A dentist in Arnold named Homer Tourkakis has been fighting off an eminent domain attempt at taking his dental clinic and has become, in the process, something of a small town hero. 

The city wanted the land so that THF Realty could build a shopping area that would include a Lowe’s, Dierberg’s, Office Depot and other stores.  For the $78 million project, THF was being given $30 million in government subsidies and tax increment financing. Even with that much of a leg up, though, THF wanted one more advantage: the right to take the land of several nearby businesses. 

Tourkakis felt that being forced to give up his land was wrong and filed a lawsuit against the city of Arnold and THF for trying to take the building where his dental practice has been located for 22 years. He has been heartened by community reaction:  

According to Tourkakis, his dental patients and the city’s general population have continued to support him.

“They don’t feel that private property should be transferred to another for profit,” Tourkakis said.

The basis of Tourkakis’ legal challenge was that the state constitution allows only cities with a constitutional charter (that’s only the biggest cities:  St. Louis, Kansas City, Springfield) to take land by eminent domain.  The circuit court found that a convincing argument and ruled in his favor last May.  Circuit judge M. Edward Williams ruled that a third class city did not have the constitutional authority to take the property even if it had been blighted–which, of course, it wasn’t.

The decision was a blow to developers, who had tried everything to win, including an attempt to buy him off.  Once Tourkakis initiated the court challenge, developers asked him to “name a number”:

“I happen to know that once the developer realized the weight of this constitutional challenge, they asked the doctor to ‘name a number’-the last thing they wanted was a court precedent that would foil similar developments all over the state,” says Ron Calzone, chairman of Missouri Citizens for Property Rights, in a press release. “When most people would have taken the easy way out, and the money, Homer stayed the course and paved the way for others to protect their property with the same defense. Non-chartered cities across Missouri should now be on notice.”

Calzone spoke those optimistic words after Tourkakis won his court case last May.  Unfortunately, that ruling was not the final word. 

In late October, the city of Arnold appealed the case to the Missouri Supreme Court.  It will argue that the constitution allows the taking of property for redevelopment and will cite a state law that allows even municipalities without a constitutional charter to take land.

Tourkakis’ lawyers will argue that any state law that contradicts the constitutional provision that only constitutionally chartered cities have the power to take land is itself unconstitutional.

Each side avows its confidence that it will prevail.  There will be much perusing of the fine print in the constitutional amendment and in the statute in question–much perusing and much speculating about the intent of the legislators who wrote them. 

Not being a legal scholar, I leave those speculations to the court, but I hope the law will allow the best man (Tourkakis) to win. 

Central, these days, to the discussion on health care reform, is what George Lakoff refers to as the neoliberal position of thought. . Neither purely progressive nor purely conservative, this mode of thought shares progressive values and the ethics of care, insisting on maximizing health care coverage, and at the same time accepts a conservative version of market principles that guarantees profits to insurance companies.  An inherent tension between the two goals, the government to provide real quality health care and the profit-maximizing insurance marketplace, is thus created.

Of the Democratic presidential candidates, most favor the neoliberal position on health care reform. They believe that the market can be efficient and serve moral ends. They believe that markets can be effectively regulated to serve human interests and so, argue for technocratic changes to existing markets as a means to achieve progressive ends. They are unfazed by health care solutions that involve profit-maximizing private insurance companies.  They think they are on the move.  Republicans snidely refer to this jumble as “socialized medicine”.  But then, you know the republicans, anything, no matter how screwy, to get the fear factor in play.

The fly in the ointment is that profit-maximizing private insurance companies need to make  – profits!  Once upon a time, back in the day, it was all-good.  Profit maximizing insurance companies insured, for the most part, houses and lives.  Since not too many house burned down or blew away, they could take your premium dollars, invest them and maybe even turn a total profit on your account.  Same for life insurance because most of that insurance is term and is set to expire before you do.  Sweet!  But health insurance is another story.  Yuuk!  Everybody gets sick and weak and older.  Lots of benefits to be paid!  No profit in that!  And then they figured it out.  By excluding the tired, poor and sick and by denying claims to those who had purchased coverage, they could make a profit.  Health insurance became an industry that made money by not delivering the services it was paid to deliver. Yes!  And nothing is going to change no matter how much technocracy is employed.  Profit-maximizing industries are not going to stop doing what they do.  And with health care projected to become a 4 trillion dollar industry by 2012, wild horse won’t drag them away from that feeding frenzy. 
  So, good luck, Hillary, John and Barak in trying to regulate this baby into something that “serves moral ends”.

