Oh. My. And I thought Denny Hoskins was having a bad freshman year before the news broke yesterday that he owes over $20,000 in back taxes on properties owned by Hos Properties, LLC, the  rental property business he owns with his brother.

I would imagine it is something of a toss-up which Denny Hoskins regrets more this week…All that yammering he did about being a CPA and how responsible he would be with the taxpayers money, or the slim 122 votes that he won his seat by.

We snagged a screen shot of his website to preserve his touted CPA bona fides

To his credit, he didn’t lie and obfuscate when confronted with the information available in the public record.

Rep. Denny Hoskins admitted to The Daily Star-Journal on Wednesday that he failed to pay more than $16,000 in taxes last year.

Hoskins owed the tax bill for the entire 11 months he has served as a House member, with the debt beginning Dec. 31.

Hoskins – who touted being a certified public accountant and who made working to improve the economy cornerstones of his election campaign last year – blamed the failure to pay taxes last year on the recession. He said Hos Properties LLC, a company owned by Hoskins and his brother, owes the taxes.

“It’s not something my brother and I are proud of, but our rental property business is struggling just like other, many Missouri businesses, and when our tenants are struggling to pay their rent due to the economic recession, we struggle to pay our mortgage payment and property taxes,” Hoskins said.

In addition to owing $16,091 in taxes used to fund local schools and other taxing entities, Hos Properties owes $4,227 in penalties.

Now, beating up on Denny Hoskins is just about my favorite sport outside of World Cup Soccer. I think he’s a moron and an embarrassment and has no damned business in the state legislature. But do I think he would be behind in his taxes if the economy didn’t suck and people were paying their rent?

Honestly, no. I don’t. I feel the same way his opponent does.

The only announced candidate in the race for Hoskins’ seat in the 121st District, Courtney Cole, Warrensburg, said she paid all of her taxes.

“Of course I did,” Cole said. “They can check all they want.”

Cole said she “feels bad for him,” but everyone must pay taxes.

“I feel he’s doing a disservice to our district by not paying his taxes, especially somebody who’s an accountant. It’s unfortunate that he doesn’t do what’s expected of all of the citizens within the district,” Cole said.

And they have obviously been trying to collect on monies owed, filing in small claims court to collect on the bad debts their tenants have left them holding. But on the other hand, Warrensburg is a small town, and they got twenty grand in arrears on taxes, so I have to ask…was anyone paying their rent?  

A small claim filed by HOS Properties

in 2009…

…signed by Denny Hoskins.

On yet another hand, he hasn’t let us forget since he announced he was running for the seat, he is a CPA and the code of conduct that he is sworn to mandates he pay all taxes on time, for himself and his clients. And that’s pretty immutable.  

( – promoted by Clark)

Here are the FDL Action health care reform highlights for Wednesday, November 11.

1. Jane Hamsher points us to Kagro’s “excellent rundown of what happened on the public option fight,” and also why abortion rights activists, with “an existing network of professional lobbyists and policy analysts, plus a multi-million dollar funding base,” didn’t see the Stupak amendment coming and work effectively to head it off. Simply bizarre.

2. Jon Walker reports on Sen. Tom Carper’s “no good, super terrible, completely awful, new new new ‘alternative’ to the public option,” namely “to take Olympia Snowe’s worthless trigger idea (which already should have 60 votes if no liberal Democratic senators bolt), and  weaken it further for no reason.” Brilliant!

3. Jon Walker writes that “if Harry Reid tries to go this route [e.g., “accept some worthless fig leaf like the Snowe’s trigger or Carper’s Plan B”] to get a watered-down compromise, it will not ‘show the left that he did everything he could do.'” In the end, Walker concludes, “The left will not be ‘placated’ by a big show and half hearted measures.”  Sorry, but that’s not what we’ve worked so hard for the last several years.

4. Jane Hamsher writes that “the absolute best, most optimistic outlook for passing a bill in the House without a public option means that 13 or fewer progressive votes could stop it.” She then proceeds to list 16 progressives who have pledged that they’ll vote against any bill without a public option. The result of this analysis is powerful: “no health care bill will pass without a public option. Period.”  Now that we’ve got that out of the way, how about the Senate stops wasting time and gets this thing done already?

5. Jon Walker says that “PolitiFact Is Wrong About Nita Lowey: Abortion Coverage Could Become Rare With Stupak Amendment.” What’s weird is that even after Walker contacted PolitiFact and told them exactly why they were wrong, they still would not correct their story, arguing that the possibility of abortion coverage becoming rare “seems remote.” Based on this, Walker remarks, snarkily, “PolitiFact claims to be a ‘fact checker,’ not a ‘in my opinion it seems like an unlikely outcome’ checker.” Heh.

6. Finally, Jon Walker reports that “since the House agreed to decouple the public option from Medicare rates, [Sen. Kent] Conrad has expressed some tepid openness to the public plan.” True, it may not be a “ringing endorsement” of the public option by Conrad, but on the bright side he “does not sound like a man who is about to threaten to bring the whole bill down if it includes one.”  Hey, that almost makes me tepidly optimistic!  LOL

Apropos hidden fundamentalist influence in politics, the Post-Dispatch is reporting that St. Louis Archbishop dipped into a “special needs” fund to donate to a ballot initiative in Maine to  

McCaskill has a nice YouTube up on Veteran’s Day:

On another note, I grew up in the South in the Reagan era, in a region that has always paid particular attention to its military heroes and in a political climate where pride in the US military was again pre-eminent. So when I spoke to the combat veterans in my family about war, pressing them for stories of heroism and glory, I was inevitably confused when they rarely would say even a word about their time in battle. They often told tales of their travels to faraway places, of friends they had made from across the country, and especially of the good times they had trying to pass the interminable boredom while waiting to fight again. But even when pressed, even when knowing that I was waiting to lionize them after a tale of danger, they were all reluctant to open up about facing the enemy. My grandfather served in the Pacific aboard a destroyer. His brother flew in the Army Air Force in Europe, including during the latter days of the Battle of the Bulge. And my other grandfather’s brother fought in Korea while my grandfather trained Marines in the States.

