Latest / Breaking The Meta / Georgia Sat on $14 Billion. You Got $250.
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- Breaking The Meta: Hello everyone and welcome to Breaking the Meta. name is Mike Winson. Today I am sitting down with Ryan Fountain who is running for Georgia's State House District 11. Hello Ryan, how are you doing today? Ryan Fountain: I'm doing pretty good, super busy today. One of my only off Breaking The Meta: Ha Ryan Fountain: days from my day job and I'm spending it doing everything I possibly can. Breaking The Meta: There you go. Yep. I feel that one. I feel that one. To start off, because not everyone knows Georgia, could you give us an idea of what area of Georgia is encompassed in House District 11? Ryan Fountain: Yeah. So house district 11 encompasses primarily Pickens County, going around the city of Jasper and a little bit into, Tate, little fun fact is that's actually the, marble capital of Georgia. so the state house itself and a bunch of other, places that used marble when they were building 50, 60, years ago or a hundred years ago came from right there. I also Breaking The Meta: Yep. Ryan Fountain: have, ball ground, which is actually my hometown. It's inside Cherokee County. And then a little bit of Forsyth County. doesn't really have any major cities in there, but it's a nice rural farm area. Jasper is right in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. So as you're going down the highway, you can look out and see mountain ranges with a bunch of pine trees and other things. Breaking The Meta: Yep. So let's start off with the hardest part of the entire interview. Could you give us a little background on who you are and why you decided to run in the first place? Ryan Fountain: Yeah. So like you said, my name's Ryan fountain. I'm turning 30 this year and I've always been kind of interested in politics. It's been one of my hobbies because I like just debating with people. I don't know why it's just fun talking about different beliefs and just seeing where Breaking The Meta: Mm-hmm. Ryan Fountain: everyone stands. Well, when Donald Trump won again, uh, I felt the need that I have to get into politics. at this point, stuff needs to change. And it doesn't look like, it did not look like my state house representatives are really doing anything to benefit lower class and middle class people. Or they were only focusing on big tech, the millionaires, billionaires and trying to account for them. And I'm living paycheck to paycheck. I'm an ATM technician. You would think that that would pay pretty well, but all things considered, it's not really that much. And so that I felt needed to change. And then. On top of that, I was just mad. Like to be completely honest, I was mad Breaking The Meta: Mm. Ryan Fountain: at the state of everything. Georgia actually has a $14 billion surplus of tax funds. And instead of using that to, uh, go into social programs, actually fully fix our infrastructure or try and modernize our, uh, election systems, they're going to just give a tax rebate of, think it was like $250, which I don't know about you is enough for. maybe 10 items at the grocery store and half a tank of gas. So yeah, Breaking The Meta: Yeah, especially nowadays. Ryan Fountain: especially with the gas prices shooting up. But yeah, and so that's where I'm at now is I felt the need to get into politics to try and make a change because I didn't see anyone in my district actually going for trying to make the change. And so I wanted to be the one that made the difference. Breaking The Meta: As you have gone around and talked to the people in your district, what are the pain points? What are the things that most people are talking to you about where they could use help from you, assuming you get in? Ryan Fountain: Primarily, it is affordability. It is always coming back to how much money do they have on their paycheck and how far is that going? And I get that. Like I said, I'm paycheck to paycheck myself. A few of the things that I have been telling them that I can do, because I don't like to promise things that I don't believe I can get done. I like to under promise and over deliver, if that makes sense. Breaking The Meta: Mm-hmm. Ryan Fountain: The, far as affordability is concerned, there's a lot of things that can go into it to make it better. but one of the things that I'm focused on as a. Like millennial or younger millennial Gen Z type person is I'm focusing on the technology that's coming into these, Walmart, Kroger, all these big box stores, they're looking into using AI as well as using the, digital, labels, digital labels where they can change the prices of them at the press of a button. Breaking The Meta: Mm. Yeah. Ryan Fountain: And that's cool. I like that. That is really good, innovation to save time. Cause instead of having four or five people going around, putting stickers