Remember Americans for Prosperity (AFP), the infamous Koch founded and funded organization that, among other achievements, got the Tea Party organized and on track? Want to know just which legislators in Missouri are most in tune with AFP goals? Well, you need wait no longer. The AFP has just issued a scorecard for the 112th Congress. The grades received by Missouri legislators, listed below (name, party and grade), is about what one would expect:
Roy Blunt (R): B
Claire McCaskill (D): D
Todd Akin (R): A+
Russ Carnahan (D): F
Wm. Lacy Clay (D): F
Emanuel Cleaver (D): D-
Jo Ann Emerson (R) B
Sam Graves (R): B
Vicky Hartzler (R): B
Billy Long (R): B
Blaine Leutkemeyer (R): B
If you want a vote breakdown, check out AmericansforProsperity.org/Scorcard. According to the DailyKos' Meteor Blades:
AFP chose to grade congressmembers based on their votes on repealing President Obama's new healthcare law, blocking the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gases, supporting the demolition document known as the Paul Ryan budget, ending ethanol subsidies and several Congressional Review Act resolutions as well as the fiscal year 2012 appropriations bills.
This rationale explains just why Republicans get high marks and Democrats get low marks - as a progressive, I'd be very disturbed if any Democrats scored higher than they did. That said, I do have to admit that I was surprised that most of Missouri's GOP legislators can't get better than B grades - only uber-winger Akin qualifies for an A grade (A+ actually). They sure talk a good game and one would have expected that they would reap a bigger reward. Perhaps ethanol subsides plays a role in their scores? Also of interest is the fact that no matter how far right she tries to list, poor Claire McCaskill can't do better than a D. I would have pegged her at C- (for centrist wannabe) myself - if only because of her efforts on behalf of Big Coal.
Missourians have been busy signing letters today - and at least some of Missouri's Democratic pols are doing so in a good cause - protesting the new, reconfigured, better-than-ever, poll tax proxies that constitute the latest salvos in the newly energized GOP war on voting:
House Democratic Whip Steny H. Hoyer (MD-05) and Ranking Member of the House Administration Committee Robert Brady (PA-01) led a letter sent to Secretaries of State today urging them to oppose new state measures adopted over the last year that would make it harder for eligible voters to register or vote. The letter was signed by 196 House Democrats, including Hoyer and Brady.
Adding their names to the letter were all three of Missouri's Democratic House members, Emanuel Cleaver (05), Russ Carnahan (03), and Lacy Clay (01). Republicans signing the letter: zero, zip, nada. I guess they were just too scared by the ghost of Acorn or some other fictional agent of non-existent voter fraud. Or maybe they're just afraid of their own constituents?
Over at the DailyKos they had this to say about a leaked poll that shows Russ Carnahan very slightly ahead of both Ed Martin and Ann Wagner in a potential run for the 2nd district congressional seat:
A Russ Carnahan internal poll made its way to Dave Catanese's hands, showing the de-districted Democrat with tiny leads over possible Republican opponents in the new 2nd CD. Carnahan leads teabagger extraordinaire Ed Martin 42-40 and former state party chair Ann Wagner 40-39 in the survey from Lake Research. I'm not so sanguine about these results, though, as MO-02 is very red territory and Carnahan would have to contend with Barack Obama at the top of the ticket.
But, I ask, didn't the redistricting changes to the 2nd do something to dilute its former makeup? Also, as a resident of the 2nd district, I've never found it to be as virulently red as the election of Todd Akin would suggest - lots of old-timey, "moderate" GOPers out here. Their votes for Todd, who for a long time kept his wilder tendencies pretty low key, were more a Pavlovian response to the GOP bell than an endorsement of Todd Akin's extremism. And now that the Tea Party's ringing that bell, lots of them are a little less enthusiastic than before about the GOP brand.
That's only my read, of course, and, I could be very wrong - poll respondents did rate the Tea Party five points higher than President Obama after all, and there is also some evidence that the poll results could change as voters become more familiar with the candidates:
The August survey found Carnahan up two points on Martin, 42 percent to 40 percent and leading Wagner by a single point, 40 percent to 39 percent.
After being read positive messages about both candidates, Martin leads Carnahan by five points, 47 percent to 42 percent. Under the same scenario with Wagner, it's a closer race, with the Democrat besting the former ambassador 44 percent to 43 percent.
I'd like to know the content of those "positive messages." When negative messages about Martin and Wagner were read, it's also interesting that, overall, pointing out that they posed a threat to Medicare was pretty effective in lowering their approval rates - but emphasizing Ed Martin's past record of corruption also got lots of negative traction.
