Yesterday, 30 Sierra Club members toured the ABB factory in Jefferson City, MO, where the company makes transformers that are used in wind generators and solar collectors.

The goal of the tour was to see firsthand how renewable energy creates good, family-wage jobs locally and around Missouri.  ABB employs about 650 workers at its facilities in Jefferson City, MO.

The Sierra Club organized the tour in response to Missouri General Assembly actions to curtail development of renewable energy in the state.  This spring, the General Assembly overturned a Public Service Commission rule that would have required utilities like Ameren to meet its 15 percent renewable energy standard (mandated under Proposition C, passed in November 2008) by counting electricity that was either generated or consumed here in Missouri.  By nullifying this rule, the General Assembly is allowing utilities to buy renewable energy credits from anywhere in the world in order to meet its renewable energy targets.  When the wind generators are located in China instead of here, Missourians do not enjoy the benefits of clean energy – including both local jobs as well as cleaner air.

This ABB plant manufactured the transformers that were installed in the Lost Creek Wind Farm, located near King City, Missouri.  Lost Creek is the largest wind farm in Missouri, and utilizes one hundred transformers that were made by ABB.

After a two-month bathroom break, wealthy GOP donors have started sending checks to Peter Kinder again. Here's a snapshot of donations worth more than $5,000 reported to the Missouri Ethics Commission since July 27.  

Brian Nieves likes it Hard Core.

-- Forwarded message --
From: Brian Nieves 
Date: Thu, Sep 22, 2011 at 4:24 PM
Subject: 2nd Annual, 2nd Amendment Freedom Rally & Gun Show!!
To: 

Calling All Patriots ... Join Senator Brian Nieves for our 2nd Annual, 2nd Amendment Freedom Rally & Gun Show!

Saturday, Oct. 1st from 10a-4p at the Franklin County Baptist Association Building. Located in Union, Mo. at 785 Butterfield Dr.   The building is easy to find on Hwy 47 between Union & St. Clair.

Top Door Prize of the day ... Your choice of a Glock 23 or 27 - The G23 & G27 are Brian's personal favorites for conceal carry and you may end up taking one home!

Come Celebrate with the Senator who may very well be the Missouri Senate's most Hard Core Supporter of our God Given Right to Protect Ourselves and the 2nd Amendment that acknowledges that Personal Right!

Many of you joined us last year for this Very Unique Event so you know how much fun it is.

* Patriot Booths
* Vendor & Display Booths
* Guns Guns and more GUNS!
* Local 2nd Amendment Celebrities
* Live Outdoorsman Demonstrations
* Good Food, Good Fun, Festivities & Friends
* AR-15 and other "Black Gun" demonstrations
* Come select that new or used gun you'd like to buy
* Did we mention there will be Guns Guns & more GUNS!??!

h/t TPM

The Hotline's Sean Sullivan surveys the GOP landscape in Missouri: "[O]utside money and a weak environment can't overcome deeply flawed candidates. Just look at Colorado, a state positioned to flip Republican, but which elected a Democratic governor and a Democrats senator due to weak opposition. What's already out there about Kinder is bad, but not impossible to overcome. But if more new negative news surfaces, it could doom his chances. In the Senate race, there is still time for Steelman, Akin or Brunner to emerge as credible challengers, but so far, McCaskill hasn't yet met her match."

From the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities' Off the Charts blog:  "Deep poverty — that is, the share of the population with incomes below half the poverty line — rose by a statistically significant amount in 40 states (including the District of Columbia) from 2007 to 2010 and fell in none, Census Bureau data released today show."

According to the census bureau, 385,117 Missourians lived below half the poverty line in 2010. 

Simply unacceptable.

More from the latest Public Policy Polling survey:

Roy Blunt is proving to be a pretty unpopular Senator.  Only 33% of voters approve of the job he's doing to 42% who disapprove. Independents split against him 28/44 and only 54% of Republicans are happy with him compared to 63% of Democrats who give him poor marks.  The fact that Blunt won such an overwhelming victory last year even though he's so unpopular is really symbolic of how brutal the climate was for Democrats in 2o1o- the GOP could have put up most anyone and won the Senate race in Missouri last year.  Blunt's someone who could be really vulnerable if he was running in a year that was good for Democrats or even pretty neutral.  But his timing was perfect last year.

As the Star's Dave Helling notes, PPP's work the last cycle "actually exhibited a slight bias toward Republican candidates," despite their progressive orientation and client list.

At Crooks and Liars, Brad Reed writes that Tim Noah “makes an excellent point that it's become perfectly acceptable for elected officials to claim that showering already-wealthy people with even more money is the only way to create jobs since they otherwise might feel sad and lose their will to work.”