on everything, it can just be done in five minutes. The problem Breaking The Meta: Yep. Yep. Ryan Fountain: is, is that with the AI coming out, they are having the cameras that are watching as people are coming in using the data on their like Walmart plus app to know what they're going to be probably buying. And then there is proven like there are studies shown that they're already looking into watching you with the cameras, seeing when you go to the milk, know that you typically go for the higher priced items and bump it up by like 10 cents, not enough for you to notice. Breaking The Meta: Mmm. Ryan Fountain: But when you're talking about a scale of multiple millions of dollars Breaking The Meta: Wow. Ryan Fountain: in sales a day, that adds up for them. Breaking The Meta: Yeah. Ryan Fountain: And I want to, one of the things that I want to push is a legislation just to say, Hey, you can use these electronic labels. But if you set a price, it has to stay that way for 24 hours. So that Breaking The Meta: Mm. Ryan Fountain: way they can't just change it at a whim. As you're looking at it, they can, it allows them to still go with surge pricing or whatever. If like we get snow storms and they increase the price of milk and bread, but it stops them from constantly bumping it up and try and nickel and dime us across that way. Uh, another point is the actual like infrastructure. Pickens County used to be a hub. Like I mentioned, it was the Marble County. or marble capital of Georgia. And in like recent years, it's kind of died down. I was just Breaking The Meta: Mm. Ryan Fountain: in Jasper and on Main Street where there was this really great little coffee shop called the Red Bean. Highly recommend it. It's cool. There's another couple of stores down where the guy that I was talking to there, he says foot traffic is almost impossible to get people in. And Breaking The Meta: Mm. Ryan Fountain: that's just because there's a major highway about a mile away that's taking everyone right past Jasper up into the Blue Ridge mountains. Breaking The Meta: Yeah. Ryan Fountain: And people aren't really sticking around to small town anymore. And so that is kind of hard for them. They're open six days a week and yet at the same time, they're just barely getting by. So stuff like that, just typical affordability and trying to make sense of the current economic status of Georgia. Breaking The Meta: Yeah. Has there been a lot of effects in your district when it comes to the ACA subsidies getting taken away or the snap benefit change, the changes, the change in requirements, the snap benefits? Ryan Fountain: I haven't actually had enough time to speak with people about that specifically. I have a few more committee meetings or like county meetings I'm going to. But if I can assume I would, it would be yes. we already had one hospital closed down in recent years because they just didn't have enough funding. And Breaking The Meta: Mm. Ryan Fountain: I can almost assure you that most of the people in my district are going to be on either Medicaid or Medicare. and so we need to get that expansion going into try and save our rural hospitals. and as far as, everything else, like I, I wish I could give you more, but I haven't had a chance to fully talk with them and I don't want to speak Breaking The Meta: Yeah, no, that's fine. Ryan Fountain: to them as if I'd know what they're going through when I haven't spoken with them yet. Breaking The Meta: Absolutely understandable. One of the other issues that is a constant problem, especially when it comes to our politicians, is this idea of accountability or the lack thereof. What does accountability look like to you? What does being held accountable by the people in your district look like? Ryan Fountain: I love this. So the reason I love this is cause I was like, I was speaking to those business owners. asked, do you know who your representative is? And they had no idea. Breaking The Meta: Ha ha ha. Ryan Fountain: Uh, and so I'm like, okay, his name is Rick Jaspers. Uh, he's been in office since 2010. So you think more people would know. Yeah. Uh, and Breaking The Meta: Wow. Ryan Fountain: it's funny how they don't know who he is. And it could be because before recent years, politics was kind of like a personal thing, not really a public thing. but not knowing who it is, is a problem for me. So accountability to me means that when I make a choice on a bill, if I vote yes or no, you should be able to call me and tell me I was an idiot or not. you should be able to contact me at any point during business hours. got to save a little bit of work life balance, but any point during the day, You should be able to contact me and tell me what you believe I should do. I am a representative of you. And so on my website, I have a Calendly link for people to set up like 30 minutes just to speak with me. I have my