Missouri Rural Crisis Center is calling on Missourians to stop this constitutional amendment:

Representative Tom Loehner has introduced House Joint Resolution 86 (HJR 86), which would change the Missouri Constitution and could have unintended and far-reaching consequences regarding local control and even our current state CAFO standards.

This Bill Could Come to the Floor Monday…

Please Call Now!!!

Please call (contact info below):

• Your Own Representative,
• Rep. Tilley, the Majority Floor Leader (the person who makes decisions about what comes to the House Floor),
• Rep. Richard, the Speaker of the House,
• Rep. Loehner, sponsor of HJR 86,
• & Any Other Representative You Have a Relationship with.

Talking Points for HJR 86 (Bill Language Below):

• HJR 86 could stop the state from regulating CAFOs.  HJR 86 includes language stating that “it shall be the right of citizens to raise domesticated animals in a humane manner without the state imposing an undue economic burden on animal owners”.
• HJR 86 could stop counties from passing health ordinances to protect their citizens from the negative impacts of industrial livestock operations.  HJR 86 includes language that “No law criminalizing or otherwise regulating crops or the welfare of any domesticated animals shall be valid unless based upon generally accepted scientific principles and enacted by the general assembly”.
• HJR 86 is not simply a new law, but proposes an amendment to the Missouri State Constitution.  This means that any unintended consequences of this language would be cemented into the state constitution and would over-ride any current statute or future action of the state legislature.
• Representative Loehner should change the language of HJR 86 to clarify the purpose of the bill.  The current language is too broad and creates the possibility of too many far-reaching consequences for independent family farmers, local control and the ability of elected representatives to respond to the citizens of the state.

House Joint Resolution 86:

Article I, Constitution of Missouri, is amended by adding one new section, to be known as section 35, to read as follows:

Section 35. That agriculture which provides food, energy, and security is the foundation and stabilizing force of Missouri’s economy. To protect this vital sector of Missouri’s economy, it shall be the right of citizens to raise domesticated animals in a humane manner without the state imposing an undue economic burden on animal owners. No law criminalizing or otherwise regulating crops or the welfare of any domesticated animals shall be valid unless based upon generally accepted scientific principles and enacted by the general assembly.

Representative Tom Loehner: (573) 751-1344

Representative Steven Tilley: (573) 751-1488

Representative Ron Richard: (573) 751-2173

YOUR REPRESENTATIVE! (Click here for contact info.)

Claire and I disagree about the necessity of even having our forces in Afghanistan, but we can agree on what she has to say here about Blackwater. At the beginning, she cushions the criticism to come, but when she gets down to the problem of lack of accountability for Blackwater operatives, she is right on and straight up.

Afghanistan has cost you and me about $256 billion so far, and part of that high cost is that we’re paying top dollar to an organization that doesn’t chain down its loose cannons.

If I was not a lifelong Democrat used to defeat being snatched from the jaws of victory, I might be tempted to start stretching for a victory lap about now, but I am not a political neophyte, but a veteran of a gazillion disappointments and heartbreaks. It’s tempting, though, because the momentum seems to be shifting toward passage of healthcare reform.  

But I am a war-weary political veteran who doesn’t know how to stop fighting, so I keep coming back for another battle, and I suppose I will continue that MO since the fuckers haven’t killed me yet. I’ve wanted to reform the system since I started working in it in the 80s and the first bricks started falling, signaling that before long, the system was going to be coming down around my ears.

Is the Senate legislation anywhere near the system we would have if I was designing it? Oh hell no. If I was doing the overhaul, I would give us a British-style National Health Service, and the healthcare workers would be eligible for the same sort of generous retirement after twenty years that the military gets, because it wrecks your body. (Yoo Hoo over here. Exhibit A is my right knee, with a rebuilt patellar tendon, a reconstructed ACL, degenerative joint disease, severe osteoarthritis, no miniscus, total surgeries: five. Exhibit B is my left knee, with an ACL that has been reconstructed twice, first a hamstring graft then after I shredded that one coming off a chopper, it was replaced with fiberglass. It’s also been opened up twice to clean up miniscus tears, back when I had some, and it, too has DJD and severe oseoarthritis. Total surgeries: four)

