Whoever wins will be taking a solemn oath to uphold the constitution, whether they understand what they are swearing or not.

To cubalibre and Deanne: I have the full support of the Libertarian Party of DeKalb and the Libertarian Party of Georgia, as well as Freedom Force Atlanta, and I am one of 140 Liberty Candidates running for various offices around the country which include all parties. I don’t care if you don’t appreciate my comments, others do and it’s free speech. Thanks, Decatur Metro!

To Another Rick: What do you care what they teach your children in public school as long as you don’t need to pay for it yourself and you can go to work without bothering with the kids hanging around all day. Have you ever read one of your children’s Social Studies books and critically compared it with historical records from early American history? There is no way to end public education overnight, but there needs to be a transition somehow, someday, to make parents responsible for their own children’s upbringing, not make everyone else pay for government-approved propaganda to be taught as if it is the very thing needed for people to feed, clothe and shelter themselves. I would like to not focus on education, except that it is the “elephant in the room” when it comes to the state budget – 60% of the state budget goes to Education! And most of your property taxes go there also. Only the wealthy or self-sacrificing parents have access to choice in education. My father, with only a six-grade education, paid for private school tuition for four children, plus his taxes also. Now he is 77 years old and can’t retire. Social inSecurity is not enough.

And I’m certainly not talking vouchers either – that’s just another way to shift the burden of tuition from parents to taxpayers.

I appeal to you to look into the history of public education and open your mind to this very important matter.

Looking at this from another angle, Georgia has an undeserved bad rep for having poor schools because we give the SAT test to every single 11th grader, while other states only test those who intend to go to college. This skews the results and we will never move up the list until we become selective in who we give the SAT test to. We also spend several hundred thousand to test 1st graders while most other states do not. We feel so inferior that the only answer seems to be to keep throwing money at this problem. This plays right into the educational systems hands because they will always want more money. In this economy, businesses everywhere are suffering and have had to lay off workers and give pay reductions. The public school system needs to figure out ways to become more efficient and get back to the basics of reading, ‘riting and ‘rithmetic. They should also put more junior high students into agricultural and industrial tracks. The federally mandated minimum wage also hurts our young people, who have a hard time reaching the bottom rungs of the ladder of success.

Speaking of the federal government, this is my true focus of rage. We are all, teachers public and private, students, parents and the rest of us Georgians, suffering at the hands of a fiat monetary system under the control of a central bank in cahoots with the federal government. Notice that they have not been having any problems paying their bills and are still growing strong while the states suffer? What we need is currency competition. I will do my best to get SB 416, the Sound Money in Banking Act, resolved with HB 430, the Constitutional Tender Act, and passed through the General Assembly as soon as possible. This will resolve many of our banking and economic problems and draw businesses and investment money to Georgia where their money and businesses will be safe from inflation.

To macarolina: Interesting, if true, that JC would get the Georgia Equality endorsement without ever having said anything about the issue. I have been talking about this issue since day one and sought their endorsement back in February. They said they had to wait until qualifying was over to see who all the candidates are. But they never called or even sent me a questionnaire. Could it be the huge fundraising capability of the Carter Center they are after?