Perhaps you read the recent story about a Missouri farmer who put a sign up in a field with the message:
Are you a Producer or Parasite Democrats - Party of the Parasites
Of course the punch line is that this gentleman, who is so indignant about "parasites," has taken over $1,000,000 dollars in federal farm subsidies over the past thirteen years. This story, among others, serves to underline the fact that there are far too many small minds on the far right who aren't at all bothered by the hobgoblin of consistency. Or to put it another way, the GOP winger base may not be made up of the best and brightest.
Since nature abhors a vacuum, for every right-wing simpleton, there is almost surely a cynical, bought-and-paid for huckster with the corporate line du jouron standby standing by ready to take up the slack. The proof? Look no further than Ed Martin, Russ Carnahan's Republican challenger for Missouri's third congressional seat.
Martin, who left his job as little Matty Blunt's capo in disgrace, became a free-lance political jack of all trades, keeping himself viable with the right-wing through organizations like the Missouri Club for Growth and the Missouri Roundtable for Life. In his latest role, he has cast himself as a "leader" in the Tea Party crusade to takeover Washington.
True to the Tea Party ethos, Martin has been outspoken about the evils of government regulation. Most recently, he has come out swinging to protect poor little BP, shamelessly trying to pretend that the Gulf oil spill can be blamed on excessive government regulation, a talking point that is gaining traction as the right-wing attempts to justify its inflexible ideology in the face of one more example of its failure.
Well, guess what? Just like our Missouri farmer's disgust with parasitic Democrats, the story about Ed Martin as a valiant defender of beleaguered BP against the big, bad government has a pretty good punch line too. After local bloggers, including SMP's Clark, went to town with the fact that Martin seemed somewhat hesitant to file his federal income disclosure forms, he made a few feeble excuses - mostly to the effect that he was just too busy and it's soooo hard to file those intrusive government forms. (Bear in mind that this guy expects us to trust him to have the energy and sufficient organizational skills to navigate the demands of a complex and demanding elective office.)
I'll bet you're not really that surprised, though, when I tell you that we are now learning that maybe Martin didn't file these publicly accessible forms because he just might have had something to hide - like the fact that he has been kept afloat on a tide of big oil money. It seems his wife has oil holdings worth something in the area of $100,001 to $250,000.
Kind of puts a different light on our crusader. As the Carnahan campaign put it:
Letting Big Oil drill without oversight in the wake of this disaster is a position that defies logic - unless you realize that bigger profits for Big Oil would directly benefit Ed Martin's bank account
It's probably a good thing for Martin that the Tea Party types don't seem to be too disturbed by good ol' boys who conceal their conflicted interests - even when they're playing the Tea Party faithful for fools.
But even though we should celebrate [the Stupak amendment] victory, we must remain vigilant, visible, and vocal because the pro-death Democrats will not give up. They are in thrall to Planned Parenthood, which wants to include abortion in socialized healthcare so they can finally achieve Margaret Sanger's goal of eliminating "undesirables" before they are born. It's not hard to imagine a government health care counselor withholding prenatal care from a poor black woman but offering her a free abortion.
The implied empathy of tea partiers for poor black women is touching.
To sum up, we're accused of trying to prevent the birth of black babies by offering abortions instead of birth control. What can I say? When you're right, you're right, PlasticEyes. We do want to prevent the birth of "undesirables"--i.e. babies not desired by the mothers. That final phrase, though, offers kind of an important distinction between what you say we want and what we do want.
Republicans, on the other hand, want neither birth control nor abortions. It was the Missouri Republican House that passed HB 1010 in 2006 banning county health clinics from providing family planning services. Fired Up! observed:
So the GOP has finally come clean that they are opposed to contraception. They used to argue that they opposed family planning because Planned Parenthood played a role. But now the GOP has targeted family planning provided by the county health clinics. Their action is a direct attack on women's access to traditional family planning services.
The amendment, offered by Rep. Susan Phillips (R-Kansas City) removed "voluntary choice of contraception, including natural family planning" as one of the permissible services that county health clinics could provide with state funding.
All that empathy for poor black women that PlasticEyes evinced rings hollow when you consider that many patients at county health clinics are poor women--and in urban districts, they're poor black women.
At Governor Holden's monthly Pizza and Politics forum Wednesday evening, Ed Martin, the Republican challenging Russ Carnahan next year, and Chris Kelly, a Democratic representative who was elected in Columbia just last year, faced off on the question of term limits.
Kelly spoke first. Because he had previously served in the legislature for twelve years in the eighties and early nineties, he had the historical knowledge to appreciate how the House differs from what it used to be. His main argument was that term limits destroy necessary institutional memory and depth of knowledge. Bitter partisanship fills the gap left by departing long term legislators.
Kelly pointed out that currently, each party caucuses with its members twice a week, and they use those occasions to "throw each other partisan red meat" and "inflame sectarian passion." In the past, he says, representatives had served with each other sometimes for decades. It was harder to characterize someone as a mindless Republican shill if you had been to his daughter's wedding.
And people voted their own conscience instead of lock stepping with their party.
