Podcast
Michael Corbin on School Safety, Teacher Pay and Election Integrity [Podcast]
In this episode of Peachtree Corners Life, Rico Figliolini interviews Michael Corbin, the Republican candidate for Georgia State House District 97. With his background as a parent and husband to a Gwinnett County public school teacher, Corbin shares his deep commitment to school safety, advocating for immediate actions like enhanced security measures, mental health resources and more school resource officers. They dive into topics such as using state-of-the-art technology to protect schools and fostering a safer learning environment without making schools feel like prisons.
The conversation also spans broader issues, from the importance of teacher pay to ensuring fair and secure elections in Georgia. Corbin emphasizes his dedication to making housing more affordable for teachers and public servants while also supporting job creation in tech-focused communities like Peachtree Corners. Tune in to hear Corbin’s thoughtful perspectives on the future of Georgia’s schools, housing, and government.
Resources:
Michael Corbin’s Campaign Website: https://www.corbinforga.com/
Michael’s email: Michael.Corbin@corbinforga.com
Timestamp:
00:00:00 – Michael Corbin’s Perspective
00:04:11 – Securing Schools and Practical Measures to Protect Our Kids
00:06:48 – Addressing Mental Health and Warning Signs in School Shootings
00:09:51 – Leveraging Technology for Student Safety
00:11:48 – Addressing Teacher Pay and Affordable Housing for Educators
00:17:27 – Cost of Living Adjustments for Teachers
00:21:29 – Leveraging State Support for Tech Hub Development
00:26:30 – Identifying and Fostering Technical Aptitude in Students
00:28:48 – Balancing Healthcare Access and Affordability
00:31:36 – Healthcare Costs Crushing Middle-Class Americans
00:33:30 – The Real Costs of Natural Disasters
00:35:13 – Navigating Disaster Recovery for Businesses
00:38:53 – Ensuring Secure and Accessible Elections in Georgia
00:40:53 – Secure Elections and Voter ID in Georgia
00:45:01 – Importance of Accessible Voter IDs
00:49:02 – Voting for Candidates with Your Interests in Mind
Podcast Transcript
00:00:00 – Rico Figliolini
Hey, everyone. This is Rico Figliolini, host of Peachtree Corners Life here in the city of Peachtree Corners, Gwinnett County, Georgia. I have a special guest tonight that we’re going to be spending some time with. Tonight, I say, because it’s Thursday at 8 o’clock p.m. and nothing ever stops around here. We just keep going on. So it’ll be an interesting time with Michael Corbin, who’s running for Georgia State House District 97 as a Republican candidate. Hey, Michael, thanks for joining us.
00:00:32 – Michael Corbin
Hey, Rico. Thanks for having me. It’s always a pleasure. I was on a couple of years ago when I was running for Congressional District 7 at the time. And yeah, thank you for doing this and having candidates on so voters can hear directly from us and get a little bit more background about just also our stance on some of the issues.
00:00:52 – Rico Figliolini
For sure. The candidate interviews, funny enough, days or a week leading up to election is always the most searched on our website. So it’s always good to see that people actually look. It’s good that people are looking.
00:01:06 – Michael Corbin
Yeah, that’s good to know. Yeah, that people are looking and researching the candidates before they cast their vote.
00:01:13 – Rico Figliolini
Yeah, that does my heart well to see that. We’re going to be touching on a lot of subjects here tonight. We’re going to be touching a bit on school safety and education, public safety in general, jobs in the economy, healthcare, voting, election integrity, I forget too, its technology and online safety. So a bunch of topics that we’re going to start off with. Let’s get right into it. School safety and education. I know that obviously with more shootings going on, more active shootings, whether it’s schools or it’s a candidate like Donald Trump out in the field making speeches, there’s just a lot going on. It seems a lot more violent for some reason this year than most. But schools have, from some of the recent shootings, it just becomes, you almost feel like if you’re watching enough TikTok and Instagram, it feels like it’s happening all the time. But we should attend to school safety, right? I think one of the proposals you made was obviously, as many candidates do, that we should be looking to create a safer environment in our schools to protect our children from active shooters. So I guess the question would be, can you elaborate a little bit on what those solutions might look like? What are your thoughts about implementing what should be done along those lines?
