On Friday night the Missouri Democratic Party held its Jefferson-Jackson Dinner at the Renaissance Grand Hotel in downtown St. Louis. There were over five hundred in attendance.

The ballroom before the start of the evening’s activities.

Senator Claire McCaskill (D) (center) at the pre-dinner reception.

@sarahfelts Sarah Felts

.@clairecmc: “We’ve got problems, but the problem isn’t teachers…The problem isn’t gov’t wotkers & it sure as hell is not their pensions.” 19 hours ago

@sarahfelts Sarah Felts

#MO Sen. @clairecmc on redistricting: “This state is not a 6-2 state & we’re gonna show everyone that in November.” 19 hours ago

Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan (D) and Senator Jon Tester (D-Montana), the keynote speaker.

@sarahfelts Sarah Felts

Sen. Tester, Senator from Montana & keynote speaker at JJ Dinner, gives a shout-out to the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. Amen! 19 hours ago

@BGinKC Blue Girl

John Tester gives good speech. I could vote for him, if I lived in Montana. #JeffersonJacksonDinner 19 hours ago

@sarahfelts Sarah Felts

Sen. Tester @ JJ Dinner: “On the debt-limit, we’re playing around with something that could put us into a severe depression.” 19 hours ago

Susan Montee, Chair of the Missouri Democratic Party (right).

Representative Wm. Lacy Clay (D), First Congressional District (left).

Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan and her spouse, Juan Carlos Antolinez.

@sarahfelts Sarah Felts

#MO Sec. of State @RobinCarnahan: “Democrats focus on people. That’s what we do… We know we have an obligation to take care of people.” 20 hours ago

Representative Russ Carnahan, Third Congressional District.

Susan Montee (center left) and Wisconsin State Senator Lena Taylor (D) (center right).

@sarahfelts Sarah Felts

WI State Sen. Lena Taylor addressing the JJ Dinner about the #WIunion fight. “We’re still kicking. Missouri – will you fight with us?” 20 hours ago

Missouri State Treasurer Clint Zweifel (D) (left).

Missouri State Treasurer Clint Zweifel addressing the audience.

@BGinKC Blue Girl

The crowd at #JeffersonJacksonDinner are on their feet for Jay Nixon and his veto of the GOP disenfranchise-Democratic-voters scheme. 20 hours ago

Governor Jay Nixon (D).

@BGinKC Blue Girl

“Attacking working families doesn’t create a single job.” Gov. JAY nixon 20 hours ago

@sarahfelts Sarah Felts

#MO Gov. Nixon @ JJ Dinner: “Elections matter. …We’re going to send our common-sense senator (@clairecmc) back to Washington to lead.” 20 hours ago

@sarahfelts Sarah Felts

#MO Gov. Jay Nixon @ JJ dinner: “I will keep opposing right-wing-extremists… They wanted ‘Right-to-Work’ & We. Said. No.” 20 hours ago

Governor Jay Nixon in the foyer after the dinner.

Friday in St. Louis a coalition of groups held a rally outside the offices of Senator Claire McCaskill (D) to express their concerns about proposed cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

During the rally representatives of the coalition met with Senator McCaskill. This group included the American Federation of Government Employees, the Mutual Of Omaha plan G, Missouri Jobs with Justice, Paraquad, Missouri Budget Project, Metropolitan Congregations United, GRO-Grass Roots Organizing, Missouri Health Care for All, and Missouri Pro-Vote.

Approximately two hundred people attended the rally.

@BGinKC Blue Girl

Lots of honking and waving, haven’t seen a single person flip us off. http://twitpic.com/5cygef

7 hours ago

@BGinKC Blue Girl

Props to StL…These folks over here know how to throw a protest rally. http://twitpic.com/5cyhzw

7 hours ago

Signing the petition.

Greeting sympathetic passers by.

Organized labor working for social justice.

The petition.

After their meeting with Senator McCaskill a representative of the coalition addressed the crowd outside the senator’s office.

From the Kansas City Board of Elections:

Election Summary Report

APRIL 5, 2011

SCHOOL AND SPECIAL ELECTION

Summary For Jurisdiction Wide , All Counters, All Races

Unofficial Results

KC QUESTION

Polling Absentee Total

Number of Precincts 133 133 133

Precincts Reporting 133 133 133 100.0 %

Total Votes 45818 2070 47888

YES 37838 1737 39575 82.64%

NO 7980 333 8313 17.36%

[emphasis added]

From the Platte County Board of Elections:

Election Summary Report

General Municipal Election

Summary For Presidential, All Counters, All Races

Platte County, MO

Unofficial (All Polls)

05 April 2011

Kansas City – Earnings Tax

Total

Number of Precincts 13

Precincts Reporting 13 100.0 %

Times Counted 7858/28939 27.2 %

Total Votes 7845

YES 5353 68.23%

NO 2492 31.77%

[emphasis added]

Cass County and Clay County results aren’t in yet.

