Blunt-Kinder Administration

The whims of the holiday calendar do bring with them some regularity, some consistency.

Since today is the day before a three-day weekend, we can be almost certain that Team Blunt will use the opportunity for an upcoming extra-long media lull to take out some garbage. 

The day before the long Thanksgiving weekend, the Blunt administration quietly announced Ed Martin’s termination. With a three-day weekend upon us, what will Blunt announce today?

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?

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Rarely do we respond to a comment on the site, but one recent comment deserves a front page reply.  Specifically, a commenter with the handle 'blessedcurse' fired off a comment in response to a recent post about MOHELA's recent failure to make another scheduled Lewis & Clark payment.  'blessedcurse' wrote:

MOHELA's woes have very little to do with Lewis & Clark and are mostly due to the colapse [sic] of the auction rate bond market and changes in federal regulations governing student loan lenders...

In other words, 'blessedcurse' makes the case that Matt Blunt's sale of MOHELA can't be blamed for any the loan agency's current woes because those difficulties are attributable to fluctuations in the market and interceding federal action.  Implicit in the argument is the idea that the events 'blessedcurse' cites were either unforeseen or unforeseeable, leaving the proponents of the sale of MOHELA's assets free from any responsibility.

Of course, the trouble with this line of reasoning is that all of the "unforeseeable" occurrences cited by 'blessedcurse' were the very same reasons pointed to by opponents of the MOHELA sale while it was being discussed in the legislature as reasons why the asset sale was a terrible idea.

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You probably knew things were bad for the Republican Party as an organization and as a brand, but you probably don't know how bad until you read about the party's future from some GOP blogger called Middlebury Republican.  Middlebury Republican sees some GOP heroes out there on the scene:

One thing that reading Grand New Party did make me think about is the future of both American political parties. Despite the conventional wisdom that the Republican Party is in trouble, one thing that we do that I believe the Democrats are lacking right now is a leadership foundation upon which we can build for the future. It is this foundation, I believe, that is going to lead to a Republican resurgence with the next decade. ...

But it is in gubernatorial politics that Republicans future may lay....  Governor Matt Blunt of Missouri is a decorated Navy veteran and highly successful governor who has earned the nation's highest rating from the libertarian Cato Institute, and is well regarded for his successful work to reduce the size of the state's government...

To have these...young leaders, each moving forward with a clear united conservative vision for the country, is something that happens once in a generation. And for all the stories that are written about the Democratic Party's young power, they don't have this. In today's closely divided political environment, that may be all the difference.

This guy must've gleaned everything he knows about our illustrious governor from the eight-minute infomerical on Matty's repurposed campaign website.

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Garrison Keillor famously wrote about a place called Lake Wobegon, where "all the children are above average."

Under the Blunt administration, the people who run the state have apparently worked very hard to make sure that we have an opposite Lake Wobegon effect.  Bluntees have rigged the system so that state employees are always adjudged average or below. 

Blunt administration appointees have invented and implemented an employee rating system called PERforM, on which they will presumably make "merit" pay increase decisions for workers.  Because pay for working people hinges on the ratings, Bluntees have to be very careful to make sure that even employees who earn high marks don't get scored that way. 

Consider the discussion of the PERforM system from this email, sent earlier this year by a manager from a state facility in southeast Missouri...

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The latest chapter in the rousing success of Matt Blunt's crowning legislative achievement, the sale of assets from the state's student loan agency.

This good news about MOHELA's continued inability to make scheduled payments follows last month's good news about MOHELA seriously curtailing borrower benefits.

Uhh, can we officially call Blunt's asset sale a failure yet, or are we supposed to keep pretending until he leaves office?­

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As the AP's Chris Blank tells us the afternoon, Matt Blunt was out wandering the countryside signing bills today before amiable reporters in places not called Jefferson City:

 Blunt was making stops to publicize the legislation Thursday in Excelsior Springs, Boonville, Park Hills and Springfield.

