solar, and, as Georgia Tea Party activist Debbie Dooley argues, potentially influencing the General Assembly to take a fresh look at giving rooftop solar a boost.<div class="widget widget-newsletter-block mc-embed-signup embed-horiz fbia-strip" style="box-sizing: inherit; border: 3px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); padding: 1em; text-align: center; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">"The cost overruns have become an issue," said University of Georgia political science professor <a href="http://spia.uga.edu/faculty-member/m-v-hood-iii/" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">Trey Hood</a>. While it's hard for any Democrat to win statewide office Georgia, he said, "people can directly connect the dots" between the PSC and their power bills.Solar advocates from both parties see potential for ramping up clean energy in the state even more."Georgia is at a clean energy crossroads," said Jennette Gayer, state director of the group Environment Georgia. "We have the potential to continue to grow our clean-energy footprint. The question is do we flatline or continue that upward trajectory."<h3 style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 0.5em; padding: 0px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.333; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" align="left">Falling Prices, Low Interest Rates, Lots of Sun</h3>Georgia's <a href="http://www.georgiaenergydata.org/solarmap" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">solar capacity</a> has increased dramatically in the past five years, ever since the PSC required Georgia Power—an investor-owned utility with 2.5 million customers—to install hundreds of megawatts of solar farms starting in 2013. With Georgia lawmakers avoiding policies that could be viewed by conservatives as subsidies, the state achieved much of its solar growth through an energy planning process with Georgia Power that is overseen by the PSC. The commission doesn't view its solar requirements as a type of mandate. "It's an agreement between Georgia Power and the PSC," said commission spokesman Bill Edge. ...<div align="left">
</div><div align="left"></div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/election-03918/trumps-vote-suppression-team-doing-gops-dirty-work">https://www.alternet.org/election-03918/trumps-vote-suppression-team-doing-gops-dirty-work</a>Anyone who favors expanding voting rights should be relieved by Wednesday’s <a href="https://electionlawblog.org/?p=96747" style="text-decoration-line: none;">demise</a> of President Trump’s so-called Election Integrity Commission. But the panel’s right-wing agenda to rig the voting process to benefit the GOP will continue.There’s plenty to cheer about when white nationalists like Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, the vice-chair, and voter suppressors like the Heritage Foundation’s Hans von Spakovsky were discredited by a panel run in a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/01/04/trumps-explanation-for-shutting-down-his-voter-fraud-commission-is-just-as-untrue-and-partisan/?utm_term=.03993d3eb436" style="text-decoration-line: none;">secretive, conspiratorial and clownish</a> manner. But these Republicans are not giving up on their plan to create new barriers to eligible voters.“Amid many challenges for the institutions of American democracy, this was a rousing win,” said Michael Waldman, president of the Brennan Center for Justice. “No doubt, there is fallout to come… The commission has vanished, but its pernicious objectives persist. The White House has asked the Department of Homeland Security to take up the commission’s work—a dangerous and appalling idea. Earlier this morning, the president took to Twitter to renew calls for voting restrictions.”Indeed, Kobach signaled his next move to <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2018/01/03/trump-disbands-voter-fraud-commission-322621" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Politico, which noted</a>, “The Kansas official said he expects officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and political appointees overseeing that agency to take over the commission’s work and begin efforts to match state voter rolls to federal databases of noncitizens. He insisted he was not disappointed with the president’s decision.”“It’s the right move,” Kobach said. “It’s a shifting in tactics from having the investigation be done by a federal commission to having it be done by a federal agency. The agency has a greater ability to move quickly to get the investigation done.”The GOP Strategy UnmaskedKobach’s is referring to a strategy employed by the most fervent partisan Republicans to position red-run states to keep new registrants from voting and do mass purges of infrequent but otherwise legal voters from their rolls. In short, it draws on intentionally sloppy data-mining to creates thousands of false positives that are then used to stymie voters. That porous data has been used in recent cycles in Georgia to <a href="https://politics.myajc.com/news/state--regional-govt--politics/new-georgia-project-releases-financial-records-renews-voter-push/BJoatzFC6XHZQ8GcACOsRN/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">delay approving</a> new registrations and to accelerate <a href="https://www.aclu.org/news/aclu-georgia-demands-explanation-improper-purge-notice-encourages-other-affected-voters-come" style="text-decoration-line: none;">mass purges</a> of voter rolls. But it's not just Georgia.In 2014, Florida’s top election official proposed using DHS’s problematic citizenship data to purge voter rolls. In response, county election supervisors <a href="https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article2087729.html" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none;">rebelled and blocked it</a>—because they still felt the sting of the 2000 election, when Secretary of State Katherine Harris used sloppy data-mining (seeking former felons who could not vote under that state's laws) to purge tens of thousands of eligible voters before that year's presidential election.If Kobach has his way, the contours of that sordid history will repeat itself, including using a DHS <a href="https://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2013/oct/30/league-women-voters-florida/league-women-voters-says-homeland-security-warned-/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">database that was never designed to be an authoritative list of every U.S. citizen</a>. But in the years since Harris’ Florida purge, the right-wing strategy has become clear.Republicans like Kobach strategically target weak points in the voting process. They pinpoint areas in the process that are ambiguous, or where there’s no authoritative national data to counter their claims of purported illegal activity.For example, there is no federal agency that tracks so-called voter fraud, which these right-wingers define as someone impersonating someone else at the polls to vote more than once, and has become the go-to justificatiom for red-run states to erect new barriers to voting century. Since there’s no single federal agency that tracks so-called voter fraud, it becomes a useful propaganda tool for Republicans because it's left to acacdemics and the media to debunk it, which these partisans routinely ignore.The latest high-profile example of this narrative is Trump's thoroughly <a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/quotes-on-voter-fraud" style="text-decoration-line: none;">debunked</a> claim that millions of Democrats illegally voted more than once to deprive him of 2016’s popular vote majority. But that lie, recited again by Trump’s press office when announcing the commission’s demise, resonates among supporters who want to believe all Democrats are crooks despite <a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/issues/voter-fraud" style="text-decoration-line: none;">vast documentation</a> by academics and the press that voter fraud barely exists. In the absence of an authoritative federal accounting, it becomes an easy pretext for red states to pass laws to, as they purport, police the process’ integrity. In reality, they thwart Democratic voters.Not surprisingly, on Thursday, Kobach spewed that same line to—where else?—Steve Bannon’s Breitbart News. “They [Democrats] have absolutely no interest in stopping voter fraud,” <a href="https://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/01/03/exclusive-kris-kobach-voter-fraud-commission-being-handed-off-to-dhs-will-no-longer-be-stonewalled-by-dems/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Kobach told Breitbart</a>. “It’s truly extraordinary that one party in our system has made clear that they don’t care… Some people on the Left were getting uncomfortable about how much we were finding out.”What's wrong with these figures? Beyond the fact that some of these numbers, like his Kansas statistics, have been <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/14/us/kris-kobach-voter-fraud.html?r-&r=0" style="text-decoration-line: none;">debunked</a>, what’s missing is the context or the larger number, the denominator if you will: that is, how many people voted legally in all the years cited? In other words, how pervasive is this problem? What is its real magnitude in the real world of voting?Kobach, pretending to be authoritative, then cited <a href="https://thf-legal.s3.amazonaws.com/VoterFraudCases.pdf" style="text-decoration-line: none;">figures</a> that also have been pedaled by the Heritage Foundation's von Spakovsky. “The voter fraud commission has revealed: 938 convictions for voter fraud since the year 2000,” <a href="https://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/01/03/exclusive-kris-kobach-voter-fraud-commission-being-handed-off-to-dhs-will-no-longer-be-stonewalled-by-dems/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">he said</a>. “Fewer than 1 in 100 cases ends in a conviction. In Kansas, alone, there are 127 known cases of non-citizen aliens registering to vote. In 21 states, there were 8,471 cases of double voting discovered.”The answer is it is a trifle. That's because that well over <a href="https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/data/turnout.php" style="text-decoration-line: none;">half a billion people</a> have voted in federal elections alone since 2000, which means the 938 figure is close to a once-in-a-million occurrence. Nonetheless, the absence of an authoritative federal agency tracking this activity and issuing authoritative reports that are respected by legislatures and the courts, perpetuates Kobach’s propaganda. Its absence continues to serve as a red-state pretext to overly police voting—as seen in Trump’s Thursday tweets.Kobach Wants ICE to Vet New Voters?That fabricated backdrop for imposing new restrictions on voting takes us to what’s new and potentially insidious about Kobach’s latest gambit. He wants the Department of Homeland Security to take responsibility for preventing “non-citizen aliens” from voting. Just like voter fraud, there is <a href="https://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2013/oct/30/league-women-voters-florida/league-women-voters-says-homeland-security-warned-/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">no authoritative federal database</a>—even at DHS—listing every American citizen. Their database is designed to ensure welfare recipients are entitles to their benefits; but it is not a list of every U.S. citizen.That deficiency creates an opening which right-wingers like Kobach, Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp and Florida Secretary of State Ken Detzner have sought to exploit—and have exploited—to game the process of voting to up the GOP’s chances of winning. Because DHS’s citizenship database is incomplete, it cannot confirm the citizenship of every new person registering to vote. That omission was exploited by Kemp to delay processing tens of thousands of new voter registrations in 2014. After that November, almost all of those registrations were approved; but not for the election those Georgians wanted to vote in.When Detzner tried to force Florida county election offices to use DHS’s citizenship data to purge voter rolls—initially claiming, like Kobach, that there were hundreds of thousands of illegally registered voters—local officials balked and <a href="https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article2087729.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">forced him</a> to back down. Later, it was revealed that there were fewer than 100 questionable registrants among Florida's 10 million-plus registered voters.Why would Republicans focus on proof of citizenship in order to vote? Because, as the Brennan Center reported in 2006 and updated in <a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/analysis/evidence-impact-documentary-proof-citizenship-requirements" style="text-decoration-line: none;">a report</a> last summer, an estimated 7 percent of eligible voters don’t have such documentation, typically a birth certificate or passport. In other words, adding proof of citizenship to register will reduce participation in elections. (Think of it as a barrier at the starting line of the process, just as stricter state voter ID requirements is a barrier at the finish line.)