This month members of of the Missouri General Assembly started pre-filing bills for the upcoming legislative session. We spend time perusing the lists of bills, looking for various items. One of the issues generating a lot of public interest this session in Jefferson City is ethics reform, so when we see a pre-filed bill on the subject we take a look at it.

Sometimes a bill is filed and withdrawn – when that happens the full text of the filed bill is no longer available and you’re left with a sometimes intriguing short description. One such bill on ethics reform was filed and withdrawn on the same day, December 2nd.

This may not be the plane in question – we couldn’t find the registration number on it.

This couldn’t be about the plane, could it?

HB 1312 Prohibits members of the General Assembly from jointly owning property with any registered lobbyist unless the member is the lobbyist’s spouse or family member or is dating the lobbyist

Sponsor: Talboy, Mike (37) Proposed Effective Date: 08/28/2010

CoSponsor: LR Number: 3732L.01I

Last Action: 12/02/2009 – Withdrawn (H)

HB1312

Next Hearing: Hearing not scheduled

Calendar: Bill currently not on a calendar

[emphasis added]

The “dating” part is very interesting. Is it just casual or do you have to go steady? Unfortunately we may never get to know about those important details because the bill was withdrawn.

Some of our previous coverage of the business relationship between Representative Steve Tilley (r – 106), the republican Majority Floor Leader in the Missouri House, and lobbyist Travis Brown:

Today’s Republican Floor Leader co-owns plane with Lobbyist story is [RBH]

A Plane, a Business, a Representative, and a Lobbyist

A Plane, a Business, a Representative, and a Lobbyist, part 2

A Plane, a Business, a Representative, and a Lobbyist, part 3

Robin Carnahan (D) stays ahead of Roy Blunt (r-“I swear I had a health care plan in here somewhere”) in Nate Silver’s prognostication of the 2010 U.S. Senate race in Missouri:

12.31.2009

Senate Rankings, Decemeber [sic] 2009 Edition

by Nate Silver @ 4:20 AM

Races are ranked in order of their likelihood of changing parties by November 2010, accounting for all factors such as potential retirements, primary challenges, and so forth…

…3. Missouri (R-Open) — Robin Carnahan’s polling has been very stable, continuing to show her with a very slight lead. That’s probably because her opponent, Roy Blunt, is a rather vocal member of the sitting Republican Congress, which is losing popularity just as quickly as the Democrats in Congress are. He’s the wrong candidate for this type of cycle…

Rough translation: being an obstructionist republican hack does not bode well, even in an off year election.

Update: Jay Nixon’s letter to legislators (.pdf file)

Seems like Governor Jay Nixon has some ideas about ethics reform too:

In a conference call with reporters Wednesday, Nixon outlined four components of what he would support in terms of reforming government:

— Restoration of campaign donation limits in the neighborhood of $1,200 to $1,300 for statewide candidates in primary and general elections.

— A ban on the practice of shifting campaign funds among committees in an effort to disguise the original source of the funds.

— A waiting period between when a lawmaker serves in office and then becomes a lobbyist.

— A prohibition of the practice of a lawmaker receiving money to act as a political consultant.

Good luck on getting point A enacted. The Republican General Assembly seems to think that allowing 5-digit campaign donation checks makes things more open and ethical.

Meanwhile in today’s campaign finance news, the House Republican Campaign Committee reported a $16275 donation from a St. Louis man and Jay Nixon reported a $25K donation from the “Lewis & Clark Regional Leadership Fund” (which apparently donated $50K to Kenny Hulshof last year). The fun never ends in the Texas-era of Missouri campaign finance. Big money big money no whammies.

Should be exciting to see how watered down the Republican “reform” bill ends up being.

Heh. Senator Jolie Justus (D) via Twitter:

Rep Davis-I don’t know her, I didn’t serve w/her, I’m not friends w/her, but I can assure you, you’re no Sarah Palin. http://bit.ly/4MhNdC    31 minutes ago   from web  

Wingnut on wingnut primary cannibalism (“No, I’m further to the right than you are”) is commencing:

12.29.2009 12:15 pm

Rep. Cynthia Davis challenging Sen. Scott Rupp in GOP primary

By Mark Schlinkmann

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

…”I guess the best way to describe this race is I’m more like Sarah Palin and he’s more like John McCain,” Davis said…

And here I thought it wasn’t going to be any fun covering politics in Missouri this coming year…

Update:

Senator Scott Rupp (r-not sufficiently wingnutty for Cynthia Davis, but too much for anyone else) via Twitter:

I like elections….and this one is going to be fun    about 7 hours ago   from web

Yep, pass the popcorn.

