Considering the general Republican disdain for helping ordinary citizens cling to their middle class status, it comes as a shock to see two major Missouri unions endorse Tom Dempsey in Tuesday’s special election for the state Senate.

The Missouri Laborers’ Legislative Committee, which represents 14,000 members, and the Carpenters’ District Council of Greater St. Louis and Vicinity, which represents 22,000 members, are endorsing Dempsey, mainly on the strength of his vote “to protect the prevailing wage.”  He voted as a state rep, in other words, for a law requiring that major government construction projects must pay workers the prevailing local wage.

Since many of the unions’ members in St. Charles are social conservatives, the union leaders apparently feel they must consider endorsing any Republican who votes labors’ way on particular laws.  Even if Republicans do knock 100,000 desperate people off Medicaid.  Even if they work to eliminate a non-partisan system for selecting judges in favor of a system where judges will be bought by campaign contributions.  Even if they do harm public schools by favoring vouchers.  Even if they do overturn the campaign contribution limits that Missouri’s voters set, so that they can sell themselves to the richest buyers.

The unions are in the business of protecting their workers’ wages and working conditions.  They don’t figure it’s their job to decide for their workers what to think of these political issues.

Do you agree with them?

Anybody interested in helping canvass for Ed Applebaum this weekend can join ProVote workers.  Just go to the Target store in St. Charles at 3881 Mexico Road.  Here are the times (arrive 15 minutes early if possible):

Saturday:  10-2 and 3-7

Sunday:  3-7

Monday:  10-2

Tuesday:  10-7

Republican moral values focus almost exclusively on the crotch.  And if the owners of those crotches get entangled with other crotches of the same sex, look out.  The roof’s gonna blow.

Larry Craig is toast.  You know that.

Even Kit Bond, who zipped his lips when David Vitter (R-LA) admitted to soliciting sex from prostitutes, has publicly condemned Craig.

“It is unacceptable for a member of Congress to be soliciting sex in public restrooms,” Bond said.

Bond’s criticism is actually mild.  John McCain and Norm Coleman are calling for Craig’s resignation.  The Republican chorus of condemnation will grow, because they have to staunch the bleeding.  In less than a year, that’s two of their number caught playing footsie with the same sex.  The public is starting to believe they might be hypocrites.

Let me just say that they are hypocrites, but I’m not talking about their sexual proclivities.  I don’t give a hoot about who they screw as long as they don’t screw the public.

What’s the body count up to in Iraq now?  Craig voted for that war.  I don’t need to look up his legislative record to know that.  He’s a Republican, so he not only voted to get us in there, he’s been supporting it. He has the blood of thousands on his hands.

Nor have I heard that Senator Larry Craig (R-ID) has been publicly critical of the no-bid contracts awarded to Halliburton, et. al.  “Grand larceny” wouldn’t even begin to cover that theft.  It’s fantastic, sweeping, imperial larceny.

But those behaviors aren’t immoral, not according to the crotch moralists, because they could have been committed by a eunuch.  No, for a crime to be heinous enough to turn your Republican colleagues against you, you have to be guilty of … being gay. 

On Sunday, September 16th the 30th Harkin Steak Fry will take place at the balloon field in Indianola, Iowa. Democratic Presidential candidates Senator Joe Biden, Senator Hillary Clinton, Senator Chris Dodd, Senator John Edwards, Senator Barack Obama, and Governor Bill Richardson will be in attendance (and speak to the crowd).

I plan on attending this year.

On September 12th in 2003 I received a phone call from a friend the day before the Harkin Steak Fry. He asked me, “Do you want to go?” It’d been ages since I’d taken a road trip – I agreed to go. So, we drove the 4 1/2 hours to stand in a muddy balloon field and listen to Democratic presidential candidates. We had the time of our lives.

At the time my friend and I were avid Howard Dean supporters. As we drove into Indianola we stopped to get gas. We were conspicuous in our Howard Dean t-shirts, as were the occupants of a car from Minnesota doing the same.

The Dean campaign arranged for a meeting and staging place at a park shelter near the grounds of the event – publicizing such on their blog and forum. We arrived early and helped some twenty-something campaign types move picnic benches and set up the speaker stacks for the sound system.

It started drizzling.

The campaign twenty-somethings unloaded a pile of boxes and started handing out orange t-shirts emblazoned with the legend “Hey Harkin, these steaks are Dean-licious!” So, we helped. And we kept handing them out. I watched in amazement as the parking lot filled up and all those people (some flying in from great distances) showed up. I estimate the crowd in orange t-shirts under and around the shelter to number 400 to 600. Somone passed the word that Dean supporters from at least a dozen different states were in attendance.