00:02:41 – Michael Corbin
Yeah, definitely. And it is near and dear to my heart. Number one, both of my children are in public school here in the state of Georgia, right in our community. And you don’t want to be a parent worrying about your kid, not coming home at whatever level it is. They’re in elementary school now, but time flies and they’ll be getting into middle school as well as high school soon. And just to mention, it was a few weeks ago, right after Appalachee, there was a middle school student that was found with a gun for Duluth Middle School, which is where my daughters will be going. It’s where I went to middle school. So it’s near and dear to my heart. And my wife is a public school teacher here in Gwinnett County. So I am highly invested in this. There’s a lot of people that I think, you know, propose, I would say, feel good, do nothing proposals out there. Number one, because they’re too partisan in nature, you know, with red flag laws and gun safety. Those are such high overarching discussions that are going to take so long. And I’m tired of it. We, there’s things that we can do and we can do now to protect our kids. And yes, we need to, we need to look at some of the issues when it comes to gun safety and mental health and things of that nature. But why are we waiting to protect our kids? Why do we have metal detectors in airports to protect people that are traveling? Why do state legislators have to have people that come through the Capitol doors get screened for guns, right? So there’s all these technologies that are out there that we’re using in other places, courthouses, that we’re not putting into our schools. Why? That’s the question that I ask. That should be the most bipartisan thing that we can talk about is investing in the technology, security assessments and gaps to make our school safe. And nobody wants their kid going and feeling like they’re in prison. But I’d rather have my kid going to where I know somebody is going in and out of the school. And they’re being screened by and these days, I’m in technology, we have very state-of-the-art metal detectors that aren’t these you know 1980s looking metal detectors that you see and have. If you picture in your head they can be embedded in walls, you can put them in to where it doesn’t look like a prison. And we have the money as a state to spend on this, and we’re not doing it. You know, so you asked about your question, just to get back to that, but, you know, nobody likes to hear mandate, but, you know, we need to mandate having security assessments. Where are the gaps at every school? And then we need to make sure that those gaps are filled with the technology that’s available. You know, talking about metal detectors, cameras, alarms, at all ingress and egress points, entry exit points. Another simple thing that we can do is hire more school resource officers. You know, those jobs can exist. There’s people that want to do it. And you can maintain a ratio of student resource officers to student body enrollment. And then also, you know, mental health, right? We don’t have the mental health experts in our school system to identify. And once it has been identified to adequately deal with those people that may be vulnerable to using a gun or some type of violence. There’s a lot of things we can do right now.
00:06:34 – Rico Figliolini
Would it make sense to, obviously you want to prioritize things, right? Past shooters have always been a mental issue or family issues that starts it off. I don’t want to lessen the importance of metal detectors in schools, but if you look at the state of Georgia, how many times has an active shooter happened in the state of Georgia? How many schools do we have actually out there? And what type of investment would that be? I think that a lot of times that we find out that a child is just not being listened to. And if they were, we would know what the problem is, right? Several of these shooters had already been in touch with either school officials or police, and they weren’t taken seriously, right? So we’re prioritizing getting social psychologists into the schools, staff of that nature first, makes sense, and then work your way through. Because budgeting, you know how that works. It takes two years to budget a bill out of the senate or even that, right?
00:07:48 – Michael Corbin
Right. And it does and I agree. You know you have to, all of them were not really in, I would say an order of priority. Getting one of those things that I listed in action would be great and then work your way towards what you can work towards, because there will be an investment. You got to get it passed from a budget perspective. But I do believe that it can be done. There can be something that’s put in place. But yeah, we need people that can identify and deal with those situations and isolate those situations when it comes to known issues of mental health. Now, there’s going to be some that slip by, right? Even the best of mental health experts, the people that are around them, that’s going to happen. But I agree with you. Like most of these that we hear about, there were warning signs and there just weren’t adequate enough resources to take care of or help the individual that was affected. So I think that that’s an easier entry point in. And then the second piece is you’re not going to be able to catch all of it. And not all of them, a lot of them do have mental health, but some of them just could, it could just be somebody that, you know, wanted, gang violence, something else that, that comes up. So, you know, the technology would still have to cover for that because that person may not have been identified with somebody with a mental health issue. So it’s really kind of all encompassing, but I think we have to really have that comprehensive program in place to protect our students because they shouldn’t have to worry about going to school and dying and parents shouldn’t have to worry about sending their kids to school to die. I grew up through the Columbine, you know, school shooting. That was my senior year in high school. And it was kind of one of the first times it really hit home for everybody. And it was a very odd time. And even me, you know, as a high school senior, big football player, I was scared to death to go to school. We had no resources there to protect us. So I don’t want my kids growing up in that. I know nobody wants their kids growing up in that state.
