So much for the horse race, let's look at track conditions

All right Democrats. It is time to get our collective act together and put the past behind us. It isn't about anyones hurt feelings. I voted for Hillary in the primary and one of the checks I wrote this primary season was to her campaign. But I can read the tea leaves, and Obama is going to be the nominee.

So take the long weekend to lick your wounds, and when Tuesday rolls around, start with mending fences. It is time to get over yourself. It isn't about you, or me, or even the candidates. It is about electing a Democrat and saving the Supreme Court.

Looked at through that lens, Obama is perfectly suited for the job, because he was a Constitutional Law professor. That is hugely important with a Supreme Court that has a liberal wing that is as chronologically advanced as our liberal justices are. Especially with Roberts as Chief. Ugh...

McClatchy has an article on the importance of Missouri this fall. Obama carried the state - narrowly - on Super Tuesday - because of St. Louis and Kansas City. In the outstate areas, Hillary is the overwhelming choice. At the State Democratic Convention I saw Hillbillies for Hillary t-shirts, and my father in law, who has voted in the primary for the guy who eventually won the White House since 1980 is a huge Hillary Clinton supporter. I have been telling everyone since September, when we went to the country for bow season, that she is the outstate favorite.

Obama - and the state and national party apparatus - have challenges in this bellwether state - but they can be overcome with grassroots organization, and most importantly - presence. When Missouri voters in outstate areas are asked about Obama and the response ranges from

"I feel like I just don't know him yet."

to

"I can't vote Republican. I'll either vote for Obama or not vote. If it were today, I would not vote. There's still six months . ... He's gonna' have to convince me. I haven't seen it yet."

Our mission is clearly defined. Convince voters. I spoke to my father in law before the state convention and asked him if there was anything he wanted me to impart to the leaders of the party. He said I should tell them to make their presence known, that no one was going to vote for them if they didn't bother to ask.

So here is how Obama wins in Missouri, and helps deliver the Missouri Sixth congressional seat to Kay Barnes, the Democrat opposing the odious Sam "96%" Graves, (as in he votes the way aWol wants him to 96% 0f the time), and takes a congressional enemy off the chessboard.

It's politics 101. What Howard Dean did for the nation with the brilliant 50 State Strategy, the Obama campaign and the Democratic Party (national and state need to get their act together and combine resources for this) need to do in Missouri. Call it a 114 County Strategy.

Get someone on the ground in every county - it can be as simple as a dedicated cell phone and someone willing to answer and return calls, and store yard signs, bumper stickers, lapel pins and campaign literature in their garage or basement and pass it out when people ask for it, and put an add in every county paper every single week.

If Obama campaigns hard in Kansas City, St. Louis, and the Sixth Congressional District...He wins. KC and StL are reliably Democratic. The Sixth is vulnerable and due to flip. The Sixth is also huge in area - the population isn't dense, but the people aren't either. They know that republican policies have damaged them economically and sent their kids to fight and die in a senseless conflict that should never have been undertaken. A couple of stops in St. Joseph would pull supporters for both Kay Barnes and Representative Nancy Boyda of the KS 02 and fill the stadium at Missouri Western. Do the same thing in Hannibal and bolster democratic turnout among rural voters in three states. What's not to love about this plan?

Now the Democratic Party needs to get their act together and start plotting strategy. Ask any veteran and they will tell you - It is always - always - a bad idea to cede the hill country in any fight.


[Crossposted from Show Me Progress]

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Purple Missouri Target of Republican Voter Suppression Campaign

Greg Gordon of McClatchy Newspapers is reporting that Claire McCaskill was the target of a coordinated voter suppression campaign conducted by Missouri's Republican legislature, Matt Blunt, and the Karl Rove Justice Department, lead by voter suppression specialist Brad Schlozman. Hiding behind claims of massive "voter fraud" the Republican voter suppression efforts were cynically aimed directly at minority and poor voters. The Republican campaign was thwarted by timely rulings of from Federal and Missouri courts. As evidence of the coordinated nature of the Republican voter suppression campaign Gordon points to the following:

-Schlozman, while he was acting civil rights chief, authorized a suit accusing the state of failing to eliminate legions of ineligible people from lists of registered voters. A federal judge tossed out the suit this April 13, saying Democratic Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan couldn't police local registration rolls and noting that the government had produced no evidence of fraud.

-The Missouri General Assembly - with the White House's help - narrowly passed a law requiring voters to show photo identification cards, which Carnahan estimated would disenfranchise 200,000 voters. The state Supreme Court voided the law as unconstitutional before the election.

