Today, at the Missouri Ethics Commission:

051087 08/27/2013 MISSOURIANS FOR TIM JONES Pyramid Home Health Services PO Box 1927 Cape Girardeau MO 63702 8/26/2013 $10,000.00

[emphasis added]

Maybe that’s the industry standard.

Previously:

Campaign Finance: and the circle remains unbroken (August 25, 2013)

Yesterday, at the Missouri Ethics Commission:

C091068 08/24/2013 HOUSE REPUBLICAN CAMPAIGN COMMITTEE, INC MIssourians For Tim Jones PO Box 434 Eureka MO 63025 8/22/2013 $10,000.00

[emphasis added]

Today, at the Missouri Ethics Commission:

C051087 08/25/2013 MISSOURIANS FOR TIM JONES RightChoice Managed Care Inc PO Box 680086 Cincinnati OH 45206 8/23/2013 $6,500.00

[emphasis added]

Following campaign finance in Missouri can sometimes be like watching a dryer in a laundromat. The window is there, not too many people pay attention, and the circle thing is a constant.

Yesterday in Warrensburg President Obama tried to raise once again the issue of economic growth and its corollaries such as infrastructure investment, education and energy. The response from Missouri’s GOP politicians can only have been inspired by the fact that they’re secretly trying out their stand-up comedy routines before getting together and hitting open-mike night at some comedy club:

Back in Washington, Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., said on the Senate floor that he was glad the president is visiting Missouri. “But these speeches sound an awful lot like the 2012 campaign speeches. I think we need to move beyond that. We need to not just pivot to the economy, but we need to stick with the economy.”

And:

“Our nation would be in a better place if, instead of spending all his time giving speeches filled with unrealized rhetoric about a better America, President Obama would actually work with Republicans to address the enormous problems facing our nation,” Missouri House Speaker Tim Jones, R-Eureka, said in a statement.

Somebody needs to remind Senator Blunt about the priorities of his GOP congressional colleagues. Although perhaps he’s aware of some big economic impact that adheres to outlawing all abortions at 20 weeks; votes to ban gender-based abortion (which is not a problem in the U.S.); 38 (I believe that’s the current count) purely symbolic votes in the House to defund Obamacare, numerous set-to’s over shutting the down the government over such a routine matter as raising the debt limit to cover the nations already incurred obligations (all spending approved by congress, by the way); this summer’s unending hearings over poorly manufactured and managed non-scandals, etc. and etc. (And, by the way, don’t forget, all this useless activity costs us money.)

As for Speaker Jones, he actually has the right of it. Of course, God himself couldn’t “work with” Republicans. After all, as we have learned over the course of the past few years, working with Republicans to achieve almost any goal means meekly bowing your head and meeting their every demand, and, God forbid, never, ever criticizing them for acting like thugs – all while ignoring the druthers of the folks who elected President Obama with a rather resounding majority to do just those things that throw the excitable GOPers into a frenzy of tantrums.

Both Senator Blunt and Rep. Jones seem to want us to think that the President is all talk and no action. However, I do seem to remember numerous initiatives that the president has put forward while the GOP has done nothing at all but obstruct and fulminate. Specifically in response to columnist Josh Kraushaar, Economist Jared Bernstein managed to point out the weakness of these types of GOP talking points when used to counter the President’s new offensive on the economy:

There’s no hint in Kraushaar’s column about the Jobs Act that Obama proposed in September 2011. Nothing about the economic plan he pushed in fall 2010, either. Nothing about Dodd-Frank. Nothing even about the proposals Obama made in his State of the Union this year, most of which he’s still repeating (and House Republicans are still ignoring). For that matter, nothing about Obama’s deficit-cutting over the last couple of years. […]

Not to mention that there’s a very screwy giving-speeches-and-passing-things focus here. What Obama did for the economy in 2009-2010 was mainly implementing the stimulus passed in early 2009. That’s really not ignoring the economy.

I don’t think any sane person could deny that we’re recovering from the Bush recession  – and from where I stand the President deserves the credit. And also from where I stand, the folks who deserve the blame for the fact that this same recovery is less vigorous than it could be are the folks who insisted on a series of stupid budget cuts that culminated in the sequester – which all by itself is costing us plenty in terms of growth:

Forecasting firm MacroEconomic Advisers has lowered its second-quarter forecast for GDP growth from 1.8% to 1.3%. That’s very weak growth that will probably hold back hiring and spending, and depress confidence. “The sequester is expected to slow growth this year, and largely accounts for the weak second-quarter growth and lackluster third-quarter growth,” the firm said in a recent report.