Today Rep. Athony Wiener (D-NY) sent a letter to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas asking that he recuse himself from hearing challenges to the Affordable Care Act (ACA). According to Wiener and the letter's 73 cosigners, the fact that Thomas' lobbyist wife, Virginia (Gini), has worked in a professional capacity to defeat the legislation constitutes a conflict of interest. Wiener also noted Gini Thomas' involvement with clients that had benefited from the Court's Citizen United ruling.
Among the cosigners were Missouri's Lacy Clay (D-1) and Russ Carnahan (D-3). Notably absent were signatures from any of the Republican members of the Missouri delegation. While their abstinence may be understandable from a political point of view, it is certainly questionable given that, as Think Progress' Ian Milhiser notes apropos the federal recusal statute:
... conservatives have already interpreted this ethics law in a way that requires Justice Thomas to recuse himself from the health care litigation. After progressive Judge Stephen Reinhardt was assigned to the appellate panel that was to hear a challenge to anti-gay Proposition 8, supporters of the anti-gay law called for Reinhardt to recuse because his wife's organization advocates against Prop 8.
Certainly, in light of Gini Thomas' activities - and the added fillip that her husband has for many years failed to report her income as he is required to do - it would seem that there is more substance to Weiner's claims than in the efforts of conservative Orin Hatch to trump up objections to Elena Kagan prior to the court's inevitable review of the ACA. Hatch recently questioned Kagan's impartiality to hear cases related to the ACA on the basis that she served as Obama's Solicitor General while it was taking shape, although Kagan had previously stated that "she had not been involved in legal strategy sessions about how to defend the health-care plan against charges that it is unconstitutional."
It will be interesting to see how the Missouri GOPers react as this little conflict of interest contest rolls out. Meanwhile, kudos to Clay and Carnahan. Somebody needs to call Thomas out about what seems to be a pattern of abuse related to his judical activism.
If I were to try to find a descriptive label for the political atmosphere in 2009, I would call it the year of the tantrum because of all the displays of thwarted fury that took place in the wake of the election of the first African-American president. Who can forget the right-wing tantrums that took place wherever Tea Party mobs hijacked congressional town halls or congregated to inflate the weight of their essentially minority demands. While the rage continued unabated in 2010, one might better characterize last year in terms of the bait used to snare those same angry Tea Partiers - any one of the numerous iterations of the big lie that has become the currency of the modern GOP.
That fringewingers have been boiling over isn't really anything new as those of us know who can remember the McCarthyist "better dead than red" protests and the original John Birchers. What was worth remarking, though, was the degree to which the Teople were worked up over things that just weren't true - nonexistent death panels, fictional FEMA detention camps, or the imaginary threat of the great Obama gun confiscation for example.
This year, as GOP pols and their corporate supporters doubled down in their efforts to retake the congress, they also doubled down in their willingness to exploit what has been revealed as the almost limitless gullibility of those over-Foxified and Limbaughed individuals who inhabit the fact-free zone of GOP propaganda. GOP politicians have been liberated; they are free to deny obvious facts at will and make any outlandish claim, secure in the knowledge that they will never be held accountable by their base.
Missouri, of course, saw its share of political lies during the past year, but to my mind, there are two GOP pols who excelled in the rarefied art of bilking the suckers. Ed Martin who lost his race against Russ Carnahan for the 3rd district House seat, and Roy Blunt who beat Robin Carnahan for retiring Senator Kit Bond's Senate seat. (You, of course, may have other candidates, and I would welcome your arguments for them in the comments if you are so inclined.)
It's hard to know where to start when describing the excesses of Ed Martin, who seems to have mislaid whatever capacity he possessed to tell the truth as soon as he started his campaign. He started out by pretending that Carnahan had defaulted on debates that, contrary to Martin's claims, he never agreed to, and finished by fabricating absurd claims of election fraud. In between, his campaign featured a multitude of spurious claims about his rival, among the most creative of which was his contention that Carnahan, along with his pal, the Obama boogyman, would come between Missourians and their religious "salvation." The trouble with Martin, though, is that so little that he said had any relationship to truth that, after awhile, most of us found his fantasy life a little boring.
As truth challenged as Martin proved to be, probably the most overwhelming triumph of big-lie politics in Missouri was the election of Roy Blunt to the Senate. In part, this is because Blunt, a scandal-tinged insider who, during the Bush years, presided over a a GOP dominated House that helped drive the deficit to astronomical heights while simultaneously trashing the economy, managed to coast to election with promises to "fight to restore accountability" to Washington.
A plaid-shirted Blunt, who in his long-time Washington incarnation plays the role of a glossy socialite, tooled around the state in a rented pick-up, kissing up to any and every rural prejudice. After disrespecting Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security like a good GOP pol really wants to do, he not only denied his own words, but ran ads falsely implying that Carnahan's support for the Affordable Care Act, would translate into cuts in Medicare benefits. He lied about his votes against the minimum wage. He even sunk so low that in the course of bragging about his GOP boiler-plate "jobs plan" he lied about its length, adding a good 80 pages.