“Don’t be fooled. I don’t work for the interests of Big Oil or the Energy Industry. I work for the interests of Southwest Missourians …”

So says purveyor of cheap bridges, Roy Blunt. But:

Peabody Energy, formerly Peabody Coal, is the largest private coal company in the world. In the 2008 election cycle Peabody gave more money to Blunt than to any other member of the House of Representatives — $14,200. During ’08 cycle Blunt also received more money from Peabody Coal then all but two senators– both of whom were from coal producing states. Peabody owns no mines in southwest Missouri.

And those contributions are just the tip of the iceberg. There’s another 54 thou he got from the oil industry in the ’08 election cycle.

Hey, Roy? Your campaign donation slip is showing.

(photo coutesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Amy Smoucha has worked on health care issues for Jobs with Justice for three years now. That’s dozens of months, hundreds of weeks, and thousands of hours. And that makes her expertise on the subject worth listening to. So I did. When the e-mail below arrived in my inbox, I paid attention–especially to her fourth point.

In fact, within a few days, I will write in more detail about the “national, non-profit, publicly accountable option for health insurance coverage” contained in the Senate bill. Suffice it for now to say that rather than fight the screaming mob about the public option, the Senate did an end run: it eliminated that program and substituted a plan that has the potential–minus the right wing hysteria–to achieve the same thing. An analysis of how useful (or less than) those two programs may turn out to be will be part of my upcoming posting.

But for now, see what Amy thinks of the progress Democrats have made so far:

An open letter to progressives:  ideology kills people

I have been amazed at the rancor and deceit that many politically “right wing” and conservative leaders have demonstrated during the long, heated struggle to pass health reform legislation.  I’m amazed that for political, partisan and ideological reasons, Republicans and Libertarians are willing to lie to their own voters.  I’m awestruck at the monumental steps people are taking to protect corporations, defend outrageous profits and protect a status quo that working people in any political party cannot afford much longer.

Of course, we expect that sort of vitriol and cynicism from the right wing and from conservative political operatives who have lost ground in the last election and are bitterly losing the health care fight.

I am having a much harder time understanding the fierce attack by some folks who are thoughtful, independently-minded and progressive.  Like any significant human and civil rights struggle, we are in a place where we’ve won a lot, we’ve lost some of our demands, and there’s more work to be done to get a final bill out of conference.  Both the House and Senate health care bills represent an incredible step toward real, affordable, quality health care for every person in our country.   Neither of them accomplish everything we need.

I hope we all evaluate the bills and what they accomplish based on the ambitious reforms they include and an understanding of the context in which the measures are proposed. The bils do many things for our communities–like funding clinics and doctors.   It’s important to consider the flaws in the bills alongside a balanced understanding of just a few examples of what we are gaining and winning:

1. The Senate bill delivers health coverage to 94% of Americans –31 million uninsured people will gain access to affordable health coverage.  (The House bill would cover 36 million-95%.)

2. The proposed expansion of Medicaid will provide a lifeline to 15 million low-income and disabled Americans.  Congress is about to enact a significant expansion of Medicaid for both individuals and families up to 133% of the federal poverty level.   Currently in Missouri a family of three is eligible for the state health insurance program if their income is less than $292 a month.  Both House and Senate bills lift the income rules for the whole country to about $2029 a month for that same family of three.  For the first time adults without dependent children will get this coverage.  These 15 million uninsured, low income individuals will gain insurance through a public health insurance program that is affordable and has very nominal out of pocket costs.  This provision will help laid-off workers and part-time workers.  This expansion will revolutionize life for people with disabilities and people living with mental illnesses.  For many of us, when disability strikes, we will no longer have to prove that we are “permanently and totally disabled” and unable to work just to have access to the public option of Medicaid.  We won’t have to stop working just to get health care.

3. Corporate abuses are curtailed and health Insurance companies have been significantly pushed back in both bills. The Senate bill went much farther than we imagined in reining in insurance company abuses.  What’s really in the Senate bill?  Insurance companies will not be able to turn us down or charge us more if we have pre-existing medical conditions. Insurers will be required to spend 85 cents out of every dollar they receive in premiums on health care rather than profits and administrative costs. If not, people would receive rebates from their insurance companies for the difference.  Insurance companies will be banned from issuing policies that have lifetime or annual limits on benefits.  Consumers gain the right to an independent appeal of any decision by an insurer to deny coverage.

