Maria, there's another candidate in your race who is free from the taint of Rex Sinquefield donations, and his name is Joe Adams. He was actually your mayor for several years, if you can recall.
Maria Chappelle-Nadal, outgoing representative of the 72nd House District is running in a 4-way race for state senator of the 14th Senate District. She just sent out mailers to her prospective constituents that mangle a quote from the St. Louis American (and that's being generous) to claim that Maria is the only candidate who hasn't received money from Rex Sinquefield. Joe Adams, the former mayor of University City, has not received any contributions from Sinquefield, and the original quote from the American in no way resembles Maria's claim.
The quote on the front of the mailer says, "I'm proud to be the only candidate in this race that has not been bought by billionaire Rex Sinquefield who is trying to own state government." The quote on the back appears to directly cite the St. Louis American: "Her youthful energy gives her the edge [and she is] the only candidate in this race who is free from the taint of major funding by Rex Sinquefield."
In fact, the quote from the American explicitly states that Joe Adams has not taken money from Sinquefield. In other words, Maria's mailer "quotes" the opposite of what the American said, and one can't draw any other conclusion than that the quote was deliberately altered. Maria is flat out lying.
Republican
BRYAN PRATT BLUE SPRINGS MO 53 2/23/2010
WILL KRAUS LEES SUMMIT MO 238 2/23/2010
GARY DUSENBERG BLUE SPRINGS MO 340 2/23/2010
Libertarian
KEVIN PARR GRAIN VALLEY MO 3/19/2010
Why is it that Libertarians never seem to get those big campaign contributions? You's think proponents of the laissez faire, hey big government leave me alone, political philosophy would be raking it in from all those corporate capitalists. You'd think.
Conventional wisdom has it that, given the unbalanced turnout that is expected next Tuesday, the Missouri effort to weaken health care reform, Proposition C, will prevail. A comment on my earlier post about the Missouri Hospital Association's anti-Proposition C campaign noted that when it passes it "will not be pretty ..., especially on Fox and hate radio." Well, I'm here to tell you that the triumphalism has already gotten bizarre.
The St. Louis Beaconreports that State Senator Jane Cunningham believes that Proposition C is divinely ordained, and its assured passage just goes to show that God "interferes in the affairs of men." According to Cunningham, God doesn't want all Missourians to have equal access to health care.
What I want Cunningham to ask God next time she and he get together for coffee is why he's so worried about requiring individuals to take responsibility for their health care? She and the people she represents affirmed, after all, that they want a private rather than a public health care delivery system; did they do so only because they thought that they could push the cost of their emergency room visits onto the rest of us, helping to push health costs ever upward, and sending deficits spiraling?
Cunningham seems to imply that God opposes the individual mandate because it limits "personal freedom," and requires people to spend money. But God doesn't seem to be at all worried about mandates for the purchase of auto insurance. Nor does he seem to be worried about requirements for building standards, food safety measures, disabled access and a whole slew of "mandates" that have associated costs, but which make our country a decent place to live.
Cunningham and her pals also seem to think that God is all lathered up about "state's rights" - which leads me to ask why he didn't intervene more forcefully when that issue was settled at the conclusion of the American Civil War. Somehow, I find it hard to believe that a supposedly all-powerful God really gets too worked up about weak constitutional arguments.
All this leaves me with just one question. If it isn't God who's working to deliver a victory for the Proposition C forces, who could it be? Could it have anything to do with that force darker forces that manifest as apathy, stupidity and cupidity? I don't know about you, but that's not exactly what I describe as divine intervention.
...The poor phrasing of the central provision in SB 1070 led to it being blocked, according to the injunction issued today by U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton....
Lunatic right wingnuttia teabaggery exists everywhere, and they wear it on their...vehicles.
You have just got to love the Gadsen rattlesnake superimposed on the Arizona flag with the legend "bite me". Not really.
Linda Schuch is a business success story. She is the co-owner of the Island Seafood Market in St. Petersburg, Florida. In the year since its opening, the restaurant has gathered a steady following of locals. While the Market originally opened as a fish market that served the occasional sandwich, its tasty options and devoted ownership have led to a need to expand the restaurant.
Did I say Shuch is a business success story? Make that "was" a business success story. Because the Gulf Oil Spill is ruining her venture. Schuch speaks in the video of how proud she was to make a success of her first year in business but admits ruefully that a five year plan, for someone dependent on fishing in the Gulf, is probably a waste of time. She concedes that she may have to move back to Pennsylvania, where she was raised. Multiply her sad story by hundreds of thousands or millions, then add in the sad stories of dead birds, turtles, and alligators.