This partial list of Blunt's transgressions against the truth, which offers just a few of our new Senator's self-misrepresentations, is in itself a strong argument for giving Blunt the title of Missouri Liar of the Year. Martin seemed, most of the time at least, to lie about his opponent - and so outrageously as to be simply amusing - but Blunt created an entire false persona which he used to promote himself to the Senate. Besides, Martin lost and Blunt won, and by winning on the basis of so many lies, he debased our political discourse just a little bit more. He has contributed one more cog in the devaluation of truth that we have seen taking place in our political world over the past decade, each inch taken, leading to another mile of democracy lost.
On Saturday, a group of us met in Clayton to discuss ways to get the attention of state Democratic Party leaders in order to make them fix the problems in the party infrastructure. We concluded that we need a paid, dedicated state party director, a talented communications director who will proactively get the message out that we are the better choice if voters want to keep America from sinking to third world status, and someone who actually makes the township and county central committee members work to build the local networks critical for winning elections.
If we don't see some improvement in the way the state party functions, we're withholding our campaign contributions and volunteer time. The word is already out that we're doing this and many Dems are calling saying they want to join us.
Claire McCaskill is already sending out donation requests to be part of "Claire's Crew." No thanks. Not until we see some backbone on the part of our elected Dems. It's not enough to say the alternative is worse. We have to have a reason to shout from the rooftops why we love our candidates.
This is the letter going to Gov. Nixon this week:
November 21, 2010
The Honorable Governor Jay Nixon
Missouri Capitol Building
Room 216
Jefferson, City,Mo.65101
Dear Governor Nixon:
I am sure you are aware that progressive Democrats around the country are regrouping in response to the disappointing results of the recent midterm elections.
Today a core group of active Democrats in St. Louis County met to discuss how to we can make the Missouri Democratic Party more effective.
We concluded that we Democrats have much to be proud of and our values clearly reflect the best interest of the majority of citizens. The Republicans have purposely degraded a lot of what progressives hold dear.
Our Democratic priorities which include equal educational opportunities, a fair tax structure, civil rights, security, protection of the environment, basic health care and decent paying jobs need to be spelled out clearly and persuasively. We need someone to generate talking points that we can all use so our message will sink in and motivate voters to side with us.If false information is generated by the media we need it to be quickly addressed and the true facts given out.
Therefore we're asking you, our Governor and head of the Missouri Democratic Party, to meet with us to discuss how to improve the effectiveness of the State Party.
We would like to talk to you about hiring a full-time paid Director, a publicist/message developer,and an outreach co-ordinator to reach all of our state's townships with our democratic objectives.
There is so much that can be done with the internet, with direct mailers, and other media opportunities.
Today we pledged, as a group, that we will not get involved in campaigns for State and National candidates until we meet with you and we feel a more effective party is established. I will be sending a copy of this letter to Craig Hosmer,Clint Zweifel and Chris Koster.. Copies of a similar letter have been sent to Sen.Claire McCaskill, Representative Russ Carnahan and Representative Lacy Clay.
We hope you can find time in your busy schedule when you are in the St. Louis area to meet with us. If you have no trips planned in the near future, we will come to your office.
Thank you for your attention to our serious concerns. We look forward to hearing from you.
Carnahan, Russ DEM 99,011 48.9%
Martin, Ed REP 94,593 46.7%
Hedrick, Steven R. LIB 5,757 2.8%
Ivanovich, Nicholas J. (Nick) CST 3,151 1.6%
Wallner, Brian WI 59 .0%
Ed Martin for Congress
News and Information from the Ed Martin for Congress Campaign
Democracy is precious, and the very cornerstone of our representative republic is free and fair elections. Losing by a handful of votes in a fair contest is tough, but our team could handle it.
In the case of this election, the facts are not adding up to a fair election. The three glaring factors which stand out involve the Secretary of State's office, the sole decision of a newly appointed Democratic chair at the City Elections Board, and an unprecedented number of votes coming in late from the city and county.
The Secretary of State first of all is Congressman Carnahan's sister, Robin Carnahan. She reported having irregularities and computer glitches early in the day. We have heard from countless voters who want those problems scrutinized. Many point out that the for three years the Department of Justice pursued a case against Missouri for failing to clean up the process. "When filed in 2005, one-third of Missouri counties had more registered voters than voting-age residents. What's more, Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan,... contended that her office had no obligation to ensure individual counties were complying with the federal law mandating a cleanup of their voter rolls." (Wall Street Journal, John Fund, July 8, 2010)
People also question the motive behind a newly appointed St. Louis City Board of Elections Democratic Chairwoman, Eileen McCann, hiring a security company with close ties to Congressman Carnahan. Special Services was called on by Congressman Carnahan to do security for him as recently as August 26th. Carnahan paid the company $1400 at that time which can be seen in a quick review of his FEC filing.