4. Both the House and Senate bills bill create a national, non-profit, publicly accountable option for health insurance coverage.  The House bill contains a national public insurance option.  However, even in the Senate bill, people purchasing insurance in the Exchange will be able to choose from national plans, including at least one non-profit plan, supervised by the same department of the federal government that selects health insurance plans for federal employees.  Before the recent invention of a “public plan” demand, progressive health care activists were asking Congress to either open up Medicare for all or allow people to buy into the plans administered by the Office of Professional Management-the same plans that Congress and Federal employees have.  We just won a long-standing demand.

5. We cannot “start over” and get more progressive reform through Congress any time soon.  Getting landmark legislation passed is a treacherous, long chess game, especially when that legislation has powerful corporate enemies or extends significant civil and human rights.  Unprecedented political capital and economic capital have been spent-the years spent making health reform a key issue in the last election, the storybanks, the canvasses, the phone calling.  We all put our best game on the field.  It’s time for a final push to improve the legislation in conference committee and to plan on how we will take this momentum and build and expand on our victory.  Many leaders in the health reform movement predict that if health reform fails now, we will not have another meaningful effort for 15 to 20 years, if at all.  If health reform fails now, the insurance companies and for profit health care corporations will laugh (at us) all the way to the board room.

This fight has been long and vicious because Congress is creating federal rules that make insurance companies behave.  Insurance companies are going to be regulated, and they don’t like it.  So much is at stake.  It is very dangerous to forgo these incredible victories because they are not far enough, especially since losing means millions of struggling Americans will have to continue in the health care system as it is for many, many years.  I’ve spent the last three years talking to hard working people throughout Missouri who will get real, measurable, concrete help from these legislative changes.  For some of them, their lives literally hang in the balance.  We have a responsibility to stand beside and for the uninsured working people who will gain much from these bills.

As a few progressive groups send emails around to “kill the bill” (along with the tea party) or “a bad bill is worse than no bill,” insurance companies and right wing political operatives throw fuel on that fire. All of us should deeply consider the consequences of
squandering this opportunity to move our health care system several strides forward.  Kill the bill, and insurance companies win.   I believe we are better than that.

On Christmas, I wrote an article called “Health-care bill will stimulate economy and create tens of thousands of jobs“.

Within hours it had gone semi-viral with over 3000 hits on the web. Progressive Democrats of America posted it on their home page and I cross-posted at Show Me Progress and Polizeros.

In it, I posed the question, “How is it that throughout the entire health care debate the issue of job creation and economic stimulus has not been brought up?”  And offered the plausible conclusion that adding 30 million people into the health care system will translate into an abundance of economic activity and opportunity for millions of Americans: i.e. JOBS.

Suggesting this outcome summoned a hail storm of criticism from opponents of health-care reform, asking rhetorically what kind of “dope” us Democrats/Obama were smoking and how what I had authored must have been satire or else it was pure “hogwash”. Evidently, I touched a nerve by countering head-on a primary talking point of health-care bill adversaries, namely, that it’s a “job killer”.  It was as if I’d dipped a few of those tea-bagger’s sweet tea-bags in tart mustard — “Grey Poupon”, of course.  

My favorite response I received went beyond shutting down health-care reform and advocated dismantling most of the entire social services system:

“The US Postal Service was established in 1775. You’ve had 234 years to get it solvent, it is broke. Social Security was established in 1935. You’ve had 74 yrs. to get it solvent, it’s broke. Fannie Mae was established in 1938. You’ve had 71 yrs. to get it right, it’s broke. The War on Poverty was started in 1964. Taking trillions through taxes and transferring it to the poor; has not improved their lot. Medicare and Medicaid were started in ’65. You’ve had 44 yrs. to get it solvent. Future baby boomer promised funds are at a deficit $106 trillion. Freddie Mac was born in ’70. You’ve had 39 yrs. to get it right. It is broke. TARP, the Stimulus, not helping the grassroots. Help France, not us!!”

What is bringing on this extreme reaction to an initiative seeking better care for folks? We spend ten times as much on defense, why so much resistance on guaranteeing care for poor and rich alike?

We have public education, public libraries — where’s the difficulty in metabolizing a mixed system of public and private health care, like our schools or the way we mail stuff to one another? (private and public options in a mixed-market economy, what every Western democracy embodies including the US)  

First, a couple of straw-mans for the naysayers to digest illustrating a clear case of why we need to change the status-quo now — and why that incremental change alone will stimulate economic health and lead to job creation.  More mustard.

(You can answer yes or no.)

Q: Do you think health care should be a for-profit enterprise with folks being denied care because they’re poor?

Q: Do you think it’s tolerable that 70% of personal bankruptcies in the US are due to a lack of health-care insurance coverage?