-Two weeks before the election, the St. Louis Board of Elections sent letters threatening to disqualify 5,000 newly registered minority voters if they failed to verify their identities promptly, a move - instigated by a Republican appointee - that may have violated federal law. After an outcry, the board rescinded the threat.

-Five days before the election, Schlozman, then interim U.S. attorney in Kansas City, announced indictments of four voter-registration workers for a Democratic-leaning group on charges of submitting phony applications, despite a Justice Department policy discouraging such action close to an election.

-In an interview with conservative talk-show host Hugh Hewitt a couple of days before the election, Rove said he'd just visited Missouri and had met with Republican strategists who "are well aware of" the threat of voter fraud. He said the party had "a large number of lawyers that are standing by, trained and ready to intervene" to keep the election clean.

Last August Ajbari Asim wrote in a Washington Post Op-ed of the then soon to be held unconstitutional Missouri voter ID law:

Blunt and others say the law will prevent fraud. Their opponents rightly point out that the measure disproportionately affects those who have been disfranchised in the past, such as the poor and racial minorities. Besides, they argue, Missouri hasn't exactly suffered from an epidemic of imposters showing up to vote.

As one of the lawsuits filed to block the measure puts it, "It is statistically more likely for a Missourian to be struck by a bolt of lightning than to have his or her vote canceled by someone posing as another voter to cast a ballot."

You can read the Missouri Supreme Court opinion in Weinschenk v. Missouri here.

UPDATE: For a sample of how this story is being blogged locally, you might want to check out KC Blue Blog's comment.

Elected officials inside the Missouri Republican Party may have knowingly worked with political operatives in accomplishing this goal. Thomas Hearne, a high dollar Republican from St. Louis, founded the non-profit Center for American Voting Rights, in Feb. 2005. This center was used as the hub for drafting reports that purposely launched hysteria campaigns involving non existent voter fraud, or cases that were investigated and found to be nothing, to give the appearance that it was a massive problem in Missouri and other swing states. For the record, over the last 5 years nationwide there have only been a total of just over 100 cases total.

Republican State Senator Delbert Scott (R-MO), along with other Republican State Representatives and Senators worked with Mr. Hearne to draft legislation to restrict lower income voters through their "Voter ID Bill" which was found to be unconstitutional. In making the argument Republican State Representatives and Senators, including every Lee's Summit State Representative, may have been told to make these hyped up, fake claims of "preventing dogs and cats from voting, etc." in speeches and local newspaper articles to create an illusion that the bill was needed, so that the real reason wasn't focused on.

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Putting the US attorney scandal into perspective for Kansas & Missouri

[This is a cross-post from my blog In This Moment. If you've been following the US attorney scandal on this blog, you might want to skip down to the new material about the voting fraud issues in Kansas and to the unanswered questions.]

I have to admit there are moments when the screaming fits and scandals of Washington, D.C., seem far removed from life out here on the prairie. This isn't one of those times.

The scandal in the U.S. Department of Justice has now reached into the U.S. attorney's office in Kansas City and possibly into the 2006 election in Missouri. What may be Republican efforts to target core constituencies of the Democratic Party may also have reached into the 2006 election in Kansas and into the 2007 Kansas legislative session.

If those of us out here in the great middle weren't concerned before, it's time to pay attention now.

This post is an attempt to put all of this into perspective and to pose the questions that remain unanswered.

Two issues are paramount.

• The quality of federal law enforcement in the Kansas City region
• The fairness of elections in Kansas and Missouri

When I covered northeastern Kansas and the Kansas Legislature for The Wichita Eagle, I quickly realized that although U.S. attorneys are political appointees, their jobs were and are not political. They are charged with enforcing federal law in their regions.

They take on cases involving drugs, civil rights, corruption and a multitude of other issues. Our safety and the health of our democracy depends on the professionalism and fairness of U.S. attorneys.

The first issue before us is this: Was a U.S. Attorney named Todd Graves forced out in Kansas City for no other reason than the fact that he was, well, fair and professional? Was he forced out because he would not bow to the demands of the Bush Administration that he use his office to unfairly target Democratic constituencies for voting fraud charges?

(The KC Star's Steve Kraske reviews Graves approach to his job.)

Graves resigned in March 2006, a few months after his name was put on a White House target list. Graves told The Kansas City Star that he is thankful that he left because the "current environment at the department can only be described as toxic." Graves also told the reporter that he didn't know his name was on what appears to be a hit list.

