Flip-Flops

Friday afternoon, House Speaker Ron Richard (R-Joplin) told the Post-Dispatch's Tony Messenger that he wanted to be on "the short list" of GOP candidates for governor in 2016.  And then at some point in the next 24 hours, Richard decided -- or was persuaded -- that we shouldn't believe what he'd stated the day before. 

It's not hard to see why some of his colleagues at the MOGOP's Lincoln Days celebration were freaked out by Richard's statements.  Implicit in his 2016 dreams, of course, is the assumption that Peter Kinder will not survive his 2012 campaign for governor. 

Missourinet and the AP report that Senate President Charlie Shields (R-St. Joseph) and Speaker Ron Richard (R-Joplin) are both cool to the replace the state income tax with much higher sales taxes.  Missourinet's Bob Priddy:

Senate leader Charlie Shields does not think the bill will pass but he expects a robust debate. In the event it does clear the Senate, the proposal goes to the House, which passed the bill last year. But this year, Speaker Ron Richard sees problems. “I just want to make sure there’s not any uncertainty about where we’re moving, about schools formula, about libraries, about fire districts...And I can see the amendments on the floors now, everybody getting exempted out to kill the bill...I don’t think St. Louis can take 11 or 12 or 13 percent sales tax on their retail. I don’t think that would work and I don’t think that’s proper,” he says.

The Tribune's Janese Heavin has the scoop on a really interesting development in the story of Gary Forsee's opposition to federal clean energy legislation. For several days, he's sustained criticism for lending support to the Republican efforts to kill the legislation. Then yesterday, things got a whole lot worse for the President of the UM System when it was reveled that the calculations at the core of this opposition were incorrect.

In light of these facts, Forsee began to walk back his opposition at a Mizzou campus town hall earlier today, and reaffirmed his support for reducing carbon emissions.

A new story from KY3's Dave Catanese has an fascinating quote from Speaker Ron Richard's spokesperson on why House leaders refused to allow a vote on autism legislation last year.

"Ron just didn't have the votes [last year]," said Richard spokeswoman Kristen Blanchard. "Publicly legislators were telling people they'd vote for it, but behind closed doors they were saying they couldn't. The Speaker wants everyone to be able to have their input on the bill," she added.

So the Speaker's spokesperson is asking us to believe a significant portion of the GOP caucus was lying to the public about supporting the bill?  Nice! 

Catanese doesn't challenge the assertion from Richard's office in his article, except to weakly state that "some blamed the House for failing." 

As noted Tuesday, University of Missouri System President Gary Forsee is publicly opposing the comprehensive energy legislation being debated in Congress despite his previous promises to be leader in new technologies, clean energy, and responsible environmental policies. 

In addition to questions about why he's chosen to stand down from his commitments and stand up for the status quo, Forsee also has a few questions to answer about potential personal conflicts of interest.

When Forsee isn't serving as President of the University of Missouri system or thinking about how to spent some portion of his enormous Sprint Nextel severance package, he also sits on the the Board of Directors for Great Plains Energy Incorporated, the holding company of Kansas City Power & Light and KCP&L Greater Missouri Operations Company. 

KCP&L, as you may know, is actively opposing the Congressional climate legislation, saying it would force them to reduce their emissions too quickly and might force them to "retire some portion of our coal-fired fleet."

Rush Limbaugh says he's made "a really gutsy and courageous move."

For more on Gary Forsee's surprising and disappointing change of heart on federal climate legislation, check out this rundown at Show Me Progress and the previous Fired Up! coverage. 

Despite commitments to the contrary, GOP Leader John Boehner told reporters yesterday the House Republicans' health care bill will not prevent insurance providers from barring clients based on pre-existing conditions.  

In June, Roy Blunt's #1 principle for Republicans' "commonsense reforms" was to make affordable coverage available to everyone, regardless of pre-existing conditions. He wrote:

The House Republican Health Care Solutions Group has been working for months on a plan... This process has resulted in the broad outline of a health care reform plan that the solutions group hopes will receive bipartisan support. The health care reforms outlined are designed to:

1. Make quality health care coverage affordable and accessible for every American, regardless of pre-existing health conditions.

Speaker Ron Richard, the Most Powerful Man in Missouri, has apparently expressed a possible willingness to consider potential small changes in unspecified ethics laws at some point in the future:

House Speaker Ron Richard, a Republican, declined to address specific proposals, but said he is open to a “serious look into how we can work to strengthen Missouri ethics laws and ensure moral behavior in the House of Representatives.”

But, um, what's changed since April?

House Speaker Ron Richard, a Joplin Republican, said Thursday he wasn’t interested in additional ethics reform. A bill passed last year removing campaign contribution limits achieved all the goals he had set.

Peter Kinder, Mike Ferguson and Speaker Catherine Hanaway in 2004

The Missouri GOP is very excited today about the decision of former Libertarian Lt. Governor candidate Mike Ferguson to join the Republican Party and endorse Roy Blunt's candidacy for the US Senate.