Update: see comments.

St. Louis looks like a landslide, too:

Election Summary Report

General Municipal Election

St. Louis, Missouri

April 5, 2011

Summary For CITY WIDE, All Counters, All Races

Absentee and Partial Results

PROP E

Total

Number of Precincts 203

Precincts Reporting 133 65.5 %

Times Counted 27985/194640 14.4 %

Total Votes 27767

YES 24324 87.60%

NO 3443 12.40%

[emphasis added]

All those millions spent by a billionaire to make everyone else jump through hoops. To what end? Increase the bond interest rates for Missouri’s two largest cities?

“April 4, 1968 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. died while defending AFSCME sanitation workers in Memphis who were fighting for their right to collective bargaining. Today, public service workers are under attack again. It’s time for us to stand with the public service workers who stand on the frontlines.” So says the ad that is sitting on the left side of my screen as I write this.

‘We Are One’ rallies took place across the nation on Monday the fourth. About two hundred people showed up at the Communication Workers of America (CWA) hall near Westport Plaza in St. Louis County. Before the event kicked off, Carl Hayes, an IBEW member, told me that he’s always amazed when he hears workers “trash talking” about unions–maybe right before they go on a two week vacation, oblivious to the fact that two week vacations would never have become the norm were it not for unions.

See those Unite Here workers at the table on the left? Two years ago, I wrote about their struggle to form  a union at Lumiere casino:

Knowing how much a union would empower the workers, the company has used every tool at its disposal to try to make its employees forgo their right to organize.

Or to fire them if they wouldn’t.

Earlier, the union organizers had put out a bulletin–with pictures–showing thirty of the employees on the union committee. At many companies, doing this offers a modicum of protection for the committee members because the company can’t then claim when it fires someone that it didn’t even realize he was a union guy. Lumiere refused to play by these rules: so far it has fired nine of the thirty. Another has been suspended and still another has had his last warning. And Lumiere’s hardball tactics have had an effect, of course. Some people have stopped attending the union organizers’ meetings.

One of the key tactics companies use to get rid of pro-union employees is to use points against them. Points are black marks on employee records; workers can get points for being late, being absent frequently, or being written up for not doing their jobs well. (Anything over ten points at Lumiere is grounds for dismissal.)

The Unite Here folks tell me that their first contract is still being negotiated and because it isn’t yet final, the favoritism in the point system continues. An absence can be counted as a point, even if you have the flu. But whether or not that absence is actually chalked up against you is up to the bosses. Union members are more likely to get penalized for getting sick. Those workers need that union contract finalized.

After listening to some stirring speeches, the attendees hit the pavement. They walked half a mile to the Page Avenue overpass, carrying signs and chanting. Plenty of rush hour commuters had a chance to see them and some honked.

Along Fee Fee Road on the way to the Page overpass

Westbound traffic on Page

Standing on the overpass …

… letting commuters see why we’re there

Goose Wurst is seriously pissed off about the war on workers.

Mark McDonald chuckled, brave soul, when he told me that he longs for the good ole days when he was living paycheck to paycheck. He knows all about the redistribution of wealth  because these days, his paycheck is spent two weeks before he gets it.

Goose’s personal hero is John Ebeling, a CWA organizer who was willing to drive 81 miles to Des Loges to organize a two man printing shop.

I’ve never heard anyone do this convincing a job of explaining why every piddly-assed April election matters.

Think maybe the union diehards like Jake Zimmerman?

He was speaking at a ‘We Are One’ rally at the Communication Workers union hall in St. Louis County Monday afternoon. I’ll post pics and interviews from that event next.

The question remains, who’s bankrolling the bankrollers?

Previously:

Campaign Finance: Who is bankrolling the bankrollers? (March 10, 2011)

Campaign Finance: your Friday big bucks contribution dump (March 4, 2011)

Campaign Finance: opponents of the earnings tax in Kansas City get a lot of help (February 26, 2011)

Today, at the Missouri Ethics Commission:

CONTRIBUTION OF MORE THAN $5,000.00 RECEIVED BY ANY COMMITTEE FROM ANY SINGLE DONOR – TO BE FILED WITHIN 48 HOURS OF RECEIVING THE CONTRIBUTION

C091269 FREEDOM PAC 3/18/2011

American Democracy Alliance

1100 Main Street Suite 2600

Kansas City, MO 64105

3/17/2011

$100,000.00

[emphasis added]

At this rate billionaires are gonna become millionaires really soon.

And they complain about the earnings tax in Kansas City and St. Louis?

