Government For Sale--Special Interests

Tony Messenger has a story today about Kenny Hulshof changing his vote to override the President's veto of a Medicare reimbursement bill just weeks after a fundraiser through which he raised more than $20,000 for his gubernatorial campaign from funders who would benefit from the reimbursement bill.  

The money quote comes from our old friend Spence Jackson:

“You cannot trust Congressman Hulshof,” said Steelman spokesperson Spence Jackson. “He changed his vote explicitly for campaign contributions at Dr. Steve Reintjes house in Kansas City just a few days ago. Missourians can’t afford a government that’s for sale.”

Far be it from me to agree with Spence, but he may be onto something.

In case you missed this nugget in all the news about the sale of St. Louis-based Anheuser-Busch, John and Cindy McCain are the Big Winners in the foreign takeover of our favorite hometown beer brewer.

From the Wall Street Journal:

"Mrs. McCain’s company owns between $2.5 million to $5 million in Anheuser stock..."

The ethically challenged Blunt Public Service Commission has found itself faced with the unfathomable--- drafting an ethics policy.

So the Commission has punted and asked a private vendor to tutor it on ethics.

No word on whether Andy Blunt's law firm will bid on the contract.   Story Continued »

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?

According to recently released state documents, GOP Attorney General candidate Mike Gibbons has asked the Missouri Development Finance Board to divert $5 million in job creation funds to Stages of Chesterfield, "a musical theatrical company that has four performance shows a year."

No word yet on whether MDFB President Peter Kinder is supporting Gibbon's bold jobs plan.

Way back in March, the Associated Press had a story about Ethics Commission machinations and some odd contingencies surrounding whether elected officials would have to return above-limit contributions collected during the period before the legislature's repeal of individual giving limits was struck down by the state supreme court.

The story included a curious and (so far as I can tell) still unexplained loophole enunciated by the Ethics Commission (emphasis added):

In all, the commission is letting the 11 politicians keep more than $205,000 in over-limit donations. And if lawmakers approve new legislation to remove the fundraising limits, another $121,000 won’t have to be returned....

Richard, R-Joplin, doesn’t have to return $1,275, must refund $300 and will have to return about $83,000 if the lawmakers don’t repeal the fundraising limits this session. Tilley, R-Perryville, doesn’t have to return more than $31,000. Icet, R-Wildwood, doesn’t have to refund $1,275 but will have to repay $34,000 if the limits aren’t repealed.

Has any reporting on this been done since?  Has anyone explored what will happen now that the legislature has again passed a bill to repeal campaign finance giving limits? 

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.

Is there a more factually sparse or logically bankrupt argument than the one Republicans continue to make in defense of their lifting of voter-approved campaign contribution limits?  As Mike Gibbons demonstrates for the Webster-Kirkwood Times, there probably isn't:

State Sen. Michael Gibbons, R-Kirkwood, who is campaigning to replace Nixon as the state attorney general, said he expects outgoing Gov. Matt Blunt to sign the campaign finance legislation as a means to increase transparency as well as accountability in elections.

"What motivated those of us who supported the bill was a desire to end all the money that goes through the parties, their organizations and the political action committees," said Gibbons. "Right now, unless you are a forensic scientist, you don't know where all the money is coming from in our elections.

Gibbons cites the desire to stanch the flow of "anonymous" campaign money through party committees as the big reason underlying his party's removal of contribution limits.  He makes that case in spite of the fact that the law he passed does nothing to shut down the operation of the party committees as a conduit for the non-transparent flow of political dollars.

After a week of pitched GOP in-fighting, an issue finally came along that was so compelling, it moved former intra-party combatants to beat their political swords into plowshares and leave small-village thinking behind.

That unifier?

Yesterday saw a couple news stories about how GOP legislators have grown livid about the increase in fees for driving records charged by the Blunt Department of Revenue.  From the KC Star:

A new fee structure for Missouri motor vehicle and driver records has insurance companies enraged and a lawmaker promising action in the waning days of the legislative session.

The state Department of Revenue on May 1 raised the fee to $7 per record and has said it would not provide a bulk discount to companies that use the data for things such as calculating insurance rates. That means companies now must pay about $28 million for the entire database.

The story notes that the fee increase pushed through by the Blunt Department of Revenue represents a 300,000% increase in the fee previously charged.  We get more clues about why from the AP's story:

SHOT:

"You see, Alanco Technologies --as it happens-- is already engaged with the state of Missouri as a contractor for the provision of electronic offender tracking services. And Alanco offers GPS tracking among its handful of products. Here's betting that Alanco, with the assistance of Blunt-favored lobbyists Carter and Alcorn, will be high in the running to grab the new bags of cash that the Governor throws at the electronic offender tracking program."

-- Fired Up Missouri, April 13, 2007

CHASER*:

The Missouri Department of Corrections (MDOC) has awarded a contract valued at up to $750,000 to Alanco Technologies' Alanco/TSI PRISM subsidiary, a Scottsdale, Ariz., manufacturer of RFID tracking systems for the corrections industry. The contract calls for Alanco/TSI PRISM to provide its RFID systems for up to an additional five probation/parole early-release facilities (the MDOC previously purchased two TSI PRISM systems in 2006, which have been operational in similar facilities located in Farmington and St. Joseph). Two new contract installations, valued at approximately $300,000, will commence immediately at facilities in Hannibal and Kennett, with additional sites to be scheduled in Kansas City, Fulton and Poplar Bluff.

-- RFID Journal, May 1, 2008

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. 

It makes perfect sense if you really think about it.  The Associated Press is reporting that, over the objections of many who preferred that the school reject the tainted money, the University of Missouri has finally filled an endowed professorship created by Ken Lay:

The University of Missouri has turned to one of its own professors to fill a long-vacant endowed chair named for the late Enron founder Ken Lay.

Joseph Haslag, a faculty member since 2000, is the first person to fill the Kenneth L. Lay Chair in Economics.

Who is Joseph Haslag?  For one, he's the Executive Vice President of the Show-Me Institute, a conservative "think tank" funded by billionaire voucher advocate Rex Sinquefield.  He is also reportedly the husband of another Sinquefield employee, Sara Haslag, who maintains a Show-Me Institute email address and apparently works from the Show-Me Institute's office in downtown Columbia (though some observers claim that Ms. Haslag is also an employee of Pelopidas, a government affairs firm through which some of Sinquefield's voucher money is moved).

Dust off the corner of your brain that you last used back in high school while prepping for the Analogies section of the ACT, and consider this one...

Doug Gaston is to Sarah Steelman as Jewell Patek is to_____________.

The answer?  Matt Blunt, of course. 

Perhaps when one has access to as much accumulated wealth as Sarah Steelman does, he or she simply no longer feels the need to play by any of the rules that the rest of the state follows.  Steelman has already decided, for instance, that she possesses the ability to accept contributions from party committees that exceed the prescribed legal limits for such committees. 

 And now Tony Messenger informs us that Steelman isn't big on the rules that keep state employees from working full-time on election campaigns, either: