The real reason Matt Blunt opted out of running for reelection

As soon as Governor Matt Blunt of Missouri announced that he would not be seeking a second term "because he had accomplished everything in one term" that he set out to achieve; we were immediately suspicious and doubted his claim because there are still a few people receiving Medicaid.

Almost immediately my phone started ringing, and every single call laid out a plausible scenario for an impending indictment, most of them based on the fee-office fiasco from his first months in office. During every single one of those calls I made some notes, and then filed them away, waiting for corroboration that never came.

Most recently, the rumor has been pervasive - he is going to be "outed."

Yesterday, I got an email from a prominent attorney friend of mine with the subject line URGENT! CALL ME ASAP!!! so I did - I tend to always comply with urgent messages from attorneys - and I got some details.

Now folks, it is still just a rumor until you read it in the Post-Dispatch - but here is what we have on good authority will be substantiated in the coming days...

The governor has had an ongoing homosexual relationship with a 29-year-old real estate broker from the St. Louis area.

Apparently, Matty B is one of those self-loathing gay people who publicly rail against their inner selves, almost like they are engaging in some form of exorcism - "if I say it enough, and believe hard enough, I won't be gay any more."


I tried to dig up some quotes and comments from both Matt and his father Roy. All I felt was ill.

I am the mother of three fantastic children - and the youngest one happens to be a lesbian. This does not make me love her any less, nor do I think she should "change"
because some people are narrow-minded and priggish. My daughter is gay. She is also well adjusted and healthy and happy because she grew up in an environment knowing that she was loved unconditionally and that would never change.

Some of her friends in the gay community are not so lucky - many of them were dragged to therapists and psychiatrists and medicated against their will by parents intent on "fixing" them. Many more were unable to cope and acted out - cutting and self-mutilation, drug abuse and self medication - kids kicked out of the house and onto the street while still in high school for the sin of being born gay.

Revisiting some of the hateful spewings that have emanated from Roy Blunt just broke my heart after I put it in the context of a little boy, just entering adolescence, who is starting to figure out his sexuality and suspects he might be different. It's enough to make you want to break down and sob.

What really pisses me off is the fact that adults, intent on absolute control, damage their kids for not being what they, the parents, envisioned.

Parents, love your kids. Unconditionally. And if you don't have the capacity to do that, then you have no business even attempting to parent.

Missourians, they're coming after our non-partisan court plan again

The movement conservatives in Missouri are once more taking aim at our non-partisan judicial selection process.

You remember the Missouri Plan - it is the one that is so screwed up that 36 other states have adopted it and it is taught in law schools as an example of the non-partisan way that the judiciary should operate, that all might have equal confidence in the inherent fairness and non-partisan nature of our courts. But then, a sense of fairness does tend to elude those driven by the movement conservative ideology.

The Missouri Plan was put before the voters of the state in 1940 and passed overwhelmingly in response to the hijacking of the justice system by the powerful political machines of Tom Pendergast in Kansas City and Edward Butler of St. Louis. Under the Bosses, justice resided in their pockets, and nowhere else.

The amendment passed by our grandparents 68 years ago, dubbed “The Missouri Plan”, replaced judicial elections with a judicial commission comprised of judges, lawyers and citizens to review and interview applicants for vacancies on the bench, and winnows the field to three choices. The Governor then has sixty days to select the new judge from those three candidates. If he fails to do so in the allotted time, the decision reverts to the recommending body. At the first General Election following one year on the bench, the new judge faces the voters who decide whether the appointed judge shall be retained.

In balloting to determine whether judges be retained, the state Bar Association issues ratings for the judges before the election, and the ratings and recommendations are made available to the public. It is in the best interest of attorneys and citizens alike for judges to be fair-minded and non-partisan, so the ratings are extremely apolitical.

With Matt Blunt-force trauma stepping down to spend more time with his legal team, the foam-flecked loons are plotting to make it an issue once more, with the appointment of Stephen Limbaugh to the federal bench leaving a vacancy on the state supreme court.

Kraske today:

Within minutes of the Limbaugh vote, conservative critics of the Missouri court plan began mobilizing. They issued a series of news releases that, taken in sum, signaled that once again the state’s highly touted nonpartisan selection plan is in their crosshairs.

“I am committed to appointing a Missouri Supreme Court judge who will faithfully interpret our constitution and will not legislate from the bench,” Gov. Matt Blunt said.

Translation: Send me a conservative I can support.

John Elliott, president of the conservative Adam Smith Foundation, said he hoped the Appellate Judicial Commission, the group that screens candidates and prepares a slate of three judges for Blunt, “does not repeat last summer’s mistakes and nominate his replacement under a cloud of secrecy and corruption.”

He added: “In the event that does occur, I strongly encourage the governor to use his constitutional authority to reject the commission’s nominees.”

Translation: We’re prepared to go to war over this pick.

Said Charlie Harris, president of the Missouri Bar: “We … will see the same thing we saw this fall — an all-out assault on the nonpartisan court plan. My message to all citizens of the state and all lawyers of the state is to weather the storm.”

Game on.

Missourians might recall that we already did this last summer when Ronnie White announced his retirement. The movement conservatives, feeling their grip slipping, attacked the non-partisan process. They said the process is too secretive and lawyers have undue influence. The far-right fringe was pissed that Blunt had to select Patricia Breckenridge - they would have much preferred a conservative-activist stooge who would have furthered baby Blunt's wacky agenda to an actual judge. According to the naysayers, if the wingnut governor isn't free to pick a wingnut for the bench, the process is broken.

But in reality the system has worked very well for us for 67 years, and has served to keep the state courts as apolitical as possible, while efficiently and promptly filling vacancies on the bench with qualified jurists. In the years since 1940, it has been expanded to include all circuit court judges in Clay, Platte and St. Louis Counties.

One of the most elegant features of the plan is the way it defangs the money monster. Success in partisan elections depends on money, on the financial contributors of donors (a very specious proposition when we are talking about the very concept of Justice) and that is what pisses off the wingnuts the most - if they can't influence a process with money, it must be wrong.

The Missouri plan works so well that in the intervening decades, 36 additional states have adopted the plan in whole or in part.

Detractors say that the process is too reliant on the input of lawyers, but that argument doesn't get off the starting blocks with me. Who better to make judgments about legal professionals than other legal professionals? How deep is your experience with judging the competence of jurists? Mine is a thimble of the ocean. If you are like most people you don't know diddly about the court system because you have no business before the bar of justice. If the wingnuts have their way, judges would be elected like state legislators, and what a nightmare that would be if judges owed political favors to certain segments of the electorate, and naturally had a political bias against others. How could you call that justice?

The move to abolish the Missouri Plan gets full-throated opposition from the Missouri Bar Association and other professional organizations representing attorneys of diverse political backgrounds. Proponents of the plan say it eliminates the influence of politics as effectively as is possible. They say that a better alternative simply doesn't exist.

By the way, I have had a word or two to impart about the Adam Smith Foundation in the past, pointing out some things that weren't mentioned in Kraske's article. They are a little hard to take seriously, but he didn't tell you that. Let's go to the archives, shall we?

In June, a thinly-veiled BluntCo initiative rolled out to attack the judicial selection process. Flying under the flag of something called "The Adam Smith Foundation" the minions of the governor went on the attack, while simultaneously playing the victim card....neat trick, that.

June 26th, 2007

Adam Smith Foundation Launched

(Jefferson City) - The Adam Smith Foundation is proud to announce its official launch as an organization committed to promoting conservative principals [sic] and individual liberties for Missouri. Our Foundation seeks to provide Missourian's with information they need to hold their State and local elected officials as well as activist judges directly accountable for their actions.

"There are countless leftist political groups in Missouri, but only a handful of conservative organizations. We strive to fill an important void by holding politicians in Jefferson City accountable." said John Elliott, organization President. "Big spenders in state and local governments have forgotten that tax dollars belong to the citizens, and we will promote ways to reduce the size of government."

Blunt pursues this agenda at the peril of further splitting the Missouri GOP. When State Senator Kris Koster left the Republican party in August, he cited the Blunt Administrations attack on the judiciary was one of his key reasons for switching parties. Koster, a former prosecuting attorney for Cass County summed up the Blunt administration very well when he said “I can’t think of another administration in our lifetime that has such disregard and such contempt for the third branch of government.”

'Nuff said.

Talkin' 'bout a resignation

It is time for the petulant brat who has already stepped aside from seeking re-election as this states governor to consider stepping down now. He has clearly abused the power of his office and needs to go now, for the good of the state.

Yael Abouhalkah, writing for the editorial board of the Kansas City Star articulated it quite well:

It's time to start using the "R" word with Missouri's immature governor, Matt Blunt. Yes, he may need to resign for the good of the state.

Sound too harsh? Not for people who respect the governor's office. Not for people who realize Blunt's recent childish actions are tarnishing that office right now.

Here's the latest example of why Blunt made absolutely the right move in announcing in January that he would not run for re-election.

His office has demanded copies of every e-mail and document sent to or from Rep. Jeff Harris, a Columbia Democrat running for attorney general.

Why the request?

No real reason, the governor's office admitted.

They just did it to jerk the chain of Harris, who had the temerity to stand up and defend the public's right to know what's going on with their governor. [emphasis added]

So the governor's office thought it would make this absurd request. Now taxpayer money will be wasted as Harris complies with the request.

Of course, the one person who's in real trouble over e-mails is Blunt.

Earlier this week, independent investigators sued Blunt to obtain computer backup tapes that contain e-mail messages deleted from the governor’s office computers.

Put simply, Blunt or his team may have illegally tried to hide information from the public.

Now the governor wants to divert attention from his mounting problems. Problems that, if they continue, could cause him to have to resign in disgrace later this year.

I have wanted him gone since his inaugural address in 2005 - but I never quite articulated it as well as Abouhalkah just did, and I have certainly never managed to discuss the smarmy little fucker without using profanity (see?) so just let me say this about the above reproduced editorial:

Fuckin'-A.

And if you have a little love to show Jeff Harris, scroll about a third of the way down the left sidebar, to the "Endorsed Candidates" link list and click the link to contribute to Jeff's campaign for Missouri Attorney General. He has already proven himself a stand-up guy, and god knows that here in Missouri we could use a few more of those in public service and a whole lot less Blunts.

So does anyone really believe Matt Blunt's 'spend more time with my family' dodge?

Less than two weeks before Matt Blunt dropped his "I'm not seeking reelection" bombshell, he gathered his cronies at the posh Big Cedar Lodge south of Branson to plan the campaign strategy for his upcoming reelection battle.

Present at the meeting were top-tier staffers from his administration, media specialists, fundraisers, pollsters, communications specialists and ground-game organizers. There was no doubt in anyones mind: the meeting was the kickoff to his reelection campaign. Those present reported that the Governor was engaged, inquisitive and involved in every aspect of the planning. Prior to the meeting, Blunt had prerecorded video footage for his initial volley of campaign commercials that were to be rolled out before spring, with the goal of beating Nixon off the starting blocks with a couple of weeks of uncontested air time in which he could tout his ostensible "accomplishments" with no counter message.

The brainstorming session in the Ozarks turned over every rock they could find. The participants pored over internal polling data; they discussed initiative petitions currently making the rounds, keenly remembering the effects of 2006's Amendment 2 (the stem cell initiative) and the influence of that initiative on other races.

During the meetings his message was honed: He would accentuate that he had turned around a $1 Billion inherited state debt to show three years of surplusses, that spending on education had been boosted, and that 90,000 new Missouri jobs had been created. He even planned to claim that he had transformed a broken health care system.

The messages crafted at the Big Cedar Lodge formed the foundation for the State of the State address he delivered on January 15.

