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]
All three have been in various news items recently, but there are three news items in particular I want to draw your attention to, in case you missed them:
1) Many Republicans have been claiming Roy Barnes supports illegal immigration. PolitiFact Ga recently gave that claim a “LIAR LIAR PANTS ON FIRE” designation and said that it was absolutely ludicrous. So hopefully those Republicans that still have a shred of dignity left will drop this one, but that leads us into item 2…
2) Apparently, Nathan Deal has paid more than $120K of campaign donations into a company he owns. For the record, this is a company that is a subsidiary of the company at the center of Nathan’s $weetheart deal with the State that he maid MILLIONS of dollars on. This, on top of the recent revelation that he hid nearly $5 million in debt from EXTREMELY poor business decisions. At this point, there truly is no way an honest, ethical person can support this man without a MASSIVE heaping of delusion. He is now officially WORSE than John Oxendine.
3) John Monds was campaigning in Albany yesterday, attending Albany City Commissioner John Howard’s monthly “Town Hall”. I was working yesterday, but Tom was there and the quote in the Herald was spot on: ““The purpose of government is to protect our rights,” Monds said. “Government doesn’t create jobs, business does. Government should get out of the way.”
While the one commentator incorrectly states that the Libertarian nominee tends to draw more from the Republican than the Democratic candidate (in actuality, Libertarians draw fairly evenly from both, due to believing in BOTH fiscal conservatism and social tolerance), what I want you to particularly look at is the video 11 Alive uses of John Monds.
Those who were in attendance at the SWGAPolitics.com Candidate Forum should recognize it – because that is exactly where John was in that video. At the single largest political event in SWGA this election season in terms of number of candidates present.
For “third” Parties, the magic number in any Gubernatorial election is 20%. At 20%, Ga law says the “third” Party is finally legally equal to the “Big 2″.
At least one site seems to think that John Monds could be near the 20% mark:
I noticed something quite disturbing when studying recent polling for elections around the country. Rasmussen Reports will include upwards of 6 or 7 candidates in the Democrat and Republican Primaries, sometimes with candidates that only receive 1% of the vote, yet when it comes to the General Election they will only include the two Democrat-Republican candidates despite there being sometime upwards of 3 or 4 other candidates from Third Party Nominations or Independent Nominations. This case is most present and most dangerous in a particular Governor’s election in Georgia, where the African-American Libertarian Candidate John Monds is left out of General Election polls despite having won 33.4% in a statewide election in 2008, and apparently the most likely winner of the 15- 20% of unaccounted votes in Rasmussen Polls.
The results are in, and it appears the Georgia Republican Party has nominated a racist who denies President Obama’s natural American birth for Governor. (Sadly, per one recent poll, 25% of Americans agree with him on that second part in particular.)
Fortunately for Georgia, there is another man running who is NOT a racist in any way, is a strong fiscal conservative, and is dedicated to restoring the Freedoms Georgians have the God-given right to enjoy, but that the Democrats and Republicans have stolen from them.
That man is John Monds, and we welcome all disaffected Republicans who cannot in good conscience vote for Deal to vote instead for John.
Remember, Georgia is a runoff state, meaning there is absolutely NOTHING to lose by voting your conscience on November 2, and then your fear in the runoff – contrary to what Republicans are going to cram down your throat over the next few months (indeed, this has already begun).
Note: “Racist” in the title is in reference to the “ghetto grandmother” comment in the above video. We are fully aware that birtheism does not imply racism, and we sincerely apologize if we implied otherwise above.
a message from John Monds, Libertarian candidate for Governor:
This was supposed to be the year of angry voters, right?
Apparently the handful of establishment voters in yesterday’s primary didn’t get the message. Whatever they might say with their mouths, they spoke more clearly with their votes.
An organization’s mission statement says that its mission “is to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate racial hatred and racial discrimination”.
This same organization’s vision statement says its vision “is to ensure a society in which all individuals have equal rights and there is no racial hatred or racial discrimination”.
The objectives of this organization are as follows:
- To ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of all citizens
- To achieve equality of rights and eliminate race prejudice among the citizens of the United States
- To remove all barriers of racial discrimination through democratic processes
- To seek enactment and enforcement of federal, state, and local laws securing civil rights
- To inform the public of the adverse effects of racial discrimination and to seek its elimination
- To educate persons as to their constitutional rights and to take all lawful action to secure the exercise thereof, and to take any other lawful action in furtherance of these objectives,
So tell me, please, where’s the problem here? So far as I can tell, every single thing here is noble and is to be done within the confines of a democratic republican government that is intended to be equal for everyone.
No, the problem some racists have with these statements is that they expose racists in the modern era. [Continue Reading]
I don’t generally mention the LP-SWGA meetings on this site, but the Libertarian Party of Southwest Georgia is having a meeting tomorrow, Jan 2, 2010, and we’re having the LP-Georgia’s only announced candidate for Governor, John Monds, as our guest speaker.
John represents a unique opportunity for Georgia in several ways, and I hope you’ll come out to meet him.
Not 14 months ago, John received more than 30,000 more votes in a losing bid for Public Service Commission than Sonny Perdue did in his winning bid for his first term as Governor! In the process, he got more than 100,000 votes than Roy Barnes did in 2002, which was the last race Barnes ran state-wide!
Unless Ray McBerry pulls a MASSIVE upset, John will be the ONLY liberty-oriented candidate on the ballot for Governor next year, and as always all LP-SWGA meetings are open to the public, regardless of political affiliation!
