Speaker Summaries

Louie Hunter, former Cobb County Commissioner, spoke to Madison Forum members and guests at the regular breakfast on Saturday, February 23, 2008 on the subject “Transparency in Government”.

Mr. Hunter began by saying, Ronald Reagan asked a guy one time; “What’s the problem with the American voter? Why don’t they get involved, why don’t they vote, why don’t they question? Is it ignorance or apathy?” The guy replied; “I don’t know, and I don’t care.”

Mr. Hunter said it’s time to know, and it’s time to care, and it needs to go outside of this room. We’ve got a government that’s unresponsive at almost all levels. And you see it every day in almost everything we do. One of the groups Mr. Hunter lobbies for is Americans for Tax Reform out of Washington, DC. Grover Norquist is the head of the organization. Hand pick by Ronald Reagan, which Mr. Hunter said, puts him pretty much near John Wayne and Elvis, and God as far as his heroes to run the thing. Grover has dedicated his life to absolutely stopping taxes where they are. Grover has been doing that for a long time, and, on the federal level there has not been a tax increase, largely because of his actions, since 1994. It is a good thing that he is there, and Mr. Hunter said he is very fortunate to represent them and be in Georgia trying to be a go-between and convince folks that No New Taxes is the only way to go.

Mr. Hunter said, as is always the case, you can prepare and plan all you want to, and then on the day you come to make your speech, the newspaper hands you a gift. It’s HB938. It’s about transparency. It’s about taking your money and doing something with it that’s good for you. The bill says; “We want Franchise Fees to be called a Franchise Tax. Because that’s what it is. It’s not a fee. It doesn’t help the entity charging it. They’re collecting it for municipalities, and they’re handing it back to the municipalities... There’s a small problem there. Number one, it’s not called a tax. He said he thinks if it’s a tax it should be called a tax. And a fee is a tax all the time. This fee, this tax, is being charged in unincorporated areas. That money is still going to the city. So, the unincorporated folks are being charged the fee, but the tax is being spent by the city. So the unincorporated Georgians are getting nothing for the tax. That’s taxation without representation. That’s wrong. That’s government without a soul. That’s why we had the big tea party back a couple of hundred years ago.

Mr. Hunter said we’ve got to get involved, because this is what’s happening to your money and your government. It’s not that the character of the people doing it is wrong or bad. It’s just the way it’s always been done. No bureaucracy on the planet has ever decided to intentionally make itself smaller. It’s not going to happen unless we do it. Grover Norquist rides these legislators like crazy. He stays in them. He sends them letters saying you took the no tax pledge. What you’re doing is raising taxes.
Mr. Hunter said Republicans in Georgia are doing a pretty good job of talking about lowering your taxes, but we not have a $1.00 a pack Sin Tax that a Republican has proposed. That’s a tax increase. If you nibble on the elephant long enough, you’ve eaten the whole elephant. You’ve had tax increases all over. You have to be careful.

We have a one cent state wide potential for referendum on gas tax. That’s a tax increase. The only way that works is if you get the option to lower your taxes at the same time you get the option to raise your taxes. Why don’t we look at expenses and try to cut these things and put the money where it belongs? We continue to throw millions and millions and billions, with a b, at education to just stay right at the bottom. It’s not about money. It’s about what we do as people and how we get motivated to change the system. We’ve got areas all over the country spending $10,000, $12,000, and $15,000 per kid. They score the same thing, within a point or two, every year. Money is not the issue. Money is just where the power is. That’s why people stay in the hunt for it all the time.

