“….Social change is not neatly packaged into four and eight year increments.  The fact that, the, the fact that Jolie Justus moved the mountain is proof that mountains can be moved….”

Previously:

That’s Liza with a Z, not Lisa with an S… (May 18, 2013)

Truman Days in Jackson County – 2013 (May 18, 2013)

Truman Days 2013 – Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D) – Breakfast Keynote – May 18, 2013 (May 19, 2013)

Attorney General Chris Koster (D) at the annual Truman Days dinner sponsored by the

Jackson County Democratic Committee in Kansas City on May 18, 2013.

Attorney General Chris Koster (D) spoke at the Jackson County Democratic Committee’s Truman Days dinner in Kansas City on Saturday night. He spoke on Senator Jolie Justus (D) and the Missouri Nondiscrimination Act:

Attorney General Chris Koster (D):  [on cell phone] Are you there? All right.

So, when I learned that, uh, Senator [Jolie] Justus was not gonna be in attendance tonight because she is on her way to, I think, Turkey,  I stepped outside and I called her and I said, Oh my gosh, where are you, my speech is about you. [laughter] And, uh, so with the help of Jeremy LaFaver, uh, we called Jolie and Jolie is right there. The telephone is one, she can hear us. [laughter] So, good evening, it’s, it’s great to be [cheers, applause]…

First of all, it’s great to be back with Kansas City’s Democrats. Uh, where are my Cass County people? [cheers] All right. An unheralded minority. [laughter]

Well, another legislative session is behind us, has come and gone. And it is my ninth, believe it or not, in Jefferson City. And over time you learn the rhythms of the legislative session. First, what happens is that it appears that the world is going to come to an end as we know it. [laughter] Threats and compromises lead to frustration. But occasional victories do occur. And then, mercifully, at six p.m. on the first Friday after the second Monday in May, it all suddenly stops. We’d all shake hands and shake our heads, we’d go home to different town across this great state, and in the days that followed we asked ourselves whether Missouri is a better place for our efforts.

Occasionally there are legislative accomplishments that end with important laws, and front page stories in the Kansas City Star, and bill signings in the Governor’s office, and conversations in barber shops across Missouri about how much better off or worse off we are because of those damn politicians. [laughter]  But there are other kinds of legislative accomplishments that go largely unnoticed. They end with no new law being passed, no entry in the statute books, or water cooler debate. And while historically and culturally important, they are, none the less, completely missed by this morning’s [Kansas City] Star and nearly every other news outlet in Missouri. Yet because of these unnoticed accomplishments we ask, when we ask ourselves whether Missouri is a better place for our efforts our answer is a resounding yes.

I swear to you on the twenty years of my life that I have dedicated to this profession one of those largely unnoticed acts that ranks among the most impressive legislative accomplishments that I have ever seen occurred last night just before dinner. And I want to take a minute with you tonight to respect it. Last night at five forty-five p.m.  with fifteen minutes left in the legislative, legislative session of two thousand and thirteen Senator Jolie Justus passed the Missouri Nondiscrimination Act. [applause, cheers] It was an attempt to make it illegal to fire someone simply because they are gay, to make it illegal to refuse to rent a hotel room to someone simply because they are gay. She passed it through the floor of the Missouri Senate. Unfortunately there was not time left to pass it through the House floor on the other side of the Capitol and so it did not become law. But the fact that here, in our home of Missouri, such a measure was taken up in an overwhelmingly Republican Senate and passed by a vote of nineteen to eleven is deserving of extraordinary respect and recognition.  The vote itself has been years in the making. And the efforts of Senator Joan Bray should not go unrecognized tonight. [applause]

The Missouri Nondiscrimination Act, or MONA as it is called, has been filed every year for over a decade. For many years the legislature would not even give it a committee hearing. Then, about five years ago the Senate and the House began giving the bill committee hearings, but never considered it, passing it, never considered passing it out of committee or bringing it to the floor.

