Common Cause Finally Prints my Responses to the Candidate Survey on Ethics, Sort of..

I got an email from Bill Bozarth over at Common Cause Georgia a couple of days back wherein he stated they had finally put up my responses to their Ethics Survey. Hoo Rah.

I cruise by today and it's up, unfortunately my name and office are blank. It's probably intern related. In the interests of shameless self promotion I'm reprinting the info for the readership here:

1.) Legislation to limit lobbyist gifts to elected officials? Yes or No?

2.) Legislation to limit movement of campaign funds out of campaign accounts for purposes other than paying for valid expenses of the candidate’s own campaign? Yes or No?

1. No.

I'm a Libertarian. Politicians should have a sufficiently developed ethics base to see that accepting gifts from lobbyists is patently wrong. Republicans and democrats have a great deal of trouble with this, Libertarians do not. If some fool wants to give $100 dollar gifts to a politician to buy a vote on a particular piece of legislation, the fool should be allowed to do so. Having said that, I would like to see legislation introduced that requires such donations be documented in painstaking detail and published for all the world to see with draconian penalties for not doing so. More transparency in the murky world of politics and influence peddling should gain the result that HB 920 sought to achieve by limiting gifts to $100. A better solution would be to vote for Libertarian candidates since they wouldn't take the money to start with.

2. No.

I'm a Libertarian. If one of our multi term elected officials with huge wads of cash stashed away in the campaign kitty wants to help out a fellow politician, PAC, or single issue group with a cash infusion to maintain the status quo, he should be allowed to waste his resources any way he sees fit. If we mandate that they keep their warchests full for their own use we'll never be able to bleed the entire system of it's financial resources and bring about fundamental change. Why would we seek to give our elected officials an official reason to deny their supporters and affiliates huge wads of cash? We should be encouraging them to spread their money around as fast and furiously as they spend the publics purse.

Now that we've addressed your concerns about Lobbyist gifts, it's time to ask your position on Ballot Access Reform (B.A.R) in Georgia. What is your position sir, do you support last years HB 1141, HB 1257, HB 1425 or SB 359? All of these bills sought to bring relief to Georgian citizens and all of them died in committee like HB 920.

I await your response.

Shane Bruce

Libertarian Candidate for Insurance Commissioner

As a side note, Mr. Bozarth is supportive of enhanced ballot access in Georgia for third party and independent candidates. Good on you sir.