Yes, we've had our fair share of "trickle-down" troglodytes for some time now. In 1932, FDR used the phrase to criticize Hoover and Mellon. But similar phraseology pre-dated even that one. Here's William Jennings Bryan in 1896, in a section of his famous Cross of Gold speech: 

There are two ideas of government. There are those who believe that, if you will only legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea, however, has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous, their prosperity will find its way up through every class which rests upon them.

Miss Liberty thinks William Jennings Bryan was a man before his time and asks if he will please come back!

This is the time where most people would say I told you so, but that would just be childish. 

Earlier this year, it was revealed that the records available from Sarah Steelman's time as State Treasurer were lacking to say the least. 

Steelman, now a Republican candidate for U.S.  Senate, has often touted the virtues of transparency and open government.  In a 2004 editorial in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, she wrote that "every elected official at every level of government should strive to ensure that our laws, our records and our meetings are open to the public's scrutiny."

During her time in office, her staff even pointed to "special information technology" that was used to preserve e-mails for years.

[Jon Galloway, the treasurer's office director of communications and policy,] said the current office has e-mails that were received by Steelman to her state account, "but there are no sents."  He also said there were no "executive boxes" turned over to the Secretary of State's office at the end of her term for preservation.

Many of these state records are supposed to be retained for 5 to 10 years or longer. What's even more troubling is Steelman never offered a clear explanation for why she didn't turn over executive records to be archived. Who knows if the Steelman campaign will ever provide a clear answer, but the people of Missouri certainly deserve one. 

It's hard to believe, but Ed Martin is still pushing death panel nonsense. 

FactCheck.org evaluated this sad attempt to keep the death panel lie alive in December post titled, "Let the distortions begin."

The Independent Payments Advisory Board was created to slow the growth of Medicare spending; it has no power to ration care.  

Via the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities: "This chart, based on data from the Tax Policy Center (TPC), sums up the case for the President’s proposed 'Buffett Rule'"  a significant group of very wealthy people pay a smaller share of their incomes in federal income and payroll taxes than large swaths of the middle class.  There are two reasons why:  the capital gains and dividends rate is so low, and wealthy people pay payroll taxes at a much lower rate than middle-class Americans."

The President is calling for Congress to to make sure that no American making more than $1 million a year pays at a lower rate than middle-income families, as part of a comprehensive tax reform package.

Peter Kinder, hating on special interests and insiders with special interests and their champions in Springfield

August 31 - Peter Kinder says mean things about his party's "self-described kingmakers, ... special interests and insiders"

September 7 - Peter Kinder campaigns at a private party in Cape Girardeau  with Karl Rove, the reigning national consultant for GOP special interests and insiders.

After the past week, people might start thinking Morris Buttermaker has taken over for John Hancock as the driving force behind John Brunner’s phantom campaign for US Senate. 

• Public Policy Polling showed that of the three GOP candidates who are currently losing to Claire McCaskill, John Brunner is the weakest.

• And just today, PPP released a real beanball: John Brunner is polling in single digits (6%) with GOP primary voters, trailing Sarah Steelman by 32 points.

• Even Missouri’s contrarian conservatives are starting to write him off.

All this comes as his promise of a big post Labor Day announcement remains unfulfilled, but, with numbers like this, he may realize it is not worth spending his family fortune on a lost cause. 

The American Cancer Society filed a petition seeking to raise Missouri's lowest in the nation tobacco tax to 80-cents per pack. Here is how the change in state law is described in their press release:

The measure filed today would ask voters to approve an 80-cent per pack cigarette tax increase and an equivalent increase on other tobacco products. The revenue from this tax increase would go towards local public K-12 schools, colleges and universities statewide, and tobacco use prevention and quit assistance programs. Additionally, it would close a loophole that allows certain small tobacco companies to avoid contributing to a fund that reimburses the state in part for tobacco-related costs.

American Cancer Society Tobacco Tax

More from Public Policy Polling on their numbers in the Governor’s race, and the news actually gets worse for Peter Kinder.

Missouri Republicans aren't exactly giving Peter Kinder a big vote of confidence for being their Gubernatorial nominee.  Only 22% say they'd like Kinder to be the party standard bearer compared to 35% who prefer a generic 'someone else' and 43% who say they have no opinion one way or the other.

Obama campaign manager Jim Messina sent out a message marking the end of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.

Gay men and lesbians in the military no longer have to hide who they are, and the service members who were discharged under this policy can re-enlist.

This is one of the administration's signature achievements. Countless Americans fought hard to end this law over the course of nearly two decades, and President Obama is proud to have signed the repeal.

But today's news isn't just a policy promise kept -- it's a personal promise kept to the thousands of people who needed and deserved this change.

The campaign also sent out a video highlighting members of the armed forces who can now live openly under this change in policy.