Then just before midnight seven precincts within the city and county delivered an astounshing late night dump of votes. In such a hotly contested race and with so many voters concerned it only makes sense to make sure in fact every vote counts.
For this reason, we will continue to fight. Our supporters who struggled and worked deserve our best efforts. Further, the voters of the district deserve to have the cloud lifted from the election by either revealing a reasonable explanation for the amazing, last minute results or by identifying the misconduct and hopefully those responsible. If you witnessed anything out of the ordinary, we invite you to use our online form to report details. We will pass these on to the investigative authority.
Please help us continue this fight. We budgeted our race to leave it all "on the field" - we did not plan on losing. You contribution will help us over the next few weeks cover the expenses of reviewing records and investigating the procedures at work. Any amount, $100, $50, or even $10 will help defray the costs.
Thank you for your continued support. We'll see where this all goes.
Thank you,
Ed Martin
"...Then just before midnight seven precincts within the city and county delivered an astounshing [sic] late night dump of votes..."
They must have gotten caught somewhere between astonishing and astounding near Conspiracyville in Persecution Complex County.
"...Any amount, $100, $50, or even $10 will help defray the costs...."
I received two e-mails that epitomize the difference between Russ Carnahan and Ed Martin.
The first was a press release from Carnahan's office:
Yet another Social Security privatization group is lining up behind Ed Martin in thanks for his support to eliminate this critical safety net for Missouri seniors. The 60 Plus Association, a national group known for promoting risky Social Security privatization schemes, has just begun spending significant campaign cash to elect a sure vote for their extreme agenda: Ed Martin.
You can bet your booty that Russ Carnahan won't abandon Social Security. He's the other kind of politician, the kind who will actually work to protect us--who will, for example, take time out from fending off Ed Martin's lunacy to deal with an environmental issue that concerns the drinking water of hundreds of thousands of St. Louisans. He has jumped into the fray about West Lake Landfill.
The backstory on that landfill is that Kay Drey, who has been an activist about nuclear waste issues for decades, has, for two and a half years now, been kicking up a fuss over the decision by Region 7 of the EPA in Kansas City. The last director there ruled that it would be sufficient to cover up--oh, pardon me, I meant to say cover over a landfill site full of extremely hot radiation.
I don't know strontium this from thorium that from polonium the other. But people who do, tell me that the nuclear waste that Mallinckrodt Chemical Works illegally dumped at the West Lake Landfill in Bridgeton in 1973 is the kind you don't want to put on a floodplain. Eight miles upstream from the water treatment plant for all of North St. Louis County. With no liner or cap. And a levee that's no higher than the one that the flood of '93 breached in Chesterfield.
A couple of days ago I wrote about how our Missouri Democrats need to emulate threatened Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold, who has come out fighting in the face of GOP efforts to smear him by misrepresenting the Affordable Care Act. However, when I assumed that all our Missouri Democratic pols were taking a hands-off response to the ACA, I spoke too quickly. As evidence I offer Russ Carnahan's remarks at a recent St. Louis event concerned with business opportunities for veterans.
This video of the event (via the Turner Report) showing Carnahan standing up on his hind legs and acting like a member of species homo sapiens makes the case that he might have a healthy case of intestinal fortitude:
Not the slickest presentation, but doggedly honest - which makes it all the braver given the reams of misinformation and sound-bites that have seeped, via Fox News, into many Missourians' consciousness. In the video Carnahan is doing just what a good leader is supposed to do - educating his constituents by giving them the facts. We need more of this - slicker might probably be better, but honest and outspoken is okay by me.
This election Carnahan is up against Ed Martin, a right-wing, back-slapping, bully boy who seems delighted to prance around in front of an audience and try to score a few zingers at the expense of the truth. We can only hope that there are enough voters out there who prize substance - and who can recognize it when they see it.
GOP candidates have been running their mouths a lot about jobs, mostly in relation to lower taxes for their favored, well-off constituencies. Roy Blunt's campaign for Senate, for instance, has produced a "Jobs Plan," that is long on GOP boiler-plate (and equally long on "solutions" that seem designed to play well with the energy and telecom industries who support his political ambitions so generously). Rhetoric aside, what does the current GOP record actually look like when proposals that would really have an impact on employment are put on the table?
A rarely discussed structural problem that contributes to the current jobless recovery is that many of the good-paying, manufacturing jobs have been outsourced over the past decade - good for corporations that can exploit the poor in third world countries with impunity, bad for the U.S. employment picture. Roy Blunt doesn't even mention this problem in his jobs plan. GOP Senate team-player, Kit Bond, voted just this week to keep a bill from coming up for a vote that would have imposed tax penalties on companies that outsource their production. Claire McCaskill, on the other hand, voted to end debate and permit a vote on the legislation.