As long as I'm altering my wording, make that "Gulf Oil Gusher", not "Spill." A spill is something the baby does with his milk. Rick Roberts made that observation when he and Schuch and another Gulf Coast resident, Linda Hawkins, were in St. Louis. The three of them have been visiting various states under the auspices of Repower America, working to convince people that the Gulf Oil Gusher is not a regional problem but a national one and that, above all, we need a comprehensive clean energy plan.
Linda Hawkins, who was raised in the New Orleans Ninth Ward, who lost everything to Hurricane Betsy in 1965 and who saw the destruction of Katrina, spoke about the difference between those natural disasters and this much more destructive man made one. Then she described how Louisiana differs from the other Gulf Coast states. Texas is the only one of the five with a diversified economy. Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi, where most of the population is near the water, are tourist or retirement destinations. But Hawkins said that Louisiana's beaches are working beaches. Cajun fishermen, whose forbears left Canada in 1755, bring in shrimp, oysters and blue crab. They are closed down now. Fishing and the industries that depend on the offshore oil rigs support the economy. Louisiana, like the tourist states, is reeling. Many people are talking about which spouse will have to leave the Gulf Coast for work in another state and which spouse will stay home with the kids. Suicides are up. Animal shelters are overwhelmed with pets that people can't afford to feed.
All the recent damage done by BP to Louisiana is on top of damage already done by our need for oil. Hawkins points out that 25 percent of the oil the U.S. imports comes in through canals built in Louisiana--canals that have destroyed coastal wetlands.
Despite the horrors of the Gusher, the three Gulf Coast residents know that most Americans don't see the problem as anything affecting them. They don't understand how the ripples from the economic devastation will spread to them, and they don't see that if the U.S. had focused on clean energy forty years back, we'd have avoided this Gusher--not to mention wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We'd have saved the trillions lost to those wars and thus had more money to deal with the recession that the bank profiteers caused.
As Fired Up Missouri's .Sean and the P-D's Tony Messenger have noted, Tea Party groups around Missouri are openly critical of Roy Blunt in his bid for the GOP nomination for US Senate, and openly supportive of his rival Chuck Purgason, and have excoriated their hero Michele Bachmann for stumping in Missouri on behalf of Roy Blunt. And as Adam makes clear at St. Louis Activist Hub, the St. Louis Tea Party, despite a history of claiming that they would really go after Roy Blunt for his supposed crimes against conservatism, has taken a stance of neutrality in the primary.
In some ways, this is a moot point, as far as you and I are concerned. For myself, and I assume for most readers of this blog, we're not going to support the Republican nominee for Senate whether it's Chuck Purgason or Roy Blunt. But I do think that it's going to be hard for Republicans to make the case in November and beyond that they truly have fiscal principles based on limited government free from corrupting influences if they nominate people like Blunt, who helped wrangle through the an unpaid expansion of Medicare and a massive bank bailout with no strings attached, not to mention tangled tightly in a web of ties to lobbyists. In the primary, conservatives have the chance to speak up and indicate that they would prefer someone who doesn't have that baggage. The St. Louis Tea Party apparently cherishes their close ties to the Republican establishment more than principles.
We at Show Me Progress regularly criticize Democrats for either ethical failings or for taking what we view to be poor policy stances, with McCaskill absorbing the most of our ire. For my part, and I would hope for progressives around the state would agree, if a progressive challenger to McCaskill, or Nixon, or any other statewide elected Democrat should make a strong case in the Democratic primary, I wouldn't hesitate to back them even in an uphill battle. Same goes for Robin Carnahan, but I can't see any other candidates in her primary who I would prefer. After all, the best, and really the only, time to change the direction of your party is to speak up in the primaries.
UPDATE: As Adam points out, the St. Louis Tea Party's demurral is a non-sequitur:
We decided a long time ago not to endorse candidates in the primary. That means we don't un-endorse, either. The Tea Party, being totally decentralized, represents a lot of ideas and opinions. We love that. We love that so many passionate conservatives have gotten involved in the process.
Hennessy claims that they don't "un-endorse." But that has nothing to do with the letter. The original letter doesn't say "We un-endorse Roy Blunt." It says:
The following list of Tea Party organizations, from across the state of Missouri, have NOT endorsed Roy Blunt in his campaign for the U.S. Senate seat.
