Blunt Watch

As Blog St. Louis reports, the numbers pretty much say it all: 33% approve, 57% disapprove, #48 out of 50 US governors. He might have won the election, but he has no mandate for his unprecedented social service cuts and half-assed education funding bill.

Meanwhile, Pitch editor C.J. Janovy contemplates What Woud Claire Do.

A spot on the KC Board of Police Commissioners can be yours for only $1,750. That’s how much newly-appointed Terry Brady has contributed to the Blunt campaign.

Meanwhile, if you want to chair the Jackson County Sports Complex Authority, it will cost you a little more: $10,000 for new chair Mike Smith. That amount will also get you one of those lucrative license bureau offices.

(Source: Center for Ethics and the Free Market)

Another thing you don’t want to mess with in the suburbs are religious soccer moms who adopt special needs kids. This would seem a like a core group for Missouri Republicans, but they get a big shaft in Blunt’s medicare cuts. When State Senator Matt Bartle was told that one of his own friends would be affected by the loss of adoption subsidies his reply was “I’m sure God will find a way to provide for those kids.”

“We’re a Christian family, and at this point right now … I feel kind of betrayed,” she says. “I’m a bit embarrassed to admit I voted for them [Blunt and Bartle] now, which is sad. There’s a definite chance that, at least in those two slots, we would go Democrat if it meant getting them out of office.”

The Pitch: Playing Defense

An editorial from a red county newspaper shows that suburbanites might finally be coming around to the fact that they were scammed into buying a pile of shit. There seems to be a dawning realization that the “no taxes” pledge at the state level has resulted in higher taxes at the local level, as cities and counties are left with an increasing burden of funding state-wide responsibilities. The moral of the story: screw around with a suburbanite’s school district at your own risk.

Has anyone else noticed that the more state lawmakers puff up their hairy chests and proclaim how wonderful they are for not raising taxes, the more the burden seems to shift to the local level for funding education, health care and other programs?

The reason costs rise, according to some of the more disingenuous lawmakers in Jefferson City, is that all government-sponsored programs choke on waste and scams. These lawmakers, in fact, are the scammers. They promise something for nothing, which is the foundation for all scams.

Northland Sun-News (KC): Northlanders give, state takes…

Matt Blunt announced on Tuesday that he was giving Tom Deuschle the post of Director of the Department of Labor and Industrial Relations. The mainstream press has reported this development without comment - but some of us remember that Tom Deuschle was the bag-man back when John Ashcroft was abusing the office of Missouri Attorney General to solicit investigation targets for campaign contributions. This man has confessed to fundraising for his boss while being paid by Missouri taxpayers! And he is supposed to lead the department responsible for labor and industrial relations??

This appointment is subject to senate confirmation. Let’s see if our senators have the integrity to reject this insult to Missouri taxpayers. (Hint - they won’t.)

The Missouri Budget Project has identified several ways to plug the $326 million budget hole without raising cutting services or raising taxes. Besides using a big chunk of the rainy day fund, they propose closing several tax loopholes. Also identified were six increases in sin taxes and other fees that could raise an additional $2 billion in revenue, restoring much of the budget lost over the last four years.

KC Business Journal: Missouri could offset Blunt’s cuts without tax increase.

Missouri Budget Project report: Real fixes for the fiscal crisis (PDF)

Instead of using the state-provided plane, Governor Blunt has been using private planes paid for from his campaign fund. His office claims he is doing this to save taxpayer money, making a dig a Governor Holden’s seemingly excessive use of the state plane. However, using private planes means that the details of the governors trips and his travelling companions are not subject open records laws.

“It’s amazing that Matt Blunt would allow special interests to curry favor with him by paying for his flights,'’ Democratic Party spokesman Jack Cardetti said. “If special interests aren’t paying, then an officeholder’s integrity can’t be questioned. Here, you never know what Governor Blunt is giving these special interests in return.'’

AP/KMBZ-AM 980: Missouri governor using private planes for public events.

Blunt’s true feelings about the state’s urban areas slipped out at the Republican Party’s recent Lincoln Days hoe-down…

“In a jab at the rival Democratic Party, the governor asserted that to find its Missouri supporters, ‘You have to go to places where nobody wants to live anymore.’” (Jo Mannies, STL Post-Dispatch)

However, the counties carried by McCaskill and Blunt represent almost equal halves of the state population, while the McCaskill counties account for 60% of the state’s economy. As Diatriber points out, the ten fastest growing counties were split between the two candidates. By Blunt’s logic, nearly half of Missourians either live in or are moving to places where “nobody” wants to live.