"In the bad ole days before we had term limits, we caucused twice a session because no one in their right mind would go to the caucus and listen to their political party tell them how to vote." Kelly maintained that if the party had tried to tell them how to vote, legislative giants like John Schneider and Wayne Goode would have said something like "'Go to hell. I know what I'm supposed to do. I've been on this issue for many, many years. I understand the issue very well. I've spent my entire adult life studying it, and I'm gonna decide how I'm going to vote based on that store of knowledge.'"
The video clip begins with Kelly describing how much less today's legislators know:
Kelly said that members used to figure that about one fourth of the House were the hard working representatives who got the bulk of the work accomplished. That's still true, he said. Only now that hard working one fourth doesn't have as many tools, as much knowledge, to start with.
Ed Martin, the founder of Term Limits for Missouri, defended term limits. He averred that the current climate is well served by them. For every John Schneider that the legislature loses, it gets other good replacements, and he would rather have fresh faces arriving. Sure, Schneider is gone, but Tim Green and Barbara Fraser served well. Barbara Fraser, in turn, was term limited out, but she served on the St. Louis County Council and will probably run next year for Joan Bray's senate seat.
Nancy Pelosi was in town Saturday to do a fundraiser for Russ Carnahan, which event seems to have come off uneventfully. Uneventful, though, does not mean that the presence of such a visceral target of right-wing fury went unremarked by the local fringe-wingers who put on their best Saturday night bib and tucker to celebrate the Speaker's visit. High points of the eventing:
--Ed Martin, who is running for Carnahan's congressional seat, held his own wannabe populist chic "shadow" event, which he called the "'Welcome to St. Louis Speaker Nancy Pelosi' Pork and Beans Party!" This guy belongs to the same party as Kit Bond and Roy Blunt and he's calling Nancy Pelosi out about pork?
That wasn't all he got wrong, since the pièce de résistance at his pork and beans banquet was his claim that Pelosi was flying in for a political fundraiser on a military plane. Unfortunately for Mr. Martin's credibility, the claim was false. Pelosi traveled to St. Louis in a commercial plane paid for by the campaign.
--The ubiquitous, local teapartiers infiltrated the Carnahan fundraiser. Local fringe diva, Dana Loesh, has posted what I suppose one could call contraband video of Pelosi's comments on her Webpage, where one can enjoy the added bonus of parsing Loesh's rather startling use of language - evidently her kinship with Sarah Palin goes beyond the political.
I hear what Fired Up is saying here, but why should it surprise anyone that reporters pass along Ed Martin's press releases? He's a former chief of staff for a GOP governor, so obviously he's a Very Important Person whom we should all listen to.
Just like we should watch videos of Kit Bond claiming that 80% of all Missourians oppose the stimulus package, and not have to read any context or demand any evidence to back up the claim.
And we should all be thankful that Dave Catanese at least made us aware that it was a statement from Martin, and not simply reported as if it were fact, Fox News-style.
The 30 Day After Election Reports (pdf) from candidates and committees were due on December 4th. There's always a good chance you'll run into something interesting when you root around the on-line reports at the Missouri Ethics Commission site.
For instance, there were two open seat legislative races in west central Missouri which looked to be good Democratic pick up opportunities this cycle. The Democratic candidates were excellent (and a sign of strong recruiting). The republican candidates appeared to be rather lackluster. The results in the November General Election were not good, though:
Official Election Returns
State of Missouri General Election - 2008 General Election
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
As announced by the Board of State Canvassers
on Tuesday, December 02, 2008
Official Election Returns
State of Missouri General Election - 2008 General Election
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
As announced by the Board of State Canvassers
on Tuesday, December 02, 2008
Both Democratic candidates lost by small margins (though the 121st Legislative District race is going to be recounted next week). What happened? Money. Lots of it.
An article in the Thursday Post-Dispatch titled "'Soft money' takes new shape" says that because the FEC cracked down after 2004 on the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and even on a couple of liberal political advocacy groups, such independent groups have morphed into new variations. One such new group, the conservative American Issues Project, shows that the change isn't for the better:
The AIP was set up earlier this year as a nonprofit, "social welfare" organization that is subject to even less disclosure than the Swift Boat-style groups.
Ed Martin, looking for a new gig since he had to skedaddle out of the governor's office over the e-mail scandal, eagerly boarded this new Swift Boat vessel.
[H]e noted that Democratic soft money groups have traditionally had an edge on their GOP counterparts, so this was a chance to even out a "lopsided debate."
"The liberal-leaning groups have made very clear ... that they're going to spend tens of millions of dollars on advocacy for their issues and to influence the discussion in the fall," Martin said, citing campaigns by the Service Employees International Union and Planned Parenthood, among others. "So our goal is to be pushing into the public discourse some conservative ideas."
Oh, you mean conservative "ideas" like linking Obama to William Ayers, a one time member of the Weather Underground"? That kind of "idea"? Because that was AIP's debut on the political ad scene. One question about that ad, Ed: where's the idea in that idea? I don't call a groundless ad hominem attack an idea.
There are a number of campaign radio ads running in the 121st Legislative District market. One such set of ads promoting the generic republican game plan and the anointed republican candidate recently aired, paid for by the "Missouri Club for Growth Committee".
