I wait with the proverbial baited breath for each and every one of State Rep. Cynthia Davis' (R-19th) Capitol Reports; I am filled with anticipation to learn just how absurd her latest effort to deal with the complexities of government will be. Her most recent effort (printed here at The Turner Report) does not disappoint. It brings us Davis' musings on educational reform, specifically the Race to the Top federal grants program which Davis condemns as a manifestation of:
... the insatiable appetite the federal government has for controlling every element of our lives. There really is no reason for congress or the executive branch to be meddling in how we educate our children or how we administrate health care. ... We are trading away our freedom on how to manage our own schools for a set of federal standards that will be defined by those in Washington, not those closest to the students like the parents and the teachers.
Quelle horreur! Federal standards that reflect an informed, national consensus about what an educated individual should know and the best ways to teach it, rather than the prejudices of small-minded state legislators like Cynthia Davis! You may want your children taught creationism, among other questionable tenets, but most people I know certainly do not.
According to Davis, a national reform effort is not needed:
There is nothing "Race to the Top" can give us that we cannot already give ourselves. If we want school reform, we can simply vote for the reforms the voters want, not what is mandated from on high
Tell that to school administrators in St. Louis, Kansas City, and, I suspect, some of the poorer rural districts and see how they react. Following Davis' logic, one has to conclude that many Missouri parents actually want a mediocre or poor education for their children - or else, surely, they would have voted for just the right reforms long ago - and figured out how to fund them, too - something that our current legislature doesn't seem to be able to manage.
Davis is right that the No Child Left Behind program is a failure; it was always underfunded and excessively rigid - partly to placate conservative beliefs about education, or, as some suspect, to force failure and eventual privatization of our educational system. It did, however, reflect the growing recognition that we need national educational achievement standards and an equitable approach to delivering education if we are to be successful as a nation.
This time, however we are being offered an incremental approach to reform that reflects the real world rather than slogans, which is why the effort to spur practical innovation via the Race to the Top could be an important step. And this terrifies poor Cynthia Davis? Quelle horreur!
Despite the sorry shadow of its former self that the Post-Dispatch has become, editorials like this one keep me subscribing:
State Rep. Cynthia Davis, R-O'Fallon, whose "hunger is a positive motivator" beliefs earned her national renown last summer, has come out in favor of feeding people who don't want to be fed.
House Bill 1235, sponsored by Ms. Davis, would require mandatory feeding tubes for terminally ill patients - but only for those patients who have said they don't want them. The feeding tubes would have to remain in place for at least 60 days before they could be withdrawn.
During that time, nurses would have to place food and water in the patient's mouth at least three times a day. If the patient swallowed - either on purpose or by reflex - the tube feeding would continue indefinitely.
Davis' loopy logic is that the coming national health care program might engender those death panels the Rs were so distraught about, though she avoids that discredited term in favor of the phrase "people who are motivated by economics". Same idea.
Consider these two pieces of irony that the Post points out:
Ms. Davis, worried that national health care reform will lead to rationing, is sponsoring a resolution that would allow Missouri to "opt out" of the changes. But Medicare has been covering elderly and disabled Americans for 45 years, and no one ever has accused it of rationing their care.
But in 2005, Ms. Davis and her fellow Missouri House Republicans - "motivated by economics" - voted to ration health care by cutting Medicaid insurance for 100,000 people. The cuts ended Medicaid coverage for, of all things, feeding tubes.
Ms. Davis' latest bill would add about $8,000 in costs for each nursing home patient who receives an extra 60 days of tube feedings that she or he doesn't want. It would add about $56,000 for each hospital patient.
The summer feeding program Ms. Davis attacked last June cost $1.81 for each breakfast and $3.18 for each lunch. That irresponsible spending prompted Ms. Davis to offer a helpful hint. "Tip: If you work for McDonald's, they will feed you for free during your break."
Tip for Ms. Davis: Leave the intensely personal decisions about end-of-life care to patients and their doctors. Worry instead about Missouri's hungry children.
I have a question: Do we have enough nutcases in the House to pass HB 1235? Because I'm starting to get tired of seeing the rest of the nation point at Missouri and laugh.
* Communis rixatrix: a common scold, "a species of public nuisance - a troublesome and angry woman who broke the public peace by habitually arguing and quarreling with her neighbours."
