Prop A Anniversary (Video)

Thanks to Damien Johnson for grabbing some video of the panel assembled for the anniversary of Proposition A, the ballot initiative that saved public transportation in St. Louis. My fellow panelists included Nancy Cross of SEIU, Dr. Suggs of the St. Louis American, Tom Shrout the former director of Citizens for Modern Transit, Rose Windmiller of Washington University, and John Nations, at that time the leader of the campaign and the Republican Mayor of Chesterfield. The panel was moderated by Eddie Roth of the Post-Dispatch. Unfortunately, it looks like Damien didn't catch my introduction from Eddie, which about knocked me off my chair because it was so nice, but you can catch a good chunk of my comments on the role of social media and student involvement here:

Damien also got some video footage of Nancy Cross from SEIU discussing how they helped out in the campaign:

And John Nations:

UMSL Professors David Kimball and Todd Swanstrom (along with Tom Shrout) put together a nice report analyzing the campaign and suggesting some lessons for the future.

Other bloggers in attendance: Justin Chick of Transit Turning Point, Court Sloger of NextStop STL, and Steve Patterson of Urban Review STL.

Loesch On Cooper: Clueless As Usual

Dana Loesch was on Anderson Cooper last night. She began by causing Begala to question whether her earpiece was working because she mindlessly repeated the "Dems fault for not passing a budget" talking point after he just finished arguing against it. She then cheers on the idea of shutting down the government over the question of whether Planned Parenthood should get funding for providing women's health services. And she spends the last couple minutes of the segment giggling, rolling her eyes, and making strange noises while Begala is talking.

Here's the video:

On the next segment, she completely fails to answer Anderson Cooper's question of why riders to defund Planned Parenthood should be included in the budget bill. And, as Cooper pointed out, she tried to imply that Democrats were the people who brought Planned Parenthood into the debate.

I'm really not sure why CNN thinks she should be on their programs. She's remarkably unprofessional and her talking points are completely disconnected from reality. Can't CNN find a conservative who can at least put forward honest arguments for their positions?

Missouri State Senators Who Hate Missourians

Do you live in Missouri?

Missouri State Senators Brian Nieves, Jim Lembke, Will Kraus and Rob Schaff hate you. They want you to suffer for their nonsensical principals.

They say that they despise an out of control federal government. Because of this they want to give back to that same federal government $300 million that has already been appropriated to the state of Missouri. Our tax dollars are coming home and these people want to return the money to "Barack Hussein Obama and his liberal ilk".

These men are willing to block the extension of unemployment benefits for Missourians in order to make sure that our state doesn't have $300 million to pay for our teachers, improve our railroad tracks and make our home energy use more efficient. They are willing to spend money to help the unemployed but only if we refuse to spend money to gainfully employ people who provide useful services for Missourians.

What point are they trying to prove? They want to teach the federal government not to be wasteful by giving them more money?

While the $300 million would do a world of good here in Missouri, if sent back to Washington it could pay for less than one day of overseas wars. I guess these people would rather see our money go up in smoke over North Africa, the Middle East or central Asia.

Is An 87.5% Vote for the E-Tax A Mandate AGAINST the E-Tax??

Yesterday, St. Louis City voters overwhelmingly voted in favor of keeping the 1% Earnings Tax, 88% - 12%. In a rational world, this would be taken as a pretty clear sign that St. Louis residents are in favor of collecting revenue via the earnings tax as opposed to other more regressive methods like a sales tax increase. Of course, as well all know, it's not really a rational world.

Mayor Slay and his inner circle have started beating the drums suggesting that "major changes" need to be made before the next vote on the earnings tax in five years. On Slay's blog, he wrote the following:

In the coming months, we must begin making the changes the economy and the census have been telling us we have to make. Those changes may begin in the city, but they cannot stop there. It is the region that needs to change.

What voters did tonight is critical to that task. They gave us five years to get this done. It would have been infinitely more difficult to bring the region together without a good bond rating or a working parks, streets, or fire department.

We may celebrate what the city’s votes have given us, but we must understand that it is not a blank check and it will not last forever. When this election comes around again in five years, we must be a very different city and region. I do not expect voters to give us another chance.

His Chief of Staff Jeff Rainford express similar sentiments:

Perhaps this is not a big deal, if all they're referring to is simply streamlining services, perhaps even by merging St. Louis City and St. Louis County. However, it sounds like they have much more in mind, and in particular are already planning on how to get rid of the earnings tax 88% of St. Louisans just voted for. Here's Slay's close advisor Richard Callow, in the Post-Dispatch article about the win:

Still, Callow, echoing many public officials, said he didn't think he'd be asked to do the same in five years. "I don't think there's going to be another campaign on this earnings tax," he said.

City officials, he said, have already begun talking about other ways of getting the revenue the tax brings in.

And Mayor Slay made similar comments to the Riverfront Times:

"Today's vote shows that the overwhelming number of St. Louisans thought it was irresponsible to get rid of the earnings tax without a viable way to replace those funds," Slay told Daily RFT. "But does that mean we just forget about the earnings tax after tonight? No. We now have five years to see if we can come up with a better way to tax and fund the city."

