You’re familiar with the classic situation of somebody who gets hoodwinked because they didn’t read the small print. Well, it looks like we’ve got some purveyers of very, very small print (so small that it’s not even there) here in Missouri. These are the folks who devised and are promoting the proposed Missouri Constitutional Amendment 1 (House Joint Resolution Nos. 11 & 7). This is the August 5 ballot language that you will see when you vote:
Shall the Missouri Constitution be amended to ensure that the right of Missouri citizens to engage in agricultural production and ranching practices shall not be infringed?
The potential costs or savings to governmental entities are unknown, but likely limited unless the resolution leads to increased litigation costs and/or the loss of federal funding.
… although the official ballot language voters will see when they go to the polls next month gives no indication of this, the Fair Ballot Language that voters won’t see when they go to the polls on Aug. 5 states, “A ‘yes’ vote will amend the Missouri Constitution…subject to any power given to local government under Article VI of the Missouri Constitution.” Instead, the voters will see official ballot language that reveals nothing about the impact of Amendment One on the ability of local government to regulate CAFOs.
[…] If Constitutional Amendment One passes, you will be left without any ability to provide reasonable health and welfare safeguards for neighbors living in the rural areas of your county.”
If you doubt that all is not what it seems, note that Missouri GOP Senator Roy Blunt, a.k.a. Montsanto’s man in Washington, came out recently for the Amendment, dubbed yet another “Montsanto Protection Act” by one writer who is concerned about the proliferation of genetically modified foods and the dominance of the biotech sector in agriculture. Blunt straightaway set about trying to assuage fears that rather than protecting the “family farms” that supporters are piously evoking in their pro-Amendment 1 TV ads, the bill is intended to protect powerful corporate factory farms whose questionable agricultural practices might be vulnerable to regulation and so-called “nuisance” suits that threaten the bottom-line for the Blunt-friendly big-guys.
The fact that Blunt is the latest pro-Amendent 1 batter up speaks for itself, as does the likely source of the amendment:
A year ago, the North Dakota [right to farm] measure was a topic for discussion as legislative agriculture chairmen from across the U.S. gathered for a conference in Vancouver, Canada. The event by the State Agriculture and Rural Leaders Association was financed by dozens of agriculture businesses, including Archer Daniels Midland Co., Cargill, DuPont Pioneer, Deere & Co. and Tyson Foods. Among those present was Missouri Rep. Bill Reiboldt, a farmer who sponsored the right-to-farm amendment referred to this year’s ballot by the Republican-led state Legislature.
If you’re interested in why one would oppose what seems on the surface to be an almost meaningless reiteration of support for farming, this video of former Missouri Lt. Governor Joe Maxwell speaking against the bill spells out the ways that Amendment 1 not only threatens the family farm, but the safety of our food supply:
Among other points Maxwell makes, he points suggests that Amendment 1 could result in weakening the protections for the family farmer that were spelled out in the 1975 Family Farm Act. As he noted elsewhere:
This amendment is about ensuring the largest multi-national corporation constitutional rights here in Missouri so they can do whatever THEY want to us neighbors out in the country. […]. What other industry has constitutional protections to do whatever they want and strips the local voice, either at the local level, the county level or even at the statehouse from being able to put in safeguards for neighbors out in the country?
Not only will supporters of this stealth legislation not answer these questions, they would prefer that you not even realize that anyone is asking.
“Useless laws weaken the necessary laws.” – Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu (1689 – 1755)
“…Today in Missouri, as well as Oklahoma, Indiana, and two other states, corporate agriculture is trying to put their guarantee to farm in state constitutions…” – former Missouri Lieutenant Governor Joe Maxwell.
Yesterday at the Missouri Ethics Commission, for the folks opposed to the “Right to Farm” constitutional amendment on the August ballot.
C141005 07/24/2014 MISSOURI’S FOOD FOR AMERICA Humane Society Legislative Fund 2100 L Street Suite 310 Washington DC 20037 7/22/2014 $375,000.00
[emphasis added]
They’re obviously all in.
It’s a simple question. Is it really necessary to place a “right to farm” in the Missouri Constitution?:
As if family farms are under some sort of existential threat from public sentiment or government overreach?
If your answer to that simple question is “No”, then former state Senator Wes Shoemyer, former Lieutenant Governor Joe Maxwell, and the Humane Society of America have it right. And you’re also probably wondering how another Missouri politician who is probably running for Governor in 2016 arrived at “Yes”. That’ll probably generate another simple question for you.
The next Netroots Nation will be in Phoenix. So of course, half the liberals who attend the annual hippie hoe-down immediately announced that they were not exactly boycotting, just not attending the next Netroots Nation, including the founder of the event, Markos Moulitsas. Remember, the function started as “Yearly Kos.”
I get his arguments, truly I do. I make them myself, or arguments very much like them, to my cousins in the rural parts of my own state. It’s easy to be a liberal in Seattle, or Portland, or Eugene, or San Francisco, or Berkeley, or Boston, or Austin or even in Kansas City or St. Louis. But try it in Tucson, Cheyenne, Mountain Home, Colorado Springs or Wichita (I know…I’ve been a liberal in a lot of the aforementioned places). And since we’re doing a thought exercise anyway, lets take the internet out of the equation, because it wasn’t really an organizing tool before Howard Dean made it so in 2004.
In the run-up to the Iraq war, I had two small, maybe 3×3 stickers, one said “Peace is Patriotic” and the other said “No War on Iraq” in the back window of my little economy Ranger pickup, and on my way to work one night, an asshole in a giant Chevy 4-wheel drive tried to push my truck into oncoming traffic as I sat at a red light at 23rd and Sterling Avenue, on my way to Independence Regional Health Center. The light changed and I got away from him, but I got his tag number and a pretty good description of the jerk — and his bumper sticker that said “THIS TIME, ANTI-WAR IS ANTI-AMERICAN” and when I got to the hospital and clocked in I called the cops.
You know what the cops told me?
“This is a patriotic town, you probably ought to take that inflammatory sticker off of your truck.”
I asked the cop if he had a DD-214, and he didn’t know what that was. I explained it was a discharge from the military, and I had earned my right to be a peacenik the hard way, unlike him or, probably, the asshole in the Chevy pickup.
One of my favorite bonus-kids lives in Phoenix, so I’m going. Partly to see Jason, and partly because it’s fucking hard to be a liberal in Arizona. I know. I’ve tried. I lived in Tucson during the Sanctuary movement.
There are liberals in Arizona that do a hell of a lot more than type. I intend to go support them.
Got respect for red-state liberals yet? Because you damn sure ought to have.
Let me tell you a story. It’s about how I started blogging. I had just finished a brutal week. It was a year after the HCA takeover of the Health Midwest system, and the effects were starting to be felt. We had already had a steady rotation of lab directors at the “flagship hospital” that lasted, on average, about 15 weeks – and it was not my first HCA rodeo. They inherited my whistle-blowing ass, there is no way in hell they would have hired me. Anyway, I was a supervisor and I didn’t ask anything of my staff that I wasn’t willing to do myself. Since my staff was working, on average, 60 hours a week, I worked at least 70. I had gone to work at 0600 on Friday and clocked out at 2230 (10:30 p.m.) and come home to take a quick shower to was the hospital off me and I fell into a bed made with clean sheets.
The next morning my husband collected all the cell phones and made sure the handsets to the cordless were on the first floor and on low, and he had threatened the very lives of our spawn if they disturbed me.
About 9:00 he heard me get up and go to the bathroom, and he came up and asked me if I was ready for coffee and the newspapers, and he would get them I should get back in bed. About ten minutes later he brought me a quad-shot espresso with plenty of Bailey’s and a shot of spiced rum, a bagel and the newspapers. All was bliss for about 20 minutes then I read something that got me started.
I think Tom was just looking for the brakes that morning when he said “Why are you telling me this? I already agree with you. You need to convince people who don’t.”
Maybe it was the Bailey’s and the Captain Morgan making me bold, but a lightbulb came on. “You’re absolutely right,” I told him as I kissed his cheek, put on my robe, stuck the newspaper with the offending article under my arm, took my coffee and headed for the home office. “Brew a pot of the regular kind and go get more Bailey’s if you need to. This may take a while.”
Two hours and three cups of “coffee” later, I was a blogger and I came out swingin.’
See, I live in one of those places that the republicans couldn’t get control of fair-and-square, so they cheated. They gulled the outstaters into enshrining term-limits in the state constitution. That was a fight that was over and done with by the time I moved to KC. I live in one of the states where ALEC puppets are running a meth-lab of democracy and it’s hard. I have literally had my life threatened for my political leanings, so spare me the righteous stand. There is a lot of offensive shit coming out of Jeff City, and I’m sure there are people who are taking a principled stand against visiting our state or spending money here. Too bad. You would find that Kansas City and St. Louis are vibrant, progressive, cities with live music and arts scenes that are driving independent revivals of areas of both cities, and where music happens, liquor flows and food follows. Both cities have been blessed with a few top-notch chefs who paid their dues in New York, San Francisco or New Orleans, then to find they were priced out of the market when they wanted to open their own place. They were able to rent or buy spaces they could only dream about in the big-three, throw in the selection of fresh, local ingredients, the fact they can hire top-quality sous chefs and garde mangers.
