Senator Claire McCaskill (D), via her blog:

Jan 3, 2011

Sometimes it’s important to fight your party’s leadership.

I believed over a year ago that spending caps were an important part of our effort to fight the deficit. Jeff Sessions(R-AL) and I worked hard and came very close to passing the Sessions -McCaskill spending caps. While I was able to secure 16 of my Democratic colleague’s support, we fell just short of the 60 votes needed. The leadership in my party was opposed to our effort and fought to defeat these caps. Keep in mind that this was a cap on BOTH domestic and defense discretionary spending that took into account our current fragile economy, and placed caps on spending for the next three years. It was supported unanimously by the Republican senators…

Senator Jeff Sessions (r)? Really?

Blue Girl, over at They gave us a republic…:

And that’s when my head exploded…

by: Blue Girl

Mon Feb 14, 2011 at 14:00:00 PM CST

I swear, I watched it three times.

Honest…Three times…and no one should EVER watch a segment of a Jeff Sessions interview three times, I don’t care how strong ones constitution is. It just shouldn’t be done, because if the person being subjected to his nonsense repeatedly isn’t a ridiculously hyper-partisan douchebag, or if you don’t handle cognitive dissonance very well and can’t just let it roll off your back, you run the risk of a cranial event like the one pictured that I just experienced.

I’m going to share the video, but please, promise you will only subject yourself to it once…

No — don’t watch it again — he really did say that the trillion dollars in debt reduction in President Obama’s proposed budget is chump change and does nothing to get us on sound financial ground — right before he touted the same savings as ‘significant’ when in the context of what republicans want to do budget-wise.

Here are his exact, transcribed words when asked about the Obama budget that was rolled out today:

“No, it’s not. This is a ten-year budget. It sets the president’s plans and what the country should do for the next 10 years…. $1 trillion reduction is insignificant and does not get us off the right course.”

And here are his exact transcribed words on republican plans to reduce the deficit:

“[E]ven the $100 billion House proposal in reducing spending will amount to $1 trillion. And that’s a step. I mean, because, you carry it out for ten years and you save $1 trillion in that fashion.”

Keep in mind — this obviously-addled joker is the top republican on the Senate budget committee.

I weep for my country. Care to grab a box of kleenex and join me in a good cry?

The republicans aren’t serious about the deficit and the national debt. You know it. We all know it. You even showed everyone in attendance at your Concordia, Missouri town hall:

Senator Claire McCaskill (D): town hall in Concordia, Missouri (August 11, 2010)

[….]

Hey, we use that CBPP chart all the time!

[….]

Their behavior created the mess and now they’re suddenly deficit hawks?

And you helped them add to it (the “other purposes”)?:

Senator Claire McCaskill (D): evidently any concern about the deficit has been alleviated (December 15, 2010)

….And the final vote on the deal, perpetuating dubya’s tax cut windfall for the top 2%:

Question:  On the Motion (Motion to Concur in the House Amdt. to the Senate Amdt. with Amdt. No. 4753 to H.R. 4853 )

Vote Number: 276 Vote Date: December 15, 2010, 01:02 PM

Required For Majority: 1/2 Vote Result: Motion Agreed to

Measure Number: H.R. 4853 (Airport and Airway Extension Act of 2010, Part III )

Measure Title: A bill to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to extend the funding and expenditure authority of the Airport and Airway Trust Fund, to amend title 49, United States Code, to extend authorizations for the airport improvement program, and for other purposes.

Vote Counts: YEAs 81

NAYs 19

Bond (R-MO), Yea  

McCaskill (D-MO), Yea

….Do us a favor. Spare us those lectures on the deficit. Otherwise, you’re just telling us it’s raining.

The “bipartisanship” continues in a press release from Senator McCaskill’s office:

McCaskill & Corker Introduce Bill to Cut Spending Over 10 Years

Bipartisan ‘CAP Act’ would put binding cap on all federal spending

February 1, 2011

WASHINGTON – As the Congressional Budget Office reports a record $1.5 trillion U.S. deficit for fiscal year 2011, U.S. Senators Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) and Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) are introducing legislation to force Congress to dramatically cut spending over 10 years.