Today's on-the-road signings come after Blunt traveled in recent weeks to Joplin, Ft. Leonard Wood, Pomona, Raymore and Belton to sign bills.  Blunt even left the state altogether this month and let Peter Kinder sign a few bills so he didn't have to. 

Bills that Blunt did sign in Jeff City --like the repeal of Rod Jetton's village law-- were done behind closed doors with no public opportunity for the media to question the governor.

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In an indication of just how far down the wrong track things have gone, the Blunt Administration today announced its opposition to Bush Administration regulations of health-harming ozone.  Team Blunt thinks the Bush standards are too strict and wants to join the state of Mississippi in opposing them.

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The KSPR News website today posts the Associated Press story about attempts by Matt Blunt to evade the state's Sunshine Law by claiming that taped back-ups of Blunt emails are "extra copies" and therefore need not be provided.

But more interesting than that is the image (right) that KSPR runs to accompany the story on the web.

If you look closely, you'll see that KSPR's graphic includes Blunt's photograph pasted in front of a mock-up of a web-based email inbox.  Among the "emails" that Blunt is pasted in front of are ones that include reference to "Peniss Enhancmeent Patches" and that implore the reader to "Be the 'biggest' out of all your friends."  Another says, in all-caps, "SEXUALLY-EXPLICIT."­

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History has proved that there are few things more precious (Yahoo IM is probably one) to Lieutenant Governor Peter Kinder and the staff who work for him than the Tour de Missouri French-style bicycle race.  In fact, it seems that even folks who leave his office have a hard time letting go of their connection to the Tour.  

Take Jerry Dowell.  According to reports, Dowell recently took an unpaid leave of absence from Lt. Gov. Kinder's office in order to run the Congressional campaign of Blaine Luetkemeyer (who was a key cog in the Tour de Missouri via his role as director of the state's division of tourism, natch).  But in some ways it's like Dowell never left.  In fact, Dowell is still listed as the Executive Director of the Tour de Missouri on the tour's website contact page.

So is the Tour de Missouri just slow to update its website and excise Dowell's name, or is Dowell retaining the executive director title and all the inexplicable sway that apparently comes with it in MOGOP circles, even though he's on a "leave of absence" from the state? 

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It happened about a week and a half ago and we've missed it until now, but it can't slip completely by unremarked upon.

On June 13, Matt Blunt announced the appointment of Joe Ortwerth to the State Board of Registration for the Healing Arts.  This panel is responsible for overseeing the registration and licensure of physicians in Missouri. 

One would expect that a governor would appoint a fairly stable individual to that post, but not Matt Blunt.  He chose to put forward a man who is perhaps most noted for having responded to every inquiry by a television news reporter by asking, over and over, "Do you know that Jesus loves you, Elliott?" 

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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.

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You're right Tina, they are always here. 

Ever since Matt Blunt became Governor, anyway.  

While Missourians sandbag and head for higher ground to escape prospective flooding like that which has taken several lives in Iowa, they might be interested to know that Matt Blunt and his top aides are headed for the water.  

Instead of nervously watching the levees here in Missouri, Blunt, his chief of staff Trish Vincent and senior policy advisor Adam Gresham will be spending June 19-21 in South Carolina for a Republican Governors Association senior staff retreat.  Among the events on their schedule is a Thursday evening "Late Night Yacht Party."  Never let it be said that Matt Blunt and the Missouri GOP are out of touch with the lives of real people. 

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Matt Blunt split town last Thursday, sending a letter to state agencies to let them know that he'd be gone and that Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder would be charged with gubernatorial duties while he was out of the state.

In that role, Kinder has already mobilized the National Guard and signed a couple bills into law.

But even so, some duties are too important for Matty to leave to just anyone --even if he is the acting Governor.  That's why Blunt, despite having already handed the reins temporarily over to Kinder, continued last Friday carrying out the gubernatorial duty to which he now devotes most of his time: attacking Jay Nixon via his official office.

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