A gift to Chuck Purgason, paid for and developed by Joe the Plumber, aka Joe Wurzelbacher, and “friends”, and set to air on cable throughout Missouri until August 3rd:

True, Purgason does seem to be a stand-up fringe-winger, willing to take the crazy as far as it will go, but withal showing a type of integrity – while Blunt is a surely a cynical, get-while-the-getting’s-good kind of guy.  But seriously, is it possible to be so far to the right that one describes Newt Gringrich, Karl Rove and Mike Huckabee, all of whom have endorsed Blunt, as moderates? What does “moderate” mean to Republicans anyway?  Corrupt, maybe?

Afterthought:  It just struck me that the fairy tale format is especially appropriate for the Tea Partiers given their proclivity for fantasy.

( – promoted by Clark)

On June 29th, the St. Louis County Council gave the green light to updated residential building codes that will save homeowners hundreds in energy costs through new energy efficiency standards. St. Louis County is home to approximately one million residents, part of the Greater Metropolitan St. Louis area.

The savings are particularly beneficial for Missourians in the long term due to projected coal-generated energy costs rising faster than in other states.

Some facts to consider:

* 82.4% of Missouri’s power is coal-generated, while its only 50% nationwide

* US Residential Electricity prices have gone up 50% in last decade

The adoption of the new codes means that updated energy efficiency building standards will be in effect everywhere in St. Louis County that is unincorporated or in municipalities that look to the County for code enforcement. St. Louis County is home to over 90 municipalities, many of which enforce their own building codes. There is still work to do among those municipalities that perform their own code enforcement and have yet to adopt the updated energy conservation codes.

Although eventually near-zero energy buildings and ultra-low energy homes may be the ultimate sustainable solution, the 2009 International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) establishes a set of minimum energy efficiency standards that will save homeowners on average between 12-15% energy usage.

The Energy & Cost Savings Analysis of 2009 IECC Efficiency Improvements from the Energy Efficiency Codes Coalition concludes,

“ICF International’s analysis estimates that homes built to the 2009 IECC standards will save 12.2% under the simple “prescriptive” method and could save 14.7% or more using the more complicated “performance-based” method.”

The City of St. Louis is not within St. Louis County, so this code adoption does not affect the city. There is, however, hope that the City of St. Louis will follow the lead of St. Louis County soon, as well as St. Charles County, which lies to the West of St. Louis County. St. Charles County has a population of approximately 350,000, and is one of the fastest growing counties in the country, which makes the adoption of energy efficient building codes extremely important.

Ultimately, “sustainability” means behaving in such a way as to preserve and protect the existing ecosystem for future generations to enjoy-leaving things just how you’ve found them.

On sustainability,

“There is abundant scientific evidence that humanity is living unsustainably, and returning human use of natural resources to within sustainable limits will require a major collective effort. Ways of living more sustainably can take many forms from reorganizing living conditions (e.g., ecovillages, eco-municipalities and sustainable cities), reappraising economic sectors (permaculture, green building, sustainable agriculture), or work practices (sustainable architecture), using science to develop new technologies (green technologies, renewable energy), to adjustments in individual lifestyles that conserve natural resources.”

Energy Efficiency is the fastest and cheapest way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and promote a cleaner and more sustainable environment. National groups like the Sierra Club, US Green Building Council and local ones, the Missouri Association of Accredited Energy Professionals (MAAEP) and the Home Builders Association of St. Louis and Eastern Missouri all support the new codes. Through the adoption of the 2009 Energy Conservation Code, energy efficient homes and businesses will make a substantive contribution creating a cleaner environment tomorrow.

Randy’s Turner explores the Missouri implications of the Disclose act, which would have mandated disclosure of who pays for political campaign adverting – nothing more, nothing less – hardly, as Republicans claim, a ploy to “restrict freedom.” Turner’s screed is  worth reading in its entirety, so read it here or on the Turner Report.

And then cry. The Disclose Act was voted down in the Senate this afternoon:

On a Senate vote of 57-41, Democrats fell short of the needed 60 to clear a procedural hurdle Republicans set up against The Disclose Act, likely killing the measure for the year

I assume that everybody knows all there is to know about the Shirley Sherrod affair. There has been plenty of speculation that the edited Breitbart tape was the opening salvo in a Republican strategy that seeks to portray Obama’s almost hysterically racially neutral administration as favoring blacks over whites – a commonly voiced fear from elderly and working class voters before Obama’s election. An interesting take on the timing of Breitbart’s release of the doctored tape that was presented on TPM last week takes this speculation even further:

It’s also important to understand that Andrew Breitbart’s timing of the release of the grossly distorted video of Sherrod, which he admits having had for weeks, may not be entirely random. Congress will soon vote on whether to fund part of a settlement between the USDA and African-American farmers who faced acknowledged discrimination — farmers like Sherrod and her husband used to be.

From this perspective, the manufactured controversy might have proven to be an effective ploy – in spite of the fact that Breitbart’s selective editing was quickly discovered. Only a few days  after all the noise about Sherrod began, the Senate stripped from the war funding bill the allocation for the Pigford II settlement, which would have directed that $1.25 billion in reparations be paid to black farmers who were  openly discriminated against by USDA in the 80s and 90s.