Do you sometimes wonder about the mental state of the fringiest of our Republican legislators? Consider the following recent examples of shrill and clueless scolding on the part of two of the people elected to represent us:
--At a hearing on anti-abortion legislation, State Senator Jane Cunningham felt it appropriate to ask witness Michelle Trupianio, a lobbyist for Planned Parenthood, if she had ever had an abortion. When Trupiano appropriately responded that it was none of Cunningham's business, Cunningham proceeded to badger her until Senator Matt Bartle "reminded her to allow witnesses to answer the questions asked of them."
--A couple of weeks ago, Rep. Cynthia Davis rudely and aggressively questioned an African-American witness at a hearing before the House Health Care Committee about the nutrition practices of "your people," and "your community." Davis also quizzed the witness about her religious background as if it were relevant, and brought up her own personal opinions about the choices she believes food stamp recipients make.
Both of these women used their relatively powerful positions to bully and belittle people whom they clearly consider to be not only different from themselves, but threatening and inferior. What should have been dispassionate forums to explore issues were perverted into irrelevant personal inquisitions by a couple of two-bit Torquemadas.
All of which came to my mind when I read a recent column by Nick Kristoff in the New York Times. Kristoff described research that suggests that people whom we commonly classify as "liberal" or "conservative" may have significantly different cognitive structures from each other. Research that looked at startle responses and other neurological markers lined up with earlier research that found that conservatives:
tend to see the world in stark, black-and-white terms, perceive the social order as vulnerable or under attack, tend to make strong distinctions between "us" and "them," and emphasize order and muscular responses to threats.
Sounds about right, doesn't it? The more offensive people like Cunningham and Davis seem, the more they are really playing defense. What this research implies is that they represent extreme degrees of a common neurological bias. When you mix their biological inclination to respond with fear or disgust with simple-minded religious or political ideology, you get holy warriors (jihadists?), bent on running roughshod over all the infidels who don't see the world just like they do - a conclusion that is not too encouraging for those who believe in rational give-and-take, but it could add an important dimension to theories of persuasion such as, for example, Lakoffian "framing."
Remember when Cynthia Davis was busy worrying that a summer food program sponsored by the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services would undercut the motivating effect of hunger on young people? Or her more recent perorations on how using part of the marriage license fee to aid domestic abuse victims, who might have been living together without benefit of matrimony, is an insult to couples wishing to marry?
You thought it would be impossible to top Davis for sheer mean-mindedness, right? And that may be true, but South Carolina's Republican Lieutenant Governor Andrew Bauer is at least in the same category. He recently compared feeding hungry children to "feeding stray animals," adding that:
You're facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don't think too much further than that. And so what you've got to do is you've got to curtail that type of behavior. They don't know any better
Davis and Bauer are soulmates maybe, heartless for sure, but sadly familar. Remember Dicken's Oliver Twist and the cruel workhouse matron, Mrs. Corney and the corrupt Beadle, Mr. Bumble? Self-righteous meanness never seems to go entirely out of style, no matter how far we think that we have progressed since the horrors of the 19th century workhouse.
While reading Cynthia Davis' comments about her proposed "Marriage Matters in Missouri Bill," HR1234, I figured something out about the mental processes of people like Davis and the Tea Partiers who have endorsed her as "their" candidate. Talking Writing about one of the more innocuous aspects of her proposed legislation, a provision to waive part of the marriage license fee for couples who get some type of premarital counseling, Davis offers this observation:
I was surprised to discover that $27 of the marriage license fee goes toward child abuse and domestic violence shelters. Why should the innocent citizens who are doing something honorable, moral and foundational to our civilization be forced to pay for the damage caused by those who are behaving dishonorably? Statically, people who are "living together" are more likely to beat up their partners and children than married people, but they are not being asked to pay for domestic violence or child abuse. The philosophical premise behind this fee is insulting to all married people.
Oh wow, I thought. I'm married and yet I would not be insulted at all if part of my marriage license fee had gone to help women and children trapped in abusive relationships, married or not.
Then I got it. What Davis is talking about is an aspect of the "freedom" that rings the Tea Partiers' bell over and over. They are not worried abut the "freedom to be you and me" - they don't even like that type of freedom - but rather freedom from the claims that individuals in a comity might be expected to exert on each other. In other words, it's nothing more than narrow, bougie, mean-mindedness.
