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The University of Georgia
Search: Tim Echols TeenPact
Winterville's Tim Echols may be the most
jHk interesting man in Georgia politics. He is a
theocrat whose proudest achievement is a
school that teaches young religious funda-
mentalists how to grab the reins of govern-
mental power. Yet his own chosen theocratic
course led Echols to run for Public Service
Commission, which, in addition to being among
Georgia's most obscure elected offices, is also one whose
narrow purview allows for nothing that would resemble theo
cratic governing. Echols augments his religion with a decidedly
more worldly free market fundamentalism, which seems to
place him at direct odds with the Public Service Commission's
charter. Yet his capitalist zealotry has thus far done more to
antagonize the corporations than the rest of us.
Echols' theocratic intentions would make some Iranian mul
lahs blush. His life's success is TeenPact, ? "leadership school"
whose "mission is to train youth to understand the political
process" in order to rewrite the country's laws to reflect the
Bible's "inerrant" and "infallible... authority."
TeenPact teaches children from hardline Christian families
how to run for office, work in campaigns and operate in the
arcane world of legislating. The school also largely pulls from
home-school families, so it's got this borderline cult-y, shel-
tered-from-the-21st-century vibe: you know, the exact crowd
you want writing your laws. Begun in the basement of the
Georgia Capitol, the school has been successful, gathering a
support team that reads like a Who's Who of American Christian
fundamentalism. TeenPact boasts classes in 38 states and thou
sands of graduates who probably know more than you and me
about how to influence the political process from the inside.
In 2010, Echols entered electoral politics himself. If
there's a back door to governmental power, the Public Service
Commission is the distant back gate you sneak through to
catch sight of the back door. Unable thus far to find a way to
use anti-gay fervor to generate electricity, Echols has nonethe
less brought a different sort of extremism to the office as a
“believer in the free market system" [emphasis ours]. The prob
lem is that the commission's entire raison d'etre is to regulate
industries—electricity, telecom and others—which by their
very nature tend toward abuse, monopoly and market failure.
Due to the nature of the industry and its barriers to entry,
there's no such thing as a mom-and-pop electricity provider.
There is not, and cannot be, an electricity market; only a heav
ily state-regulated system. It's been understood for some time
that a free market for electricity, in which an unlimited number
of individuals run power plants and string their own power
lines down the street, is a quick way to start a statewide elec
trical fire. It requires a fundamental misunderstanding to sug
gest that a free market is at all appropriate in this industry.
However, it was his free market ideology that led Echols to
buck fellow Republicans and become one of the loudest objec
tors to Georgia Power's attempt to push substantial costs of
a nuclear power plant onto current ratepayers who may never
receive electricity from the plant, which continues to exist only
in the abstract. Declaring himself free of financial relationships
with the commission's regulated industries, Echols condemned
the 90 lobbyists hired by Georgia Power as a violation of the
free market. Of course, the nuclear power free market envi
sioned by Echols means a privatized radioactive waste disposal
market, in which firms compete to see who fails and who
succeeds. What constitutes failure in the handling of nuclear
waste, when each firm is trying to maximize profits—which is
to say, minimize costs? Here's hoping some second-rate BP is
never allowed to get into the business of handling the most
dangerous substances on Earth.
Echols' free market fundamentalism is like that of Ron Paul:
respectable but kind of terrifying. Principled politicians are
refreshing and rare, and earnestness should always be wel
comed in the ethical cesspool of politics, and there is in Echols
a discernible core of internally consistent logic. It's just that
the logic depends on holy spirits and invisible hands.
- Matthew Pulver
8 FLAGPOLE.COM • FEBRUARY 8,2012