A Republican in Georgia's House of Representatives has introduced a bill to eliminate driver's licenses, arguing that the documents are an unnecessary infringement on personal freedom. Rep. Bobby Franklin, who represents the Atlanta suburb of Marietta, defended the bill to skeptical reporters on Monday, who questioned whether it would be a good idea to eliminate oversight of Georgia's drivers.
"One of your inalienable rights is the right to travel, the right to move about without needing your papers," Franklin told WSB in Atlanta. "You shouldn't have to have permission from the state to exercise a right that has been inalienably given to you from your creator."
Franklin took tough questions on the bill from a CBS Atlanta reporter who questioned what it would mean if children were allowed to drive cars.
CBS Atlanta's Rebekka Schramm asked Franklin, “How are we going to keep up with who’s who and who’s on the roads and who’s not supposed to be on the roads?”
“That’s a great question," Franklin said. "And I would have to answer that with a question, ‘Why do you need to know who’s who?’”
“What about 12-14-year-olds who want to drive? What would stop them?" Schramm asked.
“Well, what’s stopping them now anyway?” Franklin answered.
"Let us answer Franklin’s question right away: Millions of parents are stopping them, in the name of a law that’s unlikely to change anytime soon," Jim Galloway wrote at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "Another roadblock: The constant fatalities ... that remind us that driving is serious business."
Franklin has been in the Georgia House of Representatives since 1996, and his Facebook profile describes him as "the most conservative member of the Georgia General Assembly."
"Representative Franklin has been called 'the conscience of the Republican Caucus"' because he believes that civil government should return to its biblically and constitutionally defined role," his House website states.
Franklin's legislative agenda appears to mirror many of the causes taken up by the tea party movement, including the movement's concerns about the Federal Reserve and fiat money. Last month, Franklin introduced a bill that would require all transactions with the state of Georgia to be paid in silver or gold.
The proposed law, intended as an effort to move the US towards a gold standard for its currency, would have "catastrophic consequences" for Georgia, Ian Millhiser wrote at ThinkProgress.
Among other things, the U.S. Mint simply does not make very many gold and silver coins — the Mint has even suspended sales of precious medal coins when demand rises above very low levels — so it is unlikely that enough coins even exist to allow Georgia taxpayers to pay more than a fraction of their tax obligations if they are required to do so in U.S. minted gold or silver....
Gold or silver standards leave a nation completely powerless to control its own monetary policy, often tying inflation rates to completely arbitrary factors such as the rate that gold is mined in South Africa, rather than to the interests of a national economy. Worse, it leaves a nation without one of its most important tools to push back against economic downturns. In the 1930s, the United States was one of the last major nations to abandon the gold standard, and this failure to act was one of the principle causes of the Great Depression.
According to CBS Atlanta, Franklin co-sponsored all of the first 21 bills introduced in the new House session. Among the bills are one that would criminalize abortion in the state under all circumstances, and another that would prohibit mandatory vaccinations. Yet another bill proposes abolishing the state income tax.