LGBT Community and Capitalism discussion

Hello everyone.

There is an event happening tonight at 7 pm at the LGBT Community Center on Manchester to discuss the relationship between the LGBT community and a Capitalist / consumerist economy. The community center is a really nice space just to check out if you've never been there before. Hope to see you there.

http://www.facebook.com/events/357901590889044/

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In much of the United States the LGBT community appears to be firmly set along one political path. Members of the Democratic party, while being more inclined to not view those who identify as LGBT as against God and Nature, have other interests that far outweigh and oftentimes conflict with LGBT rights. I’ll just acknowledge the existence of the Republican presidential candidates and leave it at that.

Why is marriage so important to anyone, let alone the LGBT community? How and why has the LGBT community been used and abused by our economic system? What other avenues are there to empower the community without reliance on a party that usually only helps out when it’s convenient to do so?

If you are interested in exploring the intersections between sexuality, gender, and the economic system we live under then hot dog. By examining these intersections other connections can be drawn between struggles such as environmental and labor rights issues. The implications this has on possible organizing is also worth exploring. Got to work together to smash the things that are keeping us down and possibly leading us and everything else towards extinction.

So we’re going to have a little chat to get this conversation / planning rolling

Wednesday, February 1st @ 7 PM
at the LGBT Center, 4337 Manchester Road

Okay bye!

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Here is some reading material you all might find interesting. It goes into the formation of a gay identity and how that plays into some of the contradictions of Capitalism.

http://platypus1917.org/wp-content/uploads/readings/demilio_captialismgayid.pdf

What's Worse Than a Democrat Paid By Sinquefield Keeping Quiet About Rex's Crazy Ideas?

As I documented yesterday, there are a lot of St. Louis "Democrats" being paid by Rex Sinquefield who are mysteriously keeping quiet about his crazy ideas, even those ideas that cut funding for Missouri schools. But you know what's even worse? Democrats being directly paid to advocate for his crazy ideas!

John Temporiti, the former chief of staff for Charlie Dooley who is still listed as Dooley's campaign Treasurer and getting reimbursed by his campaign on the latest finance reports, received $7,500 for "campaign expenses" from the Sinquefield funded-group designed to get rid of the income tax and increase sales taxes (which would have the effect of both gutting state government and shifting the tax burden overwhelmingly to the poor and middle class and away from the rich).

You might remember Temporiti from the fact that his son Mike Temporiti was awarded a $70,000 patronage job during a hiring freeze in St. Louis County:

In January, with St. Louis County in the third year of a hiring and pay freeze, Mike Temporiti landed a $70,000 county job.

Temporiti, 27, is now the county's abatement compliance officer. It's a brand new job, created just for him in the Revenue Department. His salary is the ninth highest of the 237 employees in the department.

The job was never posted, and Temporiti did not have to interview for it.

He is a lawyer and the son of John Temporiti, who is County Executive Charlie A. Dooley's longtime campaign treasurer and manager and former chief of staff.

Also in the same Post-Dispatch article:

Several county employees, including some in the Revenue Department, have complained to the Post-Dispatch about the hiring of Mike Temporiti. They asked to remain anonymous because they fear retribution from their supervisors.

They dispute Earls' contention that the job is essential or that it needs to be full time.

"It's a task that could easily have been relegated to a current employee without adding too much strain to their current job," one employee said. "It would have only entailed several extra hours a week."

Oh, and there's also this:

Katy Temporiti, who is married to John Temporiti's eldest son, John Jr., is also a patronage employee, as a part-time administrative assistant in the Parks and Recreation Department. Since hiring her six years ago this month, the county has paid her a total of about $178,000....

At the time she was hired, John Temporiti was serving as Dooley's chief of staff..

Katy Temporiti's supervisor, Chief Parks Ranger John Nesbit, said Temporiti primarily worked from home.

Just read the whole article (which has a lot more detail and nuance) and reach your own conclusions.

St. Louis County Executive Dooley, of course, is also a frequent recipient of Sinquefield's donations.

Follow Michael Bersin at Show Me Progress for more details about various campaign finance reports.

Finance Report for Fake Local Control: How A Right-Wing Idealogue Pays Off Local "Democrats"

Now that the Mayor's office and right-wing multimillionaire Rex Sinquefield have thrown local control activists under the bus and are pushing for a new ballot initiative that would actually decrease accountability and transparency, it might be worth taking a closer look at some of the campaign finance reports for Rex's front group, A Safer Missouri. Rex, if you recall, wants to gut state government and shift the tax burden to the poor, and local "Democrats" who get paid by him conveniently stay quiet on these disastrous ideas, just like they did when Rex pushed a statewide ballot initiative to get rid of the earnings tax. How many local "Democrats" need to be on the payroll of a right-wing ideologue with crazy ideas before St. Louis residents start to worry about our City's future?

First things first for documenting the atrocities: the astroturf local control group is called A Safer Missouri. Only one person has ever donated to the group: Rex Sinquefield.


And who benefits from the amazing generosity of Rex, who graciously took time out of his busy schedule of trying to privatize everything in Missouri to magically start caring about this issue last year? Why, St. Louis "Democrats" of course! One of the biggest beneficiaries was Martin Casas, former President of the St. Louis Young Dems and a current candidate for the Missouri House of Representatives. Casas, if you recall, previously said that he had no position on the disastrous Everything Tax, which should be enough to disqualify anyone from calling themselves a Democrat, asked people to sign a petition from the right-wing front group United for Missouri while working for Rex, and also claimed that he had "no idea" if signing up for A Safer Missouri would help build Rex's email list:


In light of how much Casas was paid by Rex, it's pretty hard to believe this claim was true. And how much was that? Casas got close to a cool $20,000 from Rex Sinquefield in 2011 according to the most recent campaign report:

And this is all in addition to the fact that Casas's wife is also on Rex's payroll, through a different organization.

