Monthly Archives: July 2018

Campaign Finance: one week

31 Tuesday Jul 2018

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Jessica Podhola, We Are Missouri – July 10, 2018.

Today at the Missouri Ethics Commission from working people in support of working people opposed to the anti-union “right to get paid less” Proposition A on the August 7th ballot:

C171127 07/31/2018 We Are Missouri CHIPP Political Account 1401 Hampton Ave St Louis MO 63139 7/30/2018 $22,685.85

C171127 07/31/2018 We Are Missouri Committee to Protect MO Families 1401 Hampton Ave St Louis MO 63139 7/30/2018 $534,412.31

C171127 07/31/2018 We Are Missouri International Union of Operating Engineers 1125 Seventh Street NW Washington DC 20036 7/30/2018 $198,182.96

C171127 07/31/2018 We Are Missouri ACT Ohio Foundation 222 East Town Street Columbus OH 43215 7/26/2018 $20,000.00

C171127 07/31/2018 We Are Missouri United Association of Journeymen and Apprentices for the Pipe Fitting Industry Three Park Place Annapolis MD 21401 7/31/2018 $100,000.00

C171127 07/31/2018 We Are Missouri Eastern Missouri Laborers’ District council 3450 Hollenberg Dr Bridgeton MO 63044 7/31/2018 $300,000.00

C171127 07/31/2018 We Are Missouri International Union of Operating Engineers Local 148 11000 Lin Valle St Louis MO 63123 7/31/2018 $12,580.62

[emphasis added]

Solidarity.

Vote “No” on the anti-Union Proposition A in the August 7th primary.

Previously:

A script, in one short act (June 29, 2018)

Vote “No” on Proposition A rally – Kansas City – July 10, 2018 (July 10, 2018)

Campaign Finance: less than four weeks to go (July 11, 2018)

Campaign Finance: electricity (July 12, 2018)

Campaign Finance: They Sing, the Collective Electric! (July 17, 2018)

Campaign Finance: “No” on Proposition A (July 18, 2018)

Campaign Finance: Oh, there’s a really big difference… (July 20, 2018)

Campaign Finance: there are more of us (July 22, 2018)

Campaign Finance: everyone (July 23, 2018)

Campaign Finance: it really is everyone (July 24, 2018)

Rep. Vicky Hartzler (r): gaslighting

30 Monday Jul 2018

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All in as a card carrying member of the MAGA cult.

…Gaslighting is a tactic in which a person or entity, in order to gain more power, makes a victim question their reality. It works much better than you may think. Anyone is susceptible to gaslighting, and it is a common technique of abusers, dictators, narcissists, and cult leaders. It is done slowly, so the victim doesn’t realize how much they’ve been brainwashed…

GDP growth touted as “historic” by Trump is anything but

….In fact, Mr. Trump didn’t inherit a fixer-upper economy.
The U.S. economy just entered its 10th year of growth, a recovery that began under President Barack Obama, who inherited the Great Recession. The data show that the falling unemployment rate and gains in home values reflect the duration of the recovery, rather than any major changes made since 2017 by the Trump administration.
While Mr. Trump praised the 4.1 percent annual growth rate in the second quarter, the economy exceeded that level four times during the Obama presidency: in 2009, 2011 and twice in 2014.
In purely numerical terms, a larger shift took place in the second quarter of 2014, when the economy went from contracting by 1 percent to growing at a rate of 5.1 percent….

Representative Vicky Hartzler (r) [2016 file photo].

This past weekend from Representative Vicky Hartzler (r):

Rep. Vicky Hartzler @RepHartzler
Great news yesterday at our economy grew by 4.1% last quarter! So much better than the abysmal growth we had for years under the Obama Administration. Jobs are coming back, paychecks are increasing, opportunity is reborn. It’s a new day! #MAGA #Hope #Jobs
8:54 AM – 28 Jul 2018

No, it’s not a new day.

Some of the responses:

Actually Vicky, in the 2nd quarter of 2014, the GDP grew by 5.1%.
Obama was the president at that time. 5.1 is larger than 4.1
“the economy exceeded that level (4.1%) four times during the Obama presidency: in 2009, 2011 and twice in 2014.”

We deserve a Rep who is familiar with the history of their own nation at least going back 9 years or so.

You are part of the problem, Vicky. Why does good news on the economy always have to be contrasted with the Obama administration? Oh, because the Liar in Chief says so in his hateful insecurity.
Btw, the Obama years hit 5% from time to time.

Each lie gets a little easier, huh Vicky.

Literally everything you said after that first sentence was false.