But no one is asking me how we ought to do it, and no one in this country other than the small number of people who deliver and consume military and VA medical services would agree with it anyway. That’s because I really would initiate a government takeover of health care. A real one. That is because I know something about healthcare and I have worked in every phase of the system, public, private and DoD/VA. The DoD and the VA are excellent, and in some areas of the country, cities have done such a fabulous job with public health that everyone gets care The systems in Kansas City and San Francisco come to mind. 2005 was a good year for public health – both San Francisco County and City (they have combined operations) and Kansas City/Jackson County, Missouri put it to their voters and funded health levys, and used the money to deliver universal care to their citizens who don’t have insurance. Neither sell insurance policies to their citizens, they just deliver healthcare via robust, efficient public health systems that serve everyone who needs care – and do so by focusing on wellness and keeping the people they care for healthy – which costs less money than high-dollar sick care. Continuing down that path, when someone does get sick, getting them in to see a doctor and make sure they are properly treated assures a lower expense than the same person getting sicker and sicker and sicker, until finally they end up in the ER, where most of the time we just treat ’em and street ’em, most don’t get admitted, unless they are on death’s door.

Failure to pass the Senate bill and improve it later would be the most vivid example of ‘letting the perfect be the enemy of the good’ that we have seen in the modern era.

At the end of the day, I am a realist. I am the person who will use a tampon to stop a gunshot victim from bleeding out, not because I was taught that trick in training, but because there was a kid bleeding to death in front of my eyes and I had one in my pocket and nothing to lose by trying.

I think, realistically, the Senate bill is the best we can do. And setting aside the fact that the Senate needs a serious fucking overhaul, the best we can do is the best we can do. Get the job done. We have been toiling at it longer than I have been on this planet, and even though one of my Grandmothers was nearly 65 when I was born, she had me for several years before she had a Medicare card.

We aren’t going to get a better deal for a decade at least – and anyone who thinks that if we pass on this and let it get worse still, it will get bad enough that you will get that perfect single-payer system…I think you are out of touch with reality to even think about aligning yourself with Jim DeMint and the like, who simply want to see the President fail. I really don’t understand those who want a primary challenger that would simply result in a repeat of 1980 and the trouncing Teddy Kennedy handed Ronald Reagan over Jimmy Carter. If you want President Palin, you do that. (And it’s 1938 again.)

I figured that Kevin and Steve were pretty good company to be in anyway, so I never had second-guessed my “pass. the. damned. bill.” position.

Now a whole bunch more people are saying it, too – and they ain’t bloggers. They are the sort of heavyweight experts who, in a time of sane discourse, would hold sway.

Obviously, not all economists are in favor of the current proposals in Congress. But a pretty impressive list of health economists and other policy experts has released a letter making the following argument:

We commend the President’s pursuit of bipartisan solutions. Yet the summit made plain that it is now time to move decisively and quickly to enact comprehensive reform. We believe that the only workable process at this point is to use the President’s proposal to finish the job. After long debate, the House and Senate have passed two similar bills that do crucial things to improve U.S. health care.

The signers include Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel laureate and behavioral economist; David Cutler and Len Nichols, who have advised Congress on health policy over the last year; Theda Skocpol, the political scientist; Henry Aaron of the Brookings Institution; and Paul Starr, author of a Pulitzer Prize-winning history of medical care.

Just do it. Pass it now and perfect it later. Remember that the strong programs that we all know and love now, like Social Security and Medicare didn’t start out the strong programs they are now. They were passed, and they were improved on. There is no reason to believe that healthcare reform would be any different.

(apologies in advance to the old British childrens rhyme about Guy Faux Day)

Remember, remember the 24th of December

Durbin whipped ’til sixty he got

But the holiday season

Gave the public ample reason

That whipping sixty was quickly forgot.

I am really sick of hearing the bullshit line that if Democrats use reconciliation to pass healthcare, it is akin to tyranny and besides it was never meant for things as big as healthcare, it was only intended for budget fixes.

