Last night, at a Democratic Party gathering in west central Missouri:

“Communist China, A Right-to-Work State Since 1921”

Previously: 2014 Candidates for Congress – March 19, 2014 (March 19, 2014)

The candidate filing deadline is 5:00 p.m. on Tuesday, March 25, 2014.

As of 5:00 p.m. Friday Democratic Party candidates have filed in all of Missouri’s eight congressional districts.

The filed candidates (in italics), for now:

U.S. Representative – District 1

Democratic

Lacy Clay

Republican

Martin D. Baker

Daniel J. Elder

Libertarian

Robb E Cunningham

U.S. Representative – District 2

Democratic

Arthur Lieber

Republican

Ann Wagner

Libertarian

Bill Slantz

U.S. Representative – District 3

Democratic

Velma Steinman

Courtney Denton

Republican

Leonard Steinman

Blaine Luetkemeyer

John Morris

U.S. Representative – District 4

Democratic

Jim White

Nate Irvin

Republican

Vicky Hartzler

Libertarian

Randall (Randy) Langkraehr

Herschel L. Young

U.S. Representative – District 5

Democratic

Mark S Memoly

Emanuel Cleaver II

Bob Gough

Eric Holmes

Charles Lindsey

Republican

Bill Lindsey

Berton A. Knox

Samuel Alao

Michael Burris

U.S. Representative – District 6

Democratic

W. A. (Bill) Hedge

Edward Dwayne Fields

Republican

Kyle Reid

Brian L. Tharp

Sam Graves

Christopher Ryan

Libertarian

Russ Monchil

U.S. Representative – District 7

Democratic

Genevieve Williams

Jim Evans

Republican

Marshall Works

Billy Long

U.S. Representative – District 8

Democratic

Barbara Stocker

Republican

Jason Smith

Libertarian

Rick Vandeven

Constitution

Doug Enyart

In case you were wondering, eighteen republicans, sixteen Democrats, six Libertarians, and one individual from the Constitution Party have filed in Missouri as candidates for Congress.

 

A recent petition at the White House:

We petition the Obama Administration to:

Alaska back to Russia.

Groups Siberian russians crossed the Isthmus (now the Bering Strait) 16-10 thousand years ago.

Russian began to settle on the Arctic coast, Aleuts inhabited the Aleutian Archipelago.

First visited Alaska August 21, 1732, members of the team boat “St. Gabriel »under the surveyor Gvozdev and assistant navigator I. Fedorov during the expedition Shestakov and DI Pavlutski 1729-1735 years

Vote for secession of Alaska from the United States and joining Russia

Created: Mar 21, 2014

Issues: Civil Rights and Liberties, Government Reform, Human Rights

Signatures needed by April 20, 2014 to reach goal of 100,000 94,661

Total signatures on this petition 5,339

[emphasis added]

There is the small matter of the 1867 purchase agreement – seven million, two hundred thousand dollars in gold.

Does anyone wonder if those signing this were thinking it would make Sarah Palin a Russian citizen?

At the Missouri Ethics Commission, from the lone republican candidate in the 26th Senate District race:

C091299 03/20/2014 CITIZENS FOR SCHATZ N.B. West Contracting Co. 2780 Mary Ave. StLouis MO 63144 3/20/2014 $5,001.00

C091299 03/21/2014 CITIZENS FOR SCHATZ Don Kelly Contractor Inc, 299 NW Outter Rd P.O. Box 10 Norwood MO 65717 3/21/2014 $5,001.00

C091299 03/21/2014 CITIZENS FOR SCHATZ Robert Sellenriek P.O. Box 237 Jonesburg MO 63351 sELF Utility Contractor 3/21/2014 $5,500.00

C091299 03/21/2014 CITIZENS FOR SCHATZ Bradley Willard 28351 Hwy F Lebanon MO 65536 Self Contractor 3/21/2014 $7,500.00

[emphasis added]

Mister Jones?

