The Source

Deep Thoughts from Maxine Waters

Rep. Maxine Waters, three time winner of the "Most Corrupt Members of Congress" award, is at it again. After Shell Oil President John Hofmeister attempted to explain to her the law of supply and demand, an outraged Waters declared her support for taking over and nationalizing oil companies.

This is clearly the kind of level-headed reasoning we need in Congress.

The E.Coli-Gate Casualty List

How many people have lost their jobs because of E.Coli-Gate? A lot. Unfortunately, not very many of them were actually involved. They were collateral damage from Nixon's attempts to control the story. Most of the people who caused the problem still remain.

Here's the casualty list:

Nearly 100 State Parks Employees:

The DNR claims these layoffs were the result of declining tax revenue. The decision was announced by former Missouri CIO Bill Bryan on October 19, who announced the layoffs only a month into his tenure.

The State Parks Advisory Board claims the layoffs were rushed and the DNR didn't explore alternatives. Both of these things are true - when Bill Bryan sent out his infamous e-mail, he didn't even know if he could fire all the employees.

The process of finding out who, Bill Bryan claimed, could take weeks. So the natural course of action was to tell everyone that he's going to fire them if he can.

Why rush them out the door?

Mark Templeton, who had been placed on temporary leave (a slap on the wrist, all things considered) was set to return that week. Having Templeton do the announcement would have been unpopular and faced serious press scrutiny. Unpleasant headlines had to be avoided.

Joe Bindbeutel:

Joe Bindbeutel was at the center of the decision to withhold the test results. He wasn't the only one involved but ended up taking all the blame. At the time he could at least look forward to Nixon appointing him to a six-figure job in the Administrative Hearing Commission.

After his appointment got held up by the State Senate, Nixon withdrew it. Someone had to be thrown overboard, and Bindbeutel was vulnerable. That was his reward for his misplaced loyalty.

Now he just has all the blame, while his former colleagues like Mark Templeton, Jack Cardetti and Jeff Mazur go on with their careers as if nothing happened.

Director of Administrative Services Laverne Brondel, Director of Field Services Alice Geller, Director of Environmental Quality Dan Schuette:

Between the three they had 85 years of experience in the DNR. Their crime? Being in Mark Templeton's inner circle. No reason has been offered for their firings.

One of their three positions would have been redundant because the Field Services and Environmental Quality Divisions were being merged - but all three ended up being fired to make room for two promotions.

Over the course of a few days, the DNR variously said they had been demoted, fired, placed on administrative leave and would be fired, and were still working there but still would be fired. It's good to know that they have a handle on events.

Jim Yancey:

Yancey went on vacation and didn't forward E. coli test reports (separate from the ones that caused E.Coli-Gate) to the relevant authorities. He got fired, even though Nixon appointees who have been involved in the same issues still have their jobs intact.

People Who Left Themselves:

Both Susanne Medley and Earl Pabst left the DNR shortly after the E.Coli-Gate story began to break. Medley's account, given to the Senate investigators, is a depressing story of someone who had good intentions but ran into a bureaucracy that just wouldn't do the right thing.

They knew early on that things were going to go bad - and probably didn't want anything to do with it.

There are still a lot of loose threads in the official account of E.Coli-Gate. The Senate investigation is ongoing, but our impression is that a lot more innocent people are going to lose their jobs before the right people are held accountable.

Reports of Conservatism's Death Are Greatly Exaggerated

Dennis Moore and Ike Skelton must be worried - the fates of Virginia's Creigh Deeds and New Jersey's Jon Corzine are an unpleasant sign of what they'll have to deal with in a year.

You can whine and wheedle when it comes to passing your legislative agenda, but when you're losing elected offices, there's nothing to spin. The electorate isn't happy with Democrats and they're losing their jobs.

There is no silver lining. Hoffman's defeat is no consolation. Dede Scozzafava was a one woman political suicide squad, and any strategy that depends on your opponent self detonating in the last week of the election won't stand up in 2010. Fortunately, she's part of a rare breed in politics, and we hope we don't see any more of her type for a long time. She's New York's Theresa Loar.

So the Democrats' only victory tonight was handed to them.

It's worth nothing that Obama's involvement didn't do any good. Despite his best efforts, his candidate still lost by 5%. So much for his golden touch.

Obama's predicament is going to get worse. Declining congressional job approval and rising Republican support in the generic congressional ballot isn't going to suddenly reverse. The Democrats will either pass legislation that will devastate the economy or they'll get nothing done. Obviously we prefer the latter, but we think the electorate dislikes both.

So what should Dennis Moore and Ike Skelton do? They need to decide if their loyalty to the Democratic leadership is worth losing their jobs.