“A <a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/legacy/d/download_file_39242.pdf" style="text-decoration-line: none;">nationwide survey</a> by the Brennan Center in November 2006 found that 7 percent of the citizen voting age population, or 13 million people, did not possess documents that would prove their citizenship,” the Center’s <a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/analysis/evidence-impact-documentary-proof-citizenship-requirements" style="text-decoration-line: none;">July 2017 report</a>said. “The rate is twice as high among citizens earning less than $25,000 per year. Women who changed their name upon getting married are especially likely to lack the relevant documents: A third of voting-age women don’t have proof of citizenship that reﬂects their current name.”In other words, making proof of citizenship a new requirement before getting a ballot will mostly hurt likely Democrats.Bad Data as a Partisan ToolRepublicans also know that the use of incomplete citizenship data can be used to stymie voters on Election Day. That's because it is a tool to do pre-emptive voter roll purges, in which inactive voters, especially in blue epicenters, can be disproportionately purged or removed from voting in the next election without reregistering.That’s not a paranoid scenario. The Supreme Court will later this month hear a case over that very issue from Ohio, where GOP Secretary of State Jon Husted took advantage of two contradictory sentences in the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 to purge tens of thousands of mostly Democratic voters from his state’s three biggest cities. <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-votingrights-ohio-insight/use-it-or-lose-it-occasional-ohio-voters-may-be-shut-out-in-november-idUSKCN0YO19D" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Reuters' reporters analyzed</a> the purge and found it was mostly aimed at Democrats. Here again, the GOP saw and seized on a legal ambiguity and used data to tilt the process. The reason Kobach and Trump’s commission was so bent on adding a new proof of citizenship standard is it benefits the GOP in many ways. First, as the Brennan Center noted, 7 percent of otherwise eligible voters don’t have the paper documentation.(Today people sign their name on registration forms as an oath under penalty of perjury; these Republicans say that's not good enough.) Beyond that, knowingly turning to sloppy data-mining to additionally delay new registrants further helps the GOP by thwarting grassroots registration drives. And using bad data to imprecisely target infrequent voters for selective purges also helps them.  The Voting Wars ContinueIt’s a good thing that media scrutiny and public criticism of Trump’s election commission shut down that sham panel. But it was only one means to an end that is still in the GOP’s sights. Indeed, just this week it was revealed thst the Justice Department asked the U.S. Census to include <a href="https://www.alternet.org/immigration/trumps-doj-has-audacious-new-project-suppress-vote" style="text-decoration-line: none;">a question on citizenship</a>, citing a need to use that information to better enforce the Voting Rights Act.Kobach and his ilk will do anything to subvert the process of voting for Democrats and non-whites. They’ve burrowed into the nooks and crannies of the law and process to exploit ambiguities and contradictions. Just watch what they will try to do in the months ahead—not just with baseless voter fraud accusation, but with screening for citizenship. As they wrap themselves in the flag, look at their data-mining. They know it’s shoddy and going to yield huge numbers of false positives, and that’s just what they want.<div wibbitz="embed-main-player" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" align="left"><div class="bio-new body_news-politics" style="width: 630px; line-height: 22px; height: auto; border-top: 3px solid rgb(223, 223, 218); clear: both;"><div class="author-bio">Steven Rosenfeld </div></div></div>=<a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/vogtle-nuclear-plant-2519385301.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">https://www.ecowatch.com/vogtle-nuclear-plant-2519385301.html</a><h1 class="widgetheadline h1" style="margin: 10px 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; cursor: pointer; word-wrap: break-word; line-height: 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" align="left"><a class="widgetheadline-text custom-post-headline" href="https://www.ecowatch.com/vogtle-nuclear-plant-2519385301.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; word-break: break-word; word-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; margin: 0px; line-height: 31px;">Betraying Ratepayers and Clean Energy Future, Georgia Panel Approves Vogtle Nuclear Reactors</a></h1><div class="body js-expandable clearfix js-listicle-body js-update-url expanded" data-elid="2519385301" data-authors="Common Dreams" data-headline="Betraying Ratepayers and Clean Energy Future, Georgia Panel Approves Vogtle Nuclear Reactors" style="margin: 10px; line-height: 24px;" align="left"><div class="body-description" style=""><div class="widgetbrief" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">By Jessica CorbettGeorgia's public utility commission <a href="http://www.myajc.com/news/plant-vogtle-construction-approval-depends-federal-tax-breaks/y2lZawiCIui2p5KC6OfXwN/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; word-wrap: break-word;">voted</a> 5-0 on Thursday to continue construction on two half-finished nuclear reactors that will cost an estimated $25 billion, even though the project is now "<a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/georgia-officials-approve-funding-for-troubled-nuclear-plant-1513872255?mod=e2tw" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; word-wrap: break-word;">more than $10 billion over budget and five years late</a>."Opponents of <a href="http://www.ecowatch.com/tag/nuclear" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; word-wrap: break-word;">nuclear power</a> were disappointed by the unanimous decision, which the Wall Street Journal <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/georgia-officials-approve-funding-for-troubled-nuclear-plant-1513872255?mod=e2tw" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; word-wrap: break-word;">noted</a> was considered "a victory for Southern Co., whose subsidiary Georgia Power is the primary owner of the Alvin W. Vogtle Electric Generating Plant, which has two existing reactors." The project has faced opposition from <a href="http://www.myajc.com/business/kempner-georgia-underdogs-confront-power-then-get-smacked-back/R4qJIiqhVVstAB56I70d8K/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; word-wrap: break-word;">local residents</a> as well as national groups that emphasize the long-term risks of nuclear power.</div><div class="js-appear-on-expand" style="transition: all 350ms; height: auto; overflow: hidden; opacity: 1;">"Georgia Power should scrap this disaster immediately and instead transition away from dangerous nuclear and fossil fuel-based electric generation and toward a 100 percent clean energy economy that creates good jobs, protects our environment, and shields our communities from the gross financial risks associated with bad bets like Vogtle," <a href="https://www.sierraclub.org/press-releases/2017/12/psc-votes-let-georgia-power-keep-fleecing-ratepayers-for-vogtle-nuclear" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; word-wrap: break-word;">said</a> Ted Terry, director of the Sierra Club's Georgia Chapter, after the vote."Georgia Power's profits have soared because they've been allowed to pick the pockets of families, schools and churches for a boondoggle that even the [public utility commission's] staff has called too uneconomic to continue—yet today commissioners chose not to stop it," Terry added. "The commission has failed Georgia's hard-working families and businesses today by choosing to be lapdogs for Georgia Power instead of watchdogs for the people of Georgia."Construction on the reactors "has been plagued by delays and spiraling costs, compounded when the main contractor filed for bankruptcy" in March, the Associated Press <a href="https://www.gainesvilletimes.com/news/troubled-25-billion-nuclear-project-gets-ok-continue/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; word-wrap: break-word;">reported</a>."Most people have to pay for their mistakes, but Georgia Power is still profiting from theirs," <a href="https://www.southernenvironment.org/news-and-press/press-releases/public-service-commission-stiffs-georgia-power-customers-greenlights-plant" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; word-wrap: break-word;">said</a> Kurt Ebersbach, senior attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center. "There's something wrong with a system that rewards this kind of failure."The decision will likely "shape the future of the nation's nuclear industry, partly because the reactors at Plant Vogtle were the first new ones to be licensed and to begin construction in the U.S. since 1978," the AP noted—all while consumers of power in Georgia pay the price."Under state law, Georgia Power's 2.4 million customers will ultimately reimburse the state-regulated monopoly for the flagship plant as they pay their monthly electricity bills," the AP explained. "That law allows Georgia Power to charge its customers now for the interest it pays on the borrowed money needed for the project. Under an older law, the utility had to wait until the plant was operating to collect those interest charges from its customers, a practice that meant the interest owed grew during the construction period.""Even though customers had no control over Georgia Power's mistakes, they're going to be the ones footing the bill," <a href="https://www.southernenvironment.org/news-and-press/press-releases/public-service-commission-stiffs-georgia-power-customers-greenlights-plant" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; word-wrap: break-word;">said</a> Nathaniel Smith, chief equity officer at the Atlanta-based nonprofit Partnership for Southern Equity. "These impacts will be especially difficult on the most vulnerable Georgians who are already struggling to put food on the table."However, there may still be hope for cancelling the project. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution <a href="http://www.myajc.com/news/plant-vogtle-construction-approval-depends-federal-tax-breaks/y2lZawiCIui2p5KC6OfXwN/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; word-wrap: break-word;">reported</a> that Georgia utility regulators "conditioned their approval of the Vogtle nuclear project on no small caveat: that Congress approves roughly $800 million worth of tax credits"—meaning that if federal lawmakers don't approve the tax credits, the state regulators may reconsider their decision.Reposted with permission from our media associate <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/12/21/betraying-ratepayers-and-clean-energy-future-georgia-panel-approves-vogtle-nuclear" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; word-wrap: break-word;">Common Dreams</a>.<div class="around-the-web" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="around-the-webheadline" style="font-weight: 700; text-transform: uppercase;">RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB</div><ul class="around-the-weblist" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; list-style: none;"><li class="around-the-webitem"><a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/westinghouse-nuclear-2469123144.html" class="around-the-web__link" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; line-height: normal; display: inline-block; margin-top: 10px; word-wrap: break-word;">It's Official: Nuclear Power Can't Compete With Renewables ›</a></li></ul></div></div></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" align="left">=</div> =<a href="https://www.alternet.org/activism/georgia-6th-house-district-special-election-case-gets-weirder-state-election-officials">https://www.alternet.org/activism/georgia-6th-house-district-special-election-case-gets-weirder-state-election-officials</a> fallout following a lawsuit filed in Georgia after its U.S. House Special Election last June get curiouser and curiouser, as we learned this week that the state attorney general's office has now quit its defense of the Secretary of State and the state's other top election official defendants in the case.We've been covering this mess for months now (years, really), but particularly since the <a href="https://bradblog.com/Docs/CURLINGvKEMP(2)-ComplaintWithVerificationAndExhibits_070317.pdf" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none;">lawsuit [PDF]</a> was filed in July, after the somewhat surprising results from June's U.S. House Special Election in Georgia's 6th Congressional District, where GA's former Republican Sec. of State Karen Handel reportedly defeated Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff, but only on the state's 100% unverifiable Diebold touch-screen voting systems. (He defeated her nearly 2 to 1 on the <a href="https://bradblog.com/Docs/6th-district-runoff-statistical-analysis_VoterGA_101617.pdf" style="text-decoration-line: none;">only verifiable ballots</a> in the race, the mail-in paper votes. Everything else regarding the results is unverifiable speculation.)Late last week, we learned via Frank Bajak at the Associated Press, that technicians at Kennesaw State University's Center for Elections, which has been contracted to program all of Georgia's computer voting and tabulation systems systems for some 15 years, "<a href="https://www.apnews.com/877ee1015f1c43f1965f63538b035d3f" style="text-decoration-line: none;">wiped clean</a>" the election server that was used to program the elections, ballots and tabulators, just days after the suit was filed in July. Its two backup servers were also subsequently wiped and "<a href="https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/10/days-after-activists-sued-georgias-election-server-was-wiped-clean/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">degaussed three times</a>" in August, the day after the suit was moved from state to federal court.GA's chief election official, Republican Sec. of State Brian Kemp, who is running for governor in 2018, claims he knew nothing of the server deletions until AP's report last week. Previously, a <a href="https://www.facebook.com/BrianKempGA/posts/10155116858826275" style="text-decoration-line: none;">huge fan</a> of the Center for Elections at Kennesaw, Kemp <a href="https://www.facebook.com/BrianKempGA/?hc_ref=ARRhEwBJfdY3pv9wfg3N_ezPNmAliOw_HpIFEHrp5H5eoSziE7YBmOW8brgDQ9DUCLI&fref=nf" style="text-decoration-line: none;">cited</a> the "gross incompetence" and "undeniable ineptitude" of the folks at KSU for whatever happened. Nobody has yet to take credit, however, for giving the instructions to delete the servers which held critical evidence that plaintiffs had hoped to have forensically investigated as part of the lawsuit. And then yesterday, in another flip-flop, Kemp called the entire matter "<a href="https://www.facebook.com/BrianKempGA/posts/10155116858826275" style="text-decoration-line: none;">#fakenews</a>."All of that is disturbing on its own, but even more so in light of revelations earlier this year that the election server in question—which stored personal data for all of GA's 6.7 million voters and the electronic ballot programming and administrative passwords for the state's voting and tabulation systems—was left completely accessible online, no password necessary, for at least six months. Kennesaw was notified about the vulnerability by a data security researcher in August of 2016 (months before last year's Presidential election), but they failed to secure the server until after Politico's Kim Zetter <a href="https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/06/14/will-the-georgia-special-election-get-hacked-215255" style="text-decoration-line: none;">revealed</a> the vulnerability just prior to the GA-06 U.S. House race this year. (Samantha Bee's "Full Frontal" covered much of the story up to this point on her <a href="https://bradblog.com/?p=12357" style="text-decoration-line: none;">show last night</a>.)Then, on Wednesday evening, AP's Bajak offered <a href="https://apnews.com/0b9004bc3828468d9dc636054140a047" style="text-decoration-line: none;">another bombshell</a> in reporting that the Republican state attorney general's office, which had been defending Kemp, Kennesaw and the state Elections Board in the matter, has now pulled out from defending them. The reasons offered by the state AG and Kemp's campaign for Governor (he's running in 2018) have conflicted with each other or with known evidence obtained during the multi-partisan lawsuit, which a Kemp campaign spokesperson describes to AP yesterday as "a tasteless nothingburger cooked up by liberal activists who know their lawsuit is nothing short of stupid."One of those "liberal activist" plaintiffs, Republican Marilyn Mark, a longtime election integrity advocate and executive director of the <a href="https://coalitionforgoodgovernance.org/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Coalition for Good Governance</a>, confirms that nobody still knows who ordered the server deletion, nor why the state AG has dropped out of the case. "It's an enormous mystery, and the mysteries continue to increase every day," she says."I think that Brian Kemp is, and rightfully so, getting a black eye here," Marks tells me. "What he has done is shameful. There's no way to explain it. So I'm sure his defenders and campaign managers are doing everything they can to go on the offensive and try to make other people look like they are to blame, and that their candidate is innocent. But I think when people step back and say, wait a minute, if they erased the servers—and they did it twice—they did it for some reason. And it wasn't because our lawsuit was stupid."She goes on to explain the "number of conflicting stories that Brian Kemp's people are telling" about when and why the compromised servers were deleted and why the AG's office is no longer willing to defend the case. She also details whether any of the information plaintiffs had hoped to examine from the servers might still be available in what is believed to be a partial copy of the servers obtained by the FBI when they came in to examine the reported data breach that occurred earlier this year, when the servers were discovered to have been left vulnerable online.Georgia voters head to the polls for municipal elections being held next Tuesday, which will also be overseen by Kemp, programmed by Kennesaw, and run on the same wildly <a href="https://www.bradblog.com/?p=3467" style="text-decoration-line: none;">hackable</a>, 100% unverifiable touch-screen voting and tabulation systems that lead to this entire mess in the first place.She recently <a href="https://bradblog.com/Docs/OpenLettertoGeorgiaMunicipalCountyandStateElection_CoalitionForGoodGovernance_102917.pdf" style="text-decoration-line: none;">wrote [PDF]</a> to Kemp and other election officials to ask them to make paper ballots available to voters since, as she tells me today, if the system was contaminated during the months it had been left vulnerable on the Internet, "They wouldn't have had time, even within the last year, to have cleaned up everything. Because, as you know, that malware can travel down to the memory cards, the voting machines, the optical scanners, and the jump servers down in the counties. Things could have traveled there in the last six months, year, two years—there's been no effort to try to disinfect all of the various components. I mean, there are 27,000 of these touch-screen voting machines in Georgia. There's no way that they should be in use when we know that this system was subject to a high degree of risk." =<a href="https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/georgia-election-server-wiped">https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/georgia-election-server-wiped</a> computer server that was used to store key elections data in the state of Georgia was completely wiped earlier this year after voting rights advocates filed a suit against Republican Secretary of State Brian Kemp.<a href="https://apnews.com/877ee1015f1c43f1965f63538b035d3f/APNewsBreak:-Georgia-election-server-wiped-after-suit-filed" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">The Associated Press reports</a> that the server’s data was destroyed this past July by unnamed technicians at the Center for Elections Systems at Kennesaw State University, which is responsible for running Georgia’s entire elections system. What’s more, two backup servers were also wiped completely clean in August, which was right around the time when a lawsuit against Kemp moved to federal court.The lawsuit, which the AP says was filed shortly before the data server was wiped, was filed to end the state’s current voting infrastructure, which the plaintiffs claim is far too vulnerable to fraud and tampering. Among other things, the lawsuit notes that the state’s 27,000 AccuVote touchscreen voting machines do not offer paper receipts and are vulnerable to hacking.“The server data could have revealed whether Georgia’s most recent elections were compromised by malicious hackers,” the AP notes. “The plaintiffs contend that the results of both last November’s election and a special June 20 congressional runoff— won by Kemp’s predecessor, Karen Handel — cannot be trusted.”Kemp’s office claims that it had nothing to do with the center’s decision to wipe the server, despite the fact that center answers directly to Kemp. However, at this point it is not clear who ordered both the primary server and the backup servers wiped clean of data.But Richard DeMillo, a Georgia Tech computer scientist, tells the AP that this should raise suspicions of some kind of foul play going on behind the scenes.“People who have nothing to hide don’t behave this way,” he said.==<a href="http://www.alternet.org/republican-congressman-warns-black-attorney-she-may-go-missing-if-she-attempts-remove-confederate">http://www.alternet.org/republican-congressman-warns-black-attorney-she-may-go-missing-if-she-attempts-remove-confederate</a>http://www.alternet.org/gender/georgia-women-arrested-protesting-bill-would-let-employers-fire-women-whove-had-abortionThat film was mocked and dismissed by climate deniers. For instance, an <a href="http://www.epw.senate.gov/fact.cfm?party=rep&id=257863" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition: color 0.2s linear; background: transparent;">editorial in the Wall Street Journal</a>, written by Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor of atmospheric science Richard Lindzen, argued that Gore falsely claimed there was scientific consensus around the reality of climate change. We’re currently observing the spectacle of Republicans in Congress fighting tooth and nail to sink President Obama’s Clean Power Plant proposal, even going so far as to suggest to governors that their states break the law to defy the federal government and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.So when you find Democrat Al Gore on the same side of an environmental issue as a far-right Tea Party leader, it’s eye-opening. But left and right are coming together over the issue of distributed <a href="http://ecowatch.com/business/renewables/" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition: color 0.2s linear; background: transparent;">solar power</a> and the right of homeowners and businesses to install rooftop photovoltaic solar panels.That shared interest was highlighted this week when Gore spoke at the <a href="http://about.bnef.com/summit/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition: color 0.2s linear; background: transparent;">Bloomberg New Energy Finance</a> conference in New York this week back-to-back with Debbie Dooley, a national Tea Party activist, chairman of the Atlanta Tea Party and founder of Conservatives for Energy Freedom.But while Gore has focused on the climate impacts of dirty energy and the need to switch to clean energy sources to prevent global catastrophe, Dooley ignores climate change altogether to focus on individual freedom and the “free market.”“She is an activist for solar energy and decentralizing the grid, working with conservatives across the country who believe expanding renewable energy markets and customer choice are consistent with free-market principles,” <a href="http://about.bnef.com/summit/speakers/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition: color 0.2s linear; background: transparent;">says her bio</a>. “She believes our nation is in the midst of a clean-energy revolution that unites grassroots activists from the left and right.”An <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-13/al-gore-joins-tea-party-in-battle-against-utilities" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition: color 0.2s linear; background: transparent;">article in Bloomberg News</a> called Gore and Dooley a “political odd couple” and noted that Dooley never mentioned climate change in her presentation, focusing rather on consumer choice.“Solar equals independence—solar equals freedom,” she said, using a favorite Tea Party word. “Tea Party activists don’t like strong centralized units. There’s nothing more centralized than a utility, than the government telling you what power to buy. This is a battle that we will win. I am literally floored with the response I have been getting from conservatives with the right message.”Gore had a startlingly similar message.“People want their own opportunity to shape their own future, and renewable energy is part of that,” he said. “There is a war on solar with these legacy utilities, and coal companies using their historic political power, campaign contributions and lobbying to pass the most ridiculous laws and tax the people who want to put solar panels on their roof.”Dooley’s activism began when she joined forces with the Sierra Club to prevent Georgia Power from billing customers in advance for two nuclear plants projected to have huge cost overruns. She also helped fight off an effort by Georgia utilities to charge owners of rooftop solar an extra fee on their monthly bill, <a href="http://ecowatch.com/2015/03/27/solar-under-attack-koch-brothers/" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition: color 0.2s linear; background: transparent;">something utilities, backed by conservative groups like Americans for Prosperity, are pushing around the country</a>. Currently, Dooley is one of the leaders of a battle in Florida to protect and expand the ability of homeowners and businesses to generate their own rooftop solar and sell it to their neighbors, bypassing big utility companies. The effort is<a href="http://ecowatch.com/2015/01/08/solar-energy-amendment/" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition: color 0.2s linear; background: transparent;">engaging both conservative and liberal environmentalists</a>.“They have a lot of policies in Florida that actually effectively block the sun,” <a href="http://e360.yale.edu/feature/debbie_dooley_interview_why_this_tea_party_leader_is_seeing_green_on_solar_energy/2859/" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition: color 0.2s linear; background: transparent;">Dooley told Yale Environment 360</a>. “So you have the Sunshine State that has policies put in place by these powerful utilities to stifle competition, and I just felt like something needed to be done.”“We’re going to work together to accomplish something,” she said. “Those on the left believe in climate change and coal’s bad. Those on the right don’t like government-created monopolies— we believe in free-market choice and national security. It doesn’t matter what your reasons are, as long as we work together to accomplish a common goal. That’s all that matters, and we’re much more successful when we’re able to do that.”YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE<a href="http://ecowatch.com/2015/03/16/al-gore-sxsw-punish-climate-deniers/#" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition: color 0.2s linear; background: transparent;">Al Gore at SXSW: We Need to ‘Punish Climate-Change Deniers’ and ‘Put a Price on Carbon’</a><a href="http://ecowatch.com/2015/01/08/solar-energy-amendment/" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition: color 0.2s linear; background: transparent;">Tea Party Members and Environmentalists Join Forces in Support of Solar Energy</a><a href="http://ecowatch.com/2015/03/27/solar-under-attack-koch-brothers/" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition: color 0.2s linear; background: transparent;">4 States Where Solar is Under Attack by Koch-Funded Front Groups</a>

