PostPoliticsBlogNetwork

Over the next week and a half, we’ll be bringing you ten 10 Top 10 lists looking back on the year that was.

With the self control and emotional maturity of a high school freshman, Lt. Governor Peter Kinder has spent copious amounts of free time in 2010 tweeting vile, dishonest and outrageous messages to his online followers. Sadly, our mainstream media outlets have ignored his garbage as often as Kinder has ignored the truth, and very few Missourians have been informed about the hate and insanity that flows with regularity from one of their statewide politicians. Here are the ten tweets or twitter tantrums that left us the most dumbfounded.   

#10: Kinder declares that Wall Street Reform legislation is a catastrophic "socialist takeover of the financial sector."
This first question one asks when reading the Lt. Governor's response to the Wall Street reform legislation passed in June is, "Does he know what the words 'socialist' and 'takeover' mean?"   The new law passed 60-39 with Republican support in the Senate, in part because it some of the original consumer protection proposals were beat back by Wall Street lobbyists.   Here's a summary of what's actually in the law -- none of it even comes close to a collectivist takeover of our financial industry.

For posterity:

http://twitter.com/#!/PeterKinder/status/17034370969

I see that RNC Chair Michael Steele is in Kansas City today, asking voters to "hire Roy Blunt."  This is not an entirely unexpected position from the Chairman of the Republican National Committee, but it is quite different from Steele's previous position regarding Mr. Blunt and the need for reform in Washington.

"When stuff gets in the crapper, you gotta clean it out."

Here's a headline in one of Roy Blunt's hometown papers, The Hill, that he can't be thrilled about: "GOP LEADERS PLEDGE K ST. PROJECT DEAD." 

Bad news for Blunt, and for his core constituency.

As you probably remember, Blunt's rise to power with Tom DeLay was inextricably linked with the development of "legion of Republican lobbyists into an arm of the House whip operation."  As summarized in the Washington Post's WhoRunsGov.com biographical summary for Blunt:

Throughout his time in office, Blunt has maintained close ties to lobbyists. He was a House GOP emissary for Tom DeLay’s notorious K Street Project, which prodded the Washington community to hire Republicans and raise money for the GOP cause. Blunt’s PAC employed Jim Ellis, who was indicted on corruption charges along with DeLay. Gregg Hartley, Blunt's former chief of staff, is now a vice chairman of powerhouse lobbying firm Cassidy & Associates.

Tom Edsall wrote (perhaps) the definitive summaries of Blunt's rise to power in 2006

Roy Blunt embodies the insidious, half-legal corruption that has permeated the G.O.P. majority since 1995. Blunt’s election as minority whip, by a 137-to-57 margin, was a defiant Republican rejection of calls to clean up their act. Warnings by Blunt’s challenger, John Shadegg of Arizona — “We ceded our reform-minded principles in exchange for a ...tighter grip on power” — went unheeded.

In 1998, DeLay put Blunt on the leadership ladder, making him chief deputy whip. Blunt modeled himself on DeLay, creating an identical network of state and federal political committees that raised money from the same lobbyists, corporations and trade associations that financed what became known as DeLay Inc...

In 2003, after DeLay moved up to majority leader and turned the so-called K Street Project over to him, Blunt promptly converted a legion of Republican lobbyists into an arm of the House whip operation. Lobbyists have always been close to Congress, under rule by either party. What DeLay and Blunt did was to sacralize this relationship. In doing so, they transferred a chunk of power from Capitol Hill to business interests.

This unholy alliance was a crucial factor in transforming the G.O.P. into an army of spenders whose earmarks, appropriations and tax cuts rivaled the government largess of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society.

According to the News-Leader, Roy Blunt's spokesman Rich Chrismer says the DSCC is attempting "to deliberately deceive Missouri voters" with this television commercial.

Ummmm.... how?  It's, like, a fact that Roy Blunt was twice named to CREW's "Most Corrupt" lists. 

