Namely, when you find yourself in one, stop digging.

He seems downright hurt that his constituents have been paying attention to the cynical machinations he has excelled in during his brief tenure in the House, and they remember what he said during the campaign.  Now he is miffed that they want him to take a position on HB 645 – legislation that would allow concealed-carry on university campuses.  

He was especially steamed about a letter to the editor that ran in The Muleskinner, the student newspaper at CMSU UCM.    He was so upset about it (text below) that he confronted the student in a public setting.  

Full disclosure:  The student is a Democrat and he is also a politically active PoliSci major who is interning this semester/legislative session in Representative Mike Talboy’s office.  Mike is my friend and my representative, and he is also the chief legislative election strategist for the House on the Democratic side.  Mr. Wiseman is understandably perturbed himself, because Mr. Hoskins seems to think that he was “put up to” his letter by Representative Talboy.  In fact, Mr. Wiseman asked Mr. Talboy if he would mind if he wrote the letter, and Mr. Talboy said “absolutely not” and offered to look it over if Mr. Wiseman wanted him to.  After the letter was submitted, Mr. Wiseman told Mr. Talboy what he had written so Mr. Talboy would not be blindsided should Hoskins come after him.  

More below the fold.

Here is the text of the letter that twisted Denny’s knickers:

Dear Editor,

Thirty-two people lost their lives by the barrel of a gun at Virginia Tech April 16, 2007. Just over a year ago in a neighboring state, six college students were murdered by a gunman at Northern Illinois University.

After such horrific examples of shootings on college campuses, certain members of the Missouri House of Representatives (including Rep. Denny Hoskins) think it’s a good idea to pass a conceal and carry law for Missouri universities.

After these vicious acts that transpired, Rep. Hoskins wants to make it easier for such atrocities to occur in our state. Shouldn’t our representatives be more worried about limiting the amount of guns on college campuses rather than making it legal to conceal them? This is yet another example of Rep. Hoskins, and the members of his party, catering to organizations, such as the NRA, instead of protecting the citizens of Missouri from the dangers of guns.

Rep. Hoskins may look at these recent shootings and claim the lives of the victims would have been saved if someone on campus would have had a gun.

Multiple studies show the more guns are involved in a situation, the more deadly the outcome. More guns are not the solution to this problem, but the problem itself. Many would argue that citizens have the right under the Second Amendment to carry a gun on a campus. How does that correlate to forming a well regulated militia? These so called “protectors of the Constitution” that would defend the conceal and carry law on Missouri’s campuses should be forced to examine such barbaric acts of violence in which possession of a firearm was the cause.

I ask that Rep. Hoskins reconsider his position on this bill, and for the citizens of this state to understand the shear destruction that propagates from firearms. Out of respect for those who have lost their lives in the Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois shootings, we owe it to them to reject this bill and to vocalize our opposition.

Sincerely,

Derek Wiseman

Sophomore political science major

Representative Hoskins was quite miffed by the audacity of the student to assemble facts and statistics and recall the campaign rhetoric and promises made by Hoskins (and maybe even this farcical attack against his opponent) during the race for the 121st legislative district.  

So miffed that he confronted the student.  In public.  In the student union.  

Contrary to some of the rumors that are floating around, he did not go to the student’s class and interrupt a lecture to deliver his rebuke.  

Here is a description of the exchange in  the student’s own words:  

Here is what happened:

I was hanging out in the Union at UCM. Rep. Denny Hoskins was in there as well with a Muleskinner in his hand. He saw me from across the Union and walked over to me. He asked me where the Mulskinner office was, and I told him. He asked me if I wrote the article (knowing full well who I am and that I wrote it). I told him I did, and then he was visibly upset because I didn’t talk with him about the article before I wrote it. I told him that we could talk about it then and we discussed the topic. He was upset that I assumed his opinion on the bill and that he has never seen or heard of the bill. I told him that I assumed his opinion based off of his opinion on gun control and the conceal and carry laws. When I talked with him he even said he was in favor of conceal and carry laws, but he didn’t know how he felt about the bill because he hadn’t heard of it yet. I asked him to consider House bill 645, and to vote against it, and he said he would “look it over.” He was visibly irritated with my actions and he walked off to talk with the head of the communications department.

That is pretty much what happened. I hope it helps.

The thing is, Denny’s position is easy to assume.  Asking him for a direct answer does not yield one.  He knows what is being asked, and he knows that we know that he knows what is being asked, and he knows that we want an answer and there is only one reason he won’t commit…He want’s to play it both ways.  That is, after all, this particular republican pony’s one and only trick, since we learned the CPA hates counting.   I saw this first hand on Wednesday with my own eyes during the budget perfection debate on the House floor with Meals on Wheels.  

Lets just say I came away from watching that bit of political theater thinking that it would be splendid indeed if legislators could be required to put on a shock collar every time they stand up to speak, and the controls should be in the gallery.  When they act like Hoskins and Pratt did on Budget-Perfection Wednesday – and I can only assume every other day – we should have the option of zapping them with a mild but unpleasant electrical shock.  

We could call this the electric fence method of citizen control over the legislature. I have been a lot of things in my life, but the basis for everything I am are my roots as a sixth-generation Missouri farm girl. I have controlled a lot of half-ton animals with a skinny piece of wire and a battery.  I assume that legislators are at least as smart and trainable as my horse and various Angus steers I raised, and could keep a civil tongue in their heads and avoid walking into the fence?  Maybe not right off the bat, but eventually…Don’t you think?  (Okay, you got me…Maybe not…)

But Hoskins is no where near ready to stop digging and put down the shovel.

He was contacted by one of his constituents and a member of the UCM faculty:

Blue Girl,

I’m on the Faculty Senate of the University of Central Missouri.  When I saw the letter in the school paper, I was concerned.  This is legislation about my working conditions.

Here is the email I sent Hoskins Thursday evening.

Representative Hoskins,

A letter appeared in the Muleskinner today saying that you support HB 645 that would allow holders of a conceal and carry permit to bring their guns onto university campuses.

Is the letter correct?  Do you support this legislation?

Would you expla
in to me your position on this legislation?

…Asked to take a position, he continued the dance.  This is the email I received from the concerned faculty member, reprinted here with his permission:  

On Friday afternoon, Hoskins called me at home.  He told me that he had no position on allowing conceal and carry on public universities.  He said before he would have to talk to students, faculty, and the administration.

I told him that surprised me because universities about the learning and spreading of knowledge.  Guns don’t help.

Moreover, there is no evidence that a lot of guns make places safer.  I noted if that were true Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and Sudan should be some of the safest places in the world.

Finally, I observed the groups he wants to talk to are not equal.  Students are on a campus for at best five years.  Faculty are on campuses for decades.  This legislation is about our working conditions and I urged him to vote against ending the bill.

He did not indicate what he would do.

Hope this helps

Hoskins pleading ignorance is a weak tea indeed.  (That is the polite way of saying I think he is most likely lying like a rug when he says he has no opinion on HB 645 and hasn’t even thought about it.)  The legislation was introduced in February, by a member of the republican caucus, and written up extensively on this site at that time. Now far be it from me to offer advice to help the MO GOP, but I would think that at the very least he should have a staffer keeping an eye on the likes of us so we can’t blindside him with our pesky facts and stuff and catch him unawares.  (But carry on…how he is currently  proceeding works just fine for me.)

Now here is the thing…I am what passes for the resident gun nut in these parts.  I am a hunter and a big, big fan of the Second Amendment.  But I am not stupid or naive enough to think ordinary citizens could challenge our government in an armed rebellion.  Those days are long gone, if for no other reason that the side with the Air Force always wins.  

Revolutions in this country take place via the power of the ballot, not the power of the bullet.  Anyone who insists the latter is even possible is either stupid or crazy, and the two categories are not mutually exclusive.  

I am a country girl, a hunter and a deerslayer extraordinaire.  I will never – let me repeat – never give up my guns.  But I also didn’t stay out-state in the countryside.  I spent a couple of decades cleaning up after gun violence on trauma teams in inner-city hospitals – I can’t begin to tell you how many nights I went home from work in the bloody Kansas City summer of 2004 with the blood of murder victims on my clothes, but I can tell you that on at least two occasions that summer, I picked gray matter out of my shoelaces afterwards.

I am not someone you want to get your chickenhawk on with when this is the topic.  Anyone who thinks that guns are too regulated is going to get stiff opposition a face full of claws scattershot from me.  

I was appalled by John Derbyshire in the immediate aftermath of the Virginia Tech tragedy when he implied the victims had shown cowardice by mewling “Where was the spirit of self-defense here? Setting aside the ludicrous campus ban on licensed conceals, why didn’t anyone rush the guy? It’s not like this was Rambo, hosing the place down with automatic weapons. He had two handguns for goodness’ sake-one of them reportedly a .22.  A .22 – the preferred weapon of the ruthlessly effective Bosnian snipers in the 90s.  A .22 will kill you just as dead as a .45 – and at a greater distance, too.  But then, unlike Derbyshire, and most chickenhawks, I know something about guns…

I also know something about contagious gunfire, and I do not think that allowing a bunch of young people who have not mastered impulse control the ‘right’ to carry a concealed weapon on campus is a good idea – and neither do the vast, overwhelming majority of law enforcement officials.  More guns is not the answer to public safety.  More guns means more violence.

Now I am far from having all the answers, but I do know some of the right questions to ask, so to speak.  I am convinced that if we are truly concerned with public safety, and not just pimping an ideology, we can do that and simultaneously strengthen the rights of law-abiding gun owners, but the ideologues don’t want to hear what I have to say about it because it runs counter to the opinion the NRA pays them to have.

We all need a gut-check.

We need to start by fully enforcing the laws on the books, but we also need to bring a basic framework of laws into standard compliance across all 50 states, with common sense adaptations. States need to share information. Thorough background checks for all firearms purchases should be mandatory, including psychiatric/psychological occurrences. I would go so far as to mandate that private sales, those currently unregulated, would have to take place through the county sheriffs office; and any unregistered sale proven in a court of law would carry a stiff penalty, with mandatory prison time.

We can’t make guns go away. And I don’t want them to. But we can make it harder for criminals to get hold of new ones, and we can control the ones that are out there by actually enforcing the laws that are on the books right now and getting serious about bringing the ones that are currently floating around out there untraceable into the system one-by-one.  My suggestions are not ideal, but it’s a place to start – until smarter people than me can get serious about this. Which will require standing up to the NRA – so I am not holding my breath.  

Let me finish with a bit of unvarnished truth…every last damned one of us who has the proper reverence and respect and can be trusted with the kind of power that a firearm represents – every one of us who really deserves to own a gun – knows some f*cking moron we (at least secretly) wish would give all their guns away and become vegans, because one trip outdoors with them scared the living sh*t out of us and we never went out with that person again.  My moment came on Pea Ridge in Mercer County in 1989 when Satellite Bob shot up Mike’s satellite dish with an AK-47 modified to auto, and when he was asked what he was shooting at, he said “who knows???” (And we also all know that the Satellite Bob’s of the world are the ones who think that liberty herself is dependent upon them packing heat.)

Everyone who hunts or shoots knows someone like that, and if you were really and truly honest with yourself, you would have to admit that there are people who, when you think of them with a gun, and you can’t help yourself.  You think “there ought to be a law…”

(I don’t automatically promote diaries by elected officials or candidates, but this one definitely gives some much needed context to the budget process. – promoted by Clark)

I have been watching Missouri politics very closely since 1991 when I was hired as director of a statewide grassroots anti-poverty organization. Changes made in the past few years have greatly damaged the quality of our state’s budget-making process.