But this isn’t a diary about why people choose to live here…it’s a diary about why I will be attending next year, and why I understand why Markos won’t. I am not a young, Latino male; I’m a middle aged white woman. I will move about freely and not worry about being profiled. Markos, by virtue of his hair and eye color and skin tone, would automatically register on every law enforcement officer’s personal radar that he happened to cross paths with. If I’m trying to break in someplace, a cop is more likely to help me than stop me and ask me what the hell I’m up to.
But ultimately, Netroots is a DFA thang now, and I haven’t forgotten 2006.
For those who don’t know, Democracy for America is what Dean for America grew up to be. And those grassroots organizing skills, in the belly of the beast, having a candidate in every race…that let the Democrats take the majority in 2006. It’s the nature of the DFA beast to take the fight to the enemy. They may not win every battle, but they win enough to keep charging hard. They remember how Jim Ryun, of all people, found himself in trouble thanks to the Tom DeLay fallout, and Nancy Boyda was in the race already, and capitalized on his ethics troubles and won. She beat the Olympic gold medalist track star. She didn’t have national party backing until the final few days, when it looked like she might actually win…but she had DFA backing all along. I know. I was one district over in the safe-for-Emanuel-Cleaver Missouri 5th, and the Missouri 6th is a lost cause until a Democrat runs like a Democrat. So I was phone-banking for Nancy Boyda like a mad woman, and I was not alone. At that time, the greater Kansas City area had a very active DFA chapter and we were all working for Boyda. It seemed impossible when we started, but the mighty Ryun was felled, and without the national party that tried to swoop in at the last minute with an ad buy and pretend like they saved the day. Please. I know better, because I was in the trenches and they were nowhere to be found, but DFA was.
So I’m going. I didn’t ask for the privilege that white skin and red hair and five decades of life will automatically extend to me while I’m there, but I have it, and I intend to make the most of it.
Besides, it’s been thirty years since I’ve seen an Arizona sunset, and that’s just too damned long.
C131133 07/22/2014 MISSOURIANS FOR SAFE TRANSPORTATION & NEW JOBS INC International Union of Operating Engineers 1125 Seventeenth Street Northwest Washington DC 20038 7/22/2014 $75,000.00
C131133 07/23/2014 MISSOURIANS FOR SAFE TRANSPORTATION & NEW JOBS INC Laborers International Union of North America Laborers Local No 110 4532 S Lindbergh Blvd Sunset Hills MO 63127 7/23/2014 $50,000.00
[emphasis added]
C131133 07/22/2014 MISSOURIANS FOR SAFE TRANSPORTATION & NEW JOBS INC American Bridge 1000 American Bridge Way Coraopolis PA 15108 7/22/2014 $20,000.00
C131133 07/22/2014 MISSOURIANS FOR SAFE TRANSPORTATION & NEW JOBS INC St. Louis Regional Chamber One Metropolitan Square Suite 1300 St Louis MO 63102 7/22/2014 $10,000.00
C131133 07/23/2014 MISSOURIANS FOR SAFE TRANSPORTATION & NEW JOBS INC Norris Asphalt Paving Co PO Box 695 Ottumwa IA 52501 7/23/2014 $10,000.00
C131133 07/23/2014 MISSOURIANS FOR SAFE TRANSPORTATION & NEW JOBS INC Missouri Asphalt Pavement Assn PO Box 104855 Jefferson City MO 65110 7/23/2014 $7,500.00
C131133 07/23/2014 MISSOURIANS FOR SAFE TRANSPORTATION & NEW JOBS INC Polsinelli 900 W 48th Place Suite 900 Kansas City MO 64112 7/23/2014 $7,500.00
C131133 07/23/2014 MISSOURIANS FOR SAFE TRANSPORTATION & NEW JOBS INC Witte Bros. Exchange Inc. 575 Witte Industrial Ct Troy MO 63379 7/23/2014 $15,000.00
[emphasis added]
You know, if we lived in a Libertarian paradise we wouldn’t have to bother funding any socialist public infrastructure by any means.
Yesterday Representative Vicky Hartzler (r) posted an image on Twitter of President Obama and an obviously unhappy baby with the caption “That awkward moment when you realize that your share of the dept is $55,260”:
Economic Recovery Measures, Financial Rescues Have Only Temporary Impact
By Kathy Ruffing and Joel Friedman
Updated February 28, 2013
….Just two policies dating from the Bush Administration – tax cuts and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan – accounted for over $500 billion of the deficit in 2009 and will account for nearly $6 trillion in deficits in 2009 through 2019 (including associated debt-service costs of $1.4 trillion). By 2019, we estimate that these two policies will account for almost half – over $8 trillion – of the $17 trillion in debt that will be owed under current policies.[7] (See Figure 2.) These impacts easily dwarf the stimulus and financial rescues, which will account for less than $2 trillion (just over 10 percent) of the debt at that time. Furthermore, unlike those temporary costs, these inherited policies do not fade away as the economy recovers.[8]
Without the economic downturn and the fiscal policies of the previous Administration, the budget would be roughly in balance in this decade. Even if we regard the economic downturn as unavoidable, we would have entered it with a much smaller debt – allowing us to absorb the recession’s damage to the budget and the cost of economic recovery measures, while keeping debt comfortably below 50 percent of GDP, as Figure 2 suggests. That would have put the nation on a much sounder footing to address the demographic challenges and the cost pressures in health care that darken the long-run fiscal outlook….