“At a time when many families have been forced to tighten their pocketbooks, Congress must also learn to do the same. This bill isn’t just about cutting back this year or next year; it’s about instilling permanent discipline to keep spending at a responsible level,” Senator McCaskill said.

“Washington continues to borrow and spend, and despite the pleas of the American people, there is no end in sight,” said Senator Corker, “As we approach our debt limit of $14.29 trillion and more and more Americans – Republicans, Democrats and Independents – call on Washington to get spending under control and reduce our deficit, I see no better time to change course. What Senator McCaskill and I are offering is a legislative straightjacket, a way of forcing Congress to dramatically cut spending over 10 years. The beauty of the CAP Act is that it imposes fiscal discipline and smaller government, while incentivizing lawmakers to pass policies that promote economic growth.”

The Commitment to American Prosperity Act is a simple, 10-page bill that does four things:

1. The bill permanently limits all federal spending – both discretionary and mandatory – to a responsible level compared to our economy using historical markers to set limits.

2. It eliminates oft-used budget gimmicks in order to take into account the true reality of our economic situation.

3. It authorizes the Office of Management and Budget to make evenly distributed cuts throughout the budget to bring down spending if Congress fails to meet the annual cap.

4. It requires a two-thirds vote in both houses of Congress to override the binding cap.

The Corker-McCaskill CAP Act is cosponsored by Senators Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), Richard Burr (R-N.C.), Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.), Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), and John McCain (R-Ariz.).

In 2009 the federal government spent $1.4 trillion more than it took in, borrowing nearly 40 cents of every dollar. The gap between spending and revenue is almost four times the historic average. Even when the U.S. reaches historic revenue levels, we are still projected to be spending nearly six percent more of our gross domestic product than we take in, and the gap will continue to widen. By 2035, on our current trajectory, U.S. debt will reach 185 percent of GDP. If this occurs, interest payments on our national debt will reach nearly nine percent of GDP – as much as we currently spend on national defense, education, roads, and all government agencies combined.

[….]

###

Have you asked Senators Corker (r), Alexander (r), Burr (r), Chambliss (r), Inhofe (r), Isakson (r), Kirk (r), and McCain (r) what they think of President Obama’s one trillion dollar budget cut, as opposed to the republican controlled House’s one hundred billion dollar cut (maybe over ten years)?

Senator Sessions (r) wasn’t available? Just asking.

And why don’t republicans ever bother to address the impact of dubya’s tax cut windfall for the top 2% on the deficit and wealth redistribution upward in this country?  

Apparently, it’s always raining in Washington, D.C.

Maybe you remember seeing this Krugman column that talked about the Texas Attorney General who opposes regulating CO2 on the grounds that:

It is almost the height of insanity of bureaucracy to have the EPA regulating something that is emitted by all living things.

[….] This argument says that we should adopt an equally laissez-faire attitude toward sewage.

But hey, there was a time when conservatives did, in fact, argue for doing nothing about effluent of any kind. In the years leading up to the Great Stink of 1858, which finally got the British to build a London sewer system, The Economist editorialized against any such foolish notion (pdf):

suffering and evil are nature’s admonitions-they cannot be got rid of.

Or, to put it (almost) in the modern vernacular, stuff happens.

And given the way we’re heading – with politicians arguing that the federal government has no right to ban child labor – don’t be surprised to see the anti-sewer movement making a comeback, and to see elected representatives, even if they know better, holding their noses and going along.

Seems that Mike Lee, the wingnut who replaced Senator Bob Bennett from Utah, believes that Congressional laws banning child labor are unconstitutional.

“Congress decided it wanted to prohibit that practice, so it passed a law. No more child labor. The Supreme Court heard a challenge to that law, and the Supreme Court decided a case in 1918 called Hammer v. Dagenhardt,” Lee said. “In that case, the Supreme Court acknowledged something very interesting — that, as reprehensible as child labor is, and as much as it ought to be abandoned — that’s something that has to be done by state legislators, not by Members of Congress.”

Our own Sen. Jane Cunningham agrees that this issue belongs to the states. But if you think Lee is nuts, heartless, and laughable, then consider that Cunningham is nuttier, meaner and more asinine, because she doesn’t even go along with Lee’s avowal that child labor is “reprehensible.” Cunningham has introduced a bill to minimize Missouri’s child labor laws. No, I’m serious.