personal phone number listed. I haven't my email listed. have as many ways as I can think of for people to contact me as possible because I need them to speak for me so that I can speak for them. other than that, was it Linda B Johnson? The buck stops here. that's my viewpoint on things there. I was in a JR to see in at Creekview high school. And one thing that stuck with me was when you're in charge, when you're like a squad leader or whatnot, and granted this is high school, it's not actually in the military, but you're responsible for every decision that people in your squad make. So in my eyes, if I am your representative and one of my team members makes a post that maybe I don't agree with and they just went off script, I'm responsible for that. That is my statement because they are on my team. So, let me mute that. Sorry about that. Breaking The Meta: You're good. Ryan Fountain: But yeah, so. That's, that's accountability to me is owning up to your choices, being able to be reached by the people that you're supposed to be representing and any statements that you or your team make. is where it ends. It's it ends with you. Breaking The Meta: Georgia is a purple state. Ryan Fountain: Yes. Breaking The Meta: Nope. Ryan Fountain: Sorry, that's my work phone and they're trying to, let me just fully mute this. I didn't think that they were gonna call me on my day off, but they did. All right, continue. Yes. Breaking The Meta: Welcome to welcome to businesses. Georgia is a purple state, and Ryan Fountain: Yes. Breaking The Meta: that means that there are Republicans and Democrats in every district, probably, almost definitely. What has been your experience like interacting with people that are Republicans, especially after this last year of volatility, price increases, the now war in Iran, has that changed the way that people have interacted with you in a way that they may not have before? Ryan Fountain: I wish I could say yes, but it kind of hasn't. Breaking The Meta: Mm. Ryan Fountain: my district is very, very red. There, it has not voted a Democrat into office in the history of the state. Breaking The Meta: wow. Ryan Fountain: Yeah. so I fully believe that they are kind of set in their ways on I'm going to vote Republican versus Democrat. However, there is a little bit of mutual respect in a way. And it could be just because it's me and the way I talk with them. Uh, but it kind of feels more in line with like the, uh, back in 2008, 2012, when Obama was running and, uh, his opponent said, no, he's a good guy. We just disagree on policy. That's the way I view them. Uh, most of the time. The people that I'm speaking with are intellectual people. They do have their own views and I disagree with their views, but usually I'm able to see past why they are saying what they're saying and put myself in their shoes. and on top of that, I've had interactions with people where they are saying like, okay, I don't agree with you on these stances, but I can see where you're coming from. And that's cause I'm not trying to. preach my message like I'm holier than now. I just want you to see that I'm here for everyone and it doesn't matter what political ideation you have. I'm trying to make sure that I'm going to be a good representative for you. And I think that people kind of respect that tone because they're probably used to Democrats that are going down and basically saying, no, you're horrible for thinking that we should support abortion or whatnot. I'm trying to like basically talk down to them. I don't have a college degree. I went to college for one semester, and dropped out cause I was like, this is too expensive. Breaking The Meta: Mm-hmm. Ryan Fountain: and so I feel like on a certain level, I am speaking on their level as an everyday person that just got fed up with everything and wants to run for politics now. Breaking The Meta: Let's let's take a little time and do a little future casting. So November 3rd comes along and I know you said it's a very Republican district and they don't normally vote Democrats in but surprise surprise you you've you flip the seat you do something that your district has never seen before. January comes along and you're sworn in what are the first things that you do? Ryan Fountain: As a joke, uh, get ready for my 20, 28 presidency. Cause, uh, it'd be about the same chance Breaking The Meta: Ha ha ha ha! Ryan Fountain: of me winning. I w I would go for it. Cause I got bigger ideas that I would have to do at the federal scale. Uh, in actuality, if I'm sworn in, first thing that I'm going to be doing is figuring out which committees I'm going to try and get on. Breaking The Meta: Mm. Ryan Fountain: Uh, ideally I would want to be on education, uh, transportation and infrastructure. Reason why is I want. things better for our students. I personally hate the voucher system that Georgia pushed for public