Previously: Campaign Finance: If the dinosaurs had PACs we’d all be food in Jurassic Park (April 11, 2012)

C121149 04/20/2012 MISSOURIANS AGAINST COSTLY MANDATES American Coalition for Clean Coal 1152 15th Street, NW Suite 400 Washington DC 20005 4/17/2012 $20,000.00

[emphasis added]

No sense of irony at all. On so many levels.

Previously: Campaign Finance: cough, cough, hack, hack (April 10, 2012)

Today, at the Missouri Ethics Commission, on opposite sides:

C121181 04/20/2012 ENOUGH TAXES ALREADY Cheyenne International 701 South Battleground Ave Grover NC 28073 4/18/2012 $50,000.00

C121042 04/20/2012 MISSOURIANS FOR HEALTH AND EDUCATION American Cancer Society-High Plains Division, Inc. 2433 Ridgepoint Dr Austin TX 78754 4/20/2012 $75,000.00

[emphasis added]

And the players are:

C121042: Missourians For Health And Education

Po Box 412887 Committee Type: Campaign

Kansas City Mo 64141

(816) 820-8201 Established Date: 01/26/2012

[….]

Ballot Measure History

Ballot Measures Election Date Subject Support/Oppose

Statutory Amendment To Chapters 149 & 196 Rsmo Relating To Tobacco Taxation & Regulation 11/06/2012 Tobacco Taxation & Regulation Statewide Support

[emphasis added]

On the tobacco side, a committee organized on April 4, 2012:

C121181: Enough Taxes Already

Po Box 1533 Committee Type: Political Action

Jefferson City Mo 65102

(816) 262-5745 Established Date: 04/04/2012

[….]

Enough Taxes Already [pdf]

Statutory amendment to Chapters 149 and 196 RSMo, relating to tobacco taxation and regulation November 6, 2012, statewide Oppose

[emphasis added]

Enough Taxes Already has received $101,000.00 in April from Cheyenne International.

Uh, Missouri is last [pdf] in the nation in tobacco taxation.

Some time ago, Rep. Paul Curtman’s (R-105) gold currency measure, HB1637, caught my eye – partly because it was so patently ridiculous. I had started to write about it and the role that gold has played in the more paranoid wingnut fantasies over the past decades (there are folks who read the Wizard of Oz as an allegory about the gold standard), but decided that I would put it on hold, and if we were really lucky, Curtman’s promenade on the cazy side would be brought to a halt by more seasoned hands in the legislature.

Turns out, there are no such seasoned hands – in the Missouri House, that is, which has just voted to send Curtman’s fantasy opus to the Senate. In the – I hope – unlikely event that this bill makes it through the Senate, Missouri will join Utah in recognizing gold and silver coins issued by federal mints as legal tender.

On the surface it just sounds goofy. Only a fool would really try to use gold and silver to make purchases. Think about it – would you be willing to trade a gold coin with a commodity value of $1200 for the $50 dollars of groceries it’s face value would get you?

Curtman, however, was inspired by a development in Utah. An enterprising soul there has offered to hold gold in a depository and issue a debit card that can be used to spend down the actual, commodity value of the gold credited to the debit card holder. As Curtman conceded:

The provisions of the bill won’t be utilized unless and until a business like the one in Utah is developed in Missouri. Curtman says, “Right now it’s a new concept and so there’s not really regulatory authority over it, so that’s one of the parts of the bill … if this happens, the Secretary of State’s Office would be the one to handle it, because it’s commodities exchange.”

So what does Curtman hope to achieve? Would you believe he sees this as an important hedge against inflation? Although inflation is currently a non-issue, this rationale is telling. As Ed Kilgore observes:

The idea that hyperinflation is the major economic peril facing America at the moment requires a truly special perspective on current events. But throughout history, “hard money” advocates have conflated currency with morality, and more generally, creditors with virtue. That makes latter-day goldbugs nothing more or less than the outer edge of a conservative movement increasingly inclined to define the defense of “haves against have-nots” as the defense of civilization under seige by redistributionist barbarians.