Ever wonder why the Tea Partiers throw tantrums about government spending, even when it is demonstrably beneficial and would actually pay for itself - like rational health care reform would? It's because the spending is used for other people, very likely people who might be a little different from God's select variety of tea people. They feel directly affronted that their money might be used for somebody who is poor and/or black (remember Saint Reagan's "welfare queens"?), or those who have a different life style (perhaps cohabiting "dishonorably" per Davis). That's what it means to usurp the freedom of a Tea Partier.
Just for the record, I have to add that Davis' assertions about who is involved in domestic violence aren't just mean, they are also not necessarily true. For one thing, domestic violence is not well reported or understood, so sweeping statements about who is actually being abused and who is doing the abusing cannot be well substantiated.
The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) does collect and publish statistics for those cases that are reported to law enforcement agencies. According to the BJS, individuals most likely to suffer from domestic violence are women who are separated - and the offender may be the separated spouse or a boyfriend.
Violence that culminates in homicide, however, is most likely to involve those noble married folks whom Davis believes to be so direly insulted by the wedding license fee. And jut to be clear, in 70-80% of domestic violence homicides, which, as we have seen, predominantly involve married couples, the guilty partner had a history of abusing his or her victim.
In looking forward to the coming legislative session, State Rep. Jake Zimmerman, D-Olivette, acknowledged that he will be working with a number of unhinged members of the Missouri House. He waved Cynthia Davis aside as by no means the most wackadoodle of them and called to the attention of the audience at West County Dems two Republicans who have outdone even Cynthia.
Jim Guest, R-Pluto (pictured at right), believes that the government has been implanting electromagnetic chips in citizens' brains in order to control them and torture them. Blink. This assertion was striking enough to get Guest a mention in a New York Times article about a British psychologist who tracks the crazies on the internet. Unfazed by the notoriety of one of its members, the House leadership, as Fired Up! points out, has granted Guest tacit support by appointing him chair of the Real ID and Privacy Committee.
Ed Emery, R-Lamar, is out there too. In 2006, he inserted language into a special committee report claiming that abortion causes illegal immigration. Seriously. (We've killed so many of our babies that now we have to have Mexican workers come here to fill the gap.) Democrats on the committee refused to sign the report, but nine Republicans signed it.
Zimmerman's reaction?
"It makes complete sense if you're insane. ... These are our colleagues. But that's okay. Such has ever been the way with state legislatures. It wasn't so long ago that an Arizona legislator introduced a bill to change Pi from 3.14159 to 3.10 so that it would be easier for math students.
So anytime Zimmerman is tempted to get impressed with himself, he says:
"I look in the mirror and I remind myself that I make the same salary and have precisely the same job as Jim Guest and Cynthia Davis.
The upside of all their nuttiness is that it's so easy for Democrats to point all that out in campaigns. And besides:
The word from Dave Catanese suggests a disappointing or interesting turn of events in the Cynthia Davis saga:
"I plan on being a candidate in 2010, but not for Missouri State Auditor," Davis said.
Now, let's see. Cynthia Davis could run for the State Senate against Scott Rupp, (edit: she could run for Congress against Todd Akin, which would be hilarious), she could run for a St. Charles county or municipal office in O'Fallon, or she could run for the U. S. Senate against Roy Blunt and provide us hours of entertainment. As a Kansas City sports fan, I always bet on disappointment, so I'm sure Cynthia is prepping her race for Director of Elections or Collector of Revenue.
Cynthia Davis also bashed Tom Schweich for donating to Claire McCaskill and praising the composition of Obama's cabinet. Because blind party loyalty is what you want in an auditor.
Meanwhile, Chuck Purgason moves onwards, hitting Roy Blunt on earmarks. No word on when Blunt will just start voting against budgets or not voting, before claiming credit for the earmarks. It's what Kit Bond would do.
In an article in the New York Review of Books last October Michael Tomasky predicted that if health care reform becomes fait accompli, the follow-up strategy of the fringewing opposition would be to rally under the "Tenther" banner. Tentherism refers to one of the more amusing distortions of the constitution current in right wing circles; Tenthers hold that the ninth and tenth amendments allow states to nullify any federal legislation they don't like.
