I took a look at the Turner Report today in order to find out what’s going on down in Joplin and thereabouts. Guess what I found. A copy of a press release from none other than the  über-conservative dreamgirl, Cynthia Davis, erstwhile GOP legislative pain in the you-know-what and more recently, Missouri Constitution Party doyenne, on the reasons she opposes – yes, you read it right, opposes – the right to farm Amendment 1. Her reason:

Normally, the conservative position is to side with less regulation. However, there is a real threat that the Chinese could buy up our farmland. In that scenario, having fewer regulations could allow us to end up with massive problems like squallier [sic], filth and stench.

Figures that the argument that got to her had to with thwarting those dammed foreigners, but she still gets the main issue right. Corporate farms stand to benefit, not necessarily small farms (she does express a bit of worry about protecting the already amply protected Missouri family farmer). Is this what the Missouri political world would look like if we could cure rightwing delusions and GOP politicians carefully weighed issues based on real, verifiable facts, not hot air, conspiracy theories, and/or which campaign donor stands to benefit the most?

Davis should get some credit for this – the Turner Report post directly below her statement on the issue was that of Missouri House Speaker and money-man Tim Jones, who, predictably asserts that Amendment 1 has been “designed to protect the family farming traditions that are such an important part of our state’s history, and such a vital component of our state’s economy.” Of course, Davis isn’t in elective office anymore – actually, she isn’t even a Republican any more – so she doesn’t have to line up with the GOPers in Jefferson City who have their hands out waiting for Big Ag benefactors to drop some of that green manna from heaven into their grubby paws.

Addenda: Okay. Perhaps I’m giving her too much credit. She doesn’t seem to realize that homegrown, American agricultural corporations are just as likely to create “massive problems like squallier [sic], filth and stench” as the Chinese variety.  

Last year Governor Nixon froze $400 million worth of spending allocated for education, state services and capital improvements. He took this action in order to make it clear that efforts by the legislature to override his veto of HB253 would result in long-term damage to state revenue that would have to be offset by reallocating funds:

“The choice before us is stark and clear,” Nixon told reporters.  “Members of the General Assembly can either support House Bill 253 or they can support education, but they can’t do both.”

The Governor’s dramatic action, which simply underlined the detailed evidence he had already made available to support his arguments against the tax-cut, seemed to have worked. HB253 went down in figurative flames, enabling Nixon to free up some of the frozen funds.

Given the braying about spending offsets for every piece of social services spending that we get from national Republican legislators, you’d expect our GOP homies would understand how it works and man up. But no way. Nixon’s strategy enraged plenty of Republicans who were confident that they were going to be able to deliver a juicy tax-cut for their corporate patrons. Who, after all, likes to be outplayed, especially when, to all appearances, one holds all the cards?

But elephants never forget, and state GOPers now think they’ve figured out a way to get payback and thwart future efforts to make education the topic when they want it to be nothing but tax-cuts:

The Missouri Constitution allows the governor to control the rate appropriations are spent and to reduce spending when state revenues are less than the estimate upon which the budget is based.

Republican Sen. Ryan Silvey, of Kanas City, has proposed a constitutional amendment that would exclude spending through the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education from that budget-trimming authority. A constitutional amendment would require a statewide vote if it passes the Legislature.

There  you have it: Rep. Silvey’s SJR45 , a tit-for-tat move that, by putting a constitutional amendment on the state ballot, seeks to tilt the playing board for future tax policy games. It’s an interesting move since Missouri House Speaker Tim Jones claimed that the Governor was violating the constitution last year. The fact that nobody took the Governor to court and that the GOP is now hoping to ask Missourians to amend their constitution, suggests that they didn’t really think the constitutional objection had much weight. Republicans were simply playing the empty constitutional card that they always pull when they’ve not got anything else up their sleeves.

