The third party is the perennial underdog, but with voter dissatisfaction so high and the Tea Party gaining steam, do you think that this could be a unique opportunity for somebody like yourself?
John Monds: Absolutely. All across Georgia voters have been voicing their displeasure with the lack of leadership that’s been going on. Once again, getting back to those things that work, limiting government in people’s lives, letting them keep the money they’ve earned and respecting their individual rights, those are things that people are looking for so the message has been doing well all across the state. I think we’re gonna surprise a lot of people with how we perform in this election.
As I was going through some of the issues you discuss on your website, two things caught my attention: Reducing nonviolent drug offenses and allowing Sunday alcohol sales. Although they are obviously controversial to some voters, could they also play a role in both generating revenue and helping balance the budget?
John Monds: We shouldn’t have a tax system that punishes people who produce, and that’s what we have with income tax. It affects small business owners and that’s the economic engine that runs things. That’s why I talk about eliminating income tax and going to a broader based consumption tax, we need to get rid of some of those exemptions.
Once you stimulate the economy and get it growing, that’s gonna drive revenue up. You have to look at the revenue side and making us more competitive with our regional neighbors, but you also have to look at the spending side, getting rid of wasteful programs and projects.
Monds also said Wednesday that Georgia’s constitution shouldn’t define marriage, a reference to the voter-approved amendment in 2004 that banned same-sex unions.
“There are enough other things that we should be doing as far as people’s rights. I see it as a diversion to really gin up people. That is not the direction we should be going in. Government should be securing people’s rights,” he said.
…
“I think crime is crime. I would say I am not in favor of hate crimes [legislation]. There is not a love crime, so why would you need a hate crime? The fact that you assaulted somebody, that you have committed violence against somebody—the motivation behind that is not where we should be going. The violence is the key. The focus is that you murdered someone, raped somebody, assaulted somebody, shot somebody – that is my view on hate crimes legislation.
Those that are concerned about John’s work in the NAACP may be comforted with this quote, which isn’t lockstep with NAACP to say the least:
He also said that he doesn’t support interfering with the operations of private businesses, which he said employment non-discrimination legislation would do.
“I look at in the private sector. If somebody wanted to put a sign up [that said] no blacks or gays in their business, I think they have the right to do that. They probably won’t stay in business. But if it’s in the private sector, I believe people have a right to discriminate.
And fires a broadside at the Democratic Party:
The Democratic Party has been a huge let down not only for those in the gay community, but for African Americans as well. They get away from the respect for individual rights.
Dan was in Albany at the Exchange Club Fair yesterday and sat down for an interview with WALB and the Herald.
Here’s the video from WALB:
And a selection from the Herald piece:
“I think we need to set new standards in this country based on individual rights,” said Barber, an auto body shop owner from Cumming. “We must eliminate this sense of entitlement, a culture of dependency. We believe that all individuals have the right to control their own lives and live however they choose as long as they don’t forcibly interfere with the freedoms of their fellow citizens.
“I believe the government has no right to regulate the lives of citizens, or to seize the fruits of their labor without their consent.
The article then goes on to list some of his positions on the issues, including
HEALTH CARE: “I believe free markets provide the greatest variety of choice and quality in health care, as in every other service. I support a return to a free market in health care,” Barber writes. “I recognize the right of the individual to choose his own physician, and to choose how much insurance, if any, is appropriate.”
An interesting situation is developing right now, and I’m still working to sort through the reports.
Here’s what happened:
At 5pm today, Peach Pundit’s Clint Murphy reported via twitter that
Apparently Deal staffers shouted & pushed & shoved citizens trying to ask Deal @ his voting record & corruption in Savannah
I immediately retweeted this because Clint is typically trustworthy – to me, this wasn’t just some random report, but an actual initial report of an conflict in a developing situation. I put it out on my Facebook at the same time, for the same reason.
