Representative Vicky Hartzler (r) is, as always, relentless, regardless of the facts.

@RepHartzler Rep. Vicky Hartzler

Pres. Obama held a pep rally at the EPA yesterday so he could say “Thank you” for their good work. Talk about our of touch! 11 Jan

“…Talk about our [sic] of touch!”

It’s called projection.

Rep. Vicky Hartzler (r): playing disingenuous games with dust while Rome burns… (December 8, 2011)

Bill to ban phantom EPA dust rule approved by House panel

By David A. Fahrenthold and Juliet Eilperin, Published: November 2 | Updated: Thursday, November 3, 12:45 PM

Earlier this year, Republicans found what they saw as an ideal talking point to illustrate a federal bureaucracy gone batty.

The Environmental Protection Agency, they warned, was trying to regulate something only God could control: the dust in the wind….

….There was just one flaw in this argument: It was not true.

The EPA’s new dust rule did not exist. It never did….

[emphasis added]

Rep. Vicky Hartzler (r): town hall in Warrensburg, part 2 (August 12, 2011)

Representative Hartzler: ….Uh, EPA is out of control. They’re, they’re trying to regulate our greenhouse gasses, uh, I live out in the country on a gravel road, uh, always have, I, we farm and they’re trying to regulate dust as if it’s a hazardous waste. I mean, like, you can’t do that. Uh, if you go down a gravel road you’re gonna have dust. So that’s hurting jobs….

Yep, relentless, regardless of the facts.

Meanwhile, what does the Environmental Protection Agency [EPA] do?:

Our Mission and What We Do

Our Mission

The mission of EPA is to protect human health and the environment.

EPA’s purpose is to ensure that:

 *  all Americans are protected from significant risks to human health and the environment where they live, learn and work;

 *  national efforts to reduce environmental risk are based on the best available scientific information;

 *  federal laws protecting human health and the environment are enforced fairly and effectively;

 *  environmental protection is an integral consideration in U.S. policies concerning natural resources, human health, economic growth, energy, transportation, agriculture, industry, and international trade, and these factors are similarly considered in establishing environmental policy;

 * all parts of society — communities, individuals, businesses, and state, local and tribal governments — have access to accurate information sufficient to effectively participate in managing human health and environmental risks;

 *  environmental protection contributes to making our communities and ecosystems diverse, sustainable and economically productive; and

 *  the United States plays a leadership role in working with other nations to protect the global environment.

To accomplish this mission, we:

Develop and Enforce Regulations

When Congress writes an environmental law, we implement it by writing regulations. Often, we set national standards that states and tribes enforce through their own regulations. If they fail to meet the national standards, we can help them. We also enforce our regulations, and help companies understand the requirements.

Uh, that’s why the President of the United States tells them “thank you” for their good work.

That’s a good thing, unless, of course, you don’t like clean air, water, and land.

Cough.

Panini and Company Cafe normally sells sandwiches to tourists in Lower Manhattan and the residents nearby, but in recent days its owner, Stacey Tzortzatos, has also become something of a restroom monitor. Protesters from Occupy Wall Street, who are encamped in a nearby park, have been tromping in by the scores, and not because they are hungry.

Tzortzatos’ tolerance for the newcomers finally vanished when the sink was broken and fell to the floor. She installed a $200 lock on the bathroom to thwart nonpaying customers, angering the protesters.

………

In interviews, [neighborhood residents] said they were especially annoyed that the organizers of the grass-roots movement  neglected to include portable toilets in their plan to bring down Wall Street.

I can’t say whether the protesters in NYC haven’t had the presence of mind to install several Johnny On-the-Spots, but I have been to Kiener Plaza in STL and seen the one that our protestors have. Seen it? Hell, I’ve used it and been grateful. But did I take a picture of it? Well … no. I’ll remedy that next time I’m there. Meantime the picture of a totally different Johnny will have to fill in.

And when you come to Kiener for next Friday’s rally, expect a huge crowd and one porta-potty. Use the facilities wherever you are before you leave for the rally.

Previously: Campaign Finance: Gov. Jay Nixon (D) continues, Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder (r) not so much… (September 14, 2011)

Today, at the Missouri Ethics Commission:

CONTRIBUTION OF MORE THAN $5,000.00 RECEIVED BY ANY COMMITTEE FROM ANY SINGLE DONOR – TO BE FILED WITHIN 48 HOURS OF RECEIVING THE CONTRIBUTION

C001135 JAY NIXON FOR MISSOURI [pdf] 9/15/2011

Thompson Coburn LLP

One US Bank Plaza

Saint Louis, MO 63101

9/13/2011

$10,000.00

[emphasis added]

And still, for Lieutenant Governor Peter Kinder (r) the large dollar drought continues…

1965 48 Hour Report of Contribution Received Over $5000 07/27/2011

1946 48 Hour Report of Contribution Received Over $5000 07/19/2011….

[emphasis added]

Otto Fajen, Missouri NEA Legislative Director, at the capitol building in Jefferson City.

I spoke early this afternoon with Otto Fajen, Missouri NEA Legislative Director, in front of the capitol building in Jefferson City.

[transcription by cc]

Show Me Progress: So the, uh, the, uh, how would you assess the, the legislative session?

Otto Fajen: Uh, how would I assess? Well…

SMP: In, in, in large terms, in overall terms…  

Otto Fajen: Yeah, overall terms?  

SMP: And its success and the things that are obviously in your area of interest.

Otto Fajen: Yeah, in overall terms it really has been remarkably, for all of the heat and light and energy put into trying to move legislation, it’s been remarkably unproductive.