• CREW, 2006: "Beyond Delay: The 20 Most Corrupt Members of Congress"
  Blunt comes in at #1: "Rep. Blunt's ethics issues stem from the misuse of his position to benefit family members, his connections to Jack Abramoff, and a trip paid for by a foreign agent."
• CREW, 2005: "Beyond DeLay: The 13 Most Corrupt Members of Congress"
  "Rep. Blunt’s appointment is a case of ‘new boss, same as the old boss.’ While Rep. Blunt may be new to the job, he has long followed Rep. DeLay’s pattern of ignoring campaign finance laws and ethics rules."

By deceptive, does Chrismer mean uncomfortably accurate? 

Politico and Talking Points Memo reached out to legal experts for reaction to Fox News' complaints about the Robin Carnahan campaign, and there seems to be a consensus among their copyright law sources that Fox's is really reaching with their complaint. 

Politico:

Legal experts described Fox’s legal tactics as aggressive. Some said they believe that Fox’s suit was the first time a news organization actually sued a political campaign over its use of material from a news broadcast. In addition, while news organizations routinely fact check campaign commercials, Fox’s blunt description of the spot as a “smear ad” pushes the envelope.

While Fox’s suit claims a copyright violation, the network’s main objection is that Carnahan’s use of the video is misleading. However, a copyright suit is generally brought to recover lost revenue due to theft of intellectual property, not to help a firm preserve its image.

“Reputational damage is just not a cognizable copyright interest,” entertainment lawyer Ben Sheffner wrote on his Copyrights & Campaigns blog. He also called the notion that the ad implies that Fox or Wallace endorsed Carnahan “a dubious proposition.”

Buried at the end of the Post-Dispatch's Sunday story on Roy Blunt's deep financial connections to K Street is this incredible quote:

In 2003, Blunt appeared to some of his GOP colleagues to be dispensing a favor in an episode being recalled in the Senate campaign. Soon after winning his No. 3 leadership slot, Blunt tried to attach a provision benefiting Philip Morris USA, a contributor, to homeland security legislation. The wording, stripped by other GOP leaders when it was discovered, would have benefited Philip Morris by placing limitations on online tobacco sales and marketing of contraband cigarettes.

Later that year, Blunt married Abigail Perlman, a lobbyist for Altria Group, Philip Morris' parent company....

"I never saw anybody get more criticism for something that didn't happen," he said of the tobacco episode.

Didn't happen? Blunt's favor for Philip Morris on their lobbyist "didn't happen" because the manner and situation in which Blunt tried to make it happen was too disgusting even for Tom DeLay and Denny Hastert. It "didn't happen because he got caught.

 
Don't sweat this, because it's just "something that didn't happen."

A new "Truthwatch" segment from WDAF evaluating Robin Carnahan's "Mug" ad includes some hilarious spin from GOP consultant Jason Klindt.  Klindt, a longtime staffer for Sam Graves, was asked to respond to the statement in the ad, "Congressman Roy Blunt...got caught trying to insert a secret deal for tobacco giant Philip Morris into a bill just days after company executives gave him over $30,000." According to Klindt, the special language inserted into a Homeland Security bill without debate "wasn't exactly a secret" and "lacks context."

Watch it:

Back here in the Real World, we know that no one else in the GOP leadership knew that Blunt was trying to slip in the favor for Philip Morris.  As reported by the Washington Post on June 11, 2003, six months after Blunt attempted the dirty deed:

GOP WHIP QUIETLY TRIED TO AID BIG DONOR
Provision Was Meant To Help Philip Morris

Only hours after Rep. Roy Blunt was named to the House's third-highest leadership job in November, he surprised his fellow top Republicans by trying to quietly insert a provision benefiting Philip Morris USA into the 475-page bill creating a Department of Homeland Security, according to several people familiar with the effort.

The new majority whip, who has close personal and political ties to the company, instructed congressional aides to add the tobacco provision to the bill -- then within hours of a final House vote -- even though no one else in leadership supported it or knew he was trying to squeeze it in.

Once alerted to the provision, Speaker J. Dennis Hastert's chief of staff, Scott Palmer, quickly had it pulled out, said a senior GOP leader who requested anonymity. Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) also opposed what Blunt (Mo.) was trying to do, the member said, and "worked against it" when he learned of it.