nat gas ad on trms ga pwr?)nat rev<div align="left">Congratulations to Keith Blackwell on his appointment to the Georgia Supreme Court. Blackwell, currently a judge on the Georgia Court of Appeals, graduated summa cum laude from Franklin College, served as senior editor of the law review at the University of Georgia School of Law, and clerked for Judge Edmondson on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit. After clerking, Judge Blackwell distinguished himself in private practice and in several government roles, including service as deputy special attorney general representing Georgia in the Obamacare litigation. He is a longtime member of the the Federalist Society, and has served as president of the Atlanta Lawyers Chapter of the society.  He has been a judge on the Court of Appeals since late 2010, when he was appointed by Governor Perdue along with another conservative standout, Steve Dillard, perhaps better known to court-watchers as “Feddie” from the now-defunct legal blog Southern Appeal.   </div>Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/bench-memos/303924/governor-deal-appoints-keith-blackwell-georgia-supreme-court-carrie-severino==A growing predatory industryJudicial Correction Services and Sentinel Offender Services are the two companies most often cited in the report and are, according to Human Rights Watch, "arguably the most significant industry players, and ...the two firms that have been most widely implicated in alleged abuses."The Georgia-headquartered Judicial Correction Services (JCS) is, relatively speaking, "an industry giant." In 2011, it was acquired by Correctional Healthcare Companies, a "privately held corporation that also focuses on the provision of healthcare services to prisons and bills itself as a provider of 'integrated healthcare solutions' to the criminal justice system 'including inmate healthcare, outpatient treatment, mental health, behavioral programming and treatment case management services." In 2012, the private equity group GTCR acquired CHC.By late last year, JCS was "operat[ing] in some 480 courts ... [in] Georgia, Alabama, Florida and Mississippi. ...At any given point in time JCS employees are supervising approximately 38,000 probationers."Sentinel Offender Services "is a privately held California corporation whose physical presence is largely based in Georgia, [and] is largely controlled by its founder Bob Contestabile and his son Mark Contestabile, who heads up the company's east coast operations." According to the report, "Sentinel claims to operate in 48 US states, mostly providing GPS monitoring and other services for government clients. The company's offender-funded probation supervision business operates exclusively in Georgia. There, the company works with 80 courts and supervises between 23,000 and 35,000 offenders at any given point in time. Sentinel boasts that it has supervised more than 500,000 probationers since 1992."Sentinel also provides electronic monitoring and other services to government clients in California and elsewhere. It operates a monitoring center in Irvine, California that tracks offenders on various forms of electronic monitoring for Sentinel's government clients as well as its own probation business."Over the past few years, any civil liberties organizations have been working to make debtors prisons truly a thing of the past. It is now time to shine the spotlight on predatory probation privateers that are preying on the poor.