Wages = flat

That is a lie

Uhmmm….we hit 5% several times under the Obama administration. No need to lie to get your point across.

Who ARE you?

#Derp

Wages are not increasing and growth hit at least 4% several times in the Obama years. You consistently lie to suit your far right worldview and I’m embarrassed that you’re my rep in Congress. Stop trying to sell tax cuts for the rich as something good for average Americans.

The Chicago Times said that inflation increased slightly. The number of homeless grew in 2017 for the first time in a decade. Don’t worry. All these things are completely natural business fluctuations.

Obama had 3 that were higher than 4.1% and he didn’t go out bragging. Let’s start talking about the deficit that the GOP are blowing up. We just borrowed $12 billion from China to give welfare to our farmers because of Trumps tariffs. Trump filed bankruptcy 4 times.He’s brilliant

Wrong.

But who cares about him being a Russian puppet, immigrant children still not with their parents, and 3D printed plastic guns coming soon. You sicken me.

under Obama:
—5.1% Q2 2014
—4.9% Q3 2014
—4.7% Q4 2011
—4.5% Q4 2009

I know the truth is hard for you, but maybe you should try lying about something this isn’t so easy to fact check.

Another lie from Missouri’s 4th district mouth piece. You could care less about the dismantling of our country! Sad-shame-pathetic!

You know this is a blatant lie, right? Is that the new playbook for the @GOP just lie and hope people are too dumb?

That appears to be their plan.

It’s not Peoria, Illinois

30 Monday Jul 2018

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…quoted in The New York Times, Aug. 3, 1969…

…[John] Ehrlichman was counsel and Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs under Richard Nixon. “It’ll play in Peoria” was his explanation of a political move criticized in Washington, D.C…

On a billboard along U.S. 70 outside of Roswell, New Mexico:

It is Roswell, New Mexico.

Trump’s negotiation (governing) strategy explained

28 Saturday Jul 2018

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Forgive me. I know it’s bad form to post a piece that does nothing more than quote another blog, but, folks, the following summary of the Trumpian process (strategy?) we’ve all been watching is the most succinct version of the real, true, truth that I’ve seen to date:

Print it out and post it on your refrigerator. Memorize it. Coupled with an effort to discredit reliable information resources (Rush Limbaugh, Fox News as pioneers?) that the conservosphere has lovingly built up over many years,  it’s how President Moron  got elected. (Funny how what Trump characterized as American carnage became a rich, powerful country just days after the Russian gambit succeeded in the 2016 election.)

But once enough of us understand the way Trump plays the game, the rules automatically change. It’s a simple if lethal formula and it’s been successfully put in play by much smarter wannabe dictators. However, our guy has evidently only read the “for dummies” version of the playbook.You’re not supposed to telegraph your lies – or contradict them within hours.

But what did you expect? Trump has shown that he’s no genius after all – not even the very stable variety.

Onward to the midterms.

Campaign Finance: dismantle the public good, privatize everything

28 Saturday Jul 2018

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Yesterday at the Missouri Ethics Commission:

C180455 07/27/2018 Missouri Senate Conservatives Fund American Federation for Children Suite 675 Washington DC 20036 7/26/2018 $27,500.00

The American Federation for Children?:

The American Federation for Children is a 501(c)(4) organization that does lobbying and grassroots advocacy work in the states and Washington, D.C. We are affiliated with the American Federation for Children Action Fund, a political committee that supports and opposes state-level candidates for elected office. We work closely with our educational partner, the American Federation for Children Growth Fund, a 501(c)(3) organization, to promote the benefits of—and the need for—school choice, make parents aware of their options, mobilize grassroots supports and ensure private school choice laws work for students.
The American Federation for Children works in states across America to advance our mission. Our headquarters are in Washington, D.C., with state-based staff located in regional offices around the country.

Ah, they’re about defunding and dismantling public education. That’ll work so well in rural Missouri. In the same way right wingnuts blocking Medicaid expansion helped rural access to health care and rural hospitals prosper. Oh, wait.

And:

C180455 07/27/2018 Missouri Senate Conservatives Fund US Term Limits, Inc. Suite 200 Washington DC 20036 7/27/2018 $200,000.00

[emphasis added]

Ironic, eh?

U.S. Term Limits (USTL), based out of Washington, D.C., advocates for term limits at all levels of government.
[….]
In 2016, USTL launched the Term Limits Convention, a new project to enact a constitutional amendment for congressional term limits. Under this approach, state legislators can enact term limits for the Congress in Washington and no member of Congress can stop them.