The provision would have made it harder to sell tobacco products over the Internet and would have cracked down on the sale of contraband cigarettes, two practices that cut into Philip Morris's profits. Blunt has received large campaign donations from Philip Morris, his son works for the company in Missouri and the House member has a close personal relationship with a Washington lobbyist for the firm.

It is highly unusual for a House Republican to insert a last-minute contentious provision that has never gone through a committee, never faced a House vote and never been approved by the speaker or majority leader. Blunt's attempt became known only to a small circle of House and White House officials. They kept it quiet, preferring no publicity on a matter involving favors for the nation's biggest tobacco company and possible claims of conflicts of interest.

Several in that circle say they were struck by Blunt's willingness to go out on a limb for a company to which he has ties. What's more, he did it within hours of climbing to the House leadership's third-highest rung, a notable achievement for a man who came to Washington less than six years ago.

A senior Republican lawmaker who requested anonymity said some GOP members worried at the time that it would be "embarrassing" to the party and its new whip if details of the effort were made public. Another Republican said Blunt's effort angered some leaders because there was "so little support for" a pro-tobacco provision likely to generate controversy...

Because Blunt's actions in the Philip Morris matter were kept quiet, there were no apparent repercussions or threats to his leadership ambitions. Meanwhile, there is evidence that the majority whip has continued to work aggressively on behalf of companies to which he has ties.

In April, for instance, Blunt managed to have a provision inserted into a Senate bill, without debate, on behalf of United Parcel Service Inc. and FedEx Corp. The two companies were seeking to block the expansion of a foreign rival's U.S. operations. Blunt's son Andrew also represents UPS in Missouri, as the Wall Street Journal first reported, and the two companies have contributed a total of $120,000 to Blunt since 2001, according to Federal Election Commission data.

Also this spring, Blunt brokered a deal with Rep. Ernie Fletcher (R-Ky.) to fight for a vote on legislation that could open the door to Food and Drug Administration regulation of tobacco, a top priority for Philip Morris, a senior House GOP leader said. Philip Morris would benefit because it is far ahead of its competitors in designing and selling "safer" cigarettes that could be permitted if the FDA gains regulatory power, lawmakers and industry experts said.

Regarding Klindt's complaint that the headline and statement in the ad lack context, I think he's right.  The public needs to know that Blunt had a "close personal relationship with a Washington lobbyist for the firm" -- Abigail Perlman, now his wife -- and that Andy Blunt, his son and campaign manager, is a paid lobbyist for the company. 

H'ray, Context!

In new must-read stories from The Star and Post-Dispatch, we are asked to believe that Roy Blunt -- "the House GOP emissary for Tom DeLay’s notorious K Street Project" who was designated as an exclusive "friend of owner" at Jack Abramoff's DC restaurant -- never actually met the most prominent GOP lobbyist on K Street.   

This is how the denial reads in The Star's weekend story, Missourian embraces role of the insider:

Blunt spokeswoman Burson [Taylor] Snyder, who responded to most of the issues raised in this story by critics, points out: “Roy Blunt never met with Jack Abramoff.”

Emphasis added.  And in today's Post-Dispatch story, Blunt's ties to Abramoff resurface, Taylor Snyder offers a less-sweeping statement: "she 'never witnessed, nor am I aware of, any staff level meetings' with Abramoff."

The Blunt campaign's 2010 assertion that he "never met with Jack Abramoff" is incredibly hard to believe.  Remember that Blunt was listed as a "Friend of the Owner" at Abramoff's DC restaurant, Signatures. (This was before ol' Jack went to the pokey, of course.)   Team Blunt claims now, as they did when this fact was first reported in 2005, that Blunt chose not to avail himself to the free food and beverage he was offered as a friend of Abramoff's. This is irrelevant to the fact that Abramoff considered Blunt a friend, and included him on a very short list of friends at Signatures.   As reported by the New York Times in July 2005:

In the restaurant's early months, a customer list noted who could dine for free, according to two former managers. A copy obtained by The New York Times shows handwritten notes next to 18 names - lawyers, lobbyists and eight current or former lawmakers - designating them as "FOO Comp," for friend of owner, or "A-Comp," for associate of owner.