00:09:54 – Rico Figliolini
Yeah, of course not. Like you said, the technology allows the ability if it’s done that way, to install these things so then you don’t feel like you’re in prison. Because that’s the biggest thing. I mean, I went to a public high school in Brooklyn, and that particular high school did not have, back then, those types of metal detectors. Although there was another high school a little further away from us that did, that I visited. And you could tell the night and day. I mean, it just felt like you were in a high, you know, in almost a high maximum security prison to some degree. You know, and they had to chain the doors shut and stuff. I mean, here in Georgia today, I mean, you have kids sometimes, I won’t say which particular high school it was, public high school, but the kids would just leave the building when they pleased and would just hang out somewhere not too far from there because that’s where they can either wait until the end of the school day and then go home or do whatever they were doing, but they would leave. They’d just walk out through the parking lot, just hang out somewhere at some office park or something. And you can’t stop them. The same way you can’t stop anyone from really walking into the building either. So you’re right. Having detection would be helpful, I guess.
00:11:14 – Michael Corbin
Yeah. And to your point, we have such great technology now that we can leverage to where students don’t have to feel that way and they can still be protected. Unlike, you know, back, when I was in high school or you were in high school, if they walked those in, were those archaic looking metal detectors and you felt like you’re going you’re into prison.
00:11:36 – Rico Figliolini
Yeah, for sure. So let’s stick on education a little bit and let’s talk a little bit about teacher pay, you know, specific steps about what it would mean to raise teacher pay, whether it’s a salary, a bonus, a signing bonus. What is the adequate amount? I mean, I know that sometimes these departments like the police, they have their tasks or they understand they need to hire a certain amount. They budgeted that money, and yet they cannot get enough candidates to fill the spots even. So I guess that works hand in hand. What do you see as a solution to something like that?
00:12:18 – Michael Corbin
You know, I do have to applaud Governor Kemp. He’s put a lot of emphasis on raising teacher pay. And I think that’s a great first step, but I think we need to continue doing that. And I think there’s reasonable ways to do it based off of inflation, but also just based off of certain criteria factors when it comes to really poverty level. When we’re looking at a teacher’s base salary, take my wife out of it. If she was raising our two kids and living in Peachtree Corners, well, she wouldn’t be living here. She can’t afford, she wouldn’t be able to afford it. It’s not attainable. So the problem is, you know, we don’t budget for it and we don’t feel like it’s necessary, I think as a society to pay teachers the amount of money that they’re worth. And eventually what happens in any industry is you will get unqualified people doing those jobs because people will move on to get higher paying jobs or they’ll quit. And my wife sees that all the time, especially in struggling school districts, right? We talk about, not to pivot away from teacher pay because teacher pay, there can be a, let’s just call it a path to progress kind of system put into place. We’ve got it in the corporate world. We can have it in the public service world as well when it comes to teachers. But the funny thing and is, it’s not funny, it’s teachers that teach in the hardest school districts sometimes get paid less or they still get paid the equal of teachers that are working in safer school districts with less transient families and their jobs are so much more challenging right? And we did pass the you know the voucher for the bottom 25 percent schools right you know to be able to take your child out and use that money to apply it somewhere else. And I think that’s a great thing for underperforming school districts. But the second step to that is we need to be able to pay teachers that are in those districts or attract teachers that want to be in those districts a higher wage. Otherwise, what’s going to change? If you have teachers that are not performing well today, we’re not able to incentivize those from a monetary perspective to do better or to attract people to get into a tougher situation and try to make education better in those areas, then we’re just going to be in a really bad cycle. So it kind of goes hand in hand, right? I think it depends on the school system you’re in, depends on where you’re teaching, and also depends on where that school ranks, how much you should get paid.
00:15:18 – Rico Figliolini
Right. True, for sure. And every county is not equal, right? And every district is not equal I know for example in where we live in Peachtree Corners, Simpsonwood, Simpson Elementary you know the PTA raises lots of money because of the affluence of the parents in the area and they share some of that with some sister schools so they’re not just keeping it to Simpson. But if you’re able to do that, that’s good. And if you’re in a district that can’t, then, well, that becomes a problem, right? Affordable housing is another issue. Not that I want to segue to that yet, but affordable housing for teachers that can actually live in the community that they’re teaching would be nice. You can’t do that in Peachtree Corners because there is not affordable housing here. I think housing starts, for the most part, any new housing now starts at like $400,000. Is that a starter home? Not really. Not for anyone that teaches or if there are two teachers in the family. So maybe, you know, do you see housing as being an issue as well? I mean, do you see the state looking at taking some responsibility for crafting the ability to have affordable housing in communities, but incentivizing developers to actually create affordable housing? Because they can, if they want to, if the rules are in the right place they can you’d have to restrict who buys those houses this way private companies like the biggest trend right now is is build to rent versus build to sell and things are moving that in that way because most people can’t afford to buy a house, although you’re probably paying the same in rent as you would for a mortgage, if you could get that mortgage. So it’s no different. In some cases, you’re paying even more in rent than you would for a mortgage. So do you see the state doing something along those lines economically to help? What do you think that could look like from your point of view?
