And, whatever you do, you don’t ever pick a fight with Blue Girl. Really.

Today on Facebook, Representative Casey Guernsey (r) did just that:

Tammy Booth shared a link.

2 hours ago [….]

Why don’t all y’all up north ask Casey Guernsey and the rest of the math-challenged GOP dipshits you keep sending to Jeff (all I can figure is it’s a couple hundred miles from Bethany and Princeton so it gets the worthless fuckers out of your way) how the hell a tax break on fuel sold at marinas in the Ozarks helps YOU.

Freewheeling legislature puts Missouri in a hole

Casey Guernsey

Since you apparently know so much about this bill, why don’t you explain how this is a tax break?

about an hour ago

Think about that response for a second. A state representative trolling social media. Really? Methinks he doth protest too much.

Tammy Booth

It’s at the link:

” They granted a tax exemption for motor fuels used at marinas. They exempted sales taxes from transactions involving used manufactured homes and locally grown produce at farmer’s markets. Large commercial laundries got a tax break. So did fast food restaurants and power companies. Even Sprint Center patrons who get first dibs on tickets received a reprieve on sales taxes.

Gov. Jay Nixon, a Democrat, estimated the total cost of the giveaways at $263 million to almost $500 million a year. The last-minute binge threw Missouri’s 2015 budget out of balance before the legislature even left town.”

about an hour ago

Casey Guernsey

I don’t read articles from tabloids – but I do know these bills. The motor fuel component you mentioned in your post is what I was talking about. While we certainly passed tax reform bills, I don’t expect any liberal to agree and frankly don’t care that they do. But if your going to make a wild eyed claim about how motor fuel tax refunds at the lake effects my constituents, I’m going to call you out for not knowing what your talking about. Again (for the second time) if you know so much about this bill, explain to me how this is a NEW tax break. I don’t care what the article says. If your going to make claims and tag me, I will call you out every time. So. Why don’t you try again.

about an hour ago · Edited

[emphasis added]

Interesting.

The Kansas City Star is a tabloid? Evidently, we never get out of junior high school.

Tammy Booth

Meanwhile, you and your ilk are determined to turn us into a third-world country and get our credit-rating cut like has happened in Kansas, you refuse to be bound by ethics or campaign finance laws and you cut taxes for the richest few (how many of YOUR constituents will get an appreciable tax cut? not very damned many, I know, I’m from up there) yet you won’t even entertain expanding Medicaid and insuring 300,000 of the state’s working poor.

Medicaid Expansion Creates Jobs, Grows Missouri’s Economy | Missouri Hospital Association

about an hour ago

Tammy Booth

The KC Star is a tabloid and I’m a stupid little girl, huh?

Nice chatting with you. Chump.

about an hour ago

Not a good decision on the part of Representative Guernsey (r).

Casey Guernsey

Simple answer Tammy. Anyone who makes more than 9,000 a year. As for finance laws, what in the world do they have to do with tax cuts? That’s quite the stretch there lol.

about an hour ago

lol. We really are in junior high school.

Uh, if someone in political life engages the public you can’t expect the public to defer discussion on any issues.

Maybe would should take a look at campaign contributions and lobbyist expenditures in Missouri and the correlations with tax legislation. Oh, wait…

Casey Guernsey

Exactly correct – tabloid drive-by reporting. I knew you couldn’t respond, it’s what happens every time liberals try to debate me on bills they only read about in an article from the star. I spent 5 months working in these bills and actually understand them. Meanwhile a reporter from the star copies and pastes the Governor’s press release and people lap it up as though they speak the gospel. I’ve seen it for about 11 years now. Better luck next time!

about an hour ago · Edited

Five months of his work got us this. That’s not particularly convincing…

Tammy Booth

Please. I don’t rassle with pigs. I get dirty and the pig likes it. Screw that. The folks I want to see this thread have already seen it. Toodles.

about an hour ago

Tammy Booth

Thanks for taking the bait tho — I really didn’t expect you to.

about an hour ago

Casey Guernsey

I’m sure you mean wrassle.

[….]

about an hour ago

Oooh, a “correction”!