Those in attendance were convinced that the message could be framed successfully, even though Jay Nixon would assail the governors record of kicking poor people off the Medicaid rolls, warn that the economy was shaky, and the education system was still lagging.

So what happened?

It wasn't money - Blunt had a proven ability to rake in massive amounts of cash, and some people present thought he could take in as much as $20 million for his war chest. He had raised almost $10 million since being elected in 2004, although his campaign warchest was sitting at about $4 million, and he still needed to return $2.3 million in excess contributions. After the reimbursements were made, he and Nixon would be on a level playing field.

So again, what happened?

There are plenty of instances of wrongdoing to point to. Those who haven't done anything wrong are not usually inclined to spend $89,000 in legal fees in a single quarter. You may recall that the Eckersley scandal broke in the last quarter. In case you have forgotten, Scott Eckersley was a staff attorney for the governor who was fired for having the temerity to tell Baby Guv he needed to follow the law and archive email, not delete, delete, delete. Of course, Baby Guv lashed out.

Or maybe the money he took from Jack Abramoff for his 2000 Secretary of State campaign has finally caught up with him?

Or did his pioneering work in vote caging catch up to him? When he was still Secretary of State, he instructed county election officials to provide him with lists of absentee voters, and then forwarded those names to Republican campaign operatives, and the GOP began contacting those voters. This ploy by a graduate of the Naval Academy disproportionately disenfranchised military personnel who were serving overseas in a time of war.

Or perhaps something came of the probe into his 2004 campaign for governor, when he used $48,000 of the public funds to run ads to encourage the citizenry to go to the polls. This scheme gave Blunt an unfair edge over his opponent, and allowed him to win by a nose.

Of course, there is the fact that former state representative Nathan Cooper was due to report to prison just days after Blunt's announcement, and of course it is just a coincidence that Cooper hearing those doors slam behind him has now been delayed.

Could it be that Nathan is singing like a canary, and Matty B knows there is an indictment in his immediate future? Dare I hope?

Or could it be the fee office scandal? I've been waiting almost two years for an indictment on that mess. There is just no way that little arrangement among insiders was on the up-and-up.

Whatever the reason for his sudden one-eighty, there is one thing for sure - I'm not buying the whole "spend more time with my family" smokescreen. Unless he is trying to soak 'em up now before he goes to the federal pen for some corruption charge or another, and the wife goes back to Virginia from whence she came.

Crossposted from Show Me Progress, Missouri's Progressive Politics Community

Matt Blunt throws the chess board into the air...

Missouri's embattled juvenile-offender of a governor has announced that he will not seek reelection in November.

It also raises a lot of questions...

What brought this on? There have been allegations of abuse of power - there is the Eckersly scandal. There were allegations that the Abramoff tentacles reached all the way to Missouri and throwing the taint of corruption on one of Baby Guv's campaigns. There is the six-Suburban caravan that schleps his feckless ass from Springfield to Jeff City every business day because his wife "doesn't like the mansion." There was the incident where one of his goons shoved Kit Wagar and caused a three-reporter pile up on veterans day.

There is the fact that Missouri as a whole is pissed off at him for myriad of reasons.

He said that he has accomplished everything he set out to do -

Sure, if he was setting out to destroy the social safety net and finish wrecking the economy, he has been a stellar success.

I'm sure the fact that he has been sucking Jay Nixon's draft since inauguration day has nothing to do with his decision to not lose in a landslide...

Or maybe he is about to be indicted...

And by golly, lets score one for the blogosphere! We have been after him for four years, and we got him. This very blog came to be because of a hissy-fit I threw in his direction. I opened my newspaper one morning in the spring of 2005 and read yet another offense against decency at the whim of the little weasel, and I started to rant. My husband, saint that he is, looked at me and said "Why are you telling me this again? I already agree with you." I looked him dead in the eye and said "you're absolutely right," and I walked into the office, went to blogger.com and two hours later, Blue Girl, Red State went live.

He's outta there...

Ed Martin is out as Matt Blunt's Chief of Staff.

Blunt named Trish Vincent, Department of Revenue director, as his new Chief of Staff in a hastily called news conference that was held late in the day on Tuesday.

Matty B. gave the standard excuse that is issued when politicos get canned: “He wants to pursue new opportunities to serve Missouri where he can spend more time with his wonderful wife, Carol, and their two children.”

Uh huh...sure...and I have some lakefront property in Mercer County with a panoramic view...(Mercer County has Lakes Paho and Marie - and they ain't neither one the least bit scenic...)

Martin has been roundly criticized for his mishandling of the Scott Eckersley firing, and even Steve Kraske had to admit there was a problem in the Blunt Administration about the way Eckersley was treated (granted, Kraske had to get sandwiched between Kit Wagar and Dave Helling after Wagar was shoved by one of baby guv's body guards - after baby guv literally ran from the press, before he even addressed the issue).

When pressed by reporters to give an answer on whether he had asked for Martin's resignation, Blunt engaged in a game of duck-and-weave and didn't answer the question, finally quipping (like the juvenile punk he is and ever shall be) “If you’re confused, that’s my intent.”

That's cool - play to your strengths and be a jackass, Matt - and when you get sent packing in 50 weeks and replaced by a grown-up, that's my intent.

A Red State, Trending Blue

People in Blue States who think Missouri is reliably red are sadly off-base. It was only in 2000 that the MOGOP finally got their corrupt, fetid fingers around the levers of power, thanks to term limits, which has had the net effect of destroying civility and changing the attitude in Jeff City from one of cross-party cooperation to one of "screw you and screw your constituents."

Well, it turns out that Missourians are more than just a tad sick of the juvenile antics and reckless disregard and selfish scorn for the greater good of the state we all call home that the MOGOP personifies.

And we haven't even addressed his war on Missouri women yet, but rest assured that my St. Louis sister in the struggle, Angry Black Bitch, and I will be reminding everyone for the next 50+ weeks that Matt Blunt has, since his first moment in office, been the most anti-woman, misogynistic ass ever to lead the state. Issues important to women were the first victims of his budget-cuts. He tried to kill the First Steps program (and failed miserably in that quest). He eliminated family planning and contraceptive funds from county health departments, and put a gag-order in place that prevented employees of those agencies from even telling the poor women served by those agencies where the services might still be available. He poured acid on the social safety net, reducing the level to receive benefits to the point where a single mother of two who earned more than $350 per month was considered too well-heeled to receive Medicaid for her children. Kansas City immediately had a hissy-fit and passed an additional sales tax to fund Truman Medical Center and the public health clinics that serve the poor in our community. Matty B has seen a steady erosion of support ever since he took aim at the poor residents of a largely rural and poor state.

Recent polling in Missouri shows Hillary Clinton mopping the floor with every Republican contender, and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch published the results of a poll today that has embattled governor Matt Blunt getting absolutely destroyed in next years gubernatorial race by Jay Nixon, the current Attorney General - who we have elected to that statewide office four times.

Matt Blunt has been an unmitigated disaster for this state, and we are all counting down the days until January 20, 2009 - which will signal the end of not one error, but two.

Putting out a fire with gasoline

It would have been a sight to behold, and I wish I had seen it...

On Veterans Day, Matty B came to KC to the world headquarters of the VFW for the obligatory medal ceremony that happens every November, and after the event, three KC Star reporters tried to get an answer from Baby Guv about the brewing email scandal in Jefferson City. He quite literally broke into a run to get away from the likes of Kit Wagar, Steve Kraske and Dave Helling.

As the reporters closed in, a security guard (who looks disturbingly like that guy on Springer) shoved Wagar, who was pushed back into Kraske, who was knocked back into Helling - who is a pretty big guy, so presumably he didn't go anywhere. But Kraske was suddenly faced with having to acknowledge that there is indeed a story there, and he should prolly say sumthin' about it, and damnit to hell, thats gonna deal a setback to his secret desire to be Matty B's next press secretary...But Helling had that damnable camera of his running, and the video was all over the interwebs an hour later...

For those unfamiliar with Missouri's latest gubernatorial malfeasance, it's a potboiler.

It all started a few weeks ago when Tony Messenger, political reporter for the Springfield News-Leader came into possession of an email from Blunt chief-of-staff Ed Martin that indicated Martin was performing political work from his state-funded office, and that is a violation of ethics rules. Messenger started asking questions of the governors office, and under the states Sunshine Law, he asked to see other emails like it. He was told that other emails didn't exist because Martin and other officials in the Blunt administration routinely deleted emails, which violates violates public records rules that mandate openness and transparency, and to that end, email retention.

Well, the governors office went into full freak-out mode and proceeded to compound their troubles exponentially. They denied they were aware of the policy on email retention - but the AP soon turned up with an email from a lawyer who served in the Blunt administration who said he had advised the governors staff to stop deleting email.

And here is where it gets really weird and the hubris becomes palpable. Scott Eckersley, the attorney who gave the administration the advice they didn't want to hear was fired and slandered and had his character and his ethics challenged; and Eckersley, a devout Mormon, was accused of getting porn emails at his state email address. (Don't we all get offers for penis enlargement, and gender is no deterrent?)

The issue has consumed a tremendous amount of newsprint all over the state, and it has been scathing of Blunt and Martin, and sympathetic to Eckersley. And two weeks in to the whole fiasco, the Blunt administration cut off their nose to spite their face. The administration filed a complaint with the state bar association, claiming that Eckersley violated the confidentiality he owed the governor as his attorney when he talked to the press. The complaint is tacit acknowledgment that Eckersley did indeed advise the governor and his staff to stop deleting emails.

And by Thursday of last week, baby guv had unveiled a new plan to archive every single email that is sent or received on state computers, because he wants to "avoid confusion" - except his staff seems to be the only folks who are afflicted by confusion. But that didn't stop him from blaming Jay Nixon, the current Attorney General. Blunt, in a stunning display of audacious gall, said his new scheme would "prevent what has happened in Attorney General Nixon's office, where the spokesperson said that e-mails are routinely deleted." Nixon, as every Missourian knows, is challenging Blunt in next years governors race, and in the words of Hotflash, my good friend and fellow co-blogger at Show Me Progress (and by the way, she has been absolutely tireless on this issue) Blunt isn't just going to lose next fall. He is going to get demolished.

The Missouri Plan: In Plain English

In 1940, following an era of machine politics in St. Louis and Kansas City that out-Tammanied Tammany Hall, Missourians amended the state constitution to change the way judges were selected to fill vacancies on the benches of the Missouri Supreme Court, the Court of Appeals and the circuit courts of Jackson County and the municipality of St. Louis.

The amendment was placed on the ballot and enacted in response to the hijacking of the justice system by the powerful political machines of Tom Pendergast in Kansas City and Edward Butler of St. Louis. Under the Bosses, justice resided in their pockets, and nowhere else.

The amendment offered was dubbed “The Missouri Plan” and under it, judicial elections were replaced with a judicial commission comprised of judges, lawyers and citizens which reviews and interviews applicants for vacancies on the bench and winnows the field to three choices. The Governor then has sixty days to select the new judge from those three candidates. If he fails to do so in the allotted time, the decision reverts to the recommending body. At the first General Election following one year on the bench, the new judge faces the voters who decide whether the appointed judge shall be retained.

In balloting to determine whether judges be retained, the state Bar Association issues ratings for the judges before the election, and the ratings and recommendations are made available to the public. It is in the best interest of attorneys and citizens alike for judges to be fair-minded and non-partisan, so the ratings are extremely apolitical.

This system has worked very well for us for 67 years, and has served to keep the state courts as apolitical as possible, while efficiently and promptly filling vacancies on the bench with qualified jurists. In the years since 1940, it has been expanded to include all circuit court judges in Clay, Platte and St. Louis Counties.

One of the most elegant features of the plan is the way it defangs the money monster. Success in partisan elections depends on money, on the financial contributors of donors (a very iffy proposition when we are talking about the very concept of Justice).