Mr. Hunter said one of the other groups he is working for is Georgia Link, which is the largest lobbying firm in Georgia. They asked him to come on board and help with DeKalb County. DeKalb County is trying to keep their people and their tax dollars. The Dunwoody people want their own city, and they want it bad. They’ve gone after the legislators who have just asked questions about where they are going to get the money, and how much is it going to cost. Mr. Hunter said he has no problem with people representing themselves. But he has a problem with them doing the exact same thing to get the leadership of their community that they’re trying to leave the other community for. Dunwoody doesn’t like DeKalb County because DeKalb County collects all this tax over here and spends it over there. They don’t like that, and Mr. Hunter doesn’t blame them. So what they’ve done is “we want to make a City of Dunwoody”. That’s fine. Got no problem with that. What have they done? They went out and got their facts to fit their model, to fit their opinion. Patrick Moynihan said one time: “You’re entitled to your own opinion, but you’re not entitled to your own set of facts.” The facts are the facts, and they get in the way sometimes. Mr. Hunter said when he sat down and started looking at their proposed budget, what they had done was misrepresented the facts. They had made them fit exactly the mold they needed them to fit so they could beat the legislators over the head and get passage of their bill. That’s wrong. When they finally looked at it – a quarter million dollar first year budget surplus to being six million dollars in the hole, not including legal fees that are going to come the minute they are incorporated, because the way the bill is written they would get more taxes in that one little area than all other DeKalb cities put together. That’s wrong. That’s government without a soul. That’s making it fit what you want it to fit, so government works for you and not the whole. That’s wrong. We’ve got to stop that. It’s time to take our government back into our hands and make them responsible to our needs. Mr. Hunter said when they went to committee on this issue (they killed it last year, it came back this year) his group won seven to five. It never made it out of committee. Never got on the floor for a major vote. Now there is a state rep from South Georgia who’s been convinced that he voted incorrectly. So Tuesday, the 26th, in this same committee that’s supposed to hear other issues, he’s going to ask to change his vote. But, the Dunwoody group has been such a pain about it that the committee chairman has said if it goes seven-six – he’s the tie breaking vote. It would be six-six with his vote. He said he’s going to vote it up and out. He’s tired of dealing with it. That’s wrong. That’s hard to do when you’re sitting there, and you know they’re going to beat you up, and you know they’re going to write bad things about you, because one of the proponents of the City of Dunwoody is Dick Williams, the bow tie wearing guy on Georgia Gang. He’s a good guy, but guess what, he owns the Dunwoody Crier which is the newspaper of record in Dunwoody. That’s where the City of Dunwoody would have to place their legal notices. Dot, Dot, Dot, Connect, Connect, Connect. He’s going to make a lot of money on that. That’s wrong. That’s taking your money and spending it for personal gain. Mr. Hunter said they will fight the battle again, and if they lose that vote, if everybody chickens out and it gets to the floor, his group will line up the votes, filibuster, whatever they’ve got t do. Not because they care for Dunwoody having self-rule. That’s a good thing, because the smaller the government, the better it is. But because it’s just wrong to do it that way.

Mr. Hunter said there is a way to get around all the people, and all the fiefdoms, and all the little kingdoms people have made for themselves. It’s called transparency in government. Grover Norquist has said that this is his single biggest issue until he dies. He wants this done, and Mr. Hunter said he is going to help him do it. By hook or crook it’s going to get done. They are going to start talking to folks all over. Transparency in government is the only way to make sure your money is being spent in the way that it should be spent. And they are asking that each government – education, school board, county government, city government, state governments, and federal government put every check that is written of our money – it’s not their money. They don’t make a widget to sell to get their money. They take it from us. And they’ll take our property, or lock us up if we don’t pay our share. It’s our money. We need to see where it’s going. They want a searchable database on the Internet that every day is updated with every check that is written. And you think - that is a huge undertaking. It’s not. We got legislation from Tom Coburn, and believe it or not, this is how politics makes strange bedfellows, Barack Obama. And every check that is written by the Federal Government for over $25,000, it’s on line. You can go search it and see where it went. Google and Yahoo have said they will participate in helping with the technology to be sure the data base is totally searchable, that it’s really there. Checks are written in numerical order. You can find them. They can’t get around that. It’s an easy way for you to see where your money is going.

Now the other issue, said Mr. Hunter, is where the money is coming from. He said he wrote a column for James Magazine which is a magazine published by Insider Advantage. He started looking into something called the insurance premium tax. It’s 4.75% of every premium in the state of Georgia is collected. The Insurance Commissioner is against it. $411,000,000 of our money is collected and sent back to the state of Georgia. They keep 1% and send the rest back to the cities and counties. He said, did we think the cities and counties are going to help get rid of the insurance tax? Once a year they get a big multi-million dollar check that they get to put in and spend any way they want to. It’s like the franchise fees. It’s being collected, and we don’t even know it’s being collected, and they don’t want to get rid of it. Their pat answer is; how do we replace it? He said he sat in committee and heard Earl Earhart say: we need to do this, and they said yea, but you’re going to cost us money. He said cut spending. Boy, what a great idea. It’s not that hard. They spend money that’s ridiculous. Mr. Hunter said Cobb County lists this fee correctly on the bills. All the cities of Cobb are doing it correctly. He said, this is a fiasco when there is $411,000,000 taken that most folks don’t even know they paid.