And the White House and Democrats are pushing back in a fact-based manner.

What a mugs game. You end up with crap like this in the so-called “paper of record.”

Seeing no prospect of a bipartisan agreement on health care, Congressional Democrats said Friday that they would make another effort to pass sweeping health care legislation on their own.

[…]

White House officials and their allies in liberal advocacy groups are making an all-out push to persuade Congress and the public that budget reconciliation is a legitimate procedure used often in the last 30 years to pass major legislation, including President Ronald Reagan’s domestic agenda in 1981, an overhaul of welfare programs in 1996 and President George W. Bush’s tax cuts in 2001 and 2003.

Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the senior Republican on the Finance Committee, said he knew those precedents. But, he said, they amount to “peanuts compared with this total restructuring of one-sixth of the economy.”

Ummm…What?

Healthcare reform already passed in the Senate. With 60 votes.

Remember that? The republicans bitching that they were going to miss the Holidays at home with their families if the mean old Democrats wouldn’t let them kill healthcare reform.

You know how the republicans whine about the ‘Cornhusker Kickback’ and the ‘Louisiana Purchase’? Yeah, those two things were part of getting sixty votes.

We have two healthcare bills passed. One was passed by the House and the Senate could pass it. That won’t happen, it is too liberal for the conservative-leaning Senate, and there are things in it that could not be passed via reconciliation, so even though it’s a better bill (even with the odious Stupak language), has a public option and covers more people. So scratch that.

But the Senate passed a bill, too. All the House has to do is pass the fucking thing. The reconciliation process would then be used…for smaller budget fixes as it was intended. Like removing the bribes to Landrieu and Nelson.

This is not complicated or hard to grasp at all. But our feckless M$M is worthless and totally (willfully) missing the fact that healthcare reform has already passed. When Chuck Todd and Chris Matthews get it, it has to be a graspable idea, for fucks sake, cause those two, bless their pea-pickin’ hearts, are far from the sharpest knives in the butcher block.

Using reconciliation would not be unusual or out of the ordinary at all if used to fix budget issues in the bill…say it with me now…the bill has already overcome a republican filibuster and passed.

During Thursday’s get-together to discuss healthcare at Blair House – and yes, I deserve a medal or something, because I watched the whole damned thing except about an hour of the afternoon session that I dozed off and slept through – I kept hearing republicans refer to the American healthcare system as ‘the best healthcare in the world’ and that is simply not true.

We have tiny little islands of excellence, but we also have huge abyss-like pools of deprivation and indifference. We have the best care anywhere…if you are rich, well-insured, or already have healthcare provided by the government. But if you are one of the millions of uninsured or underinsured, or who risk losing their healthcare because of a tenuous job situation, or if you are simply priced out of the market because you are self-employed or employed by a small business that can no longer afford to provide insurance – well, those little islands of excellence are a long ways away and you are in a leaking boat.

Best healthcare in the world? Hardly. We’re number 37.  (That link goes to the New England Journal of Medicine, here is the youtube video.)

This is where it is important to remember that health care is one thing – but it comes to us via a system that is utterly and completely fucked up, and that 48 million Americans have no access to until they are so sick they end up in an emergency room, where the care is the most expensive and the least efficient, and if a patient isn’t sick enough to be admitted, they end up discharged with an appointment they can’t afford to keep and a prescription they can’t afford to fill.

Now I know that the plural of anecdote isn’t data, but first-hand accounts are often the most telling, most moving, best examples.  So if you know someone who works in healthcare ask them if they know of anyone who has been forced to quit a job and get a divorce to get a sick kid on Medicaid. We all know of at least two or three cases. Usually it is a patient, but sometimes it is a coworker. Years ago – I think it was in Wichita but it all runs together when you move every two years for a few decades so I can’t be 100% sure – I worked with a nurse who had a baby with a heart defect. Her son used up all of his insurance benefits from both her policy at work and her husbands. For him to get coverage after his transplant rejection drugs benefit maxed out, she and her husband divorced and she quit her job so he would qualify for medicaid. I have also known a lot of military nurses, lab scientists and other allied health professionals who joined the medical officers corps to get healthcare coverage.

