Called Out for Pushing Terrible Ideas, Nieves Retreats Further Into Freedom Bunker
In January, Sen. Brian Nieves (R-Freedom Bunker) promised to stand with Sen. Jim Lembke (R-One Termer) to "REJECT almost $200Million in Fed. Education Funds!" In the universe Nieves and Lembke inhabit, it would be a good thing to reject $189M in federal education money to make a point about federal spending, even though leaders in both parties agree that rejecting the money will just send our tax dollars to other states.
Since then, Lembke and Nieves have been praised by the St. Louis Tea Party for the position, and reporters for the Beacon, Star, Examiner, Associated Press and others have reported on their plan to have Missouri reject the federal dollars.
But today, Nieves is losing his mind on Facebook, accusing Union R-XI School Superintendent Steve Bryant and the Washington Missourian of telling "Ridiculous, Irresponsible Lies" (capitalization in original) because of this story about how their filibuster of the school money would impact local districts. Nieves calls it "a FRONT Page Hit Piece."
Nieves' argument seems to be that because the reporters or editors at the Missourian conflated his multiple filibusters -- his filibusters of unemployment and education money are both allegedly about the evils of federal spending, but concern different pieces of legislation -- the paper is trying smear him. But while it's true that this Missourian piece gives an inaccurate representation of what was agreed to last week about the unemployment money, it's beyond dispute that Nieves is also trying to block money for local schools. And moreover, it's not at all clear from the Missourian article that Superintendent Bryant is confused about what's at stake.
Nevertheless, Nieves is organizing followers to call the Union R-XI School District to complain about Bryant for daring to say things like
Union R-XI School Superintendent Steve Bryant called the filibuster a “political stunt” and questions Nieves’ motives.
“His (Nieves) idea is that we need to work on federal spending, but I just don’t feel this type of political stunt is how we accomplish that,” said Bryant. “It seems likely that his philosophy centers around major contributors like Rex Sinquefield.”
“I certainly understand the point that Sen. Nieves is trying to make in curtailing federal spending, and I don’t think anyone disagrees that we need to make more changes at the federal level, and at the same time, I understand the financial needs of this state,” Bryant said.
“This money is being put out regardless. It is already in the pipeline. He certainly has the right to make a point, but that money won’t be sent back to the federal government — it will be redistributed to other states,” Bryant added. “It really puts a big hole in the already strained budget of Missouri.”
Sinquefield is a Nieves donor, and Nieves is filibustering money that is really important to local schools. But Nieves leaves out those details in his call to action on Facebook:
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Here's the text of Nieves' call to action:
Please call Dr. Steve Bryant, superintendent of the Union Mo. School district, and ask him to stop his misleading attacks against State Senator Brian Nieves! Dr. Bryant can be reached at 636.583.8626
Unfortunately the new superintendent has chosen to lead a false attack in which he claims Senator Nieves is filibustering education funds. He has sent out emails to teachers that are horribly misleading and participated in an irresponsible Attack Piece placed on the Front Page of the Washington/Union Missourian News Paper for the Saturday, Apr. 9th 2011 issue. The "News Paper" article is so completely misleading that it is difficult to know where to start in an attempt to correct what Dr. Bryant and the writer said! Perhaps the worst part is that Dr. Bryant would make such false and attacking statements publicly with out ever having reached out to try to verify any of it! Even if Dr. Bryant and the Missourian writer would have simply read other, more credible papers, they could have written more accurate statements but I guess people only do that when their motivation is to be accurate and not to Attack! We should ALL be alarmed that such prominent people/institutions would stoop to such low levels. Please call Dr. Steve Bryant TODAY! 636.583.8626
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For posterity, this is how Nieves described his allegedly moral stand on January 28:
I can honestly see and somewhat understand the argument that says "Hey Brian, if we in Mo. don't take it they'll just give it to someone else." ... I admit that's a tuff argument to counter but I'll try: If I'm walking down the street and find a line of people taking stuff out of a damaged store front and I know that if I don't grab that 42 inch LCD TV, the guy behind me is going to anyway.... Doing something that is wrong is still wrong even if every body else is doing it! Kind of sounds like something our Mothers likely told us. The federal government has NO business in our schools anyway!