Anti-redistributionist frenzy aside, hard currency has been a cause célèbre among the paranoid right for generations. U.S. currency was decoupled from gold in 1971, but the desire to return to the good old, hard currency days is near and dear to the right wing heart for the very reasons that most economists eschew it. Delinking gold from the currency allows policy makers greater flexibility to respond to changing economic conditions. Fanatic free-market advocates, however, distrust this flexibility and prefer to leave the value of the currency to the vagaries of the market. As The Economist mockingly observes, “the quintessential gold bug is an investor who expects every form of paper wealth to collapse, along with civilisation itself.”

It gets even nuttier, however. The way many conspiracy theorists spin it, paper money is part of a plot to create an economic collapse:

According to this theory – and it has many forms – an elite will usher in an age of hyper-inflation in order to improvise [sic] citizens in the developed world. Having achieved this they be in possession of the only real assets (property, gold) and thus have even greater political power.

A final irony: If you know anything about Curtman, you of course remember that he is very fond of representing himself as a fearless defender of the Constitution. Consequently, a particularly amusing aspect of Curtman’s efforts to establish an alternative currency is that it arguably contravenes Article One, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution. To be fair, hard currency enthusiasts respond that Article One, Section 10 suggests that states may recognize gold and/or silver currency – an argument that, it has been pointed out, hinges on ignoring the purpose of Section 10 and its limitations. Constitutional considerations aside, the Economist is probably correct that for folks like Curtman, the real attraction of gold depends on “airier considerations, such as whether you think Barack Obama is the Anti-Christ.”  

Via a comment at Charles P. Pierce.

President Obama personally approved the entire agenda for the GSA retreat and then personally imposed a spending cap on personal discretionary entertainment spending by federal employees in Columbia. It’s all his fault.

President Obama was totally uninvolved and had nothing to do in the process of getting Osama Bin Laden.

That is all.

President Barack Obama sits on the famed Rosa Parks bus at the Henry Ford Museum

following an event in Dearborn, Mich., April 18, 2012. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Fighting back. A video promoting the march and rally in Jefferson City next weekend:

Susan Montee: On Saturday, April twenty-eighth women and men from all over Missouri will gather here in Jefferson City to march and rally for women’s rights. They’ll be joining a nationwide movement in all fifty states and we’d like you to join us.

Unite Against The War On Women. Some people have a problem with the words war on women. They say it’s too extreme. But just look where we are. There’s no denying the record number of laws passed in the last year restricting women’s reproductive rights. And what about the rash of proposed invasive laws, some requiring unnecessary medical procedures?

And we are fighting battles we thought we already won, like the nineteen ninety-four Violence Against Women Act that the Republican Congress just failed to renew.    

When I began my career in politics I fought for equal opportunities for women in the workforce. As a city council member in St. Joseph, Missouri I stood against those who said there were no women in many important government positions because women were not interested in those kind of jobs.

Today we’re still fighting the same fights and struggling for equal pay. Women earn seventy-seven cents out of every dollar a man makes. And over their lifetime that can be hundreds of thousands of dollars and impact Social Security and pensions.

With the upcoming election and so many issues at stake it’s time to make our voices heard. Join the march and attend the rally.

The priorities are women’s rights and civil rights, women’s reproductive rights, women’s economic equality and worker’s rights, and protecting women and children from violence and abuse.

We have to be vigilant. Many of the rights that we’ve already fought for are under assault or have already been turned back.

Here in Missouri the march will take place in Jefferson City beginning at ten a.m. Everyone will gather at the Secretary of State office building and march to the capitol where the rally will be held. There will be a number of speakers addressing important issues, both nationally and locally, and a call to action here in Missouri.      

Courtney Cole: Our goals for the march are to increase public awareness of issues that are important to women, to advance women in the political process and policy making process so that our concerns are addressed by women, and to get women involved in the legislative and political process. We need women to get involved, take action, and vote.    

Susan Montee: this is an opportunity for every woman who cares about our rights, our well being, and the future of our daughters to unite with women across Missouri and America in making a difference. And men, we need you, too. Men who support our cause, we want you there with us. Without you we can’t succeed.

We Are Women March, Missouri. Saturday, April twenty-eighth in Jefferson City starting at ten a.m. at the Secretary of State building with the rally on the capitol steps starting around eleven. For more information visit our Facebook page.

Courtney Cole: Enough is enough. Stop the war on women.

