Transparency when it comes to public business doesn’t appear to be in vogue anymore.

This past week in Wisconsin:

Sweeping secrecy is big mistake

July 03, 2015 10:31 am

Republicans are supposed to be suspicious of big government.

Instead, the GOP leaders who run the Legislature’s budget committee want citizens to trust state government with sweeping secrecy.

No thank you.

The full Legislature should reject the Joint Finance Committee’s sneaky attempt Thursday night to exempt state lawmakers from Wisconsin’s open records laws….

[….]

….Aren’t Republicans supposed to favor responsibility? Apparently, Wisconsin Republicans do not.

Among several troubling passages inserted into the state budget Thursday night is this doozy: “No provision of the state’s public records law that conflicts with a rule or policy of the Senate or Assembly or joint rule or policy of the Legislature applies to a record that is subject to such rule or policy.”

In other words, state lawmakers do what they want, when they want – and taxpayers will be in the dark….

[….]

Meanwhile, in Missouri:

Missouri judge dismisses lawsuit over open Senate committee meetings

Lawsuit claimed lawmakers must allow filming of meetings

5:52 PM CDT Jun 30, 2015

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -A Missouri judge dismissed Tuesday an advocacy group’s lawsuit that challenged restrictions on filming Missouri Senate committee meetings.

Cole County Circuit Judge Jon Beetem dismissed the petition brought by Progress Missouri, which claimed decisions by Senate committee chairmen to prohibit filming by the group violates the state’s open meetings law. The liberal advocacy group also said the prohibition infringes on its freedom of speech and association.

The state’s Sunshine Law allows public bodies to establish guidelines on recording to minimize disruption, but the lawsuit said Progress Missouri’s filming wouldn’t have been disruptive. Senate rules state that cameras may be allowed with the permission of the committee chairman “as long as they do not prove disruptive to the decorum of the committee….”

[…]

Sunshine ain’t bustin’ out all over.

The stalwart courage of old media in Missouri is inspiring:

Jason Hancock ‏@J_Hancock

Progress Missouri challenges state Senate on Sunshine Law (via @krcg13) [….] 4:19 PM – 23 Jun 2015

We asked:

Michael Bersin ‏@MBersin

@J_Hancock @KRCG13 So, KRCG was denied permission to film a Senate hearing in the past and they’re not a party to the lawsuit? Why not? 4:31 PM – 23 Jun 2015

Interestingly, there was no response.

Previously:

Because asking politely for people to comply with the law always seems to work out so well (April 15, 2015)

On the wrong side of history and technology (April 20, 2015)

Well, Governor Sam Brownback (r) is one of the principle parties to blame for the budgetary mess in Kansas.

This morning, via Twitter:

Jim Ward ‏@RepJimWard

Today’s rumor-Republicans to cut & run. Adjourn session leaving Governor to make huge cuts to education. #ksleg 8:33 AM – 9 Jun 2015

Ah yes, the republican party is supposed to be the one of “personal responsibility”. Got it.

Previously:

Inviting the leader of a sovereign state to speak in your capital city to tweak your elected leader (March 4, 2015)

If you radically defund state universities how can you expect them to field a basketball team? (March 22, 2015)

A sign for the times (April 3, 2015)

This is the matter with Kansas (June 7, 2015)

Kansas: Now what? (June 8, 2015)

Yesterday the right wingnut controlled Kansas Senate voted to increase regressive taxes. The Kansas House will take a look at it.

On Twitter:

Moderate Party of KS ‏@ModerateKS

The ends dont justify the means. The “cons” lied to get elected then passed tax hikes on to working poor #ksleg  10:34 PM – 7 Jun 2015

Yael T. Abouhalkah ‏@YaelTAbouhalkah

Johnson Countians: Your senators just passed largest tax increase ever in KS. (But you can afford it, right?) #ksleg  9:25 PM – 7 Jun 2015

KS Senate Democrats ‏@kssenatedems

The largest tax increase in the history of our state passed earlier this evening. Not a single Democrat voted in favor of it. #ksleg 9:05 PM – 7 Jun 2015

As if any voters will remember that at the next election.

Previously:

Inviting the leader of a sovereign state to speak in your capital city to tweak your elected leader (March 4, 2015)

If you radically defund state universities how can you expect them to field a basketball team? (March 22, 2015)

A sign for the times (April 3, 2015)

This is the matter with Kansas (June 7, 2015)

Blind ideology. No demonstrable understanding of objective reality. Meanness.