Mr. Hunter said these are folks all the way down line. This is the poorest of the poor who are paying this tax because they have to have a car to get to their job. If we are conservatives, and want to be considered compassionate conservatives, we could start right here in Georgia by cutting $411,000,000 out of the budget, and saying, guess what, we don’t need it. We’re going to leave it with you. It’s not a lot of money per household for folks at the lower end. They may have one car and one insurance policy. But, give them the $50. Let them spend their money where they need it most. And quit sending my money all over the county or all over the state, and letting them spend my money on things that don’t benefit me. Taxation without Representation. He said he hates to sound as if he is hung up in 1776, but that’s what it is. That’s why they wrote our Constitution the way they wrote it. It is as evident today that they knew what they were talking about as it was back then. We’ve got to get control of our spending.

One more little thing about the insurance tax, he said, that is just mind boggling. There’s something called, believe it or not, called the Retaliatory Tax. It’s a charge against the insurance industry for doing business in other states that have a lesser insurance premium tax. So, if theirs is 2% and ours is 4.75%, you have to pay an additional 2.75% to retaliate against them when you’re doing business with them in that other state. Now what is that? That’s wrong. That is a tax on business for doing business out of the state. And it has driven the insurance industry out of the State of Georgia. AFLAC, started here, created here, flourished here, provided tons of jobs here; National Headquarters – Nebraska. Come on! Average job in the insurance industry if $43,000 a year. That’s middle income. That’s the backbone of the economy. That’s where the taxes are paid. That’s where everything that works about our system starts, is in that level of income. And, we ran ‘em off. Because 30 years ago the people in power then decided this is another pot of gold. This is another place we can go and get money and spend it on the things that keep us in power. If you rob Peter to pay Paul, Paul’s always going to vote for you. You can count on it. Write him a check, buy the vote. It’s time to fix it. It’s time to get involved. Don’t be ignorant, don’t be apathetic. We have to understand that these things are not happening by accident. They happen by a very well funded, highly interested group of individuals. They get in our wallet, they attempt to take away our sovereignty. They do everything they can to benefit themselves. Mr. Hunter said he didn’t want to say people in government are bad people. They’re not. It’s a tough job. He said he got out because he was losing his business and his family, and you can’t do that. You have to be older and pretty much financially independent to do it, or you’re going to suffer. It’s right in front of us just as plain as if they put a billboard up and said; we’re stealing your money. They are taking our money and spending it unwisely or incorrectly.

The system is broken. The system has got to be fixed, and we can do it at the ballot box. Cobb is doing a lot of things right, but there area places we can find and fix, and help. Go to our elected officials as voters, and tell them we want transparency. Tell them we want to see every check that’s written on line. When that happens; if we can get that done at the state level, there’s 9 ½ million auditors in the State of Georgia. Every night we can get on line and audit the state’s finances, and the county’s finances, and the city’s, the school board. Texas does it down to the pencil. Every day – update. They know where the money goes. If you don’t think that will keep your elected officials thinking about buying this lunch on the state, because tomorrow it’s going to be on website. Somebody’s going to see it. Do we really need to have this getaway for the weekend? Because if we do, it’s going to be up there. Every check we write is going to be there. Somebody’s going to see it and question it. Better have your ducks in a row. That’s good government. That’s government of the people, for the people, by the people, and not with a few elected elitists who want to stay in control and stay in power. It’s not hard. It’s not expensive. The State of Texas went on line almost immediately. It cost about a quarter of a million dollars. On a state level. The information’s already there. We’re already writing the checks. We know where the revenue’s coming from. It’s coming from the income tax premiums, franchise fees, and all that. Put that up there, too. Let people see where the money’s coming from, so that they know where they’re losing their bucks each month. It’s not wrong. It’s not asking your government to do something for you. It’s you’re turn. It’s the right thing to do. It’s the responsive thing to do. If a corporation doesn’t keep their books, they get in trouble. They go out of business. If you don’t keep your books right, you lose your house, you lose your car. Be smart. Require the same thing of your government.