When it comes to the Scott Eckersley firing, "mistakes were made". Ed Martin fired the young lawyer and then, "with the full knowledge of the governor, ... orchestrated a taxpayer-funded character assassination unlike anything ever seen before in Missouri government." None of that should have been done.
Luckily, our governor is not one to pawn off the blame on someone else. Sure, Martin screwed up, but Blunt was cognizant of the smear that was publicized and the e-mails that were hidden, so he shouldered the responsibility, or ... at least appeared to:
"I'm the governor, I'm responsible for what happens in state government."
How very manly of him, except that he's still not admitting to the lies that were told and the e-mails that were concealed behind attorney/client privilege.
NPR's "Media Matters", speaking last spring about Alberto Gonzales' stonewalling, offered a critique of political non-confessions:
COMMENTATER BOB GARFIELD: So in the long tradition of politicians in whose hands cookies have been found, the passive voice was invoked. Because in Washington, that's how things are done. The magical construction was popularized during Watergate by Nixon spokesman Ron Ziegler and since has become a Washington tense unto itself, dubbed by CNN political analyst Bill Schneider "the past exonerative."
In January, for instance, on the subject of Iraq, the past exonerative was invoked by President Bush.
How are you at deciphering political-speak? Here's some that needs decoding from the news story about Ed Martin's departure from the governor's office. Blunt said that Martin "wants to pursue other opportunities" and spend more time with ...." You could finish that sentence without my help, right? Spend more time with his family, of course, just like Karl Rove. Like Odysseus returning home from twenty years of war and adventures, the conquering hero just wants to snuggle up to Penelope and while away his dotage.
Translation: He put us on the hot seat once too often, so we had to can his ass. But don't worry, he'll end up working for the Archdiocese in St. Louis again. And if that doesn't pan out, we'll find a slot for him in some think tank or agency. We Republican high muckety mucks are loyal to the other big shots. We always find a wingnut welfare slot for our recently disgraced.
Mitt Romney, the son of Michigan governor George W. Romney, is beloved among Republican elites here in Missouri. Matt Blunt and Jim Talent both endorsed him fairly early. Jack Jackson, Jason Crowell, Gary Nodler, Bryan Pratt, Shannon Cooper, David Day, Doug Funderbunk, Dwight Scharnhorst, Neal St. Onge, and Bryan Stevenson have all endorsed him, too. And in a recent e-mail, Rod Jetton (h/t Arch City Chronicle) details how he was won over at a meeting with Mitt, just like "when you go to those time-share presentations." (That's a direct quote - I kid you not.) Ed Martin was won over with the answer to the first question of the meeting - his own - which was about the Iraq warabortionuniversal health careglobal warming Romney's Mormon faith, of course.
Romney has a record of moderate governance, working to balance budgets, preserve a woman's right to choose, extend health care to every citizen. Of course, that gives him no chance in the Republican presidential primary, so now he's running as the most conservative candidate in the race. Double Guantanamo! Slash taxes! No universal health care! Stay the course in Iraq!
In honor of his whiplash-inducing position changes, the Democratic National Committee is auctioning off a 'Mitt Romney Flip Flop Kit" on eBay. Details below the flip.
In his first "Sunday Essay" on his Arch City Chronicle blog, Dave Drebes stands up for his erstwhile colleague, Ed Martin, who really stuck his foot in his mouth with his remarks on Hispanics employed by developers. (If you somehow missed what Martin said, he claimed that if there are a "bunch of Mexicans" at a site, some are probably illegal.) Drebes doesn't really defend Martin's remarks so much as his right to say them, characterizing them as a few poorly-chosen words in the service of making a broader policy point, and claims that Martin shouldn't have to resign over this flap.
I tend to agree. If Matt Blunt believes that racial profiling is OK, whether while driving or at the workplace, then absolutely, he should continue to associate himself with Martin's remarks by keeping Martin on as his chief of staff. And I expect that's exactly what's going to happen, because Blunt values revving up his conservative base by demonizing a minority group over civil rights. I don't believe Martin's words were poorly chosen at all - he was picking a fight on behalf of his boss.
To sum up, we're accused of trying to prevent the birth of black babies by offering abortions instead of birth control. What can I say? When you're right, you're right, PlasticEyes. We do want to prevent the birth of "undesirables"--i.e. babies not desired by the mothers. That final phrase, though, offers kind of an important distinction between what you say we want and what we do want.
Nancy Pelosi 
Ed Martin, looking for a new gig since he had to skedaddle out of the governor's office over the e-mail scandal, eagerly boarded this new Swift Boat vessel.
Mitt Romney, the son of Michigan governor George W. Romney, is beloved among Republican elites here in Missouri. Matt Blunt and Jim Talent both endorsed him fairly early. Jack Jackson, Jason Crowell, Gary Nodler, Bryan Pratt, Shannon Cooper, David Day, Doug Funderbunk, Dwight Scharnhorst, Neal St. Onge, and Bryan Stevenson have all endorsed him, too. And in a recent e-mail, Rod Jetton (h/t 