The Missouri plan works so well that in the intervening decades, 36 additional states have adopted the plan in whole or in part.

Unfortunately, last summer the resignation of Supreme Court Justice Ronnie White (famously "blue slipped" by Ashcroft and denied a hearing after Clinton nominated him to the Federal bench) created a vacancy on the Missouri Supreme Court and gave little Matty Blunt the opportunity to stamp his wittle feet and pitch a hissy-fit and try to break another part of the state government that actually works. Injecting politics back into the process appeals to him, too, of course. And as a bonus, he got to throw a tantrum because he doesn't think the commissions pay him proper homage as the elected executive of the state.

Don’t be fooled, his hissy-fit is pure political theater. Blunt is attacking the nonpartisan judge selection because he wants total control of the appointments. But there is a more insidious undertone to it, too. He’s firing a warning shot across the bow of the judges not covered by the non-partisan system who do have to stand for election. It makes the Governors position crystal clear – if he doesn’t like their decisions, he can orchestrate a deluge of money for opposing candidates. It has already happened.

In June, a thinly-veiled BluntCo initiative rolled out to attack the judicial selection process. Flying under the flag of something called "The Adam Smith Foundation" the minions of the governor went on the attack, while simultaneously playing the victim card....neat trick, that.

June 26th, 2007

Adam Smith Foundation Launched

(Jefferson City) - The Adam Smith Foundation is proud to announce its official launch as an organization committed to promoting conservative principals [sic] and individual liberties for Missouri. Our Foundation seeks to provide Missourian's with information they need to hold their State and local elected officials as well as activist judges directly accountable for their actions.

"There are countless leftist political groups in Missouri, but only a handful of conservative organizations. We strive to fill an important void by holding politicians in Jefferson City accountable." said John Elliott, organization President. "Big spenders in state and local governments have forgotten that tax dollars belong to the citizens, and we will promote ways to reduce the size of government."

Blunt pursues this agenda at the peril of further splitting the Missouri GOP. When State Senator Kris Koster left the Republican party in August, he cited the Blunt Administrations attack on the judiciary was one of his key reasons for switching parties. Koster, a former prosecuting attorney for Cass County summed up the Blunt administration very well when he said “I can’t think of another administration in our lifetime that has such disregard and such contempt for the third branch of government.”

A small victory but no reason to celebrate just yet…

Yesterday a federal judge agreed to temporarily block the horrendous new law that was aimed at further restricting abortions through the regulation of clinics where the procedure is performed.

U.S. District Judge Ortrie Smith granted the request from Planned Parenthood of Kansas & Mid-Missouri and stayed the law from taking effect, and he will hold a hearing on September 10 to determine whether to make the injunction permanent or allow the law to take effect.

The new law, which Matty B. signed into law in the sanctuary of a Baptist Church, is an end run around access, pure and simple. When the courts had given the anti-choice zealots all the legal restrictions they were going to get, they set their sights on restricting access via facilities regulations. To this end, they drafted a smarmy little law that set the bar for facilities higher than most of the clinics can meet. As a result, they either have to suspend providing the service, or they have to spend a shitload of money they don’t have on a bunch of pointless facilities upgrades that aren’t needed and serve no purpose.

Facilities that provide abortions in Missouri are already licensed and regulated, but here is where it gets dicey…not all facilities that perform abortions have been defined as abortion clinics. State law has defined an abortion clinic as a facility that derives at least one-half of it’s revenue from abortion services. Under that definition, only one facility, a Planned Parenthood clinic in St. Louis meets that definition.

The new law would alter the definition of an abortion clinic in the state code and pull other facilities under the definition, even the KC clinic that only dispenses abortifacients, and does not perform surgical abortions.

In his order, Smith warned both sides from reading too much into his ruling, saying "the state has a legitimate interest in regulating facilities that perform surgery, even if the facility in question performs surgical abortions."

"The court also believes the state may differentiate between facilities that do not primarily perform surgery based on the types of surgery they provide," he wrote.

But he said it was confusing how the state would apply the law to the Kansas City clinic, which performs only medication-induced abortions, not surgical ones.

Defense attorneys said the facility should be outfitted for surgery in case something goes wrong with the medication. Smith was not convinced.

"Of all the establishments that dispense medication (e.g. doctor’s offices, pharmacies), why is it only those that dispense medication for the purpose of inducing an abortion that must be prepared to perform surgery?" Smith asked.

He said the law should probably apply to the Columbia clinic and noted that Planned Parenthood and the department were willing to cooperate. But he said there was still disagreement over what level of regulations the clinic would have to follow.

In the mean time, we need to get organized and get loud. The rights of women to control our own bodies has been beaten, battered, and thrown under the bus under the Blunt administration.

In Missouri, reproductive freedom is under full frontal assault. Over a year ago legislation was passed that prohibited not just the distribution of contraceptives, but the dissemination of information. The legislation tied state funding to a gag order. County health departments were not only prohibited from providing birth control, they were prohibited from referring to programs that could provide those services.

Over a year ago the non-profit Guttmacher Institute released a study that showed poor women, those living below the poverty line, have a four-fold rate of unintended pregnancy over more affluent women. The study also showed that the trend coincides chronologically with actions taken at both the state and federal levels that have severely limited or entirely eliminated contraceptive programs that serve low-income women. Pregnancy prevention programs have consistently shifted the focus of their efforts from contraception to abstinence, even in marriage.

Social conservatives, meantime, continue to dismissively argue in the face of fact that all contraceptive methods have limitations to their effectiveness, so the only way to be sure an unintended pregnancy is avoided is through abstinence, so really, denying contraception doesn’t matter – God’s will is God’s will. Yes, no contraception is foolproof – but if I were a woman living below the poverty line, I would sure rather have access to the pill and it’s 98% effectiveness rate than nothing at all. Their argument is specious at best, and actually smacks of blatant intellectual dishonesty.

