What does Nathan Deal say would be his toughest job as governor? Creating jobs in a tough economy? Nope. Fixing transportation? No. Improving our schools? Not a chance.
In August, in a moment of rare candor, Nathan Deal told the crowd at the Georgia Forward Forum in Macon:
… the toughest thing about being governor would be to turn down the requests of his friends… (The Macon Telegraph. (8/28/2010) Political Notebook: Gubernatorial candidates phone it in at Macon conference.)
No kidding. Deal’s long-established pattern of scratching the backs of his friends and political allies is not just about airplanes and poor business investments. Sometimes, it’s about you and me.
Take the story of The Chicken and the Congressman Who Crossed the Line.
When you pay extra at the grocery store for organic milk, eggs or poultry, you want to be able to trust that the product actually is organic, right? Well, if Nathan Deal had his way, those labels would be meaningless.
certify and label meat as ”organic” even if the animals had been fed partly or entirely on conventional rather than organic grain.
Consumers be damned, Deal slipped in this provision to benefit his buddies and campaign contributors over at Fieldale Farms Corporation in Baldwin, Georgia. Fieldale employees had contributed $4,000 to Deal’s last campaign for congress. So far, Fieldale Farms Corporation and it’s employees have contributed $16,400.00 to Nathan Deal’s campaign for Govenor.
Not your grandmother’s farm, this giant corporation grossed $750 million in sales in 2008 and is no stranger to political controversy, having drawn the attention of the press in 1993 after financing a trip to the Daytona 500 for elected officials and taking advantage of a loophole in the ethics laws to not disclose the expenditure. So egregious was this episode that during the next legislative session, there was legislation sponsored to close “The Fieldale Farms Loophole.”
In 2003, when his congressional colleagues got wind of Deal’s scheme to help out Fieldale, a bi-partisan coalition, with the support of the Bush Agriculture Department quickly formed to introduce legislation to repeal the provision, but not before Deal got national attention for his willingness to help out his friends and contributors despite the impact on consumers.
Now, we need a bi-partisan coalition of voters to say NO to Nathan Deal so he won’t have to worry about saying NO to his friends.
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