We passed the time conversing with each other and new found friends. In some cases, exchanging e-mail addresses so we could continue the conversation.

Along with a few friends I had raised the money to print 1500 “‘No W’ – Next regime change, November 2, 2004” bumper stickers. I distributed a large number of them to the crowd.

Howard Dean arrived (with Joe Trippi) and stood up on a picnic table to address the crowd. After he finished speaking he and his entourage started walking to a small bus which would take them to the steak fry. I maneuvered through the crowd and called out, “Mr. Trippi. Mr. Trippi.” He turned to look at me as, with a self satisfied grin on my face, I handed him a bumper sticker. He read the bumper sticker, said with a strained look on his face, “Oh, great”, turned and walked away. I thought, “Oh, well.”

The orange clad host walked the relatively short distance to the grounds of the steak fry. We saw John Kerry go by in a van past our line of orange  walking along the highway.

We had opportunites to interact with some candidates on the grounds – and we heard them all speak. Howard Dean, Dennis Kucinich, John Kerry, John Edwards, Bob Graham, Carol Mosley-Braun, and the Big Dog (Dick Gephardt had been there earlier in the day – Joe Lieberman didn’t attend).

There was that sea of orange.

We had a gas. I recommend the experience.

I still have that orange t-shirt.

The Missouri voting reform organization Show Me the Vote! is holding an open house/reception in Kansas City today to celebrate the approval of their inititiative petition. They are attempting to put an initiative on the ballot that would require that Missouri elections return to a hand-marked, hand-counted ballot.

From a release by Show Me the Vote!:

Show Me The Vote! has been working furiously this year to write and file a Missouri Constitutional Initiative Petition which would mandate that Missouri elections return to using hand marked, hand counted paper ballots instead of the… ummm… problematic machines that we must use now.

  This is to announce a successful conclusion to that effort which culminated with a notice late Monday afternoon that our Initiative Petition had been approved.

  To celebrate, and to get a jump on the October 1 start of our six month campaign, we are holding a reception/open house at:

  Holiday Inn
  Salon A
  45th & Main   (by the Plaza)
  Kansas City, Missouri.
  Friday, 8/31 1:00pm to 9:00pm

  If you would like to participate in this effort to take back our democracy, please join us! You will be able to:

1) Be among the first 1000 to sign the Initiative Petition.

and/or

2) Sign up as a Petition Circulator (need not live in Missouri)

3) Ask any questions pertaining to the effort, and

4) Find ways to help out with this “revolutionary” movement

Please circulate widely.

  The notice of the Petition’s approval, and the ballot language (take the auditor’s report with a grain of salt and consider her source) may be found at the website of the Secretary of State.

http://www.sos.mo.go…

  The full text of the proposed revision of the Missouri Constitution may be found here.

http://www.sos.mo.go…

Who wants the hot potato?  The Missouri Supreme Court and the Ethics Commission are blistering their fingers trying to get rid of the job of ruling on who has to return excess campaign contributions.

Political Eye describes the judges’ quandary:

According to an expert in Missouri law and politics, the only thing that can explain this week’s Missouri Supreme Court ruling on campaign donation limits is a cowardly fear on the part of the court’s Democratic judges that they will be branded “activists.”
……

“I can’t think of one reason Jay Nixon or Matt Blunt should not have to return their money,” the expert said. “The Democrats on the court are just walking on eggshells in not deciding the issue for fear it will make them look like activist judges and that will be used against them later.”

Meanwhile, Ethics commissioners, trying to disguise their case of the jimjams, are pretending they never said that all the money should be refunded.  (Their take on it:  And even if we did–which we didn’t–we wouldn’t want to be left holding the bag.)

A month ago, Jay Nixon, speaking as the lawyer for the Commission, said that “the Ethics Commission’s position is that all candidates have to return over-the-limit contributions unless they can prove ‘undue hardship.'”  None of the commissioners argued with that statement–until the hot potato landed on their bare thighs earlier this week.  Now Conner is saying that the Commission “never voted” on the question.  And Legan said “he was shocked that the Supreme Court passed the refund issue onto ethics commissioners.”

You don’t suppose Matt Blunt has been putting any illegal pressure on those commissioners, do you?  Cause their knees are hammering out a rhythm.

If nobody has the balls to make Blunt give much of his three mill back, there’ll be hell to pay, says Political Eye.  Their anonymous expert explains:

“Now it’s possible some candidates will be found in hardship and keep their money, and some won’t and will have to return it. And those candidates who pay back will sue that this is unreasonable. And those cases will be back in the Supreme Court, like a Ping-Pong ball.”