Lakoff cautions against the dangerous trap of “Surrender in Advance” thinking and states:

Those who pragmatically focus on appeasing what they assume will be unavoidable political opposition to their proposals also run the risk of moral surrender.  For instance, assuming strong, possibly insurmountable conservative resistance to government based health care solutions, they will embrace profit maximizing private insurance solutions because they believe that 1) political opposition can be muted and 2) the “free” market, properly regulated, can serve moral purposes. Proponents of these neoliberal solutions often overlook the fact that the very source of the health care crisis is the structure of the insurance: the less care they authorize, the more profit they make, and profits come first and are maximized.

Lakoff argues that the sanctioning of technocratic solutions for health care causes a failure of articulation of more progressive values.  Those values, health care for all, empathy and responsibility, protection and empowerment, go unstated. We are inundated with market management mechanisms that are next to impossible figure out.  We are so overwhelmed by complicated program principles that we are not even able to combat the Republican Propaganda Machine as it drearily drones out its mantra of “socialized medicine”.  Americans hear only the conservative moral view, and consequently, move toward that viewpoint. I am thinking of Pogo right now.

My dictum, in thinking of health care reform, is “all of the people, all of the time”.  A simple standard of measurement can be: “Does this improve the health care security of all of our fellow citizens in concrete ways?”  Progressive values for health care reform must be kept in the forefront of discussion to avoid being lost in the murky depths of technocratic improvisation.  I haven’t been hearing much of the progressive platform lately.  What I am hearing is that Americans will be able  (or compelled) to purchase “coverage”  (which means insurance) to the extent of their ability to pay, or perhaps they might be able to lobby (beg) for a subsidy or something (following extensive means testing of course), as represented in the ongoing saga of the SCHIP, but that they will have a choice over public or private insurance mechanisms.  Whatever the case, they will have some “coverage” depending upon their ability to pay. It seems that the more things change, the more they stay the same.  Hillary, John, Barak, are you listening?

Margaret Donnelly thinks like an attorney general.  Which is to say that she plans to file legislation that will help the next attorney general control the meth trade.  Her bill will call for an electronic log book system to track illegal purchases of pseudoephedrine. 

Cover your mouth when you yawn.  This may not sound sexy, but it would help cops track the meth trade in minutes rather than days.  According to Donnelly’s press release:

Law enforcement currently must travel to each pharmacy and copy the written logs before returning to their office to review the data for suspicious purchases.  But new technology enables pharmacies to post log books online for law enforcement to track in real time. What takes days can take just minutes when law enforcement can go online to track pseudoephedrine purchases and stop illegal meth production.

Good idea.

And another good idea would be to restore funding to  MoSMART, a state agency which offers grants to local law enforcement entities to help them combat illegal methamphetamine production and distribution.  Donnelly is calling on Governor Blunt and on House Budget Chair Allen Icet to support a supplemental spending bill next session to restore funding to MoSMART.

Donnelly is working to get the legislature to give her–or whoever is elected AG–the necessary tools to fight meth production.  Good thinking. 

A month ago, I wrote about the restorative justice program in Missouri:

It’s painful to face someone and apologize when you know you really screwed up–so much so that some people can’t, or won’t, do it.  But most of us know that only an apology will give us any peace, especially if it is accepted graciously.  Better to face the person you’ve hurt and fess up than have the memory of your wrongdoing keep stinging you.

A group in Missouri is working to improve our justice system by applying that bit of common sense. Restorative Justice arranges for criminal offenders to face their victims, apologize, and hear what the victims have to say about what happened.  The offender may also hear what restitution the victim wants from him.

A movie about three crime victims will be shown this Tuesday evening:

Beyond Conviction:This movie tells the story of three crime victims on a journey towards resolution and healing. This film follows participants in a pioneering program run by the state of Pennsylvania in which victims of the most violent crimes meet face to face with their perpetrators. The St. Louis Area Restorative Justice Collaboration and the Missouri Restorative Justice Coalition are sponsoring a showing of this award winning film “Beyond Conviction”

When: Tuesday,Nov. 13th.

Where: the Ethical Society of St. Louis

9001 Clayton Rd.

free

Time: Doors open at 6:30 PM. Movie starts at 7PM

Nina Balsam,head of the local restorative justice group, will present the film

Memo shows attorney challenged Blunt’s policy before firing
Saturday, November 10, 2007
By CHRISTOPHER LEONARD ~ The Associated Press

ST. LOUIS — A former staff attorney for Gov. Matt Blunt sent an internal office memo challenging his boss’ stance on deleting e-mails just weeks before the attorney was fired, according to a copy of the memo obtained by The Associated Press.

