Politicians Betrayed Georgia Voters on their flag – Commentary by Carl Sears

This letter was published in the Waycross Journal-Herald Friday March 26, 2004 (Waycross Journal-Herald).

EDITOR, Journal-Herald:
This letter is in response to the misguided March 20 letter from Greg Morgan. I will try to deal mostly in facts and leave speculation, emotion, and political spin out of it, however difficult that may be.

Mr. Morgan states it was Gov. Roy Barnes and the Democrats who took our state flag. That is partially true. It was that party who received the lion’s share of the blame for the 2001 outrage. However, without the votes of several Republicans, the flag would never have been changed in 2001. In fact, many Democrats voted against changing it in 2001.

Mr. Morgan states it takes two-thirds of the House to pass anything for the voters to vote upon. This is an incorrect statement. It does take two-thirds in the House and Senate to make constitutional changes. The previous rigged flag referendum, which was non-binding, required only a majority in the Senate and a little over a majority in the House. That is not anywhere near two-thirds.

Mr. Morgan really enters the “Land of Oz” when he states getting rid of Democrats in general would be the right thing to do if we voters and heritage-minded citizens feel we were taken advantage of by politicians. Let me give you and your readers some facts to “jaw over” while drinking your coffee and nibbling your eggs down at the Huddle House.

It is a fact that the Republicans had a majority in the Senate in 2003. It is a fact that Gov. Sonny Perdue ran as a Republican and was elected as such.

So the Republicans had control of the Senate and the governorship in 2003. It would be simple to pass anything the governor wanted in the Senate at least, would it not?

In the 2003 legislative session, the flag referendum bill (HB-380) passed the Democrat-controlled House by an astonishing 62 percent (111-67) and was sent to the Republican-controlled Senate. Immediately, Sen. Tom Price submitted a “Letter of Intent” to engross. Now, some may not know what that means, so let me explain:

A bill that has been engrossed cannot be changed. It can only be voted up or down.

The publicized plan was to engross the referendum bill (HB-380) in the Republican-controlled Senate, which would result in it passing unchanged, and the people would then have the right to vote on their State Flag.

Engrossing it would have guaranteed that the bill would not have to go back to the House.

Tom Price was the Senate majority leader and after submitting the Letter of Intent, all he had to do was make the motion by the third reading of the bill, but he didn’t do it!

Read that again with a bit more background. But the Republican senate majority leader, who had submitted a Letter of Intent to engross, did not follow through and left the bill open to change!

Calls to his office to find out what was going on were not returned!

Sen. Price failed to engross HB- 380, voted for Amendment 15 with some other Republicans to remove YOUR vote on the Georgia State Flag and offered to make a deal with the Atlanta-based corporations, Black Caucus and politically correct crowd that includes the Chambers of Commerce. This was even publicly printed in the Atlanta Journal & Constitution.

So, by not engrossing the bill, this allowed it to be sent back to the House where the post-1956 state flag was removed as a choice and SHAZAAM!, tobacco-users got hit with Perdue’s tobacco tax increase that previously didn’t have a prayer in the House.

Not only did our flag choice get removed in the House, the bill passed with our flag choice removed in the Republican-controlled Senate.

The bill then goes to Gov. Perdue who signs it into law. Sonny says he did not lie, but there are many people around here and the state who will tell you differently. He lied to our faces and then took our money!

Gov. Perdue says he didn’t want to be heavyhanded and that the people had spoken through their legislators. That is why he didn’t veto the flag bill and chose instead to be untruthful. But, Sonny managed to veto about 20 other bills that “the people” approved “speaking through” their legislators.

Sounds like high-handedness to me.

Carl Sears
Waycross

Carl Sears is a dedicated activist and member of The Wiregrass Rangers Camp 2006 of the Sons of Confederate Veterans in Douglas, Georgia .

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