Libertarian David Montané Speaks on the Tocco Flyer Kerfluffle

I'm way behind on this one folks,

A teapot tempest swept the district 42 special election last Friday as a result of a flyer being distributed at the Tocco Hills shopping center that called democrat candidate Jason Carter's finances into question. It quickly turned into the media event of the day and prompted a response from Carter HQ that transformed the flyer from a piece of paper into a smear campaign. By Friday afternoon the flyer was regulated to the dustbin of history as time and the Carter Juggernaut proceeded to march forward.

Libertarian David Montané has posted his thoughts about the event over at DecaturMetro Blog and is provided below:

David Montane says:
May 8, 2010 at 7:58 pm
Thanks for bringing the conversation back around the to The Issues, karass! Personally, it doesn’t bother me that Jason Carter was able to raise over $260,000 for this campaign and that the legal limit of $4800 came from a couple named Amir and Nathalie Emami with a Hong Kong address. If that is Amir Emami in the picture with Arafat, I would not make that mean anything about Jason. I trust the voters to decide based on the issues, not on how much money the candidates have raised (or not) and where the money came from or how it was spent. The more attention voters pay to the issues, the less money candidates will need to spend to get our votes.

I would rather focus attention on Jason’s position on Education, in which he naively associates how much children learn with how much taxpayers spend, and Transportation, in which he ignores how poorly run and expensive government trains such as MARTA and AmTrak are, instead suggesting that we should spend money to expand them and make them faster.

And you are right – when it comes down to it, there is not much difference between Jason and Tom, nor Steve, for that matter, as became clear at the debate last Sunday night. They all want to increase our taxes instead of look for ways to reduce our collective expenses. I am the only one of the four candidates who is pointing out that 60% of our state budget is for Education, so that is an area deserving a big microscope to see where we can cut.

Immediately this statement will raise concern on the part of public school teachers, so I want to make clear that in my opinion, the place to start is to cut all the federally mandated testing teachers are required to prepare students for, which will also lead to less need for administrative staff. While I do not feel teachers should be getting raises in this deflationary period when so many in the private sector are taking huge pay cuts or being laid off, I think teachers should be the last place to look for cost savings.

Since the only requirement of the Georgia State Legislature each year is to balance the budget, and since so much of the budget is Education, this is the biggest issue to look at.

For all the other issues, if you want to know where I stand, review the Libertarian Party of Georgia’s platform at http://www.lpgeorgia.com, the Ludwig Von Mises Foundation at http://www.mises.org, the Cato Institute at http://www.cato.org and the Weston A. Price Foundation at http://www.westonaprice.org.

I hope that all who read this will carefully consider their vote, and only vote if you are confident your decision will be the best long-term decision for District 42 and the state of Georgia. I stand for Smaller Government, Lower Taxes, and More Freedoms. If this is what you want, vote for me. If you want Big Government and Higher Taxes and a state Senator who is unsure of what Freedom really is, pick your favorite candidate: Jason Carter, Tom Stubbs or Steve Patrick.