The Source

Is Russ Carnahan Accepting His Fate?

The National Journal seems to think so, despite some recent coverage that speaks otherwise. 

At this point, Carnahan appears to have come to terms with the fact that the state's Republicans -- and perhaps his two Democratic colleagues in the Show Me State delegation -- have thrown him under the bus. With his district all but certain to be parceled out four ways, Carnahan may move out of St. Louis City to embark on an uphill battle in GOP Rep. Todd Akin's conservative suburban 2nd District. It would be less of a suicide mission than running in a primary against African-American Rep. William Lacy Clay (D) in the 1st CD, but not by much.

Cash on Hand for MO Congressional Delegation

Lacy Clay - $221,594

Todd Akin - $910,609

Russ Carnahan - $286,067

Vicky Hartzler - $183,696

Emanuel Cleaver - $180,414

Sam Graves - $126,250

Billy Long - $73,263

Jo Ann Emerson - $17,918

Blaine Luetkemeyer - $486,191

 

Roy Blunt - 

Koster's Brief: Disappointing

After months of waiting to see if Koster would do his job, the wait is over - he decided he's not going to do it.

Opinions from the right:

Despite the literary allusions and fancy legal footwork, legal experts were unimpressed by the friend-of-the-court brief filed this week in a Florida case before the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

"It appears that the attorney general is trying to split the baby with this amicus brief, hoping to satisfy those who demanded that he take a position against the Affordable Care Act's constitutionality while also signaling his support for the underlying policy," Dave Roland wrote in an email. He is director of litigation for the libertarian Freedom Center of Missouri.

And opinions from the left:

"I don't think the Democratic party should tolerate statewide officials undermining the party," wrote Adam Shriver yesteray on his left-leaning blog St. Louis Activist Hub. "I have no interest in voting for Koster after this pathetic pandering. I hope people who actually believe in the values of the Democratic party can find a good primary challenger who would at least give us a decent candidate to vote for in November 2012."

The unofficial blog of the Missouri Democratic Party, Fired Up! Missouri, called Koster's briefing "disappointing." 

Today's lesson: nobody likes a spineless politician.

 

Remember when McCaskill Didn't Say One Thing, Do Another?

We don't - but at least now Claire faces the specter of public accountability. Her tap dancing around the issues reminds us a lot more of the Democrats who failed in 2010 than the ones that survived the wave.

Claire McCaskill’s hypocrisy knows no bounds.  In 2007, she called an effort raise the debt limit “unacceptable”—but four years and $4 trillion in debt later, McCaskill is now apocalyptic about what would happen if Congress fails to raise the debt ceiling.  

According to the St Louis Beacon , McCaskill claimed this week that “failing to raise the debt ceiling would cause a financial panic that would be devastating to the economy” and chided opponents by calling it “profoundly irresponsible to play chicken with the debt limit vote.”  But McCaskill was singing a different tune back in 2007, when she voted against raising the debt ceiling to $9.8 trillion, saying that the budget had become “an unacceptable color of bright red.”  (Vote: HJR 43; KC Star, September 29, 2007)

“It is the height of hypocrisy for Claire McCaskill to accuse her opponents of playing chicken with the debt ceiling when she did the same thing less than four years ago,” said Lloyd Smith, Executive Director of the Missouri Republican Party.  “Claire McCaskill needs to immediately explain why she called $9.8 trillion in debt ‘unacceptable’ in 2007 but now believes that raising the limit beyond $14.3 trillion is necessary.”

Claire McCaskill played a major role in the Obama-induced spending binge over the past two years.  She supported the $787 billion stimulus bill, Obamacare, and bailout after bailout—and more recently, she has criticized Republican attempts to cut spending in the current budget year and beyond. 

Now, as a result of her profligate spending over the past several years, she is demanding that Congress increase the debt ceiling so the Democrats can keep spending borrowed money and racking up debt that our children and grandchildren will have to repay.

This week, President Obama repudiated his previous opposition to raising the debt ceiling, which he now claims is necessary.  Will Claire McCaskill follow his lead and apologize for her votes—or will she continue her indefensible position of raising the debt limit far beyond the amount she previously called “unacceptable”?

Tax System Explained in Beer

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100... If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this... The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing. The fifth would pay $1. The sixth would pay $3. The seventh would pay $7. The eighth would pay $12. The ninth would pay $18. The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59. So, that's what they decided to do. The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve ball. "Since you are all such good customers," he said, "I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20". Drinks for the ten men would now cost just $80. The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes. So the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his fair share? They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody's share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer. So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man's bill by a higher percentage the poorer he was, to follow the principle of the tax system they had been using, and he proceeded to work out the amounts he suggested that each should now pay. And so the fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% saving). The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33% saving). The seventh now paid $5 instead of $7 (28% saving). The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% saving). The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% saving). The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% saving). Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But, once outside the bar, the men began to compare their savings. "I only got a dollar out of the $20 saving," declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man," but he got $10!" "Yeah, that's right," exclaimed the fifth man. "I only saved a dollar too. It's unfair that he got ten times more benefit than me!" "That's true!" shouted the seventh man. "Why should he get $10 back, when I got only $2? The wealthy get all the breaks!" "Wait a minute," yelled the first four men in unison, "we didn't get anything at all. This new tax system exploits the poor!" The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up. The next night the tenth man didn't show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had their beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn't have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill! And that, boys and girls, journalists and government officials, is how our tax system works. The people who already pay the highest taxes will naturally get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas, where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.