Mike Hall’s AFL-CIO blog posting about it says:

I could find all kinds of colorful words and descriptions to show just how crazed and outrageous is S.B. 222.

But let’s just use the official summary of the bill from the Missouri state Senate website and if you don’t believe me, click here and read it yourself.

• This act modifies the child labor laws.
• It eliminates the prohibition on employment of children under age fourteen.
• Restrictions on the number of hours and restrictions on when a child may work during the day are also removed.
• It also repeals the requirement that a child ages fourteen or fifteen obtain a work certificate or work permit in order to be employed.
• Children under sixteen will also be allowed to work in any capacity in a motel, resort or hotel where sleeping accommodations are furnished.
• It also removes the authority of the director of the Division of Labor Standards to inspect employers who employ children and to require them to keep certain records for children they employ.
• It also repeals the presumption that the presence of a child in a workplace is evidence of employment.

Even though Cynthia Davis (R-hunger is a great motivator for children) lost her state senate bid last fall, her ignoble, penurious spirit endures in Jane Cunningham. We’ll have to hope that Missouri’s legislators refuse to hold their noses and go along.

The Kansas City campaign in support of the earnings tax kicks off today:

They have a nifty website, Keep KC Alive:

Keep Kansas City Alive,

Keep Vital Services Funded in Our City!

Vote YES Tuesday, April 5

The earnings tax is the lifeblood of Kansas City.  It generates approximately $200 million annually, accounting for fi [sic] nearly 40% of our city’s general fund, which pays for vital and essential city services. Without it, the City would be required to drastically reduce police and fire protection, ambulance service and other public safety services, such as 911. Funding for essential services, such as street maintenance (fixing pot holes and removing snow) would be reduced. Maintenance of our parks, boulevards, community centers and fountains would be cut. Trash collection and recycling will, by necessity, become fee-based. Funding for many arts, cultural and social service programs would be eliminated.

More than 50% of the workers who pay this one percent tax on wages and salaries are persons who work in the city, but who live outside the city limits, in Johnson County, Kansas, and elsewhere. This tax does not apply to social security, investments or other retirement income. Retired citizens, for instance, do not pay the earnings tax.

By voting YES on April 5, you will be approving continuation of the earnings tax, funding for vital and essential services, for five more years.

[emphasis added]

And the voters of Kansas City can thank Rex Sinquefield for the cost of those elections every five years and for the increased cost of issuing bonds because of that five year clause in Proposition A from 2010.

He probably thinks it’s the best ten or so million dollars he’s ever been scammed out of by the right wingut political consultant welfare and self enrichment industrial complex.  

My husband, who has been a socialist since he was thirteen, announced at breakfast today that he plans to vote for certain Tea Party candidates.

Blink.

This violent about-face comes on the heels of Grover Norquist announcing that he wants to drag into his infamous bathtub … wait for it: the Pentagon budget–you know, that $534 billion monstrosity (well, $533.8 billion actually, but who’s going to quibble over a piddling .2 billion dollars, right?) the budget that every year, in Afghanistan and Iraq, has gone mostly down the toilet instead of into the tub.

For years only a hardy band of liberals in Congress-the Progressive Caucus, the Black Caucus and individuals like Representative Barney Frank-challenged the bloated military budget. The Republicans, ignoring President Eisenhower’s warning fifty years ago about the military-industrial complex, always gave the Pentagon what it wanted and more, gleefully bashing Democrats as weak-kneed on national security. Since the fall, however, a civil war of sorts has broken out among Republicans over defense, with the dissident faction led by Norquist, the libertarian Cato Institute and a growing group of allies, including some factions of the rambunctious Tea Party movement, backing significant cuts.