Harry Reid’s response to the defeat:

I hoped that tonight the Senate could finally right a wrong that has been left unresolved for far too long. … As recent events have reminded us, the fact that justice and fairness were denied to black farmers for so many years continues to have ramifications today. … Republicans should be held accountable for standing in the way of justice for those affected.

Reid is right about the injustice, but wrong to lay the blame on solely on Republicans.  As usual, many of the hard-core, Democratic “moderates” (self-labeled) in the Senate voted along with the Republicans – a point of shame for us in here in Missouri since our own Claire McCaskill once more showed her contempt for Democratic values by joining the folks on the other side of the aisle, who more and more seem to be her true cohorts.

Why, Claire, one is tempted to ask. Does it have anything to do with her absurd deficit posturing (see also here) – which in itself constitutes a potentially harmful little legislative hobby she has taken up in order, one suspects, to appeal to what she seems to believe to be “common-sense” preferences of small town and surburban Missourians. Or perhaps she is really concerned that the racial overtones that often pervade discourse about government spending in Missouri were just too strong in this case – which means that McCaskill will easily be stampeded to the right in order to avoid the fallout from a Republican race-baiting strategy.

The one thing we can be sure of is that the answer with McCaskill always seems to be that she goes along in order to try to get along. In other words, she has no respect for her constituents and is running scared of what she considers their general meanness. Which means that we’ll have to work harder to let her know that we are better than she thinks we are before it’s too late.  

Last Friday Tony Messenger of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch observed that one of the reasons that Proposition C, the Missouri tenthers’ effort to sabotage the health care reform bill, is likely to pass is that there is no organized opposition. But on the other side Proposition C proponents are getting their act together. Organizations like Missourians for Health Care Freedom are mobilizing for the final push. A grim situation all around.

So you can imagine my surprise today when I received a big, glossy mailer from the Missouri Hospital Association (MHA) asking folks who might be inclined to vote for Prop C to get their facts straight. The particular fact that the MHA chose to emphasize in the mailer ought to have some resonance with those greedy and fearful little hobgoblins on the right who are so afraid that a poor person (or, horror of horrors, a poor black person) might get some of their hard-earned dollars:

But by law, Missouri’s hospitals must provide medical care in their emergency departments to anyone who is uninsured – even if they can afford health insurance. Hospitals must cover the cost of that care by charging more to patients who do have insurance.

So the question is: Should Missourians who already pay for health insurance also have to pay for those who choose not to pay?

If you think it’s acceptable that some who can afford insurance get a free ride, vote yes on Proposition C. If you think that’s unfair, you should vote no

.

There’s more on the MHA Website, a factsheet and a statement from the MHA President and CEO, Herb B. Kuhn, explaining why the MHA has decided to join the fight against Proposition C in such a prominent way:

The MHA Board of Trustees endorsed a voter education campaign on Proposition C because, regardless of the feelings about federal reform, Proposition C could have very real – and negative – implications for  hospitals

Negative implications like upsetting the balance of Medicare and Medicaid payments – according to Kuhn, Missouri hospitals would stand to lose somewhere in the vicinity of 500 million dollars over ten years if the individual mandate were to be revoked.  He adds:

Much will be said during the next few weeks about the individual mandate and the notion of “individual freedom.” That is a powerful and persuasive argument. There is, however, another side of the story, and that’s the notion of “fairness.” Fairness to make sure Missouri’s hard-earned Medicare and Medicaid dollars stay in the state and fairness in sharing in the cost of health coverage for all.

Many argue that since Proposition C is patently unconstitutional – it clearly conflicts with the Supremacy Clause – it can be safely ignored. Don’t think, though, that a constitutional showdown will be quick, inexpensive or pretty. If the proposition were ever allowed to go into effect, Mr. Kuhn’s statement is potent testimony to some of the potentially disastrous financial impacts. At the very least, a Proposition C victory will be used as a rallying cry to revitalize the war on the President and his health care agenda.  In this environment, the MHA’s willingness to stand on the frontline and oppose this piece of pernicious political theater with a dose of reality is more than welcome and they deserve our appreciation.  

Action Needed:

Click here and pledge to call Claire McCaskill and Kit Bond during the next three days, July 27-29, and let them know that inaction or timid half-steps to combat climate change is not acceptable.

Why?

Real, effective climate legislation, that is, legislation that mandates some form of carbon emission control is now officially dead for the present and perhaps the future. As Joe Romm of Climate Change puts it, “the mostly dead climate bill is now extinct.”

Naturally, the Democrats want to blame the Republicans, and they are right that the corrupt numbskulls on the Republican side of the aisle played their usual obstructionist role. But Republican obstructionism is not the whole story. This time around, the so-called brown dogs, including prominently our own esteemed Claire McCaskill, have to take their share of the blame:

… garnering 60 votes on a plan that caps emissions is a major challenge as long as Democrats such as McCaskill fear the electoral consequences.