Previously:

Campaign Finance: your Friday big bucks contribution dump (March 4, 2011)

Campaign Finance: opponents of the earnings tax in Kansas City get a lot of help (February 26, 2011)

Today, at the Missouri Ethics Commission:

CONTRIBUTION OF MORE THAN $5,000.00 RECEIVED BY ANY COMMITTEE FROM ANY SINGLE DONOR – TO BE FILED WITHIN 48 HOURS OF RECEIVING THE CONTRIBUTION

C091269 FREEDOM PAC [pdf] 3/10/2011

American Democracy Alliance

1100 Main Street Suite 2600

Kansas City, MO 64105

3/10/2011

$100,000.00

[emphasis added]

The American Democracy Alliance? They appear to dump their money into right wingnut causes. Via the Missouri Secretary of State, their July 21, 2010 Annual Registration Report [pdf] lists a slightly different address:

1100 Main Street Suite 2700

Kansas City, MO 64105

[emphasis added]

So, who is bankrolling the bankrollers?

Any Missouri billionaires? Anyone? Anyone?

Ya gotta love some kangaroo courts. MORE conducted one on Saturday to try the banks that aren’t modifying mortgages, as they promised to do when they took all that bailout money. And the thing about good kangaroo courts is the way they play to the masses. This one did. It gave us righteous indignation mixed with comic relief. Beautiful.

The judge allowed the “prosecutor” to call six witnesses. The first was an “expert in economics”, who testified about the causes of the Great Recession. He said that until the mid eighties, the financial sector of our economy grew in tandem with every other sector of our economy. Our GDP relied on companies that actually made things, that hired people; and the financial sector grew at the same pace as those companies did. But starting with the Reagan era, that evenly paced growth has been out of whack. The financial sector has grown more than twice as much as other sectors. At the same time, jobs were being shipped overseas. Therefore, far too much of the growth of our economy has been concentrated in the financial sector of our market. As the competition in that sector intensified, the CEOs took more chances. They extended credit that should not have been offered; they created financial instruments that should not have existed.

In the forty years between World War II and the Reagan era, everybody’s income almost doubled; but since then, wealth has been increasingly concentrated in the hands of the top one percent of Americans. Meanwhile the middle class–seeing many of its jobs shipped overseas–has basically been deconstructed.

The prosecutor’s other five witnesses were homeowners, and these people were not playing a role, they were telling their all too real stories. Each one described the same basic pattern: once they began having trouble making payments, for whatever reason–because one witness had had to replace the entire plumbing system in an old house and then discovered additional costly problems with it;  or because another had lost his job; or because a couple had no health insurance and the wife developed major medical problems; or because a woman’s adjustable rate mortgage went from a monthly payment of $721 to $991 and then to $2100–as soon as those problems put people in need of refinancing or a mortgage adjustment, the vampire banks set about sucking as much blood as possible out of their victims, never mentioning that foreclosure was going to be the probable outcome.  The banks, counting on homeowners’ hopes of resolving the problems, extorted unjustified fees and continued teasing mortgage payments out of them–before finally dropping the foreclosure bomb.

Comic relief made it possible to listen to all this grim news. After each homeowner testified, the “defense attorney” smoking a humongous fake cigar, would ask a single question, something along the lines of: “And your husband lost his job because he’s a gambling addict, isn’t that true?” The defense offered two “witnesses”. One was an airhead who dropped out of cosmetology school and took a  job as a “stage three loan modification engineer”. Her main duty was to answer phones and pass angry homeowners to other “engineers”, who in turn passed them on to somebody  else.  The second witnss was a “bank official” who gave us plenty to boo and hoot about. There was lots of hot air about irresponsible homeowners who don’t know what it means to be accountable and much patting of his own back because he works so hard. (By the way, “When a man tells you that he got rich through hard work, ask him ‘Whose?'”–Don Marquis)

Much to the slick defense attorney’s chagrin, the jury, which was everybody in the audience, ruled against the banks. But how could they do otherwise, now that they had been informed, for example, that the banks–unlike us little people–pay practically no income taxes. The jury didn’t it that the banks promised to help distressed homeowners, as a condition of TARP money, and then took advantage of them instead. Let’s see now, how many of those CEOs have been sent to jail for their nefarious actions? Ah, but you know the answer.

Americans hate the big banks. And they should.

I talked to Jeff Ordower of MORE about the purpose of the People’s Hearing. It was, he said, to get the word out–Alvin Reid of the St. Louis American was filming, as was I–and thus to continue exerting pressure on Attorney General Koster to bring suit against banks for their misbehavior. Mary Boehm, who testified, tells me that the investigator from Koster’s office has called several times now but has not yet interviewed her husband and herself. A lawsuit charging Bank of America for its crimes against its customers would be welcome anytime, Mr. Koster. But preferably before all the homeowners seeking modifications die a natural death of old age. Just a suggestion: could you maybe aim for June?

