Nathan Cooper

There are a few things to digest in a new post from the Post-Dispatch's Tony Messenger about ShowMe Better Courts' inability or refusal to pay their petition gatherers in a timely manner. 

Perhaps the most interesting nugget to long-time Fired Up! readers is the public reappearance of convicted felon Nathan Cooper in the GOP mix. As you may know, Cooper was sentenced to 15 months in federal prison in December 2007 for immigration fraud.

If Ed Martin decides to run for Congress, will that limit his ability to file unethical frivolous lawsuits? 

GOP State Rep. Steve Tilley (R-Perryville) is sitting on a good pile of campaign cash heading into 2010.  Tilley is the #3 Republican in the House behind Speaker Ron Richard and Speaker Pro Tem Bryan Pratt, and is in line to be Minority Leader or Speaker after next year's elections.

As has been noted elsewhere, Tilley's considerable sums of campaign money provide him with considerable influence when it's time for said cash to be "passed out to his buddies."

The Republicans are looking for some new issues because they continue to lose support.  These are the issues I have noticed the Republicans using during the recent past. Next to the issue I listed the Republican spokesperson for the issue. Maybe somewhere in this list is a clue why Republicans are losing support in the State of Missouri.

Support for naked burglar hunting and adultery. Spokesman Scott Muschany
http://rturner229.blogspot.com/2009/03/muschany-committed-adultery-naked-in.html

His whereabouts a mystery
            He is so hard to find
Slippery Peter seems to be
            TWO of a kind

Is he speaking against crime
            Or defending Nathan Cooper?
Does he support ethics reform
            But think the status quo is super?

Ryan Cooper’s sermon du jour speaks for itself this week. It is amazing that being the brother to a convicted felon, ex State Representative earns you a free-for-all GOP consultant job at the Springfield News-Leader.

Cooper writes the following about Rep. Sara Lampe & Rep. Charlie Norr’s opposition to the meaningless fairy land resolution against the federal Freedom of Choice Act:

Lampe and Norr know that they are vulnerable and could be defeated in 2010, but they voted with the hard left anyway. Liberal special- interest groups are more important to them than their constituents.

Greene County is still a bastion of conservative Republicans. Democrats will continue to lose if they run liberal candidates.

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Good: Economic recovery money started to flow.

• Federal economic recovery money is on its way. 
• The Governor launched a new website to collect economic recovery ideas -- 1,357 have been submitted to http://transform.mo.gov at last check.

Bad: Republicans stuck it to Missouri's kids and the unemployed, but fought to keep a fat advertising budget for Chicagoans.

• Peter Kinder called new federal money to help the unemployed a "bribe." Fear not: Kinder has assured us that he has no interest in helping the record number of jobless.
• Republicans on the House Budget committee refused to fund $939k for children's health care. Budget chair Alan Icet cited remarkably unconvincing "protocols" that limit what can be done in a supplemental budget request.
• Then, the GOP stood up for $900k in advertising for the Chicagoland area.  No, these backwards priorities don't make any sense to us either.

Ugly: Blunt continued to re-imagine the world around him, Steelman continued to fuel the speculation that she'll join the race soon.

• Roy Blunt is now a transparent budget hawk who has always worked in a bipartisan manner. Please update your files.
• In a remarkably dumb move, Roy voted against a Congressional pay freeze. Days earlier, he called for a federal spending freeze. Oops!
• Republican insiders listed 3,234 reasons why Blunt will have a tough row to hoe, but still believe he's a better choice that Sarah Steelman.
• Blunt surrogates fired back at Steelman, attacking Steelman's professed status as an outsider.
• Steelman was a jerk. And then she wasn't.
• Only 521 days to go.

Other Notes:

• Bill O'Reilly told Ed Martin to stop wasting people's time and money.
• Cynthia Davis said that fathers aren't natural nurturers. No she didn't!  Yes, she did.
• The Tour de Missouri shall henceforth be referred to "My [Peter Kinder's] Bicycle Race"
• The noodlers are back.
• Speaker Ron Richard still hasn't given the public a good reason for kicking Rep. Jeanette Mott Oxford off the House Children and Families Committee.
• Nathan Cooper is back at home.
• Mizzou is the #8 team in the land.

Convicted felon and former GOP state Rep. Nathan Cooper is re-entering society this week -- in fact, we hear that he may have already left his halfway house in St. Louis. Cooper, as long-time readers know, has been in the federal pen since Dece­mber 2007 on felony fraud charges.

While serving as a top lieutenant to former Gov. Matt Blunt, Cooper orchestrated a fraudulent scheme to create shell companies and to obtain visas for illegal workers.  He was also a key player in Blunt's fee office scheme and obtaining appointments from Blunt's office. Ultimately, Cooper resigned his House seat in August 2007, was suspended from practicing law, fined and sentenced to prison.

Following yesterday's post which referenced Nathan Cooper's incarceration, a helpful tipster accurately pointed out that Cooper is actually no longer in jail.  In fact, less than one year after reporting to prison for what was supposed to be a fifteen month sentence, Cooper is now tethered only to a community release center in St. Louis.