Then a couple of right wingnut sycophants jumped in with responses. Those, in turn, were followed by:

Mark Matzeder

Unless things have been deleted from this thread, the name-calling began with Guernsey calling Tammy’s post “sixth grade level”. She never responded in kind. Yes, yes, I know she alluded to a well-known metaphor of “rasslin’ with pigs” (rassle and wrassle are BOTH nonstandard versions of wrestle), but no intelligent person would confuse a term used in a metaphor as an epithet.

49 minutes ago

Lynn Caldwell

Mr. Guernsey, all due respect, but if you’re going to resort to correcting someone’s spelling to make your point, be sure you’re clear on the difference between “your” and “you’re” first.

“But if your going to make a wild eyed claim about how motor fuel tax refunds at the lake effects my constituents, I’m going to call you out for not knowing what your talking about. ”

39 minutes ago

And then there was more pearl clutching about language from right wingnut sycophants.

To quote Blue Girl’s email tag:

If you can’t use profanity to describe an obscenity, when the fuck can you use it?  –Me

And the final response from Blue Girl:

Tammy Booth

Sorry to keep you all waiting…I had to feed my family.

Where is the line? No, a kid with a few tomato plants shouldn’t have to be encumbered with regulations, but a person with a 30-acre truck-garden shouldn’t be able to duck their responsibility. The taxes on fuel pay for our roads and the state patrol.

For the record, I don’t just read the papers, I read the bills, too. I also know which ones are strikingly similar to bills in other states because they are based on ALEC model legislation.

I’m concerned about the schools and the roadways that will deteriorate, thanks to the tax cut bill that passed over the Governor’s veto a couple of weeks ago, and the marina fuel tax cut just compounds that problem. I’m worried about the hospital in Bethany staying open. I’m worried about the school in Cainsville staying open. I’m worried about adequate law enforcement and all those trappings of civilization that are paid for with tax dollars.

Mr. Guernsey conveniently overlooked the key word in my tax cut query…”appreciable” and came back with his comment that folks making as little as $9000 would get a tax cut – yes, that is true. I am not math challenged, so I understand that the tax cut that someone who earns so little will get will not even amount to a tank of gas or couple of days worth of groceries. While their communities crumble. It makes no sense.

2 minutes ago

“Thanks for taking the bait tho — I really didn’t expect you to.”

You don’t tug on Superman’s cape, you don’t spit into the wind, you don’t pull the mask off that old Lane Ranger, and you don’t mess around with Blue Girl.

Heh. Don’t you just love social media?  

This month, at the Missouri Ethics Commission:

C071378: Citizens For Guernsey

Po Box 401 Committee Type: Candidate

Bethany Mo 64424 Party Affiliation: Republican

[….] Established Date: 12/17/2007

  Termination Date:

Information Reported On: 2014 – January Quarterly Report

Beginning Money on Hand $108,692.46

Monetary Receipts + $10,800.00

Monetary Expenditures – $9,610.40

Contributions Made – $0.00

Other Disbursements – $0.00

Subtotal     $1,189.60

Ending Money On Hand   $109,882.06

[emphasis added]

Guernsey decides not to seek re-election, Senate seat

Posted: Friday, January 31, 2014 12:00 pm | Updated: 1:43 pm, Fri Jan 31, 2014.

By Ray Scherer St. Joseph News-Press |

State Rep. Casey Guernsey announced Friday morning that he has decided not to pursue the Missouri Senate 12th District seat in this year’s election. Not will he seek re-election for his House seat.

The 33-year-old Mr. Guernsey – a Bethany Republican serving a third term representing the Missouri House Second District — told the News-Press that he reached the decision this week….

And he just paid for a new license plate.

Previously:

M – I – Z, boo… (November 2, 2013)

M – I – Z, boo… part 2 (November 5, 2013)

This could explain why they keep voting for the same tenther bills every session (December 14, 2013)

At about this time last year, 20 six and seven year old children along with 6 adult school staff members were murdered in the town of Sandy Hook elementary school by the mentally disturbed son of a Connecticut gun lover – whose last gift to her overtly troubled son was a check intended for the purchase of a CZ 83 pistol. As you might expect, the media has observed this sad anniversary with numerous stories evaluating the impact of that event from every possible perspective.

