Nixon Scorns Puppy Supporters and St. Louisans

Governor Jay Nixon is helping to ensure that Missouri remains the Puppy Mill Capitol of the world. Despite the fact that a majority of Missouri voters supported the Puppy Mill Cruelty Prevention Act, and despite the fact that Nixon himself had brokered a compromise with legislators, he decided to project weakness by caving in to bad faith demands that he sign a full repeal before the compromise is considered. Now he has to sit back and twiddle his thumbs while waiting for Republicans to spontaneously decide that they are going to work to round up votes to pass a compromise that's further away from what they were originally advocating for. Or, more likely, Nixon is simply planning on acting "gee shucks" shocked when Republicans say "whoops, I guess we couldn't pass the compromise after all!"

I understood the initial politics behind this. Nixon has to veto a lot of stuff from this crazy legislature. He's expected to veto a Republican bill that would weaken anti-discrimination laws. He will likely veto attacks on the minimum wage and right-to-work-for-less legislation. I'm grateful that we have someone in office who can block these shameful attacks on workers. Yet Nixon also wants to be seen as a middle-of-the-road compromiser. So it's not surprising that he would throw dogs under the bus.

However, the politics changed once Republicans demanded that Nixon sign the full repeal before they would "think about" the compromise. Giving in to bad faith negotiators makes Nixon look weak and stupid, and if he thinks he can feign ignorance if it turns out that Republicans don't actually fulfill their end of the bargain, he is sorely mistaken. All Nixon would have had to say by vetoing SB113 is that he respects the will of Missouri voters. Missourians who couldn't take that as an explanation will never vote for him anyway. Now he's completely at the mercy of people who have never done anything to improve conditions for dogs and who have no incentive to do so now.

Confirmed! Repubs Were Negotiating In Bad Faith! VETO the Bill!

If someone proposes making a deal with you by saying "give me everything I want, and then I'll consider a deal," I have news for you: it ain't a deal!

If a group forms an agreement with you, and then later changes the conditions so that you first have to give them everything they want before they decide whether they will actually uphold their end of the bargain, they are negotiating in bad faith.

I wrote yesterday that State Senator Mike Parson had backed out of his deal with Nixon, now claiming that Nixon had to sign his bill to repeal the Puppy Mill Cruelty Prevention Act before he would "think about" a compromise. Today it was confirmed that Republicans in the state legislature have no intention of following the agreement. MissouriNet reported:

House Speaker Steven Tilley, a Republican from Perryville, tells the Missourinet he will encourage Governor Nixon to sign Senate Bill 113, which he says maintains the intent of the voters in November while fixing some problems with Proposition B. Tilley says, then, the legislature can consider the compromise the Nixon Administration is proposing. According to Tilley, the House doesn’t have a set position and is willing to work with the governor when it can.

And:

Agreeing is the House sponsor of the bill, Tom Loehner, a Republican from Koeltztown.

“That’s what I would like to see, that he go out and sign 113 and say this is a start, we’ve done this thus far and I think we can do a little bit more with the fix,” Loehner, chairman of the House Agriculture Policy Committee, says. “If we could get that done and an emergency clause, that’s great.”

This, in my opinion, pretty clearly makes the "deal" null and void. There is absolutely no reason why Nixon should be required to give them everything they want (which by the way is in direct opposition to the will of the voters) before they even "consider" the compromise. In fact, they're pretty clear about the fact that they're not sure the compromise can even make it through the legislature, so a situation where Nixon passes the repeal and they then say "whoops, guess we couldn't round up the votes!" seems to be the most likely possibility (and maybe what they were planning all along) if Nixon signed the bill.

At this point, it is clear that Nixon should veto SB113. First, this is the only action that would respect the will of the voters, who voted in favor of Prop B in November. Second, to sign the bill or let it pass would demonstrate tremendous weakness and would encourage Republicans to negotiate in bad faith in the future. If they can't abide by the terms of the agreements they came up with, they need to be politically punished, not rewarded. Nixon can honestly tell rural voters who opposed Prop B that he tried to negotiate a compromise, but the people he was speaking with broke their word. It is House and Senate Republicans who screwed everyone in this deal, including the dog breeders.

You can join the Save Prop B group here.

Barbara Schmitz on Prop B Compromise

Yesterday, Charlie Brennan interviewed Barbara Schmitz, the Missouri State Director of the Humane Society of the United States, to get her thoughts on the purported compromise on the Puppy Mill Cruelty Prevention Act. You can listen here:

In other Prop B news, the Post-Dispatch had a well-written and thoughtful editorial praising Nixon for the compromise. I actually agree with quite a few of the points; however, I think it's worth noting that Nixon would have had pretty solid moral ground to stand on in vetoing the bill by simply saying, as he has in the past, "I think the will of the voters should be respected." And more importantly, as revealed after the Post-Dispatch editorial was published, it is now clear that puppy mill supporters have altered the conditions of the deal to where Nixon has to give them everything they want before they decide whether they will compromise or not. The Post-Dispatch editorial already recommended that Nixon veto SB113, the bill to repeal the Puppy Mill Cruelty Prevention Act. Now that puppy mill supporters have shown their true colors, this is even more clearly the correct path of action.

DEAL-BREAKER! Mike Parson Says NO COMPROMISE on Prop B Unless Repeal Bill is Signed!

Yesterday, State Senator Mike Parson was said to have struck a deal with Governor Jay Nixon and others on a "compromise" about voter-approved Proposition B, the Puppy Mill Cruelty Prevention Act. However, today Parson is announcing that he won't even consider the compromise unless Nixon signs SB13, a bill that basically completely repeals Prop B, into law:

This is a deal-breaker! Nixon needs to veto SB13 immediately and he can now honestly tell the voters that he tried to negotiate in good faith but was betrayed by the puppy mill propagandist Parson.

Update: I should note that Parson did already tell the Beacon that he expected his bill to be signed first and said that the deal would be off it Nixon vetoed the bill (I linked to the Beacon article yesterday to mention this point). However, the difference in today's statement is that Parson is saying that the repeal bill must be signed before they can even "talk about other things." In other words, Parson's claiming that Nixon needs to sign the bill first, then they can talk about a compromise, which seems to be an extremely bad idea!