Hell, it kept us in!

Every time it came time to decide “do we stay or do we go?” we stayed – because after that second hitch, you can see the end of twenty and a defined pension and lifetime healthcare. That was a key consideration before it sucked this bad out there!

And if I did not have this benefit now, my life would be a hell of a lot more complicated and less pleasant. For one thing, I would probably have to take a hell of a lot more medication and risk all the side effects that entails. I take narcotics every day – specifically, I take thirty mg. of Oxycontin, and that would be enough to foster an addiction if taken improperly and carries a dependence risk when taken properly. I also take 200 mg. of Celebrex and 5mg. of Cyclobenzaprine. If I still spent ten hours a night running units to the ER  and working traumas and ICU transfusions, and occasionally having to fight for my life with a desperate or psychotic patient, I would certainly have to take higher doses of at least two of the three drugs that are – so far – successful in the attempt to get me on the other side of fifty before I have to have bilateral knee replacements.

Because I have healthcare, I had the option to make a decision three years ago to quit working a regular schedule and instead do some other important things like raise my granddaughter to school age while I keep the classic all original equipment for a few more years.  

Because I have healthcare, I have been able to carve out a little niche for myself editing, writing, researching, that sort of thing. It required other concessions on my part, and some of my friends in the burbs shook their head at the choices I started making about four years ago that ended with me cashing in my chips three years ago and withdrawing from the ratrace (problem is, even if you win, you’re still a rat) but every last one of them went from confused to jealous as soon as I reminded them that I don’t have to worry about my healthcare access disappearing with my full-time job.

A single-payer system, or even a strong public option that truly small businesses could rely on, would free up so much creativity and small business investment and economic stimulation in this country that we would have the closest thing to full employment you can have and not have runaway inflation.

In my former line of work, I met a lot of firemen and cops, and a huge number of them own bars – at one time I thought it was in the KCFD union contract that when you became a Lieutenant you were issued one, but a friend who is a fire Captain and on his third bar, each one nicer than the last, disabused me of that notion a few years ago, so I gave up trying to get a KCFD gig…

I worked with all sorts of entrepreneurs who used the time a hospital or public service schedule affords to do other things. I worked with two women in one hospital who made boutique soaps and sold them online and at local arts fairs and in specialty shops and natural foods stores. I knew a guy in environmental services who had a fish business – he rented fish tanks to professinal offices and used his days off at the hospital to service the tanks and deliver fish food to the offices. I knew a lab scientist who owned and operated a science store. A young friend – I trained her to stick needles in living flesh – now sticks more needles in fabric. She is a fabulous dressmaker and makes a lot of money doing it, but not enough to quit her job and still have healthcare, even though she turns down enough work to work full time and hire an assistant.

Ask any one of those people and they would tell you that they would pursue the successful businesses they have passion for full time, invest in them and hire employees…if they weren’t tied to their jobs in order to keep their health care.

I’ve told you before about the second job I had for a few years when we landed here – I worked for a friend in a blues bar and wrote for the Blues News before I got political – my politics were never addressed when we were in the military, they were no ones damned business. Anyway, working there is how I originally got to know Mike Finnegan – hell, I was pleasantly surprised – and delighted – to find out that MY Mike Finnegan and the blog roundup guy at Crooks & Liars were the same guy!  

There is one big – huge, actually – difference though, between writing about politics and wars and national security and stuff and reviewing performances and recordings. Back then, I got calls from agents and artists every day, begging me to please go see this band or they wanted to send me that CD – Boy, did I have a lot of long-lost friends and relatives when I could just walk past any doorman in town because my name was always on the guest list or I could walk through the stagehands and bands entrance to Sandstone for Aerosmith or the Anger Management Tour or the Beastie Boys or Oz Fest and watch from the side of the stage – Here’s the bottom line – if you are backstage for B.B. King, Little Milton, KoKo Taylor or Bonnie Raitt – or you are in charge of the beer tent at a three-day music festival – your friends fight over who gets to to tag along with you to work.