Fired Up!, meanwhile, is hinting that Blunt is so determined to keep the cash that he’s looking to find an “activist” federal judge to overturn the Missouri Supreme Court decision.  Consider that claim in the rumor category, but, given Blunt’s ethically-challenged record, don’t discount it altogether, either.

Perhaps I’m being too hard on the governor, however.  After all, the executive director of the Missouri Republican Party, Jared Craighead, (or Jarhead as Political Eye dubbed him) sounds very reasonable:

“We sincerely hope that the Missouri Ethics Commission will take the people, and not politics, into consideration when deciding the fairest way to apply the law the people’s representatives enacted.”

That statement is only reasonable, though, until you remember that it was the Republican legislature that overturned the campaign finance limits that “the people” had voted on.

State Republicans aren’t any whit more ethical than the federal species.  They’ll say or do whatever serves their purposes at the moment.

photo courtesy of Fired Up!

 
• The Missouri Senate voted to pass the development bill late last night. The entire Missouri Legislature has now passed the bill. h/t Pub Def

 

• Blunt has withdrawn Rick Sullivan and Derio Gambaro as recess appointments. Sullivan had been appointed to be CEO of the St. Louis School District, and Gambaro was on the state Board of Education. Both were blocked by their home district senators, Joan Bray and Jeff Smith, respectively. Gambaro was Smith’s rival in last year’s 4th District race. h/t Pub Def (again!)

 

• Via green rising, Ameren UE has launched a voluntary Pure Power program. Customers can pay slightly more (1.5 cents more per kWh) to have their energy produced entirely by wind and other renewable sources. I’m signing up right now.

 

• McCaskill would support Talent as US Attorney General? Whaaaa? In fairness, she said Talent wouldn’t be her preference, because he has no background in law enforcement. Still…

Riverfront Times has an article on Judith Conoyer, co-founder with Phil Lindsey of Show Me the Vote, the petition drive for a constitutional amendment in Missouri requiring hand-counted paper ballots.  The writer lays out the problem with the machines, succinctly and clearly.

Conoyer, a 67-year-old St. Charles resident, co-founded Show Me The Vote in 2005, after becoming suspicious about the reliability of electronic voting machines during the 2004 presidential election. After traveling to Ohio to observe the well-publicized irregularities surrounding the touch-screen machines, Conoyer wondered whether Missouri’s election results were also inaccurate. In St. Charles County, for example, she discovered six precincts reported a voter turnout of more than 100 percent.

You go, Judy!  Phil, too!

( – promoted by Clark)

…the  number of Missourians who don’t have health insurance skyrocketed at three times the national rate in 2006. (SLPD 8/29/07)

Mystified experts, that study the Missouri Medicaid Mess, are surprised at the dramatic drop in health insurance coverage over the past year and say that the decline offers evidence that “many people cut from the state’s Medicaid program two years ago have failed to find other medical coverage.” The mystified experts further state that at the time of the cuts there were hopes that that those who lost coverage would find alternative health insurance.  Well, not hardly likely, not unless they were Medicaid queens driving Cadillacs.

According to the US Census Bureau figures that were released earlier this week, the number of uninsured in Missouri went up by an estimated 104,000 individuals in 2006, an increase of 16%, compared with the national average of a 5% increase.  This jump in Missouri was not unexpected because of the 100.000 individuals cut from the program in 2005.  Heckuva job Matty!.

But we can’t lay all of the laurels at Matty’s feet.  It was reported out in the NYT in 2005 that Congress had served up a budget cutting funds for Medicaid and food stamps while at the same time extending tax cuts on dividends and capital gains.  At that time it was noted that the Missouri Medicaid program was to be completely phased out in 2008.  Missouri residents remained largely silent.  They know that programs for the poor always turn into poor programs and poor programs for the poor are frequent targets for budget cuts.

Of course the Blunt Administration had an opinion on the mess as well. It went like this … “Increasingly employers are having difficulty in providing health insurance to their employees, and this, more than anything, may be contributing to the problem”.  We will try to figure that one out Matthew Blunt, since the mystified experts seemed to think that those being cut from the Medicaid roles were going to pick up some health insurance somewhere else, maybe from an employer.  And it might be fun to note that 100,000 (the number cut) is awfully similar to 104,000 (the increase in the uninsured in 2006).

The experts will have no relief from their mystification since the state did not track whether those dropped from the Medicaid program found other coverage.  Most Missouri residents will show no interest in those cut from Missouri Medicaid except to possibly feel some secret glee that they are safely insured, at least for the moment.  And an additional 100,000 Missouri residents will go without medical care.