Small business owners often cite tight credit that discourages expansion to explain their failure to hire new workers. However, Republicans, who talk endlessly about the importance of small businesses for recovery, have for months stonewalled legislation designed to address just that issue.
The long-stalled small business lending legislation was passed in the Senate only recently with the help of two Republican Senators who plan to retire at the end of their current terms, which means that they no longer need fear repercussions from the NO party's leadership or its Tea Party-addled base. However, Missouri's retiring Republican Senator, Kit Bond, good GOP soldier that he is, kept faith and continued to march in lockstep with the Party of NO (jobs).
On the House side, Roy Blunt was so busy out on the campaign trail running his mouth about jobs creation that he couldn't manage to even vote on the Small Business Lending Fund Act of 2010. But Blaine Luetkemeyer, Jo Ann Emerson, Sam Graves, and Todd Akin made up for Roy's indisposition, and handily voted against the interests of the small businesses they love to talk up as the real job creators. You want to know how Missouri Democratic Reps. Carnahan, Cleaver, Clay, and Skelton voted? If you even have to ask, just click on their names and learn who really stands with the middle class.
At the Sunday evening debate between Russ Carnahan and Ed Martin, Martin was in his element--or should I say among his element? 250-300 people crowded the Arnold Recreation Center in Jefferson County, and nine out of ten of them supported Martin. I couldn't attend the Friday debate at Forest Park Community College, which is the northern tip of Carnahan's district, so I can't speak to the proportion of each man's supporters that night. But Jefferson County, at the southern tip of the district, has a boatload of white conservatives.
Fortunately, they were--by Tea Party standards anyway--calm and civil. But that's only Tea Party standards. I know what the far right is like at its toxic worst. In August of 2009, I attended McCaskill's town hall in Hillsboro, and the hate and anger pressed down on me like a huge, sooty fist that day. I'll never forget it. By contrast, Sunday night's crowd was merry, though always at Carnahan's expense. Give Ed Martin this much: he has a knack for belittling another person. No matter how logically Carnahan presented his viewpoint, Martin mocked him. He played to the crowd, and they ate it up.
Carnahan can speak clearly, but he's not inspirational. In the following clip, he answers two separate questions about health care reform, and each time, Martin begins his response by flattening Carnahan.
When the candidates explained whether they support repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell, Carnahan said that the military needs talented people, whether they're gay or straight, so he supports repeal. Martin translated that for the crowd as "Congressman Carnahan supports gay marriage. He doesn't care what Missourians think...." That response was far enough away from any attempt to answer the question that Martin drew a mild rebuke from the moderator. But he was too high on the crowd's adulation to show any compunction.
The audience laughed and hooted as Martin put words in Carnahan's mouth. For instance, Carnahan said, speaking about abortion, that women should be allowed to choose for themselves. Martin "translated" again: "He's for abortion." The audience occasionally booed, like when Carnahan called Martin out for the Eckersley scandal or when he said we should wean ourselves off of oil dependence. But on the whole, they had a great time watching their man of the hour walk all over that mean, nasty liberal elite, that "member of the ruling class."
You know. The one who wants them to have affordable health care. What an ogre.
Missouri will likely lose a House seat according to a new estimate based on 2010 Census data. The loss will significantly affect Missouri's overall impact on national issues; the state would will lose an electoral college vote, for instance, and each district would will be somewhat larger, permitting less representative granularity. The most immediate impact, however, would will be the shape of Missouri's House delegation. The process of reapportionment should be especially interesting given that Missouri has a Democratic governor and a Republican controlled legislature, a situation that is likely to persist for awhile at least.
In April, Nathaniel90 at the Swing State Projectoffered a speculative map showing how Missouri's political environment, coupled with the loss of a House seat, might affect reapportionment. I found myself, as a current resident in Rep. Akin's 2nd district, very interested the first point he made:
The real question for me was which districts to combine. With power balanced between the parties, it was obvious that one Republican and one Democrat had to face off in a "fair fight" district, leading to an obvious solution: a suburban St. Louis seat forcing Todd Akin (R) and Russ Carnahan (D) together. [...] the legislature won't draw anything too friendly for Carnahan's south-of-the-city base, and that Gov. Nixon would balk at a map too heavy in Akin's northern suburbs.
Were this to happen, it could give us at least some chance of finally getting rid of the egregious embarrassment that is Todd Akin. It also puts Carnahan's Democratic seat at risk (assuming that Carnahan holds it this November), but it might be worth it. I am one of the few who believes that if the Missouri Democratic party had been willing to put more energy into Akin's district over the past few years, he would be a lot more vulnerable right now, even without redistricting. A new competitive district might be just the ticket.