Hat-tip to Arch City Chronicle

Another cutback in Gov. Blunt’s proposed budget is the elimination of the Department of Revenue’s 11 state-owned license bureaus, saving $8 million a year and eliminating 150 state employees. The vast majority of license bureaus are already run by private contractors know as fee agents. The system is actually a huge patronage scheme, as most fee offices are rewarded politcal allies of the sitting governor.

However, some offices are run by non-profits and school foundations, like the one in Lebanon. In fact, last year State Auditor Claire McCaskill argued for turning all fee offices over to school foundations, thereby ending the patronage system and giving public schools a much-needed financial boost.

On Thursday, Matt Blunt saw fit to criticize Missourians who sat on a jury, listened to evidence, and decided that a fantastically profitable company should be punished a fraction of its net worth for killing a Missourian. Without hearing a word of the evidence brought to the trial, Matt Blunt decided that a twenty million dollar punitive damages award against a tobacco company “is an ‘egregious’ example of a court system in need of reform.”

There are so many things wrong with Blunt’s position that I need to address them separately.

1. The Blunt family is owned by Big Tobacco. Little Brother Andy Blunt gets paid big money to lobby for tobacco companies. His new step-mom is also in the family business of lobbying for tobacco companies. His Dad is so much in the pocket of Big Tobacco that he embarrassed even the shameless Republicans in Congress by trying to sneak a provision benefiting Big Tobacco into the Homeland Security Bill. In Blunt’s world, the central “family value” is supporting big Tobacco. (By the way, why didn’t the so-called “liberal press” even mention these ties to Big Tobacco in their coverage?)

2. Blunt does not know the evidence. A jury reaches its verdict based upon the evidence put before it. Matt Blunt did not hear the evidence that the jury heard. He did not read the documents put before it, demonstrating that Brown & Williamson knew that the product it was selling would addict Ms. Smith and subject her to a slow, painful death. He did not see the evidence that Brown & Williamson actively suppressed that information during the time that Ms. Smith was getting hooked. He did not see the evidence about how many millions upon millions of dollars Brown & Williamson was able to “earn” by deceiving Ms. Smith and others about the health effects of their product. All Blunt knows is that the industry that bankrolls his family just got brought to justice in Kansas City.

3. The case isn’t over. Post-trial motions have not been heard. The appellate courts have not looked at the case. Even if the verdict does become final, half the money will be diverted to a Tort Victims Compensation Fund. People who confuse a jury verdict with an ultimate result do not understand our court system.

4. Why does Matt Blunt think juries are only wrong when they punish corporations? Republicans are tremendous supporters of the jury system when it involves putting black teenagers to death. They have attacked appellate judges that dare to look at trial error in cases where lives, instead of money, are at stake. They are working hard to restrict Missouri citizens serving on juries from imposing money damages on corporations, but they are happy to allow jurors to send the poor and undereducated to the gas chamber when they are accused of hurting one person, rather than millions.
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Matt Blunt isn’t just wrong this time, he is an ignorant hypocrite blinded by the blood money Big Tobacco has paid to his avaricious clan. Matt Blunt did not have a negative word to say when Ms. Smith died of heart disease brought on by the Big Tobacco corporations that bankroll his family. He didn’t attend her funeral. He didn’t mourn her passing. But he stands ready to call it “egregious” when his corporate pals are called to account for her death.

Ms. Smith was a Missouri citizen. Her fellow citizens sat on a jury and reached a verdict based on the evidence they heard. Matt Blunt’s criticism demonstrates that he values Big Tobacco more than the citizens he mocks.

Gov. Blunt has ordered a review of projects receiving state Tax Increment Financing (TIF) money, including the new H&R Block headquarters under construction Downtown and the proposed Bass Pro Shop in Independence.

While Missouri’s TIF laws certianly need revision, Blunt’s review misses the mark. This program intended to spur redevelopment of blighted areas was long ago hijacked by suburbs turning farmland and other open space into strip malls. However, Blunt is not reviewing the overall TIF, only projects that receive state money and are subject to a $15 million cap.

So far only the two KC-area projects have been singled out, and Blunt is suggesting former Governor Holden and former Economic Development Director Kelvin Simmons may have committed money beyond the state’s cap.

The Star: State’s TIF cap sparks concerns

Once again Roy Temple has outdone himself by posting almost 20 entries on his blog about Blunt’s State of the State Address. Temple did the updates in real-time and should be required reading for anyone seeking a “Fair and Balanced” view of the Governor’s address.

Missouri’s Freshman Representatives are holding a baby shower for Matt & Melaine Blunt soon to be born son, according to the Springfield News-Leader (thanks to JohnCombest.com for noticing the article). Representatives will be asked to bring gifts that represent the region they represent. Certainly a nice gesture for the child.