So perhaps Graves wasn't forced out. Why would he have quit if he didn't know he was on the hit list?

Look, though, at what happened when he left. Within 13 days of his departure, the White House appointed Brad Schlozman, a justice department official who had already filed a voter fraud case against Missouri.

Thirteen days? If the Department of Justice didn't know Graves was leaving, how did it find a replacement at what amounts to warp speed? But then again, Missouri was a battleground state in November. The victory of Claire McCaskill helped secure the Senate for Democrats. At the time Schlozman was sent to Kansas City, the Missouri Senate race was still neck and neck.

What did Schlozman do when he got to Missouri? A week before the election, he prosecuted ACORN workers for allegedly filing false voter registration forms. This is the only federal case filed against ACORN in the nation. ACORN works in urban areas with key Democratic constituencies.

Meanwhile, Republicans in Kansas pushed hard in the 2007 session for a bill requiring voter identification, a measure Democrats think is aimed at thinning out some of their core voters. Even its supporters say the bill is designed to fix a voting fraud problem that apparently doesn't exist in the Sunflower State.

Also just before the November election, the Wichita Eagle reported that Spanish-speaking voters were facing difficulties in registering to vote. The Kansas election system is run by its secretary of state, an office held by a Republican.

Unanswered Questions

What does it all mean? Do all these events go together, or is this a vast coincidence?

Honestly, I don't know.

The Bushie's choice for the Kansas City U.S. attorney office has a record of putting politics before professionalism. The case Schlozman filed against Missouri before coming to the Kansas City office was dismissed by a federal judge last month. The judge said she found no evidence of major voter fraud in the state.

The voting fraud case Schlozman filed just before the election eventually ended up with one ACORN worker pleading guilty in February to falsely registering one Kansas City woman. According to a Feb. 7, 2007, Kansas City Star story ACORN itself informed authorities in October 2006 of irregularities by three of its workers. (I'm not linking to the story because I found it in a library database open only to registered members of the library.)

Schlozman said at the time that the ACORN charges weren't political. ACORN's own involvement in the case seems to indicate that. However, the fact that the entire case ended in one person pleading guilty to doing something wrong one time indicates that the case may have been overblown. But then again, shouldn't even one crime be prosecuted?

Questions have also been raised regarding Graves.

I don't have good answers to the questions raised by all of this. However, I do know that antics of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and crew have destroyed the credibility of that department.

Never before did I question the integrity of a U.S. attorney. I do now. Never before did I question the integrity of elections out here on the prairie. Unfortunately, I do now.

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Screw You, Hippies!

Representative Cooper takes on the Great Unwashed of People-Powered Politics

In a naked display of disdain for the will of the people, MO State Representative Shannon Cooper (R-Clinton) has decided he needs to muck up a perfectly good solution to a problem caused by the recent passage of Proposition B (The Minimum Wage Act) back in November.

When Proposition B became law, missing ballot language caused an inadvertent revocation of Federal rules regarding how overtime is calculated for certain types of essential employees, specifically, law enforcement officers, fire fighters & emergency medical technicians.

Cities and fire departments complained that the change wreaked havoc on their scheduling and budgets.

Fire departments often use 24-hour shifts, and some police and sheriff's offices use 10- or 12-hour shifts that may result in employees working more than 40 hours in a particular week. The state previously followed a federal wage law that lets police work up to 171 hours and firefighters up to 212 hours in a 28-day work period without earning overtime.

But the state Department of Labor and Industrial Relations said the ballot measure requires all employees to get overtime after 40 hours, with no exceptions. That would mean a firefighter on a 24-hour shift could not work two days in the same week without triggering overtime.

Rather than forcing local governments to pony up millions of dollars in unforeseen overtime funds, the State Senate formulated a bill (SB 255) which simply "reinstates the Federal overtime standards in place before the passage of Proposition B (2006) including exemptions for firefighters, commissioned employees, and flex-time rates."

Enter (un)Representative Cooper. In his capacity as Chairman of the House Rules Committee, he is determined that SB255 will not leave his committee, unless the "inflation adjustment is taken out of the new minimum wage law." Believing that the 76% of Missouri voters (71 - 77% in his own district) choosing to adopt Proposition B were simply too stupid to read ballot language & did not know what they were voting for, he is determined to save us from ourselves.

Cooper and other Republicans have concluded that voters didn’t understand what they were considering. “People were unaware of the consequences when they voted for this,” Cooper said

This is what Cooper thinks we were too stupid to understand.