Another local principled "Democrat" who benefited from Sinquefield's kindheartedness was Gregg Christian, Democratic Committeeman in the 15th Ward. Here's A Safer Missouri's payment to Christian's company Gladius Communications for "graphic design:"

Was Gladius responsible for this beautiful logo? Cause I'd say that's worth about $4,000 just by itself:

Another local Democrat paid off in this campaign is Nancy Rice, but she's paid by Rex for a lot of things (she works for Pelopidas) so I won't bother to document the cash for this situation.

Every politician who has ever taken money from ideologues has claimed that the money has *nothing* to do with their future votes. Yet we know our democracy is broken because the uber-wealthy have far too much influence on our laws via their donations. If St. Louisans are really worried about Democracy being for sale, we're going to have to start paying better attention to what's happening locally. Having "Democrats" in office isn't any better than Republicans, if they're all getting paid by the same people.

Steelman: Brunner is Trying to Buy the Election

Whoa! I actually agreed with Sarah Steelman on something! Here's what she had to say at the GOP Senate primary debate that John Brunner was afraid to attend:

Oh well I say it’s due to his tv ads and the fact that he’s basically trying to buy this election. The 30 second ads or he’d be here tonight participating in a debate where he could actually get questions from the audience and share his views of the country’s problems are. I also note that he’s got a lot of money to spend. He made the decision he wants to invest a lot of his money in buying this race. The way I look at it, that’s what’s wrong with politics today.

h/t Caitlin Legacki

John Brunner Listened To The Debate He Was Too Scared To Attend

Todd Akin and Sarah Steelman debated today in the contest for the GOP nomination for the Senate race. I really don't know what crazy things they said, because the real action was over at the Twitter hashtag #wheresbrunner, which was making fun of the fact that St. Louis businessman John Brunner was skipping yet another debate. The guy is pretty clearly not yet ready for primetime, and he prefers to spend boatloads of money on advertisements versus having to talk to germy people.

There were a lot of funny tweets, but this one was my favorite:



To make matters worse, it turns out that Brunner was actually listening to the debate while it was going on! Here's a message from Monte Schisler, the News Director at KRZK/KOMC in Branson:


In other words, it's not like he had something better to do; he really was just afraid to be subjected to the questions! How in the world does this guy expect to be a Senator?

Update: Confirmation that Brunner listened online to the debate:

He said he couldn’t attend the Conversation with the Candidates due to his schedule, but HometownDailyNews.com has confirmed that St. Louis businessman John Brunner listened to the event online.

Roorda Says Only "Cop Haters" Could Be Opposed to Rex's Phony Local Control Ballot Initiative

To review, last year, activists working for local control of the St. Louis police department teamed up with the Mayor's office and other opportunistic local Democrats to try to get a bill passed through the Missouri legislature. Mayor Slay and the other opportunists, of course, used this as yet another opportunity to get paid by multimillionaire Rex Sinquefield who, just like every other entity that donates huge amounts of money to politicians, obviously doesn't want anything in return. I agreed with the St. Louis American on this: though I was suspicious of the group working with Rex, I ultimately thought local control was a good thing because the activists endorsed the idea and it could get St. Louis closer to a system with increased transparency and accountability.

However, the bill failed last year thanks to the incompetent GOP legislature, and when it returned as a ballot initiative, it was in a mutated form that discarded the original reasons for supporting it. The whole point of local control was to bring accountability and transparency, not to just shift from one opaque, unaccountable board to another. But the new ballot initiative pushed by Rex, Mayor Slay, and the other "Democrats", but not the actual activists, actually takes a step backwards on accountability and transparency, because what it actually does is prevent the creation of a civilian review board, and puts all of the power in the hands of a board appointed by the Mayor. Don't take my word for it: read the op-ed by Brenda Jones, executive director of the of the ACLU of Eastern Missouri.

But to give you a sense of how nasty the "Democrats" are who are doing Rex'$ bidding, check out this quote from Jeff Roorda saying that only "cop haters" could oppose the Rex Sinquefield phony local control ballot initiative:

Let’s not get distracted by cop haters that are trying to drive a wedge, when we’re coming to the table trying to find a way to make this department work better,” Roorda said. “Civilian review boards do not work. They’ve never worked anywhere they’ve been tried. They’ve got one function, and one function alone, and that’s to drive a wedge between the police department and the community.”

Yep. Only "cop haters" could possibly agree with the ACLU about having accountability and transparency be a part of the law. Or maybe it's just, you know, people who want accountability and transparency.

Momentum!

Question: if you are an organization created by a multimillionaire for the sole purpose of doing that multimillionaire's bidding, does it really count as "momentum" when that guy gives you more money? Apparently it does according the the Let Voters Decide "coalition", who received a donation from Rex Sinquefield, the only guy in the state who actually believes it'd be a good idea to gut state government and shift the tax burden to the poor and middle class by eliminating income tax and shifting exclusively to a sales tax. Check out this hilarious headline from the "coalition" referring to Rex's new donations of $1.2 million dollars:


In light of this genius idea, I've decided to start off every day with some extra "momentum" by giving myself $20. Look out world! I've got momentum!