Nixon Appointed E.Coli-Investigator Conceals Health Risk At State Park

Nixon told the public that after the Department of Natural Resources launched an internal investigation into E.Coli-Gate, its habit of concealing health threats would be “fixed”. The investigation was a sham. KSDK has revealed that Travis Ford, one of Nixon’s investigators, was making misleading statements about a health risk at the St. Joe State Park – even as he was supposedly “investigating” the DNR.

    St. Joe State Park is a very popular location for ATV riders, but it happens to be covered by approximately 75,000,000 tons of lead tailings left over from old mines. The ATVs kick up a lot of dust and lead particles, which people then breathe in.

    The Missouri Department of Health says there is a health risk.

    The EPA says there is a health risk.

    The Missouri DNR? No health risk.

    By using a flawed study and ignoring other, more credible ones done by the EPA, the DNR decided it was okay to tell the public the park was totally safe. KSDK reporters practically had to chase down DNR spokesperson Travis Ford with proof the DNR was wrong to get him to admit there was a problem.

    We might add that Ford’s efforts to throw them off his tracks were lacking. KSDK traced the painfully transparent evolution on of Ford’s statements on the park:

    Statement one: (10/20/09) "The DNR puts park visitor health and safety first. Since 1993, the department has conducted a number of tests, and none has shown unacceptable levels of risk to park staff, on-site residents or recreational off-road vehicle users."
    Statement two: (10/26/09) "Studies have shown that occasional off-road riding is acceptable, but more frequent riding could subject visitors to unacceptable levels of risk. That is a concern...."
    DNR flyer sent (11/2/09) "Children six and younger should not play in the tailings (sandlike material in beaches, ORV areas and other locations in the park."

    Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Here’s the crucial point: Travis Ford was one of the three people Nixon appointed to do the DNR’s internal investigation on E.Coli-Gate.

    So now we have Nixon-appointed investigators doing the exact same thing they were appointed to investigate others for: misleading the public about health risks. There’s one thing that’s for sure: if Nixon was looking for someone to do a whitewash investigation of the DNR, Travis Ford would have been at the top of the list.

    Ford’s involvement also goes a long way towards explaining why the internal investigation never produced a written report or anything that could be examined by the public. It was never meant to create any real results: it was a façade designed to protect Nixon appointees at the cost of the public safety.

    The Nixon administration has proved, once again, that it placed newspaper headlines before all else. The DNR has always had problems, but Nixon’s political maneuvering is only making things worse.
           

AP: Fee Office Bid Rigging?

When James Ryan Williams and James Montee started revising their fee office bids, they raised some eyebrows. In several bids they drastically reduced the amount of money returned to the state (in the case of Lee's Summit, by more than 40%) and somehow managed to narrowly win the fee offices and make a lot o money in the process.

Now they've caught the attention of the Associated Press:

"JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) —A friend and the ex-husband of Missouri Auditor Susan Montee have amassed millions of dollars of contracts from Gov. Jay Nixon’s administration under a new competitive bidding system that was supposed to eliminate political favoritism in awarding state license offices.

 Attorney James Montee and business associate James Ryan Williams won several of the lucrative contracts despite scaling back initial promises to pay the state sizable chunks of their profits. The difference to their pocketbooks could be an extra $360,000 they otherwise would have paid to the state."

To read the full article, click here.

KS Secretary of Commerce Becomes Missouri Director of Economic Development

Today David Kerr will be resigning his position as Secretary of Commerce and replacing Interim Director Kathleen Steele Danner in the Missouri Department of Economic Development.

Kathleen Steele Danner took over after Linda Martinez resigned due to disagreements with the Governor's office.

Kerr is a former AT&T executive.

Déjà vu, Anyone?

Today, Governor Nixon cut $200 million dollars from the Missouri budget and announced 700 layoffs within the state. Medicaid payments are being reduced and Medicaid will stop taking on new clients for certain mental health services.

The names have changed, but the story sounds a lot like Governor Matt Blunt's situation in 2005, when he cut Medicaid funding. Will the media react the same way? We doubt it. Blunt was dragged over the coals for trying to balance the budget.

Reactions from some outlets, such as the St. Louis Post Dispatch, bordered on the hysteric.

Nixon Did What?

One St. Louis Post Dispatch article was titled "A Tale of Two States Waging War On the Working Poor: Missouri's Medicaid Shame" (9/21/05). The article's solution? Raise taxes, and create a new budget crisis by attaching children's health insurance to a regressive and declining revenue source (cigarette taxes). Reasoning was abandoned in the rush to bury Matt Blunt.

Another was "Two Standards? Two-Faced? Too Bad" (5/1/05). The title says it all about the tone of the piece.

These vitriolic articles were just the tip of the iceberg. The newspaper became a soapbox for one side of the issue - opposing views were only briefly mentioned and rarely elaborated.

So here's the question - now that two Governors in a row have cut Medicaid, will the press give them the same treatment?