schools to basically lose funding so that we can fund private schools. And I want to rectify that, focus on getting money back into our public schools because we need those. My district only has four private schools and each one is a religious private school. Like I don't hate private schools, just to be clear. Like there are times when private schools are needed for like special needs and everything else. What I have a problem with is that we are giving taxpayer money to schools that are not able to be held accountable because we're not able to go in, verify their curriculum, make sure that they're doing right by the students. and we should, if we're going to give them taxpayer money, we should be able to audit them and that's not happening. so once I get on those committees, then I'm going to start pushing for everything that I want to do. I'm going to be a brand new face, bottom of the totem pole. And if people in Democrats or Republicans aren't listening, I'm going to just shout it from the rooftop. I like to say that because I'm not a politician, I'm doing this because I'm mad at the system that I have no qualms with destroying the system to make it work. Breaking The Meta: Mm. Ryan Fountain: like basic things, need a change to the heartbeat bill. That's one of the key things that maybe I don't agree with the democratic party on. but I also don't agree with Republicans who want no abortion. My view is that abortions In my opinion should be between a woman and her doctor and maybe the father is involved. Um, but on the grand scheme of things to actually get that policy passed, because I only want to focus on things again, under promise over, uh, deliver. I'm only going to give you what I think I can actually get passed in that right now is a four week extension to, uh, the heartbeat bill, which cuts it at six weeks. want to move it to 10. The reason why is because that would actually allow women to have a chance to one realize that they're pregnant and then Breaking The Meta: Mm-hmm. Ryan Fountain: go in. make a choice on should I get an abortion or not for a little context. I'm the oldest of four and of those four, I was the only one that was planned. My younger Breaking The Meta: Mm. Ryan Fountain: brother, was a condom baby. My sister was a pill baby and my youngest brother was a vasectomy baby. My parents did everything they could to try and not have kids. and yet they still got up with four kids. But back Breaking The Meta: Wow. Ryan Fountain: in 2001, when my youngest brother was, born, there was no restriction on abortion. My mother and father had time to go and make The choice talk with grandparents talk with, or talk with my grandparents talk with, themselves, figure out the financial aspects, see if it was physically like feasible. Cause again, that's for children and they're already not in like upper class. fortunately they decided like, yes, we should keep this because we can, we can probably make it work. And now my brother is a special needs teacher and doing great things, but had they not had that time and we're stuck with like, we got to make a decision in one week. Otherwise we're not going be able to get abortion. They probably would have just niche a knee jerk on and got the abortion. So just giving time for people to make an educated decision is important. so that's one of things I'm going to be pushing for. I also want to push, other legislation that we can get into later. cause I don't want to hold up too much of your time, but I, I can talk for hours. Breaking The Meta: I mean, this is this is about you. You are more than welcome to talk about other legislation that's important to you. Ryan Fountain: Awesome. Okay. I mentioned the, vouchers for private school. way that I want to fix that is one, need to increase teacher pay like just across the board. They should not be having to one fund their own classrooms with their own paychecks that with that are already well below the poverty line. They are the sculptors of our next generation. We need to treat them as such. So on top of that, I want to create something called the Georgia achievement fund. Use some of that surplus to make an investment account that is tied to the student. Just one extra piece of paper when they do that mountain of paperwork at the beginning of a year or first time they enrolled where we are putting money into a, their own account based off of the grades that they get from kindergarten to a fifth grade, just a hundred bucks a year, throw that in there so it can start building up from sixth grade to graduation. Every a gets a hundred dollars and every B gets $50. And if you get straight A's, get an extra bonus Breaking The Meta: Hmm. Ryan Fountain: doing that into these investment accounts, which funnily enough, yes, I am a Democrat, but what I will be using to do this is the Trump accounts that were introduced in the