Of course I read yesterday that Senator Blunt thinks he has the solution to all our economic problems. While – to his credit – speaking out against a mind-numbingly stupid GOP threat to hold the debt limit hostage to an effort to defund Obamacare, he added:

… Where we ought to be now is – we need more spending cuts. They need to be probably on the mandatory side rather than the discretionary side. I think that’s the formula that obviously allows us to move forward most easily here.

You know what that means. If the President decides, apropos Speaker Jones wishes, to “work with” Republicans, it will mean cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Just what the GOP has wanted all along.

Today the American Society of Civil gave Missouri’s infrastructure a grade of C-. These “report cards,” issued every four years, are an outgrowth of the Society’s efforts to draw attention to the vital issue of America’s failing infrastructure which, as an earlier report shows (Failure to Act: The Impact of Current Infrastructure Investment on America’s Economic Future), is a significant factor affecting economic growth and prosperity.

This report does not come as a surprise – Missouri hasn’t been doing too well in this area for some time and the Society’s 2009 report for the state, while nominally better in some areas, wasn’t much different. It would seem that the past few years of GOP stewardship of the statehouse in Jefferson City has not done much for the state’s infrastructure and the corresponding issues of economic growth. Nor is it difficult to understand why things have been deteriorating at the current rate. Just consider the risible response of House Speaker Tim Jones to the report:

In my mind, it gave me facts and figures to prove that what we were working on was meaningful and the right way to go,” Jones said. “We need to work on the electric issue, we need to work on highway funding, we need to work on our water, sewer and roadways in general.

Jones seems to be saying that the GOP’s heart was in the right place, but unfortunately, the brains involved just weren’t up to the task. They were on the right track, he implies, because they spent a little time considering a few issues that form an essential part of their charge as lawmakers – so no matter if they couldn’t manage to do anything. Speaker Jones thinks his only failure, one that he suggests is trivial, was that he couldn’t rally his feisty partisans to support his goals this year:

Funding infrastructure was one of the key goals of the recently-finished legislative session, and it could be on the agenda for next session, too.

In particular, Jones had hoped to  pass a one-cent sales tax to fund transportation. But that bill died in the Senate when John Lamping from Ladue filibustered the bill that his own party leader supported.

So let’s gauge Jone’s efforts. A modest goal – fix roads – and no result. I’m glad he feels good enough about his efforts to pat himself and his GOP colleagues on their metaphorical backs, although I’m a bit confused about how he can think of the legislative session that just finished as other than an abject failure.

I also have to say that I’m just as glad that the GOP response to infrastructure needs, a sales tax, has failed. Bear in mind that the same Jones who is touting a regressive sales tax to address a few selected infrastructure concerns, also supported a successful bill that would gradually cut already low individual taxes by .5%, phase in a 50% deduction for business income that is reported as personal income, and cut corporate taxes by 3% from 6.25% to 3.25%.

To summarize: the GOP response to infrastructure needs is make poor and middle class Missourians pay disproportionately for infrastructure essential to Missouri businesses via a sales tax. At the same time, one of their few successes, a so-called tax “reform” that the GOP pushed through both houses, would allow Jones and his pals to let those very businesses off the hook even more by cutting their already low income tax obligations to almost nothing. And of course, anybody but a Missouri Republican realizes that cutting state revenue this severely isn’t going to do anything for those outstanding infrastructure deficits.

Ironically, the only thing that stood in Jones’ way, at least in regard to the sales tax, were the ideological sensibilities and political fears of his GOP colleagues:

The sales tax idea went down in flames after lawmakers started to fret over the portrayal of the tax increase as the biggest in state history.

That’s tough campaign rhetoric to overcome.

What conclusion should we draw from the GOP reluctance to raise the revenue necessary to fulfill basic government functions such as providing the infrastructure essential to economic growth? I would suggest that, unless there’s a change in the makeup of the legislature, none of us hold our breath in expectation of a better report card four years down the road. I’m sure that the issue will, as Speaker Jones suggests, come up next year. I’m equally sure that the response will be just as befuddled and corruption-riddled as this year’s has been.

By @BGinKC

File this in that bulging folder labeled “This Session Can’t Be Over Soon Enough.”

One thing the Missouri General Assembly did right — no thanks to Casey Guernsey, who voted the way the speaker told him to, the schoolchildren of his district be damned, Speaker Tim Jones (and more importantly, the Speaker’s benefactor Rex Sinquefield) wanted him to vote “aye” on the legislation, so he did what any good mindless, brainless, clueless drone would do — he voted “aye.” Because he’s a whore for Rex and ALEC and the Koch brothers. Fortunately for the schoolkids, most of the Democrats and 42 Republicans voted “no.”

 In a stinging rebuke to Speaker Tim Jones, the heavily Republican House has rejected for the second time his drive to tie educators’ job evaluations to students’ academic progress.