SMP: Wow.

Otto Fajen: You know if you look at, and it’s, in a certain way that’s predictable when you have a legislature controlled on both sides by one party and a governor of the other party. There’s going to be a natural inclination on the part of the legislature not to give the governor of the other party what he wants, not to give him his victories. So if you looked at the things he wanted, not all of which we, you know, necessarily took a strong position on but, the tax credit bill, the jobs, they call it the jobs bill, that was one of his big priorities. So that hasn’t passed. Let’s see what else have been there. The, the use of the federal money has come in and it was actually, in a certain sense, it allayed one of our biggest fears ’cause we, have been, we, we pay careful attention to the balance of state revenue. It’s why we spend so much time talking about tax justice and adequate taxation, it’s ’cause they can’t do anything in terms of investing if they don’t have the money.

SMP: If there’s no money or if there’s…

Otto Fajen: And we saw, as they’ve pointed out, if you didn’t have the federal money, we’d be looking at eight hundred million plus in general revenue deficit. We’d be looking at major cuts…[crosstalk]

SMP: In everything.

Otto Fajen: …In higher ed. be, You’d probably would really struggle not to cut K-12, which has a constitutional mandate protection and litigation going on right now. But even then they might be hard-pressed not to cut that. Higher ed would probably be getting slaughtered. Other, you know, social services, we’d be cutting funding there. Which in many cases would probably be also cutting federal matching money, it would be just a disaster…

…SMP: Where do the, uh, where does the use of tax credits come into, this kind of, does it exacerbate the problem?

Otto Fajen: It exacerbates the problem, and the problem, and, and what was interesting was some people that we are not always on the same page on, were really right on message on this, this session. People like Senator Crowell from Cape Girardeau, Senator Lager from up northwest, they really were speaking at enormous length on the fact that the tax credits are essentially equivalent mathematically to an appropriation but they’re done in a way that the legislature has no control over it. They off…, they pass this bill, they hand over control of this tax credit to say the Department of Economic Development and in some cases there are no limits. And so it’s, it’s kind of like writing a blank check. Things are going to happen, credits are going to be issued, things will happen and then when it comes time to collect revenues, “Oh, wait a minute, here’s a whole big chunk of revenue that we thought we were going to have, that we don’t have.” And obviously when it doesn’t come in you can’t appropriate it for what you thought you were going to appropriate it for. And so they pointed out that that has really undermined our ability to maintain funding for K-12 and higher ed.

SMP: In, uh, so now in more specific terms, what has happened with your agenda for, uh…

Otto Fajen: For education?  

SMP: Yeah, for education.

Otto Fajen: If you look at what’s across the goal line, so to speak, there’s not much. On the other hand, there is still, there are still some big bills in play which have a big mix of some pieces that are, would be helpful and some really dreadful ideas that are, that are not very workable. We got Senate Bill 291, seems to be kind of the, the rat ahead in the race to get through the House. And it, it has, it’s this book that I have here has like two hundred and seventy-five pages or so. All kinds of stuff, including improvements to school, modest improvements to school funding using the gambling stuff that we hope will come in. Other, other improvements to policy and one of the pieces is a clear statement on professional teaching standards in K-12 schools. So there’s some real positives there. There’s the Quality Rating System for early childcare. Some real positive pieces. Then they’ve got some real negative pieces stuck in there, too. They’ve got some really awful language that relates to the school employees that would make it basically to where school employees would be innocent until, er, guilty until proven innocent. When it comes to allegations against them. Really could allow a, a resentful student to take a school employee who is innocent of any wrongdoing out of public education for their whole life. So, we think that’s going to come out before the end of the day but it’s really, as it stands in the bill right now, it would be a huge problem.

SMP: So the b..the bill is…

Otto Fajen: Senate Bill 291.

SMP: It’s, but it’s, it’s got almost everything in it?

Otto Fajen: Just about everything you, that’s been talked about. [crosstalk]

SMP: And so it’s, it’s the kind of thing where somebody can literally vote for it and not know what they’re voting for?

Otto Fajen: Yeah, or I mean, you know, the vote on it almost, almost hardly becomes meaningful, yes or no, because there are things that you, you know, almost everybody has something they hate. We have several pieces we hate.  We have several pieces we really like. A governor, governor, bill like this were to come to his desk, what is he supposed to do with it? Does he sign it or veto it? You know, I, I, if I were, if I were governor, I would almost consider saying, you know, anything over a hundred pages I’m just going to veto because it’s got, you know, it’s not the proper legislative process. You know you really are supposed to try to send more identifiable things that you can have a clear vote on and whether vetoing it or not vetoing it means something.

SMP: And, and is this normal for the process? Or is this, is this bill in and of itself in the form that it’s taken something that’s unique?

Otto Fajen: It, it has become, it is always been a poss…possibility that you had a reliance on big bills but you’ve, we’ve seen a trend as we’ve seen more polarization in the people who are here, especially the people who are, like have a really extreme ideology that doesn’t fit with our basic Missouri values, that you start to see more things being blocked, more things that ought to be reasonable seem…you know, they get stym…stymied so when you can’t get the original bill, you find a way to glom it into the omnibus bill and then it gets pulled out towards the end of session. [wind noise] But we’ve seen, we’ve seen that increase and increase and we’ve seen the legislative, like the mile markers for when bills get to a certain point. Every year it kind of gets later and later and they’re working on, for instance working on their own bills, later and later in the session. And not turning to the other chamber until later and later in the session. Bickering between the chambers, even more than they used to, so.

SMP: All right,
well thank you very much.