Three Tea Party Republicans announced their candidacies for Bethlehem Area School Board at a press conference Tuesday evening.
In front of about two dozen supporters and members of the press, Sam Mele, Kenneth Barreto and Randy Toman said they will be running on a fiscally conservative platform.
Taxes are too high, and there is little academic achievement to show for it, all three said.
“That's my main reason for running,” said Mele, a longtime local resident and owner of an independent sales business. “I can do a better job. There's no reason for taxes to be what they are.”
A graduate of the BASD, Mele said the district doesn't consider costs to the taxpayer.
“There is no reason for the Bethlehem Area School District to feel the taxpayer has to pay for everything,” he said.
Barreto, a recent military veteran and current corrections officer at Lehigh County Prison said he became concerned with the state of local government, particularly the school board when he returned from overseas.
“I would like to focus on...no new taxes,” he said, adding that he feels district employees need to do more and work harder. The level of bureaucracy needs to be reduced within the school district because it is not only wasteful, but confusing, he said.
“If the citizen can't understand it, I can't understand it,” Barreto said.
Absent due to illness, Toman represented his views with a letter he recently distributed, which outlined his views, similar to his running mates.
Also on hand were previously-announced Bethlehem City Council Tea Party Republican candidates Al Bernotas and Tom Carroll, who spoke briefly. Both echoed the same themes as the school district director candidates—that the current city council needs more fiscal conservatism, that taxes are too high and that the local government needs to be more transparent.
“It's fiscal mismanagement,” said Carroll. “The city council just rubberstamps.”
Bernotas was even more critical.
“They're going to tax people out of their homes, just like the Bethlehem Area School District, and we've got to stop it,” he said.
The third Bethlehem City Council Tea Party Republican candidate, Tony Simao, was attending the evening's city council meeting, running mates said.
Websites have been set up for all three city council candidates and Baretto. Toman and Mele said they welcome being contacted at their respective email addresses.
Kenneth Barreto – www.kennethbarreto.com
Sam Mele – smele@stantonsales.com
Randy Toman – challenger.randy.toman.school.bd@gmail.com
Al Bernotas – www.bernotasforcouncil.com
Tom Carroll – www.tomcarrollforcouncil.com
Tony Simao - www.simaoforcouncil.com
As I have stated in the past, this media outlet seems to be very left leaning and you got away with defending an "opinion" piece. However if you're going to run a serious news story, please at the very least get the facts straight without labeling everyone involved.
Whether you believe he is right or wrong, I still think that our government follows the Constitution of the U.S. and not "Biblical law," or else we would still be stoning women in the streets (Deut. 22:13 -21; 23-24). Even if Mr. Toman believes that the "Tithe" should be implemented as the standard for taxation, using Biblical justifications for such laws seems to violate the separation of church and state intended by our founding fathers who were not Christian but, Unitarian, Congregationalists and Deists. Maybe Jon's words were strong, but his accusations about cherry picking from the Bible are quite substantiated. There are 613 laws in the Old Testament, 248 of which are no longer followed in modern times because they are mainly concerned with priestly practices like sacrifices. I doubt Mr. Toman would advocate that we invoke all Biblical law so; I would not want to return to the age of Biblical law where it was an "eye for an eye."
Here he is trying to find Biblical justifications for the Republican tax cut religion: http://www.lehighvalleyconservative.com/biblical-taxation/ Here he is trying to justify his paranoia about the Federal Reserve with still more cherrypicking from the Bible: http://www.lehighvalleyconservative.com/taxation-and-the-federal-reserve-system/ People also need to know that Mr. Toman's blog, Lehigh Valley Conservative, is a birther blog: http://www.lehighvalleyconservative.com/obama-celebrates-ramadan/ http://www.lehighvalleyconservative.com/was-obama-born-in-the-us/ http://www.lehighvalleyconservative.com/who-did-what/
If you're going to run a personal smear campaign on someone at least have the common decency to do it in the form of a rebuttal on relevant issues. It's easy to label someone crazy (as you have done) but that is not how American politics work anymore. We the voters want an honest exchange of ideas and philosophies not name calling. Obama DID IN FACT celebrate Ramadan at the White House, Sestak himself stated he was offered a high position by the Obama Administration if he stepped aside, and even Donald Trump who donated $50k to Rahm Emanuel's Mayoral campaign has investigators in Hawaii looking at the birth certificate issue. Randy Toman did not make these things up out of thin air; he's just passing on what he finds in the World Wide Web. Sort of like Mr. Geeting passes on what he finds on Progressive Liberal websites on his own blog. I await the in depth article explaining the Federal Reserve, all of its parts, policies, and members from Mr. Geeting.