On June 29th, the St. Louis County Council gave the green light to updated residential building codes that will save homeowners hundreds in energy costs through new energy efficiency standards. St. Louis County is home to approximately one million residents, part of the Greater Metropolitan St. Louis area.
The savings are particularly beneficial for Missourians in the long term due to projected coal-generated energy costs rising faster than in other states.
A gift to Chuck Purgason, paid for and developed by Joe the Plumber, aka Joe Wurzelbacher, and "friends", and set to air on cable throughout Missouri until August 3rd:
True, Purgason does seem to be a stand-up fringe-winger, willing to take the crazy as far as it will go, but withal showing a type of integrity - while Blunt is a surely a cynical, get-while-the-getting's-good kind of guy. But seriously, is it possible to be so far to the right that one describes Newt Gringrich, Karl Rove and Mike Huckabee, all of whom have endorsed Blunt, as moderates? What does "moderate" mean to Republicans anyway? Corrupt, maybe?
Afterthought: It just struck me that the fairy tale format is especially appropriate for the Tea Partiers given their proclivity for fantasy.
Randy's Turner explores the Missouri implications of the Disclose act, which would have mandated disclosure of who pays for political campaign adverting - nothing more, nothing less - hardly, as Republicans claim, a ploy to "restrict freedom." Turner's screed is worth reading in its entirety, so read it here or on the Turner Report.
And then cry. The Disclose Act was voted down in the Senate this afternoon:
On a Senate vote of 57-41, Democrats fell short of the needed 60 to clear a procedural hurdle Republicans set up against The Disclose Act, likely killing the measure for the year
I assume that everybody knows all there is to know about the Shirley Sherrod affair. There has been plenty of speculation that the edited Breitbart tape was the opening salvo in a Republican strategy that seeks to portray Obama's almost hysterically racially neutral administration as favoring blacks over whites - a commonly voiced fear from elderly and working class voters before Obama's election. An interesting take on the timing of Breitbart's release of the doctored tape that was presented on TPM last week takes this speculation even further:
It's also important to understand that Andrew Breitbart's timing of the release of the grossly distorted video of Sherrod, which he admits having had for weeks, may not be entirely random. Congress will soon vote on whether to fund part of a settlement between the USDA and African-American farmers who faced acknowledged discrimination -- farmers like Sherrod and her husband used to be.
From this perspective, the manufactured controversy might have proven to be an effective ploy - in spite of the fact that Breitbart's selective editing was quickly discovered. Only a few days after all the noise about Sherrod began, the Senate stripped from the war funding bill the allocation for the Pigford II settlement, which would have directed that $1.25 billion in reparations be paid to black farmers who were openly discriminated against by USDA in the 80s and 90s.
Harry Reid's response to the defeat:
I hoped that tonight the Senate could finally right a wrong that has been left unresolved for far too long. ... As recent events have reminded us, the fact that justice and fairness were denied to black farmers for so many years continues to have ramifications today. ... Republicans should be held accountable for standing in the way of justice for those affected.
Reid is right about the injustice, but wrong to lay the blame on solely on Republicans. As usual, many of the hard-core, Democratic "moderates" (self-labeled) in the Senate voted along with the Republicans - a point of shame for us in here in Missouri since our own Claire McCaskill once more showed her contempt for Democratic values by joining the folks on the other side of the aisle, who more and more seem to be her true cohorts.
Why, Claire, one is tempted to ask. Does it have anything to do with her absurd deficit posturing (see also here) - which in itself constitutes a potentially harmful little legislative hobby she has taken up in order, one suspects, to appeal to what she seems to believe to be "common-sense" preferences of small town and surburban Missourians. Or perhaps she is really concerned that the racial overtones that often pervade discourse about government spending in Missouri were just too strong in this case - which means that McCaskill will easily be stampeded to the right in order to avoid the fallout from a Republican race-baiting strategy.
The one thing we can be sure of is that the answer with McCaskill always seems to be that she goes along in order to try to get along. In other words, she has no respect for her constituents and is running scared of what she considers their general meanness. Which means that we'll have to work harder to let her know that we are better than she thinks we are before it's too late.
Last Friday Tony Messenger of the St. Louis Post-Dispatchobserved that one of the reasons that Proposition C, the Missouri tenthers' effort to sabotage the health care reform bill, is likely to pass is that there is no organized opposition. But on the other side Proposition C proponents are getting their act together. Organizations like Missourians for Health Care Freedom are mobilizing for the final push. A grim situation all around.