Although the true purpose of of Silvey’s gambit is clear, he also wants to pose as a stalwart supporter of education by ignoring the context the Governor’s actions, the threat posed by the Republican corporate tax-cut, tweeting “Today I filed SJR45 to amend the MO Constitution to prohibit the Governor from withholding money from schools. Education is too important. ” Damn straight education’s important. That’s why the Governor did what he did.

Silvey later added, “My SJR45 will finally remove school kids from being a piece on the Governor’s political chess board.” I don’t know about you, but I’d be glad to let the Governor use my children as pieces on his “political chess board” if it saved their schools from Republican raids on the state’s revenue stream. Good schools cost money. Heck, even mediocre schools cost money. Tax-cuts for corporations and rich people take the money we need for schools, among other things, and, to be honest,  they haven’t done much for the economy of states that have beggared themselves through  this type of tax-cutting. What we ought to be asking Silvey is, if he’s so big on eduction, why isn’t he proposing a way to secure some new revenue to pay for it?

Nobody wants to hurt education and, in general, at any rate, everybody likes the idea of tax-cuts, but the two are tightly linked in Missouri, a state that currently can’t manage to properly fund its schools. Why does it bother Republicans so much when this linkage is made explicit? Why can’t they be upfront about the consequences of their low- or no-tax philosophy? And finally, why should anyone vote for Silvey’s constitutional amendment, which is no more than a cynical effort to checkmate a Governor who’s trying against all odds to improve Missouri’s mediocre educational system.

 

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has been in the news lately. The Guardian Newspaper managed to get hold of a trove of ALEC documents that have helped to cast more light on the activities of the secretive, corporate-funded group that has sponsored tight relationships with state legislators in order to push preferred rightwing policies. ALEC has gone so far as to actually  author “model” legislation it then presents to tame legislators so that they can file it under their own names.

Among the documents the Guardian exposed was, tellingly, a loyalty oath intended for ALEC-recruited representatives in state government. As the Kansas City Star‘s Barbara Shelly describes it:

One of the most interesting documents is a proposed job description for the legislators designated to head up their state delegations. Along with striving to increase membership in ALEC by 10 percent a year and informing the group of all public information requests that include ALEC documents, it was proposed that state chairs take a loyalty oath: “I will act with care and loyalty and put the interests of the organization first.

What? These are elected officials. They are to put the interests of their states and constituents first. Apparently at some level people realized that, because the draft job description was never adopted. But the very suggestion demonstrates ALEC’s eagerness to control these lawmakers.

Shelly goes on to observe that several lawmakers in both Kansas and Missouri are active ALEC collaborators. And, in Missouri at least, one can conjecture with a fair degree of confidence that few state pols known to be complicit with ALEC would have had any qualms about signing a loyalty oath. Even if they balked at the bald statement of priorities in the pledge, most of our Missouri ALEC-ites seem to be spiritually in sync with its intention. When it comes to ALEC and Missouri Republicans, it’s a love match, no pre-nup needed.

Take for instance, Missouri GOP State Senator Ed Emery, the state chairman for ALEC in Missouri. He is, to put it bluntly, upfront about the role that ALEC plays in Missouri government:

… In the world of term-limits, an association like ALEC is invaluable in assisting state legislators by assembling the private and public expertise that can effectively identify and clarify even the most complex issues.

In other words, poorly informed legislators can chillax and let corporate dogsbody ALEC do all the heavy lifting. ALEC surely has the best interests of Missourians at heart after all, no self-interest there.

Of course, ALEC doesn’t stop at doing the legislator’s work for him or her – they’re quite willing to pay for the privilege. Just ask House speaker Tim Jones who, according to blogger Randy Turner, received a total of $2,672.58 from ALEC in 2013 2012. Turner also observes that while other members of the  legislature likely received gifts from ALEC, they managed to keep them under wraps. Writing about reports filed by lobbyists in the wake of the 2012 ALEC convention in Salt Lake City, Turner notes:

Not one Democrat and only a handful of Missouri Republicans attended the national American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah, in July, but Missouri Ethics Commission documents that went online Saturday indicate that state lobbyists are crediting most of their expenses to the entire General Assembly.