Previously:

26th Senate District: As if there’s any difference? (February 26, 2014)

Campaign Finance: a really serious commitment (March 2, 2014)

Campaign Finance: laughing all the way to the bank (March 3, 2014)

26th Senate District: pass the popcorn (March 8, 2014)

Campaign Finance: Still laughing? (March 9, 2014)

Campaign Finance: Running for something? (March 11, 2014)

26th Senate District: not particularly surprising (March 13, 2014)

Campaign Finance: the lone republican in the 26th Senate District race keeps on raising money (March 20, 2014)

At the Missouri Ethics Commission:

C031159 03/13/2014 MISSOURIANS FOR KOSTER Western Missouri and Kansas Laborers’ District Council PAC 8500 Ward Parkway Suite 300 Kansas City MO 64114 3/11/2014 $10,000.00

C031159 03/16/2014 MISSOURIANS FOR KOSTER Pharmacy Services, Inc. 212 Millwell Drive Suite A Maryland Heights MO 63043 3/14/2014 $10,000.00

C031159 03/21/2014 MISSOURIANS FOR KOSTER Iron Workers Local No. 10 PAC 1000 E. 10th Street Kansas City MO 64106 3/19/2014 $10,000.00

[emphasis added]

Round numbers.

Previously: Campaign Finance: Because the Constitution Party candidate is an existential threat? (March 21, 2014)

Someone else filed for State Auditor yesterday:

State Auditor

Republican

Name Mailing Address Random Number Date Filed

Tom Schweich 7144 WYDOWN BLVD ST LOUIS MO 63105 531 2/25/2014 10:41 a.m.

Constitution

Name Mailing Address Random Number Date Filed

Rodney Farthing 3127 HIGHWAY K SALEM MO 65560 3/20/2014 11:08 a.m.

Also yesterday, at the Missouri Ethics Commission:

C111150 03/20/2014 FRIENDS OF TOM SCHWEICH Friends of Tilley 100 S Jackson Perryville MO 63775 3/19/2014 $10,000.00

Dueling ex-Speakers, eh?

This week Senator Claire McCaskill (D) held a series of events and town halls across Missouri. We attended three of the town halls – in Columbia, Kansas City, and Higginsville. The format for these open town halls has become familiar. Senator McCaskill’s staff provides cards for attendees to write their questions. The questions are placed in a basket. Senator McCaskill makes brief opening remarks, asks for someone “who would never vote for me” to volunteer to staff the basket and pull the questions, then she proceeds to take questions one after the other for an hour. Sometimes there’s give and take with the audience – for clarification of a question or to follow up.

The audience at these events can vary as can the type and scope of questions. Interestingly, at the three town halls we witnessed medical and recreational marijuana were the subject of a number of questions, Obamacare/Affordable Care Act not so much. The subjects submitted in questions included immigration reform, the NSA, coal, the Keystone pipeline, Common Core, campaign finance reform, the status of the Status of Forces Agreement with Afghanistan, GMOs, auditing the Fed, unemployment benefits, veterans’ issues, the minimum wage, the farm bill, food stamps, gay marriage, among several other issues.

We attended two town halls yesterday – in Kansas City and Higginsville.

In Kansas City:

Senator Claire McCaskill (D) speaking at an open town hall on the campus of UMKC in Kansas City – March 19, 2014.

In Higginsville:

Senator Claire McCaskill (D) speaking at an open town hall at the Higginsville Community Center – March 19, 2014.

Previously:

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D): showing up is more than half the battle (March 17, 2014)

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D): press Q and A – March 17, 2014 (March 18, 2014)

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D): press Q and A – Kansas City – March 19, 2014 (March 19, 2014)

Yesterday, at the Missouri Ethics Commission:

C091299 03/19/2014 CITIZENS FOR SCHATZ Steven Dickey 672 w. Springfield St Clair MO 63077 SELF Retail Business 3/18/2014 $5,000.01

C091299 03/19/2014 CITIZENS FOR SCHATZ Skyview Construction & Crane LLC P.O. Box 1377 Hannible MO 63401 3/18/2014 $7,500.00

[emphasis added]

Fancy that.

And someone else recently filed as a Democratic Party candidate:

State Senator – District 26

Democratic

Name Mailing Address Random Number Date Filed

Lloyd Klinedinst 10 DOVER LN VILLA RIDGE MO 63089 3/18/2014 1:28 p.m.

