Why our state representative Matt Ramsey is a zero

Pleasant and personable as he may be, our state representative Matt Ramsey boasts of insignificant accomplishments amidst a group of people with no clue on how to really help the people of Georgia. You don’t do that by just cutting the budget and boasting about it.

While he is hung up on the idea of making it illegal for young inexperienced drivers to use cell phones while they drive, a common sense idea that does not need to be put into law and is largely unenforceable, he has done nothing to make it illegal to drive a pickup truck without using a seat belt.

If people who drive cars must wear seat belts for their safety, why not pickup truck drivers? It could save an estimated $62 million a year in accident-related expenses and bring in $4 million in federal highway safety grants.

Ramsey’s bill on driving teen cell phone users didn’t make it this year, but he says it’s on the five-yard line for consideration next year. So what?

He claims to have fixed a gap in the Georgia child molestation statute. I suppose that’s good, but is child molestation a major problem for most of us? What is a problem, for many parents, is child bullying in public schools. If Ramsey addressed that, he’d be much more helpful.

Ramsey says he introduced a bill to protect parties from costs resulting from meritless lawsuits. I don’t know the details of what he did, but I see a lot of problems with that.

First of all, lawsuits cost way too much and take far too long to resolve. If Ramsey had done something to limit the costs and speed up the process, he would have done something useful. Attorneys from both sides pile on all kinds of paperwork, hearings, depositions, etc., at great cost, with each attorney in effect exploiting his own client. Now Ramsey wants to prolong the process by fostering disputes on who should pay the two extravagant bills from the attorneys, raising the bills even more.

In our state courts, much of the litigation is between divorcing people, and we don’t need to give them more to fight about. Some litigation, however, involves people who have been done wrong by a big corporation or the government. When these companies or the government defend these suits, they have no regard for the money they spend. Just look at how tobacco companies have given cancer-stricken smokers a ride.

Quite often, a lawsuit which seems to lack merit to one judge does not seem to lack merit to another judge. We have plenty of 5-to-4 U.S. Supreme Court decisions, and the loser’s suit did not lack merit. The term “meritless” is a ridiculous expression.

What Ramsey seems to have done is to make it even more difficult for the little guy to take on any of the big guys. That seems to have been part of the Republican philosophy now repudiated by sensible people. I would not boast about this, if I were Matt Ramsey. I suspect he has hurt his constituents by doing what he did.

Ramsey also says he worked on a bill to provide our school systems greater flexibility from state mandates to help in the current economic crisis. That is like saying we weakened some of our rules to save money. In whatever we do, as consumers, we always weigh the cost versus the value of what we get. Government should always do that, too. This is not a great achievement, just common sense.

What Ramsey failed to say is that he participated in efforts to weaken the state’s tax base by reducing the taxes of the rich and powerful, such as capital gains taxes. The controlling idea seems to be making the state financially so weak that it can no longer perform basic functions like building roads, or inspecting peanut butter plants.

The ultimate goal, it seems, is to make the people so desperate for certain basic functions, like having decent roads, that the people themselves will vote to increase the state sales tax.

Ramsey is a nice guy. But he is a puppet of the special interests who put him in the position he is in. He has no agenda for providing effective help to the people who elected him. He is simply marching to the beat of the old Republican guard drummer.

Ramsey And The Rest Of The Sheep

Submitted by Spear Road Guy on Sat, 04/25/2009 - 11:54pm.

He just goes baaaah and tows the line for the big wigs. I voted for Brown in that election.

Vote Republican

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In my house, Ramsey is known as the man

Submitted by ptcmom678 on Fri, 04/24/2009 - 7:33pm.

who handed me a button in the 4th of July parade saying "Vote for me - we need more redheads in the legislature!"

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Seat belts for Pick-ups

Submitted by Dondol on Fri, 04/24/2009 - 10:04am.

If people who drive cars must wear seat belts for their safety, why not pickup truck drivers?
The major opposition for this comes from south Georgia farming representatives. Get them to come on board and this will be a no brainer.

Obama's weapon of Choice!

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Let's Make The Useless Red Necks

Submitted by Blah Blah on Tue, 04/28/2009 - 7:07am.

Let us make them wear seatbelts for their own good. Peace!

A system of limitless individual choices, with respect to communications, is not necessarily in the interest of citizenship and self-government.

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