Q: Do you think it’s okay for people to never consider changing jobs — thereby disrupting market forces — because they fear losing their health-care by switching employment?

Q: Do you think folks should live in fear — negatively impacting work productivity — because they’re forced to wade through so much red tape dodging efforts to dump their insurance or deny claims because it makes more profits for health insurance corporations to not provide care?

Those dilemmas listed above are common occurrences in US health care — perpetuation of the status quo will:

1. cost lives needlessly

2. damage productivity in the workplace

3. disrupt and distort market forces in regard to job mobility

4. damage US companies’ ability to compete in the global market

5. continue to cause an epidemic of health-care related bankruptcies

These flaws of our current health care crisis are JOB KILLERS right now, today. So, tea-baggers, unless you can address these issues, put your job-killing talking points away, we are already there.

The health care reform efforts will positively affect each of the above five bullet points, which, in turn, would help strengthen our economy and invigorate all of our livelihoods.

A lift from my health care paper from two years ago,

“Our country is the only industrialized nation without coverage for all her citizens and we spend twice as much per capita than any other nation for our health care – 17% of our GNP. That’s 90% more than Germany, France or Canada. And don’t think that America is paying a premium for quality because the World Health Organization ranks us at 37th, sandwiched between Slovenia and Costa Rica. An overemphasis on corporate profits has swept away the most basic human needs of the American people.

Our health-care is too expensive and it’s broken. Why is it that Health Care in America costs so much?

In our current privatized system, over 30% of the cost pays for expensive Washington lobbyists, exorbitant salaries of CEOs, extravagant corporate jets and flashy advertising campaigns. Money skimmed right off the top before any care is ever provided.”

Simple fact is, the US health care system is broken because of an overemphasis on the profit-side of the business of taking care of folks; a uniquely American affliction as evidenced by the less ‘profit-frothy’ examples of universal health care coverage in the rest of the Western industrialized democracies, with coverage for all and producing significantly better medical outcomes for the average patient. Turbo-capitalism is at odds with the humane-healing part of health care, and in the worst instances, negates the healing mandate of general medicine. In legalese, we have a classic conflict of interest.

Approximately 45,000 people die every year due to preventable causes; they die because of lack of access to a doctor, hospital and medicine. This is inhumane, unjust and unacceptable.

Why? What’s driving the trend of rising premiums, co-pays and deductibles? Costs going up three times faster than wages? People unable to see a doctor? What are the root causes?

Mike Hall cites, “Profits at 10 of the country’s largest publicly traded health insurance companies rose 428 percent from 2000 to 2007, while consumers paid more for less coverage.”  Ca-ching.

Can you imagine an initiative that could actually stop all violent murders in a year? Or stop all deaths due to drunk driving? Miraculous, right? Well, getting everyone access to care could save as many lives as these fantasy scenarios. It is real and currently before our nation for consideration — it needs your support.  

Many health care opponents are so xenophobic, unable to accept the possibility that another nation besides the US may have a better handle on solutions toward delivering more effective care for their citizens. We should all listen more and let go of an unholy attachment to broken economic theories that do not reconcile with the art of healing and providing care in an equitable manner. Or is it the rich survive and the poor die? Law of the jungle dot com? Too much of any one thing is bad — we need a balance between ’empathy / compassion’ alongside ‘competition and individual comparative advantage’. Finding tha
t balance is where wisdom comes into play. If a project one tenth of the cost of the Pentagon can save 45,000 lives a year, well, that’s no-brainer to me. Imagine one of those 45,000 being your father, your mother, your sister. Sure, you’d want coverage then wouldn’t you?  

I wish we’d all do a little more research, open our minds and resist the temptation to stop parroting Limbaugh-Beck-isms for a moment. Yes, they’re entertaining and stoke so successfully the knee-jerk defensive reaction to protect all the nuts we’ve buried in our backyards. But that’s a button they push like selling beer with attractive blonds. Just because it feels right, doesn’t make it right.    

My article on job stimulus through health care reform was simple. We will see more economic activity to provide preventive care for the 30 million or so that will be added to the health-care insurance roster. More economic activity means more work hours, transactions and the provision of additional services. It means jobs — it means stimulus.

We have over 10% unemployment and need job creation to put folks back to work. It’s a positive side to the health care reform package that hasn’t been emphasized to date and I think it should be. BTW, I like French’s, the Grey Poupon is way too horseradishy.