Only eighteen folks -- and only eight of them were Members of Congress.  And Blunt was on the even more exclusive "FOO" list.  How many people you've never, ever met list you as a "friend" at their swanky restaurants so you can have all the free food and drink you want? 

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee launched their first IE ad of the cycle yesterday, titled "Bailout."

"Roy Blunt took over $1.6 million in contributions from Wall Street special interests, and was named one of the most corrupt members of Congress. Roy Blunt isn't just in Washington -- he IS Washington."

A new KY3/Missouri State University poll shows a "dead heat" in the U.S. Senate race -- 48.8% of respondents supported  Roy Blunt, and 48.4% picked Robin Carnahan.

First, the Kansas City Star decided to actually read Roy Blunt's job proposal and ask his candidate to substantiate the information presented in said proposal.  Blunt and surrogate Sarah Steelman told reporters yesterday that they were "extremely worried about the deficit" and had allegedly identified $2 trillion in spending reductions.  But as you can read over on the Prime Buzz, half of those "savings" come from the federal health care reform bill, which actually decreases the federal deficit over time by reducing waste in Medicare and raising additional taxes and fees.  

Cancelling health care reform may or may not be good public policy, but it would have little impact on the federal deficit — certainly nowhere near the $1 trillion Blunt and Steelman claim.

And then some weirdo at Think Progress decided to look at the other proposals in Blunt's 'jobs plan.'

[T]he point remains that the only way Blunt’s push for repeal works as a deficit reduction measure is if he plans to keep all of the tax increases and Medicare savings, without actually giving anyone any additional health care.

Plenty of other spending cuts that Blunt suggests are equally ill-informed. He proposes repealing the remaining stimulus funds, including those dedicated to middle class tax cuts. He also says he’d cut an unidentified “wasteful welfare program,” which is presumably the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Emergency Fund that House Republicans like to cite all the time. But it’s actually a successful work program that is supporting hundreds of thousands of jobs across the country, including 4,600 in Blunt’s own state.

Ridiculous, right?

Why are people actually reading and evaluating this proposal at all?   I'm quite confident that we were all supposed to congratulate Mr. Blunt for having something approximating a "plan" without actually evaluating its contents or asking questions about the ideas contained within its pages. 

This fact-checking and policy analysis sounds exactly like something socialists and terrorists and hippies would do.

The conservative American Action Forum has released a slew of polls this morning from GOP pollster Ayres, McHenry & Associates, including one in Missouri's 3rd Congressional District. Their survey shows that Russ Carnahan enjoys a "comfortable" 54 to 38 lead over Ed Martin.

Our polling, conducted for American Action Forum on August 16, 17, and 21, with 400 likely general election voters, shows Representative Russ Carnahan with a comfortable lead at the start of the Fall campaign. Carnahan’s 51 to 35 percent favorable-unfavorable rating (with 98 percent total name ID) exceeds challenger Ed Martin’s 16 to 9 percent rating (with 43 percent total name ID), and Carnahan leads by a 54 to 38 percent margin.

Via The Hill and Plog, AFSCME has put $1M behind a statewide radio ad criticizing Roy Blunt for his vote against raising the federal minimum wage in 2007.  Listen to the ad, as provided this afternoon by the organization:

The Blunt campaign quibbles with the ad because "the 27th Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits Members of Congress from voting to increase their own pay." Said amendment just requires that pay raises not take effect until the session reconvenes -- and Blunt doesn't dispute that he voted to advance pay raises that would line his pockets. So not exactly a compelling response.

For a few minutes yesterday morning on The Jaco Report, Ed Martin did not sound like the dishonest lunatic we know him to be.  Observe:

Let that soak in for a moment.  Ed Martin -- a man who can't stop talking about the horrors of public programs and government spending - is calling for a rival of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's largest New Deal agency, the Works Progress Administration.