Although the Tenther premise is assuredly negated by the Constitution's supremacy clause along with other considerations, the more feckless of Missouri's fringer pols have been quick to jump on the bandwagon. As Hotflash noted last October, state Senator* Jane Cunningham has promised to introduce nullification legislation. Not to be outdone, the witless but very energetic Cynthia Davis (R-19*) has already started the ball rolling to amend the State Constitution and nullify the provisions of federal health care reform legislation.
The Tenther movement, however, like the related Tea Party anger orgies, is not quite as natural a development as would-be constitutional defenders such as Davis and Cunningham would like us to think - or may actually think themselves. According to Lee Fang of ThinkProgress:
The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), founded in 1973 by conservative activist Paul Weyrich, is a DC-based front group which helps state lawmakers craft corporate-friendly legislation. As the Atlantic has noted, ALEC developed template health care "states' rights," legislation to declare aspects of health reform unconstitutional. ALEC has promoted this "tenther" legislation using its network of mostly far right Republican state lawmakers. The bills, which have been adopted in some form in 24 states so far, aim to invalidate federal regulations of health insurance, the public option and the individual mandate using the Tenther Amendment.
To take the chain of influence one step further, one of the main architects of the ALEC Tenther strategy is Joan Gardner, Executive Director of State Services with Blue Cross Blue Shield Association's Office of Policy and Representation. Is the picture becoming clearer?
Jane Cunningham and Cynthia Davis may be the face of Tentherism in Missouri, but we should remember who is pulling the strings. Bleat as they may about "freedom," Cunningham and Davis are doing nothing more than providing a sham patriotic facade for the insurance industry's war to save its profit margin.
* Corrected
It is instructive to take a look at Roy Blunt's and Cynthia Davis' respondes to H1N1 preparedness. Both Blunt and Davis pay allegiance to a similar conservative credo; yet Davis tells the government no thank you, keep your vaccine, while Blunt puts on a big show, pointing his little finger at the big, bad government that didn't get him his vaccine right away.
As we pointed out earlier, Blunt has, predictably, remained faithful to the tried-and-true Republican playbook: do nothing, obstruct, defame the opposition, and use the rhetoric of movement conservatism to do so - all suitably fact free, designed to give Blunt the requisite populist sheen.
Davis, however, responds to the need to head off a potential public health crisis in a way that is true to her belief that government is not entitled to intervene in health questions (except, of course, when they involve women's reproductive rights):
It is not the job of the government or the schools to provide vaccines. Schools are educational institutions, not health institutions. ... ultimately this decision should be worked out between you and your doctor.
In Davis' delusional reality, the recommendations of epidemiologists for disease control can be safely disregarded simply because they might interfere with her narrow definition of the role of government. She conceives of public health policy as a function of doctors interacting with comfortable, middle-class individuals who can afford their services - and if that is not really an effective way to deal with potential epidemics, then let the devil take the hindmost.
With such liars and simpletons for leaders, is it any wonder that the Republican cadres are going into a Tea Party tailspin? The bred-in-the-bone conservative masses are tasked with understanding why things went south after George Bush led the way to the promised land, gave them their tax cuts, thrilled them with feckless displays of military might, gutted corporate and financial regulation, and unleashed the free market dogs on a hapless nation. And what tools do they have to help them make sense of what happened? A choice between the mendacity of Republican power politics or the delusional dogma that fed its inevitable failure
*Graffito Angst photograph from Wikipedia Commons.
Missouri State Rep. Cynthia Davis' persona has elements of the mid-20th century comedian Gracie Allen, who developed a sweetly stupid comic schtick derived from an earlier vaudeville stereotype, the "Dumb Dora." Unfortunately, as Davis' newsletters often demonstrate, in a political context Dumb Dora's skewed logic is not always funny -- particularly when dealing with topics such as the massacre at Fort Hood.