In a news article about the race between Roy Blunt and Robin Carnahan, Claire McCaskill had this to say:

She faces challenges in terms of keeping the base enthusiastic and passionate,” McCaskill said of Carnahan. “In Missouri, the side that is most motivated is the side that has the edge.

Well … duh! Does this mean that McCaskill thinks she herself has been effectively motivating her base? If so, she may be in for a surprise.  

There’s the old Monsanto, the corporate behemoth that trashed the environment with chemicals, then lied about the danger; and the new Monsanto, the one riding on a white charger to the rescue of the world’s hungry with Roundup ready seeds.

And there’s no connection between the two.

In fact, the old Monsanto was renamed Solutia and all of the old corporation’s sins have been transferred onto Solutia’s books, including a still accumulating backlog of lawsuits. The latest incarnation of Monsanto, though, shriven of some fifty-plus EPA Superfund sites, barely refers to its first 100 years in its literature and lists instead its accomplishments since the corporate reorganization in 2002.

But while its officers enjoy selective memory loss, citizens in many locales are still living with the depredation the old Monsanto caused.

From 1929-1971, for example, one of its plants in Anniston, Alabama produced PCBs as a byproduct of manufacturing lubricants, hydraulic fluids and sealants. Those PCBs–though the plant workers and townspeople didn’t know it at the time–can adversely affect liver function as well as several of our systems, namely neurological, reproductive, immune and endocrine. And that’s just the effects on humans. It doesn’t do the environment much good either.

People in Anniston find themselves in this fix today largely because of the way Monsanto disposed of PCB waste for decades. Excess PCBs were dumped in a nearby open-pit landfill or allowed to flow off the property with storm water. Some waste was poured directly into Snow Creek, which runs alongside the plant and empties into a larger stream, Choccolocco Creek. PCBs also turned up in private lawns after the company invited Anniston residents to use soil from the plant for their lawns, according to The Anniston Star.

So for decades the people of Anniston breathed air, planted gardens, drank from wells, fished in rivers, and swam in creeks contaminated with PCBs-without knowing anything about the danger. It wasn’t until the 1990s-20 years after Monsanto stopped making PCBs in Anniston-that widespread public awareness of the problem there took hold.

Studies by health authorities consistently found elevated levels of PCBs in houses, yards, streams, fields, fish, and other wildlife-and in people. In 2003, Monsanto and Solutia entered into a consent decree with the E.P.A. to clean up Anniston. Scores of houses and small businesses were to be razed, tons of contaminated soil dug up and carted off, and streambeds scooped of toxic residue. The cleanup is under way, and it will take years, but some doubt it will ever be completed-the job is massive. To settle residents’ claims, Monsanto has also paid $550 million to 21,000 Anniston residents exposed to PCBs, but many of them continue to live with PCBs in their bodies. Once PCB is absorbed into human tissue, there it forever remains.

Naturally, Monsanto was loath to admit that it knew before 1971 the dangers to which it was exposing the countryside and the residents of Anniston. But it could hardly have failed to know.

The evidence that Monsanto refused to face questions about their toxicity is quite clear. In 1956 the company tried to sell the navy a hydraulic fluid for its submarines called Pydraul 150, which contained PCBs. Monsanto supplied the navy with test results for the product. But the navy decided to run its own tests. Afterward, navy officials informed Monsanto that they wouldn’t be buying the product. “Applications of Pydraul 150 caused death in all of the rabbits tested” and indicated “definite liver damage,” navy officials told Monsanto, according to an internal Monsanto memo divulged in the course of a court proceeding. “No matter how we discussed the situation,” complained Monsanto’s medical director, R. Emmet Kelly, “it was impossible to change their thinking that Pydraul 150 is just too toxic for use in submarines.”

Ten years later, a biologist conducting studies for Monsanto in streams near the Anniston plant got quick results when he submerged his test fish. As he reported to Monsanto, according to The Washington Post, “All 25 fish lost equilibrium and turned on their sides in 10 seconds and all were dead in 3½ minutes.”

As soon as the Food and Drug Administration caught on, in 1970, to what was happening in Anniston, Monsanto official Paul Hodges issued an internal memo titled: “confidential-f.y.i. and destroy” that outlined the plan for quashing the story. That plan called for the Secretary of the Alabama Water Commission to keep the story under wraps. When that didn’t work, when the story leaked out anyway, the company–with the help of the Water Commission Secretary–convinced a local reporter to write that the danger was recent and that Monsanto would correct the problem quickly. The newspaper story reassured residents that there was no cause for public alarm.

Oh really? 39 years hence, the environment in that part of the country is still toxic. With that sort of history at its back, no wonder the officials of the new Monsanto have become amnesiac.