To be sure, Obama and Reid also need some Senate Republicans to play ball if they’re going to get a climate bill across the finish line. But the amount of GOP support they will need is directly proportional to the number of Democrats they will lose. And Obama faces considerably more party discord on climate change than he did on health care or Wall Street reform because of deeply rooted regional concerns over energy policy

So you could certainly say without fear of contradiction that Claire McCaskill was instrumental in killing the climate bill. And while she has taken money from coal interests (about $10,000 out of $47,000 total from energy interests), it surely can’t be the case that this relatively tiny mess of pottage is is what prompted her to sell out her base. It is far more likely that she is simply afraid of the the political consequences if she takes a principled stand – afraid that if electricity prices or farm energy prices were to go up, she might be out on her you-know-what come 2012.

People in organizations like Repower America know that if we are to revive meaninngful climate change legislation, we need to keep the issue alive and let politicians like McCaskill know that while we’ll get their back when they do the right thing, we won’t forget when they let us down. More importantly, McCaskill is a co-sponsor of the Rockefeller bill that seeks to neuter the EPA’s emissions control rules. And, although, President Obama is poised to veto the bill if it passes, we have to let her know that supporting the coal industry in this way is not really winning hearts and minds at home.

In early days, before McCaskill learned to fear the Tea Party backlash, she was, as Michael Bersin reminded us last week, pretty upfront about her support for cap-and-trade. Such past statements suggest that McCaskill knows what the right thing to do is, but is just too timid to do it.That’s why Repower America is asking progressives, environmentalists, and anyone who is concerned about the pending climate disaster, to phone McCaskill tomorrow and remind her of what she already knows.

So by all means get mad. But also take action – click here and make a pledge that sometime during the next three days – July 27- July 29 – you’ll phone McCaskill – and poor, hopeless Kit Bond, for what it’s worth – and let them know that we demand real leadership to get us through this potentially disastrous environmental crisis.

Afterthought: You don’t even have to click and use the Repower America tools – just phone the fools and let them know the folks they work for aren’t too pleased.  Please. McCaskill’s number: (202) 224-6154; Kit Bond’s: (202) 224-5721.

( – promoted by Clark)

I’m typing this waiting for the final evening session.  The final speaker will be Al Franken.

Today, both Pelosi and Reid spoke.  

For me, the day was Elizabeth Warren day. If you heard her speak you can understand why she MUST be the head of the new consumer agency the Wall Street Reform Bill sets up.

The final session is beginning.  More after the fold.

Pelosi had clearly had the easier task in addressing the Netroots.  She can talk about the legislation that the House passes that goes to languish in the Senate.

Reid had the more difficult task.  He defused it when he talked about ending Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. Dan Choi is here and the moderator gave Reid Choi’s West Point ring.  Reid said he will return it when DADT is finally ended.  They both embraced and it was very touching moment.

For me, the best line was when Reid said they are proposing changes in the Senate rules for the next session.  That got a big applause.  Of course, there were no specifics.

I’m going back to the last session.  I will write one more summary tomorrow.

I hope you enjoyed these reports.  Thanks for reading them.  

Mary Nichols, a Democrat running against Byron DeLear for state rep in the 79th, has lost any shred of respect I might have had for her. Get a load of part of the mailer she just sent out. Under the headline “AN ELEPHANT NEVER FORGETS”, she claims that DeLear “forgot” to mention that he used to be a Rush Limbaugh Republican. (That’s elephant hide you’re seeing underneath the text.) Remember that this mailer is going out to Democrats before the primary in a district that will almost surely go Democratic in the fall.

Were any of you good progressives reading this posting raised as Republicans? That’s what I thought. Me too. Is it to your credit that you overcame the right wing propaganda imposed on you and thought for yourself? That’s all DeLear was getting at when he wrote in 2004:

I used to be a conservative right wing republican listening to all of those right wing radio talk show hosts, and subscribed to a Rush Limbaugh-esque ideology that’s all about the law of the jungle. You know, the Capitalistic ‘survival of the fittest’. Well I have come through my wicked ways, and I have seen the revelation that building the future of humanity on a foundation of greed and industrial schemes designed to prey upon the weak is simply not sustainable. Being born into a wealthy family and having gone to military school as a little boy were the pertinent ingredients that led to my march in lockstep.

Next the mailer accuses DeLear of having run for Congress in California under the Green Party banner–the implication being that he doesn’t know what he is. Could be that the blurry photo, by the way, was the only one available, but it makes him look like part of a suspicious, maybe faintly subversive group.

And now, he “claims” to be a Democrat.

Give me a Green guy who got PACE passed in Missouri any day over a real estate agent who wants to develop the Missouri river floodplain. Nichols’ mailer is–speaking of the GOP–a Karl Rove type smear tactic against another Democrat.

Look, I understand that any serious run for state rep is hard. Those candidates put themselves through the mill. So when I wrote about that race less than two weeks ago, I gave Nichols every benefit of the doubt, although I thought she had little to offer. Now, I’ll be blunt. She has no agenda to speak of other than trashing a fellow Democrat who has proven that he wants to help the people of this state.