The second biggie that Nathaniel90 struggled with is the outlook for Ike Skelton's rather strange 4th district:
The other problem in Missouri was what to do with Ike Skelton's (D) heavily Republican district spanning the rural areas between Kansas City and Columbia. I figured that a bipartisan plan means incumbent protection, and the Democrats know Skelton will be 81 when the 113th Congress convenes and is not far from retirement. I thus drew a swing district stretching from the close-in Kansas City suburbs to college town Columbia that would not only easily reelect Skelton, but provide a future Dem with a decent shot at holding the 4th District.
Nathaniel90's final conclusion about the best of all possible outcomes (note the emphasis on "possible"):
So there would be four safe Republican seats, two safe Democratic seats, and two swing seats (one of them safe for an incumbent Democrat as long as he chooses to run). Believe it or not, this is probably the closest thing to a Dem-friendly map one could get from today's Missouri legislature.
I don't have the experience or background with Missouri's political map that would allow me to comment knowledgeably about the overall state picture. Does anyone think the situation will roll out differently?
Last week I noted that no members of the Missouri Democratic House delegation had signed onto a letter to Speaker Pelosi from Blue-Dog Democrats in the House who are in favor of extending all of BuschCo's upper bracket tax cuts. As far as I know, this is still the truth - a list maintained on Politico has not been updated to show any of their names. Nor, as of Sept. 18th, had Claire McCaskill's name been added to the list of six Democratic Senators known to be in favor of extending the Bush goodies for the upper crust.
While this is good news, it could be even better. Today, via DailyKos, we learn that 36 House Democrats have signed onto a letter written by House Progressive Caucus members Mary Jo Kilroy, Alan Grayson, and Raul Grijalva, which calls calls for a vote, "before Congress adjourns in October on repealing the tax cuts for the top two percent, and making the middle class tax cuts permanent." Wouldn't it be wonderful if some of our Missouri reps signed on?
Can we convince our Missouri Democrats to stand up and act like leaders? Leaders don't resort to protective camouflage - or at least smart ones don't when there's no reason for them to hide. Letting tax cuts for those with incomes in the top 2% expire is not only the right thing to do, it's a politically smart strategy.
The text of the letter and the signatories over the fold:
Today I have bad and good news. TPM made public a list of 31 Democrats in the House of Representative who are breaking with the president's plan to cut taxes for the middle class while allowing tax giveaways for the wealthy to expire. These so-called Democrats are signatories to a letter to Nancy Pelosi that repeats debunked Republican arguments about how allowing the tax bracket of the 2% of the richest Americans to rise less than 4% points will crash the economy. (Even Republicans don't really believe that stuff!)
That's the bad news. The good news? To date, none of Missouri's Democratic House delegation are on that list! Sing Hallelujah!
Given that Senator McCaskill has been dancing around the issue, telegraphing her willingness to give the goods away if anyone asks, and the fact that Robin Carnahan managed to do just that before anyone even knocked on her door to ask, this comes as a pleasant surprise. I had begun to think that Missouri's Democrats were a pretty worthless bunch. Representatives Emanuel Cleaver, Russ Carnahan, Lacy Clay and Ike Skelton are to be congratulated for standing up for the people that they represent on this issue.
There is no way that extending the Bush tax giveaways for the wealthy does anyone any good. The tax cuts do not, contrary to GOP claims, affect most small businesses; economists argue convincingly that they will play little or no stimulative role; and, to cap it all off, they will cost 1.1 trillion dollars over ten years - which is to say that they will really bolster up the big, bad, deficit boogeyman that the right wing has been using to herd weak Democrats rightwards. To top it all off, for once, Americans seem to recognize that extending the tax cuts is a stupid idea - with maybe the exception of the Tea Party where stupid seems to be king.
Just to encourage these gentlemen to keep on keeping on, I suggest that those of you who live in their districts, if you are so inclined, drop them an email or give them a phone call and let them know that you are gratified by the respect they are showing their constituents and to good policy:
Just remember, if progressives can't win on this issue, we might as well just give up and get minimum wage jobs helping McCaskill parcel out the goods to the waiting Tea Party. We need to let our guys know that if they want us to stick with them, we need a win.
* Perhaps it's just my browser, but but the email contact page on Lacy Clay's website appears to be broken.
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.
The Wonk Roomreports that just as it looked like Senator Blanche Lincoln's (D-AR) pre-primary Hail Mary pass, a proposal that might actually put some real teeth in derivatives reform, was gaining traction, the New Democratic Coalition has stepped in to put the kibosh on it. The Coalition, which counts our Russ Carnahan (D-03) as a member, has prepared a letter asking that the Lincoln proposal, known as Section 716, be removed and replaced by the much weaker derivatives proposals in the House legislation.
