Maloy: No Rest for the Georgia Tea Party

By Tom Maloy

If you haven’t been attending the weekly meetings of the Georgia Tea Party (GTPI) lately, you may have gotten the impression that we have gone silent, or that we aren’t as active as we’ve been in the past. 

That is not the case. While in the past GTPI has gotten a lot of attention from our rallies that attracted thousands of participants and media, we haven’t hosted one since last July 16, one week before the mid-term primary election. 

Our objective for that rally was to excite the voters, give them a way to educate themselves about the candidates from all parties, and encourage everyone in Cobb, Douglas, Paulding, Cherokee and Bartow counties to go out and vote. 

We had an open forum with 50 candidates vying for a variety of state and federal positions. It was like a giant job fair at which you, the employer, could interview the people on the ballot.

We also held a simultaneous rally with Herman Cain as our keynote speaker and handed out comprehensive voter guides. It was an obvious success. 

Since then GTPI has been working at every level of government, from county to federal. We battled the Cobb SPLOST, and although that unnecessary tax extension passed on March 15th by the narrowest of margins, we were successful in getting the SPLOST reduced from a six year, $750 million boondoggle to a four year, $492 million one. 

GTPI worked on several pieces of state legislation, supporting some and opposing others. We were strong supporters of HB 87, the immigration law, which was passed by the General Assembly and has been signed by Gov. Nathan Deal. 

While there is little doubt it will be challenged by the open-border nutcases, the law avoids some of the difficulties that have plagued the Arizona law, so we believe it will stand. It merely provides Georgia citizens the protection that constitutionally should be provided by the federal government, which has been flagrantly absent on the issue of immigration and border security. 

GTPI also opposed an important piece of tax reform legislation that we felt amounted to a tax increase for Georgians. More significantly, its selective tax exemptions for various businesses were tantamount to the state choosing winners and losers, thus overriding the proper role of the free market. 

This bill will be revisited in the special legislative session coming up toward the end of summer.  GTPI will continue to work with state legislators to make any resulting tax reform truly revenue neutral, fair to all Georgians and conducive to business expansion and job growth in the state.

GTPI’s federal task force has been working with federal legislators in support of bills that will reduce the power of rogue agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy, among others. Such agencies have overreached their authority and are using regulation to supersede the constitutionally established legislative power of Congress. 

The federal task force is also working in support of certain congressional measures to cut and limit spending and reduce the federal debt and deficit. 

Other GTPI volunteers are working on additional projects that may be closer to home, such as the county education system and the Cobb County Board of Commissioners.

Of course, we will be working alongside other citizens’ groups in fighting a very tough battle against the transportation SPLOST. The proposed new tax will significantly raise the price of everything you buy in Cobb and nine other metro Atlanta counties. We will need everyone’s help to defeat it.

So if you haven’t heard much from the Georgia Tea Party lately, it’s because we’ve been busy, working on behalf of every family and individual in Cobb County. We won’t quit until our county, state and federal governments have returned to the constitutional principles that created two and a quarter centuries of the greatest prosperity the world has ever known.  

You are welcome to join us.

Tom Maloy, a retired businessman and 30-year Powder Springs resident, is a board member of the Georgia Tea Party. Contact him at tom@thegeorgiateaparty.org.