Moments later, I began a private conversation with Clint on Twitter, where it was revealed that sources at the event had told him that there was a conflict between Nathan Deal’s staffers and some protesters that had gathered in opposition to Deal. Per what Clint had been told, Jeanne Seaver -a recent Republican candidate for Congress- and Congressman Jack Kingston had to get involved to calm the situation.
After I talked to Clint, I called two sources who I knew to be at the event. One source said that he saw Kingston talking to the protesters, but that they were “smiling and laughing”. The other source said he didn’t see Kingston anywhere near the protesters, but that this source had been near the stage for the entire event.
Upon talking to the first source, I put out another tweet and facebook post saying
Initial reports from Savannah MAY have been wrong. Now have conflicting eyewitness reports.
I spoke with the second source about 20 minutes later.
At this point, I simply do not know how to answer the question that is the title of this post. Clint is typically a solid source of information, but we are all known to be wrong at times. Hopefully, Savannah’s professional media was there and can elaborate on this situation, as they probably would have been in position to see what happened, if anything. The initial report from WSAV in Savannah does not mention any disturbance. Nor does the initial report from WTOC. Nor does the initial report from WJOC.
At the moment, that is all I know. Stay tuned.
[UPDATE]: An article from the Savannah Morning News indicates (at the very bottom of the article), that there WAS some form of altercation, but does NOT mention any form of physicality.
One of the great defenses of the Christian faith is that the Gospel writers didn’t lie about the small stuff, even though this small stuff wasn’t popular at the time. For example, in that era a woman’s testimony was completely worthless – yet it was a woman whom the Gospel writers record as the first to find the empty tomb.
When looking at a candidate’s character, one thing to look at is this same principle: do they lie about the small stuff, the stuff that ultimately may be unpopular, but doesn’t really amount to a hill of beans?
Honestly, one of the primary reasons I like Austin Scott is that he doesn’t.
But when you’re a candidate involved in MULTIPLE scandals, as Nathan Deal is, it becomes even more important. You build a record in the small stuff that comes to bear in the big stuff, for better or worse. Build a record of honesty in the small stuff, and people are more willing to give you the benefit of the doubt on the big stuff. Build a record of lying on the little stuff, and people are more likely to doubt you on the big stuff.
Campaign scheduling really is “small stuff”. People won’t remember even the week after the election where you were the week before the election.
And yet, Nathan Deal risks his honor over campaign scheduling:
Here’s what Nathan Deal said on twitter yesterday:
That was posted yesterday, and claims that Nathan will be in SWGA today.
Here’s the schedule of the tour, provided in a GOP email:
Note that the red boxes on the image (added by me) highlight a certain candidate as NOT attending a single event scheduled in SWGA today.
The candidate NOT attending a single event in SWGA today is none other than Nathan Deal, who told supporters he WOULD be in SWGA today.
Nathan Deal LIED about something so small and insignificant as campaign scheduling. How can we trust him on the MULTIPLE scandals he is involved in, much less the actual very serious issues facing the next Governor of this Great State?
Andre Walker of Georgia Politics Unfiltered has been digging into the Congressional Record of one Nathan Deal to investigate claims from the Barnes camp that “Nathan Deal voted to increase his Congressional pay six times.” Indeed, this claim is on the roy2010.com website, as you can see from the screen capture at the bottom of this post.
His results:
Prior to Deal’s election, Congress passed the Ethics Reform Act of 1989, which included a provision that automatically raised the salaries of Representatives and Senators unless they specifically vote to reject the pay increase. President George H.W. Bush signed the bill into law November 30, 1989.
A report from the Congressional Research Service said that between 1990 and 2009, Congress voted to reject its automatic pay raise six times [Brudnick, Ida A. (2009-1-9). Salaries of Members of Congress: Congressional Votes, 1990-2009. Congressional Research Service. Retrieved on 2010-10-22.]. Nathan Deal was among those lawmakers voting against a congressional salary increase between 1993 and 1998 [H.R. 920 (1993), Vote #54; H.R. 4539 (1994), Vote #247; H.R. 2020 (1995), Vote #534; H.R. 3610 (1996), Vote #455; H.R. 2378 (1997), Vote #474; H.R. 4104 (1998), Vote #293 & #494; H.R. 4328 (1998), Vote #538].
From 1999 until 2007, Congress did not vote on language rejecting their automatic raise. Under the provisions of the Ethics Reform Act of 1989, since Congress did not reject their pay increase, they received it automatically.
In 2007, Congress voted to delay its pay increase until February of that year. Nathan Deal voted against that legislation [H.J.Res. 102 (2006), Vote #540].
However, Deal introduced the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2007 (H.R. 500), which included language that would cut the pay of members of Congress every year the federal government runs a budget deficit. Deal’s Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2007 languished in committee.
Links to much of the above are on Andre’s site.
What it boils down to is that Nathan Deal actually voted AGAINST a Congressional pay increase SEVEN times – and simply failed to vote against the automatic increase TEN times. But he never actively voted FOR a pay increase.
So Roy Barnes was, in fact, caught LYING -even though Nathan’s Congressional pay increased more times than Barnes said it did, it wasn’t because Deal voted on it, either way.
Wendesday, Atlanta’s 11 Alive reported that Roy Barnes was using some edited footage in a campaign commercial. The video was from the Temple Debate, where Roy, Nathan Deal, and John Monds had a very spirited debate. After the debate, Nathan Deal made a hasty exit, with a handful of reporters – and a Democratic Party videographer – hot on his heels.
The situation alone was bad enough, but someone in the Barnes campaign decided it would be a smart idea to embellish the video adding extra voices with unrelated questions. All of the actual questions shouted at Deal seemed to revolve around one of his latest controversies – that he used his Congressional office to lobby the Attorney General for a favorable ruling related to his business at Gainesville Salvage and Disposal. While this is the same company as the long-known story of his using his good buddy Lt Governor Casey Cagle to strong arm Revenue Commissioner Bart Graham into trying to keep his no-bid State contract, the lobbying of the Attorney General was for a separate business venture – a landfill adjacent to the GSD property.
The Barnes camp, in their edit, added a narrator – no problem there – and at least one to two new voices asking unrelated questions such as “What are you hiding?” – more of a problem there. The added voices make it seem much more frenzied than the situation actually was – after all, these reporters are professionals. They also emphasize points from Roy campaign, which is one reason they immediately draw suspicion. (Another reason is, as many have noted, that they are clearly dubbed in.)
As expected, the GOP is calling for Barnes’ head over this – and yet giving themselves and Nathan a pass when they embellish things to make ROY look worse than he is. No surprise that the GOP would be hypocrites. None at all. But neither am I downplaying that Barnes made an error here – as I noted above, the original video was bad enough, and I have no problem with the narration making it worse. I DO have a problem with the extra “reporter” voices, I simply feel that this is no worse than the embellishments Nathan Deal is just as guilty of using against Roy Barnes.
At the end of the day, there is one way to send a STRONG message that you are tired of this kind of politics – vote for the one man in this race who hasn’t engaged in it: John Monds.
For your viewing pleasure, here is both the original video and the Barnes ad in question: [See the Videos]
A lot has beendiscussedrecentlyabout Nathan Deal’s 1991 SB 51, which per multiple media reports would have weakened Georgia’s rape shield laws and forced rape victims to testify about their sexual histories and clothing choices.
Over the past couple of days, a rape victim whose rapist Nathan Deal did his job as a prosecutor 30 years ago and put in jail has come forward and defended him.
And how does Nathan Deal return the favor?