According to a well-known conservative activist, in early January House majority leader Eric Cantor quietly circulated to the entire GOP caucus a letter organized by Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) that called for the Pentagon’s budget to be put on the chopping block. “We write to urge you to institute principled spending reform that rejects the notion that spending cuts can be avoided in certain parts of the federal budget,” said the letter, written in November to Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell and incoming House Speaker John Boehner. “Department of Defense spending, in particular, has been provided protected status that has isolated it from serious scrutiny.” The letter was signed by twenty-three people, a Who’s Who of the conservative movement, including Norquist, David Keene of the American Conservative Union, Cato’s Christopher Preble, Richard Viguerie, Al Regnery of The American Spectator and many others. Also signing were Lisa Miller of Tea Party WDC and Matt Kibbe of FreedomWorks, the pro-Tea Party organization led by former House majority leader Dick Armey. That Cantor, who has advocated cutting the military budget, sent ATR’s letter around was seen as a shot across the bow of Republicans who consider that budget a “sacred cow,” as ATR called it.

On January 19 more than 150 Congressional staffers and experts packed a Capitol Hill forum sponsored by Cato at which Norquist and Preble laid out the conservative case for slashing military spending. Preble, with Ben Friedman of Cato, outlined a series of cuts that go far beyond what Defense Secretary Robert Gates and the Obama administration have proposed, identifying more than $1.2 trillion in cuts over the next decade-about a fifth of overall Pentagon spending. “When the Soviet Union disappeared,” said Norquist wryly, “a lot of people on the right failed to notice.” Referring to George W. Bush’s support for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and for greater military spending, Norquist said too many Republicans support feeding the Pentagon’s appetite “just because Fearless Leader said it’s a good idea.”

Instead, Norquist called for a debate among Republicans over Obama’s escalation of the war in Afghanistan, asking, “What are we doing? Why are we there? How long do we plan to be there?” A week earlier, speaking at a dinner organized by Steve Clemons of the New America Foundation, Norquist cited polling data to support his view that, if debated, pro-war neoconservatives and hawks would lose the argument. “I’m confident about where that conversation would go,” he said. “I think the people who are against that conversation know where it would go, too.”

They must fear such a debate, because a powerful coalition (the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation and the Foreign Policy Initiative (home to William Kristol of The Weekly Standard) is gearing up to challenge the anti-war wingers.

Whether or not my husband could actually vote for Ed Martin, I do not know. It’s not like Claire’s any prize, but Martin? God, he’s such a low life. Anyway, closer to the here and now, nothing will seriously endanger our War Budget this session, even if Barney Frank and Eric Cantor join hands. But the seeds of reality might be planted. I want to see a vocal debate about cutting war, oh excuse me, defense funds. Right now, Democrats are giving away the social safety net store without asking for war spending cuts in return.  

Kevin Horrigan at the Post-Dispatch has an op-ed piece on the flaw in believing that anyone is self-made. I may memorize it. You should at least read it. It begins:

It was suggested here a week ago that opposition to federal health care reform was a lot like people inside the lifeboat using their oars to whack people who are still flailing in the water.

The wisdom of that suggestion was challenged by several correspondents, one of whom wrote that “we in the lifeboat have spent our working lives to ensure the lifeboat is in good repair with oars and lifejackets. The people you weep for live their lives like a slo-mo trainwreck. They would swamp the lifeboat and not even lift a finger to work the oars.”

I’m sure it comforts people in the lifeboat to think that somehow they deserve to be there and other people don’t. But let’s face it: The biggest part of why some of us are in the lifeboat and others aren’t is just sheer luck.

Warren Buffett, the famously folksy, incredibly rich guy, has a phrase for this. He says he won the “ovarian lottery,” being born in the United States in 1930, when the odds were 50-to-1 against.

Horrigan, too, won pretty big in the lottery by being born a white male in the U.S. of parents who stressed a work ethic. He had those and a few other such lucky breaks. But lots of people work hard and don’t get very far.

Scientists, as Malcolm Gladwell discusses in his 2008 book “Outliers,” increasingly have concluded that achievement has less to do with talent than it does with opportunity.

Many people, Gladwell notes, don’t want to believe this. When Jeb Bush was running for governor of Florida two years before his brother ran for president, he – grandson of two wealthy bankers, one of whom later became a U.S. senator, and son of a president of the United States – often referred to himself as a ‘self-made man.”