By doing so, the expenses are not credited to any particular legislator, though those attending the convention may have received as much as hundreds of dollars worth of gifts from lobbyists representing special interests that are trying to curry the favor of the legislators.

The fact that lobbyists and pols alike try to hide the possible quid pro quo says it all. That legislators’ ALEC ties aren’t a statewide scandal would be incomprehensible in a sane political climate. Surely folks who rant and scream about how a moderate health care reform represents a horrific incursion of big government into individual life ought to be up in arms when they learn that state government is being abandoned – maybe even sold – to corporations looking only to enhance their bottom lines.

 

Today an article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch confirmed my fears that although HB253, the corporate tax-cut bill has been laid to rest at last, it will be resurrected poste haste in January when the legislature reconvenes:

On a media blitz Wednesday, House Speaker Tim Jones detailed his plan to strip out the portions [from HB 253] that Nixon found objectionable and push the legislation as the first bill of the coming session.

Those portions to be stripped out – that’ll be the hidden sales taxes and “unintended consequences” segments. Savage cuts to already low corporate taxes will remain, despite the potential damage to the state’s dismal revenue stream. Missouri’s GOPers are, after all, desperately eager to follow the “trend” set by Republican statehouses in Oklahoma, Kansas and a few other states that are attempting to spur economic growth by bankrupting their states.

It was clever of Governor Nixon to make the question of education funding the lynch-pin of his struggle to sustain the veto of HB253. Educational funding in Missouri is already dismal – per student funding in the state of Missouri is 3.1% lower than it was in 2008. But hey, guess what? Take a look at Oklahoma, one of the states that recently decimated its system of taxation – and which our Missouri GOPers cite as an example of what we have to do to be competitive. Oklahoma is now spending 22.8% less per student than it was in 2008 and is one of only 15 states that cut its per student spending this year. As for Kansas, one result of its tax cutting orgy is per student spending that is 16.5% less than in 2008 – and, according to a state district court,  failing to provide students a ‘suitable’ education.” The Governor was simply trying to warn concerned Missourians that we could expect the same deterioration in our school system if we followed the tax-cutting trend that has afflicted these states.

What the Governor didn’t tell us and what many don’t realize, though, is that many of those folks behind the tax-cutting frenzy actually want to starve public education. They probably look at those Oklahoma and Kansas education spending figures and chortle with glee.

One of the staunchest supporters of the effort to revive HB253 – to the tune of over $2 million – was St. Louis billionaire Rex Sinquefield. A year ago he floated ballot initiatives to cut income taxes and shift the burden of Missouri taxes onto the backs of the poor and middle class via expanded sales tax increases – while seriously decreasing state revenue. According to Steve Kraske, House Speaker Tim Jones wouldn’t have even brought up the sure-to-fail HB253 for an override vote if not for Sinquefield:

If you believe the hallway yak in the Missouri Capitol, Jones sought a vote on the tax bill only because the Missouri GOP’s leading benefactor, Rex Sinquefield, demanded it. Jones wanted to keep the rich guy happy more than he did his own colleagues, even though the speaker knew the vote was a loser.

Sinquefield is a never say die type of guy, and this issue is one of his two two major political obsessions The other is privatizing eduction. He has spent money lavishly attempting to drive a wedge between Missourians and their public schools, seizing on the disenchantment many feel as they are bombarded with news of failing schools in districts coping with poverty and social malaise. Nevertheless:

Education groups have balked at many of his educational initiatives, especially efforts to use state tax credits for private schools. He also sparked a backlash last year when he referenced a column in a central Missouri newspaper that seemed to suggest that the Ku Klux Klan created public education to harm black children.

You want to know why we’ll have to deal with the zombie tax-cut bill again next year and why the fight to adequately fund our public schools is a losing cause? Look no further than Rex Sinquefield and the folks who think like he does, along with the politicians who, as Steve Kraske suggests, are wholly owned subsidiaries of Sinquefield Inc.

