Category: Missouri

After Matt Blunt’s term as Missouri governor, with its semi-austerity in cutting government programs unpopularly (some of which I chronicled on my old Draft Matt Blunt blog), it looks like 2009 will return to government business as usual. Jay Nixon will be your candyman:

On a gubernatorial campaign stop Monday at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon unveiled a plan that would allow Missouri students who start out at a community college to get a four-year degree without having to pay tuition along the way.

Of course, economics dictates that once everyone has a bachelor’s degree, the starting salaries for people with college degrees will diminish, squeezing the middle class in another fashion. But this is government/politics, not reality/economics.

The new Missouri license plates contain a grammatical error. Who cares? Well, some of us, but not the officials in charge.

The problem?

The plate, featuring a bluebird perched on a hawthorn branch, was the landslide winner of an Internet vote last year among three plate designs. During the competition, the words “Show Me State” ran vertically along the right side of the plate. Vertically, there was no graceful spot for the hyphen.

Later, the state found that the vertical placement caused production problems, so the slogan was moved to a horizontal position near the top of the plate.

Because the words “show” and “me” form a compound modifier for the word “state,” they should be joined by a hyphen.

Official response:

David Griffith, spokesman at the Missouri Department of Revenue, said the state doesn’t consider the lack of punctuation a fatal flaw and won’t be replacing the plates. “We’re too far down the line,” he said.

Makes me glad my children won’t participate in an educational system run by a government where mistakes too far down the line won’t be corrected.

Compulsion for corporations? Sign her up!

Missouri residents could get the chance to force some of the state’s biggest utilities to sell more renewable energy.

A group called Renew Missouri is trying to collect 150,000 signatures to get a November ballot initiative that would ask voters to decide whether the state should have a mandatory renewable energy standard.

Hey, we can force utilities to enact policies to make electricity more expensive! What’s not to like?

Don’t we have a legislature to handle these things?

Since 2000, legislative attempts to establish mandatory renewable energy standards have faced utility opposition and failed.

That’s a nice sentence, Brody. I notice you’ve stopped stuttering.

It would appear that reality diverges from this journalist’s wildest yearnings:

Last year, however, Gov. Matt Blunt signed into law the Green Power Initiative, which creates a goal of 4 percent renewable energy use in 2012 and 11 percent by 2020.

Several utilities also offer their customers the chance to buy renewable energy. For example, AmerenUE sells renewable energy through its Pure Power program, which was rolled out last year.

But let’s cut to the compulsion, shall we?

But supporters of a ballot initiative say voluntary goals and programs are not enough.

It never is. Not until the ruled live in hovels and are no longer a threat to their betters, who are the animals who will be more equal (that is, not subject to rolling brownouts) than others.

I’m going to get ahead of the curve and express outrage about the Missouri legislature’s attack not only on unpapered pioneers, but also its bias against unborn children identified in this story:

The Senate legislation generally doesn’t go quite as far. For example, illegal immigrants who are already born could go to college if they don’t get in-state tuition.

Why can’t the unborn go to college with the in-state rate? Or is there an in-utero rate that’s cheaper?

Good to see Missouri has its priorities in order.

1. Funding private development that will turn empty land into empty buildings:
   

   Of the $387 million construction cost, public aid is projected to account for $116 million, with the state’s share at nearly $30 million and the rest coming from the city and special sales tax districts.

2. Critical repairs to infrastructure:
   

   State highway officials have barred large trucks from a mid-Missouri bridge over the Osage River after an inspection prompted by the fatal Minnesota bridge collapse revealed a badly deteriorating steel beam.

   . . . .

   The entire 1,000-foot bridge is scheduled to be replaced in 2010 at a cost of $9.4 million.

ACORN threatens suit over drop in Mo’s voter registrations:

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, also known as ACORN, joined with others Thursday in sending “a letter of intent to sue” to the Missouri Department of Social Services.

ACORN, Project Vote and Demos (a national, non-partisan public policy, research and advocacy center) contend that the state has failed to comply with “a requirement of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) to provide voter registration opportunities in public assistance offices.”

The letter was sent in connection with the release of a Project Vote report detailing concerns because voter registrations at
public assistance agencies “have dropped from 143,000 in 1995-1996 to just 16,000 in 2005-2006.”

Could that be that all the people who receive assistance might have registered to vote in the last 10 years?

Nah, it means that someone creative, like ACORN, should be able to “find” 125,000 additional voters each and every year until a Democrat becomes president for life.

In 2006, Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan’s office rejected two conservative-minded state ballot initiatives, but put four liberal-minded initiatives on the ballot.

In 2007, Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan’s office might be rewriting a conservative-minded ballot initiative to hinder its passage.

Joseph Stalin allegedly said, “It’s not who votes that counts. It’s who counts the votes.” However, what counts more is who determines what is voted on, and Robin Carnahan is casting enough doubt on the process to merit her removal next election.

Missouri has a budget surplus:

Missouri could be sitting on a $320 million budget surplus because of higher-than-expected tax revenues and lower-than-expected spending during the recently concluded fiscal year.

Lawmakers had intended to leave about $200 million unspent when passing the state’s $21.5 billion operating budget for the 2008 fiscal year, which started July 1.

Funny, it’s the heartless Matt Blunt and the Republicans in the legislature that cut the budget, but it’s Missouri that has the surplus.

Never fear, though, our elected troughhogs are working to change that:

Unless lawmakers take additional action, that money will remain unspent. But politicians already are proposing ways to use part of that surplus.

I call racism. What do lawmakers have against being in the black?