00:17:23 – Michael Corbin
I would think it would be a cost of living adjustment based on where they’re teaching for housing specifically. So I wouldn’t say it would be government-owned housing or anything like that to put them in, but I think you can look at it from a cost of living adjustment. You do that in the corporate world today, right? If you move from Atlanta to New York to take a job, you get most companies will give you a cost of living adjustment to make sure that you can have the same type of lifestyle or at least similar based on where you’re coming from to where you’re going to based on housing prices, all the other different economic factors that are going to influence you. So if we’re doing that at the corporate level across many states and even countries, I’m pretty sure we can fix it here with counties and school districts. Data is not that hard to really gather. And thanks to AI, it can spit it out pretty dang quick in terms of what those adjustments probably would be. I’m not saying we’re going to use AI to do that, but it’s not rocket science. But to answer your question, yes. If you’re living in Peachtree Corners or an area that, that has a, you know, higher standard of living just to be able to get by and you don’t want to have to drive three hours to work because that’s what’s happening in a lot of cases, then there could be a cost of living adjustment that would be able to help bridge that gap when it comes to housing, whether it’s buying or renting.
00:19:02 – Rico Figliolini
And you’re right. I mean, there are people that are traveling and all sorts of things. There are a couple of people I know that work in Peachtree Corners, and they live in Sugar Hill or Beaufort, and they’re driving south here. So, yeah, because they can’t afford to live here, and yet they work in the city of Peachtree Corners. I think as many people work in the city sometimes as work outside the city is the way that it was pointed out at one point. I don’t know if that stat has changed, but with new housing coming in, new apartments, new townhomes, these things aren’t cheap. $750,000 starting. I don’t know who can afford to buy that. When I was at the Peachtree Aquinas Festival, a couple came by, a young couple. They found out that the boyfriend was a real estate agent. They’re late 20s, early 30s maybe. And they were looking at buying a townhouse on the green. You know, those things are like easy, $750, $800.
00:20:01 – Michael Corbin
Yeah. They’re like mini brownstones in New York. It’s like they, you know, put them on their beautiful townhomes list.
00:20:13 – Rico Figliolini
Oh yeah, they’re really nice townhomes. And you want to listen to the concert across the way sit out on your patio and do that.
00:20:18 – Michael Corbin
Exactly, exactly. So yeah it’s a nice area. There’s been a lot of building going around, you know at Peachtree Corners and say, hey, that’s where I want to start my life? And not many. It’s expensive.
00:20:54 – Rico Figliolini
So let’s talk a little bit like that because you’ll be representing, if you’re elected, District 97 represents more than Peachtree Corners, but Peachtree Corners is part of that representation, right? A great bit of it, yeah. And, you know, we look at ourselves as a smart city. Different cities, like Alpharetta has like 700 different tech companies, let’s say there, right? They’re probably one of the most populous of the smallest cities outside Atlanta with tech companies. What do you see the state’s responsibility in to be able to help a place like ours, like Peachtree? I want to be centric to Peachtree Corners. What could you leverage to help create jobs here or support small businesses or startups in the city of Peachtree Corners? How should the state be working with localities like us?
00:21:56 – Michael Corbin
Yeah, to me, it’s about just making it easier to do business, right? When it comes to Peachtree Corners, there’s a very specific plan. And I know that. You know, it’s, we’re a tech hub or we’re going to continue doing that with incubation of tech. And we’re going to continue attracting that type of talent here. We’re providing easy access for companies to come in here and whether that’s, you know, through some type of, want to call it a stimulus, but, you know, some sort of incentives that we can give to different cities based off of what type of industries that that city is trying to attract to their communities would be huge, right? Because cities are all in competition with each other. And yeah, so you’re trying to attract tech companies, Alpharetta is trying to attract tech companies, the city of Atlanta is, and you have to really get it specific to what those cities are trying to attract. And that’s where we’re at in our community. We’re not in an industrial community in South Georgia or a farming community. To support the businesses that want to go there long-term and that the state has the backs of those communities based on the type of business that they’re trying to cultivate within their communities. Because schools and businesses are the lifeline of communities when it comes to their success or failure, if the schools start to fail and the businesses start to fail, the people start to leave their houses, the housing market crashes and you end up with a failed city. So you have to invest in business and you have to invest in the businesses that those cities want to attract. And you have to invest in the school systems that are in those, in those areas as well.