Senate punts tax debate; House goes home til Monday

Legislature, Brownback struggle to fill $400 million budget deficit

Posted: June 6, 2015 – 11:22pm

The Kansas Senate and House participated in separate versions of legislative paralysis Saturday night while trying to wiggle state government out from under the burden of a $400 million budget deficit.

Inertia was so troublesome that House Majority Leader Jene Vickrey R-Louisburg, adjourned the House until Monday.

The Senate was still scheduled to convene Sunday, but the chamber’s agenda was unclear….

[….]

And the rest of civilization understands why:

Justin Henning ‏@jjhenning

I see #ksleg antics made Doonesbury this morning. 7:25 AM – 7 Jun 2015

Governor Sam Brownback (r) [January 2015 file photo].

Yesterday via twitter:

Kent Bush ‏@Kentbush

Who would have ever thought that a bunch of ideologues would have so much trouble governing through a crisis of their own making? #ksleg 11:15 PM – 6 Jun 2015

Five minus two equals seven. There are people who believe that works in Missouri, too.

Previously:

Inviting the leader of a sovereign state to speak in your capital city to tweak your elected leader (March 4, 2015)

If you radically defund state universities how can you expect them to field a basketball team? (March 22, 2015)

A sign for the times (April 3, 2015)

The Speaker of the Missouri House, John Diehl (R-89), just resigned. He seems to have been carrying on an affair with a nineteen year old student intern and he rather stupidly let his id override common sense when it came to exchanging salacious tweets that have now been made public. Is anyone really surprised? It’s an old story. Diehl is far from the first politician to let his exaggerated sense of self-importance fog his brain when it came to exercising what must have seemed like a perquisite of office, especially given the otherwise anything goes culture of the Missouri GOP.

But as gratifying as it is to see a hypocrite exposed, nobody is claiming that the young woman was coerced by Diehl. Politicians, no matter how personally unappealing, seem to have their groupies too – power, they say, is a potent aphrodisiac and Diehl was a big poohbah in the little Missouri political tent. No matter what  you think about it, since it doesn’t rise to the level of illegality, what Diehl did was his own business. It only concerns him, his family and the intern. When Bill Clinton’s intern came to light, I said the same thing and I’m not going to change my tune now.

Don’t get me wrong. From an aesthetic point of view Diehl’s behavior seems seriously sad and creepy. There’s also the hypocrisy factor which probably justifies some of the outcry. Diehl is, as you might have guessed, one of those GOP “family values” types with a particularly strong enthusiasm for anti-gay panders:

Earlier this year, Diehl and the president pro-tempore of the state Senate filed an amicus brief in defense of the state’s anti-gay-marriage amendment, leading the Missouri Family Policy Council, the state affiliate of the Family Research Council, to praise the speaker “for demonstrating moral leadership and true integrity in standing up for the sacred institution of marriage and the family values of the people of Missouri.” The state affiliate of the Southern Baptist Convention thanked him for “fighting to defend biblical marriage.”

Seems a bit ironic now. Diehl has also pushed abortion restrictions during his tenure, co-sponsored a 2012 bill prohibiting Gay-Straight Alliances in public schools, and tried to restrict the availability of birth control insurance coverage for those whose employers want to claim religious privilege to defy the law.

All in all, Diehl’s pose as a thorough-going, rightwing Christian warrior makes his dirty old man routine especially revolting. But he’s got lots of company in the GOP in recent years. And many of these Christian sinners have continued to be re-elected – does the name David Vitter ring a bell – by constituents who evidently care more about what politicians do in office than when they go home. Correctly, I think.

Nevertheless, I have to admit that I’m enjoying the public way that the chickens have come home to roost for Rep. Diehl and I’ll be more than glad to see the back of him. But it isn’t because of his sleazy sexual behavior. When it comes to official malfeasance, there are far more serious charges to level against Diehl in his role as leader and enabler for the legislative GOP in Missouri. We mustn’t fail to give him a double-sized helping of credit for:

— 700 Missourians who will die unnecessarily every year because of the failure of the GOPers in Jefferson City to accept federal funds to expand Medicaid.

—  6,300 of Missouri’s poorest children who will loose welfare benefits.

— Putting legal guns in felons’ hands. Along with everybody else’s.

— Underfunding education. Yet again.

— Decimating social service agencies’ funding and then blaming the agencies for the resulting dysfunction.

— Refusing to fund crucial infrastructure needs. While bridges face collapse and highway repair needs are triaged.