And that way only lobbyists and special interests, not elected legislators, will hold any legislative institutional memory. Why, that takes us down the road towards kakistocracy and kleptocracy.

And, the usual individuals and right wingnut funded entities:

180455 07/24/2018 Missouri Senate Conservatives Fund David Humphreys P.O. Box 4050 Joplin MO 64803 Building Products President/CEO 7/23/2018 $50,000.00

C180455 07/25/2018 Missouri Senate Conservatives Fund Missouri Alliance For Freedom – Grace River PAC 7509 NW Tiffany Springs Parkway Suite 300 Kansas City MO 61453 7/24/2018 $100,000.00

C180455 07/25/2018 Missouri Senate Conservatives Fund Missouri Republican Leadership PAC P.O. Box 144 Jefferson City MO 65102 7/24/2018 $25,000.00

C180455 07/25/2018 Missouri Senate Conservatives Fund American Democracy Alliance – Ridgely PAC 1100 Main Street Suite 2700 Kansas City MO 64105 7/25/2018 $50,000.00

“…Why, that takes us down the road towards kakistocracy and kleptocracy…”

They consider that a feature, not a bug.

Powell Gardens – CAFO permit stayed pending outcome of appeal

28 Saturday Jul 2018

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At Powell Gardens, Kingsville, Missouri. F 9, 1/125, ISO 100, 165 mm – May 2016.

A statement from Powell Gardens, in Kingsville, Missouri:

***CAFO UPDATE*** Many of you have been following our opposition to the expansion of the Confined Animal Feeding Operation located three miles west of the Gardens on 50 Highway. We are pleased to announce that the Administrative Hearing Commission has GRANTED our request to stay or suspend the permit until a decision is made regarding the appeal. Based on the evidence presented so far, the Commission agrees that the permit was issued improperly and that irreparable harm to waters of the state will occur if the permit is issued as-is. The Commission has scheduled the final hearing on the permit for August 27, 2018 in Jefferson City…

Previously:

Now that’s a CAFO (March 18, 2018)

Now that’s a CAFO – comments addressed to the Missouri Department of Natural Resources (March 21, 2018)

Suppose you threw a DNR CAFO hearing in Warrensburg and everyone came? (April 3, 2018)

Suppose you threw a DNR CAFO hearing in Warrensburg and everyone came? – photos (April 5, 2018)

Suppose you threw a DNR CAFO hearing in Warrensburg and everyone came? – Tabitha Schmidt, CEO President, Powell Gardens (April 5, 2018)

Suppose you threw a DNR CAFO hearing in Warrensburg and everyone came? – Karen Lux (April 5, 2018)

Suppose you threw a DNR CAFO hearing in Warrensburg and everyone came? – Al Weir (April 6, 2017)

Suppose you threw a DNR CAFO hearing in Warrensburg and everyone came? – Aimee Davenport on behalf of Powell Gardens (April 6, 2018)

Suppose you threw a DNR CAFO hearing in Warrensburg and everyone came? – Eric Tschanz (April 7, 2018)

Suppose you threw a DNR CAFO hearing in Warrensburg and everyone came? – Chuck Petentler (April 7, 2018)

And they have a CAFO (June 15, 2018)

The gun floodgates open

27 Friday Jul 2018

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It’s hard to know how many guns are floating around  in the United States. Gun ownership is  not well-regulated so exact numbers are hard to come by. Various studies, however, put the number of guns at somewhere between 265 million – 300+ million.

There’s a  little more than 320 million people in the U.S.

That’s a lot of guns. Lots of guns produce consequences.

The U.S. has 5% of the world’s population, but 31% of global mass shooters. Murder by gun runs 25.2% higher in the U.S. than in comparable countries.

As an exercise, try reading  your city’s daily paper tomorrow and count the number of deaths by shooting that are described there. Better yet, do it for a week or a  month.

And it might just get worse:

Americans will soon be able to make 3D-printed guns from their homes, widening the door to do-it-yourself versions of firearms.

The choices will include the AR-15, the gun of choice in American mass shootings. All 3D-printed guns will be untraceable, and since you can make them yourself, no background check is required.

A settlement earlier this year between the State Department and Texas-based Defense Distributed will let the nonprofit release blueprints for guns online starting Aug. 1, a development hailed by the group as the death of gun control in the United States.

Gun-loving Missouri crack-pots are already trying to get in on the act:

Nearly a year after  he was temporarily booted by Facebook for raffling off an AR-15 rifle, a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate is giving away a machine capable of printing parts for a similar firearm.

