Representative Denny Hoskins (r – noun, verb, CPA) issued his latest legislative update video (something that Fired Up! has been reveling in) and in it he took time to lament being the target of an [our word] “alleged” push poll:

…one of the other things that we’ve had a lot of, um, ethics bills in, in the Ethics Committee and Government Accountability Committee this week. Um, with one of the things that I’ve think we should propose is a legislation on, um, ethical push polling. Recently in my home district this week the Democrats launched a push poll. And what a push poll is, uh, I’ve had several constituents call and, uh, tell me about the push poll as far as what they ask is, yes, would you vote to re-elect Representative Hoskins, and when my constituents ask yes, they provide, uh, some false and misleading and untrue statements about myself or my family. And then after they provide that information then they say, well, would you still vote for Representative Hoskins knowing these other things that we’ve told you. When several of my constituents asked who was paying for the poll, uh, the polling company, uh, did not, would not disclose that. And I think that that’s something, and, you know, ethically that our voters and constituents should know who is paying for the polling and so they can determine themselves if it’s a biased poll or not…

Representative Hoskins also put the same story in the written version of his January 28, 2010 “Capitol Report”:

….The House Committee on Governmental Accountability and Ethics Reform met again this week to hear testimony on several ethics reform bills.  One ethical reform the legislature should address is proper disclosure for campaign rhetoric. I was the subject of a prime example of campaign rhetoric just this week.  Disguised as a “survey,” a company called Liberty Polling conducted a biased telephone “push-poll” in my district. When asked who paid for the “survey,” Liberty Polling would not answer the question.  The issue here is not that there was a poll, but that it was veiled and not actually a survey at all.  In the name of good ethics and transparency, whoever is paying for the “survey” should be disclosed, especially when the recipient of the call requests that information.  I appreciated hearing from a number of constituents that you did not welcome this call. I won’t commit space here to go into details about what I was told about the calls, but I’d be happy to discuss it further if you would like….

This is amusing on so many levels. There’s the republican propensity to join the “cult of the victim.” And there’s the “isn’t that mean when they say something untrue about me”, but it’s okay when the republicans demonstrably do that to somebody else on your behalf. And, finally, there’s the basic misunderstanding of polling.

The American Association for Public Opinion Research has a lot of useful information on polling practices:

Fraudulent Polls  vs. Message Testing

The fact that a poll contains negative information about one or more candidates does NOT in and of itself make it a ‘push poll.’ Political campaigns routinely sponsor legitimate “message-testing” surveys that are used by campaign consultants to test out the effectiveness of various possible campaign messages or campaign ad content, often including negative messages. Political message-testing surveys may sometimes be confused with fake polling, but they are very different. One way to tell is that message-testing surveys exhibit the characteristics of a legitimate survey, such as:

At the beginning of the call, the interviewer clearly identifies the call center actually making the calls. (However, legitimate political polling firms will often choose not to identify the client who is sponsoring the research, be it a candidate or a political party, since that could bias the survey results.)

The interview contains more than a few questions.

The questions usually ask about more than one candidate or mention both sides of an issue.

Questions, usually near the end of the interview, ask respondents to report demographic characteristics such as age, education level, and party identification.

The survey is based on a random sample of voters.

The number of respondents falls within the range of legitimate surveys, typically between 400 and 1500 interviews.

AAPOR stresses that these criteria apply most of the time, but exceptions will arise. Journalists and members of the public are encouraged to investigate allegations of “push polling” to ascertain whether or not the calling activity was carried out for legitimate research purposes….

….Issues in Message Testing

Despite their legitimacy of purpose, message-testing surveys occasionally generate vigorous complaint. They are sometimes the subject of public controversy in political campaigns, and may appear in press stories about dubious campaign practices. AAPOR recognizes that message tests may need to communicate positive or negative information in strongly political terms, in a tone similar to campaign advertisements. Still, these surveys should be judged by the same ethical standards as any other poll of the public: Do they include any false or misleading statements? Do they treat the respondent with fairness and respect…?

[emphasis added]

People are caught off guard when they get a random sample poll, because, well, they were selected at random. The odds of any one person getting called are pretty steep and so most people who are called don’t tend to record the actual conversation with the poll interviewer (as if they’re sitting around waiting with a recording device or pencil and paper). And since it can be a unique experience (that random sample thing again) people who are called might not get all of the details of the conversation committed to memory, especially if they aren’t very aware of what to look for (see the AAPOR information above).

