A Capitulation to Celebrate

After lots of big talk from one-term Senator Jim Lembke and Brian Nieves, I'm delighted to see that the pair opted against a filibuster of already-allocated federal education money for Missouri schools.  Given the reality of how their silliness would negatively impact local schools and the overwhelming reaction from their own communities, it's easy to see why they backed down.

Nieves hasn't yet notified his Facebook legions of the decision -- it's just an oversight by a very important person doing very important things, I'm sure. Howeve,r it's worth remembering on this happy day that Nieves promised "fireworks" and likened acceptance of the federal dollars to stealing televisions.

Here's what Nieves wrote in January:

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!

Super-awesome capitalization and punctuation are authentic.

The supplemental budget (HB15) accepting the $189M in federal education dollars was approved by the Senate with a 28-6 vote on Monday.  Senators Lembke, Nieves, Jason Crowell, Jane Cuningham, Will Kraus and Chuck Purgason voted against the bill.