Traditionally the governor’s recommendations have been filed as budget bills. There are 13 budget bills, each dealing with a topic or department of government. For example, Budget Bill 2 is elementary and secondary education. Budget Bill 9 is corrections. Etc.

The budget bills were traditionally assigned to the respective appropriation committees. These committees have generally be divided much as they are in 2009: agriculture and natural resources; education; general administration; health, mental health, and social services; public safety and corrections; and transportation and economic development.

Continued below the fold.

In the past, the appropriations committees would “mark up” the budget bills.  The members of the appropriations committee could offer amendments to specific lines of the budget bill, and the committee would have the opportunity to vote on these amendments. Their versions of the bill contained actual numbers, and the amended budget bill they finally passed was sent to the budget committee.  The budget committee could then make further amendments, but they started with the bills as amended by the appropriation committees.

In recent years, with Allen Icet (R-Wildwood) as the Budget Chairman, the budget bills are not the governor’s recommendations.  Instead they are generated by Rep. Icet’s office.  They are not filed at the beginning of session and are not considered by the appropriations committees.  

Instead appropriations committees now merely have informational meetings.  They still take much public testimony, often heart-wrenching stories about where our neighbors are falling through the cracks in the current scheme of things. But instead of having a budget bill to work with, the appropriations committees merely file “reports” with the budget committee. The end result is that:

– citizens who testify at the appropriations hearings have an illusion of access to power, but much less chance of actually impacting on a line item in the budget bill

– appropriations committees are greatly disempowered

– the budget chair has a greatly enhanced role

This year we didn’t see a budget bill with real numbers until March. House bills (HBs) 2, 3, and 4 were not filed until March 2. HBs 6, 7, 8, 9 and 12 were filed on March 3. HB 5 was filed on March 4. HBs 10 and 11 were filed on March 5.

The budget committee had testimony from each department of government on March 3, 4, 5, and 9.  Only departmental staff testified; no members of the public were allowed to testify on any of the budget bills that were filed.

For example, $2.5 million was the proposed cut for Meals on Wheels, a very effective program that provides both nutrition and human contact to senior citizens living at home alone. The bill containing Meals on Wheels was not filed until March 5.  There was no public testimony permitted about the impact of that proposed cut, or any of the other propsed cuts or omissions.

March 11 was the only day that budget members were allowed to offer amendments to the budget bills. This was a marathon session, lasting much of the day and long into the night. The process looked much like the floor process on the budget in that very few Democratic amendments were allowed to pass, but a small number of partial restorations were made.

The  Legislature then went on Spring Break upon adjournment on March 12.  Break ended on March 23, and the Rules Committee (another bad government idea introduced in the Jetton Era) considered the budget bills that day and voted them out of committee.

The House began perfecting the budget the next day (March 24th).  Because the bills did not come out of Rules until March 23rd, the members did not receive copies in their mailboxes until the day we began perfecting the bills. Those of us not on the Budget committee were at a special disadvantage in the floor debate, because we had no time to consult agencies and programs affected by proposed budget cuts to assess the impact of the numbers in the budget.

Because of the degradation of the budget process in the House, the Senate has increased its power over the budget in recent years.  The Senate now rewrites the House bills, because they come out of such a flawed process and contain such bad decisions.

In addition, when members of the public ask where and when they can testify about the impact of proposed cuts in the budget bills, the only available opportunity is in the Senate Budget committee. The Senate has better information about the contents of the actual budget bills because they have public hearings on those bills (bills with real numbers).

To my knowledge, under this recently instituted system, the House versions of the budget bills are the only bills filed, assigned to committee, voted out of committee, and sent to the floor without opportunity for public testimony. The departmental Q & A sessions are helpful, but not an adequate substitute for hearing the voices of Missouri’s citizens.

