Meet The New Chairman of The AP Board of Directors

The Gateway Journalism Review reports that Mary Junck was named the new AP Board Chairman. Apparently, she's been on the board for 10 years and has been the vice chair for 3 years.

Junck is also the CEO of Lee Enterprises, which owns the Post-Dispatch. I happen to think there are a lot of things to like about the Post-Dispatch, but the upper management of Lee Enterprises is certainly not one of them. Bill McClellan, in an especially courageous column, wrote about Lee laying off employees while Junck took in a salary of $833,000. McClellan suggested that Junck must be "too big to fail," and he said he wished he could say the same about some of his colleagues.

But what really convinced me of just how cold-heated Lee is, beyond the typical "management makes a lot of money while firing employees right and left" story, was the way Lee Enterprises explicitly promised health care to employees who agreed to an early retirement deal, and then went back on their promise. This heartless decision led to gut-wrenching stories like this from Show Me Progress:


I admit I don't much about the AP Board. Maybe they were already ruthless. Or maybe they don't have much influence on how cynically newspaper owners act. But I have to say I'm not very encouraged by this news.

h/t ForwardSTL.

Poseur Alert! Dana Loesch *Explicitly* Supported Romney's Mandate in 2008

It's a funny thing. If you point out that right-wing pundits lie, their fans don't care. If you point out that they use extremist rhetoric, their fans don't care. But if you point out that they're unhip....have mercy!

Tommy Christopher wrote a snarky follow-up to my earlier post where he compared Dana Loesch's voting for Romney in a February 5, 2008 primary to a hipster having a Justin Bieber CD drop out of his pocket. Loesch, of course, freaked out and posted a response claiming she had "eaten Christopher's lunch" because she only supported Romney out of her disdain for McCain. But Christopher updated his post to note that, in Missouri's '08 primary, McCain was not Romney's only opponent. In fact, McCain just barely beat out Mike Huckabee.

Of course, the point of all this from my perspective is to evaluate whether Loesch really lives up to her carefully constructed, money-making image as a rebellious tea party outsider. If she claims that the constitution is the most important thing to consider and that RomenyCare is unconstitutional, then it would be pretty bad if she actually ended up supporting Romney in 2008 despite recently claiming that she was "against him last election."

But all of that is rather indirect. Because, as it turns out, Dana Loesch actually said on her blog that she supported RomneyCare. In her January 30 live blog of the Republican debate in California, here's what Loesch had to say:

7:19 Is it just me or are they going after Romney tonight? I like Romney’s “pay your own way” approach to healthcare. Now the debate is starting to sound like an exercise in conservatism. First time all night.

Seems bad enough already, but check out the full Romney quote Loesch was referring to:

With regards to my health care plan, let me describe what is the ultimate conservative approach. In this country, you have today about 47 million people that don’t have health insurance. We went out and tried to find out why they don’t. We found out that about half of them could afford to buy insurance if it were reasonably priced. They could afford to buy it, but they weren’t buying it. it? If we get sick, we can go to the hospital and get care for free.“ And we said: what? If somebody could afford insurance, they should either buy the insurance or pay their own way. They don’t have to buy insurance if they don’t want to, but pay their own way. But they shouldn’t be allowed to just show up at the hospital and say, somebody else should pay for me. So we said: No more free riders. It was like bringing “workfare” to welfare. We said: If you can afford insurance, then either have the insurance or get a health savings account. Pay your own way, but no more free ride. That was what the mandate did.

So there you go. Radical, going-all-in-for-a-strict-interpretation-of-the-constitution tea party rebel Dana Loesch "liked" Romney's healthcare plan and specifically the mandate, which she says is unconstitutional. And she's now claiming that she never supported it.

So is it a lie? Here's what Dana Loesch said in her most recent response:

I weighed RomneyCare against McCain-Feingold. And that's ultimately what made my decision. I disliked both of them to the point where I almost just wanted to choke. And I ultimately decided that McCain-Feingold in that particular instance was worse.

I think socialism at any level is still socialism. I don't buy the federalism excuse for RomneyCare. I think it was bad for business, it was bad policy. Say what you will. I spoke to Will Cain earlier this morning (who's on CNN and I respect his opinion very much) and we politely disagreed. I think that it's still socialism. You're still penalizing people for not participating in the system. You're still hinging their living in a state with their purchasing a product from the government and you're penalizing them if they don't. That's a nationalized, in the case of Massachusetts, a state-run freedom-infringing health care plan.

Is it wrong to change your mind about an issue or a candidate later on? Of course not. But is it wrong to rewrite your own history to try to pretend that you never supported the thing you now point to as the epitome of all-evil? You betcha!

Lembke Uses Tea Party Blog To Whine About How Misunderstood He Is

After leading a group of grandstanding state senators fillibustering to deny money for healthcare, education funds, and unemployment benefits (and demonizing the unemployed as lazy in the process), Jim Lembke has searched his heart and finally found some sympathy. For himself.

Lembke apparently is feeling quite victimized over the fact that no one appreciates what a great guy he is for trying to defund our schools and kick sand in the eye of people struggling to pay the bills, and seems to be using the St. Louis Tea Party blog to vent his frustrations.

A little context before getting to the tragic story of our state's most misunderstood man. Lembke was apparently behind the push to get Chip Wood selected as the Republican County Assessor candidate:

Chip Wood’s horrid performance – taking only 34% - in the St. Louis County Assessor race has Republicans finger pointing, mainly at the process which chose their flawed candidate. One operative says that it was Sen. Jim Lembke’s people, led by Republican committeeman John Judd, who pushed for Wood over Gene McNary.

So, with that in mind, you can see how Bill Hennessy's recent post about the "selfishness" of the Missouri Republican Party is nothing more than a long list of Lembke complaints about how he doesn't get more respect while he's drinking port and smoking cigars at the good old boys club:

How selfish were these Republicans?

• One State Senator from St. Louis County attended a $150 per person fundraiser for the candidate but paid only $100. And if you think it had something to do with Chip’s property tax issue, think again. This Senator from an affluent area never asked for the money back after the story broke.
• A rising star in the GOP House (who hopes to be Speaker one day) is busy amassing over $1 million for his re-election to the House. A million bucks for a race in which he’s likely to run uncontested. He’ll spread that wealth around next year—to buy votes for the Speakership. With tons of cash in the bank, this bright young man did little or nothing for the assessor race—yet his constituents will be disproportionately damaged when the elected Democrat assessor uses his power to redistribute wealth in St. Louis County.
• In his race for the Senate, Jim Lembke worked tirelessly to win in a very tough district. But the Missouri GOP did almost nothing to help. In 2010, the Missouri GOP did as little as possible in St. Louis County. The result: two state-wide Republican candidates who won their elections handily lost landslides in St. Louis County.

So, to summarize:

• Boo hoo, a state senator only paid $100 for a fundraiser for Lemke's candidate.
• Boo hoo, a "rising star" didn't give Lembke's candidate any money.
• Boo hoo, nobody helped poor, "tireless" Jim Lembke.

I'm sure that schoolchildren, the unemployed, bus riders, and people who would benefit from health care infrastructure are all crying their eyes out at this tale of woe from Lembke, the Most Misunderstood Man in Missouri.