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Elsewhere, many affluent Americans prefer to live in exclusive neighborhoods. It's common for wealthy residents of <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/371271/golden-gated-communities-kevin-d-williamson" target="hplink" sl-processed="1" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Southern California</a>and <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/371271/golden-gated-communities-kevin-d-williamson" target="hplink" sl-processed="1" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Silicon Valley</a> to live in gated communities, which often <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/in-gated-communities-such-as-where-trayvon-martin-died-a-dangerous-mind-set/2012/04/06/gIQAwWG8zS_story.html" target="hplink" sl-processed="1" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">employ private security</a> rather than relying on public police officers. And the security may be for a good reason. In the non-gated Lindenwood neighborhood, near Silicon Valley, average home prices exceed $7 million. Vandals <a href="http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-vandals-strike-atherton-20140227,0,1985653.story" target="hplink" sl-processed="1" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">recently spray-painted</a> black graffiti on the 1 percent's walls, garages and white picket fences.

In the last decade, several cities in Georgia <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/22/sandy-springs-georgia-privatize-outsource_n_852466.html" target="hplink" sl-processed="1" style=" box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">have broken off</a> from the state and become largely autonomous, with many locals citing a poorly run state government. The first city to do so was the affluent Sandy Springs, where almost all public services have since been privatized. Without needing to provide to poverty-stricken surrounding communities, Sandy Springs, where the average family income is $169,815, <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/22/sandy-springs-georgia-privatize-outsource_n_852466.html" target="hplink" sl-processed="1" style="box-sizing: border-box; text-decoration: none; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">can now reportedly</a> keep taxes lower and stay out of debt.