So not only was Cooper's sentence actually far short of the 30 to 37 months called for by the federal sentencing guidelines, but now he's slipped the bonds of prison for a halfway house before serving even the entirety of his already abbreviated sentence.  ­

­­Longtime Fired Up readers will remember the names Abid Nisar and Naveed Razzaque.  Nisar and Razzaque were two clients of now-imprisoned Republican Nathan Cooper from whom Cooper raised money which ultimately wound up in the pocket of Matt Blunt's then-Appointment Secretary James Harris.  Nisar and Razzaque each received­ a gubernatorial appointment to a board or commission.­

The uninitiated might think Cooper's incarceration would mean the end of this particular racket.  They would, of course, be wrong. 

Missouri Ethics Commission records indicate that Nisar and Razzaque have been active political givers for the last year --but only to three candidates for whose campaigns Harris was heavily engaged as a consultant.­

Fired Up! Missouri has chronicled a list of questionable behaviors on the part of Peter Kinder as well as pointing out his weaknesses when
it comes to ethics.  Even more evidence
is appearing showing how beneficial it is to be a friend of Peter Kinder. 

Not something that is actually possible here, given Missouri's lack of partisan registration for voters, but it seems that across the nation people are deciding that they aren't interested in being Republicans any longer.

For more than three years starting in 2005, there has been a reduction in the number of voters who register with the Republican Party and a rise among voters who affiliate with Democrats and, almost as often, with no party at all. ...

And though comparable data are not available for the 21 states where
voters do not register by party, there is evidence that an increasing
number of voters in those states are also moving away from the
Republican Party based on the results of recent state and Congressional
elections, the researchers said.

Notwithstanding non-partisan registration in Missouri, other indicators affirm the anti-Republican trend here.­ 

Over the last four years, there is a list longer than your arm of ethical improprieties in Jefferson City and across Missouri which Peter Kinder saw fit to ignore completely.  Kinder never, not once, piped up to talk about ethics in government during any of the following ethical lapses and scandals...

• The fee office scandal
• The Jewell Patek-Andy Blunt favored lobbyist strongarm
• The Fred Ferrell sexual harassment scandal
• The Blunt brothers' Show Me Ethanol escapade
• The Nathan Cooper illegal immigration saga
• The Carl Bearden lobbyist-and-legislator-at-the-same-time trick  
• Catherine Hanaway's Sweetheart Deal for Nathan Cooper
• The Scott Eckersley firing
• The Governor's Sunshine Law violation and cover-up
• The Randa Hayes fiasco
• Rudy Farber's $50K Purchase of a Transportation Commission seat 
• Mike Kehoe's illegal in-kind bus donation to the Matt Blunt campaign

Yet now, all of the sudden, Kinder is drawing a bead on Rod Jetton, rolling out an ethics package clearly aimed at the Speaker.  I wonder if Kinder knows something the rest of us don't that he's trying to get out in front of by throwing Jetton under the bus?

From a column by Ryan Cooper (whose writings the Springfield News-Leader publishes, inexplicably) come bons mots like this one: 

"Corrupt politicians eventually lose."

Yes, Ryan.  Or they get shuffled off to the federal penitentiary before they get the chance to lose. 

Readers may remember that Ryan Cooper is the brother of disgraced GOP Representative Nathan Cooper, also known as prisoner #34350-044.

Even as as it became clear that his quest for a second term would never fully materialize, Matt Blunt's campaign continued to pay vast sums for "services" to former appointments director and Nathan Cooper associate, James Harris.  Team Blunt reported paying more money to Harris in consulting fees after Blunt had announced that he wouldn't seek a second term than they paid to him in the previous quarter, when the campaign was still live.

Missourians for Matt Blunt Inc. reports making the following payments to James Harris's consulting firm over the first quarter.  All but one of these payments came after Blunt announced on January 22 that he would not be seeking another term in office. 

An interesting profile of GOP gubernatorial hopeful Sarah Steelman shows up in the most recent issue of the Riverfront Times.  The most compelling factual information in the piece, which is largely a biographical rehash, comes buried more than two-thirds of the way through the story in an anecdote:

During the pre-dinner mingling in St. Charles, Steelman gets an assist
from Willliam "Buddy" Hardin, a local activist and friend of her
consultant, Jeff Roe. Hardin, a barrel-chested man whose suit lapels
are covered with stickers, introduces her to several people. Steelman
greets each of her new acquaintances with a long, earnest handshake.
"She's not your traditional, kiss-a-baby, look-how-great-I-am
politician," Hardin says.

That's eye-catching for a few reasons.

Lost in the torrent of stories that emerged during the first days of candidate filing in late February was the official entry of Mike Lair into the Republican primary for the 7th District House seat.

Lair, aside from being one of the board members of an organization created by Team Blunt to scrap the non-partisan Missouri Court Plan in favor of a hyper-political alternative, is also a family member to some of the key players in the cabal responsible for the Blunt Administration's cash-and-carry appointment policy.  It is those players who are fully engaged in helping push Lair's candidacy for the general assembly seat formerly held by ally Jewell Patek. 

An article in St. Louis Today had the following:

Surely its just a coincidence that Governor Blunt made his shocking announcement just days before Rep. Nathan (I love Serbia) Cooper was supposed to be sentenced.  I'm sure its also coincidence that Nathan's prison report date has now been delayed.  I bet there are a lot of people out there hoping that this is all just coincidence.  But for some reason, I keep seeing Frank Pentangeli in my head saying "The Blunt family was like the Roman Empire."