Susan Montee: Stand up for women’s rights. Join us April twenty-eighth and let your voice be heard.

Word.

We’ll be there.

Mitt Romney, smarting from the fact that President Obama publicly commented on his rather protuberant silver spoon, decided to go on the offensive, pouting that Obama “likes to attack” people who are “successful,” and, in a comic effort at misdirection, notes that he, Romney, won’t apologize for the success of his self-made father. We can only assume that he’s not willing to apologize for own silver-spoon-fed self either.

Mitt’s defense of success will probably work better, though, than his wife’s efforts to claim fellowship with struggling Americans by sharing her stories of their youthful hardships. According to Ann, in order to make ends meet and ensure that she could stay home with the brand new little Romneys, graduate student Mitt actually had to cash in some of the stock portfolio with which his father endowed him. Oh the horror!  At least Mitt’s response makes his allegiances clear.

The sad thing is that Mitt’s loyalties don’t differ much from the rest of the GOP. While Mitt’s defending the successful, the U.S. House is going after food stamps. These are the same GOPers who voted uniformly for the cruel Ryan Budget that would gut the safety net, Medicaid and Medicare while giving Mitt and his wealthy friends even bigger tax breaks than they already have – all of which Romney, ever the champion of the successful, adamantly endorses.

Certainly, our Missouri GOP has bought into the defense of the successful big time – although they seem to prefer the other GOP designation for wealthy corporate elites, “job creators.” Efforts by a few rogue Democrats to reform the individual income Missouri tax code are routinely ignored – in spite of the fact that the current outmoded tax structure not only fails to bring in sufficient revenue to meet state needs, but puts the greatest burden on low and middle income tax payers. But that doesn’t mean that the GOP anti-tax drones don’t want to fiddle with the tax code. In fact they’re proposing to cut the state’s insufficient revenue by many more millions by halving the Missouri corporate tax rate – a rate that is already one of the lowest in the country.

And what does the GOP defense of the successful do for Missourians? It certainly doesn’t seem to create many jobs. But on the other hand, we here in Missouri have been treated, thanks to our legislators, to a most edifying debate about whether or not to slash services to the blind or to higher education. Most recently, our stalwart defenders of the successful have been pondering massive cuts to children’s services.

The cuts could affect over 5000 children in day care, many of whose parents might have to give up jobs and return to welfare; result in the loss of 42 jobs and the loss of over $500,000 in federal funds; threaten the Children’s Division’s standing with the Council on Accreditation, and reduce adoption subsidies at a time when the number of children entering the foster system has increased by 10% over past years.

But hey, no matter what pain he’s willing to inflict on folks struggling with hard times, Sen. Kurt Schaefer and his GOP pals on the Senate Appropriations Committee he chairs, the folks who are floating this latest attack on poor Missourians, will no doubt be more than willing to stand with Mitt Romney and continue to proudly defend those who have been successful.

Today, at the Missouri Ethics Commission:

C111205 04/18/2012 SPENCE FOR GOVERNOR Howard Wood 203 N E Main St. Bonne Terre MO 63628 Cequel III Chairman 4/18/2012 $2,000.00

C111205 04/18/2012 SPENCE FOR GOVERNOR Christopher Klein 209 Pullman Pl. #100 Kirkwood MO 63122 1st Phorm International LLC Owner 4/18/2012 $1,000.00

C111205 04/18/2012 SPENCE FOR GOVERNOR A Charles Roland III 829 Fairfield Lake Dr. Town and Country MO 63017 Retired Retired 4/18/2012 $1,000.00

C111205 04/18/2012 SPENCE FOR GOVERNOR Darlene Roland 829 Fairfield Lake Dr. Town and Country MO 63017 Retired Retired 4/18/2012 $1,000.00

C111205 04/18/2012 SPENCE FOR GOVERNOR Schnuck Markets Inc. 11420 Lackland Rd. St Louis MO 63146 4/18/2012 $10,000.00

C111205 04/18/2012 SPENCE FOR GOVERNOR Joseph Stieven 4 Lochinvar Dr. St Louis MO 63131 Stieven Capital Advisors Executive 4/18/2012 $1,000.00

[emphasis added]

…unless you’re independently wealthy.