Furthermore, Gladwell writes, extraordinary achievement – on the order of Bill Gates or the Beatles – requires not only high levels of innate talent but also extraordinary opportunity that permits you access to the tools for whatever it is you want to get good at and enough time to put in 10,000 hours of practice.

To get really, really good at almost anything takes talent plus 10,000 hours of practice. Who’s got time for that unless he’s really lucky?

Buffett’s “ovarian lottery” and Gladwell’s opportunity rule both can be seen as corollaries to the work of John Rawls, an American political philosopher and author of the 1971 book “A Theory of Justice.”

You can test a vastly simplified version of Rawls’ theories at home, like a parlor game. Get a few gross of ping-pong balls, label them with a variety of demographic factors, put them in a hopper and invite a whole bunch of people over, liberals as well as conservatives. (My experience is that conservatives tend to bring tastier food, so invite a lot of them).

Tell them that the object of the game is to create rules for a society that they themselves would have to live in. But here’s the trick: Everyone starts from what Rawls called the “original position” behind a “veil of ignorance.”

“[N]o one knows his place in society, his social status, nor does anyone know his fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abilities, his intelligence, strength and the like,” Rawls wrote. “I shall even assume that the parties do not know their conception of the good or their special psychological propensities.”

Horrigan explains the game in some detail with a view to showing that where we land in life is a matter of chance. Much as I appreciate Horrigan for dispelling the myth that any successful person got to the top by himself, I feel his argument could be tweaked. All of us know that there’ve been times when we could have done more, used our talents better. Do we get to write off those failures as predestination and the lottery? Because if we do, those who believe that personal responsibility explains everything can simply dismiss us as fatalists.

So I’d have to leave a little bit of room in there for saying that some ne’er-do-wells just plain blow their opportunities. But I’d also point out that most of the people flailing in that ocean without health care aren’t of that sort. I wrote recently:

I was talking to Brigit in the vet’s office this week. I had her as a student twenty plus years ago. She’s worked for that vet for twenty years, I guess. She’s unfailingly pleasant and competent–a good worker. But she’s got it hard. The vet keeps her hours just under forty a week, so that she has no health care. She works two jobs, and has trouble paying the bills.

Brigit was as likeable a student as I ever knew, but under 100 on the IQ chart. Which brings us back to Rawls’ theory and his game. She didn’t get the choicest ping pong balls. Now maybe she could handle her finances better, for all I know. But that vet wouldn’t want to do without people like her. She contributes. And she deserves a seat in the boat. She’d be glad to take an oar.

The best prescient film review ever:

Ephemera 2009

…There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs…

Via TBogg at Firedoglake and Doug J at Balloon Juice.

Class warfare propaganda for the haves.

And to think, Leni Riefenstahl constantly complained about what she had to work with…  

Representative Jake Zimmerman (D-83) is a candidate for St. Louis County Assessor.

Yesterday, at the Missouri Ethics Commission:

C051130 02/11/2011 CITIZENS FOR JAKE ZIMMERMAN Sandy Rothschild & Associates 7751 Carondelet Ave. St Louis MO 63105 2/10/2011 $2,500.00

C051130 02/11/2011 CITIZENS FOR JAKE ZIMMERMAN Stone, Leyton & Gershman 7733 Forsyth Blvd. St Louis MO 63105 2/10/2011 $5,000.00

C051130 02/11/2011 CITIZENS FOR JAKE ZIMMERMAN AT&T Missouri Employee PAC One AT&T Center St Louis MO 63101 2/10/2011 $1,000.00

C051130 02/11/2011 CITIZENS FOR JAKE ZIMMERMAN Electrical Workers Voluntary Political 5850 Elizabeth Ave. St Louis MO 63110 2/11/2011 $1,000.00

C051130 02/11/2011 CITIZENS FOR JAKE ZIMMERMAN One Missouri Fund P.O. Box 16761 St Louis MO 63105 2/11/2011 $1,000.00

C051130 02/11/2011 CITIZENS FOR JAKE ZIMMERMAN Central St. Louis Co. Fire Fighers PAC 115 McMenamy Rd. St Peters MO 63376 2/11/2011 $600.00