Mr. Hunter read something Kelly McCutchen of the Georgia Public Policy Foundation put in his weekly newsletter. “We might hope to see the finances of the Union as clear and intelligible as a merchant’s books so that every member of Congress and every man of any mind in the Union should be able to comprehend them, to investigate abuses, and consequently to control them.” That was written by Thomas Jefferson in 1802 to the Secretary of the Treasury. Controlling expenses. You do that every day. When you get paid, you pay your bills. You spend too much, you don’t pay, you lose things. The government needs to lose things. They need to cut expenses. They need to cut it back. If they don’t, we’re so far down the road to ruin, Mr. Hunter said, that he’s not sure we can get back. The last estimate he saw from the Federal Budget website, we need 53 trillion dollars right now to finance the obligations of the folks who are in the system right now. 53 trillion dollars. It’s mathematically impossible. The Federal government doesn’t keep their books like you keep your books. When you go to apply for a loan or you do a debit and credit, you have to show your long term debts as well as your short term debts and your monthly overhead. The Federal government has the luxury of saying we’re not going to carry Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid on the books. That really enhances the bottom line when those long term liabilities don’t appear. You take away 53 trillion dollars of long term liability; well, OK, we’ll just run on a nine trillion dollar deficit. Just a nine trillion dollar deficit? But every time someone’s born, and every time someone turns 65 they start collecting a check. They start running a tab. That’s wrong, folks. We’re printing the money to do it. We have no backing of our dollar. That’s why it’s dropping like a rock. Everybody’s understanding that across the world. China’s sitting there with 1.4 trillion dollars in cash, and with the amount of money we’re printing each day to pay this huge debt, they’re losing probably 10% to 12% a year. The Inflation rate is somewhat tied to the cost of goods. But it’s much more indicative of the amount of money they’re printing each day to monetize the debt. That’s wrong. We have Five Hundred Billion Dollars a year in interest being paid. We don’t even touch the principle. We can’t go on like this. It’s got to stop. And, it’s got to stop pretty soon. Or we’re going to have another Bretten Woods Agreement, especially where the United States declared bankruptcy in the late ‘50s. They got together with all the other major financial countries. And said; we’ve been issuing our dollars based on gold to this point, and we don’t have enough gold to cover it. So we’re going to quit backing it with gold. We’re just going to keep printing the paper, but we’re going to hang on to our gold. That’s wrong. That’s government without a soul. That is using you and you’re children, and your grandchildren, and your great grandchildren to pay for stuff right now so that Paul gets to re-elect his people all the time. We’re all Pauls in some way – Peter and Paul. Don’t let them do this. Call them. These people will respond to letters and phone calls. And it doesn’t take a lot. If you get a switchboard in a legislator’s office that gets 30, 40, 50 calls, they think the roof’s caving in. Be one of those 30, 40, 50 calls. Don’t let them get away with it.

Mr. Hunter said he is very proud of our Congressional delegation for voting against this ridiculous stimulus package. A hundred and sixty some odd billion in a $13 trillion plus economy. It’s robbing Peter to pay Paul so Paul will vote for them in an election year. That’s all it is. It doesn’t matter. It’s gone in a whisper. It doesn’t make a difference. Don’t let them fool you. Over a hundred billion of that basically was just printing the check. The real benefits that are coming from that are about $40 to $50 billion dollars worth of depreciation, acceleration, and things like that, that will cause big business to spend real money that has long term job effects which means each job creates dollars to go into the economy. $30 billion is going to non-taxpayers. They decided they should make us believe they weren’t going to give this money to illegal immigrants, like the tried to make us believe they were going to fund the fence on the border. Then they put it in Homeland Security and decided; we’ll fund it if necessary. The government is broken, folks. Not to be too dramatic, we’ve got to fix this. We’ve got to get on the ball. Our kids paying for this for the rest of their lives in taxes, and at some point it will cease to exist. The monitory system will collapse on itself, and they’ll go back and de-value, and we’ll have hyper-inflation and a lot of problems.

One more example of government creating another entity that’s just out of control is the Department of Education. It’s terrible. It’s about 20 years old. It’s annual budget is $600,000,000 a year. It’s just floors, and floors, and floors of people, and they don’t really know what they’re doing. They’re doing their little thing on their desks, giving eight hours work for eight hours pay, but they’re not fixing the education system. They’re not doing anything but picking your pocket. Our Representatives have voted the right way, and fought some of these battles, and done a really good job. But, if we don’t do something. And, we’re the people to do it. Don’t leave here and say: that was pretty good, where are we going for lunch. Go home and make a list. Look up where your legislators are, who they are, and what their phone numbers are, and call these folks. If they’ve done a good job, tell them. If they’ve done a bad job tell them. A couple of pats on the back go a long way. They will have more armor for the next fight, and they may be fighting your fight. And that’s important, because there’s a very few people that get up every morning and say I don’t care what anyone says, I did this to get elected. This is what I’m going to stand on, and this is how I’m going to vote. Take your government back,