— Beggaring the state to give tax cuts to the wealthy, who shovel the excess back into campaign coffers by the handfuls. In Missouri those greenbacks don’t just exercise their free speech rights, they shout.

— Pushing through Right-to-Work-For-Less legislation – a big wet kiss on ALEC’s corporate backside and and kick in the face to Missouri’s working middle class.

There’s more, of course. And I didn’t even touch on Diehl’s behind the scenes embrace of the corruption that runs rampant in Jefferson City. Thanks to Diehl and his like-minded cronies in the statehouse, Missourians might just as well give up and accept the coming blight. And as long as public  immorality is defined in terms of private sexual behavior rather than in terms of public corruption and indifference to the needs of the state’s citizens, we’re not likely to see much difference, no matter which on-the-make GOP clone takes Diehl’s place. But it does do a body good to see one of the malefactors frogmarched, metaphorically speaking, out of office.

* Edited slightly for clarity’ three links added.  

Some time ago I wrote a post about the colossal arrogance of the Tea Party and other members of the 27 percenters who insist on usurping the label “We the People” and employing it in almost every other sentence to express their minority demands.  Missouri’s GOP-dominated legislature shares that We-the-Teople arrogance. They too seem to have an outsized conception of their importance, specifically as it pertains to the will of the rest of the people in the state. I am referring, of course to their willingness to use the power that we have vested in them to undercut popularly passed ballot propositions.

Exhibit one: the hearings that began yesterday to repeal or amend out of existence Proposition B, the puppy mill bill that passed with a 51.6% majority. Opponents of this measure had ample time to make their case and failed. Cue Missouri legislators to ride to the rescue of the Puppy Millers and the deluded farmers who were led to believe that humane treatment of dogs is the first step on the slippery slope towards enforced vegetarianism.

Just as egregious a show of contempt for the will of the people was perpetrated earlier this week when the State Legislature’s Joint Committee on Administrative Rules (JCAR) voted to gut an important component of Proposition C, the Missouri Renewable Electricity Standard that was passed in 2008 with a 66% majority. The proposition mandated that 15% of the energy provided by state utilities come from renewable energy sources.

A PUC implementation that JCAR is attempting to circumvent provides that those clean energy sources be located within or near Missouri and was intended to spur growth of clean energy businesses within the state along with the concomitant green jobs. God forbid that the Missouri GOP show any concern for innovation and a new source of jobs; we all know that utilities and their profits come before people, right?

There are precedents for this disregard of the public will. You surely remember when Missourians said “No, thank you” to concealed carry gun laws in 1999. Since rejection doesn’t sit well with the NRA and its pet Missouri legislators, the General Assembly overruled the proposition and in 2003 passed a concealed carry law.

Opponents of these measures all seem to think that overriding the will of the people of the state is just jim-dandy because the majority they are disregarding is mostly urban and evidently not aware of some deeper truths known only to those in the boonies. If you look online, you will find innumerable newspaper articles where lawmakers justify reversing the will of the majority because rural areas voted overwhelmingly for mistreatment of dogs, a wild west gun culture, or are worried about the possibility that energy prices might go up (which they most certainly will no matter what  happens with Proposition C rules and regulations). For example, this quote from KPSR’s coverage of the Proposition B repeal effort is typical:

… the majority of those passing votes came from a minority of counties. While most lawmakers who spoke, even Stouffer, aren’t dead-set on eliminating Prop B, they say the will of the people in rural Missouri is proof enough it, at the very least, needs tweaking.

Somehow, I bet that if I were in a position to do the research, I’d  find that many members of the rural minority that failed to prevail in the case of Proposition B correspond to the 16% of Missourians who voted for that other Prop C and against the health care mandate last April. In April the minority prevailed because few Missourians, only 23%, turned out to vote.* Fair enough. But what I want to know is why this particular minority matters more than the rest of us when they don’t prevail? They matters so much that, on the basis of the April Prop. C vote, lawmakers are trying to force the Attorney General of the State, Chris Koster, to join a frivolous and potentially expensive suit against the Affordable Care Act

Never mind that the pros and cons of all these potential laws were fully debated before the vote and that the people of the state had plenty of information and time to make up their minds. What this blatant disregard for the democratic process says to me is that those of us in St. Louis and Kansas City are second class citizens. There’s got to be some reason why these rural lawmakers feel free to explicitly spit in the faces of voters. There must be some way to demand respect for the principles of democracy in this state.

* “only 23%” added.