Last night in the Missouri Senate was the first time that MONA was ever given serous floor time in either chamber, the first time it was ever given a recorded vote in either chamber, and the first time it was ever passed in either chamber.  Every Democrat in the Senate voted in favor of it.  And so to Senators [applause]… And so to Senators Justus, Chappelle-Nadal, Curls, Holsman, Keaveny, LeVota, McKenna, Nasheed, Sifton and Walsh we say thank you. [applause, cheers]  And to nine Republicans, Senators Dempsey, Kehoe, Parson, Pearce, Romine, Sater, Schaaf, Silvey and Wallingford we say thank you as well. [applause]

The importance of human relationships in politics never ever ceases to awe me. If you look at the seating chart of the floor of the Missouri Senate you will notice that Republican Senators Sater, Pierce, Wallingford and Dempsey all sit in close proximity to Senator Justus. And as someone who spent four years on that floor I can attest to you that the respect and cooperation that comes from mere proximity is strong.

Other stories of bipartisan relationships are every bit as important but will not ever be found in the recorded vote. Senator Ed Emery, an opponent of the bill who could have ended the bill’s chances with the shortest filibusters allowed the measure to be brought to a vote.  Senator Ron Richard, the majority floor leader and an opponent of the bill, twice gave the bill valuable floor time on the last critical day of session.  And Senator Brad Lager, another opponent of the bill, allowed his own bill, his own piece of legislation, to be overlaid with Senator Justus’ substitute language so that a measure to grant equality in hiring and housing could be given a chance.

All of these things, seen and unseen, happened because of Senator Jolie Justus and the other members of the Democratic caucus, because of the relationships that they have forged, and ultimately, because of the inherent dignity of their cause.

The Democratic caucus teases me sometimes because as an old timer and an alumnus of the Missouri Senate I place undue emphasis on each of them referring to one another in, at least in formal settings and public settings, by their formal, formal titles. They are Senators. They should refer to one another as such.  They represent the hopes and aspirations of hundreds of thousands of people. And yesterday afternoon under the leadership of an extraordinary woman they lived up to the titles we have given them.

About five years ago, I was at Black Tie, which is a gay and lesbian dinner held every year in Springfield, Missouri. And one of the things in my opinion that makes Black Tie sort of a unique event is that, unlike the HRC annual dinner in St. Louis or even the Victory Fund brunch here in Kansas City, which are both LGBT events, the Black Tie dinner has a surprisingly high number of straight attendees every year from the general community, and the business community and even actually from the religious community. Which when you consider that the dinner is held in Springfield, Missouri [laughter], I think actually breaks down stereotypes, certain stereotypes, in a very positive way.

Anyway, here’s what struck me about this dinner five years ago. About half way through the night the master of ceremonies of the event asked everyone who was gay in the room to stand, which is how I knew that there were a lot of straight people in the room. [laughter] And then the MC asked all the people who were standing to give what essentially became a standing ovation to all of the straight allies who were there sharing the dinner with them that night. And it really, it really hit me. And it’s something that I’ve remembered in kind of profound way for the last five years, which is this concept of straight allies and the fact that I, along with all of other people who were there that night, were being thanked for being one of them.  First of all, not that’s its really that important, I really appreciated being thanked.  Second, this term straight ally made me realize, maybe for the first time, that I was being thanked by the LGBT community for being more than an attendee, more than a sympathizer or a friend, I was being thanked for being something called a straight ally. And that gratitude, that acknowledgement that our effort as straight allies is a critical component to this progress, which was an important moment for me as a person, I suppose also as a political figure too, but more importantly for me as a person.