Astute Fired Up! readers may remember Ferguson from the stories about Roy Blunt's recent comments about the horrors of government health care.  It was in a radio interview with Ferguson two weeks ago that Blunt's stated it would have been "best" if the government never created Medicare or Medicaid. Perhaps Blunt's libertarian views on health care helped seal the deal; Ferguson is now serving as an "informal advisor" to the Blunt campaign.

Apparently Peter Kinder and Ron Richard have long histories of supporting bond issues, and their opposition to the current bond proposal may not be rooted in actual policy concerns. Henry J. Waters III of The Daily Tribune explains: 

It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that House Speaker Ron Richard, Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder and several of their Republican colleagues in Jefferson City are making a crass political calculation concerning Chris Kelly’s bond issue based mainly on the posture of Gov. Jay Nixon, a Democrat.

As Kelly notes in his column on the facing page, Kinder was for it before he was against it. In the recent legislative session, the bond issue resolution passed overwhelmingly with Richard’s support. At that time Gov. Nixon had remained silent on the issue. Recently, after Nixon came out in strong support, suddenly Richard and other Republicans are changing their tune. The coincidental flip-flop is obvious.

Read More »

How much thought did Ron Richard put into his new position on a bond issue to finance new construction projects?  Not enough to take down the links about his previous support from his campaign website, RonRichard.com.

Richard's "News" section still links to a June 17 article in the Post-Dispatch, which reads:

House Speaker Ron Richard, R-Joplin, said Nixon called to talk to him about the letter today. Richard said he supports the bonding program as long as it doesn’t threaten the state’s credit rating and can be accomplished without a tax increase. Nixon agrees with both issues in his letter.

“It seems like a reasonable request to me,” Richard said. “I think it’s a good way to put people back to work. But I gotta find out what the final number is.”

Richard's personal website also links to an April 29 article in the Daily Tribune, which reads:

Keeping track of the always-fluid fiscal policy of House Republicans has been a challenge, even for the most seasoned of Capitol observers. For your handy reference, we've compiled a timeline of House leaders' promises, backtracks, backflips, flip-flops, bad ideas and final actions. 

No matter how you come down on fiscal policy and what should be done to kick-start the economy with federal money, chances are, you agreed with House GOP at some point in the past couple of months.

One of the happier moments of Friday's madness was the legislature's decision to enable more out-of-work Missourians to collect unemployment benefits, and for a longer period. Facing 25-year-high unemployment numbers, the about-face from legislative leaders didn't come a moment too soon. 

Under the legislation passed Friday, unemployed workers can collect additional weeks of benefits when the state unemployment rate exceeds 6.5% through December, and workers can also receive benefits if they lose their jobs due to a "compelling family reason." The state is eligible for $133 million in federal stimulus money to fund the benefits.

The legislature's change of heart is particularly interesting because of the vociferous opposition from Lt. Governor Peter Kinder to any kind of extension or expansion of unemployment benefits with federal recovery dollars. Kinder, you may recall, even described the stimulus money for said benefits as a "bribe."

Rep. Rick Stream (R-Kirkwood) is being criticized by both sides back home for his contradictory votes on allowing concealed weapons on college campuses.

As reported here at Fired Up! and at Show Me Progress two weeks ago, Stream voted against the final version of the HB668 to allow concealed weapons on campuses. However, his vote against the full bill came after he voted for the controversial amendment to allow weapons on campus with a permit, and after he suggested that concealed weapons would have limited the deaths at the tragic Kirkwood City Council meeting last year.

Late last week, Webster-Kirkwood Times columnist Don Corrigan wrote that our audio of Stream's statements on the Kirkwood shooting "prompted a number of letters" of concern. Stream refused to respond to the Times' inquiries, but did win praise for reversing his position from Stacey Newman:

I am pleased that Rep. Stream was one of three Republicans who voted against a bill that's just wrong...Since voters in his district were 80 percent against concealed weapons, it's good that he has chosen to listen to them.

In contrast, the conservative Kurt Hofman, writing for Examiner.com, is angry with Stream's change of heart.

Yesterday, the House gave final approval to HB 668 to make several changes to state law regarding the use and possession of firearms.  The most controversial portion of the legislation would allow concealed weapons on college campuses. The attempts to remove the campus ban have been widely condemned by college officials, but the amendment to end the ban enjoyed strong support with legislators and passed 106-41.

One of the most vocal supporters of the amendment to end the campus concealed weapons bans last week was Rep. Rick Stream (R-Kirkwood). Indeed, Stream was such a strong believer in ending concealed weapons bans that he audaciously discussed last year's Kirkwood City Council shooting as an example of how concealed weapons could save lives. Talking about the shooting with Rep. Tim Jones (R-Eureka), Stream speculated that if the mayor or other citizens at the meeting had guns, "it's possible that they could have stopped a number of the killings before the assailant was able to run through that chamber like he did."