[emphasis added]

Previously:

26th Senate District: As if there’s any difference? (February 26, 2014)

Campaign Finance: a really serious commitment (March 2, 2014)

Campaign Finance: laughing all the way to the bank (March 3, 2014)

26th Senate District: pass the popcorn (March 8, 2014)

Campaign Finance: Still laughing? (March 9, 2014)

Campaign Finance: Running for something? (March 11, 2014)

26th Senate District: not particularly surprising (March 13, 2014)

Previously:

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D): showing up is more than half the battle (March 17, 2014)

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D): press Q and A – March 17, 2014 (March 18, 2014)

“… most of the people who have, show the most vitriol about Obamacare are people who are not even interacting with it. Um, they’ve just probably watching a lot of Fox. And, um, so, I think as time goes on, um, it, it, we may discover that trying to, to just have one policy change as your only political talking point may be overplaying your hand…”

Over the course of this week Senator Claire McCaskill (D) has held six open town halls (and several other events) across the state. The fifth town hall was held early this afternoon in Kansas City on the campus of UMKC. After most of the town halls Senator McCaskill made herself available for questions from the media in attendance.

Senator Claire McCaskill (D) speaking to the media after her town hall on the campus of UMKC in Kansas City – March 19, 2014.

The transcript of the press availability after the Kansas City town hall:

Senator Claire McCaskill (D): ….Happy to answer any questions anybody has….

[….]

Question: …I didn’t understand the, the gambit, uh, of bringing the money back from the international corporations. How’s that gonna work?

Senator McCaskill: How it would work is, you’d have fifty billion dollars worth of bonds and they would, over a period of time, be up for sale. And the people who would be eligible to buy these bonds would be corporations who would agree to bring the same amount of money back in money from overseas that they are buying of bonds. In other words, they’ve used the money overseas to buy the bonds. But, whether or not they’ve got the bonds would depend on what rate of tax they were willing to pay. So let’s say you had a block of five billion dollars, um, you might have ten corporations bid on buying five billion dollars worth of bonds which will allow them to bring that five billion back into the United States. They would all bid against each other without knowing what everybody else was bidding, what tax they were willing to pay. And whoever was willing to pay the highest tax on that money coming back would be the one that could buy the bonds.

Question: Ah, okay.

Senator McCaskill So, it’s kind of an elegant way to have discreet funds for infrastructure without hitting the treasury or hitting the taxpayers and not giving corporations a free pass on bringing the money back without any taxation.

Question: Yeah. Well, plus, they could sell their, uh, their civic duty, uh, you know [crosstalk] and [inaudible]…

Senator McCaskill: There you go, there you go, there you go….

….Question: Senator, my understanding is that you met with some of your colleagues , I think it was an earlier town hall meeting, uh, this week where the, the issue of marijuana and, and Colorado came up and law of unintended consequences. Um, you still feel that should be a state issue as far as Missouri is concerned or are you kind of wait and see?

Senator McCaskill: Oh, I think it should be a state issue. I mean, this is gonna be an issue if the, if other states, um, follow Colorado’s lead, uh, that will not surprise me. But it would shock me if there was a federal decision on this issue without a lot more states weighing in. So I look, I think there’ll be a lot of initiatives on this around the country and we’ll see how people vote. But, meanwhile I think Colorado’s under a microscope as everyone’s looking to see how it’s working there, if it is actually living up to the positives that were, uh, promoted when it was, um, passed versus the negatives that, um, people warned about.

Question: [inaudible] mentioned in the audience about using, uh, cannabis for treatment of PTSD. Uh, should we, uh, should more be done in the area of medical marijuana in Missouri and, really, nationwide?

Senator McCaskill: Well, I, I think we look to the medical community to advocate for that. Um, and I, I’ll circle back, I had never heard, we have an awful lot of experts on PTSD right now, um, and it, it is a diagnosis we understand now and we are administering care to tens of thousands of people. And frankly, I think that almost every sexual assault victim, uh, suffers from PTSD and it’s gone undiagnosed for decades. So, I’ve never seen them advocate that as something they really believe could make a huge difference in PTSD. Um, so, I’ll, I’ll follow up on that and see if they agree that that would be something that would be medicinally helpful.

Question: One of your colleagues told me a few days ago that you, you have sort of amped things up a little bit on your looking into war profiteering with private contractors in Iraq, Afghanistan. Could you, could you kind of bring us up to speed on that?