Absent a recording of an interview I’m not willing to call anything a “push poll.” In the past I’ve seen legitimate polls (I was interviewed for one) with candidate contrast questions characterized as a “push poll” in the local paper by a few outraged recipients. Testing the unpleasant (to the individual) facts in a candidate’s or politician’s record does not necessarily make that phone call part of a “push poll.”

It is not a given that Democrats, as Representative Hoskins stated in his video, sponsored the poll. It’s entirely possible that republicans, worried about Denny Hoskins’ numerous missteps are testing his (and their) vulnerability. Now that’s a possibility that should really make him nervous. If it were an independent republican expenditure Denny Hoskins wouldn’t have been told about it.  

The good news yesterday was that the anti-abortion terrorist, Scott Roeder, was convicted of first degree murder for the shooting of Dr. George Tiller – and that the prosecution is asking that he be sentenced to life with no possibility of parole for fifty years.  However, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch report on  the trial contained this chilling comment from a Roeder supporter:

The whole nation has seen a trial where the justification of force to stop abortion has been expressed,” said Dave Leach, an anti-abortion activist from Des Moines, Iowa. “And for a brief window, the very idea that force might be justified to stop abortion was taken seriously. And that has been enough to encourage pro-lifers and scare pro-deathers . [emphasis added]

Is this guy actually saying that the trial was good because it allowed Roeder to pose as a role model for others who might be attracted to the idea of murder?

My question is what is it going to take to get some of those folks obsessing about Muslim terrorists to take the seriously the thereat that Roeder’s fellow-travellers pose to our lives and to our democracy? At the very least those who advocate profiling Muslim males should also start calling for the profiling of Christians, don’t you think? Sure, most Christians are appalled by lunatics like Roeder and his supporters, but so are most Muslims appalled by Osama bin Laden. The key fact is that Scott Roeder and his methods have supporters and they make no bones abut their potential to engage in violence.

Missouri’s Republican pols have been vociferous in condemning the stimulus package enacted last spring. From quibbling about the numbers of jobs saved, to viciously attacking the program because all our problems have not gone away a few scant months after our economy nearly bottomed out, their rhetoric has been uniformly shrill and accusing. For instance, according to Todd Akin, the stimulus was a “tragic waste of taxpayer money,” a sentiment echoed by Blaine Luetkemeyer who declared the “so-called stimulus package” to be a “catastrophic failure.” For Roy Blunt, the stimulus was an “absolute outrage.”

You get the idea – I could produce dozens of such quotes – pick your Republican and I can promise he or she put some ugly words out there about the stimulus – although, it does bear noting that Blunt and Lutekemeyer did manage to hold their tongues when they were hustling to take credit for stimulus awards to their districts – but that’s another matter altogether.

It is, however, just this excess of partisan bile that made it all the sweeter when we learned today, that the U.S. economy grew during the last quarter at the highest rate in six years, a result that many are attributing directly or indirectly to the stimulus effects:

This broad-based rise in GDP was surely fueled in part by the tax cuts and investment spending in the Recovery Act and other rescue actions, but some appears to be the result of private sector demand returning

According to Mark Zandi, a former economic advisor to John McCain, the “stimulus was key to the 4th quarter.”

Hard times are not gone yet – but things are definitely looking up.  As the President observed after noting that the economy had contracted 6.4% in the first three months of last year:

You’ve seen a 12 percent reversal in the course of (last) year. This turnaround is the biggest in three decades, and it didn’t happen by accident

So when do you expect that we will hear the likes of Akin, Luetkemeyer and Blunt admit that they were wrong?  And, even more to the point, when will Missourians tell them and the rest of their gang that trash talk and tantrums just won’t do it anymore – we need them to get on the bandwagon instead of trying to overturn it.

President Obama participated in a lengthy give and take with House republicans at their obstructionism planning session “issues conference” in Baltimore, Maryland today. The republicans made the mistake of agreeing to broadcast the event. Absolutely brilliant miscalculation on their part.

It’s nice to actually have a President who can think. Then again, the environmental contrast was stark.

The video.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/all/modules/swftools/shared/flash_media_player/player.swf

“…But if you were to listen to the debate and, frankly, how some of you went after this bill, you’d think that this thing was some Bolshevik plot.  No, I mean, that’s how you guys — (applause) — that’s how you guys presented it….”