C051130 02/11/2011 CITIZENS FOR JAKE ZIMMERMAN Professional Fire Fighters of Eastern MO Local 2665 PAC 115 McMenamy Rd. St Peters MO 63376 2/11/2011 $1,000.00

C051130 02/11/2011 CITIZENS FOR JAKE ZIMMERMAN McCulloch for Prosecutor Committee 928 Kimswick Manor Ln Ballwin MO 63011 2/11/2011 $5,000.00

C051130 02/11/2011 CITIZENS FOR JAKE ZIMMERMAN Kirsten Kaufman 41 Central Park West New York NY 10023 Homemaker 2/10/2011 $1,000.00

C051130 02/11/2011 CITIZENS FOR JAKE ZIMMERMAN Kenton Knickmeyer 10 Douglass Ln St Louis MO 63122 Attorney 2/10/2011 $1,000.00

C051130 02/11/2011 CITIZENS FOR JAKE ZIMMERMAN David Kaplan One PO Box Square Boston MA 02109 Attorney 2/10/2011 $1,000.00

C051130 02/11/2011 CITIZENS FOR JAKE ZIMMERMAN Terry Bloomberg 47 Frontenac Estates Dr St Louis MO 63131 Developmental Child Care 2/11/2011 $2,500.00

C051130 02/11/2011 CITIZENS FOR JAKE ZIMMERMAN Janet ONeal 2214 Lakewood Dr. Cape Girardeau MO 63701 Homemaker 2/11/2011 $2,400.00

C051130 02/11/2011 CITIZENS FOR JAKE ZIMMERMAN Stephanie Peterson 129 Lodge Creek Circle Charlottesville VA 22903 Homemaker 2/11/2011 $1,000.00

C051130 02/11/2011 CITIZENS FOR JAKE ZIMMERMAN Patricia Wolkowitz 11581 New London Dr St Louis MO 63141 Retired 2/11/2011 $2,500.00

C051130 02/11/2011 CITIZENS FOR JAKE ZIMMERMAN Kenneth Kranzberg 50 Picardy Ln St Louis MO 63124 Kranson Industries 2/11/2011 $2,000.00

C051130 02/11/2011 CITIZENS FOR JAKE ZIMMERMAN Robert Blitz 61 Portland Dr. Saint Louis MO 63131 Attorney 2/11/2011 $2,500.00

[emphasis added]

That’s $33,000.00 if anyone wants to keep track.

Juke or Jook: fake, (football) a deceptive move made by a football player.  Synonyms: fraud, imposter, pseudo, fake, faker, pretender,  role player, shammer, sham.

How long will it take for Missourians to wake up to the fact that we’ve sent a pack of jukes to D.C. and to Jefferson City to take care of our financial welfare. You know what jukes are, right? Jukes point left and run right, carrying our ball right along with them, leaving us with nothing and no prospects for anything. Right now there’s lots of jukin’ going on.

The primetime juking is happening in Washington where the chawbacon economists that have hit the capital have been pointing left and screaming “I see a deficit,” while running right and trying to make sure that government can no longer do any of the things we want it to do. This week GOP House members announced their support for cuts in spending for infrastructure, national parks, scientific research, food assistance to low income women and children, community health centers, etc. There’s lots more pain in the their plans than I have space to list (see list of proposed cuts here), but the kicker is – get this – for all the suffering and lost opportunities these cuts represent, they won’t do diddly about the deficit. As Think Progress puts it:

In the grand scheme of deficit reduction, these cuts will do absolutely nothing, but they will have extremely detrimental effects for those who depend upon the targeted programs. This shows the folly of the GOP’s approach to budgeting, which leaves huge parts of the federal budget immune to cuts (like the Pentagon), while taking an axe to non-defense discretionary spending. These cuts outlined above total about $1 billion, while simply retiring (and not replacing) one carrier battle group and its aircraft wing would save $1.5 billion.

So, our GOPers in the house are planning to take a wrecking ball to vital government programs that have nothing to do with the problems they cited when they persuaded us to give them the wrecking tools. They’re doing this even though, when polled, Americans don’t support the proposed cuts and they will cost thousands of jobs. But that doesn’t bother our jukes; pols like, for instance, Missouri’s Billy Long (R-7) are sure they’ve done something big. According to the Turner Report, ol’ Billy  is patting himself on the back and fatuously proclaiming, “we got ‘er done.”  

