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.

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]