At this early point all that we can actually verify about the perpetrator, Nidal Hasan, is that he was a disturbed man whose discontent seems to have been expressed through religious preoccupations. To Davis, however, that Hasan is a Muslim is the only important fact. She writes in her latest Newsletter:
Christianity is the foundation of tolerance. ... Jesus teaches us to love our enemies. On the other hand radical Muslims, such as Hasan's imam (Islamic cleric) teach it is honorable to kill non-Muslims.... While some Muslims may be unaware of what their faith teaches and others do not adhere to these parts of the Koran, we as a country should not ignore the obvious
ooooh! We loving and tolerant Christians just can't trust those scary Muslims, no matter how reasonable they seem!
But wait a minute - earlier this year another disturbed man, his anger focused through the lens of fundamentalist Christian dogma, erupted in a violent act. Christian anti-abortion activist Scott Roeder shot Dr George Tiller who had just been acquitted of violating Kansas' late-term abortion law. There can be little doubt that Roeder's motivation was influenced by his religious beliefs.
And what did Cynthia Davis, Christian anti-abortion champion, have to say about fundamentalist Christian terrorism in the person of Scott Roeder?:
With no knowledge of the person who shot George Tiller, I can only speculate he may have been mentally unbalanced. With the exception of self defense, it is hard to imagine how anyone could shoot another human being in his right mind,...
.
Gracie Allen may have presented a Dumb Dora face to the public, but her stage character never allowed stupidity to lead her past the bounds of decency and fairness. One wishes that one could say the same for Cynthia Davis.
`Have some wine,' the March Hare said in an encouraging tone.
Alice looked all round the table, but there was nothing on it but tea. `I don't see any wine,' she remarked.
`There isn't any,' said the March Hare.
You hear some strange notions in Wonderland. Last Monday, for example, when Todd Akin spoke at Cynthia Davis' town hall, he mentioned in passing that for every government job created, two private sector jobs are lost and that by advising FDR to create public works jobs in 1932, John Maynard Keynes turned a recession into the Great Depression.
But only the Mad Hatter would agree. The real world begs to differ:
As for the claim about private sector jobs lost when government jobs are created, the evidence is like wine on the March Hare's tea table: there isn't any.
Akin dispensed another tea party notion, namely that Spain, one of the strongest economies in Europe, plunged this year to a 17 percent unemployment rate because of overdependence on solar and wind power. Akin opposes cap-and-trade legislation because it focuses on increasing solar and wind power, while neglecting nuclear power. To prove how unreliable those alternative sources can be, he explained that the Spanish government offered citizens tax credits for installing solar and wind power and that so many of them responded and sold their excess power back to the government that, on days when there was no sun or wind, there was insufficient power for the Alcoa Aluminum plant. Aluminum plants use a great deal of power and, finding its power source undependable, the Alcoa corporation moved its plant back to the United States. Voila, 17 percent unemployment.
I've been down the rabbit hole. Monday evening, I attended a town hall hosted by Cynthia Davis, with Todd Akin as her guest, and attended by 25 or 30 of their true believers. What had been billed as an opportunity for constituents to get answers to questions actually turned out to be lotsa lecture by Mr. Akin--but no one seemed to mind.
Both lawmakers had a chance to hold forth, and each differed as widely in personality as in height. Davis is merry and disarming, with more than a touch of ditzy thrown in. Akin is more serious.
And he is smooth. He never raises his voice or evinces anger. Never. Indeed, aside from the fact that much of what he says is misleading or demonstrably false, you'd swear he was the soul of rationality. Many voters trust him implicitly because he is so gosh-darned sincere and able to cite (questionable) statistics.
He spoke at length about health care (as well as cap and trade, which I'll cover in a later posting). I couldn't help but notice that, on health care--as well as on other topics--no matter how reasonable the facade, no matter how soothing the voice, he indulges in the usual Republican scare tactics. Get a load:
I won't even dignify the anonymous letter about dirty European hospitals with an answer, but I will comment on his allusion to the high cancer survival rate in the U.S. He didn't cite the statistics he promised, but conservatives have been touting the idea that the U.S. has the highest breast cancer survival rate in the world. M-m-maybe. According to at least one study, the Concord Study, we do; but the authors of the study point out that the differences among the top nations are small and could vary depending on the methods and biases of the questioners. They also note that the U.S. outcomes may be inflated because the U.S. registries don't take 100 percent of the population into account, whereas the registries of other countries do.