Jolie Justus has been a Senator on behalf of the State of Missouri for seven years.  She is a woman in an institution that is predominantly male. She is gay in a legislative body that is thirty three thirty-fourths straight. [laughter]  She is the first openly gay member of the Missouri Senate. What happened last night is evidence that sometimes the most impressive legislative work is the quiet and slow procession of a river that over time can move shorelines of prejudice. What happened last night was the result of woman’s grace and patience and gentle advocacy that was so subtle that few even knew over those seven years that it was occurring.  What happened last night was that for the first time straight allies, many of whom were Republicans, came out of their straight ally closets and were counted when they did not have to be.  [applause]

As though we needed another example of the bad and unintended consequences of term limits we can add this to the mounting litany, profound social change does not occur on a legislative calendar.  Social change is not neatly packaged into four and eight year increments. The fact that, the, the fact that Jolie Justus moved the mountain is proof that mountains can be moved.  The fact that term limits may rob this woman of a chance to complete our journey together, that we are more likely to lose our way without her than with her, is just the one hundredth reason why this term limits law should change. [applause]

But that is for another day.  For tonight let me just say that Senator Jolie Justus, in her seven years of representing us, has given Democrats and Missourians a reason to believe that our government can work.

Thank you. [applause]

That’s the kind of speech a governor makes.

Previously:

Lilly Ledbetter – Politics and Social Justice – April 3, 2013 (April 4, 2013)

Senator Jolie Justus (D) on the campus of the University of Central Missouri in Warrensburg on April 4, 2013.

Yesterday evening Missouri Senator Jolie Justus (D) spoke on the campus of the University of Central Missouri in Warrensburg as part of Politics and Social Justice Week:

Additional video segments below the fold:

Missouri State Senator Jolie Justus (D-10) informs us about Senator David Pearce’s (r-31) bus simulator skills via a Twitter post:

Just drove a bus thx to the KCATA training simulator. Senator Pearce crashed his bus – twice! http://yfrog.com/17hgxj about 1 hour ago from Tweetie

An apt metaphor for the Missouri republican party – they’ve crashed the bus.

As for Senator Pearce, I hope he didn’t hit any deer.

Two weeks ago, of course, nobody knew that this year’s anti-abortion joke of a bill would get shot down in the House. So last week, pro-choice senators had to be thinking, some option that was they were being offered: agree to a law that forces medical professionals to lie to patients seeking abortions or stand by and watch a much worse law passed.

And by “much worse law”, I’m not even referring to that godawful grotesquerie the House sent over containing a provision making it a felony to coerce a woman to have an abortion. As I’ve pointed out before:

When “Honey, I think you should have an abortion” becomes a felony, we might as well move to Afghanistan.

Republican senators, being, on the whole, less wild eyed than their House counterparts, knew that the “Freedom of speech? We don’t need no stinkin’ freedom of speech” coercion provision wasn’t going to fly. They’d have needed 18 votes to move the previous question (that is, force a vote) and shove it by the Democrats. But even with 23 Rs to 11 Ds in the Senate, the votes weren’t there.

So Democrats in the Senate knew the coercion provision was off the table. Even if it hadn’t faced a Nixon veto, the Supreme Court would have deep sixed it. No, the choice Democrats faced was between two bills that both required:

• that a woman seeking an abortion come in on two separate days, first to be informed of the risks and then to receive the abortion
• that professionals working in abortion clinics lie to patients about the possible effects of abortion.

Both bills required that women be warned they would face certain psychological consequences, but that information is based on junk science. True, the claims were printed in reputable journals, but that doesn’t make them credible:

The articles, filled with ersatz science, are indeed printed in respected journals. That’s because such journals take a few articles on controversial topics, knowing that the peer review process will reveal them to be full of holes. It’s a process of separating the wheat from the chaff. The Elliot Institute [an anti-abortion group] lies, in effect, when it pretends its claims are wheat, not chaff.

You might think that such discredited information could be successfully challenged in court, but you would be wrong. Senator Jolie Justus, D-Kansas City, and Senator Joan Bray, D-St. Louis, were in touch with litigators at the national offices of Planned Parenthood and NARAL, who told them that such provisions had been upheld in legal challenges elsewhere in the country. Furthermore, the Missouri 8th Circuit has proven hostile to challenges to the anti-abortion laws passed by Republicans.