I won't be writing any Patch articles on the Federal Reserve system, but I do write about monetary issues from time to time on my blog. I think this (http://bit.ly/i6Gi80) and this (http://bit.ly/fQbSDI) provide a good introduction to how the Federal Reserve makes monetary policy. For regular news and opinion regarding the Federal Reserve, I get my information from the following sources: The Economist's Free Exchange blog (http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/) Scott Sumner (www.themoneyillusion.com) Neil Irwin at the Washington Post (http://projects.washingtonpost.com/staff/articles/neil+irwin/) Tim Duy's Fed Watch blog (http://economistsview.typepad.com/timduy/) Matthew Yglesias (http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/) Paul Krugman (http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/) and more generally the Financial Times (http://www.ft.com/home/us) I can assure readers that all of these sources provide much more useful information about monetary policy than the Bible does.
At this point I could care less where President Obama was born. I voted for him and I'm stuck with him until the next election. Just because you don't believe in the lessons which the bible teaches does not mean that those lessons are not valid. They seem to have worked just fine for over 2000 years and were the basis for this great country. Perhaps if those lessons were still followed today we wouldn't be in the financial mess which surrounds us.
Don't try to muddy the issue. The Bible has nothing to say about technocratic questions of central banking. It just doesn't. That doesn't reflect poorly on the Bible, but rather Mr. Toman, his information-gathering habits, and his intellectual fitness to be entrusted with financial decisions.
Frist off let me state we as The U.S.A was not founded as a 'Christian' nation. But try reading the documented evidence from that time period by a lawyer and longtime White House counsel, Benjamin F. Morris' book, 'Christian Life and Character of the Civil Institutions of the United States'. It gives the foreground of the creation of the colonies, their charters, later their constitutions, who was who and their Christian background, what role they played in history, and so on. "These fundamental objects of the Constitution are in perfect harmony with the revealed objects of the Christian religion. Union, justice, peace, the general welfare, and the blessings of civil and religious liberty, are the objects of Christianity, and always secured under its practical and beneficent reign. The state must rest upon the basis of religion, and it must preserve this basis, or itself must fall. But the support which religion gives to the state will obviously cease the moment religion loses its hold upon the popular mind. Have given it character and shaped its destiny from the beginning. It is preeminently the land of the Bible, of the Christian Church, and of the Christian Sabbath....The chief security and glory of the United States of America has been, is now, and will be forever, the prevalence and domination of the Christian Faith." These are the words of American historian B.F. Morris in 1864.
“... The happiness of a people and the good order and preservation of civil government essentially depend upon piety, religion, and morality ...”—United States Supreme Court, 1892. [Church of the Holy Trinity v. U.S.; 143 U.S. 469 (1892).] “... What constitutes the standard of good morals? Is it not Christianity? There certainly is none other. Say that it cannot be appealed to, and ... what would be good morals? The day of moral virtue in which we live would, in an instant, if that standard were abolished, lapse into the dark and murky night of ... immorality.” — Supreme Court of South Carolina, 1846.[City of Charleston v. S.A. Benjamin; 2 Strob. 520 (1846).] Facts Benjamin F. Morris' book, 'Christian Life and Character of the Civil Institutions of the United States' and the courts at are founding!