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<h1 class="title-news" style="line-height: 36px; padding: 0px; list-style: outside none none; margin: 0px 0px 10px; border: 0px none; font-weight: bold; font-style: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" align="left">Kaveh Kamooneh Arrested For Charging Electric Car At Chamblee, Georgia Middle School</h1>

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The GOP's self-made woes just keep on growing. They gave the keys to the crazies and <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/08/12/1230694/-GOP-moderates-pissed-that-they-have-to-lie-in-the-bed-they-made" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 14.4px; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">can't even begin</a> to do that, you know, legislating thing. They let Erick son of Erickson matter, and now he has <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/08/12/1230645/-GOP-establishment-s-challenge-How-to-avoid-another-Akin-without-pissing-off-the-base-too-much" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 14.4px; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">basically declared war</a> on the Republican establishment. They're facing one more election where they should be able to regain the Senate, and they're probably going to screw it up again. Case in point, the clown show that is the <a href="http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/senate-races/316489-gop-anxiety-grows-over-georgia-senate-race" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 14.4px; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Georgia Senate primary</a>.

<div align="left"><blockquote style="margin: 1.2em 0px; padding: 20px; line-height: 14.4px; background-color: rgb(246, 243, 236); border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(226, 226, 225); border-top: 1px solid rgb(226, 226, 225);">Recent polling shows the two candidates Republicans are most anxious about—Reps. Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.) and Paul Broun (R-Ga.)—leading the pack. Whoever emerges from the clown-car primary, with seven candidates and counting, will face a candidate Democrats are high on in a state where shifting demographics benefit their party. [...]

The scenario that panics Republicans is Broun winning the nomination. The Tea Party-affiliated congressman has generated controversy by calling evolution and the big bang theory “lies straight from the pit of hell” and routinely referring to President Obama as a socialist.

He has some strong support in the GOP base and sports a perfect rating with the deep-pocketed, fiscally conservative Club for Growth, which could give him a big financial boost if they decide to get involved in the race. Many think they might, especially if Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.), a longtime appropriator with a more centrist record, makes the two-candidate runoff.

</blockquote></div>

Meanwhile, Democrats are likely to nominate a woman, Michelle Nunn, the daughter of former Sen. Sam Nunn. So not only do you have the possibility of Broun and Gingrey being themselves about hell and socialism, but you've got them running around doing things like <a href="http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/01/11/16465515-some-congressmen-just-cant-help-themselves?lite" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 14.4px; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">defending Todd Akin</a> and <a href="http://boldprogressives.org/2013/03/republican-senate-candidate-paul-broun-votes-against-both-versions-of-the-violence-against-women-act/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 14.4px; text-decoration: none; font-weight: bold; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">voting against</a> the Violence Against Women Act. In other words, running against a a woman and acting like typical Republicans.

Establishment Republicans have been more than happy to have Gingrey and Broun in the House, without giving a damn what crazy shit comes out of their mouths. As usual, it's only a problem for them when it's happening on the national stage and people are paying attention. It's only a problem when the real Republican party is revealed.

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12/12 huffpo

A Republican state senator in Oklahoma <a href="http://www.salon.com/2012/12/26/oklahoma_goper_introduces_bill_targeting_agenda_21/" target="_hplink" style="list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; overflow: visible; outline: 0px; cursor: pointer; text-indent: 0px !important;">has introduced legislation</a> seeking to block the implementation of United Nations Agenda 21, the international organization's non-binding sustainability program.

State Sen. Patrick Anderson (R-Enid) is introducing legislation for next year that would block local Oklahoma governments from entering into agreements with the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives, a European sustainability group, <a href="http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?subjectid=336&articleid=20121224_16_A1_CUTLIN218146" target="_hplink" style="list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; overflow: visible; outline: 0px; cursor: pointer; text-indent: 0px !important;">Tulsa World reports</a>. Anderson's legislation comes after Tulsa officials held a two-year membership in ICLEI in order to use the group's energy software.

<a href="http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?subjectid=336&articleid=20121224_16_A1_CUTLIN218146" target="_hplink" style="list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; overflow: visible; outline: 0px; cursor: pointer; text-indent: 0px !important;">Tulsa World reports</a>:

<div align="left"><blockquote style="list-style: none; margin: 15px 0px; padding: 15px; border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); overflow: visible; line-height: 21px;">As a farmer, Anderson said he is concerned about the federal government -- pushed by the U.N.'s agenda of sustainability -- forcing rules on a wide variety of things, including the creation of dust and how land can be used.

"There's a place for all that, but we also need to make sure we're not infringing on the property owners' rights to use their own land," Anderson said.

The first and best steward of how land should be used is the private owner, he said.

</blockquote></div>

Anderson is the latest Republican state lawmaker to introduce anti-Agenda 21 legislation, which has become a favorite issue for the Tea Party. Agenda 21 was created during a 1991 U.N. environmental summit in Brazil and signed by President George H.W. Bush. Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama have all endorsed the compact, which does not hold the force of law in the United States. Among the issues promoted by Agenda 21 are walkable communities and land use planning.

Agenda 21 opponents have said that the program would seize private land and force Americans to live in cities. New Hampshire state Rep. Lenette Peterson (R-Merrimack) told HuffPost <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/27/agenda-21-new-hampshire_n_2198466.html" target="_hplink" style="list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; overflow: visible; outline: 0px; cursor: pointer; text-indent: 0px !important;">that Agenda 21 was "dangerous"</a> and that "citizens would lose their rights." Peterson is promoting a similar Agenda 21 ban in her state next year. Peterson said that while Agenda 21 is not law in the United States, research from the John Birch Society, a conservative political action society, shows it is being implemented in the U.S.

In October, former Georgia state Senate Majority Leader Chip Rogers (R-Woodstock) hosted a four-hour lecture for Georgia Republican senators on Agenda 21. Rogers unsuccessfully tried to ban Agenda 21 in the state. During the lecture, Field Searcy, a birther activist expelled by the Tea Party, told senators that Obama and the U.N. are using <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/15/agenda-21-georgia-chip-rogers_n_2140438.html" target="hplink" style="list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; overflow: visible; outline: 0px; cursor: pointer; text-indent: 0px !important;">"mind control"</a> to implement Agenda 21 and <a href="http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/11/15/georgia-lawmakers-meet-over-obamas-mind-control-un-dictatorship-plot/" target="hplink" style="list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; overflow: visible; outline: 0px; cursor: pointer; text-indent: 0px !important;">said the alleged plot was similar to</a> genocide programs promoted by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and Chinese leader Mao Zedong. Rogers, <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/19/chip-rogers-mind-control-agenda-21-georgia_n_2160328.html" target="hplink" style="list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; overflow: visible; outline: 0px; cursor: pointer; text-indent: 0px !important;">who distanced himself</a> from the lecture, later resigned from the Senate <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/04/chip-rogers-georgia-resigns_n_2239703.html" target="hplink" style="list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; overflow: visible; outline: 0px; cursor: pointer; text-indent: 0px !important;">to accept a job</a> with Georgia Public Broadcasting.

Alabama lawmakers adopted a ban on Agenda 21 earlier this year, while Kansas legislators <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/11/agenda-21-kansas-un-sustainability_n_1507823.html" target="_hplink" style="list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; overflow: visible; outline: 0px; cursor: pointer; text-indent: 0px !important;">adopted a resolution</a> opposing the issue.

Democratic lawmakers nationally have condemned the anti-Agenda 21 crowd, with former New Hampshire state Rep. Christopher Serlin (D-Portsmouth) calling the issue <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/17/un-agenda-21-new-hampshire-ban_n_1524285.html" target="hplink" style="list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; overflow: visible; outline: 0px; cursor: pointer; text-indent: 0px !important;">"real tin-foil hat material."</a> Kansas state Rep. Mike Slattery (D-Mission) denounced his colleagues' discussion on the issue as <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/11/agenda-21-kansas-un-sustainability_n_1507823.html" target="hplink" style="list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; overflow: visible; outline: 0px; cursor: pointer; text-indent: 0px !important;">"stupid is as stupid does"</a> during his state's debate on Agenda 21.

==

With partisan politics trumping science-based solutions all too often these days, it's especially heartening when people overcome political differences to let solid data point the way toward practical solutions. That's what happened in Georgia last month when state regulators voted to require Georgia Power -- the state's sole investor-owned electricity provider -- to expand the use of solar power in its energy mix.

Regulators on the all-Republican commission <a href="http://www.psc.state.ga.us/GetNewsRecordAttachment.aspx?ID=250" target="hplink" style="list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; cursor: pointer;">voted 3-2</a> in favor of a plan that requires Atlanta-based Georgia Power Co. to increase its solar power capacity by 525 megawatts by the end of 2016. The decision comes on the heels of the announcement that Georgia Power, a subsidiary of Southern Co., is <a href="http://www.ucsusa.org/news/press_release/ga-power-closures-0356.html" target="hplink" style="list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; cursor: pointer;">planning to retire</a> more than 2,000 megawatts worth of coal-fired generating capacity.