It was obvious, then, that pro-choicers were going to have to swallow a bitter pill and vote for the lesser of two evils. Although the differences in the two bills Democrats faced look small, they matter. As Justus put it, it’s the difference between being kneecapped and having your head shot off. Fortunately for the pro-choice camp, the Republicans preferred to offer something they could pass without having to move the previous question. They had the votes to pass either version, but they’d have had to PQ Democrats on the more draconian one, a move they’re loath to employ.

So, what were the differences?

• The milder version would have exempted the Columbia abortion clinic for three years from the new requirement that a patient be at the clinic in person to receive the medical warnings. If she doesn’t live in Columbia, that would necessitate two trips or two days in the city–a hardship for many women seeking abortion. Justus pointed out to me that the Republican senators offered this provision in order to make the bill more palatable.
• The milder version didn’t require that the false information be dispensed by a doctor. It could be given to patients by any qualified medical professional. It would have been economically impractical for abortion clinics to pay a doctor to be on the premises to give out the information and then to return 24 hours later (because of the mandatory waiting period) to perform the abortion.
• The milder version said that the information offered in the informed consent sessions had to be “medically accurate.” With Margaret Donnelly heading the Department of Health and Senior Services, believe it: that provision would have been enforced.

Pro-choice senators voted for the bad, but less onerous, version–though not before Bray reamed out Republicans. (If you didn’t read about it, treat yourself to some red meat.)

And the hotheads in the House blew their top that their precious coercion nonsense had evaporated and that Columbia was getting a three year reprieve. There was talk in the hallways about how the Senate version had been written by ACLU lawyers! House anti-abortionists refused to vote for it, so the whole hoopla ended up being moot for another year.

The only people who breathed a sigh of relief were the pro-choicers and, oddly enough, the people on the pro-abortion side who make their living working on this issue. As Justus pointed out, there are more than sixty anti-abortion laws on the Missouri books, forty of them passed since 2000. Unless Roe is overturned, pretty much everything that can be done to put up barriers to abortion has been done. But those folks making their living off of the quarrel don’t want to lose their livelihoods. It’s a cottage industry that is working very hard to perpetuate itself.

So they’ll be back, come January. And this year’s sparring was, what?, round nine of a fight that could go past fifteen rounds. See you next year for round ten.

Uh-oh. Your organization’s got trouble when an anti-choice senator says this about you:

“I wouldn’t spit on Missouri Right to Life if they were on fire,” the usually affable Griesheimer said. “They are a bunch of liars who don’t care about anything but themselves.”

Hello. What’s going on? I mean, aside from the fact that abortion isn’t the obsession it used to be with some voters before the economy tanked.

What’s going on is that Missouri Right to Life overplayed its hand. E-v-e-r-y  y-e-a-r, Pam Fichter’s bunch tells the legislature what new restrictions to pass, and e-v-e-r-y  y-e-a-r, the Missouri Supreme Court throws out a good deal of it as unconstitutional. Even if you’re anti-abortion, it gets to be embarrassing to keep voting for this crap.

Sen. Jolie Justus, a Kansas City Democrat who led efforts to tone down the abortion restrictions proposed this year, said she detected an emerging attitude that lawmakers have restricted abortion about as much as they can.

“There is a feeling that now it’s becoming a political game,” Justus said. “Several pro-life senators told me, ‘What’s the next thing? Are they going to want us to restrict three-legged blue people from having abortions on Tuesdays?'”

The small rift between the Senate “Griesheimers” and Missouri Right to Life suffered a seismic shift about 7.0 on the Richter Scale last year. Fichter’s group opposed funding for new science buildings in KC and Columbia because–who knows?–somebody might someday do some stem cell research in one of them.

Some anti-choice senators voted for the funding anyway–and saw their ratings from the group tank. Meanwhile, some pro-choice senators voted against the funding because it was taking money from MOHELA.  Those senators got higher scores than the “Griesheimers.”

Color the anti-choice senators irate.

And then this year, the give-the-finger-to-the-constitution anti-choicers saddled their side with a proposal that banned “coerced abortions.” It would have made it illegal for a husband or boyfriend to try to persuade his significant other to have an abortion.