To me, it seems bizarre that they're already beating the drums against the earnings tax, considering that the vast majority of residents support it. And, as Callow said to the St. Louis Beacon, it's not like city voters don't understand the significance of the vote:

"City voters are very aware of the earnings tax," said Callow, the man running the Prop E campaign. "They understand how it is spent, they are very worried about the loss of services and about the potential of increasing other taxes to make up for the revenue if the earnings tax is not retained."

If citizens overwhelmingly support the earnings tax, who exactly is Slay looking out for when he pushes changing it?

Interestingly, there was another group that was on-message and ready to start beating the "St. Louis needs massive change in our tax laws" drum immediately after the election. A study released yesterday and paid for by right-wing millionaire Rex Sinquefield, who's donated more than $245,000 to Slay for various campaigns, outlined a "laundry list of unpopular choices" that could be used to replace the earnings tax. It includes such things as increasing the sales tax (which disproportionately punishes people with less income), asking nonprofits to pay more for city services, and forcing city workers to contribute more to their pensions. In other words, it contains a list of things that a right-wing millionaire ideologue might like better than a 1% earnings tax.

I've also found the rhetoric that we need to make these changes "because the census told us so" to be rather strange. It sounds a little like the Shock Doctrine of city politics: all of a sudden we need to push through "free-market" and "business friendly" changes because we had bad census numbers? Does anyone really think that people moved out of the city because they were worried about firefighter pensions being too high? Perhaps some people might move out because of the earnings tax, but is there any trustworthy data to quantify that suggestion? It seems much more likely to me that people moved out of the city because of worries about crime and the school system.

Anyway, if Slay and his group are taking this as an opportunity to streamline government, get rid of waste and corruption, and even merge services with St. Louis County, then I'm all for it. However, if they are going to try to use this to push a false notion that people are opposed to the earnings tax, without any supporting evidence, then I will be extremely skeptical of their intentions. The people spoke out strongly in favor of the earnings tax, and the idea that the past election and census numbers tell us we need to ditch it in favor of regressive measures like an increased sales tax is a complete distortion of reality.

Note: as I finish writing this, I see that Mayor Slay has a new post on his blog asking "what's next?" He suggests that he is committed to speaking to city residents about what they think should be done about crime, education, tax structures, pensions, and mergers:

Over the spring and coming summer months, I plan to continue the conversations with City voters that began in the successful campaign for passage of Proposition E.

I hope that's right, but we shall see.

Kinder's Office Claims They "Lost" The Records That Totally Prove them Right

Today, Peter Kinder announced that he would be paying back the $35,050 of taxpayer money he spent staying in St. Louis hotels. Or, rather, he would use campaign funds to pay back the money. However, as Jo Mannies notes at the Beacon, this might cause some additional problems:

But using campaign money could set Kinder up for a new round of political headaches. Campaign money is not to be used for personal expenses, and has gotten some state officials in trouble when the Missouri Ethics Commission found them guilty of doing so. (Just ask former state Rep. Cynthia Davis, R-O'Fallon, who was accused of using campaign money for personal expenses, such as buying a truck and paying taxes.)

The Missouri Democratic Party filed the ethics complaint that got Davis into hot water and may be about to do the same thing to Kinder as a result of his decision to use campaign money for the $35,000. That's because some of the stays have been linked to personal events, such as attending a wedding.

The fact that Kinder is paying it back sure seems like an admission of guilt. However, he's still claiming that he "will never apologize" and that the whole thing is the result of a "search and destroy mission" by the Post-Dispatch. With chest-thumping bravado like this, Kinder must really have some good evidence that he wasn't using the taxpayer money for personal or political purposes, right?

Actually, it's quite the opposite. It was already pointed out that many of Kinder's trips to St. Louis were accompanied by no explanation whatsoever for why he was in town. And now his office has told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that they "lost" the records of what he was doing:

Bill Kenney, Kinder's chief of staff, added that the lieutenant governor's official schedule goes into greater detail and lists more events than do expense reports and invoices. However, Kenney said, the state Office of Administration has lost all records of Kinder's calendars prior to June 2009.

Uh huh. He "lost" them. I think some more investigation is in order.

Only Fox 2 News and Show Me Progress Cover Union Rally

Yesterday, 300 union supporters rallied in St. Louis as part of nationwide "We Are One" events marking the anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., who was shot while in Memphis supporting sanitation workers trying to form a union. From what I heard, only Fox 2 News (with Charles Jaco) and progressive blog Show Me Progress covered the event. Here's the Fox 2 video:

The Post-Dispatch had articles from national organizations, and provided no coverage of the local events.

Jake Zimmerman on Jaco Report: Chip Wood Refuses to Appear!

Democratic candidate for County Assessor Jake Zimmerman was a guest yesterday on the Election Edition of the Jaco Report. His opponent Chip Wood bizarrely refused to appear!

You can watch the report here: