It seems that others in and outside of Missouri realize that former Missourian and wife of former state Sen. Jeff Smith is pretty sad when it comes to being a political operative. Ms. Smith won our “most stupid quote of the day” back in 2007 and she was also responsible that summer for the Chris Koster attorney general campaign kickoff disaster in St. Louis: (Smith is in a light blue blouse and dark skirt looking absolutely clueless as reporters question Koster.)
An Ohio blog called Third Base Politics also has some unflattering opinions on Ms. Smith’s political acumen:
Our old friend Lis Smith is back in the news. Lis was the communications director for Ted Strickland during his campaign for reelection back in 2010….For example, she tweeted out that someone who blocked her on Twitter had a “glass jaw” and mockingly called him a “grown man”. Here at Third Base Politics, it was revealed that someone else also blocked others on Twitter. Her boss, Ted Strickland.
Even simple jobs at her latest position, working for the Democratic Governor’s Association, seemed a bit challenging. As communications director for the DGA, their website was her responsibility. The DGA has a straightforward purpose. Promote Democrats, and attack Republicans. Which is why we, and others, found it amusing that the DGA website was posting glowingly positive news about Republican governors….Now, the Obama administration has hired her to be their “Director of Rapid Response”.
2010: Worked on Ted Strickland’s reelection campaign. Result: LOST
2009: Worked on Governor Jon Corzine’s reelection campaign. In Democratic New Jersey. Result: LOST
2009: Worked on Terry McAuliffe’s VA gubernatorial campaign, who had major name recognition and outspent everyone else in the race. Result: LOST
2008: Worked on Dan Seals campaign for Congress. In deep blue Illinois in a Democrat wave. LOST
After 24 years in the US Senate, Republican Kit Bond left the body in 2010 and has turned his eye to international trade. A long-time fan of Indonesia, he led a trade delegation to the country recently from his his home state of Missouri. Along the way, he also provides some insights into the current presidential race back home.
“Policies that facilitate the safe, thoughtful and timely development of pipeline, transmission and distribution projects are necessary to facilitate the delivery of America’s fuel and electricity and maintain the reliability of our nation’s energy system.”(President’s Council On Jobs And Competitiveness, 2011 Year-End Report, 1/17/12)
The Obama administration announced yesterday it was rejecting a Canadian firm’s application for a permit to build and operate a massive oil pipeline across the U.S.-Canada border. This decision comes after President Obama signed a bill in December with a provision demanded by Republicans that gave the president 60 days to either accept the pipeline’s permit or declare the pipeline not in the national interest and reject it. Politico notes, “The White House has made every effort to distance itself from the decision, constantly referring reporters to the State Department.” Yet it’s important to point out that this is President Obama’s decision, per the legislation he signed, despite the fact that Deputy Secretary of State William J. Burns will be making the announcement.
Keystone XL is a project that would create 20,000 jobs, allow the United States to get less oil from the Middle East and more from our Canadian allies, and is supported by labor unions and Democrats. The AFL-CIO’s Building and Construction Trades Department President, Mark H. Ayers, put it well when he wrote, “[I]t is America’s workers who are clamoring for the expedited approval of this important project. As President Obama has rightfully declared when it comes to the creation of jobs, ‘WE CAN’T WAIT.’” Democrat Sen. Mark Begich said, “I support the project. I think the president’s view on this, of waiting, I think doesn’t make a lot of sense. It is a project that could provide lots of jobs to this country…I think the president’s wrong on delaying this, and I think there are a lot of good jobs relating to this, and again [it’s oil] from a friendly country, Canada.”
Just last week, U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Thomas Donahue called on the president to approve the Keystone XL pipeline saying, “Our biggest and most reliable foreign energy supplier is Canada. The proposed Keystone XL pipeline would bring Canadian oil sands down to our Gulf Coast refineries and to other destinations along the way. This project has passed every environmental test. There is no legitimate reason—none at all—to subject it to further delay.” He added, “Labor unions and the business community alike are urging President Obama to act in the best interests of our national security and our workers and approve the pipeline. We can put 20,000 Americans to work right away and up to 250,000 over the life of the project.”
It’s stunning that the president would go out of his way to block the Keystone XL project and the tens of thousands of jobs it would create.
We’d certainly never tell you how to do your job Jo Mannies, but there has to be an angle here somewhere when an inner city state representative (who votes with Republicans and is challenging an incumbent state senator in her own party) is in the hip pockets of the payday loan industry!
St. Louis Beacon:
A law firm hired by the payday industry is blanketing the state with letters telling clergy, church board members and religious groups that their active support for a ballot initiative restricting payday loan interest rates could threaten their tax-exempt status.
The letters appear to have been sent out, in part, in response to a gathering of religious leaders in Jefferson City in favor of the proposed initiative, which would cap payday loan rates at 36 percent. Current rates can be more than 400 percent. “You know you’re on the right track when your opponents stick a nasty letter under a lawyer’s letterhead,” said the Rev. David Gerth, executive director of the St. Louis-based Metropolitan Congregations United (MCU). Read more…
The Missouri Department of Transportation, MODOT, is looking into ways of funding necessary maintenance on the main east-to-west highway across Missouri — Interstate 70. One funding option is to raise the gas tax state-wide. An alternative proposal from MODOT is to institute a toll on the highway.
In this video, Show-Me Institute Policy Analyst David Stokes suggests the the latter option makes more sense economically, as the people using the highway will be the ones paying for it. A rare bad idea from the Show-Me-institute, we have five concerns about toll roads that Mr. Stokes failed to address in the video:
Tolls continue long after the road is paid for.
Tolls rise automatically, with no public input.
Residents nearest urban toll roads are hit the hardest.
Road costs are not shared equally by all taxpayers.
Toll roads are in essence a regressive tax which suggests that those who have better financial means have access to better transportation options.
For months, Republicans have been pointing out that Democrats in Congress continue to push bills that are designed to fail: legislation crafted with the knowledge that it has significant opposition, advanced solely to score political points. Now, news reports show that Democrats are openly discussing how they’ll continue this strategy for another year.
On Friday, National Journal reported that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) told “a gathering of about 40 House Democrats” that “the party is positioned to dictate a congressional agenda designed to get most of its congressional members—and President Obama—reelected. Working with the White House, Senate Democrats are plotting a 2012 floor agenda driven by Obama’s reelection campaign and the fight for control of Congress. The year will see an intensified version of the course Democrats pursued this fall through votes on the president’s jobs bill. Senate floor action will be planned less to make law than to buttress Obama’s charge that Republicans are obstructing measures that would benefit the economy, leadership aides said. Assuming that Republicans will block most of their efforts regardless of what they do, Democrats will push legislation that polls well and dovetails with Obama’s campaign, the aides said. Democratic staffers said they hope that effort harms not only congressional Republicans but the GOP presidential nominee. Democrats will try to move legislation that the nominee and congressional Republicans oppose. By doing that, Democrats hope, he will yoke himself to the unpopular Congress. ‘The Republican candidate will have to own whatever the issue is,’ a Democratic leadership aide said.”
And Politico writes today, “Forget about landmark legislation or even a budget deal. And all those votes on the floor? Most will be meant to influence the November elections. Welcome to the second session of the 112th Congress, when a divided and unpopular group seems poised to ignore the basic aspects of governing and turn the House and Senate chambers into full-time campaign stumps. . . . Senate Democrats are already talking about scheduling votes to put the eventual GOP nominee in an awkward spot, forcing him to choose between the unpopular congressional wing of his party and more moderate, independent voters.”
Clearly, Democrats are planning more of the same for this year: pushing bills created only with polling and electoral politics in mind, designed not to create jobs, ease the debt burden, or foster energy independence, but to provide talking points for Democrats and President Obama on the campaign trail.
Back in October, when Democrats were pushing President Obama’s designed to fail stimulus, Leader McConnell blasted their cynical maneuvering, saying, “Democrats have designed this bill to fail—they’ve designed their own bill to fail — in the hopes that anyone who votes against it will look bad for opposing a bill they misleadingly refer to as a ‘jobs bill.’ That’s not just my interpretation. The Senior Senator for New York has been out there telling reporters that what Democrats are going for today is ‘contrast.’
“It doesn’t seem to matter that this bill won’t pass, or that even if it did pass, American businesses would be stuck with a permanent tax hike. Forget about all that. What matters most to the Democrats who control the Senate, according to the stories I’ve been reading, is that they have an issue to run on next year. This whole exercise, by their own admission, is a charade that’s meant to give Democrats a political edge in an election that [is] months away. Well, with all due respect to the Senior Senator from New York, the American people don’t want contrast. They want jobs.”
“The President’s advisors have said they’re counting on a do-nothing Congress,” Leader McConnell said, That’s why we’ll be voting on legislation . . . that’s designed to fail. If you ask me, this is a pretty sad commentary on the state of Democrat party in Washington.”
In his State of American Business speech yesterday, U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Thomas Donahue called on President Obama to approve the Keystone XL pipeline. Donahue said, “Our biggest and most reliable foreign energy supplier is Canada. The proposed Keystone XL pipeline would bring Canadian oil sands down to our Gulf Coast refineries and to other destinations along the way. This project has passed every environmental test. There is no legitimate reason—none at all—to subject it to further delay.” He added, “Labor unions and the business community alike are urging President Obama to act in the best interests of our national security and our workers and approve the pipeline. We can put 20,000 Americans to work right away and up to 250,000 over the life of the project.”
Also yesterday, over 100 trade groups, including the National Federation of Independent Business, the National Association of Manufacturers, the Business Roundtable, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and many local trade associations such as the Mid-West Truckers Association, sent a letter to President Obama calling on him to approve the pipeline. They wrote, “[We] urge you to approve the Keystone XL pipeline as soon as possible. With your approval, this shovel-ready project will provide 20,000 jobs in construction and manufacturing in the next two years, and add tens of thousands of additional jobs throughout the economy in other sectors including service, retail and distribution. With our nation’s stubbornly high unemployment, it would be irresponsible to let such good-paying jobs slip away. . . Mr. President, the significant job creation, economic growth, energy security and national security benefits of this project make clear it is in the national interest. We strongly urge you to act swiftly to approve the Keystone XL pipeline.”
And of course, labor unions and Democrats in Congress have been calling for the president to move ahead on this pipeline for months. The AFL-CIO’s President of its Building and Construction Trades Department wrote in November that “we can’t wait” for the jobs the pipeline would create. Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND) said on the Senate floor last month, “I personally think the pipeline is absolutely in the national interest. . . . Canada is going to develop this resource. This oil is going to go somewhere. It, to me, is absolutely in our national interest for that oil to come to our country.” Even a member of Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) House Democrat leadership, Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC), told MSNBC, “I’m very much for the pipeline. There is no question about that.”
It’s obvious that approving the Keystone XL pipeline is a no-brainer: it creates jobs, enhances America’s energy security, and would undoubtedly help our economy. As Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said, “The President has said his first priority is jobs. Well here’s an opportunity for him to show it: a pipeline . . . that, according to some estimates, would create thousands of jobs right away. Here’s an opportunity for the President to say he’s not going to let a few radical environmentalists stand in the way of project that would create thousands of jobs and make America more secure at the same time. The labor unions support this pipeline. The Chamber of Commerce supports it. Out-of-work Americans support it. And a growing number Democrats are expressing support for it too.”
Columbia Democrat Mary Still is proposing legislation that has Rep. Jamilah “Lil’ Neicey” Nasheed’s payday loan suitors uneasy. Still’s legislation would allow voters to choose if they want to cap these loans at 36% annual interest. With her upcoming race against Sen. Robin Wright Jones, Nasheed will need all the money she can to wage a credible campaign. Which side will the self described “people’s champion” find herself this session; the people or the payday loan industry?
“Nestled at the base of the majestic Santa Rosa Mountains in the exclusive community of Indian Wells, the luxurious Renaissance Esmeralda Resort & Spa is the place to share your passion for discovery. Offering unparalleled service and all the amenities of a world-class resort, Esmeralda invites you to indulge your every whim.” Featured in Condé Nast Traveler’s 2007 Gold List of “World’s Best Places to Stay” and Travel + Leisure’s “500 Greatest Hotels in the World.”
Democrat one percenters coming together to improve our healthcare! What the hell does Chelsea Clinton and 70’s tennis star Billy Jean King know about healthcare? We know why Dick “son of a milk truck driver” Gephardt is there, he’s drumming up business for his million dollar DC lobbying firm.
President Bill Clinton’s “Health Matters” conference Tuesday at the Renaissance Esmeralda Indian Wells Resort & Spa is nearly as exclusive as the Humana Challenge golf tournament it’s linked to. The conference — which begins with a 7:45 a.m. workout with Jillian Michaels and wraps with a 5 p.m. panel with the former president
Viewers can follow discussions with Chelsea Clinton, tennis champion Billie Jean King and former congressman Richard Gephardt and submit questions Read more…