We’ve learned in last several days that since Sandy Hook at least 194 more children under twelve have died as a result of gun violence. We’ve learned that gun control advocates are still out there, if somewhat disheartened by the grip that the gun lobby has on the political process. And we’ve certainly learned that there are no limits to the outrageous lengths that the gun lobby will go to to limit reform, including claiming that it’s not guns that kill people, but gun laws.

Our state legislators in Missouri have mostly, with a few notable, predominantly Democratic exceptions, embraced the latter attitude. As Michael Bersin has documented here, here and here, the usual suspects are busy filing bills for the upcoming legislative session that are designed to turn Missouri into a facsimile of a glorified wild west where rugged men hold sway by virtue of their guns. There is, it’s true, HB1172, which attempts to mitigate the effect of a “stand your ground” law – but which hasn’t a prayer of a chance of passing in a legislature where guns are symbols of resistance against a world changing in ways that seems to upset a majority of white, male Missourians.

So what’s going on? How can hunters and sane gun owners object to laws that keep guns out of the hands of the Adam Lanzas of the world? How can sane folks in general want to send their kids to schools where teachers, janitors, and what-have-you, are toting guns in order to “protect” the students? What normal person wants to be confronted by gun-slinging hotheads at Starbucks when we go for Saturday coffee? And what kind of idiots think we have to resort to silly and unconstitutional “tenther” strategies for no reason other than to insure just these types of outcomes?

Last night on PBS I saw a Bill Moyers’ interview (available here in video or transcript) with cultural historian Richard Slotkin that suggests some answers to similar questions about the irrational hold gun mythology has on the psyche of some Americans. Slotkin, who has specialized in exploring the roots of violence in America, makes many excellent points, but I was especially taken with his taxonomy of gun supporters:

Well, I think the extreme gun rights position, so called, some once called it “gun-damentalism” connects on a kind of spectrum to more normative attitudes. You have, as I said, reasonable gun owners. Then you have the American consumer. The American consumer looks at the gun as it’s a piece of property. The American consumer wants to use his property without restraint, wants to throw his plastic water bottle wherever he pleases, wants to drive a gas-guzzler, wants to play his boom box loud.

Which is a crude way to put it, and yet I think there’s a lot to that. Nobody wants to be bothered registering their weapons. Take it a level down from that or level further out from that, there’s an ideological level which really kicks in around the time of the Reagan presidency in which gun rights is a very powerful symbol for the deregulation of everything. If you can deregulate that, you can deregulate anything.

And then the last level is what I’d call the paranoid level, the people who think that they have a Second Amendment right to resist Obamacare– that the constitution protects their right to resist the government, that that’s what the Second Amendment is about.

And that’s dangerous stupidity and nonsense. But it uses the language of liberty and rights that we’re used to thinking of in other contexts. And if you think of all of the rights in the Bill of Rights, haven’t they been extended and expanded over the years? Why not Second Amendment rights as well?

And that’s the level at which it gets pernicious. But their appeal, their ability to control the debate, I think, comes because their position coincides with the interest of the Reaganite ideologue who doesn’t want to regulate anything and the consumer who simply doesn’t want to be bothered.

Sounds about right to me. Picture my favorite paranoid bullyboy, GOP State Senator Brian Neives, for instance, or the currently infamous State Rep. Casey Guernsey (R-2), both of whom have prominently employed massively overblown, faux-heroic freedom and guns rhetoric, when you consider this further comment by Slotkin on the topic of just what kind of person it is who makes up the more deluded and paranoid rump of the anti-gun control agitators:

…  I’ve always felt that it has something to do, in many cases, with a sense of lost privilege, that men and white men in the society feel their position to be imperiled and their status called into question. And one way to deal with an attack on your status in our society is to strike out violently.