But let’s tote the board, shall we? The social conservatives have managed to curtail availability of contraception for poor women. They have managed to get laws passed at the state level that restrict access to abortion – actions that unfairly deny access to poor women while more affluent women are able to exercise their constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy by taking a trip across state lines. And the final cruel twist of fate: once those unintended pregnancies come to fruition, and a baby is born, that child is on his or her own because Medicaid has been cut to the bone.

Reagan was wrong – people are not “poor by choice.” They are poor by circumstance, and not everyone has the skills; social, cognitive, or otherwise, to escape those circumstances. A smaller percentage still has the ability to acquire the skills necessary to escape the circumstances of their life. The Dickensian social measures being enacted at a phenomenal clip will most surely turn on us in the near future, and we will face a snarling monster with very large teeth.

I am not willing to sit on my hands and wait for the social fallout. I have a head full of knowledge and an ability to organize. And Sisters, I am doing just that. Family planning is power in the hands of women, and I can see no reason that the power of self-determination should be limited only to women of means. I have friends who are effective hellraisers and I have enough bitchitude to foist myself on social service agencies and public health clinics and make them listen to me for 20 minutes. I have enough moxie to take information sessions to the coffee shops and the student unions…and to the shelters, too.

See, HB 1055, that apostasy of a bill – again, signed in the sanctuary of a Baptist church – did not just use the building codes to restrict a woman’s right to choose. Oh, no, Darling. It is a really nasty little piece of misogynistic work. The bill encourages abstinence-only sex education in public schools, and it bans trained sex educators from Missouri classrooms.

Ladies, we need to wake the hell up, and we need to band together. These assaults against half the population can not be allowed to stand. In the meantime, we need to raise our collective voice as one and make our displeasure known.

Sisters, get registered to vote, get informed, get organized and get loud. If you are in the St. Louis side of the state, contact Angry Black Bitch, and in KC and the northwest section of the state, contact me. We sure could use an interlocutor in the Ozarks, if anyone down that way wants to be a Feminist Warrior wielding a Sword of Knowledge.

1735, here we come!

Missouri’s juvenile offender of a governor continues his assault on common sense and decency, and especially the female citizens of the state. He made a big show of signing a big wet kiss to the Missouri Right to Life clown contingent into law last week. Like everyone in the state doesn’t know that this was just Matty B groveling and cloying his way back into their good graces after alienating them by promoting Amendment 2 last fall, because he is facing reelection next year and needs the single-issue votes they can deliver to even clear a probable primary challenge, so feeble has been his governance.

The new law, which will take effect Aug. 28, also bars people affiliated with abortion providers from teaching or supplying materials for sex education courses in public schools, and it allows schools to offer abstinence-only programs.

It cements into state statute an existing grant program for centers that encourage women to deliver babies instead of having abortions.

Blunt proclaimed the law “one of the strongest pieces of pro-life legislation in Missouri history” as he spoke from a cross-shaped lectern during a signing ceremony in the sanctuary of Concord Baptist Church. The governor also was scheduled to promote the legislation in Joplin, Hannibal and suburban St. Louis. (emphasis mine)

The Republican governor said he had no qualms if the stricter state oversight caused hardships for abortion clinics. (Bloggers aside – This is the governor who slashed Medicaid eliminated the Foster Grandparents Program, Denied contraception to poor and low income women, and tried to drown First Steps in the bathtub. He loves babies. That is, until they are born and require services and funds.)

“I say if they can’t meet the same basic requirements that other (medical) providers do, then they should shut down,” Blunt said. (Bloggers aside – I have been unable to confirm that he then put his thumbs in his ears, waggled his fingers and stuck out his tongue before saying “neener, neener, neener!”)

Missouri Right to Life, which backed the measure, says groups such as Planned Parenthood have a conflict of interest in supplying materials for sex education courses, because they could potentially make money off female students who later visit their clinics. (MRtL is full of shit. Educated women who have the facts are less likely to find themselves in need of an abortion.)

Blunt alleged that abortion providers were deriving a “significant source of revenue” by selling sex education materials to taxpayer-financed school districts. (This is a blatant lie. Told in church, to boot.)

Planned Parenthood said it provided sex education materials to schools free and that its staff members who teach sexual health and education lessons in 41 Missouri schools were trained not to discuss abortions. A top official at the organization denied any conflict and called that assertion “political propaganda.” (The official is more civil about it all than I am. They are lying agenda-whores who are more interested in forcing their morality on other people than they are in making certain every child is a wanted child. They are hypocrites of the first order, and I have no use at all for pro-lifers who do not care about that life once it is delivered and draws its first breath, and after that point is a “drain on the system.”)

Well, I am not the only woman in Missouri to get her rage on over this apostasy.

Over on the other side of the state, the Angry Black Bitch has issued a call to action. Go read what she has to say, and leave her a comment if you are in. I did, and I am.

Do that as soon as you enjoy a world-class mocking of the idiocy of "abstinence only" as only The Family Guy can deliver.

More Blunt Mendacity

I am not even going to address the latest outrage of what looks like a bought-and-paid-for appointment to the State Highway Commission by The Boy Blunder Matt Blunt - That post has already been written, and written very well I might add, by someone with deeper roots into Missouri politics than a military waif like me has been able to set down.

In the future, you can get to the linked website from the Missouri Blogs link list on the left hand side. Go say hi.

Turns out it was about voter disenfranchisement after all

I live in one of those states that went insane and passed a super-restrictive voter I.D. bill. It was tossed by a judge, and tossing it held up on appeal.

Matt Blunt acted crushed, like the very fabric of our democracy was at stake. Why, no Missouri election would have the confidence of the electorate ever again if we did not pass a restrictive voter-ID law.

Yet it turns out that not only was the issue of voter fraud a tempest in a tea-pot in our state, a government panel, the United States Election Assistance Commission, commissioned under the Help America Vote Act not only found that there was no there there...The government panel spun their results by using selective wording in an attempt to help the Republican party line on the issue.

You read that right...Even after the panel found there was no evidence of malfeasance, they used selective wording to imply that fraud was being tolerated, issuing a report that said the pervasiveness of voter fraud was "open to debate. "

The original report stated that consensus opinion among experts was that there is little polling-place fraud, yet the final version of the report, the version that was released to the public, maintained that “there is a great deal of debate on the pervasiveness of fraud.”

The researchers whose work was altered are speaking out about it.

A number of election law experts, based on their own research, have concluded that the accusations regarding widespread fraud are unjustified. And in this case, one of the two experts hired to do the report was Job Serebrov, a Republican elections lawyers from Arkansas, who defended his research in an e-mail message obtained by The Times that was sent last October to Margaret Sims, a commission staff member.

“Tova and I worked hard to produce a correct, accurate and truthful report,” Mr. Serebrov wrote, referring to Tova Wang, a voting expert with liberal leanings from the Century Foundation and co-author of the report. “I could care less that the results are not what the more conservative members of my party wanted.”

He added: “Neither one of us was willing to conform results for political expediency.”

Both Ms. Wang and Mr. Serebrov are under contract and are therefore not at liberty to comment in detail on the discrepancies between the report they produced and the edited, doctored version that was released to the public.

The original report found that instances of intimidation and vote suppression (areas of election fraud that Democrats have been screaming about for years) were prevalent, especially on Indian reservations. Yet the final report watered down that finding, stating only that voter “intimidation is also a topic of some debate because there is little agreement concerning what constitutes actionable voter intimidation.”

So let's recap - the areas of election fraud that the Republicans have been bitching about were found to be much ado about nothing...Yet the report vaguely asserted that the problem was possibly pervasive and open to debate. And the concerns that Democrats have been pointing out - intimidation and disenfranchisement - were found to be pervasive, but were discounted and played down, because after all, who can really define intimidation...Such a slippery, nebulous concept.

This is all of a piece. The Republicans wanted a permanent majority, and they were willing to do whatever it took to achieve their political ends. Wrongful imprisonment, specious indictment, smear campaigns, slander, voter intimidation, voter disenfranchisement...

I, for one, have seen quite enough. I want my fucking country back.

The things that have transpired over the last six years have brought our nation to the brink of fascism. These things can not be allowed to stand. The future of our Republic demands that right now...today...every last one of us vows to see justice restored and the sanctity of the American ballot box restored.

If the sanctity of the ballot box is not restored, the die is cast and we are headed for the ammo box.

Just in case, I'm keeping my powder dry.

Blatantly Stolen from FiredUp! Missouri

Because it's fucking hilarious.

Parody? Read the papers and you decide.

Submitted by J. Carter on Thu, 03/15/2007 - 3:35pm. Blunt-Kinder Administration

Governor Matt "Flounder" Blunt today blasted Attorney General Jay Nixon for the fact that Matt Blunt is Governor. "Everything that has happened since the day I became Governor is Jay Nixon's fault," said Blunt. Flounder pointed out that Nixon neglected to run for Governor in 2000 or 2004.

"If Jay Nixon had simply done his job and run for Governor in 2000 or 2004, I would not be Governor today," said the Governor. "We would not have had the Medicaid cuts or the Ferrell fiasco, probation officers would have gotten the raise they deserve without a court fight, my brother would not have worked for Ameren (who are lieing scumbags now that they fired Andy, by the way), their dam would not have broken, Kurt Schaffer would still be a junior associate at Lathrop Gage, no one would have proposed selling MoHELA assets, Bellfountaine would be open and run appropriately, illegal aliens would not be cleaning state offices, the Department of Labor would not have screwed workers, and now employers, with terrible legal advice and Melanie would have never been photographed in that hideous fur." "Oh, yeah and my father would still be in leadership."

» J. Carter's blog | 3 comments | (Story Continued)

Give the Devil His Due

Damn. Just yesterday I tore into Matt Blunt for his Chief of Staff’s unfounded attack against Jay Nixon on state letterhead, and for his Carbon footprint - which by the way could flatten the Mark Twain National Forest - and then later that very day he went and did something decent.

He gave service workers in this state a raise, over the objections of his own Labor and Industrial Relations Board.

In November, Missouri voters passed a progressive, indexed minimum wage referendum. The Labor Department and the Missouri Restaurant Association took the position that the referendum did not apply to service workers.

Matt Blunt made the right executive decision in this case, and went against his own labor department and the business community in the process. In his statement, Blunt said he ordered the change after his office's legal counsel had studied the issue and disagreed with the Labor Department's ruling.

"The department has an obligation to instruct businesses that hire tipped employees to increase salaries in accordance with the law,'' the governor said.

Blunt's order bumps their pay to a minimum of $3.25 an hour, or half of the state's minimum wage of $6.50 an hour for non-tipped workers. That minimum went into effect Jan. 1 and was mandated by Missouri voters' approval Nov. 7 of Proposition B.

Blunt also dictated the raise be retroactive to 01 January, although the backpay may be difficult to collect.

One head has already rolled over the issue. Cynthia Quetsch, the chief counsel for the Labor Department was fired on Wednesday. Quetsch crafted the departments interpretation of the law, which maintained tipped employees need only be paid the federally mandated minimum of $2.13 per hour.

"This was not a legally defensible interpretation that the department was clinging to for the first 75 days of the year,'' said spokesman Jim Kottmeyer. He cited a provision of state wage law that requires employers to pay an equal amount in damages — in addition to back pay — when they are found to have failed to pay the proper minimum wage.

A Labor Department spokeswoman noted that the state has no enforcement power to order businesses to pay back wages to their tipped employees. As a result, Kottmeyer predicted there may be lawsuits.

Of course there will. Even though the legal fees will quickly outpace what it would cost to pay the back wages.

We all know I’m a math nerd – if a worker has been employed full time since Jan. 1 and worked 40 hours a week, that is 40 dollars per week they are owed for the last 10 weeks. That’s 400 bucks. About what a high-powered attorney costs for one hour. But inexplicably, they will fight the inevitable, because they would rather see it go to attorneys that don’t need it than the servers who do.