The Constitution's language clearly promotes a cosmopolitan society tolerant of all religious beliefs, and there's no basis for the belief that the framers sought to entrench any dominant religion for the country. Yes, fundamentalist Christians and the Great Awakenings were an important part of the American intellectual heritage from the founding era, but so were freethinkers, Deists, and hard core atheists like Thomas Paine. The decidedly non-religious Enlightenment values are much more important. I also really don't think it matters. It's ultimately not useful to spend much time thinking about what dead people from 200 years ago would think about today's public policy issues. I understand that people find it comforting to look back to simpler times for guidance when the country seems adrift, but the fact is that the founders and the Bible offer very little in the way of instructional value for what are largely technical public policy questions in 2011. The framers don't have anything to say about how to make our health care delivery system cheaper or how to invent technologies to reduce our carbon pollution. That's the stuff that matters.
- Thomas Jefferson (1823) " It's ultimately not useful to spend much time thinking about what dead people from 200 years ago would think about today's public policy issues." Oh Jon you sooooooo right why take the dead fools into account!!!
They are not to do anything they please to provide for the general welfare, but only to lay taxes for that purpose. To consider the latter phrase not as describing the purpose of the first, but as giving a distinct and independent power to do any act they please which may be good for the Union, would render all the preceding and subsequent enumerations of power completely useless. It would reduce the whole instrument to a single phrase, that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good of the United States; and as they sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also a power to do whatever evil they please...Certainly no such universal power was meant to be given them. It was intended to lace them up straightly within the enumerated powers and those without which, as means, these powers could not be carried into effect. To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it. Thomas Jefferson, April 6, 1816
Mr. Geeting, you keep making very obvious personal attacks on a man for blogging his views of Federal policy issues. These have nothing to do with how he will impact the BASD as a local government entity. The thing that truly matters is if any of the candidates mentioned in this story can come up with ways to cut the waste in the budget so that people aren't driven into foreclosure. While you continuously trumpet your belief that there is no inflation, I and others keep telling you that you're wrong. People are struggling, and you are the one muddying the waters with your dated political tactics of diversion and deflection from the true issue at hand. Nobody cares if President Obama (you can't even bring yourself to use his proper title from what I see) was born here or not. We the voters are worried about how we'll pay our next tax bill so that we don't loose our homes, all the while making certain to have enough money for gasoline to get to work. That is the issue everyone cares about. You have a blog, and that is your point of view of the world. I don't agree with your view of life and I don't agree with Randy Toman's either. But at least he's honest about his beliefs and doesn't attack anyone the way you do; he's trying to be part of the solution while you're doing nothing more than playing games of political division.
On the contrary, I think Mr. Toman's quasi- religious anti-tax views have plenty to do with how he would make decisions as a member of the BASD. Look, the Governor irresponsibly handed down state government debt to the BASD, equal to 20% of their budget. The right question for a school board member to be asking in this environment is "how do we maintain the same quality of educational outcomes for students?" not "how do I cut school taxes?" That would be extremely irresponsible, and yet that is what Mr. Toman says he wants to do. It's absurd to think you would cut taxes in response to a 20% budget shortfall. Once again, you are the one who is wrong about inflation. (http://on.wsj.com/gPJp5F) The recent rise in headline inflation is not the result of an overheating economy (http://econ.st/g1NOyn) The metric that matters to the Federal Reserve is core inflation. There are very good reasons to use core inflation. (http://econ.st/hbKKZO) The Fed should not raise interest rates until after a period of above-target inflation, around 3-4%, to soak up the idle capacity. The biggest problem is still idle capacity. Finally, if you think Randy Toman isn't a political bomb thrower, you haven't read his blog.
Political bomb thrower? Seems like you would fit that description better than most.
I am as conservative as the next guy but you cant show up at the eleventh hour and lob in grenades without offering suggestions for change that isnt "kill all the teachers". Makes me sad to be a conservative when this moron of a governor takes on the schools first, forcing them to do his dirty work, without touching the rest of the states overdrawn economy.