The world is changing fast. Thirteen states have legalized gay marriage. We have a black president; we may very well have a woman president soon. After years of right wing and corporate resistance, we have actually done something to bring our country more in line with other industrialized nations as far as healthcare goes. Social precepts that were valid seemingly just yesterday are now in doubt. Do you wonder why those who depend on a vanishing status quo to preserve their sense of order and privilege are responding in what seems to the rest of us to be a disproportionate, even deranged manner? What we can know for sure is that we’d all better be very concerned about how these frightened and rage-filled individuals are fetishising guns in the process of acting out against their fears of social displacement.

Maybe it’s a memory thing.

This all came about because someone driving a vehicle with an R-3 license plate supposedly cut off someone else in traffic exiting the Missouri-Tennessee football game. Yes, that was a memorable football game. In the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

Bill McClellan: Being unfair to Rep. Guernsey

….About 4:30 last Friday afternoon, Guernsey finally returned my call. He seemed puzzled that there was a complaint about his plates. He said his plates were R-2, just as they should be. He offered to send me a photo. I asked when he got the plates. He seemed bothered by the question. He said he couldn’t remember. Then he got angry.

He called this newspaper “a despicable rag.” He wanted to know who my boss was. He was going to talk to him. He did….

[….]

….Monday I called the Department of Revenue. I asked when Guernsey got his R-2 plates. He picked them up Friday afternoon about 4, a woman said. How strange. Half an hour later, he called me and couldn’t remember when he got them….

It’s going to be a memorable legislative session. I can feel it in my bones.

Or maybe it’s just the cold.

Yesterday, at the Missouri Ethics Commission:

C071378 08/15/2013 CITIZENS FOR GUERNSEY Casey Guernsey 2602 E Main Street Bethany MO 64424 State of Missouri MO State Representative 8/13/2013 $100,000.00

[emphasis added]

Ah, Representative Casey Guernsey (r) is running for the state senate:

C071378: Citizens For Guernsey

Po Box 401 Committee Type: Candidate

Bethany Mo 64424 Party Affiliation: Republican

[….] Established Date: 12/17/2007

[….]

Election History

Election Year Primary Outcome General Outcome Political Office

2014 State Senator District 12

[….]

We could expect more legislation like this?:

HB 46: they need to prevent the government from spying on us through our toasters, also, too (December 5, 2012)

HB 46: twiddling while Rome burns (April 6, 2013)

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.  

Previously:

HB 46: they need to prevent the government from spying on us through our toasters, also, too

Send in the drones clowns. There are priorities and then there are priorities. A bill, third read and passed on Thursday:

FIRST REGULAR SESSION

[PERFECTED]

HOUSE COMMITTEE SUBSTITUTE FOR

HOUSE BILL NO. 46

97TH GENERAL ASSEMBLY

0371H.02P       D. ADAM CRUMBLISS, Chief Clerk

AN ACT

To amend chapter 305, RSMo, by adding thereto four new sections relating to aerial surveillance, with an emergency clause.

Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the state of Missouri, as follows:

           Section A. Chapter 305, RSMo, is amended by adding thereto four new sections, to be known as sections 305.635, 305.637, 305.639, and 305.641, to read as follows:

           305.635. 1. Sections 305.635 to 305.641 shall be known and may be cited as the “Preserving Freedom from Unwarranted Surveillance Act”.

           2. As used in sections 305.635 to 305.641, the following terms shall mean:

           (1) “Drone”, any powered, aerial vehicle that:

           (a) Does not carry a human operator;

           (b) Uses aerodynamic forces to provide vehicle lift;

           (c) Can fly autonomously or be piloted remotely;

           (d) Can be expendable or recoverable; and

           (e) Can carry a lethal or non-lethal payload.

           (2) “Unmanned aircraft”, an aircraft that is operated without the possibility of direct human intervention from within or on the aircraft.

           (3) “Manned Aircraft”, an aircraft that is operated by a human on board the aircraft.

           (4) “Model aircraft”, an unmanned aircraft that is:

           (a) Capable of sustained flight in the atmosphere;

           (b) Flown within visual line of sight of the person remotely operating the aircraft; and

           (c) Flown for hobby or recreational purposes.