He tries to profit from her story, as seen in this screen capture from his Facebook page:
Now, to be fair, this could be simply a very poor choice of thumbnail image to go along with this particular story. After all, as many of us know, when you post a link to Facebook, it scans the page for images and lets you select a number of them to use as a thumbnail. I’ve personally seen as many as two dozen images offered as thumbnail choices on some pages I’ve linked to, and there is always the ‘no thumbnail’ checkbox, which will result in no thumbnail being attached.
Here’s the problem: I went to the page on Deal’s site, copied the url, and tested posting it in my own feed, just to see how many thumbnails were available. After all, the donate image could have been the only one available, and maybe – for whatever reason – the Deal camp doesn’t like using the ‘no thumbnail’ option. However, the ‘donate’ image in question was the SECOND choice, meaning it had to be ACTIVELY CHOSEN as the thumbnail on that post.
The first image is a “HELP OUT” image, the third and fourth images are slightly resized versions of Deal’s “Deal. Real.” red and white logo. Please tell me how anyone could consider the “donate” image more appropriate on a story about RAPE than the other three? Heck, the “Help Out” image could have sent a subliminal message that Deal was trying to HELP rape victims, as the story it linked to says.
But no, someone on Nathan Deal’s campaign ACTIVELY CHOSE TO SEEK TO PROFIT FROM A RAPE VICTIM.
How sick, twisted, and pathetic can you get?
For comparison purposes, here are the other three thumbnails that could have been chosen:
One thing I find interesting about this Governor election is that I have YET to see ANYONE take a serious look at one of the things that should be the best source of both things to promote about Roy Barnes and things to attack him on – his record while in the Georgia General Assembly and as Governor.
Sure, you hear Republicans talk about how “bad” he was – even though Republicrat Sonny Perdue was ranked WORSE than Roy Barnes by the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute with regards to their fiscal policies. But when you ask a Republican for specifics, typically the only thing they can actually name is the Flag issue.
It is now 15 days from when polls close in this race, and I really don’t have time to go into this with the depth that it truly deserves, but for anyone who is interested, here is The Record of The King, as far back as LEGIS is able to give it (beginning in January 1995, at the beginning of his second term as a State Representative after having spent 8 terms in the State Senate and having lost the Democratic Primary for Governor in 1990 to Zell Miller). [Show the links!]
Earlier today, Roy Barnes released an ad accusing Nathan Deal of working to dismantle Georgia’s rape shield law, which would have forced women in Georgia to defend their clothing and sexual histories in rape trials, had it been successful.
The bill in question was 1991′s SB 51, which Barnes claims was written by Nathan Deal while he was President Pro Tem of the Georgia Senate.
Now, the Georgia General Assembly is notorious for their record keeping. Virtually anything you need can be found online on LEGIS – but only if it happened in 1995 or later, when Deal was already in Congress.
That said, just because it isn’t online doesn’t mean the documents don’t exist – and I am actively on the case of getting them. These are serious allegations, and either Deal or Barnes is innocent here, but not both. Once we get the LEGIS level history of this bill, we will know one way or the other.
For now, the target is 1991′s SB 51. That will tell all in this case.
Jim Galloway has a brief post last night showing that King Roy certainly has a bit of a humorous side.
In it, he writes that apparently the King ran into Austin Scott last night in Perry before both were debating in their respective races. Barnes proceeded to “grab Scott and turn him to mug for a photographer” saying “Turn around here. We’ll ruin your reputation.”
There’s two ways to take this, and I’m sure the Republicans will seize it to try to use as some kind of attack on Roy. As the title of this post says, I see it as the King having a little fun with a man who was a junior member of the minority Party when the King was on the throne.
Given the animosity and on-edge emotions that are prevalent among most in these last three weeks before the election, I thought this was a brief bit of levity that I’d share to lighten the mood. I LIKE people with a bit of humor – it helps keep us (somewhat) sane.
But because they WERE there to work, here’s a news article from the host of the debate, Macon’s 13WMAZ. I may watch it this weekend, or I may spend most of the weekend playing Fallout 3. We’ll see.