And that’s how we get there.
Representative Hartzler (r) should have posted a photo of former President George W. Bush with the unhappy baby.
Robert Onder, one of three candidates in the republican primary for the 2nd Senate District, had a good campaign fundraising day today as reported to the Missouri Ethics Commission:
C131072 07/22/2014 ONDER FOR MISSOURI Missourians for Excellence in Government 6175 Westminster St Louis MO 63112 7/22/2014 $10,000.00
C131072 07/22/2014 ONDER FOR MISSOURI Grow Missouri 308 E. HIgh Street Suite 301 Jefferson City MO 65101 7/22/2014 $12,000.00
A curious individual might ask, “Who funds Grow Missouri?” This being a progressive political blog, we have the answers to your campaign finance questions right here:
C131097: Grow Missouri
308 E High St Ste 301 Committee Type: Political Action
Jefferson City Mo 65101
([….] Established Date: 07/08/2013
Information Reported On: 2014 – July Quarterly Report
Beginning Money on Hand $31,830.98
Monetary Receipts + $1,500,000.00
Monetary Expenditures – $179,203.42
Contributions Made – $86,500.00
Other Disbursements – $0.00
Subtotal $1,234,296.58
Ending Money On Hand $1,266,127.56
[emphasis added]
That’s an impressive grassroots fundraising effort. Or is it?:
C121488 07/02/2014 MISSOURIANS FOR EXCELLENCE IN GOVERNMENT Rex and Jeanne Sinquefield 244 Bent Walnut Westphalia MO 65085 retired 6/30/2014 $100,000.00
[emphasis added]
In the past:
C121488 12/24/2013 MISSOURIANS FOR EXCELLENCE IN GOVERNMENT Rex and Jeanne Sinquefield 244 Bent Walnut Westphalia MO 65085 none retired 12/23/2013 $25,000.00
2013 must have been an off year.
C121488 12/21/2012 MISSOURIANS FOR EXCELLENCE IN GOVERNMENT Rex Sinquefield 244 Bent Walnut Westphalia MO 65085 Retired 12/20/2012 $275,000.00
[emphasis added]
[….]
….No contributions yet for 2014. We’ll see. Astroturf in politics is always interesting.
Wouldn’t it be easier just to write the checks directly to the candidate’s campaigns? Just asking….
Well then.
And then there’s this contribution last month to Robert Onder’s (r) campaign:
C131072 06/30/2014 ONDER FOR MISSOURI Missouri Club for Growth P.O. Box 2068 St Louis MO 63158 6/30/2014 $15,000.00
“….We are not a puppet of Mr. Sinquefield,” Abrajano said. “His contributions are truly his only involvement….”
Oh, but the rest of us are.
[….]
To recap, three entities each made large dollar contributions to Robert Onder’s (r) 2nd Senate District primary campaign. All three entities have at least one other person in common.
Our question remains, since there are no campaign contribution limits in Missouri, wouldn’t it have been easier to write just one check?
C131133 07/21/2014 MISSOURIANS FOR SAFE TRANSPORTATION & NEW JOBS INC International Union of Operating Engineers Local #101 6601 Winchester Ave Ste 280 Kansas City MO 64133 7/21/2014 $25,000.00
[emphasis added]
C131133 07/21/2014 MISSOURIANS FOR SAFE TRANSPORTATION & NEW JOBS INC Kissick Construction Co Inc. 8131 Indiana Kansas City MO 64132 7/21/2014 $10,000.00
C131133 07/21/2014 MISSOURIANS FOR SAFE TRANSPORTATION & NEW JOBS INC Civic Progress Action Committee 800 Market St Ste 1900 Saint Louis MO 63101 7/21/2014 $15,000.00
[emphasis added]
$10,000.00 here, $25,000.00, pretty soon you’re talking about some serious money…
Representative Vicky Hartzler (r) via Twitter yesterday:
Rep. Vicky Hartzler a@RepHartzler
45 yrs ago #Apollo11 landed on moon. 1st moonwalk at 10:56pm. Footprints still there? [….] 2:18 PM – 20 Jul 2014
And a response:
hungryprof @hungryprof
@RepHartzler and of course if that project was proposed now you would have opposed it and called it wasteful government spending. 2:50 PM – 20 Jul 2014