So you can imagine my surprise today when I received a big, glossy mailer from the Missouri Hospital Association (MHA) asking folks who might be inclined to vote for Prop C to get their facts straight. The particular fact that the MHA chose to emphasize in the mailer ought to have some resonance with those greedy and fearful little hobgoblins on the right who are so afraid that a poor person (or, horror of horrors, a poor black person) might get some of their hard-earned dollars:
But by law, Missouri's hospitals must provide medical care in their emergency departments to anyone who is uninsured - even if they can afford health insurance. Hospitals must cover the cost of that care by charging more to patients who do have insurance.
So the question is: Should Missourians who already pay for health insurance also have to pay for those who choose not to pay?
If you think it's acceptable that some who can afford insurance get a free ride, vote yes on Proposition C. If you think that's unfair, you should vote no
.
There's more on the MHA Website, a factsheet and a statement from the MHA President and CEO, Herb B. Kuhn, explaining why the MHA has decided to join the fight against Proposition C in such a prominent way:
The MHA Board of Trustees endorsed a voter education campaign on Proposition C because, regardless of the feelings about federal reform, Proposition C could have very real - and negative - implications for hospitals
Negative implications like upsetting the balance of Medicare and Medicaid payments - according to Kuhn, Missouri hospitals would stand to lose somewhere in the vicinity of 500 million dollars over ten years if the individual mandate were to be revoked. He adds:
Much will be said during the next few weeks about the individual mandate and the notion of "individual freedom." That is a powerful and persuasive argument. There is, however, another side of the story, and that's the notion of "fairness." Fairness to make sure Missouri's hard-earned Medicare and Medicaid dollars stay in the state and fairness in sharing in the cost of health coverage for all.
Many argue that since Proposition C is patently unconstitutional - it clearly conflicts with the Supremacy Clause - it can be safely ignored. Don't think, though, that a constitutional showdown will be quick, inexpensive or pretty. If the proposition were ever allowed to go into effect, Mr. Kuhn's statement is potent testimony to some of the potentially disastrous financial impacts. At the very least, a Proposition C victory will be used as a rallying cry to revitalize the war on the President and his health care agenda. In this environment, the MHA's willingness to stand on the frontline and oppose this piece of pernicious political theater with a dose of reality is more than welcome and they deserve our appreciation.
Action Needed: Click here and pledge to call Claire McCaskill and Kit Bond during the next three days, July 27-29, and let them know that inaction or timid half-steps to combat climate change is not acceptable.
Why? Real, effective climate legislation, that is, legislation that mandates some form of carbon emission control is now officially dead for the present and perhaps the future. As Joe Romm of Climate Change puts it, "the mostly dead climate bill is now extinct."
Naturally, the Democrats want to blame the Republicans, and they are right that the corrupt numbskulls on the Republican side of the aisle played their usual obstructionist role. But Republican obstructionism is not the whole story. This time around, the so-called brown dogs, including prominently our own esteemed Claire McCaskill, have to take their share of the blame:
... garnering 60 votes on a plan that caps emissions is a major challenge as long as Democrats such as McCaskill fear the electoral consequences.
To be sure, Obama and Reid also need some Senate Republicans to play ball if they're going to get a climate bill across the finish line. But the amount of GOP support they will need is directly proportional to the number of Democrats they will lose. And Obama faces considerably more party discord on climate change than he did on health care or Wall Street reform because of deeply rooted regional concerns over energy policy
So you could certainly say without fear of contradiction that Claire McCaskill was instrumental in killing the climate bill. And while she has taken money from coal interests (about $10,000 out of $47,000 total from energy interests), it surely can't be the case that this relatively tiny mess of pottage is is what prompted her to sell out her base. It is far more likely that she is simply afraid of the the political consequences if she takes a principled stand - afraid that if electricity prices or farm energy prices were to go up, she might be out on her you-know-what come 2012.
People in organizations like Repower America know that if we are to revive meaninngful climate change legislation, we need to keep the issue alive and let politicians like McCaskill know that while we'll get their back when they do the right thing, we won't forget when they let us down. More importantly, McCaskill is a co-sponsor of the Rockefeller bill that seeks to neuter the EPA's emissions control rules. And, although, President Obama is poised to veto the bill if it passes, we have to let her know that supporting the coal industry in this way is not really winning hearts and minds at home.