The memo’s existence and content contradict public statements made by Blunt and his top officials after the attorney was fired in late September. Blunt officials have repeatedly said Scott Eckersley never challenged — verbally or in writing — their policy of deleting office e-mail and brought up the issue only the day he was fired….

This is a textbook case of how not to handle a political windstorm, unless…

…you’re worried that you’re going to go to jail for doing something really really bad.

…On Friday, Chrismer reiterated that Blunt’s office has “no record that Scott Eckersley ever wrote or stated that the practices of our office were inconsistent with any law or standard on record retention….

Heh. Do you think maybe that lack of record is because it was deleted? A classic “non denial denial” if I’ve ever seen one.

RSMo 610.010

(6) “Public record”, any record, whether written or electronically stored, retained by or of any public governmental body including any report, survey, memorandum, or other document or study prepared for the public governmental body by a consultant or other professional service paid for in whole or in part by public funds, including records created or maintained by private contractors under an agreement with a public governmental body or on behalf of a public governmental body; provided, however, that personally identifiable student records maintained by public educational institutions shall be open for inspection by the parents, guardian or other custodian of students under the age of eighteen years and by the parents, guardian or other custodian and the student if the student is over the age of eighteen years. The term “public record” shall not include any internal memorandum or letter received or prepared by or on behalf of a member of a public governmental body consisting of advice, opinions and recommendations in connection with the deliberative decision-making process of said body, unless such records are retained by the public governmental body or presented at a public meeting. Any document or study prepared for a public governmental body by a consultant or other professional service as described in this subdivision shall be retained by the public governmental body in the same manner as any other public record;

RSMo 610.011

Liberal construction of law to be public policy.
1. It is the public policy of this state that meetings, records, votes, actions, and deliberations of public governmental bodies be open to the public unless otherwise provided by law. Sections 610.010 to 610.200 shall be liberally construed and their exceptions strictly construed to promote this public policy.

2. Except as otherwise provided by law, all public meetings of public governmental bodies shall be open to the public as set forth in section 610.020, all public records of public governmental bodies shall be open to the public for inspection and copying as set forth in sections 610.023 to 610.026, and all public votes of public governmental bodies shall be recorded as set forth in section 610.015.

Rough translation: “when in doubt, save it” 

The United States Senate voted 53 to 40 to confirm Michael Mukasey as Attorney General.

Claire McCaskill was one of 40 “No” votes. Kit Bond was one of 53 “Yes” votes.

Senators Alexander (R-TN), Biden (D-DE), Clinton (D-NY), Cornyn (R-TX), Dodd (D-CT), McCain (R-AZ) and  Obama (D-IL) did not vote.

Let’s see what Kit Bond voted for:

MICHAEL MUKASEY ATTORNEY GENERAL CONFIRMATION HEARING 10/18/2007

MR. MUKASEY: I don’t know what’s involved in the technique. If waterboarding is torture, torture is not constitutional.

Well, did anyone bother to ask Michael Mukasey if there had been any cases concerning the subject?

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Carl LEE, Defendant-Appellant

No. 83-2675

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT

744 F.2d 1124; 1984

…Lee was indicted along with two other deputies, Floyd Baker and James Glover, and the County Sheriff, James Parker, based on a number of incidents in which prisoners were subjected to a “water torture” in order to prompt confessions to various crimes…

…At trial, Baker’s defense as developed by his counsel and his testimony rested on two points. The first was that he actively participated in only a single torture episode, and then only because ordered to do so by his superiors — a “Nuremberg defense.” The second was that while he believed the torture of prisoners immoral, he did not at the time think it was illegal.  In the course of Baker’s testimony, he identified Lee as a participant in the torture of several prisoners. Seven other witnesses also connected Lee with various torture incidents.  At the close of the evidence, the district judge severed Baker, and put the case of the remaining defendants to the jury.  Lee was convicted on three counts.  In this appeal he contends that Baker’s defense was in such conflict with his own that he should have been granted a severance at the be-ginning of trial. …

Do you think that if someone had been tried in federal court for a crime that it may, just may, have been a really bad thing?

Or maybe, he didn’t know “at the time” that torture was illegal, but that he did when he was indicted and convicted?

Did anyone notice that the court has no problem defining the procedure as torture? You’d think that a nominee for Attorney General or a United States Senator could have their staff do a little basic research.