           (5) “Law enforcement agency”, any state, county, or municipal law enforcement agency in the state. The term law enforcement agency shall not include the Missouri department of corrections, or any state, county, or municipal fire department.

           305.637. 1. No person, entity, or state agency shall use a manned aircraft, drone, or unmanned aircraft to gather evidence or other information pertaining to criminal conduct or conduct in violation of a statute or regulation except to the extent authorized in a warrant.

           2. No person, entity, or state agency shall use a manned aircraft, drone, or unmanned aircraft to conduct surveillance or observation under the doctrine of open fields of any individual, property owned by an individual, farm, or agricultural industry without the consent of that individual, property owner, farm or agricultural industry.

           3. No person, group of persons, entity, or organization, including, but not limited to, journalists, reporters, or news organizations, shall use a drone or other unmanned aircraft to conduct surveillance of any individual or property owned by an individual or business without the consent of that individual or property owner.

           305.639. 1. This act does not prohibit the use of a manned aircraft, drone, or unmanned aircraft by:

           (1) A law enforcement agency when exigent circumstances exist. For the purposes of this section, exigent circumstances exist if a law enforcement agency possesses reasonable suspicion that, under particular circumstances, swift action to prevent imminent danger to life is necessary; or

           (2) A Missouri-based higher education institution conducting educational, research, or training programs within the scope of its mission, grant requirements, curriculum or collaboration with the United States Department of Defense.

           2. This act does not prohibit the use of a model aircraft.

           305.641. 1. Any aggrieved party may in a civil action obtain all appropriate relief to prevent or remedy a violation of this act.

           2. No information obtained or collected in violation of this act may be admissible as evidence in a criminal proceeding in any court of law in the state or in an administrative hearing.

           3. Sovereign immunity for the state of Missouri is waived for any civil action resulting from a violation of sections 305.635 to 305.641.

           Section B. Because of the need to protect Missourians from invasions of privacy in the state, section A of this act is deemed necessary for the immediate preservation of the public health, welfare, peace and safety, and is hereby declared to be an emergency act within the meaning of the constitution, and section A of this act shall be in full force and effect July 1, 2013, or upon its passage and approval, whichever later occurs.

[emphasis in original]

Really. All the black helicopters need when they start identifying people for the big round up into FEMA reeducation camps are those Gadsden flag license plates.

Who voted for this paranoid fantasy?:

JOURNAL OF THE HOUSE [pdf]

First Regular Session, 97th GENERAL ASSEMBLY

FORTY-SIXTH DAY, THURSDAY, APRIL 4, 2013

[….]

On motion of Representative Guernsey, HCS HB 46 was read the third time and passed by

the following vote:

AYES: 087

Allen Anderson Bahr Barnes Bernskoetter

Berry Brattin Burlison Cierpiot Conway 104

Cookson Cornejo Crawford Curtman Davis

Dohrman Dugger Ellington Elmer Entlicher

Fitzpatrick Fitzwater Flanigan Fraker Franklin

Frederick Funderburk Gatschenberger Gosen Guernsey

Haefner Hansen Hicks Hinson Hoskins

Hough Houghton Hurst Johnson Jones 50

Keeney Kelley 127 Koenig Kolkmeyer Korman

Lair Lant Leara Lichtenegger Love

Lynch McGaugh Messenger Morris Muntzel

Neth Parkinson Pfautsch Pike Pogue

Rehder Reiboldt Remole Rhoads Richardson

Riddle Ross Rowland Scharnhorst Schatz

Schieffer Shull Shumake Smith 85 Solon

Sommer Spencer Stream Swan Thomson

Torpey Walker Wieland Wilson Wood

Zerr Mr Speaker

NOES: 066

Anders Austin Black Burns Butler

Carpenter Colona Conway 10 Cox Cross

Curtis Dunn Ellinger Engler English

Englund Fowler Frame Gannon Gardner

Haahr Harris Higdon Hodges Hubbard

Hummel Justus Kelly 45 Kirkton Kratky

LaFaver Lauer Marshall May Mayfield

McCaherty McCann Beatty McDonald McManus McNeil

Meredith Miller Mims Mitten Montecillo

Morgan Neely Newman Nichols Norr

Otto Pace Phillips Pierson Rizzo

Roorda Rowden Runions Schieber Schupp

Swearingen Walton Gray Webb Webber White

Wright

Medicaid or jobs anyone?