Umm, the first amendment lets people talk to each other, particularly about maybe doing something that’s … legal.

Another of the “Griesheimers”, Mike Gibbons, pointed out that the law would let a woman decide, years after the fact, that she regretted having an abortion and let her then allege that a crime had occurred. How could such an allegation be proven?

So legislation that passed resoundingly (113-33) in the House died in the Senate–where cooler heads sometimes manage to prevail in regards to rotten bills.

All that was left of this year’s debacle was for Sarah Steelman to try making some political hay by calling for a Special Session to pass the bill. Oh, and while they’re at it, she wanted the legislators to make sex-selective abortions illegal. That Steelman, she loves playing to the balconies. She took her 13 year old son to buy a gun and talked about how much she loves the second amendment. (Not the first amendment, mind you, only the second. I call that amendment-selective aborting of the Constitution.)

Update: While I’m on the subject of abortion, let’s just make sure everybody knows that McCain wants Roe v. Wade overturned.

SPARTANBURG, South Carolina (AP) – Republican presidential candidate John McCain, looking to improve his standing with the party’s conservative voters, said the law that legalized abortion should be overturned.

“I do not support Roe versus Wade. It should be overturned,” the Arizona senator on Sunday told about 800 people in South Carolina, one of the early voting states.

More than half of women voters think McCain is pro-choice. Wrong.

Term limits, as they are presently mandated, do as much harm as good. Certainly, the motivation for enacting them was understandable: citizens were fed up with a system where incumbents could scarcely be blasted out of office with anything short of an IED. But the eight-year term limit solution produced, at best, a situation where somewhat experienced lawmakers lead rank beginners through a complex process.

Uh-oh. Joint efforts of any kind do best with a mixture of newcomers with fresh ideas and people who’ve been around the block often enough to predict where the bumps and snarls will occur. Legislatures are no different. Let me invite any of our current legislators who read this posting–or anyone else, for that matter–to provide examples of problems that could have been avoided in recent sessions if a few old timers had been around.

And aside from creating glitches that should have been foreseen, the whole impermanency thing begets another problem: it contributes to the partisan fissures that cripple our state government. People who know what the lege used to be like say that reps could disagree on the floor and then go out for a brew together in the evening. Sure, I understand that part of the reason that no longer happens is the essential meanness of so many Republicans now. But part of the reason must also be that there’s little incentive to bridge the gaps when either you or the people you’re fighting with will be gone in a year or two.

Last spring, Senator Jolie Justus of Kansas City tried to overcome some of the sour aftermath of on floor bickering by arranging a weekly happy hour.  That was a good idea, and perhaps she’ll follow through on it this January. It might help.

The problems that arise during legislative sessions because of term limits are only half the difficulty. The other half is what happens when people get termed out. The race in the fifth senatorial district is a perfect example: all four Democratic reps in Maida Coleman’s senatorial district (Robin Wright Jones, Rodney Coleman, Connie Johnson, and Tom Villa) are termed out–but not ready to leave state government. Two have announced for Coleman’s seat (she, too, is termed out), and the other two still might. It’s a mess.

Some legislators solve the termed out dilemma by turning to lobbying. Carl Bearden is the latest example. It’s good to let Dems have a shot at that yahoo’s seat, but when the short term limits were created, perhaps no one foresaw the unintended consequence that termed out reps would swell the ranks of lobbying leeches.

Meanwhile, in many districts, one or both parties are having trouble building farm teams good enough to keep supplying strong candidates to fill the frequent openings. Let’s see: how long has Albert Pujols been in the majors now–five years or six? I’d hate to see him shoved out of the sport in 2009. If baseball had term limits, it would hurt the quality of play. Few rookies can arrive from the minors and make an immediate impact on a team. Winning teams need a combination of seasoned veterans and up and comers.

The answer isn’t deep sixing term limits but lengthening the time allowed in office. And, in fact, the rumor is that a Republican, no less, plans to bring up the possibility this session of changing the limit for reps from eight years to eighteen. I’d cheer for that.