In early days, before McCaskill learned to fear the Tea Party backlash, she was, as Michael Bersin reminded us last week, pretty upfront about her support for cap-and-trade. Such past statements suggest that McCaskill knows what the right thing to do is, but is just too timid to do it.That's why Repower America is asking progressives, environmentalists, and anyone who is concerned about the pending climate disaster, to phone McCaskill tomorrow and remind her of what she already knows.
So by all means get mad. But also take action - click here and make a pledge that sometime during the next three days - July 27- July 29 - you'll phone McCaskill - and poor, hopeless Kit Bond, for what it's worth - and let them know that we demand real leadership to get us through this potentially disastrous environmental crisis.
Afterthought: You don't even have to click and use the Repower America tools - just phone the fools and let them know the folks they work for aren't too pleased. Please. McCaskill's number: (202) 224-6154; Kit Bond's: (202) 224-5721.
Mary Nichols, a Democrat running against Byron DeLear for state rep in the 79th, has lost any shred of respect I might have had for her. Get a load of part of the mailer she just sent out. Under the headline "AN ELEPHANT NEVER FORGETS", she claims that DeLear "forgot" to mention that he used to be a Rush Limbaugh Republican. (That's elephant hide you're seeing underneath the text.) Remember that this mailer is going out to Democrats before the primary in a district that will almost surely go Democratic in the fall.
Were any of you good progressives reading this posting raised as Republicans? That's what I thought. Me too. Is it to your credit that you overcame the right wing propaganda imposed on you and thought for yourself? That's all DeLear was getting at when he wrote in 2004:
I used to be a conservative right wing republican listening to all of those right wing radio talk show hosts, and subscribed to a Rush Limbaugh-esque ideology that's all about the law of the jungle. You know, the Capitalistic 'survival of the fittest'. Well I have come through my wicked ways, and I have seen the revelation that building the future of humanity on a foundation of greed and industrial schemes designed to prey upon the weak is simply not sustainable. Being born into a wealthy family and having gone to military school as a little boy were the pertinent ingredients that led to my march in lockstep.
Next the mailer accuses DeLear of having run for Congress in California under the Green Party banner--the implication being that he doesn't know what he is. Could be that the blurry photo, by the way, was the only one available, but it makes him look like part of a suspicious, maybe faintly subversive group.
And now, he "claims" to be a Democrat.
Give me a Green guy who got PACE passed in Missouri any day over a real estate agent who wants to develop the Missouri river floodplain. Nichols' mailer is--speaking of the GOP--a Karl Rove type smear tactic against another Democrat.
Look, I understand that any serious run for state rep is hard. Those candidates put themselves through the mill. So when I wrote about that race less than two weeks ago, I gave Nichols every benefit of the doubt, although I thought she had little to offer. Now, I'll be blunt. She has no agenda to speak of other than trashing a fellow Democrat who has proven that he wants to help the people of this state.
I'm typing this waiting for the final evening session. The final speaker will be Al Franken.
Today, both Pelosi and Reid spoke.
For me, the day was Elizabeth Warren day. If you heard her speak you can understand why she MUST be the head of the new consumer agency the Wall Street Reform Bill sets up.
The final session is beginning. More after the fold.
The St. Louis Beacon 
Linda Hawkins, who was raised in the New Orleans Ninth Ward, who lost everything to Hurricane Betsy in 1965 and who saw the destruction of Katrina, spoke about the difference between those natural disasters and this much more destructive man made one. Then she described how Louisiana differs from the other Gulf Coast states. Texas is the only one of the five with a diversified economy. Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi, where most of the population is near the water, are tourist or retirement destinations. But Hawkins said that Louisiana's beaches are working beaches. Cajun fishermen, whose forbears left Canada in 1755, bring in shrimp, oysters and blue crab. They are closed down now. Fishing and the industries that depend on the offshore oil rigs support the economy. Louisiana, like the tourist states, is reeling. Many people are talking about which spouse will have to leave the Gulf Coast for work in another state and which spouse will stay home with the kids. 
I assume that everybody knows all there is to know about the 
Reid is right about the injustice, but wrong to lay the blame on solely on Republicans. As usual, many of the hard-core, Democratic "moderates" (self-labeled) in the Senate voted along with the Republicans - a point of shame for us in here in Missouri since our own Claire McCaskill once more showed her contempt for Democratic values by 
Mary Nichols, 