The vote in Georgia is notable not just for the commonsense outcome of adding more cost-effective renewable energy in a state <a href="http://www.seia.org/state-solar-policy/georgia" target="_hplink" style="list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; cursor: pointer;">ranked fifth</a> in the nation for solar potential but just 21st for installed solar capacity. The real surprise here, after more than a year of often acrimonious debate, is the nearly unprecedented coalition that made the decision possible -- a mixture of not just environmentalists and solar advocates but also conservative lawmakers and Tea Party members.

Koch-Sponsored Misinformation

The latter groups in particular had to face down a barrage of misinformation from Americans for Prosperity (AFP), an organization founded and underwritten by the billionaire Koch brothers, whose predecessor organization, Citizens for a Sound Economy,<a href="http://www.ucsusa.org/publications/got-science/2013/got-science-march-2013.html" target="_hplink" style="list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; cursor: pointer;">virtually founded the Tea Party </a>itself. AFP's Georgia chapter mounted a scare campaign against solar power in Georgia that, as usual, supported the Koch's bottom line as fossil fuel magnates even as it played fast and loose with the facts.

Virginia Galloway, director of AFP's Georgia chapter, for instance, <a href="http://americansforprosperity.org/georgia/legislativealerts/bubbas-boondoggle-will-hurt-georgia-by-virginia-galloway/" target="hplink" style="list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; cursor: pointer;">warned </a>the group's 50,000 members that the solar proposal would "reduce the reliability of every appliance and electronics gadget in your home" and could increase Georgia electricity rates by up to 40 percent. As the Associated Press <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/08/americans-for-prosperity-koch-ga-solar_n_3560909.html" target="hplink" style="list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; cursor: pointer;">pointed out</a>, neither of these claims bore much resemblance to the truth. In fact, at the hearing before the vote, Kevin Greene, Georgia Power's attorney, said that the utility didn't believe the solar requirement would cause any increase in electricity prices for ratepayers.

All of which underscores the really surprising part: even the Tea Party faithful didn't seem to be buying the AFP line this time around. Despite the mass emails, handouts, and phone calls put out by AFP's Georgia chapter, when the group held a protest during the Public Service Commission deliberations, hardly anyone showed up.

What's more, a separate branch of the Tea Party in Georgia, known as the Tea Party Patriots, came out strongly in favor of more solar power in the state. Debbie Dooley, national coordinator of the Tea Party Patriots <a href="http://video.msnbc.msn.com/all-in-/52446144" target="_hplink" style="list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; cursor: pointer;">told the press</a>: "AFP Georgia is putting out absolutely false data," that doesn't take into account the fact that "solar prices have plummeted" in recent years. Dooley quipped that her group was forming "a Green Tea Coalition" because it saw the proposed solar expansion as a free market issue that "gives consumers more choice."

Solar Power is Growing for Good Reason

Michael Jacobs, a senior energy analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists, says the facts in the energy sector speak for themselves. As Georgia regulators wisely recognized, he says, the price of coal has risen, while prices for solar panels have dropped some 60 percent since 2011.

The fact is, solar has been one of the nation's <a href="http://www.seia.org/research-resources/solar-industry-data" target="_hplink" style="list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; cursor: pointer;">fastest growing industries</a> for the past several years, now supporting more than 100,000 jobs at 5,600 companies operating in every state in the nation. With the rate of utility solar installations more than doubling since 2012, the United States is now on track to add another 4,400 megawatts of photovoltaic power in 2013.

All of which has been noted with considerable alarm by some electric utilities. A recent<a href="http://www.eei.org/ourissues/finance/Documents/disruptivechallenges.pdf" target="_hplink" style="list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; cursor: pointer;">report</a> distributed by the Edison Electric Institute, the industry's main trade group, for instance, calls the growth of small-scale solar systems the "largest near-term threat" to the industry and warns of a disruption to the industry similar to the one wrought by cell phones on the landline telephone industry.

Next up: Arizona

In a number of states recently, utilities have sought to fight back by charging extra fees to customers with rooftop solar panels. Moves to change so-called net metering arrangements were notably <a href="http://www.utilitydive.com/news/net-metering-setbacks-for-utilities-in-idaho-and-louisiana/148738/" target="_hplink" style="list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; cursor: pointer;">beaten back</a> this spring in both Louisiana and Idaho -- hardly states known for liberal politics or environmental activism.

The <a href="http://blog.ucsusa.org/arizona-dont-turn-out-the-lights-on-solar-power-184" target="hplink" style="list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; cursor: pointer;">latest battleground</a> is Arizona, where the state's largest electric utility -- Arizona Public Service Company -- has similarly asked regulators to raise electric rates for residential customers who install solar photovoltaic systems at their homes. And, as in Georgia, the battle lines are forging some surprising alliances. In this case, Barry Goldwater, Jr. the son of the late politician who served five terms in the U.S. Senate and whose name is practically synonymous with conservatism in America, is among those leading the fight for solar power in his state, heading a recently formed organization called <a href="http://dontkillsolar.com/site/" target="hplink" style="list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; cursor: pointer;">TUSK</a> -- "Tell Utilities Solar Won't Be Killed."

Jacobs notes that the populist nature of rooftop solar power seems to be causing a paradigm shift in many people's political perspective. "Instead of being forced to buy power from a monopoly, people now have a real option to go buy rooftop solar panels as they would a television or a refrigerator. There's no question," he says, "that this aspect is particularly appealing to a segment of the population that prefers the free market and doesn't want utilities or government to mandate what they do."

While Koch-funded groups like AFP are unlikely to heed the message anytime soon, there is every indication in the solar energy field that the political terrain is starting to shift dramatically.

Seth Shulman, Senior Staff Writer at the Union of Concerned Scientists, is a veteran science journalist and author of six books whose work has appeared in The Atlantic, Discover, Nature, Technology Review, Parade and many other publications. You can sign up to receive his monthly Got Science? column via email at the Union of Concerned Scientists website: <a href="http://www.ucsusa.org/" target="_hplink" style="list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; text-decoration: none; cursor: pointer;">www.ucsusa.org</a>.

==

http://grist.org/news/tea-partiers-fight-over-solar-power-in-georgia-and-the-solar-fans-win/

<h1 class="headline" align="left">Tea Partiers fight over solar power in Georgia, and the solar fans win</h1>

By <a href="http://grist.org/author/claire-thompson/" title="Posts by Claire Thompson">Claire Thompson</a>

In Georgia on Thursday, the Tea Party scored a victory against the Tea Party by helping push through a plan requiring the state’s largest electric utility to increase its capacity for solar power.

<a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/12/tampons-confiscated-texas_n_3588177.html?1373658954">Never a dull day in Southern politics</a>, is there? A proposal by Public Service Commissioner Lauren “Bubba” McDonald to more than double the amount of solar energy produced by Georgia Power pitted the Tea Party Patriots against the local chapter of Koch-funded group Americans for Prosperity (of the notorious <a href="http://grist.org/news/how-the-koch-brothers-screwed-over-the-climate-even-more-than-you-know/">“No Climate Tax Pledge”</a>). Virginia Galloway, director of AFP for the state, warned the group’s 50,000 Georgia members that the proposal could increase electricity rates by up to 40 percent, and that this “mandate” — as she called it — would “reduce the reliability of every appliance and electronics gadget in your home.” But the Patriots see an increase in the availability of solar as an expansion of the free market and the ratepayers’ right to choose their energy sources.