00:24:07 – Rico Figliolini
For sure. When you go back just to the 20th century, when Ford decided to make his line of cars and stuff, how to educate the plant workers to be able to operate the systems right? So it’s no different today in a way, right? You have to have an educated workforce to be able to do things. So, for example, Intuitive Robotics, which is building their campus here in the middle of Peachtree Corners, they have 500 jobs. They look to expand to 1,200 jobs. They’re always constantly recruiting. It’s an assemblage plant, so they don’t manufacture anything, but they put things together there. The parts come from other places, but they need skilled labor to be able to do that. And they look at what they can hire local, and they don’t need, necessarily college level. If you have a kid graduating from a good STEM school that does not want to spend four years in college because they feel, I’ve learned CAD, I’ve learned 3D printing, I understand coding, they could go right out in the workforce through Melchior and be trained in that environment. Do you see, you know, I mean, we don’t have shop classes, for example. I mean, you don’t learn, unless you’re in a STEM school, you’re not able to learn any niche stuff like that, right? Do you see any changes needed in the school system to be able to accommodate the kids that don’t want to go to college at that level and be indebted $100,000 and then decide that what they went for, they’re not going to be doing that job. They’re going to be doing something else. Because that’s what’s happening for the most part. If you’re not a doctor or an accountant, you’re doing philosophy or psychology, you might not end up in the job that you think you want.
00:26:09 – Michael Corbin
Yeah, I think it needs to be identified. And there needs to be a pathway for those students. I think, you know, not everything in life is linear and maybe they change their mind. But there are kids that, you know, and students that have that aptitude and that’s what they want to do. And there needs to be curriculum that will foster that, number one. And number two, be able to identify and make sure that those students are on the right path. Because there are a lot of great programs out there. I mean, Gwinnett Tech’s one school system here in Georgia, just down the road, that does miraculous things when it comes to scholarships, to training and all kinds of different trades, and not just kids out of high school. I mean, there’s adults that can get in there, get trained and come out and be making 80, 90, and be making 120 thousand dollars with no liberal arts degree, college, no master’s degree, no nothing. And they love what they do. So I think you have to identify that. But you also have to have those classes for those students that have been identified, because I don’t think every, if you force all the students into it, some of them are just going to take up spots of people that really are serious about it. So I think you have to identify it, get them in there, cultivate it and get them on a path that will either send them to a technical college or a technical program, depending on what their decision is after high school. But I mean, we’ve got, you know, Paul Duke STEM. So I mean that is, you know every time my wife goes in there because they have training in there for her for Gwinnett county she’s like, this place is ridiculous like you should see it. I still have not seen it. You know, they just don’t, it’s hard, which it should be, it’s hard to get into a school. So I can’t just go in there. I would have to go maybe with my wife while she was going there for some training or something. But she’s like, you know, it’s amazing. So we need to be building more of those. I think we’re blessed to have that in our community so close by.
00:28:22 – Rico Figliolini
For sure. Let’s talk a little.
00:28:24 – Michael Corbin
To your point, just, yeah, sorry, go ahead.
00:28:25 – Rico Figliolini
No, go ahead.
00:28:28 – Michael Corbin
To your point, I think we are producing too many people that go into college. And there’s a high percentage of those folks that could go into the working force immediately. And businesses are looking for that talent, to your point, that we could be tapping into right here in our backyard and keeping those businesses here and keeping the talent here and helping the community. I don’t think that’s happening. I think that we can make sure that that happens by funding those programs at the public school level.
00:28:58 – Rico Figliolini
So keeping businesses here, I guess part of that, you know, so part of it’s education, part of it is taxation, part of it’s health care costs for their employees and for the company. One of the things you talk about is the continuing rise of health care. And especially for people that need specialists, you know, out of pocket becomes more expensive. Everything’s just becoming more expensive. I mean, whether you’re going shopping or wherever you’re going, healthcare is no different. Although that doesn’t really have a price that you can look at. You don’t usually see the price until way after you get the bill of the explanation of benefits all of a sudden. And you may not realize how much you’re out of pocket. How do you see your position if you were to win the seat? You know, what innovative solutions would be in mind when it comes to healthcare in the state of Georgia?