big, beautiful bill. And the reason why is because they are a special account that you can have different qualified withdrawals from that just needs to be signed off by the secretary of the treasury. So we can have, I'll get to actually at the end of there, but doing the math, assuming a 7 % increase year over year on top of maximum earnings, like they got straight A's the entire time, a student could graduate with 21, roughly thousand dollars in that account, which is a lot of money for an 18 year old. So then we go to the secretary of the treasury and we get them to approve three different things. One, a qualified withdrawal for higher education, a qualified withdrawal for vocational training and tools. like welders, HVAC and all that, make sure that they are able to get into that because Breaking The Meta: Electrical electricians, yep. Ryan Fountain: we need those. And then three, qualified withdrawal for a down payment on a home. Those three Breaking The Meta: Mm. Ryan Fountain: things will cover basically all of your choices as an 18 year old. And if you spent time in school, you got good grades, you should one automatically have different like the HOPE grant, the Pell grant, all this other stuff to actually help pay for college. But we just gave you the incentive to worry about school because maybe you thought I'm never going to use this. I'm just going to go become a welder or plumber. don't need school. I just need to graduate. Well, Breaking The Meta: Yeah. Yeah. Ryan Fountain: now you have an incentive to do good so you can have your money to pay for your tools so you don't have to come out of pocket at the beginning or try and find an internship or something that will pay for you and get yourself like indebted to a company immediately and stuff like that. And so that's something that I want to do because if we can give $6,000 to private schools per student per year, we can give them an extra $800 a year into an investment account that's in their name. That's the great thing about it is that it is giving money to the students for what they're doing. So we're essentially paying them for their job that we are legally required for them to go to. Otherwise the parents get hit with truancy charges. So, uh, and then a few other things that are just more or less minor, everyone can find that on my website when they choose to go Breaking The Meta: Yeah. Ryan Fountain: there later. Breaking The Meta: Yeah. Those are awesome. I can appreciate all of them. And while you're at it, can you just fix our education system as a whole so kids can enjoy learning? Because that would be fantastic. Ryan Fountain: So that that is another thing that I actually Okay So I don't know how much we can get into it But my basic ideas and people may not agree with me. We need longer school days go from push it back like starting So instead of starting like 730 started like 8 8 30 But have it go to like 5 o'clock Reason Breaking The Meta: Okay. Ryan Fountain: why is yes School can be looked at as a glorified daycare system to match the parents work schedule But what that does in time, like in the school would actually give time for younger kids, like kindergartners and whatnot, to actually have longer recess times, longer lunch Breaking The Meta: Mmm. Ryan Fountain: times and break up the speed of which they're having to get through this. Because again, we're state mandating that they hit certain milestones and children don't learn that way. Not until they're older and their brains are more focused. Breaking The Meta: Not even sure they learned that way anymore anyways, but... Ryan Fountain: Fair enough. Tick tock AI, that. but give them more time in the class. And then it also helps the teachers because they can actually have their mandatory planning time. If you just have it a little bit longer and that way they can break up where everyone's going. You only need a teacher out on the playground just to monitor things. You don't need to have a teacher everywhere. Give them a little bit more time for that. And then I also would like to move towards a year round schooling system where, Breaking The Meta: Mm. Yep. Ryan Fountain: November 30, 30th, 31st. The last day of November is the last day of the school year. You have December and January off and then February 1st is the first day of the new year. So you still have that two Breaking The Meta: Mm. Ryan Fountain: month break, but it's over the holiday period. And then that way the school year is actually just one year school year 2026 not 2025 to 2026. and the only reason that we have the summer's office because we used to be an agricultural society where children needed to go help their parents on the farms. So yes, kids are already not going to be learning during the holidays because they're focused on Christmas. Got the Christmas break, the new years, like they're basically party. Just go