Akin makes full use of such misleading arguments to bolster the notion that we're number one, instead of number 37. He implied that the "hard left" wants to wipe out this medical paradise beloved of Saudi princes, by destroying insurance companies. Would that I dared to hope for a public option that effective, in other words, one as good as Medicare--you know, the health insurance program that even conservatives over 65 ... want to stay in.
If you're a Missouri Republican, that is. Rep. Tim Jones is still fighting the good fight alongside Plutonians Orly Taitz and Rep. Cynthia Davis. But he's unopposed in his bid for Missouri House Republican Floor Leader, and Rex Sinquefield just dropped $40K into Jones' campaign coffers.
Rep. Mary Still (D-Columbia) just joined the growing group of critics calling on Missouri Speaker Ron Richard to remove Rep. Cynthia Davis (R-O'Fallon) from her chairmanship of a committee dedicated to families and children because of her comments on hunger and motivation.
In the newsletter, Davis wrote that "people who are struggling with lack of food usually do not have an obesity problem" and "hunger can be a positive motivator" for older teens capable of getting jobs.
"To say that this would have an effect on the obesity problem, that's just cruel," Still said. "It's incorrect, wrong and cruel, and I'm not comfortable with her in a leadership position."
Good for Still for keeping the pressure on Richard to hold him accountable, since he's the one who named Davis to the chair.
But yet again, Davis managed to say something in this article that really bothered me.
Davis said her role as a mom and foster parent makes her qualified to lead the families and children committee. "I am an expert on family values," she said. "I'm a huge advocate of the family, and I understand families in a deeper sense than most other legislators in the Capitol."
Excuse me? She understands families in a deeper sense than most other legislators? What a self-important jerk! She has more children than the average legislator, I'll give her that, but a deeper sense of understanding? Perhaps it was earned by lessons learned from allowing small children to play on a highway median.
And she might be right about the publicity. Every child who has ever risked detention for the fun of creating a disturbance in class can tell you that negative attention is better than nothing. It beats being boring, and it gets the admiration of a certain classroom demographic.
Now she gets to strut in front of all the tea party looneys in the state as the bull goose looney. She's way more interesting than goody two shoes Thomas Schweich, Jack Danforth's protege. Schweich has announced he's running for auditor.
Of course, Allen Icet, head of the Budget Committee in the House, is also running for auditor, and he's every bit as looney as Cynthia, but ... he's never been spanked by Olbermann and Colbert. It's not too late, though. If he makes enough noise about how he first threatened to refuse the stimulus funds, then tried to spend them on a tax cut, and finally tried to spend the whole two year's worth in one session, maybe they would take pity on him and rail against his stupidity.
Because otherwise he's just going to have to depend on getting 81 of the 89 Republican representatives to endorse him. Pretty dull stuff.
Oops, this is how a tshirt designed to rib Rep. Cynthia Davis would look if you were lying down on your right side.
Javonne Spitz, who dreamed it up, says:
"It is not pretty. I went punk."
If you'd like to add this to your wardrobe, you can call her at 636-240-8831. She says a small group of people could get together with her, pay her $4 for materials, and make their own. Or she can make them to order for $8 and mail it to you.
If nothing else, the text would be an ice breaker.
"Birthers" are individuals who fervently believe that President Obama was not actually born in the United States and is therefore not eligible to hold his current office. Two rallies were schedule in Missouri today - one in St. Charles County and one in Jefferson City.
Oh brother, you know it had to have been a pathetic event (at the Jefferson City rally) when a newspaper reporter, Tony Messenger of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, writes via a Twitter post:
I am familiar with your SMEAR Journalism (sic). You are not welcome at either events (sic). If you do show up, we will be forced to call security.
That's really sad. As much as we admire our friends at Fired Up they can't even get properly booted from a right wingnut event anymore. Sad, so sad. I digress.
Posted 3:30 p.m. Wed., July 1 ...At Wednesday's meeting, she held up a large reproduction of Obama's birth certificate and challenged various items on it. "This is a scandal of the highest proportions," Taitz said.
She also laid out other related allegations against the president.
Democrats dismiss such accusations...