The latest defeat came shortly before midnight Wednesday, when legislators refused to accept a scaled-down bill that would have applied the mandatory evaluation system to public school administrators only – not teachers.

Rep. Jay Barnes, R-Jefferson City, said the new plan aimed to create “a system of continual improvement in our schools for the people in charge … the people, as Harry Truman would say, who sit at desks where the buck stops.”

Though Jones, R-Eureka, held the voting board open for nearly a half-hour and his lieutenants roamed the chamber wrangling votes, the proposal fizzled on a vote of 76-82.

Forty-two of the 110 House Republicans voted against the bill. Opponents were not given a chance to speak but said afterward that the plan was poorly drafted and would have done little to improve education.

“If we have problems, we remove the School Board,” said Rep. Chris Molendorp, R-Belton. “I don’t need a top-down, bureaucratic, big-government approach to local education.”

Some Republicans also resented Jones’ tactics; he recently removed two GOP members of a fiscal review committee who opposed the bill.

The bill was a priority of a national reform group, StudentsFirst, founded by former Washington, D.C., schools leader Michelle Rhee. The group contends that a statewide system would improve the transparency and consistency of educator evaluations.

Originally, the bill would have affected teachers’ tenure, as well as the evaluation system. That broader proposal was defeated 102-55 last month.

Personally, I found this sentence absolutely delicious, and reread it a dozen times, each time my smile getting broader. “The bill was a priority of a national reform group, StudentsFirst, founded by former Washington, D.C., schools leader Michelle Rhee. “

My husband and daughter are teachers. I consider Michelle Rhee to be not just a grifter, although she is that too, but she is more dangerous than any grifter. She is a terrorist who targets the education system and wants to blow it up. The bitch ought to be in jail for fraud, not a top-dollar consultant/lobbyist, after she faked the improvements in student performance in D.C. She only has credibility among people who want to destroy public education. Like Rex Sinquefield. Learn that name, outstaters. He is who your republican senator and representative that YOU sent to Jeff answers to, not you. Unless you’re a billionaire, too.  

It can be kind of uncomfortable when a purely political game leaves you with egg all over your face. It’s more uncomfortable when almost everyone else calls you on it.

Speaker Tim Jones (r) presiding over the House on February 18, 2013.

Today, in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

Editorial: Speaker must be held accountable for House hacking

….Last week, Mr. Jones – or one of his minions – used a state computer in the Missouri House in an attempt to hack into a secure state computer server under control of the Office of Administration. The OA handles much of the internal computer security for the executive branch of government.

OA records obtained in a Sunshine Law request show that the mystery hacker took 23 shots at cracking the OA security. The hacker used a user name and password that had been given to a federal law enforcement official as part of an investigation into potential disability fraud….

….Here’s the outrage: For more than a month now, Mr. Schaefer and Mr. Jones have been accusing law enforcement officials, from Mr. Schilb to the Missouri Highway Patrol to Gov. Jay Nixon, of violating state law, because under Missouri law, the CCW list is a closed record.

They have ignored the very clear exceptions in law for law enforcement to obtain the records as part of an investigation. Indeed, Mr. Nixon never broke the law, nor did the state patrol, nor did Mr. Schilb. Each of them was following the mandates in the state and federal Drivers Privacy Protection Act to share such information, including the Department of Revenue-controlled CCW list, as part of a state or federal investigation.

But in attempting to show that one of them broke the law (which, to repeat, they didn’t) Mr. Jones or his mystery hacker might have. In fact, he might have broken several laws….

[emphasis in original]

Ruh, roh!

The Post-Dispatch editorial points out a relevant state statute:

Missouri Revised Statutes

Chapter 569

Robbery, Arson, Burglary and Related Offenses

Section 569.095

Tampering with computer data, penalties.

569.095. 1. A person commits the crime of tampering with computer data if he knowingly and without authorization or without reasonable grounds to believe that he has such authorization:

(1) Modifies or destroys data or programs residing or existing internal to a computer, computer system, or computer network; or

(2) Modifies or destroys data or programs or supporting documentation residing or existing external to a computer, computer system, or computer network; or

(3) Discloses or takes data, programs, or supporting documentation, residing or existing internal or external to a computer, computer system, or computer network; or

(4) Discloses or takes a password, identifying code, personal identification number, or other confidential information about a computer system or network that is intended to or does control access to the computer system or network;

(5) Accesses a computer, a computer system, or a computer network, and intentionally examines information about another person;

(6) Receives, retains, uses, or discloses any data he knows or believes was obtained in violation of this subsection.

2. Tampering with computer data is a class A misdemeanor, unless the offense is committed for the purpose of devising or executing any scheme or artifice to defraud or to obtain any property, the value of which is five hundred dollars or more, in which case tampering with computer data is a class D felony.