Whaddaya bet?

Let's do the math...

What the hell? It’s Pi day.

This is the sort of thing I consider fun. I know. I need help.

My obsessions and mental health issues aside, lets crunch the numbers and see how much carbon Matty B and his Caravan belch into the atmosphere every single day.

First off...Lets get the mileage and fuel economy information for the Chevy Surburban:

Fuel Economy

Fuel Type Regular

MPG (city) 14

MPG (highway) 18

MPG (combined) 15

Now, lets plug in our constants. The weight of a gallon of gas varies depending on temperature, but on average, a gallon of gasoline weighs 6.25 pounds.

Now for the mind-bending part…A gallon of gasoline produces nearly 20 pounds of CO₂.

“What?!?!” You may be asking about now. “How can that be? You have to be insane!”

Well, be that as it may my dear Watson, the math, and the chemistry, are both elementary.

First of all, lets talk about what happens when something is combusted. The mass does not go away, it is merely transformed into vapor, and while some chemical bonds are broken, others are created. When something burns, the atoms that are freed from their bonds form new bonds with Oxygen diatoms. This makes for a molecular byproduct (CO₂₎ with heavier molecular weight than the carbon-based fuel.

When Carbon (atomic weight 12) is released from gasoline during combustion, it quickly bonds with two Oxygens, each with an atomic weight of 16. So one molecule of CO₂ has a molecular weight of 44 amu., or roughly triple the weight of the petrol.

This gives us a number that is firmly in the ballpark of the official World Resources Institute conversion rate of 19.564 pounds of CO₂ per gallon of gas.

Now, Matty B’s caravan of six Suburbans travels 280 miles per day, minimum, and lets be generous and call them all highway miles. That means that each suburban in the caravan consumes 15.55 gallons of gasoline per day. I'm being generous here -

15.556 X 19.564 = 304.338 pounds of CO₂ per Suburban per day.

So daily, our Governor is responsible for 1826.026 pounds of CO₂ emissions.

Each week, the Governor’s Caravan of Spoiled Spouse Indulgence spews 9130.128 pounds of CO₂ into the atmosphere over our state.

These numbers piss me off, especially since I didn't marry the bitch and surrender my genitals.

How about you?

The Ferrell Fiasco and the Boy Blunder

The Fred Ferrell Flap here in Missouri is a convoluted, sorry tale, and you damn near need a program to follow along, but let’s take the nickel tour.

Fred Ferrell is was Secretary of Agriculture in the Blunt Administration until last week. He was also charged with sexual harassment in May.

Ferrell wasn’t asked to resign, instead they tried to “settle the matter privately” which we all know translates to “buy off the victim to shut her up.” We know the M.O. (If I didn’t live in State Senate 10, I’d be a Live Action News feature, I am afraid.)

The Blunt administration not only kept a sexual harasser suckling at the state teat, they planned to use funds from a state equipment fund to buy her silence. Oh – and they were going to let Ferrell slide on the ten large he was supposed to pony over for being a miscreant letch. The Columbia Tribune political blog has a pretty decent rundown of the whole sordid mess.

March 01, 2007

The $10,000 question

One aspect conspicuously absent from Gov. Matt Blunt’s letter to then-Agriculture Department director Fred Ferrell was a $10,000 levy supposedly required of the Charleston native.

Last week, Blunt spokeswoman Jessica Robinson said Ferrell was required to apologize, undergo 20 hours of sensitivity training and pay $10,000 toward a settlement with Heather Elder, a former Agriculture Department employee.

Nowhere in the letter that was released to the press yesterday does it state that Ferrell needed to contribute $10,000 in order to keep his job.

From the AP:

Blunt's May letter made no mention of reaching a settlement with Elder, nor of a previously cited requirement by Blunt that Ferrell pay $10,000 toward her legal fees. That's because those details arose later, said Kurt Schaefer, a Department of Natural Resources attorney picked by Blunt to act as a special counsel for the matter.

A press release from the Missouri Democratic Party noted the absence of the $10,000 fine in Blunt’s letter to Ferrell.

“Blunt has also recently claimed that he reinstated Fred Ferrell in May, in part, because he required him to pay a $10,000 fine,” the release says. “However, a letter co-signed by Blunt and Ferrell at the time never mentions the fine. It remains unclear when Ferrell paid the fine. Democrats question whether the fine was originally part of Ferrell’s reinstatement or merely another part of this cover up.”

You can read the whole letter here.

Filed under: Blunt , State Politics

Posted by Jason Rosenbaum at 02:39 PM

It’s been common knowledge that Blunt is in a job he is ill suited for – for starters, he is 14 – and he won’t be Governor come January 2009. Sarah Steeleman, the Republican State Treasurer declared her intent to challenge him in the 2008 Republican primary during his inaugural address in January 2005.

His imported bride turned her nose up at the Governor’s Mansion, and instead the governor commutes from Springfield to Jefferson City in a six-Suburban convoy. There are questions about how he affords the Springfield digs on his salary.

He tried to kill First Steps, which was the one program that could have been held up as an example of “THIS is what a government program done right looks like.”

Last night on Kansas City Week In Review, which airs right after Washington Week on KCPT (one of the best damned PBS affiliates in the country, in my opinion, and I’ve lived damn near everywhere) some of the chattering class speculated that he might not even run for reelection.

It is damned near a foregone conclusion that the Democratic Attorney General Jay Nixon will be the governor two years hence. We have a history in this state of electing our Attorneys General to the Governor’s Mansion. Both John Ashcroft and William Webster took that path to the office of Governor in recent political history.

Blunt has done a sorry-assed and decidedly undistinguished job as Governor, and his administration has been one ling series of PR gaffes. But it had long since stopped being funny by this time in 2005.

January 2009 can’t get here fast enough.

[originally posted at Watching Those We Chose]