MARTIN:  I live in South City, and you drive down on River Des Peres and you'll see in the bricks the WPA symbol. And what we didn't do -- we took $1.2 trillion in the stimulus -- we didn't do shovel ready jobs.

JACO: Would you have been in favor of those kind of things -- maybe a son of the WPA -- to put people to work immediately on public-sector construction jobs.

MARTIN: Emphatically yes.  I mean, emphatically yes.  And I think places like Highway 21 in Jefferson County, they're desperate to finish the roads. The federal government has a role to play, and I think you and I can talk about how big or small the role is. But public level infrastructure, I think we should have done that. We would have put, put people together. I mean, we built the Zoo, we built the memorials.  We should have said -- and even during the WPA, we sometimes said -- if workers need 20 hours each to build a 40 hour because we have two men that need a job, in this case two men and women, we'll split it up. You get 20 each. I'm emphatically for that.

Never mind for a moment that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 included $275 billion available for federal contracts, grants and loans (and $288B in tax cuts that Martin probably doesn't oppose).  Never mind that Missouri just completed the nation's first stimulus-funded shovel-ready project outside of Tuscumbia last week. Or that constructing such projects takes a little bit of time. 

Let's just reflect for a moment on this dramatic shift to the left -- and last-ditch effort for viability as a candidate in the 3rd Congressional District -- in Martin's campaign for Congress.

Host Charles Jaco was understandably confused by Martin's dramatic call for new federal job creation programs.  Near the end of the interview (around the 11:45 mark), he asked, "Are you sure that's not going to get your drummed out of the conservative economic wing of the party?"

One short year ago, RNC Chairman Michael Steele stopped by the now-defunct Vincent David Jericho radio show on KSGF to talk about their (alleged) shared disgust for Washington politicians.  In their conversation, Jericho unleashed a stinging critique of Roy Blunt and Matt Blunt for being insufficiently conservative hypocrites. 

"Guys like Papa Blunt make us sick to our stomach. They aren’t conservatives, and they sure don’t reflect moral absolute the way that we expect the Republican Party to stand up," Jericho told Steele.  To which the Chairman of the Republican National Committee responded, "I agree with you. And when stuff gets in the crapper, you gotta clean it out."

The Hotline: "The DSCC has reserved air time in October for KY and MO SEN, sources tell Hotline On Call. The committee is planning to spend $4M in MO for a statewide broadcast ad and $1.3M in KY for a statewide ad campaign...Dems are also conducting focus groups in MO, according to sources, and have found that Roy Blunt's ties to leadership in Washington could help Carnahan close the gap in the race, according to a Dem source."

Last night, the Roy Blunt campaign posted a gross web video with an image of 9/11 rubble and a Robin Carnahan statement about the proposed Park51 project. As Randy Turner writes, "Blunt apparently wants us to be deeply offended because Robin Carnahan said she wasn't going to tell the people of New York what to do about the construction of  a mosque in the Ground Zero area and she didn't want New Yorkers to tell us what to do in Missouri."

Blunt was asked this morning about the ad, and according to The Post-Dispatch's Tony Messenger, claimed to know nothing about the ad.  Minutes later the ad was pulled down.  This is what it looked like before the press asked them to explain what they were up to.  

Andy Blunt wears a few hats. He's an active lobbyist for more than twenty corporations, including Altria, APS Healthcare, AT&T, MillerCoors and Motorola. He's a partner in the firm, Schreimann, Rackers, Francka and Blunt, LLC. And in his spare time, he's the volunteer campaign manager for a leading candidate in a somewhat interesting U.S. Senate race. 

By "volunteer," I mean that Andy Blunt receives no compensation from the Roy Blunt campaign, but still serves as a lobbyist for companies with an interest or two before Congress. In fact, he added at least two clients to his roster since taking over as campaign manager. Presumably, he ain't lobbying for free.

This arrangement raises no questions whatsoever, especially given the elder Blunt's well-documented history of unethical favors for lobbyists/family members.