Senator McCaskill: Well, I, I continue, um, to look at contracting. It’s gotten to the point that I beginning asking agencies on, when I’m having hearings on contracting, if they hired a contractor to help them prepare for the hearing. And believe it or not, we have found that agencies have become so contractor dependent that they hire contractors for a hearing on contractors. Uh, so, what I’m trying to do, and we’ve made some progress, what I’m trying to do is make sure. I’m not against private contractors. We have some great ones in the federal government that are providing good services at good value, and good products at good value. But every contract needs to have the kind of cost benefit analysis so that we’re sure we’re saving money. Um, they haven’t done that in many, many instances. In fact, going back and trying to reconstruct the figures it appears that many instances we’re having contractors do work that we could do more cheaply with federal employees. So, and then, how is the contract scoped and then, is the contract managed? And if someone doesn’t perform well, the recent hearing I had was that when we have bad actors we’ve been miserable at keeping track of them. And, invariably, because one agency doesn’t know that they did very badl at another agency, they hire ’em again. So we’ve got to get a system, a data system, that is interoperable so federal agencies can track bad performing contractors so we’re not wasting our money on ’em again.

Question: is it more widespread in military applications, or do you find this kind of waste and abuse pretty much [crosstalk] wholesale.

Senator McCaskill:  It’s, it’s, you know, I started out and probably spent eighty percent of my time on this on contracting and contingencies in Iraq and Afghanistan. But I will tell you it is like shooting fish in a barrel. Um, there is huge problems with it at Homeland Security, uh, Department of Energy, we’ve done another, number of hearings about contractors. We just did one, uh, this week, uh, two weeks ago on Hanford, uh, nuclear waste, uh, we’re trying to vitrify, turn into glass, nuclear waste at Hanford, Washington. This is where we did all the, uh, uh, the plutonium enrichment for the bombs in, in World War Two. And, you talk about a contract out of control, um, in, the problem is we’ve got some retaliation going on with whistle blowers. And so, it’s a never ending job, no matter which agency, to try to. I’m not gonna, it’s kind of like being State Auditor in this, and frankly, prosecutor, you’re never gonna run out, I’m never gonna run out of work, uh, doing contract oversight.

Question: Senator, uh, as you’ve done these town halls across the state have you noted, noticed any, uh, differences in the types of questions you’re getting or in the, sort of, preponderance of questions [crosstalk] in various subjects?

Senator McCaskill: You know, I, I gotta tell you I, um, there’s clearly a lack of tea party presence in my town halls this time. Um, and typically my town halls are overflowing with, with tea party, uh, members that want to talk about the evils of the federal government and that the federal government is the enemy.  Really haven’t had that much, we have, we’ve had a sprinkling of Obamacare questions. But most of the people who have talked about Obamacare, and this woman today is an exception, ’cause clearly she’s trying to interact with Obamacare, most of the people who have, show the most vitriol about Obamacare are people who are not even interacting with it. Um, they’ve just probably watching a lot of Fox. And, um, so, I think as time goes on, um, it, it, we may discover that trying to, to just have one policy change as your only political talking point may be overplaying your hand.

Staffer: We’ve got time for one last question, guys.

Question: On, on this, uh, town hall meeting in terms of, uh, what, what number is this and kind of what’s the overall theme in questions that people are coming up with?

Senator McCaskill: You know, this, um, this is the fifth one I’ve done in a few days. I’ve got another one this afternoon, so I’ll be doing six of ’em this week.  Um, and it’s all over the board. We’ve had, um, you know, like today, this was very typical. We had everything from public education, to, uh, alternative programs for offenders, to immigration, to health care, uh, marijuana. Marijuana does keep coming up. Now, I could make a joke about why marijuana keeps coming up, but I won’t.

Question: What is the State of Missouri doing to, doing to help students afford college?

Senator McCaskill: Well, um, the State of Missouri, um, is going to finally increase some funding for higher education this year and it primarily is a state function. But we have raised the amount of the Pell Grant at the federal level. We did that a couple years ago. So I’m really pleased that we were able to do that. We’ve been able to hold on to that. Um, and we just, in fact, appropriated the Pell Grant money just a few months ago when we did the appropriations bill. So, we, we took a, and we did that without adding to the deficit by taking the middleman out of the student loan process, who was making money with no risk. And now the money is going directly to students and that money we took and put into more money for Pell Grants.

Staffer: We gotta wrap, guys. Thanks.

Senator McCaskill : Sorry, guys.

[….]