Those on the left might have a hard time distinguishing between brands of Tea Party, but there are real differences. From the <a href="http://onlineathens.com/local-news/2013-07-08/tea-party-groups-opposite-sides-solar-debate">Athens Banner-Herald</a>:

<div align="left"><blockquote>Disagreement between the two groups isn’t unusual. [Debbie Dooley, national coordinator of the Patriots,] says Galloway is using outdated figures since solar-panel prices have dropped by more than half in the last three years. She also accuses Galloway of being swayed by the fossil-fuel interests that contribute to AFP nationally.</blockquote></div>

And, to hear Dooley tell it, AFP’s opposition to solar <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/07/09/2267051/koch-brothers-fund-effort-to-undermine-tea-party-support-of-solar-energy-in-georgia/">may not reflect the will of the people</a> (or at least the people comprising its target audience).

<div align="left"><blockquote>Dooley tells Climate Progress that despite AFP’s misinformation campaign, which “was based on misleading data and was not accurate,” most of the Tea Party activists she works with support the proposed solar plan because they see it as a “way to help protect the environment, give consumers choice and in the long-term help lower their rates.”</blockquote></div>

Help protect the environment? Tea Party, are you feeling OK?

The Patriots advocate an all-of-the-above energy strategy, saying in an email to supporters that they “just don’t believe it is responsible to be completely reliant on one or two energy sources to generate needed electricity.” Bubba, for his part, sees the writing on the wall when it comes to the traditional forms of energy on which Georgia Power has long relied. <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/business/energy/article/Regulators-OK-solar-expansion-for-Georgia-Power-4660228.php">The Associated Press</a>:

McDonald called for expanding the renewable energy source as a hedge against environmental rules that might force coal plants offline or future increases in the price of natural gas. …

“We don’t know what tomorrow is going to be with coal. We don’t know what tomorrow is going to be with natural gas,” McDonald said after the vote. “But we know the sun will be shining.”

</blockquote></div>

The <a href="http://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/news/2013/07/11/georgia-psc-orders-more-solar-power.html?page=all">Atlanta Business Chronicle</a> has the deets on the new plan:

Commissioners voted 4-1 in favor of a broader long-term electrical generation plan that requires Atlanta-based Georgia Power Co. to increase its solar power capacity by 525 megawatts by the end of 2016.

Of that amount, 425 megawatts would come from large “utility-scale” solar projects and 100 would come from projects small enough to be installed by individual residential or commercial property owners.

Georgia Power already is working to develop 260 megawatts of solar energy through two projects previously approved by the PSC.

But supporters of a motion by Commissioner Lauren “Bubba” McDonald to up the ante argued that recent technological advancements have brought down the costs of solar power enough to justify additional investment.

“We’ve got to approach this in a businesslike fashion and try to stay ahead of the curve,” McDonald said after the vote.

</blockquote></div>

Solar will still make up just a small fraction of the utility’s overall energy mix. Solar providers will engage in a competitive bidding process, with oversight from the Public Service Commission, to ensure that rates don’t go up.

No Republican wants to get on the Tea Party’s bad side. Maybe if solar boosters joined forces with grassroots Tea Party groups across the nation, we could give AFP a run for its money. (Well, probably not literally.)

Claire Thompson is an editorial assistant at Grist.

===

<h1>State Climatologist of Georgia Ousting: Was It Justified? (‘Skepticism’, not only alarmism, can get political)</h1>

by Chip Knappenberger

September 19, 2011

The political battle to control the flavor of scientific discourse claims another victim. This time it was Dr. David Stooksbury, the 12-year veteran State Climatologist of Georgia whose middle-of-the-road opinions about climate change apparently ran afoul of Georgia Governor Nathan Deal’s more conservative views.

In an executive order issued last week, Governor Deal stripped Dr. Stooksbury of his title and conferred it to a current employee of the state’s Environmental Protection Division—a position under direct government control, unlike Stooksbury’s rather independent office at the University of Georgia.

Certainly, the Governor can do as he chooses. And the newly tapped Georgia State Climatologist, Bill Murphey is seemingly qualified for the job. But, the move has all the signs of haste, and none of an orderly, well-thought out and coordinated transition. Which hints of something fishy going on.

It is worth bearing in mind that politics should consider scientific opinion, not shape it.

Stooksbury’s ouster is just the latest in a string of State Climatologists have been “replaced” in recent years for what seem like political reasons.

Patrick Michaels in Virginia. David Legates in Delaware. George Taylor in Oregon. Those three now-former state climatologists were on the rather cautious (and outspoken) side when it came to the possibility for alarming climate changes to occur as a result of human changes to the large-scale composition of the atmosphere. All three were ushered out by governors who had a different take on the issue. Michaels, Legates, and Taylor were victims of their title of “state” climatologist, even though, in this case, “state” referred primarily to geographical location more so than “government.” I guess the governors wanted to alleviate any confusion associated with the name and put someone in that position whose view better reflected that of the “State” (with a capital ‘S’).

What Is a “State Climatoligist”

===

prayer --> denial http://grist.org/news/georgia-assures-you-theres-no-drought-also-please-send-water-so-thirsty/

===

, "<a href="http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/paltman/toxic_power_the_20_most_expose.html" target="_hplink">Both senators from eight states of the 'Toxic 20' states</a> -- Kentucky, Indiana, Georgia, Texas, Virginia, South Carolina, Alabama and Mississippi -- supported a resolution by Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., to repeal the health-protective mercury and air toxics standard."

===

small words

2. Rob Woodall, R-GA: Woodall once advised a constituent on Medicare that she should reject the government-provided plan and secure her health insurance on the private market. However, when asked why he refused to reject the health plan provided to him by Congress he said simply, “Because it’s free.” Then, to cement the impression that he is focused solely on his own welfare and special privileges for congressmen, he was one of only two votes against the STOCK Act that prohibited members of Congress from engaging in insider trading.

Doctor of Demonization

Paul Broun, 64

<img src="/8a365a10-0303-573e-bef3-974b735e0d23.jpg"/>A medical doctor who makes house calls only to avoid "bureaucratic encumbrances," far-right U.S. Rep. Paul Broun took over Georgia's 10th Congressional District after the death of Charlie Norwood in 2007. Since then, Broun has become a pal of the antigovernment Patriot movement, warning in apocalyptic terms of a coming socialist takeover by Barack Obama and his allies.

This April 19, 15 years to the day after the Oklahoma City bombing, Broun is scheduled to join several Patriot leaders at the Second Amendment March in Washington, D.C. On the agenda that day with Broun are Stewart Rhodes of the Oath Keepers, a group that suspects the government has plans to round up Americans and put them in concentration camps, and Gun Owners of America's Larry Pratt, a fan of militias who has been criticized for ties to white supremacists.

Broun says gun rights are necessary to "prevent treason in America."

Saying Broun is a fierce critic of the president would be an understatement. Broun has alleged that a civilian reserve corps that Obama proposed, and the Bush administration endorsed, might be used to establish a dictatorship. "We can't be lulled into complacency. You have to remember that Adolf Hitler was elected in a democratic Germany," Broun said in 2008.

A "birther," Broun has openly questioned Barack Obama's citizenship. When asked by a radio host whether Barack Obama was a U.S. citizen or a Christian, both established facts, Broun responded, "I don't know." Broun also calls Cuba's former dictator Fidel Castro Obama's "good buddy."

Last year, Broun told his constituents that the health care bill was the work of a "socialistic elite" — referring to Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid — who might use a pandemic disease or natural disaster as an excuse to declare martial law. "They're trying to develop an environment where they can take over," he said. "We've seen that historically." At a 2009 town hall, he called Pelosi "a domestic enemy of the Constitution."

So far, Broun's legislative work has been scant. In 2009, Broun voted against a climate-change bill, calling the concept of manmade global warming a "hoax" perpetrated by the scientific community. In 2009, he proposed legislation proclaiming 2010 "The Year of the Bible." Earlier, he introduced the "Military Honor and Decency Act" that would ban sales of pornography on military installations. The bill has gone nowhere.

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