 If guns are the answer and not the problem, as the NRA set claims, Missouri ought to be a very safe state with low rates of gun violence. A quick and dirty review of current Missouri legislation shows a very gun-friendly environment:

— Guns can be carried openly except in a few specified locations (e.g., churches, airports, polling places, etc.) where they are prohibited.

— Individuals 21 and older are permitted to carry concealed handguns in the glove compartment of their cars.

— Local jurisdictions are forbidden to enact gun laws that are stricter than those enacted by the state.

— Missouri has a “castle law” that permits individuals to shoot first and think later if they believe themselves to be threatened within the confines of their home or their car.

— No categories of guns (e.g., assault weapons) are prohibited, there is no waiting period to purchase a gun, nor do guns need to be registered.

Since the state is already so permissive in regard to gun ownership, many state GOP politicians have had to go the extra mile into crazyland in order to show their contempt for those of us who believe in the rule of law rather than force and would like to see some regulation of deadly weapons. In 2013 alone lawmakers have proposed the following:

— GOP Mike Leara (Dist. 96) introduced legislation that would imprison fellow legislators for attempting to introduce gun safety legislation.

— GOP Rep. Casey Guernsey (Dist. 2) put forward a bill that would make it illegal for any elected official to carry out provisions of federal gun safety legislation, killing two birds with one stone – gun safety and promoting the spurious tenther nullification drivel promoted by sour grapes GOPers who want to be able to nullify democracy by evading laws they don’t like.

— GOP Rep. Wanda Brown (Dist. 116) has offered SB 639 which would prohibit doctors and other health care professionals from asking patients (even those suffering from gun-shot wounds) about firearm ownership or keeping such information in medical records. It also prohibits school employees from asking students about guns in their homes.

So what has all this guns are good, regulation bad, furor done for Missouri? Take a look at the map below that shows the states with the most gun violence:

Makes you think, doesn’t it? Looks like the states that have a no-holds barred approach to gun ownership have much higher rates of gun violence than other states. That includes Missouri which, you will note, ranks in the top ten states for gun violence. No wonder the NRA has to resort to the tin-foil hat, black-helicopter stuff to rally the faithful and keep the gun industry mollified. When the truth doesn’t work for you, the bigger the lie, the better.

Addendum:  What is it about the GOP that they think its a good thing to squelch information and keep folks in the dark? You will notice that the chart above is based on information from the Centers for Disease Control – presumably information similar to the statistics Rep. Brown seeks to suppress with SB639 described above.

*Paragraph before addendum slightly edited for clarity.  

From the Missouri Department of Labor & Industrial Relations:

Prevailing Wage

Missouri’s Prevailing Wage Law establishes a minimum wage rate that must be paid to workers on public works construction projects in Missouri, such as bridges, roads, and government buildings. The prevailing wage rate differs by county and for different types of work.

The Prevailing Wage Law applies to all public works projects constructed by or on behalf of state and local public bodies.

[….]

It appears that a few folks in the General Assembly aren’t enamored with the prevailing wage. In the House:

HB 34

Establishes the School Construction Act which exempts construction and maintenance work done for certain school districts from the prevailing wage rate requirement upon the school board’s approval.

Sponsor: Guernsey, Casey (002)

Proposed Effective Date: 8/28/2013

LR Number: 372H.01I

Last Action: 12/03/2012 – Prefiled (H)

In the Senate:

SB 30 Repeals all of the prevailing wage laws

Sponsor: Brown

[….]

Last Action: 12/1/2012 – Prefiled

[….]

Current Bill Summary

SB 30 – This act repeals all of the prevailing wage laws.

Because building public works on the cheap will absolutely insure higher quality workmanship, right? Or maybe a much higher profit margin for someone who isn’t a worker?

Let’s work to make sure all workers in Missouri just get paid minimum wage. Then we can work to repeal the minimum wage. Utopia for right wingnuts!