Folks like Sinquefield are the reason that the education-for-the-future gambit that our Governor is playing to ward off tax butchery is so precarious. He’s threatening an outcome that they’ve been trying to achieve for years – the elimination of public schools, leaving education to a free market that doesn’t give a damn about the children of those on the bottom of the social heap.

Today, as my fellow-blogger Michael Bersin has already informed us, the Missouri House failed to override Governor Nixon’s veto of the infamous corporate tax cut bill which failed on a 94-67 vote, short of the two thirds majority needed to override. That means it’s over and done with, gone away, dead – for now.

It is true that HB253 was a poorly written bill, rife with unintended consequences. It was also, however,  a conceptually bad idea from the point of view of economic policy, even had the folks who put it together had sufficient brain power to do it in a cleaner fashion. And it’s important to remember that fact because indications are that it’ll be back soon, and next time the petty stupidities that plagued the bill and that persuaded some of the more thoughtful Republicans to uphold the veto, may be gone and we’ll have to try once more to fend off the bad policy it embodies – trickle down economics via monster tax cuts for corporations, big cuts for wealthy individuals and symbolic tax cuts for everyone else, the state’s solvency be dammed.

Earlier, when confronted with the obvious fact that the override effort might fail, Speaker Tim Jones had been emphatic that he wasn’t going to let this failure derail his goal, declaring that in such a case “income tax cuts will be a big priority next year.” Today, after losing the override vote, Jones confirmed that he has no intention of letting sleeping dogs lie when it comes to radical tax “reform”:

In a statement released after the vote, House Speaker Tim Jones, R-Eureka, said: “This is only a temporary setback for the majority of House members who believe substantive tax relief is the best way to grow our economy and to help the hard-working Missourians who deserve to keep more of their hard-earned dollars. … We will not be swayed from our efforts to provide Missourians with the tax relief they deserve and we will make a tax cut our top legislative priority when we return for the 2014 legislative session in January.”

As for the bill’s chief sponsor, Rex Sinquefield,  the $2.4 million dollars the billionaire spent promoting HB253 can easily be written off as a down payment; a first gambit in a game in which he plans to wear down the resistance with a combination of big spending and persistence. Nor, I suspect, will the Missouri Chamber of Commerce let Speaker Jones down when he revives his signature initiative, even though many commonsensical, local Chambers of  Congress broke with the big daddy organization and urged that the veto be sustained.

What can we learn from these facts? That these clowns just won’t give up. And they’ve got lots of money behind them. And if we really support progressive government, we can’t give up and sit on our – or the Governor’s – HB 253 laurels. We have to be ready for 2014 and this badly thought out tax “reform” needs to be one of the issues we trot out to make our case against the corporate-owned marauders currently holding the statehouse.

From Speaker Tim Jones (r), in reference to his Missouri Freedom Alliance LLC:

Tim W. Jones ‏@SpeakerTimJones

Libelous, slanderous, defamatory innuendo by assaultive political adversaries…is not fact. 10:20 PM – 10 Sep 13

A reply from the Chair of the Missouri Democratic Party:

Roy Temple ‏@roytemple

Tip for @SpeakerTimJones: The truth doesn’t require so many practice runs. 10:27 PM – 10 Sep 13

Hey, he had his birth certificate with him.

Two interesting stories caught my eye today:

First, a  new report from the  U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Economic Research Service on hunger in America ranks Missouri high up on the list of states where a significant number of people experience serious issues with hunger. Our fair state is in the 7th place over all :

7. Missouri

>Low food security homes: 16.7%

> Very low food security homes: 7.6% (2nd highest)

> Median household income: $45,247 (15th lowest)

> Pct. obesity: 27.2% (21st highest)

According to a 2012 Gallup-Healthways survey, residents of just two other states were less likely than Missourians to eat healthily. The falling food security of many of the state’s residents may play a role in their poor diets. Nearly 8% of households faced very low food security, the second highest percentage in the nation. This was up significantly from 3.3% in 2002, and the largest increase in the nation over the 10-year period.