Perhaps they should consider this proposal: how about when the House of Representatives is considering where to make budget cuts this year, they consider how it will effect all the children who will be born in Missouri this year. Certain the real baby boy Blunt will not lack in opportunities. Can Missouri provide the necessary health care, education and other benefits that all the children need, so they might be so fortunate?

Many Cable Operators will carry Gov. Blunt’s Speech live tonight, for more information visit John Combest’s list of local listings.

Roy Temple is looking for cyber-researchers to do fact-checking on the governor’s speech tonight. For more information, visit The Temple Report.

Governor Blunt will present his first State of the State address on Wednesday, January 26 at 7:00 p.m. He will present his proposed budget and his legislative goals for the year. KCUR (89.3 FM) in Kansas City will carry the address live, plus will carry streaming audio of the address. The Arch City Chronicle reports that KWMU-FM (90.7) in St. Louis will also carry the event live.
After you listen to the speech, leave your comments on what you heard.

Who did Matt Blunt choose to oversee the insurance companies in Missouri? None other than a former “Insurance Man of the Year”!! The insurance industry is rejoicing.

According to the No Child Left Behind Act, 31.1% of Missouri children should be proficient in math, and 38.8% should be proficient in communications next year. Not gonna happen. Instead, we’re going to settle for 17.5% passing the math test, and 26.6 in communications. Good enough for a red state, I suppose.

Matt Blunt is working hard to show how much he values insurance companies over Missourians. His latest demonstration of that fact is how he let the insurance industry pick their own regulator! What kind of public servant would delegate the task of choosing the role of protector of the public interest to the very industry that he will regulate? Matt Blunt did.

Matt Blunt has appointed Bill Ringer to the Missouri Labor and Industrial Relations Commission. In a nutshell, the LIRC is a Court of Appeals for workers’ compensation claims, and Ringer’s role there will be to “represent the public”.

Blunt has an odd idea of who the public is. Bill Ringer has spent most of his legal career defending insurance companies. His law firm, Evans & Dixon, boasts on its home page that “Evans & Dixon, L.L.C. remains dedicated to representing the insurance industry and the self insured, just as we have done for more than 55 years.”

More specifically, Bill Ringer has helped the insurance companies avoid paying Missourians injured by their employers in

cases involving amputations, assaults and violent acts, back injuries, body systems, bruises and contusions, carpal tunnel syndrome, chemical burns, contact with objects and equipment, cumulative trauma, cuts and lacerations, falls, fatalities, fires and explosions, fractures, harmful substances or environments, head injuries, heart attacks, heat burns, infectious diseases, lower extremities, multiple traumatic injuries, musculoskeletal disorders, neck injuries, paraplegia/quadriplegia, permanent disability, poisoning, pulmonary disorders, respiratory conditions, skin diseases and disorders, sprains, strains, breaks, tears, tendonitis, transportation incidents and upper extremities.

I’m not making this up, folks - this is a quote from his biography at the law firm’s web page. When Matt Blunt chose someone to represent the public, he apparently interpreted “the public” to mean “insurance companies” instead of people suffering from “amputations, assaults and violent acts, back injuries, etc.

Bill Ringer has not limited his service to Matt Blunt’s “public” - meaning the insurance companies, of course - to judicial arena, though. He has spent “countless hours” (sidenote - nobody is better at keeping count of hours than an insurance defense lawyer) trying to get the legislature to pass a bill radically restricting the ability of workers to recover for their injuries. (.pdf link) This bill was so insanely anti-working-Missourian that not even the wing-nuts in the Republican Missouri legislature could stomach it.

Now that Bill Ringer has taken a quasi-judicial seat on a commission that reviews workers’ compensation cases, will he be an “activist judge”? Will he seek to achieve through his opinions what he could not achieve in the legislature?

Another great insight from the Temple Report is that $250,000 isn’t the real pricetag on the Blunt inauguration. Temple notes:

The Million Dollar Inauguration was for registered lobbyist, Andy Blunt, as Chair of the Inauguration. That’s about what he will make off his brother conveniently naming him as Inaugural Chair. It was a lovely gesture from one brother to another and a way to send a signal to every special interest in the Capitol that they better hire little brother if they want this administration’s attention.

Since Missouri doesn’t require the disclosure of lobbying fees we might never know how much the Blunt family will make off the affair. One also wonders when the names of the corporate sponsors for the inauguration will be released.

While Missouri Republicans are happy to point out the relative thrift of their Jefferson City inauguration (and thus criticize Bob Holden), we haven’t heard any complaints about George W. Bush’s inaugural blow-out.