http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxCVRHx0JoI

It’s an Ibanez bass. Plays really good though.

I saw a guitar in your office. What kind was it?
How did you pay for it? Did you pay for it with your fishing tournament wins?

He went from being one of the most thoughtful, responsible and reasonable people in the General Assembly to unimaginably unapproachable.”

Indy,

I’m not saying this is what happened to Ben Harbin, I don’t know much about him, nor did I know him long ago. However I can probably develop a theory as to why he’s no longer approachable.

Ben is chairman of the house appropriations. That means every Tom, Dick and Jane who wants to suck at the state government’s teat to get funding for their ceramic gnome museum, is going to go the Chairman Harbin and tell him all about how important ceramic gnomes are to the history, culture and economic prosperity of Georgia. They’ll bore him to death with charts, stats and annoying little gnome animations. Towards the end of this Chairman Harbin will want to either: 1) put the gun in his own mouth, or 2) grab a fully automatic and mow down the hordes of lobbyists that swarm around the Gold Dome when the legislature is in session.

Chairman Harbin is however, a shrewed politician, and he knows that if he were to mow down all the lobbyists under the Gold Dome, some lilly-livered bleeding-heart liberal will probably take exception to that because one of the lobbyists represented mentally challenged, albino tree frogs from latin america, and his shooting that lobbyist proves that Ben Harbin hates whites, the handicapped, latinos and everyone who grew up watching the muppets.

Now, instead of being able to represent the interests of the people in his district, he’ll be embroiled in controversy, forced to resign in disgrace and have no other career to fall back on except ( the now very dangerous job of) becoming a lobbyist.

Those were the days before they came to POWER.

Power is all they have left and all they stand for is bashing Hillary Clinton.

Very few of them dare even mention the Contract with America for they turned it into a contract ON America.

We indies are heading for the voting booth and they are heading for the woodshed.

Me, too.

Hartsfield should be privatized. The Georgia Dome is a pork project, if indeed public fund were used for it’s created and upkeep.

Government should take advantage of any opportunity to lessen the burden on taxpayers. Go Fish is one of the more egregious earmarks in the budget. It doesn’t what the purpose of the money is, it’s not something that they taxpayers should be paying for. Let private sources handle it.

I liked Republicans so much better when they believed in fiscal responsibility and capitalism.

The Georgia Dome is pure pork.

Pretty much, every dollar of public spending, past, present, and future is pure pork.

A private company could run the Georgia State Patrol.

Private enterprise could build roads, landfills, sewer systems, water systems, and private fire departments could operate on a pay-per-call basis.

I’m not trying to diss your work or your contribution – I like your work and I appreciate what you do!

I don’t want to get off on a single issue but you need to stop thinking about the whole “Go Fish” program as being about tournaments – it’s not. It’s about putting in infrastructure like boat ramps and there is NEVER a more golden time to build boat ramps than when the water is as low as it is. It is way, way cheaper to build the ramps now because it’s a whole lot easier to build them on dry land than it is to build them under water.

Someday, the water will be back. Concerned taxpayers will be screaming “you could have built boat ramps for half that money if you had done it while the water was at a record low. Lack of planning!”

I agree with a lot of what you say, in principle, but nobody is knowledgeable about everything and this is one of those things that virtually nobody here on PP seems to know anything about.

He went from being one of the most thoughtful, responsible and reasonable people in the General Assembly to unimaginably unapproachable.

He has been wildly out of control – in more ways than one.

Like the story says…it’s hard to justify that money being spent when the tournaments are being canceled.

I am uncomfortable with automatically classifying everything that is spent on the tourism industry as “pork”. Tourism ranks very high on Georgia’s economic development ladder in terms of jobs and revenues produced. (Granted, most tourism jobs are pretty low-wage but, it’s a job.)

I don’t know and don’t care about how much money golf produces but I do know that the Music Hall of Fame is already paying off. I don’t have the numbers handy but I’ve heard them quoted and it’s impressive.

Other states that actively promote recreational fishing are doing very well with it – Florida, Michigan, and Texas are great examples. Their investments have more than paid off. The tournament fishing stuff is just the marketing side of it. Too many folks have tried to pin the pro tournaments as THE reason for the investment but they never were and never will be. But, you get TV time promoting Georgia as a fishing destination with the tournaments and that’s advertising and promotion that would cost more than $18 million if you had to buy it.

I’m sure the golf enthusiasts could probably say the same thing.

Anyway, the point is that marketing your state’s tourism and hospitality industry does not always equal “pork”. At least those jobs can’t be sent to India or China.

“Catch ya on the flip-flop” as we used to say in hs.