Today’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch offered an insightful editorial on the topic, drawing the lines between the increase in food insecurity in Missouri over the past decade, which has been the fastest in the nation,  and the ascendency of the strange breed of hyper-ideological Republican that has taken over the running of the state, concluding that:

Missouri’s low-tax, no-services philosophy has taken us right to the top.

We’re number one in growing the percentage of our population that is hungrier today than a decade ago.

But there might be even more to the issue of food insecurity in the state than just a bunch of idiot ideologues – which is where the second story comes into the picture. Progress Missouri has been drawing attention to an article in the Kansas City Star about Missouri House Speaker Tim Jones’ “side” business, a limited liability company called the Missouri Freedom Alliance. When questioned about what he did through that business, Jones hemmed and hawed, gave first one answer and then another, finally resorting to invoking the confidentiality of his legal clients. So far, lots of questions, few substantive answers.

This type of behavior on the part of politicians is not new to Missourians. Remember Rod Jetton who during his time as speaker “ran a political consulting firm where he worked for the campaigns of the same lawmakers whose legislation depended on his blessing”? Nor were many of us surprised when Jetton got off with a slap on the wrist from the toothless state ethics commission which, nevertheless, essentially admitted that his actions stank.

Ho-hum, some of you are saying. This is news? This is a state, after all, where politicians don’t bother to hide the fact that they’re for sale. The proof? Their unwillingness enact ethics legislation or campaign reform, while they pull in money from billionaires like Rex Sinquefield and industries with legislative axes to grind in Missouri – and don’t forget the dainty little perks like fancy meals and athletic tickets from well-heeled lobbyists. There’s a reason the State Integrity Investigation gives Missouri a C- when it comes to corruption risk – with grades of F when it comes to political financing and public access to information; D+ and D- respectively for legislative accountability and lobbying disclosure.

How do possible governmental corruption and hunger statistics fit together? Lots of academics have studied the link between governmental corruption, income inequality and poverty. A 2003 literature review (pdf)  summarizes the “governance model” often used to explain the relationship:

The Governance Model asserts that corruption affects poverty by influencing governance factors,which, in turn, impact poverty levels. First, corruption reduces governance capacity, that is, it weakens political institutions and citizen participation and leads to lower quality government services and infrastructure. The poor suffer disproportionately from reduced public services. When health and basic education expenditures are given lower priority, for example, in favor of capital intensive programs that offer more opportunities for high-level rent taking, lower income groups lose services on which they depend. Corruption is consistently correlated with higher school dropout rates and high levels of infant mortality. Secondly, impaired governance increases poverty by restricting economic growth and, coming full circle, by its inability to control corruption. Thirdly, corruption that reduces governance capacity also may inflict critical collateral damage: reduced public trust in government institutions. As trust – an important element of social capital – declines, research has shown  that vulnerability of the poor increases as their economic productivity is affected. When people perceive that the social system is untrustworthy and inequitable, their incentive to engage in productive economic activities declines.

Sound like someplace we know about? It only remains to point out that lots of people may have made the linkage between our Republican-dominated state government and the low quality of life in the state in a very practical way: with their feet. According to the data gathered from moving companies, more people have been moving out of Missouri than have been moving in. These are not people moving to low paying jobs in Texas either – they are, after all, the folks who can afford a commercial mover, people who have choices about where they want to live and, increasingly, they don’t seem to want to live in a third world economy.

It’s no secret that the American Legislative Education Committee (ALEC), the corporatist front group owned in large part by the billionaire Koch brothers and used to enact their political preferences into law, is really big on right-to-work (RTW) legislation. ALEC is not alone in promoting RTW – the Chamber of Commerce; ALEC’s sister organization, Americans for Prosperity (AFP); along with numerous rightwing groups have also made RTW their cause du jour, but ALEC has had a particularly important role. In fact, several past efforts to enact RTW bills in Missouri adhered closely to he pattern of ALEC model legislation. Those bills – so far – have failed to gain sufficient traction to pass.