Post Dispatch: Chappelle-Nadal Should be Ashamed

If there were a contest for the dumbest thing said by a Missouri state lawmaker this year, Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal, D-University City, would be among the frontrunners.

Read the article here.

Nasheed: Nixon Leadership "completely absent"

A fresh attack on Nixon from a House Democrat:

Nasheed, who moved last week to knock the governor's traveling money out of the state budget, now is accusing the governor of "lack of leadership" that she contends "has left Democrats in the dark on the issue of congressional redistricting." "This is perhaps the biggest issue we will discuss in the legislature this year and I have no idea what the governor thinks because he has been completely silent," said Nasheed (left)in a statement issued Tuesday.

 

The Earnings Tax Campaign

"Cowardice asks the question, is it safe?
Expediency ask the question, is it politic?
Vanity asks the question, is it popular?
But conscience asks the question, is it right? And there comes a time when we must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because it is right."
    -Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
 
The Earnings Tax Campaign
 
I was disappointed, but not surprised that the earnings tax passed in Kansas City by a healthy margin.
 
After the first focus group in January and first round of polling, it was clear that the earnings tax would pass- and pass easily.
 
That’s for many reasons. The most obvious is that seniors do not pay this tax and they vote heavily. There is simply no message that could make them vote against a tax that they do not pay and provides them services.
 
At the end of the campaign, polling showed that we were winning among voters who actually paid the tax. The problem is that too many voters simply did not pay the tax.
 
What’s clear to me though is that the campaign dollars we did spend were used wisely.  Polling showed that our mail was effective to the targeted universes. Our ad, “Don’t Work Here” made our point about job creation for us. It was a major gaffe by Dan Cofran, and rightly will go down in Kansas City election history as one of the worst mistakes by a spokesman. 
 
The Yes campaign was right to pull him off the campaign trail. I don’t want to overstate it, but that mistake could have made this election extremely close. He gave voice to what people believe- that the earnings tax drives jobs from Kansas City.
 
This election will come again in five years, or whenever we gather 3500 signatures, and we will be better prepared. We were able to identify grassroots activists in all wards of the City, we were able to identify small business owners who have moved or want to move and more importantly we have a good deal of data to employ.
 
We knew from the beginning we would not win the first campaign. But all bets are off for the second one.

Is Missouri Off Obama's Map?

From The Republic:

Obama came within 4,000 votes of winning Missouri in 2008, one major Electoral College prize that's always up for grabs. He could face higher odds this time around, though, unless the political landscape shifts significantly.

His popularity in the state has plunged in the last two years, largely because of his health care overhaul. Missouri voters overwhelmingly endorsed a ballot measure last year to reject the law's insurance mandate.

At the same time, Democrats lost a U.S. House seat in 2010, while Republicans added to their majorities in the state legislature, where they now control the state House of Representatives by 2-to-1 and the state Senate by 3-to-1.

The president could face another challenge with one of his top allies, Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill, also on the ballot in 2012. McCaskill is in hot water for not paying taxes on a private plane that her family co-owns. That could hurt among independent voters, who are pivotal in Missouri.

John Hancock, a top Republican strategist in the state, said he thought it was unlikely that the president would win the state, regardless of who his opponent was.

"Things would have to change dramatically," Hancock said. "If Obama wins Missouri, it's not going to be close. He will be re-elected by a lot."

Susan Montee, the state Democratic Party chairwoman, said that Democrats had been too "defensive" and hadn't trumpeted their accomplishments.

"We also didn't have the kind of coordination in 2008 that it would take for Obama to win the state," she said. "This year has been geared to grass-roots organizing, something we have been sorely lacking for many years."

McCaskill's relationship with Obama is of interest, because it reminds us of Robin Carnahan and Obama. Leading into the 2010 election there was no end of speculation on our part whether either politician would want to associate with one another. McCaskill, like Carnahan, is an Obama loyalist - but in this political climate there are a lot of incentives to hide the relationship. Obama shouldn't expect a warm reception in Missouri, even among top Democrats.

Also, Montee is clueless as usual. It wasn't more than a month ago that she was talking about having Missouri Democrats carve their own path away from national Democrats - and complaining about having the Missouri Democrats focus too much on the top of the ticket. Hearing her talk about setting up an Obama grassroots is a bit disappointing.

 

New Earnings Tax Ad