Saturday, at the Missouri Ethics Commission:

A101422 02/19/2011 CITIZENS FOR A STRONGER ST LOUIS Civic Progress Action Committee 800 Market Street, Suite 1900 St Louis MO 63101 2/19/2011 $60,000.00

A101422 02/19/2011 CITIZENS FOR A STRONGER ST LOUIS Anheuser Busch Companies, Inc. One Busch Place St. Louis MO 63118 2/19/2011 $25,000.00

To think what else they could have done with the money if they didn’t have to spend it on this.

The vote to continue the earnings tax in St. Louis (as Proposition E) and Kansas City will be on the April ballot in those cities.

After this is over do you think anyone will buy Rex Sinquefield a beer?

Representative Jake Zimmerman (D-83) is a candidate for St. Louis County Assessor.

Yesterday, at the Missouri Ethics Commission:

C051130 02/11/2011 CITIZENS FOR JAKE ZIMMERMAN Sandy Rothschild & Associates 7751 Carondelet Ave. St Louis MO 63105 2/10/2011 $2,500.00

C051130 02/11/2011 CITIZENS FOR JAKE ZIMMERMAN Stone, Leyton & Gershman 7733 Forsyth Blvd. St Louis MO 63105 2/10/2011 $5,000.00

C051130 02/11/2011 CITIZENS FOR JAKE ZIMMERMAN AT&T Missouri Employee PAC One AT&T Center St Louis MO 63101 2/10/2011 $1,000.00

C051130 02/11/2011 CITIZENS FOR JAKE ZIMMERMAN Electrical Workers Voluntary Political 5850 Elizabeth Ave. St Louis MO 63110 2/11/2011 $1,000.00

C051130 02/11/2011 CITIZENS FOR JAKE ZIMMERMAN One Missouri Fund P.O. Box 16761 St Louis MO 63105 2/11/2011 $1,000.00

C051130 02/11/2011 CITIZENS FOR JAKE ZIMMERMAN Central St. Louis Co. Fire Fighers PAC 115 McMenamy Rd. St Peters MO 63376 2/11/2011 $600.00

C051130 02/11/2011 CITIZENS FOR JAKE ZIMMERMAN Professional Fire Fighters of Eastern MO Local 2665 PAC 115 McMenamy Rd. St Peters MO 63376 2/11/2011 $1,000.00

C051130 02/11/2011 CITIZENS FOR JAKE ZIMMERMAN McCulloch for Prosecutor Committee 928 Kimswick Manor Ln Ballwin MO 63011 2/11/2011 $5,000.00

C051130 02/11/2011 CITIZENS FOR JAKE ZIMMERMAN Kirsten Kaufman 41 Central Park West New York NY 10023 Homemaker 2/10/2011 $1,000.00

C051130 02/11/2011 CITIZENS FOR JAKE ZIMMERMAN Kenton Knickmeyer 10 Douglass Ln St Louis MO 63122 Attorney 2/10/2011 $1,000.00

C051130 02/11/2011 CITIZENS FOR JAKE ZIMMERMAN David Kaplan One PO Box Square Boston MA 02109 Attorney 2/10/2011 $1,000.00

C051130 02/11/2011 CITIZENS FOR JAKE ZIMMERMAN Terry Bloomberg 47 Frontenac Estates Dr St Louis MO 63131 Developmental Child Care 2/11/2011 $2,500.00

C051130 02/11/2011 CITIZENS FOR JAKE ZIMMERMAN Janet ONeal 2214 Lakewood Dr. Cape Girardeau MO 63701 Homemaker 2/11/2011 $2,400.00

C051130 02/11/2011 CITIZENS FOR JAKE ZIMMERMAN Stephanie Peterson 129 Lodge Creek Circle Charlottesville VA 22903 Homemaker 2/11/2011 $1,000.00

C051130 02/11/2011 CITIZENS FOR JAKE ZIMMERMAN Patricia Wolkowitz 11581 New London Dr St Louis MO 63141 Retired 2/11/2011 $2,500.00

C051130 02/11/2011 CITIZENS FOR JAKE ZIMMERMAN Kenneth Kranzberg 50 Picardy Ln St Louis MO 63124 Kranson Industries 2/11/2011 $2,000.00

C051130 02/11/2011 CITIZENS FOR JAKE ZIMMERMAN Robert Blitz 61 Portland Dr. Saint Louis MO 63131 Attorney 2/11/2011 $2,500.00

[emphasis added]

That’s $33,000.00 if anyone wants to keep track.