Not so much when they have to spend six hours on a train to Jeff City and back to watch the idjits in the state lege prove that we’re in the running with South Carolina and Texas for batshit-craziest state legislature – Yellow Dog done conceded Kentucky can’t compete with us folks ‘crost the big river earlier this week, so it’s down to three –  and it not only costs them fifty bucks for the train ticket, there’s no free booze in the green room, and they don’t get a free tee-shirt or to make out with a bass player (til the next time they order a pizza.)

But it’s still good work if you can get it, and don’t have to worry about health care.  

If, dear reader, you feel misinformed regarding the facts of the Benoit Wesly affair, boggled by Podolefsky non-renewal or troubled by the burgeoning boondoggle that threatens the search for the next UCM President, you are most certainly not alone.

It has been suggested that certain individuals within the university community share a common interest and have unduly influenced the recent actions and, indeed, the very composition of the UCM Board of Governors.

We set out to see if there could be any truth to this notion and should report that, at this point, the results are inconclusive.

However, through the course of research, an interesting group of individuals emerged; a group that neatly fell into a line that traced a path from UCM Non-Employee Greg Hassler, directly to UCM Board of Governors President Dick Phillips.

Is this series of relationships meaningful or mere coincidence? You be the judge… 

 

Greg Hassler

Part-Owner (one of four initial members) of D & H Media, LLC

AM radio attacker of Ronnie Podolefsky and Aaron Podolefsky

An obvious and unequivical Non-Employee of the University of Central Missouri

Married to Carol Hassler

On-Air Personality for the Central Sports Radio Network

After the jump, we Connect the Dots!

 

Shawn Jones



UCM Associate Athletics Director, External Operations whose duties include the “…awarding of broadcast rights…”

Affilliate Relations Director/Sales Director for the University of Central Missouri Sports Network

The Voice of the Central Sports Radio Network

Host of the KMOS-TV program Sportspage, the producer of which, the aptly named Mr. James Sales, is concurrently employed by KOKO radio

Organizer of the UCM Athletics Auction which, in Shawn’s estimation, has “…has netted $750,000 for UCM Athletics in its eight year history*

*At the 2009 festivities, one could bid in hopes of winning one of five items offered by the single most generous donors of auction items, Ed and Kathy Baker.

For example, last year, some lucky bidder was tempted by this scintillating evening…

Catalog#: 32

Dinner for Eight on October 2, 2009

Enjoy a wonderful dinner at the home of Jerry and Vici Hughes, on Friday evening October 2, 2009.

Dinner for eight will be prepared by the Executive Chef of Churchill’s Restaurant in Columbia.

You will be served by the professional staff of Churchill’s.

You and your friends will be joined for dinner by UCM Board of Governors member Ed Baker and his wife Kathy,

UCM Athletic Director Jerry Hughes and his wife Vici, and Coach Kim and Melissa Anderson.

Cocktail hour begins at 6pm. Enjoy good company and great food.

Courtesy of: Ed & Kathy Baker

As chilling as that event sounds, we morbidly digress…

So, to whom did Shawn award the rights to broadcast UCM Sports?

Carol Hassler

Part-Owner (one of four initial members) of D & H Media, LLC

Married to Greg Hassler

Board of Directors of the UCM Alumni Association

As it happens, Carol sits on the Alumni Board with…

John Culp

Board of Directors of the UCM Alumni Association

UCM Athletics Program Development & Retention Coodinator

What Culp’s professional responsibilities actually entail is anyone’s guess, but clearly he develops and retains someone or something on behalf of the UCM Athletic Department.

Alongside Culp in the Athletic Department Staff Directory, one finds a young man with a familiar name…

John Hicklin

UCM Athletics Academic Advisor

Son of UCM Board of Governors member Walter “Walt” Hicklin

John Hicklin and John Culp both report to UCM’s version of  “King Carl Peterson…”

Jerry Hughes

UCM Athletics Director

Infamously NOT the UCM Vice President of University Advancement

Married to Vici Hughes, who was appointed UCM Director of Alumni Relations and Development in 2004, and shown the door, er reassigned, by UCM President Podolefsky in 2006.