ahead and make that the actual, two month break. So that way the parents don't have to worry about getting them to school after a sugar crash on Christmas morning or something or a week later. In my opinion, I think I would just be a good idea. and then there's a whole bunch of other aspects to actual education that There are multiple studies that show that there are better ways for children to learn than just sitting in one spot. And I fully Breaking The Meta: Yup. Ryan Fountain: believe that we need to get vocational training back into schools like auto shop, wood shop, get the kids working with their hands again. Breaking The Meta: and honestly cooking and all of it. Ryan Fountain: Yes. Home ec. I loved home ec when I was in high school because again, my, so I'm old Sephora, but I was also single mom at the time. So like I wound up doing a bunch of cooking at home, going to home ec and actually learning how to make eggs correctly. I I'm so happy I did that just because I didn't. Yeah. Uh, Breaking The Meta: How many people barely know how to boil water these days? It's kind of wild. Yeah. Ryan Fountain: and all the general like life skills of like, okay. Here's how you do laundry and stuff. It's amazing what you can actually learn if you stop viewing home ec as, that's for the girls and whatnot. No, it's necessary life skills. I'm going to be a single dude living by myself at college soon. I'm going to need to know how to do my own laundry. Breaking The Meta: Yep. So for everyone that has listened up until this point and heard everything that we've talked about, what are one or two things that no matter what you want them to remember about you and your campaign? Ryan Fountain: I am always available. Go to my website, set up a time and you can reach out and talk with me over any cons, a topic. I don't believe there's anything that's taboo because I'm going to represent you. You should know exactly where I stand on basically every single subject. There should be never a question like, is he, or is he not going to be voting one way or the other on this resolution? Um, and then the other thing is I'm not a politician. I, I have no, drive to lie to people. I don't think I physically can lie to people. Breaking The Meta: Mm. Ryan Fountain: I'm not going to try and tell you what you want to hear because I think it's what's going to work better. I'm to tell you what I think and you can vote for me how you want. That's how this representative democracy works. I'm going to say what I believe. And if you agree with me, vote for me. If you don't then tell me why you don't. And maybe you can change my mind. So those are the two main things. Breaking The Meta: If anyone wants to learn more about you and wants to support you in any way, whether it's volunteering, donating, whatever, where can they find you? Ryan Fountain: my website, fountain for georgia.com. The four is the number four. that has all my policy. It has all the ways to contact me. as far as volunteering goes, I am going to need a social media person. realize I suck at social media. I keep forgetting to actually Breaking The Meta: Ha ha ha! Ryan Fountain: like make posts, even though I have all these thoughts in my head. so if anyone wants to do that, please get in touch with me. my email is fountain for Georgia. This time the four is spelled out. at gmail.com and yeah Breaking The Meta: Ryan, thank you for sitting down with us and letting us get to know more about you and what you hope to do for your district. appreciate it. Ryan Fountain: Thank you so much for the time. was great being here. Breaking The Meta: Yeah, and forever and listening. Thank you so much for listening this far. I really appreciate it. Make sure you hit all those buttons down below. Like, subscribe, all that stuff. It makes it possible for me to keep doing what I'm doing, which is interacting and interviewing amazing people like Ryan who are trying to do some really great things for their districts. They aren't taking PAC money. They want to be held accountable. They want to just do things in the right way. They want to fix these problems that we've been talking about for decades. So please, whether it's watching and sharing my stuff, watching and sharing their stuff, please, please help us get them the visibility and name recognition that they need in order to be able to actually compete, if not win in their districts. It would mean a lot to me. I know that. And for those of you that may be new to Breaking the Meta, just so you know, Breaking the Meta is all about having hard conversations when necessary, fighting to break the status quo and the idea that all people, no matter your race, religion, gender or identity, deserve rights, respect, dignity and safety. Ryan. Thank you again for being here and for everyone else. see you next time on Breaking the Meta. Bye guys. Ryan Fountain: Thank you.