00:29:59 – Michael Corbin
Yeah, you know, there’s been a lot talked about when it comes to health care. You know, Kemp has the Pathways program that he pushes outside of, you know, expanding Medicare here in the state of Georgia. But when it comes to just having health care in general, let’s just take it back to a general statement here. You know, everybody should have access to healthcare, whether you want to, whether you want to say it’s, you know, a socialist thing, a non-socialist thing, I think it’s a human thing. But at the same time, people that can afford healthcare shouldn’t be price gouged. So there’s that balance. And I think it comes with competition in that space. Working in the corporate world for over 20 years now, I mean, I haven’t put a percentage on it, but it would have to be 50% at least higher than I probably did when I first entered the workforce after college for medical expenses. And at that time I didn’t even have a family, but you know, it’s so hard. And I’ve seen so many people that I’ve worked with get crushed in a year, literally crushed in a year financially because of the healthcare program that they have. I had a friend with hip surgery. And then his wife had multiple medical visits. And with the high deductible and premium, ate up everything, things that could have been socked away for savings for them for retirement, for their kids. And in my opinion, the insurance companies, the medical industries are ripping off and taking advantage of middle-class Americans. I think it’s a universal right to have healthcare, but I also think it’s a universal wrong to punish those that are middle-class Americans that don’t have very much choice other than to take what’s given them by their company. There’s no competition really. They go out and they shop it right? Per se, the companies do. But how can you really trust that? When they talked about price transparency, you get the statement in the mail afterwards. You see what they charge, you don’t see the cost. I don’t see what they paid. No. I would love to see their margins.
00:32:27 – Rico Figliolini
Yes. I mean, the cost and the pays. Yeah, you don’t. And even if you’re using healthcare.gov to do comparisons between plans, let’s say if you went out yourself to do it, right? There’s so many. It’s not a price per price. It’s not apples to apples. It’s like car insurance in a way. You know, someone says, well, I can get that cheaper. Sure you can. But, you know, you’re getting the same liability coverage, same comprehensive insurance. There’s too many variables to be able to say, to be able to shop it smartly. You almost need AI to actually do it for you. Because this way at least you can get a sense of what the real costs are, which is going to be also something that’s going to be happening. And I’m sure the state, the elected officials, as well as some of the insurance commissioners are going to have to look at. Now with what happened with Hurricane Helene coming through and causing billions of dollars in damage, it’s probably the most expensive hurricane in a century. I’ve seen insurance companies leave a state because they just can’t afford to insure anyone in that state. I mean, most people, I think in the state of Georgia, I think the percentage was less than 1% of the people that had huge flood damage are insured for flood damage. Most insurance doesn’t carry that. And so they’re going to be looking at FEMA, if FEMA even can help them in the short term. It can help them in the short term. Do you, there’s businesses that are affected by it too, see, just like Ingles shopping center locally, for example. Their main distribution was out of the Carolinas, completely flooded. Probably some of their servers were damaged there too. They were taking the financial charges from their stores because they’re only accepting cash at this store, for example, in Peachtree Corners. They’re not even accepting card.
00:34:28 – Michael Corbin
Yeah. Well, we shop there all the time. My wife went there on Monday or Tuesday, and they were only accepting cash. The lines were so long, she had to go up to Lidl.
00:34:36 – Rico Figliolini
Really?
00:34:40 – Michael Corbin
Yes. We never shopped there, but yeah, she didn’t have time to wait.
00:34:49 – Rico Figliolini
Yeah. I mean, and I shopped there a pretty decent amount of times and, just, having seen that there almost felt like, what’s happening here, wow. But you know, that’s one store. Previlex gets most of this stuff coming out of Florida. Wasn’t as bad, I guess, as South Carolina. But how do you work with businesses then, that are being hit by insurance and how they have to provide it to their employees? Disasters like this happening, how do you cut through red tape? How do you make businesses able to survive in situations like this? Can the state do anything along those lines?
00:35:26 – Michael Corbin
The state probably can, but I also want to look at the insurance companies, those that say, we can’t afford to insure people in the state anymore. If you’re saying that you’re going to make an exit from the state, then your entrance to the state should be that much more rigorous when it comes to checking your books. If you’re going to tell me that you’re that broken when it comes your financials, then I need to see your books. If you’ve been doing business in our state for 10 years and we had one natural disaster and now you’re saying you’re going to exit, I want to see your books. So if there’s going to be laws about if you’re going to be doing business in our state as an insurer. And I don’t want to make it completely ridiculous or almost impossible, but there’s companies that want to come in and do business, insurance companies in the state of Georgia. But if you tell them, hey, here’s the guidelines, if you enter, if you try to exit, this is what we’re going to do when we look. We’re going to look at your books. We’re going to look at your profitability. We’re going to see what you guys were doing because if you were not adequately keeping enough cash on hand to be able to help out your customers to where you’re now so razor thin and you can’t survive another national disaster, then you shouldn’t probably ever been here in the first place. Or you just mismanaged your finances.
00:36:49 – Rico Figliolini
And there’s been insurance companies like health insurance companies that have left the state because they don’t want to insure here anymore to one reason or another.
00:37:00 – Michael Corbin
But I don’t think they, and I’ll have to fact check myself on this one, but I don’t think there’s penalties for them leaving.
00:37:09 – Rico Figliolini
I don’t believe so.
00:37:09 – Michael Corbin
So they get in, and we let them in because we want the business. But if you want in, what is the penalty to get out because things may have changed or maybe they didn’t change? And you just want to get out right?