And, there are numerous instances cited in the prosecutions for torture at the International Military Military Tribunal for the Far East [Tokyo War Crimes Trial] [The United States was a part of the prosecution: see Michael Mukasey and waterboarding for an excerpt from an affidavit describing the technique]

Primary contests can be an approach/avoidance situation.  They’re useful as far as giving the Democratic base a choice, but they take a toll on the finances of the eventual winner.

Here’s the upside of contested primaries:  I could take a vacation if I had a ten dollar bill for every time I’ve wished some DINO would get a progressive challenger in the primary.  And sometimes the results are wonderful.  Look at Senator John Tester’s primary win in Montana last year.  He decimated the DLC selected Democrat and went on to win.

But it can work the other way, too.  In the Missouri attorney general’s race, we have two fine progressives, Margaret Donnelly and Jeff Harris, opposed by a recent convert from the Republican party, Chris Koster. 

As a state senator, Koster has name recognition and a much larger chunk of change than his opponents.  He raised over $440,000 in the third quarter alone and has a million on hand.  $100,000 of that $440,000 came from Rex Sinquefield PACs–and, by the way, Koster isn’t saying whether he would oppose state tax credits for families that send their children to private schools.

Koster would like Democrats to overlook his record, but Margaret Donnelly called him on his recent flip flop over the Medicaid cuts:

In a press release today, Donnelly said Koster suggested he would have liked a “do-over” of his vote at a Missouri Democratic Party State Committee meeting last Saturday.

“What’s most curious about Koster’s most recent statements appealing for a do-over is that in September of 2007 Koster told KY3 in Springfield that he stood behind his decision to cut Medicaid eligibility. So which is it Chris? Do you want a do-over or do you stand behind cutting thousands of Missourians off needed healthcare?,” an e-mail from the Donnelly campaign for Attorney General asks today.

Jeff Harris is getting his blows in too by challenging Koster to give back his over-limit donations.

Put that information about the Donnelly/Harris/Koster arguments on hold for a minute, while you consider this: the Missouri Democratic Party chairman, John Temporiti, doesn’t seem to buy into that approach/avoidance attitude toward primaries.  He knows what he wants: fewer primary contests.  He believes that eliminating many of them would give the Dems a chance to take more seats in the legislature.  To that end, he’s been having conferences with candidates involved in primary contests, trying to talk those less likely to win the general election into dropping out.

Temporiti says he talks to the candidates about “campaign assets, resources and winnability.”  That doesn’t sound as if he focuses on policy, does it?  Of course, he would probably argue that any Democrat who gets elected is one more vote to put the skids on the right wingers.  A few more votes, for example, might have prevented the wingnuts from passing that abstinence only sex education bill last spring.  We’re dealing with people who are fond of crowing that the bill defeated Planned Promiscuity, that they ran a truck over Planned Terrorist in the Womb (parenthood-not).  Clever, eh?  And much in need of being stopped.

Temporiti claims success at getting two state legislators to drop out and give Rep. Joan Barry, a better known candidate, a clear field in the race for the soon-to-be-vacant First District state Senate seat.  He also talked to the two men running for Lieutenant Governor, Sam Page and Mike Evans.  The rumor mill has it that Evans, far less well funded, will drop out in a couple of weeks.  If Sam Page is the last one standing, he’ll need everything he’s got to beat Peter kinder.

And now, back to the AG race. 

Temporiti acknowledges less success in trimming the current three-Democrat field running for Missouri attorney general. He admits being envious of the state Republican Party, which already has winnowed its attorney general contenders down to state Sen. Michael Gibbons of Kirkwood.

Temporiti says he’s met with the three declared Democrats: state Sen. Chris Koster of Harrisonville and state Reps. Jeff Harris of Columbia and Margaret Donnelly of Richmond Heights.

Temporiti said he discussed with each their “financial resources, grasp of the issues, and winnability in a statewide race.” The upshot: “All three of them have made very persuasive arguments of why they should stay in this race.”

Koster’s arguments would be name recognition and MONEY, while Harris and Donnelly are less well known but dependably progressive.  I just hope the two of them don’t cancel each other out and leave the top spot to Koster.  Not that I don’t appreciate him leaving the dark side, but he doesn’t deserve that nomination until he builds some street cred as a Democrat.

Temporiti plans to continue discussing the race in hopes of getting one or two of them to drop out.  If Koster refuses to go, Donnelly and Harris would do the progressive side of the party a favor if they could agree that one of them should drop out.  They’re both so good that I hate to say that, but their competition could throw the race to a candidate who is untested as a Democrat and who has several legislative votes that make me cringe.