Rumors have it that one of the candidates in the upcoming Special Election for HD 43 has a wee bit of a problem he needs some help on: According to the Cobb County Superior Court Clerk’s records, Robert Lamutt has a current outstanding lien balance owed to the Georgia Department of Labor of $2,563.12…and, his current balance owed to the IRS is a whopping $136,105.87. Adding these two numbers together and one gets approximately $138,700 in debt owed to government entities.

The term “current balance” is used to distinguish these current outstanding balances from the nearly 8-year history of liens from state and federal levels of government against Lamutt-related entities. In the past 8 years, Lamutt (including the current balances) has actually had a total of $168,713.54 liened against him and/or his various interests (including his “Lamutt for Congress” entity in 2004).

Of this total, Lamutt has only satisfied $29,607.67 worth of them, leaving the $138.7K in outstanding liens* mentioned above.

This lien situation does create, at minimum, the following questions in any voter’s mind in this Special Election:

1) How responsible would it be for me to help elect a person to represent me (“me” being the me who is a voter in HD 43) who has an 8-year history of racking-up over $150,000 in liens that governments (i.e., governments who always look to raise my taxes when they are short on funds) are owed?

2) If it comes to a backroom deal that screws my best interests while helping my representative pay off his debts, am I willing to have my interests sacrificed for his?

3) Don’t we have enough problems already in this state and country that I shouldn’t help get someone elected who clearly cannot manage their own affairs properly and legally?

*Links to Lien Documentation Below

1 Zipped File of All Individual Liens

Lien History-2-Page Summary PDF

PV Note To No One In Particular: Gee, wouldn’t it be swell if there was an addendum made to the Georgia Transparency & Disclosure Act that, in addition to the normal basically tell-us-nothing-about-a-candidate’s financial disclosures that you made it a requirement that they disclose ALL debts like IRS liens, Georgia Unemployment Insurance liens, county property tax liens, etc. on any and all related legal entities to the candidate?

Because not having those disclosed puts the people of the district at risk of being represented by someone who cannot manage their own personal finances…why should they be allowed to run for election without disclosing serious debts like liens from a government entity against them? Or, do you folks just like to leave the door wide open to encourage opportunities for graft, backroom deals, prostitution, what-have-you (e.g. Yellow Jackets sleeping with Dawgs), etc. for elected officials in Georgia to take advantage of?

And…on top of the lien issue, there’s the Laurens’ Effect…

In this HD 43 race, there were originally 5 candidates who qualified: In alphabetical order, they are:

Roy C. Barnes (not the former Governor)
John Carson
Don Hill
Robert Lamutt
Geraldine Wade

Before we tackle the Laurens’ Effect in full, let us describe for you in step-by-step detail of what Candidate Geraldine Wade, and one of her volunteers, experienced a couple of weeks ago as she was working the district via her car:

Wade received a phone call to her campaign cell phone. On the other end of the phone was a man’s voice. The man told her (not in these precise words, but close to it) the following: “I’m a developer in this district and your signs are on properties I control. Those properties are reserved only for Robert Lamutt’s signs. Don’t put your signs there.”

Wade responded with “Which properties specifically?” The man dodged that question and just ordered her, again, to keep her signs off of the “properties.” When Wade asked the man for his name, he refused to give it…and soon thereafter, the call concluded.

Wade drove-on for a little while and pulled onto one of the vacant lots in the district that had a Lamutt sign on it and a Don Hill sign on it. She saw a realtor’s sign on the property with a contact phone number on it. She dialed the realtor’s number and got him and asked him for permission to place her own sign on the property.

The realtor told her “Yes, you can. Thank you for calling to ask permission. The only other candidate who has asked if they could put a sign on the property is Don Hill.”

That struck a nerve with Geraldine who, after placing her sign on the property for which she was just granted permission to do so, hit the call-back key on her cellphone to the number that called her…and, the man picked-up.

Geraldine asked him who he was because she just got permission to put her sign up on a property in which Lamutt had a sign that he hadn’t, evidently, asked permission to put up. The man evaded telling Wade his name and told her “Look, we’re going to do a sweep of all my properties and anyone’s sign except for Robert Lamutt’s signs are going to be removed. I was just giving you a warning to save you some money.” And then he hung-up.

When Wade got back home that afternoon, she Googled the phone number of the man who had called her. The Google results came-up as “Signs Unlimited – Brian Laurens.”

Thus, Dear Reader, you are now properly segued into the Laurens’ Effect. In every single race (whether a Republican party office or a public office) that Brian Laurens is involved in, there is always mischief of one or all of the following activities:

– Lying and dirty, sneaky tricks

– General & Frequent Bullshit of Unknown Origin (e.g., the altering of Karen Handel’s Wikipedia biography in the summer of 2009. Yup! PV has received information recently that it was Brian Laurens’ who altered those records.)

Brian Laurens is very pro-Robert Lamutt in this HD 43 race. Laurens has been pals with Lamutt since Lamutt’s congressional race in 2004 (in which he lost in the run-off to Congressman Tom Price)

PV has received information as late as this afternoon that Laurens has been observed taking John Carson’s signs down, as well as Geraldine Wade’s signs.

To those of you who scoff and shrug and say “Hey, that goes on in all the races I’ve ever been involved in…” OR …”Everyone does it. Who cares?”…actually, there are people who are decent in this world who do care about this kind of bullshit and do not like it, nor do they engage in it.

ANY candidate that knows about this and allows this bullshit to happen over and over and over with Brian Laurens has even less class than Brian Laurens has. Brian Laurens is a sneaky and duplicitous sociopath…but, what’s the candidate’s excuse for not being able to recognize this and disengage himself from Laurens?

SO, for Robert Lamutt, who has $139,000 in overdue liens against him…and who has a low-life, dirty-playing campaign activist like Brian Laurens working on his behalf, surely there is someone of the remaining four candidates in this race who has a cleaner past, and a cleaner bearing to be able to better represent the interests of the district, do they not? PV hopes so…

This entry was posted by politicalvine, on Thursday, September 8th, 2011 at 9:53 pm and is filed under Cobb County, Georgia Races and Tagged: Brian Laurens, Cobb County, Don Hill, East Cobb, Georgia HD 43, Geraldine Wade, John Carson, Liens, Northeast Cobb Patch, Robert Lamutt, Roy C Barnes, Sneaky Campaign Tactics
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