00:37:28 – Rico Figliolini
That’s when you need a real strong insurance commissioner that doesn’t bend to the will of the companies. But you need the legislation in place, I think, right? To be able to… You do. You have to have the laws to hold them accountable. Yeah. Let’s move away from that a little bit. We’re obviously heading towards November. The VP debate was recent, and it was a bit of a snooze. I think most people were just like, I hear people say, well, fell asleep during part of it and stuff. I mean, they were very nice to each other, which was good. It was a little different than usual, right? I think they both spoke well, although not that I’m a Trump supporter, but J.D. Vance actually spoke better, I think, than Walz. Probably a little bit more experience, maybe. But, you know, we’re moving towards that. We’re moving towards an election where Georgia may or may not be a swing state, probably is. You know one of the things that I think you mentioned is voter and election integrity and the voting down the ballot right because do people follow down the ballot. Do they stop at some point? You know, what is, so I guess that’s the topic that will get hotter as we get closer to the elections, although early voting has already started in some states. I think it has started. I think it started in Georgia.
00:39:03 – Michael Corbin
Right. Early, 15th in Georgia, but absentee voting has already started. North Carolina has already started, I believe, early voting, yeah. That’s another major issue there because a lot of them can’t vote because they’re obviously, the disaster.
00:39:23 – Rico Figliolini
So how do you ensure what do you, you know, how do you ensure elections are going to be secure and accessible to every voter in the state of Georgia? I mean, are you comfortable with the way the system’s run at this point?
00:39:38 – Michael Corbin
So, you know, this is always one of those issues that bothers me, you know, being a Republican because you can’t make everybody happy. Like it’s, hey, are you a Kemp supporter? Are you a Trump supporter? Did you believe the election was stolen? Did you not believe it was stolen? And, you know, the past is the past. And I think, you know, we had some flaws in our election process, right? Without voter IDs, I think most, if not all states, there’s only a few, and Georgia was one of them that didn’t have that. And a lot of blame got pushed on to Raffensperger and to Kemp, but nobody foresaw COVID happening, right? Massive absentee balloting coming in. So he’s fixed it. You know, and I think there’s going to be much more secure elections. I think it’s being taken seriously. I think Kemp has been a good governor of the state. He’s got like a 60 percent approval rating, which is, you know, fantastic. I mean, even among Democrats, he’s got a pretty high approval rating. So he’s done a great thing when it comes to, he’s done a lot of great things, I think, for the state of Georgia. It’s just this internal battle between, do you think the voting is still going to be fair and secure here in Georgia? And yes, I do. From a technology perspective, people say they can or can’t be hacked. It would take a lot and those machines are pretty, I would say from a technology perspective, pretty archaic. It would be very obvious that they were. So I feel confident that the votes that are cast are going to be correct and that we’re going to have a fair election. You know, when it comes to whether people think the laws that were passed are fair or not, I think that just comes down to people wanting to win. And you know, and what is more fair and what is less fair, but, you know, most states have always had a photo ID to vote and you have to have a photo ID to prove who you are for just about anything in life. And one of the most important things that we have in our country is to vote and you should be able to prove that you are who you say you are. And that is one of the biggest things that’s going to safeguard our elections moving forward. There’s too many other hosts of conspiracy theories that I don’t entertain or get into. And as a Republican, people will gripe up and down about me because I’m not going to entertain that because I’m going to look forward and look forward to what we fix and making sure that every vote cast is one that’s going to be true and valid.
00:42:36 – Rico Figliolini
Great. I mean, I feel the same. I mean, looking forward makes sense. And voter ID, I just don’t understand why no one would want that. Because you have to, if you buy cigarettes or alcohol, you have to show an ID to be able to do those things in life. And like you said, most things you have to show some sort of identification. And to say that we don’t need that for voting, there’s no respect then for the system that so many people have died for. I mean, I just don’t get that.
00:43:17 – Michael Corbin
Yeah, I don’t get it either. And it was very disheartening back when that bill was passed and you saw even Major League Baseball go as far to take the All-Star game out of Atlanta over that. Why african-americans, not people born of the dominican or venezuela or curacao or anywhere else, african-americans that are truly from america why that’s dwindled and dwindled and dwindled and he is calling out the state of Georgia racist. He polled, I think, all five African-American players in Major League Baseball now to get their opinion in the United States, not outside of the United States, Mr. Commissioner, and taking money out of the state of Georgia over political stances. So it was very disheartening to see that you would play politics and hurt the economy of a city over something that was so simple, like you just mentioned, showing an ID.