Ruh, roh!

Today, in Representative Denny Hoskins’ (r) weekly (generally) constituent e-mail:

[….]

Teacher Tenure

Earlier in the session I voted against HB 631, which would have taken control over teacher evaluations away from local school boards. On Thursday, April 25th a similar bill, SB 125, came before the Fiscal Review committee. As a member of that committee I was asked to vote on the bill, and I stayed with my previous position on the issue and voted “No.” Immediately following the vote I and Rep. Messenger, the other republican who voted “No” on the bill, were removed from the Fiscal Review committee by Speaker Tim Jones. I felt it was important to hold my ground on this issue and vote in the best interest of my constituents. I appreciate everyone who has contacted me with their support regarding SB 125.  I will continue to stand up for what I believe, even when it is difficult.

[….]

[emphasis and capitalization in original]

Nope, we didn’t edit a thing.

Previously:

Campaign Finance: pay the piper, call the tune (April 25, 2013)

Corruption in Jefferson City? What do you think? Today the AP writes that:

Campaign finance and ethics reform have taken a secondary position at the Capitol, where much of the focus has been on economic development, taxes and the state’s Medicaid health care program for the poor. Lawmakers have about a month left before their mandatory adjournment.

Currently, anyone with a legislative ax to grind can donate whatever they want to the lawmakers of their choice. The sky’s the limit. GOPers claim that that’s okay as long as folks know where the money’s coming from, but transparency rules are, in fact, not only very easy to evade, but, the evidence suggests, often evaded.

So, if the GOP lawmakers, the folks who currently control what gets done in Jefferson City, are both honest and serious about letting us know that everything is aboveboard, why aren’t they willing to let Democratic backed legislation to cap campaign donations make it out of committee? Are they afraid to publicly debate the question? And why do GOPers, many of whom are living high on lobbyists’ hogs, dismiss ethics legislation as just some airy-fairy nonsense that they may get around to when they aren’t busy with really important issues?

According to House Speaker Tim Jones, “lawmakers are focused on other issues this session that ‘impact Missourians more than an inside the Beltway ethics discussion.'” This dismissive attitude is mirrored by the Senate President Pro Tem, Republican Tom Dempsey, who claims that:

“We’ve been working on our business, pro-growth strategies, and I’m not sure we’re going to be able to address those items – at least as Senate legislation this year,” said Dempsey, R-St. Charles. “But we’ll continue to take a look at them.”

Dare I suggest that one might ask about the “impact” on Missourians of empty conspiracy fads like the the United Nations Agenda 21 (a U.N. sustainability planning initiative, not ratified by the U.S. and with no bearing on U.S. law – although Senator Brian Nieves is sure that the federal government has rezoned land belonging to a couple of his constituents as part of its enforcement), or the nefarious efforts of the Department of Revenue to, according to various black helicopter enthusiasts, implement the federal real ID and/or register Missourians’ guns through the “back door.” All topics taken up by legislators who are too busy to deal with the perception of egregious ethics violations on their part.

Of course, the more important point is that the GOP’s putative “pro-growth” agenda, which is cited by Senator Dempsy, heavily favors corporate interests. And while I might be missing something, aren’t these the very entities that usually write those big, unlimited campaign checks and fund many of the lobbyists who ply Missouri statehouse denizens with fancy meals, tickets to sporting events and other thoughtful and expensive trinkets, spending in the process an amount in the vicinity of $1 million a year?  

To a casual observer, it looks like those corporate interests are getting what they pay for. Consider the on-going effort to pass right-to-work bills, to take down prevailing wage laws, etc., all of which stiff the little guy to the benefit of those who hold the strings of the purses that pols depend on. Kansas City Star Jefferson City correspondent Jason Hancock writes:

Take, for example, the roughly $8,200 spent by a handful of lobbyists to treat lawmakers to meals last July in Salt Lake City at the convention of the American Legislative Exchange Council [i.e. ALEC], a conservative organization that has drawn criticism in recent years for its efforts to bring together corporations and lawmakers to craft bills for introduction in legislatures nationwide.

Which lawmakers made the trip to Utah and attended those get-togethers was not disclosed. Each of the lobbyists reported the gifts as going to the “entire General Assembly.”

No matter how you cut it, it doesn’t look good when several Missouri politicians manage to hide their cozy relationship with ALEC, which has been called “a corporate bill mill,” and which, according to Progress Missouri, has been responsible for more than 30 corporate-friendly bills introduced into the Legislature over the past decade.

Does any of this suggest that we’re dealing with more than the appearance of corruption, and that, at the very least, we should be concerned about who’s in the driver’s seat in Jefferson City?