A ripple effect is that the Senate has much more knowledge and power in the conference committee work that comes after we have a passed House version and a passed Senate version. All of the Senate conferees, three majority and two minority party members, have participated in public hearings and lengthy consideration of the budget bills.    

State representatives are the closest contact any Missouri citizen has to state government.  The elimination of a transparent and democratic budget process is a great loss to Missouri residents. Hopefully voters will demand a return to the old, fairer process in 2010.

Via Atrios:

Starting Monday, St. Louis’ mass transit system will reduce service radically. The service area for this multibillion-dollar regional asset will shrink by two thirds, literally overnight.

The Metro transit agency faces an operating deficit of $45 million this year, which is expected to reach $50 million next year. Nearly one in every four of its 2,300 employees will be laid off in the coming weeks. Many highly skilled and productive employees already are being poached by transit systems in other regions.

Service will end at 2,300 of the 9,000 bus stops and shelters on Missouri’s side of the system; service in Illinois, which is fully funded, won’t be affected. A bus fleet of 320 will shrink to about 140. MetroLink light rail riders will see one-third fewer trains during rush hour. Call-A-Ride service for the disabled will be slashed.

St. Louis gets very little state money for our transit system, while Illinois funds mass transit very well even in southern Illinois just across the river. It’s worth noting that this isn’t just the fault of the Republicans, though they certainly share the blame. Governor Nixon has shown very little interest in increasing transit funding for St. Louis.  

This seems kind of important.

FBI agents are investigating Missouri lawmakers in connection with several alleged “pay for play” schemes in which legislative favors are bestowed only after campaign donations are made.

…

The political culture in the state Capitol, those lawmakers talking with agents contend, has become tainted by pay-for-play activities in which virtually any legislative benefit – from committee assignments to gaining a hearing for a bill – comes with a price tag attached.

(Scott is, after all, one of our own…Thank you, Senate Guru, for posting this at our humble little blog!  You have many fans here! – promoted by –Blue Girl)

{First, a cheap plug for my blog Senate Guru.}

While I typically focus on Senate races, the special election in New York’s 20th Congressional district is an excellent opportunity to stick it to the Republican Party.

NY-20 is a Republican leaning district in voter registration, but has been recently represented by now-Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and even narrowly supported now-President Barack Obama over John McCain.

The Democratic nominee, Scott Murphy, has turned a deficit in the polls into a narrow four-point lead over Republican Jim Tedisco.  Momentum is on our side!  A victory in this special election wouldn’t just be a nice Democratic hold, but, since it is a Republican-leaning district, it would also be a major embarrassment for Republicans, particularly new RNC Chair Michael Steele.

How desperate are Republicans in this race?  Well, they’re very literally reduced to going with a noun, a verb, and 9-11 in flailingly attacking Murphy.  And how loathsome is the Republican nominee?  Even the Libertarian candidate, who was booted from the race after – it would appear – Republicans made a concerted effort to get enough Libertarian ballot signatures overturned, has endorsed Scott Murphy.  (And it’s one hell of an endorsement.)

The special election is this Tuesday!  So what can you do to help?

Phone bank for Scott Murphy!

This is a special election, so GOTV is everything.  On Monday or Tuesday, if you can spend literally one single hour making calls, that could be the difference in a Republican pick-up versus a Republican embarrassment.

Committee chair Thomas Minihan from Jefferson City conducting the business portion of the meeting.

The 4th Congressional District Democratic Committee, made up of county Democratic Party chairs and vice chairs and Democratic Party legislative district committee chairs and vice chairs, met in Sedalia mid-day today. These meetings, scheduled at least four times a year, are an important part of the communication process for Democratic Party activists in the district.

Thirty individuals from across the district made it to Sedalia through somewhat unseasonable winter weather. The agenda included informational items as well as some decision making for a large scale event scheduled for early August in Warsaw, Missouri.