00:44:43 – Rico Figliolini
Yeah, that doesn’t, an ID being racist. Yeah, I don’t. That doesn’t mean anyone’s racist. If anything, I think what might have helped, and I don’t think the bill provided it, is that an easy pathway to get that ID. Because not everyone needs a driver’s license, right? So a state photo ID, you know, you shouldn’t have to travel 30 miles away to be able to get that. To make it as easy as possible for anyone that needs an ID to be able to get it at least the initial time in their life and then they can renew it later online or it lasts for 10 years, just like a passport lasts for 10 years, and then you have to renew a passport, right? It’s no different. I mean, if it’s just, as long as there’s no barriers to getting an ID, a photo ID, then there should be no problem with that. But I think that’s, you know, where people get into the muck and stuff.
00:45:41 – Michael Corbin
Yeah, and, you know, there could have been, you know, some provisional. You know, I would just say, flip notes to that bill of, you know, we will be building out, you know, more centers to be able to get voter IDs based on areas where they’re lacking. You know, I think that would have been something that was, would be very prudent. And saying that, hey, you know, if there are gaps, we will do an assessment and see if there are gaps when it comes to people’s accessibility to get, to being able to get to a physical location, to get an ID. And we will build that out and make sure that those are, you know, whether they’re smaller, let’s call them satellite offices and not a major DMV, way to get there and get those licenses or I call it licenses, voter ID, call it just an identification card. So I agree. I haven’t actually, being completely transparent, dug into the data to see how many centers there are based on the population, based on travel. But, you know, there’s probably some room for, or I would say opportunity for growth there.
00:46:56 – Rico Figliolini
Okay. So I have, we’re actually at a good point to start winding down on the interview. What have we not spoken about that you think that we, you want to share in the next few minutes. Any issues that you want to cover that we haven’t?
00:47:14 – Michael Corbin
I would say we’ve covered a lot of them. You know, I would just urge any voters that are, that do look this up, because voters do look it up you know when they come down to the ballot, whether it’s them standing in line, looking at their phone, being like, I saw Mike Corbin sign, let me look at his website, what the heck is he about? I mean, sometimes it takes that, and sometimes people just go up and down the ballot. What we have to, and this is starting to become a potential threat in our government at all levels, local, state, and federal, is down-the-ballot voting. And more so in state than anything because they’re often overlooked, but they’re very important. And they impact your life faster than any federal legislation. And Peachtree Corners does even quicker. So people don’t pay attention. People need to pay attention to what people like me are running for. Why I even ran, why I even care. And it’s because I love this community. I love this state. And you have to make sure that who you’re voting for has your back. And if you don’t feel like they do, then don’t vote for them. And there’s some nefarious characters out there that have now determined and have made public that they know they can get in regardless and push their own agenda and not really even care about their own party because it’s not really their party. They just will get on a ballot because they’ll get into a district where they know that down the ballot will win because it’s a Democrat or Republican district. So I just urge people to really look into the backgrounds of the candidates that are running, especially for state office, because you may end up with people in there that don’t have Georgia’s best interest, don’t have America’s best interest in mind, and eventually it will become a national security threat. So people just need to really look into that because there is a blueprint out there for people to infiltrate into our government at the state level and continue to work their way up at the federal level.
00:49:29 – Rico Figliolini
If anyone wants to find out more about Michael Corbin, where would they go?
00:49:35 – Michael Corbin
It’s www.CorbinForGA.com
00:49:41 – Rico Figliolini
All right, cool. So if anyone has any comments, you could leave it in the comments, either on here, if you’re watching it on Facebook or on YouTube. If you’re listening to this as an audio podcast or from the website, I’ll have show notes so you could find these links as well. Early voting starts the 15th, we said. And in-person voting is November 5th, if I remember that right.
00:50:07 – Michael Corbin
Yep, that’s correct. All the early voting locations are on the Secretary of State website, as well as the Gwinnett Elections website.
00:50:16 – Rico Figliolini
Excellent. And if anyone wants to reach you directly, how would they email you, or where would they email or call?
00:50:23 – Michael Corbin
You can email me directly anytime. People do all the time. I will respond right back. So it’s just michael.corbin@corbinforgeorgia.com.
00:50:35 – Rico Figliolini
Excellent. Alright Michael, I appreciate you being with me this evening and having this discussion. Everyone else that’s listening, so why don’t you hang in there for a second, but everyone else that’s listening, there’ll be other interviews over the next few weeks. Certainly look at the candidates that are representing not only, you know, in the state house, but where they’re representing, right? So the majority of District 97 is Peachtree Corners. So you should really understand who’s representing you. And like Michael said, look into the backgrounds of everyone, where they stand on certain issues and such. Whatever is important to you, and make sure that you go out and vote. Thank you, everyone.
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