[emphasis added]
Uh, I've got news for you Jo Mannies, it's not Democrats vs. republicans on this, nor is it liberal vs. conservative, it's sane vs. insane. And while we're at it, sometimes not all opposing ideas are equal. Sometimes crazy ideas just need to be treated as what they actually are, you know, crazy:
...Michael Medved referred to the Birthers as "crazy, nutburger, demagogue, money-hungry, exploitative, irresponsible, filthy conservative imposters" who are "the worst enemy of the conservative movement." He added, "It makes us look weird. It makes us look crazy. It makes us look demented. It makes us look sick, troubled, and not suitable for civilized company..."
Last time anyone checked Michael Medved was neither a Democrat nor a liberal.
Missouri State Representative Cynthia "Are there no prisons? Are there no work houses?" Davis (r) continues to have a not so good, very bad month. Some of our previous coverage:
An unsigned lead editorial in the dead trees edition of today's Warrensburg Daily Star-Journal takes Representative Davis to task for her views on the summer meals program:
Rep. Cynthia Davis, R-O'Fallon, in a newsletter states "hunger can be a positive motivator" for getting people to find jobs.
Davis must never have heard of Abraham Maslow. In 1943, he wrote "A Theory of Human Motivation." He articulated ideas that "oft were thought but ne'er so well expressed." In making his point about why humans behave in basic ways, he produced what became known as Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. At the base of his pyramid are a person's most basic needs - to breathe, to drink, to eat... To be plain, to eat is to live. Food is for life, not for motivation.
Davis no doubt did not realize that motivation is best described as an award from peers, a bonus from the boss, a kiss from a spouse, a hug from a child. She must have missed Maslow's lessons while living in her nice suburban St. Louis home, far from those low-income people in the big cities who so need her to provide proper motivation...
...May Davis never know hunger, but if ever she does, she can dine on that foot in her mouth.
Now, the question for Representative Denny Hoskins (r - noun, verb, CPA) is, since your home town paper stated, "...for Davis to head the House Special Standing Committee on Children and Families seems about as useful to those children and families as putting Trick "Pass Me the Blunt and Let Me Roll It" Daddy in charge of the state's drug prevention programs...", should she continue in that House leadership role? We'd certainly like to know if you endorse her views and her chairmanship of that committee, Representative Hoskins.
Special thanks to Michael Bersin and RBH who were instrumental in doing the research that backs up my smartassery. This post would have been a couple hundred words of mostly wisecracks without them and a conference room in the Plaza Branch of the KC Public Library.
*****
We have been pretty gleeful in heaping abuse and scorn on Cynthia "Fagin" Davis for her comments about hunger serving as a motivator for poor children to get jobs, and with good reason.
She is, quite simply, nuts, and unfit to serve as the chair of the state's standing committee on children and families. In case you have forgotten, she was one of the co-sponsors of HJR-34, the "birther bill" - legislation aimed at keeping President Obama's name off Missouri ballots in 2012. The bill was withdrawn and the texts removed from the Missouri general assembly web site - in the hope that everyone else would forget it ever happened. But, the Internets are forever, and we have a copy in our archives:
...Section 8. We the people of Missouri adopt a voter's bill of rights as a defense against corruption, fraud, and tyranny. Missouri voters shall have the following rights:
3. The right to have only qualified candidates placed on the ballot. The secretary of state shall determine that each person is qualified for the office he or she seeks, according to the law, before placing his or her name on the ballot. For candidates who are required by the Constitution of the United States to be natural born citizens, the secretary of state shall request an official copy of the candidate's birth certificate. Other certifications, such as a certificate of live birth, shall not be accepted. Should any candidate fail to provide an official birth certificate within thirty days of the request by the secretary of state, his or her name shall not be placed on the ballot.The secretary of state shall verify the qualifications of any elected officeholder who was previously placed on a Missouri ballot. Should any elected officeholder fail to provide the required documentation or birth certificate within thirty days of the request by the secretary of state, the secretary of state shall turn the matter over to the attorney general who shall within twenty days file suit to obtain the required documentation...
And she is quite the hopper-on of bandwagons, and the wingnuttier the better. Before she got the 'birther' bit in her teeth, she tried to make political hay off the Terri Schaivo tragedy by sponsoring a(nother) bill that went nowhere.
But it isn't just the crazy - it's the hypocrisy.
Cynthia Davis knows first hand that there really is such a thing as a free lunch, but her free lunches aren't the burger and fries that McDonalds employees receive as their shift meal. Her free lunches come from lobbyists.