Some Twitter reactions:

Shannyn Moore

I think the POTUS just kicked the Reps in their mandations. Hard. about 8 hours ago   from TweetDeck

Jessica Podhola

For a second there I forgot Marsha Blackburn was an idiot, then she wouldn’t stop editorializing. 🙁 #cspanObama/GOP q & a    about 1 hour ago   from UberTwitter  

The transcript:

Remarks by the President at GOP House Issues Conference

Jurors find Scott Roeder guilty of first-degree murder of George Tiller

Old media is quite good at showing us the aftermath that wedge issue politics has wrought.

They’re not very good at illuminating the reality before: Vigil for Dr. George Tiller in Columbia – June 2, 2009 – part 3

Phillip Wood, in Columbia, Missouri:

….In brief, my wife and I were unable to conceive after our first child, and even sought fertility treatments to have a second child. We were overjoyed to learn that my wife was pregnant with twin boys. But, sadly, late in our pregnancy, learned that the twins suffered from a condition called Twin-to-Twin Transfusion Syndrome…in which the blood of one twin becomes transfused with the blood of the other twin. This is a condition that occurs about thirty per cent of twin pregnancies, and in our case, it was a threatening condition to the viability of the twins.

We first sought, of course, to save both twins. And then, we sought treatment in Florida to try to save the life of one twin by tying off the umbilical cord of the other. Unfortunately when we got there we found out that amniotic [garbled] had occurred and the twins were in such a state the pregnancy had [garbled]. As other people who are professional in this area can tell you, no one walks in the door and says, “We need to terminate this pregnancy right now because something’s going to happen.” They say things like, “It is possible that the condition may pose a risk to your ability to conceive in the future.”

Long story short. We drove from Florida to Granite City, east of St. Louis where we were told that well, “One of the twin’s head is a little too large to perform that service here,” and we were referred to Wichita.

I was really uncertain what to do in a situation like this as a husband. But Dr. Tiller asked me to take part in all stages of the termination of the pregnancy. I will spare you the details of the security procedures, of the protesters, of the video cameras, the surveillance cameras everywhere. I will share with you, though, the one thing that struck me on coming into the clinic, was after you went through the sort of airport security thing, you came into this room. It was covered with pictures. Framed pictures. Framed letters. Of people who had said, “Thank you Dr. Tiller…” Some of the pictures were of children. “You know, we went on, we had another kid. And here’s a picture of this beautiful child…”

…After the twins were delivered, I went with my wife back to the bed and was with her. And Dr. Tiller came and said, “Would you like to see your boys now?”  And I said, “Okay.” And I went into the room. And he had wrapped them up in little baby blankets…and he said, “In these situations, usually we perform a service.” If you can kind of picture him, this was kind of how he talked, he was very loud. And I said, “That’ll be nice.”

…And then said, “If you like, take some time with them.” And I remember unwrapping the blanket a bit and, holding up the hand of one of them and watching it kind of curl around my finger. And I looked up, and, Dr. Tiller was kind of wiping away a few tears, just for a very brief, and he turned away. He was very professional. And I opened my mouth to say something. He smiled and said, “It’s okay, take all the time you need.” And he left. And I took all the time I needed to say goodbye…

…We went back to Iowa, had a funeral for them.  And began the slow process of recovery. A couple of weeks after that I was surprised to get an envelope in the mail from the clinic. It was a white envelope, inside that envelope was another envelope. And it said, had the words, “dignity, compassion” and “respect” on it. When I opened that up, inside Dr. Tiller had taped pictures of our brothers…Now, that meant a great deal…

…In the past years I’ve had to listen to Dr. Tiller’s problems on the news. And ,”Oh, I ought to write him a letter.” But, you know, I never did. I wish…I had….

Oh wait, except that Scott Brown (r-teabagger pinup) hasn’t taken his seat yet. Senator Claire McCaskill (D) via Twitter:

So close. Three votes short on Session-McCaskill discretionary spending freeze amendmnt. 57 yes. Good bipartisan support.    about 19 hours ago   from UberTwitter  

I believe it was this vote:

U.S. Senate Roll Call Votes 111th Congress – 2nd Session

Question: On the Amendment (Sessions Amdt. No. 3308 )

Vote Number: 11 Vote Date: January 28, 2010, 11:15 AM

Required For Majority: 3/5 Vote Result: Amendment Rejected

Amendment Number: S.Amdt. 3308 to S.Amdt. 3299 to H.J.Res. 45 (No short title on file)

Statement of Purpose: To reduce the deficit by establishing 5-year discretionary spending caps.

Vote Counts: YEAs 56  NAYs 44

The Democratic “Yea” votes: Bayh (D-IN),Begich (D-AK),Bennet (D-CO), Carper (D-DE), Hagan (D-NC), Klobuchar (D-MN), Lincoln (D-AR), McCaskill (D-MO), Nelson (D-FL), Nelson (D-NE), Pryor (D-AR), Risch (R-ID), Shaheen (D-NH), Tester (D-MT), Udall (D-CO), Warner (D-VA), Webb (D-VA)

The Joe Lieberman “Yeah votes: Lieberman (ID-CT)

The Democratic (and one Independent and one republican) “Nay” votes: Akaka (D-HI), Baucus (D-MT), Bingaman (D-NM), Boxer (D-CA), Brown (D-OH), Burris (D-IL), Byrd (D-WV), Cantwell (D-WA), Cardin (D-MD), Casey (D-PA), Cochran (R-MS), Conrad (D-ND), Dodd (D-CT), Dorgan (D-ND), Durbin (D-IL), Feingold (D-WI), Feinstein (D-CA), Franken (D-MN), Gillibrand (D-NY), Harkin (D-IA), Inouye (D-HI), Johnson (D-SD), Kaufman (D-DE), Kerry (D-MA), Kirk (D-MA), Kohl (D-WI), Landrieu (D-LA), Lautenberg (D-NJ), Leahy (D-VT), Levin (D-MI), Menendez (D-NJ), Merkley (D-OR), Mikulski (D-MD), Murray (D-WA), Reed (D-RI), Reid (D-NV), Rockefeller (D-WV), Sanders (I-VT), Schumer (D-NY), Specter (D-PA), Stabenow (D-MI), Udall (D-NM), Whitehouse (D-RI), Wyden (D-OR)

What, did Senators Cochran and Landrieu push the wrong button?

I replied via Twitter:

@clairecmc And George W. Bush’s tax giveaway to the top 1% passed by how many votes in the Senate? #MO    about 16 hours ago   from web  in reply to clairecmc

Ah, for the good old days, when a 51-49 vote was considered a “Missouri landslide.”

At tonight’s monthly Johnson County Democratic Central Committee meeting the committee passed the following motion:

On Wednesday, January 27th President Obama ended his State of the Union Speech with this exhortation:

The spirit that has sustained this nation for more than two centuries lives on in you, its people. We have finished a difficult year. We have come through a difficult decade. But a new year had come. A new decade stretches before us. We don’t quit. I don’t quit. Let’s seize this moment – to start anew, to carry the dream forward, and to strengthen our union once more.

We, the Johnson County, Missouri Democratic Central Committee, urge our representatives in Congress, Senator McCaskill and Representative Skelton, to not quit. To seize the moment and carry forward our Democratic agenda of affordable health care for all and programs that get Americans back to work.

The motion passed unanimously.

Last year’s attempt in the Missouri lege to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot dumping the income tax in favor of a bigger sales tax went nowhere. But like a vampire yearning to suck the economic blood out of Missourians, it’s back again this year. And stronger. It got an early hearing in the state Senate on Wednesday.

It is a genuinely crappy idea.

In case you could use a refresher course on what’s wrong with it, here’s what I wrote last year:

Astroturf organizers are pushing the “fair tax”. The term is one of those “exactly the opposite of what it really means” phrases, like Bush’s Clear Skies initiative that actually weakened parts of the Clean Air Act. The Fair Tax, being pushed at both the national and the Missouri level, proposes replacing the income tax with a larger sales tax.

And it’s fair all right, in fact, more than fair–to the wealthy. Under the bill that was proposed in the last state legislative session (HJR 36), those making a million dollars or more a year would, according to estimates by the Missouri Budget Project, pay about $22,000 less in taxes a year. But 95 percent of us would pay more, especially those in the middle. Those making around $37,000 a year would pay about $2,000 more in taxes.

So you’ll find various organizations, the same ones in general who astroturfed the last round of Tea Parties, pushing the fallacious notion that we could eliminate the state income tax, raise the state sales tax from 3 percent to 5.11 percent, and fund all the same programs. But Missouri Budget Project figures that the sales tax would have to be closer to 10 percent to generate the same revenue, and that the 10 percent tax would be levied on virtually everything. You’d pay sales tax to the plumber, sales tax on medicine, sales tax on day care, sales tax on rent, sales tax on groceries, sales tax on auto repairs, sales tax on nursing homes and funerals and doctor’s visits. Hell, sales tax on smiles and handshakes.

So the hearing Wednesday of the Senate Government Accountability and Fiscal Oversight Committee attracted a wide variety of witnesses opposed to the idea. In a press release about the hearing, Missouri Budget Project (MBP) highlighted three pieces of testimony.

As part of his submitted testimony, Ron Leone, Executive Director of the Missouri Petroleum Marketers Association said, “SJR 29 doubles the motor fuel tax and we have grave concerns that it puts us at a competitive disadvantage with our border states.”

Jeremy LaFaver, Director of Public Policy for Partnership for Children, also testified at the hearing and spoke about the potential impact on Missouri families who have children, including increased costs for child care and private k-12 school tuition – both of which would be taxed under this proposal.

And Ron Sergent with AARP Missouri noted in his submitted testimony that, “Families with fixed incomes, like Missouri Seniors, would have their monthly costs increase by as much as 11 percent…while tax discounts would be decreased or eliminated.  For example, the proposal would eliminate all tax credits, including the Senior Citizen Circuit Breaker, which seniors and people with disabilities currently receive to offset some of their local property tax.”

Amy Blouin, executive director of MBP, pointed out that in these hard times, last year’s estimate that a 10 percent sales tax would be needed is too low. Now it would take 11 percent. And we’re not talking about more money for roads or teachers or bridge repair with that 11 percent. Uh-uh. No, that would only fund the bare bones budget that keeps Missouri near the bottom of the fifty state pack. Furthermore, Blouin says: “No other state taxes services as broadly as Missouri would under this plan. There simply is no comparison for Missouri to use to assess this proposal. It is untested.”

To sum up: Republicans are proposing a 5 1/2 percent sales tax that would come nowhere near funding even our spartan state services. True to form, the right wing legislature has found a way to exacerbate Missouri’s problems rather than address its needs.

The Turner Report today offers a treasure trove, so to speak, of Missouri Republican response to the President’s State of the Union Address. You can find the National Republican Party Response, which laid down the official talking points that were then taken up and regurgitated by the Missouri Republican Party.  Such Missouri Republican luminaries as Jack Goldman (R-Mount Veron); Vicky Hartzler, the Republican challenger for Ike Skelton’s seat; and Billy Long, one of the stampede of candidates for Roy Blunt’s seat in the 7th district, also join the chorus.  

In case you are not inclined to spend your precious time parsing the same old Republican tropes, I offer a summary of the salient points made collectively and singly by these members of the GOP:

— The President needs to prematurely reject his policies as failures and return to the Republican-endorsed policies of the past eight years that have already been proven to be failures.

— The President has not been listening to the American people — by which Republicans mean themselves, the lobbyists and business pals they serve, along with the small tea party mobs corporate lackeys have stirred up with distortions and empty populist rhetoric.  

— 2009 marked the “people’s revolt” against tax increases – in spite of the fact that there have been no real tax increases to date, we currently enjoy the lowest tax rates of almost any developed nation, and any tax increases that have been or are being proposed are limited to the wealthiest segments of our population.

— We are endangered by the President’s determination to trust our justice system to affirm our fundamental values by insuring that Islamic terrorists are given the same fair treatment that we hand out to domestic terrorists, such as the anti-abortion activist who murdered Dr. Tiller, and the anti-abortion, anti-gay bomber who tried to blow up American citizens at the Atlanta Olympic games.

Then, as long as we are considering Republican talking points, there is Ike Skelton who, in response to the SOTU, noted that:

Instead of focusing on solutions to help America’s families wade through the wreckage of the worst economic crisis since the 1930s, Washington has wasted valuable time wrestling with partisan politics in an effort to rush through drastic reforms that do not directly address our most immediate needs.

The ostensibly Democratic Rep. Skelton also added that since the President has adopted some aspects of Republican rhetoric, all might not be lost:

The president’s address has lent us all hope – hope that the administration is finally heeding our concerns. It’s about time

Is Skelton really that frightened of Vicky Harzler, or has he always been a closet Republican?