Previously:
HB 826: the wrath of grapes (February 4, 2015)
HB 826 : the wrath of grapes – part 2 (February 6, 2015)
Evidently Representative Joe Don McGaugh (r) reads Show Me Progress, but he doesn’t appear to understand how this Internets blog thing works. Last night he sent a follow up e-mail to the individual who made an inquiry about HB 826 (again, forwarded to us from the individual who it was addressed to):
Subject: Re: HB 826
Date: 2/6/15 7:02:50 PM
From: “JoeDon McGaugh” JoeDon.McGaugh@house.mo.gov
To: [….]Next time you are going to publish our emails let me know and I will give you something good to drive traffic to your site.
Have a good weekend.
JDM
That seems to be a might testy.
Here’s the thing – Show Me Progress is not the blog or “site” of the individual who engaged Representative McGaugh (r). Show Me Progress does have registered users who can post (if they conform to our user guidelines) to this site – their posts usually appear in a column on the right. On rare occasions their posts may be promoted to the front page. If this occurs that still does not make it their site. Even then, in this particular instance, the individual who engaged Representative McGaugh (r) did not post the exchange here. This person did forward the e-mails to us and we in turn wrote a post (as we do) and posted it to our site.
The registered user model is quite common on the Internets. For example, the individual who engaged Representative McGaugh (r) did post the same e-mail exchange at the Great Orange Satan, a national blog:
Fri Feb 06, 2015 at 01:04 PM PST
A report from a Laboratory of Democracy: Missouri
by MoDem[….]
My spouse of thirty-two years is not a “verified United States citizen.” I was interested in knowing why this representative wants to prevent my spouse from ever producing wine or harvesting grapes to produce wine.
I had to find out.
[….]
One might note that even though the individual actively posted as a registered user to that national blog it is still not their “site”.
Our Missouri elected representatives constantly engage with the people of this state. That’s as it should be. In this day and age an elected official who expects that any exchange with a citizen on a public matter will not become public is naive. Representative McGaugh tapped “send” more than once on e-mails addressed to a citizen inquiring about a public issue. It’s the twenty-first century.
Finally, Representative McGaugh (r) still doesn’t appear too concerned about the effect of sloppy language in legislation. That inexact language in the bill was the point of the original post. The California egg stuff revealed by Representative McGaugh (r) in the e-mail exchanges was just a bonus.