Shall Missouri Statutes be amended to increase the state minimum wage rate to $6.50 per hour, or to the level of the federal minimum wage if that is higher, and thereafter adjust the state minimum wage annually based on changes in the Consumer Price Index?

I dunno, seems pretty vague to me. No wonder 3 out of every 4 voters in the state were so verily hoodwinked. Thank Jeebus for (un)Representative Cooper. Save us from ourselves, Shannon!

Cross posted at Welcome to the Revolution

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Roy Blunt: WATB

Hard Times in the Congressional Dining Room

Representative Roy Blunt (R-MO) has fallen on hard times. How else to explain why the man is insisting on a raise of his already significant Federal salary $165,000 per year?

Mr. Blunt...said the raises were crucial for members of Congress who are not independently wealthy and must operate two households on the current $165,200 salary. The annual raise for this year was set at 1.7 percent, about $2,760.

Shorter Blunt: $165,200 per year, bad; 167,960, good. In all fairness, Blunt is one of the, ahem, poorer members of Congress, with a reported net worth of between $118,000 - $345,000, making him the 315th most affluent member of Congress. Lest we forget, however, Mr. Blunt is married to a high-powered lobbyist for Altria (formerly Phillip Morris Management Group), who still lobbies members of Congress. Why is it I doubt his pleas of poverty?

Abigail Pearlman Blunt and Rep. Roy Blunt smiling in the face of adversity

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The Missouri Delegation: How They Voted

Last week the House of Representatives voted 356-71 to reduce interest on Student Loans through the Stafford Loan program for undergraduates. the action will lower interest rates on Stafford Loans incrementally over four years, dropping the rate from the current 6.8% to 3.4% by 2011. (A "Yea" was to pass the bill). The GOP attempted to attach a means test to the interest relief, but the measure was voted down 186-241. (A "Yea" vote was to add means testing).

The House also voted 264-163 to repeal tax breaks (to oil companies) that were written to drive the extraction of fossil fuels and use the savings to develop renewable fuels and increase energy efficiencies. (A "Yea" vote was to pass the bill).

On the other side of the building, the Senate voted 96-2 to pass a sweeping lobbying reform and ethics package that is intended to rein in lobbyists and prevent them from providing perks, gifts and meals above minimal levels to Senators and their staff members. The legislation also mandates full disclosure of tax and spending earmarks before votes are taken. The ethics package also requires Ethics Committee pre-clearance of privately financed travel. Senators traveling by private (corporate) jets now must pay the substantially higher charter rates for the trip. (In the past, they merely paid the equivalent of a first-class ticket). The legislation limits the professional contacts that lobbyist spouses of lawmakers can pursue. The new legislation doubles the length of time that must elapse before a former Senator can register as a lobbyist. The Ethics package also does away with the practice of anonymous holds being placed on legislation. (A "Yea" vote was to send the bill to conference).

The Senate also voted 89-5 to outlaw the practice of lobbyists and lobbying organizations throwing lavish parties for members of Congress at the political nominating conventions. (A "Yea" was to add the ban).

The Senate voted 27-71 to reject and amendment to the Ethics package that would have established a non-partisan Office of Public Integrity to investigate complaints of misconduct by Senators and Senate staffers. (A "Yea" vote backed the amendment).

In a closer vote, the Senate voted 55-43 to strip the Ethics bill of a provision that would have initiated federal regulation of so-called "Astroturf" lobbying. The term refers to well-financed influence campaigns that misrepresent themselves as grass-roots efforts. (A 'Yea" vote opposed the regulation).

As you can see from the handy charts below, the Missouri delegation pretty much split across along party lines, with the exception of Roy Blunt, who can always be counted on to embrace partisan hack-dom, no matter what.

This Weeks's House Votes

Representative	Student Loan Interest Rates	GOP Income test (HR 5)	Oil Company taxation ((HR 6)
Clay (D)	Yea	No	Yea
Akin (R)	Yea	Yea	No
Carnahan (D)	Yea	No	Yea
Skelton (D)	Yea	No	Yea
Cleaver (D)	Yea	No	Yea
Graves (R)	Yea	Yea	No
Blunt (R)	No	Yea	No
Emerson (R)	Yea	Yea	Yea
Hulshof (R)	Yea	Yea	No

This Weeks Senate Votes

Senator	Ethics Reform Legislation	Convention Lobbying	Office of Public Integrity	“Astroturf” Lobbying
Bond (R)	Yea	No Vote	No	Yea
McCaskill (D)	Yea	Yea	Yea	No

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