Back home in Missouri, the local jukes are also hard at it. Remember how they whined about jobs and job creation before the election? And what are they doing to create jobs? Attacking unions, undercutting workers, doing their best to insure that if, by some miracle, any jobs are created, they’ll be the sort that nobody but the most desperate will take. These ideologically driven strategies are supposed to create a “business-friendly” climate, but as the St. Louis Post-Dispatch observed:

Business-friendly is one thing. Business-promiscuous is quite another. Before the state goes past second base with these suitors, it would be wise to ask why – given all the pro-business initiatives of past years – the economy is still in a funk. Businesses were given tax breaks, tax credits, tax incentives, low corporate taxes and tort reform. So where are the jobs? Or did they just pocket the savings?

Of course not all jukes are created equal. And by that I mean competent; I also mean our new State Auditor, Thomas Schweich. When faced with the task of analyzing the financial impact of the proposed mega sales tax/income tax swap that is being engineered by political sugar daddy Rex Sinquefield, Schweich ended up looking like the proverbial deer caught in the headlights.

The facts, after all, aren’t that favorable to the unfair tax, so poor little Schweich, fearing to offend King Rex from whom all favors flow, claimed that the job just couldn’t be done. Nope. No way.  No mathematical skills, models, or reasoned estimates could be employed  – although use of those tools is an everyday thing for financial types – like auditors – who are able to walk and chew gum at the same time. The upshot: Schweich looks like a fool;  he pointed left, but just hasn’t got what it takes to run the ball to the right.

The unFair tax proponents are themselves juking in a number of directions. One of the most interesting is the proposal to cap the sales tax at 7%. As numerous analysts have shown, such a low cap is absurd if one expects the swap-out to be revenue neutral. And, of course, those of us who raise this point are missing the whole jukin’ game. These daddies don’t have the slightest interest in revenue neutral – they want to force cuts, the more the better. Here, one should note that in some dialects being juked has another connotation – as in baby, you’ve been screwed.

GOP juke economics are ultimately an exercise in ideological strategy. If there is less money, there will necessarily be less government spending on those vital programs that so disturb the John Galt roleplayers and excite the wrath of Tea Partying grannies  whose bile rises at the thought of all those welfare queens living high on the taxpayer dollar. When the consequences fall on all of us, though,  Missourians who voted GOP will have nobody to blame but themselves.

[In the interest of full disclosure, I am a member of MNEA – Michael Bersin]

This afternoon Missouri National Education Association (MNEA) Legislative Director Otto Fajen and Senator David Pearce (R-31), chair of the Education Committee, spoke on the campus of the University of Central Missouri (UCM) about education issues in the current legislative session and took questions from the audience at an event sponsored by the UCM MNEA unit.

After that session we had the opportunity to speak with Otto Fajen:

Show Me Progress: Could you tell me in, in overall terms how this legislative session is going in Jefferson City, um, for K through twelve and for higher education? In general terms.

Otto Fajen, Legislative Director, MNEA: I’ll do the best I can. Uh, I think the first thing I would say is there’s still a lot of uncertainty about this session. Um, we, after the election, were very, in the, in the Senate leadership struggles, we were concerned that it was showing a real policy shift in the Senate. Um, and with the senate Democratic Caucus being so small we, we weren’t sure whether the Senate would still kind of be that voice of reason that it has typically been in the past on K twelve and higher education policy. But with the appointment of Senator David Pearce [R] to continue to be education chair, uh, where many of us were concerned that it was gonna be a far right person like Senator Jane Cunningham [R]. That kind of sent a signal that maybe the Senate wasn’t gonna kind of fall off the edge of the earth. And so we haven’t really seen that huge race of, uh, profoundly disturbing policy ideas through the Senate yet. And, in fact, the education committee doesn’t seem to be moving very quickly on much of anything. And so the session has been slower perhaps than we might have thought from what we heard on the first day of session. Um, obviously the House leadership has been more antagonistic toward K twelve education and, uh, kind of angry in their tone about, uh, firing bad teachers. But again, the action on the ground in the committee on that hasn’t really taken place. And we’re trying to be very proactive in saying, you know, we are not that happy with the status quo. We’ve got ideas on how to do something that would actually work rather than just throw up your hands and try to blame teachers, uh, for problems that go far beyond what goes on directly in schools…

MNEA Legislative Director Otto Fajen (left) and Senator David Pearce (R-31)(right), chair of the Education Committee,

taking questions at an MNEA event on the campus of the University of Central Missouri.

…Show Me Progress: Uh, from the, from the budget standpoint, uh, the, the hundred eighty-nine million dollars in, um, federal stimulus money for education, uh, how does that affect the, the upcoming state budget?

Otto Fajen: Well, it’s, it, it’s already had a profound effect because it had a profound effect on what the governor and the state budget office and State Budget Director Linda Luebbering could do, what they could try to propose to do.  Um, it helped them, for instance, in K twelve, not utterly eliminate the pupil transportation categorical. Um, and their proposal was to actually, based upon the federal guidance at the time, spend that money this year, make the formula whole, but have districts hold on to it and then basically spend it next year where the formula would un, unfortunately have then been kind of massively underfunded. And what the House folks in consultation with the Senate budget folks and the governor’s office is, the federal, uh, restrictions seem to have been melted slightly to where they can send the money out early next year and that really smoothes out, and it really lets that money build a bridge, save the transportation categorical. It also has a spillover effect in terms of what they were able to propose in their budget in other sectors, including higher ed. So, that money was a big win, uh, we’re gonna still have to fight, um, to make sure that the real far right ideologues in the Senate don’t try to hold that money up and not allow it to be spent.

Show Me Progress: And, and speaking of that, if, uh, if they hold up that money or, literally turn it back, it, it doesn’t have a net effect on the, the federal budget because…

Otto Fajen: No. No, that’s the irony, is that their rhetoric, oh, we’re, we need, we need to be off the federal dole and we’ll help, we’ll help finance the federal debt. But, this money, there’s a distribution mechanism. And if Missouri doesn’t spend it on our schools and our kids it will be redistributed to other states and they will be able to spend it on their kids and their schools.

Show Me Progress: And there are other states that are perfectly happy to do that.

Otto Fajen: California, Illinois, New York, Michigan, they’re gonna be delighted to have an extra hundred and eighty-nine million dollars split, you know, amongst the other states that sense enough to spend this money.

Show Me Progress: Um, what’s the long term outlook, do you think, for, uh, the financial stability of public higher education in the state?

Otto Fajen: It’s not good right now. Uh, we’re, we’re profoundly concern, and that’s, you know, we’re profoundly concerned about this particularly dangerous proposal, the fair tax. But, setting that aside for the moment, even if that, even if we’re able to keep that from coming in and really wrecking state finance, we don’t see the state’s finances being positive enough.  And higher ed is always the one that’s most at risk. K twelve education is written into the constitution at square one and has constitutional protection in terms of funding and adequacy. So, K twelve funding pretty much tracks on a graph with state money. Higher education is the one that’s most at risk when finances turn down. Aand we’re not really seeing a great outlook that things are gonna turn rapidly around in a positive direction where higher ed usually then receives kind of, you know, maybe a bounce back in the really good time. So, we’re profoundly concerned that absent real leadership, real action on revenues, um, we’re gonna continue to see, uh, the kinds of struggles and downsizing that we’re seeing right now in higher ed.

Show Me Progress: And, and in the long term, uh, that has, uh, uh, a definite effect on accessibility and, and, actually, economic outlook for the state.

Otto Fajen: But, at, you know, we, in, in, our folks in K, K twelve really set the stage, but higher ed is where the, the, that’s the capstone. That’s where the real action is in terms of economics. And so, if we’re not gonna make the investment now in terms of serving our kids with higher education they’re not gonna be positioned to be the people we need, um, down the road. And it’s gonna be much more expensive overall in the long run to not have, make, make that investment in higher ed. That’s really, we set the stage for that in K twelve, but the, well, the important action there in, in higher ed has a profound impact on where Missourians end up economically.

Show Me Progress: All right. Well, thank you very much.

Otto Fajen: You’re quite welcome.