Yes. The wingnuttiest state rep of them all, the one who says it is the responsibility of the parents to feed their own children apparently thinks it is the responsibility of lobbyists to feed state legislators (and the children of one particular state legislator):
April 2009 Representative: DAVIS, CYNTHIA
Nancy L. Giddens 4/1/2009 Individual Not Amended $8.52 Meals, Food, & Beverage - Dinner
Larry Rohrbach 4/15/2009 Individual Not Amended $17.31 Meals, Food, & Beverage -
William A Gamble 4/20/2009 Individual Not Amended $40.00 Meals, Food, & Beverage - Non alcoholic beverages
Total Amount $65.83
March 2009 Representative: DAVIS, CYNTHIA
Don R. Kissell 3/3/2009 Individual Not Amended $6.33 Meals, Food, & Beverage - SAINT CHARLES LEGISLATIVE BREAKFAST
William A Gamble 3/9/2009 Individual Not Amended $30.00 Meals, Food, & Beverage - Non alcoholic beverages
Total Amount $36.33
February 2009 Representative: DAVIS, CYNTHIA
Jorgen Schlemeier 2/9/2009 Individual Not Amended $5.06 Meals, Food, & Beverage - Lunch
Jeffrey T. Sweet 2/27/2009 Individual Not Amended $12.00 Meals, Food, & Beverage - Lunch provided during Boeing briefing on operations
Jeffrey T. Sweet 2/27/2009 Individual Not Amended $8.00 Gift - Desk clock provided during Boeing briefing on operations
John A. Urkevich 2/28/2009 Individual Not Amended $35.00 Meals, Food, & Beverage - CSD Legislative Breakfast
Total Amount $60.06
January 2009 Representative: DAVIS, CYNTHIA
Lobbyist Name William A Gamble 1/8/2009 Individual Not Amended $67.80 Meals, Food, & Beverage - Non alcoholic beverages
Brad Thielemier 1/9/2009 Individual Not Amended $10.00 Meals, Food, & Beverage - Craig Felzien 1/12/2009 Individual Not Amended $10.00 Gift
C.K. Casteel, Jr. 1/14/2009 Individual Not Amended $33.71 Meals, Food, & Beverage - reception
C.K. Casteel, Jr. 1/15/2009 Individual Not Amended $129.00 Meals, Food, & Beverage - Annual Meeting (2 tickets)
Total Amount $250.51
Do you sometimes wonder about the mental state of the fringiest of our Republican legislators? Consider the following recent examples of shrill and clueless scolding on the part of two of the people elected to represent us:
All of which came to my mind when I read a recent 
You thought it would be impossible to top Davis for sheer mean-mindedness, right? And that may be true, but South Carolina's Republican Lieutenant Governor Andrew Bauer is at least in the same category. He recently 
In looking forward to the coming legislative session, State Rep. Jake Zimmerman, D-Olivette, acknowledged that he will be working with a number of unhinged members of the Missouri House. He waved Cynthia Davis aside as by no means the most wackadoodle of them and called to the attention of the audience at West County Dems two Republicans who have outdone even Cynthia.
Jim Guest, R-Pluto (pictured at right), believes that the government has been 
In an 
It is instructive to take a look at Roy Blunt's and Cynthia Davis' respondes to H1N1 preparedness. Both Blunt and Davis pay allegiance to a similar conservative credo; yet Davis tells the government no thank you, keep your vaccine, while Blunt puts on a big show, pointing his little finger at the big, bad government that didn't get him his vaccine right away.
At this early point 
But wait a minute - earlier this year another disturbed man, his anger focused through the lens of fundamentalist Christian dogma, erupted in a violent act. Christian anti-abortion activist Scott Roeder shot Dr George Tiller who had just been acquitted of violating Kansas' late-term abortion law. There can be little doubt that Roeder's motivation was influenced by his 
Talk about taking lemons and making lemonade. Cynthia Davis is termed out of HD 19 and has been considering a run for statewide office, and she seems to think her recent bout of national notoriety (
And she might be right about the publicity. Every child who has ever risked detention for the fun of creating a disturbance in class can tell you that negative attention is better than nothing. It beats being boring, and it gets the admiration of a certain classroom demographic.
