Outside of a five-state moonshine ring, or a preacher with a taste for rubber suits and meth, can you think of a more purely Southern political scandal than one involving a company that makes its money off derelict automobiles that get pulled out of the creek? Governor Nathan Deal of Georgia, currently locked in a tight race for re-election with Democratic candidate Jason Carter, appears to be about to find out.
Here's the Readers Digest Condensed version of this epic which, I assure you, comes nowhere near conveying the glorious vista of awesomeness that you can find in the entire tale. In 1990, it seems, the state contracted out the job of doing title searches on abandoned vehicles. These were sweet, no-bid contracts divvied up among companies by region, all over the state. The sweetest one went to a company called Gainesville Salvage Disposal, which was co-owned by a young state senator named Nathan Deal. This might strike a cynical soul as something more than coincidental. Then, in 2007, when Deal was serving in the U.S. Congress, the Georgia Revenue Commissioner noticed that this scam...er...arrangement was costing the state a carload of money. He cancelled all the no-bid monopolies that had been handed out 17 years earlier. Congressman Deal, however, wasn't letting go of the grift. He was making 75-G's a year as a corporate officer of the salvage firm. Alas, the House doesn't allow its members to be corporate officers, and they can make only $25,000 in outside income. So Congressman Deal simply didn't disclose his salvage business. Then, things got really strange.
Read More