To this day, the one who has opened up the most about his experiences in the military is my grandfather, the one who never deployed to combat. When I was in my early twenties, he told me in one of our usual backyard conversations over cigarettes and coffee in the Louisiana heat that he was incredibly bitter about the end of his career in the Marines. He had been picked to view the detonation of an atomic bomb, which he believed and still believes to be an honor. But after the detonation of the bomb, the unit to which he belonged was ordered to conduct maneuvers around ground zero and return for an extended period of R & R. It was only later that he realized that he had been selected as a guinea pig, that the US military had only been interested in seeing if a force could be deployed to a target in the aftermath of a nuclear bombing and still remain effective after radiation exposure.

I don’t mean to turn this post into a sob story about my grandfather getting misused by the military, because while he was bitter about his experience, he did not regret becoming a Marine. Neither did any of my other veteran relatives, despite experiencing things too horrible to share with those who did not go through the same trials and privations.

What I’m trying to get at, in my own clumsy way, is that veterans have it rough, and considering what they have gone through, it’s only fair to honor the sacrifice they made. And no, I’m not just talking about putting up a post on Veteran’s Day, or filming a short video, although it is important to vocalize a big “Thank You.”

I’m also talking about giving a small monetary token of thanks. I’m giving $11 to the Eleven Eleven campaign, which aims to raise $11 million from 11 million Americans to contribute to the welfare of US veterans. I know times are tight for a lot of you out there, because it is for me, too, but this is a really good cause for others who have given a lot more of themselves.

collectible tools

collectible phones

sewing collectibles

vanity collectibles

railroad collectibles

collectible tools

collectible phones

sewing collectibles

vanity collectibles

railroad collectibles

( – promoted by Clark)

Here are the FDL Action health care reform highlights for Tuesday, November 10.

1. Jon Walker warns that the Stupak Amendment “reaches far beyond any of the reporting so far” and could “effectively stop many employer-provided health insurance plans from covering abortions for tens of millions of Americans.” Scary stuff, well beyond the women’s-right-to-choose piece of this monstrosity.

2. Jon Walker points out that although Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) “is completely correct our current system is completely unsustainable and will not survive another decade if it continues in the same manner it has been,” he himself has “yet to endorse the kind of radical reform necessary to reduce cost.”

3. David Dayen provides a rough outline of the Senate schedule for health care.

4. Jon Walker reports that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is prepared to use “reconciliation” if necessary to pass health care reform with a public option.  Is this leading up to a death match between Sanders and Joe Lieberman, who has vowed to fillibuster a public option?  Stay tuned! 🙂

5. Yours truly reports that the House vote on health care has already become an issue in the gubernatorial primary in Alabama.

6. David Dayen writes that “Barbara Boxer sounds confident that the Senate will not be able to join the House in passing restrictive anti-choice language in the health care bill.” Let’s hope Boxer’s confidence isn’t misplaced.

7. Last but not least, Jon Walker says we shouldn’t get too excited about Bill Clinton giving Senate Democrats a pep talk.  Apparently, Clinton “told the Senate Democrats to pass anything, and do it quickly.” Anything?  With all due respect to President Clinton, that’s not really the point here, now is it?

Watch the newest episode of Laborvision!  Local governments are taking action to address climate change – hear from three local guests, including Justin Carney from St. Louis County, John Wagner from Focus St. Louis, and Tim Gaidis from HOK.

While climate change legislation is languishing in Congress, local governments are taking steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Learn more about what is being done in metro St. Louis.  

The episode will run on Charter Cable Channel 18 on Wednesday Nov. 11 and Nov. 18 at 730 pm.  

Here is a short clip from the show:

Laborvision clip

If you can ignore all the leaves on the roof, you will notice how white it is. That’s because we just had an elastomeric coating applied. It preserves the roof from those tiny cracks that grow into leaks and end up making you call a roofer. The last roof we put on cost $14,000. Getting a new flat roof put on could drive you into bankruptcy. But while we’re trying to put off by ten years the need for a new roof–or indefinitely, if we reapply the elastomere every 7-10 years–we’re also saving on our cooling bills and helping the environment. As the arctic ice melts, the world will need more white roofs to reflect sunlight. And this roof is highly reflective. It’s rated to reflect up to 88 percent of the sun’s heat, whereas black roofs can absorb up to 85 percent of the sun’s heat.

When Jill Miller of White Caps, Green Collars did the work on our house last week, she said she’d been on a black roof recently when the temp was around seventy and it was too hot to touch. So cities that are seas of these heat absorbing roofs are going to need a new look in the coming decades, the white look. Nobel laureate and Energy Secretary, Steven Chu, is advocating for white roofs on all buildings and for light colored pavement, not only in our country but worldwide.

Obviously, we won’t see any energy savings for quite a few months, but I wanted the roof protected from winter weather. And when summer rolls around, I expect to save 20-50 percent on our cooling bills.

Expect the look of flat roofs in cities all over the world to change in the coming decades.