But never fear – RTW is still a priority. House speaker, Tim Jones recently, proclaimed that “we’re going to make Missouri the 25th right-to-work state.” The only thing that has changed is the strategy, as Peter Kinder explained to the ALEC overlords last month:

Earlier this month, Republican Lt. Governor Peter Kinder told an audience at the national American Legislative Exchange Council convention in Chicago that “Right to Work” (RTW) didn’t have the legs to pass through Missouri’s Republican-controlled legislature, and that the matter would likely be placed on the ballot for the next general election.

Sounds grim. RTW is not just one more effort to chip away at the ability of unions to function effectively, it’s a chain saw that can be used to slice away huge chunks of union membership.The word is that Missouri unions are already building up their war chests in anticipation of a nasty fight:

The 1978 fight pales in comparison to what the fight would cost both sides now,” Missouri AFL-CIO President, Hugh McVey, told The Missouri Times. “We won big last time and the numbers kind of speak to that, but I don’t know that we’d win like that this time. Although I do still think we would win.”

At a meeting of the Missouri Progressive Action Group (MOPAG) last Saturday, however, Democratic Rep. Bill Otto had a different perspective, all but daring the Republicans to put RTW on the ballot. His argument touched on the issue of turnout during midterm elections. Many of us believe that the reason Missouri sent such a large population of Tea Party fence posts (as in “dumb as a fence post”) to Washington in 2010, and voted for things like the anti-Obamacare Prop. C had more to do with small overall turnout and over-excited Tea Partiers than the real druthers of less extreme Missourians. One thing a RTW ballot initiative could do, if state Democrats are able to act quickly and smartly – a big if, I know – would be to energize the Democratic base. I don’t know about you, but I’ll wait and see. I’ll also keep my fingers crossed.  

Prior performance guarantees the same result when it comes to right wingnuts.

Yesterday, via Twitter, Speaker Tim Jones (r) took issue with Attorney general Chris Koster’s letter:

Tim W. Jones ‏@SpeakerTimJones

FINALLY: @koster4missouri defines himself: Obama/Nixon, Big Gov, tax & spend liberal. At least Missourians know. #MOHouse GOP:reduces taxes. 4:10 PM – 29 Aug 13

Which prompted a response from Yael Abouhalkah at the Kansas City Star:

Yael T. Abouhalkah ‏@YaelTAbouhalkah

Lame, name-calling response from @SpeakerTimJones to @Koster4Missouri smackdown of GOP’s #HB253. Any LEGAL problems w/opinion? 4:13 PM – 29 Aug 13

“…Any LEGAL problems w/opinion?…”

As if that would be a consideration? Just asking

New Missouri Rule: if the governor governs right of center you can’t call him a “liberal” (July 1, 2013)

Bill signing Kabuki (July 12, 2013)

Rep. Chris Kelly (D): HB 253 – “I’d like to know what your opinion is.” (July 19, 2013)

Rep. Denny Hoskins (r): probably not gonna sustain the Governor’s veto of HB 253 (August 19, 2013)

Sec. of State Jason Kander (D) to Texas Gov. Rick Perry (r): You forgot about that Medicaid thing? (August 23, 2013)

Rep. Denny Hoskins (r) to UCM on HB 253: I don’t care, I’d rather be the new Speaker Pro Tem (August 24, 2013)

Rep. Denny Hoskins (r): your constituents know what you’re doing to them (August 26, 2013)

HB 253: Because those dissolute leeches at the public trough should shut up, that’s why! (August 28, 2013)

Missouri Democratic Party on HB 253: Yes, yes, let’s talk about Texas Gov. Rick Perry (r)…. (August 28, 2013)

AG Chris Koster (D) to Speaker Jones (r) on HB 253: you all certainly made a mess of things… (August 29, 2013)