According to Gary Gensler, Chairman of the Futures Trading Commission, a kind of de facto derivatives overseer, the House bill :
... may be read to provide for a more liberal exemption for entities using derivatives to hedge commercial, balance sheet or operational risk, ... . Every exemption for financial companies creates a link in the chain between a dealer's failure and a taxpayer bailout. Every slice of the financial system that we cut out through an exemption could allow one bank's failure to spread like fire throughout the economy. It is essential that financial reform does not allow loopholes that leave interconnectedness in the system. Such exemptions will only come back to haunt us in the future.
Sen. Blanche Lincoln's derivatives proposal, usually referred to as the divestiture or "push down" requirement, is the only worthwhile proposal in the Senate financial regulation bill. The rest of the derivatives regulation component of both the House and Senate bills is meaningless filler.
You get the idea: Lincoln's Section 716 is the real thing; the House bill is window dressing. Even Barney Frank (D-MA), Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, admits that the Lincoln proposal would do a better job of regulating derivatives.
Politico asserts that the force behind the New Democratic Coalition letter is Rep. Michael McMahon (D-NY), known for having, as the Wonk Room's Pat Garofalo puts it:
...argued for the extension of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy on the grounds that people making $250,000 per year are "barely making ends meet.
So does Russ Carnahan really support McMahon's position on derivatives? And if he does, why?
An even bigger question is why do I have to keep writing about actual Democrats, and my Democrats from Missouri at that, engaging in maneuvers that we expect from Republicans? Why do the guys who promise to support the middle and working classes put themselves out so readily to defend the interests of the big guys, in this case the big banks that, thanks to the era of lax regulation ushered in by the GOP, have dumped us into the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression?
St. Louis Activist Hub does the best work bar none, in Missouri, of calling out teabaggers on their lies:
The St. Louis Tea Party, after a weekend of chest-thumping and saber rattling, is now trying to portray themselves as victims of a Lefty and Media conspiracy to make them look like extremists. I think there is overwhelming evidence that their actions over the past week were specifically intended to intimidate members of congress and/or rile up their followers, potentially into violence. I present it here.
At a rally at Carnahan's office last Saturday, they threw boots at Carnahan's picture. That was a warm up exercise. Then they:
finally ended by setting the picture of Carnahan on fire while Dana Loesch said things like, "This is how a fire smells when it's burning Tyranny".
They used a photo of Carnahan with blood dripping from his mouth: [visit St. Louis Activist Hub to see the photo]
Jim Hoft titled his post "Russ Carnahan Gets Booted and Torched," and said:
The protesters torched Russ's photo while they chanted "Death to Dictator."
And that's not all that these "victimized" bullies have been up to. But you have to visit the St. Louis Activist Hub to get the rest of the story. Don't miss the concluding paragraph.
Representatives of the Party of No and its supporters responded in one of two ways immediately after the passage of the Senate bill on Mondayhealth care reform law - with violent rhetorical excess, or with real violence. The first characterized the GOPers in congress who competed to outdo each other's demagogic excesses in their efforts to portray this bill as an "outrage" that threatens democracy. Their tantrums arguably helped whip up the second, more violent response on the part of their out-of-control Tea Party dupes. The result? Violence and threats of violence against Democrats who had refused to be intimidated by months of implied threat.
The latest beneficiary of the Republican efforts to fan the Tea Party frenzy is Rep. Russ Carnahan (D-3rd). A coffin that had earlier figured in a Tea Party protest was left on the lawn of Carnahan's residence Tuesday night. Even KMOV reporter Matt Sczesny, who has seemed at times perhaps a little too friendly to the Tea Partiers to be considered objective (they certainly appreciate his coverage, at any rate), was moved to observe:
... the police were not involved, since it doesn't appear there was any direct threat and the coffin was empty. However, one can only imagine what may be implied by leaving a coffin on a front lawn. We all know that emotions have been running high over the health care reform debate, but this has to make you wonder where this debate is going.
Sczesny is correct - even though the Tea Party is claiming that they have been "smeared" by Carnahan and the coffin was simply part of a prayer vigil in which it symbolized the death of freedom. Viewed in the context of the the recent threats of violence, Carnahan, along with all sane Americans, should be concerned about where the delusional hysteria and bullyboy tactics of this group may take us.
The individuals, however, who ought to be most concerned are our putative Republican leaders who have been willing to play on the emotions of the looney tunes brigade for their own political purposes. As Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memoobserves about the recent spate of violence:
... this didn't come from nowhere and it can't be pawned off on a few cranks. Everything that's happened over the last five days has grown from a pattern of incitement going back almost a year -- wildly hyperbolic statements, coded appeals to menacing behavior, flippant jokes about bringing firearms to political events and all the rest.
We need to contact our Republican congressional representatives and demand that they take responsibility for inciting fear and anger among their more unstable constituents, and for implicitly indicating that violence might be justified whenever individuals fail to prevail politically. Not that they'll ever own up to their role - already they are fishing around for ways to blame the victims - but they ought to hear that a few of us at least know just what they have been doing - and that we will do our best to make sure that that knowledge becomes a commonplace.