Austin Petersen, who ran for president as a Libertarian in 2016, issued on Tuesday a press release and a letter to potential donors announcing the giveaway, saying that Republicans had not done enough to protect gun rights.

[…]

Petersen plans to give away the Ghost Gunner 2, which costs about $1,200. The machine is capable of milling parts for a firearm.

Brian Krassenstein of 3-DPrint.com observes that at this point guns manufactured in this manner are not especially durable, but that the technology does exist to print more durable guns and it is advancing regularly.

The floodgates will soon be wide open. Unless something is done, anyone will be able to print an undetectable gun and take it anywhere. And shoot anyone.

This development won’t be a victory for the good life Americans aspire to. It’s already scary to be exposed in public places in America. There’s lots of anger floating around. Lots of politicians using it to make hay. Resurgent racist thugs glorify force. Things may soon get much worse than we imagined they could.

Congress could push back against the court decision legislatively and Sen. Schumer and a handful of Democratic legislators are making sounds about doing something. But as long as Democrats are in the minority, “sounds” will probably be all that is forthcoming.

One thing for sure; if long-shot Austin Petersen were to make it to Washington, we couldn’t count on him to help us.

Maybe somebody should ask GOP senatorial primary front runner Josh Hawley how he feels about 3D gun printers.

 

The Russian Perils of Claire

26 Thursday Jul 2018

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Who is it who really, really wants to keep the congress in GOP hands? If  you wanna know just take a look at who’s targeting Missouri’s Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill, widely perceived to be vulnerable to raging Trumpites when she comes up for reelection this November.

There’s the 1% -the folks like the Kochs who – via their front group, Americans for Prosperity – are throwing $1.8 million dollars in ad buys at her. They think that emphasizing the GOP shaft-the-middle-class tax cut will do the trick. I guess the richest of the rich really like increasing the national debt on the backs of working Americans. (Didn’t Republicans oppose debt once  upon a time? Like when it was a question of providing Americans with healthcare? And there wasn’t any debt increase in spite their efforts to gull the gullible?)

But, hey, we’ve known for years about how wealthy Americans try to purchase elections with their talking – no – their shouting, money. Nothing new to see there. Sadly.

There is, however,  a new wrinkle:  Russians:

The Russian intelligence agency behind the 2016 election cyberattacks targeted Sen. Claire McCaskill as she began her 2018 re-election campaign in earnest, a Daily Beast forensic analysis reveals. That makes the Missouri Democrat the first identified target of the Kremlin’s 2018 election interference.

McCaskill responded with her usual verve:

“Russia continues to engage in cyber warfare against our democracy,” McCaskill said in a press release Thursday evening. “While this attack was not successful, it is outrageous that they think they can get away with this. I will not be intimidated. I’ve said it before and I will say it again, [Russian President Vladimir] Putin is a thug and a bully.”

McCaskill was one of three midterm candidates targeted by “spearphishing” efforts. We’ve known that such attacks (and other types of meddling) were likely for some time but our intrepid GOP-majority congress and the Russia-friendly Trump administration  have dithered and done little to forestall the threat. Missouri’s own Secretary of State, jolly little Jay Ashcroft, has said domestic election fraud is a bigger threat in November – despite no evidence to that effect.

But, hey, Senator McCaskill doesn’t need to worry – no less an eminence than our reality star president has acknowledged the threat. He just declared that the Russians are hard at work to help Democrats.  Because he’s so hard on the Russians (not).

Apparently the Russian GRU has a favorite in the Missouri U.S. Senate race

26 Thursday Jul 2018

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“Make America Great Again”

And it’s not Claire McCaskill (D).

A statement:

McCaskill Statement on Report of Attempted Russian Hacking
Attempted hack of Senator’s official office was unsuccessful
Thursday, July 26, 2018
WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill released the following statement in response to the report that Russian hackers attempted to target her Senate computer network:
“Russia continues to engage in cyber warfare against our democracy. I will continue to speak out and press to hold them accountable. While this attack was not successful, it is outrageous that they think they can get away with this. I will not be intimidated. I’ve said it before and I will say it again, Putin is a thug and a bully.”

How it looks in Missouri:

Tony Messenger @tonymess
This week in #MoSen: @clairecmc says ‘Putin is a thug’ after Russians try to hack her U.S. Senate email. @HawleyMO says the one word that describes @realDonaldTrump is ‘courage’ after the U.S. president sides with the thug over American intelligence agents. Advantage: McCaskill.
9:12 PM – 26 Jul 2018

Which side are you on, Josh, which side are you on?