Addenda: Ezra Klein gets it right while keeping a calm, civil tongue in his head.
Yesterday I wrote about Claire McCaskill's sad decision to join a cabal of Democratic senators out to derail the EPA's authority to regulate green-house gases from industrial sources. Today we learn that their efforts have succeeded in delaying new EPA rules - which were devised in the first place to compensate for the unwillingness of the Senate to respond to our developing climate crisis.
The reason McCaskill and her fellow letter writers give for their delaying tactics is that they represent the interest of coal-dependent states. Of course, one goal of the EPA regulations as well as the the cap-and-trade provsions in proposed House legislation, the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), is to wean the U.S. from its coal addiction - currently 50% of U.S. electricity is coal generated.
Coal is definitely not a benign source of energy. Its extraction destroys our natural environment, the fine particles produced by burning coal are harmful to human health, and, of course, coal constitutes one of the main factors exacerbating the climate crisis we face since coal-burning plants are the largest producers of CO2 emissions in the U.S.
So why is McCaskill, a politician who loves to claim that she shares the progressive values of the Democratic party - in fundraising letters at least - trying to prolong Missouri's dependency on coal? Instead of whining about the short-term costs of moving us from coal dependency, shouldn't she be exercising the leadership we expect from her?
I would suggest that McCaskill could learn from the example of Russ Carnahan, who, in his just released economic action plan, A Regional Approach to Job Growth, emphasizes the importance of legislation like ACES in guaranteeing Missouri's continued, long-term prosperity:
Nations around the world are emerging as leaders in clean-energy production creating jobs in their respective countries because of the growing demand of these technologies. Clean energy technology can and must be made in America. The Clean Energy and Security Act - which was passed by the House of Representatives in June, 2009 - would create millions of jobs that cannot be shipped overseas, making America the global innovation leader; it would increase our national security by reducing our dependence on foreign oil; and it would preserve our planet by reducing the pollution that causes global warming.
Too bad McCaskill, who has signaled her opposition to ACES, doesn't have this kind of vision or courage, but, instead, seems to be choosing to work against our long-term good to further the goals of the powerful coal-lobby and placate brainwashed rural voters.
An enthusiastic group of fifteen or twenty people greeted Russ Carnahan as he exited the concourse on his return to St. Louis after the historic vote in the House on HB 3200. A minute later, Lacy Clay strolled out of the same concourse and was delighted to be greeted so warmly.
Carnahan held a press conference at the airport and spoke after three excellent warm up acts. Dr. Johnetta Craig (standing at Carnahan's right in the video below), Chief Medical Officer at Family Care Health Clinic, which cares for an increasing number of uninsured patients, spoke with feeling about being able to foresee a time, finally, when people will have health insurance.
Then Karen Handleman (pictured at right), owner of a small business for fifteen years, described how her relatively young and healthy group of employees sees prices go up every year, even though none of them have a heart condition, cancer, or diabetes, and even though none of them has had any surgeries. She explained that health insurance companies charge more than twice as much in premiums for women as they do for men and that that factor alone could make a difference in whether a woman gets hired or not. The gasp from the audience was audible when she made that point.
The final speaker before Carnahan was Fritzi Lainoff, a cancer survivor herself who advocates for seniors. She said that medical costs eat up almost half of the income she and her husband have to live on, and she described getting a call from a woman who hit the donut hole in February.
Located in the heart of Westport --
The Original Kansas City
Californo's: Elegant dining in a delightful atmosphere,
located in the heart of Westport
If I were to try to find a descriptive label for the political atmosphere in 2009, I would call it the year of the tantrum because of all the displays of thwarted fury that took place in the wake of the election of the first African-American president. Who can forget the right-wing tantrums that took place wherever Tea Party mobs hijacked congressional town halls or congregated to inflate the weight of their essentially minority demands. While the rage continued unabated in 2010, one might better characterize last year in terms of the bait used to snare those same angry Tea Partiers - any one of the numerous iterations of the big lie that has become the currency of the modern GOP.
Representatives of the Party of No and its supporters responded in one of two ways immediately after the passage of the 
The latest beneficiary of the Republican efforts to fan the Tea Party frenzy is Rep. Russ Carnahan (D-3rd). A coffin that had earlier figured in a Tea Party protest 
Yesterday I 
Then Karen Handleman (pictured at right), owner of a small business for fifteen years, described how her relatively young and healthy group of employees sees prices go up every year, even though none of them have a heart condition, cancer, or diabetes, and even though none of them has had any surgeries. She explained that health insurance companies charge more than twice as much in premiums for women as they do for men and that that factor alone could make a difference in whether a woman gets hired or not. The gasp from the audience was audible when she made that point.
