Franklin County Democrats

Wow.

Intelligent beings managing things

“We were put on this Earth as creatures of God to have dominion over the Earth, to use it wisely and steward it wisely, but for our benefit not for the Earth’s benefit,” Santorum told an audience at the Colorado School of Mines where he was a guest speaker Monday at the Colorado Energy Summit.

“We are the intelligent beings that know how to manage things and through the course of science and discovery if we can be better stewards of this environment, then we should not let the vagaries of nature destroy what we have helped create,” Santorum said to applause from the conservative crowd.

It’s disturbing enough that we now have mainstream politicians who publicly articulate ideas that were once considered far outside the window of political acceptability, but to say them and generate a room full of applause instead of gasps of disbelief is simply mind blowing.

Sadly, in our short-attention-span, fast-food nation, if you can’t distill your political campaign down to a slogan that will fit neatly onto a bumper sticker you are probably going to have trouble connecting with voters. Josh Marshall at TPM has a suggestion for team Obama:

GM is alive; bin Laden is dead.

• On Monday, they wanted to fund religious institutions (i.e., private corporations)
• On Tuesday, Valentine’s Day, they wanted to fund more private corporations, Virtual Charter Schools AND wanted to tamper with and make more political Missouri’s Non-Partisan Court Plan
• On Wednesday, Curtman offers HCR41 to oppose Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act from Missouri

NEA Legislative Update  
Week 7, No. 2, February 14, 2012
By Otto Fajen
MNEA Legislative Director

SENATE COMMITTEE APPROVES OMNIBUS BILL RE UNACCREDITED DISTRICTS

The Senate General Laws Committee approved SCS/SB 451 (Jane Cunningham) on February 14.  The original bill pertained only to additional authority regarding shared educational services, but the SCS incorporates the provisions of SB 706 (Jane Cunningham) relating to unaccredited districts.

SCS/SB 451 includes numerous provisions regarding unaccredited districts, including a tax-credit style voucher for students of unaccredited districts to attend private schools and authority for other districts or district cooperatives to operate charter schools in unaccredited districts.
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CBS Poll

Boy, there was a time when Republicans knew how to pick a wedge issue during an election year and mercilessly pummel Democrats with it but they must be losing their touch.

A new CBS poll finds that a huge majority of the American people support birth control and believe religious employers should be required to cover it. Even self-professed Catholics support Obama’s new rule on contraception by a margin of 61/32. Oops.

If the kings of controversy were hoping birth control and “religious liberty” were going to be their ticket to electoral success in the fall they’ve badly miscalculated. Maybe they should try proposing actual solutions to our nation’s problems instead of preying on people’s fears and anxieties to get votes.

HERE IT IS – OUR LEGISLATORS TRYING TO BREAK DOWN SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE

(see 2nd item in Legislative Update for 2/13/12)

Missouri NEA Legislative Update Week 7, No. 1, February 13, 2012
By Otto Fajen MNEA Legislative Director

SCHOOL LEVY ELECTION DATES

The Senate Financial & Governmental Organizations and Elections Committee heard SB 569 (Will Kraus) on February 13. The bill eliminates both the February and June election dates for public elections.  The Association opposes the bill.  School districts rely on local tax funding to build and operate schools.  School districts should have the option to hold elections at the February and June dates.  Any bond elections on such dates must have strong community support to reach the two-thirds majority required for passage.

PUBLIC FUNDS TO RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS

The Senate General Laws Committee will hear SJR 47 (Scott Rupp) on February 14.  The SJR would remove the existing constitutional provision to keep public funds from being given to religious institutions.  The General Assembly is responsible for establishing and maintaining free public schools, not private or religious schools.  Association believes that public funds should support public schools and opposes the joint resolution.

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There’s just one thing to keep in mind when you hear the outrage coming from The Catholic Church over contraception: When the Church failed to act on child sexual abuse cases committed by priests who preyed on the innocent for decades (possibly centuries), and then actively engaged in covering it up once victims started going public, it lost all of its moral authority where anything related to children is concerned.

Kaili Joy Gray has an excellent post up at DailyKos that gets to the heart of what’s really behind the hissy fit the Church is having over the new health care requirements for women in regard to birth control …

[...] the pope is especially concerned that if such a policy is implemented, and if Americans continue to not give a damn about what the Church has to say on such “intrinsically evil practices” as contraception—as the vast majority of American Catholics don’t—this will “delegitimize the Church’s participation in public debate.”

That, of course, is the real fear, isn’t it? That the Church will lose its influence over policy debates, that it will continue to lose its moral authority to dictate what our laws should be. And that is why the Catholic Church, from the pope to the Conference of Catholic Bishops to the priests in churches across the country, has declared war—to further assert its “legitimacy.”

Maybe when the Holy Church cleans up its own house we can listen to their moralizing on birth control, but until then they are preaching to empty pews.

WORKPLACE DISCRIMINATION AND WHISTLE-BLOWER LAW

Last week the Senate again took up SCS/SB 592 (Brad Lager) for floor debate on February 1.  It was in session debating the bill for nearly fifteen hours before reaching an agreement to end the filibuster effort at about 1:20 a.m. It endorsed legislation early February 2 that would change the state’s workplace discrimination laws.

Wes Duplantier of The Associated Press wrote in The Columbia-Missourian:

Fearful of reversing decades of hard-fought civil rights gains, Democrats held the Senate floor for hours Wednesday and into early Thursday morning, vowing to block a preliminary Senate vote on the bill.

That bill would require workers who bring wrongful termination lawsuits to prove discrimination was a “motivating factor” – not simply a contributing factor – in the employer’s action. The legislation also would apply to other wrongful discrimination actions, such as the denial of promotions.

In cases where employers were found to have wrongfully discriminated, the legislation would tie punitive damages to a company’s number of employees, with a maximum award of $300,000. Political subdivisions, such as city governments, would not be liable for any punitive damages.

I encourage you to read Wes’ full article (linked above) to hear how especially Senator Maria Chappelle-Nadal, a member of the Legislative Black Caucus who led the filibuster effort by speaking against the original bill for 10 hours, plans to continue to oppose this  erosive piece of legislation.

Personally I enjoyed listening to the live audio cast during the hour or so after midnight. Senator Chappelle-Nadal read from the works of famous black authors, notably Langston Hughes of the Harlem Renaissance.

The House brought up HB 1219 (Kevin Elmer) briefly on February 1 for floor debate and then placed the bill on the Informal Calendar. The MNEA opposes HB 1219. The bill is substantially the same as SCS/SB 592.

Missouri NEA Legislative Update
Week 6, No. 2, February 7, 2012
By Otto Fajen MNEA Legislative Director

CHARTER SCHOOLS

The House Elementary and Secondary Education Committee will meet in executive session on February 8 to consider HB 1228 (Tishaura Jones).  The bill expands the authority for charter schools to cover the entire state, expands the list of entities allowed to sponsor charter schools, creates a statewide chartering commission and makes several changes designed to improve the accountability and transparency of charter sponsors and charter schools.

The Association believes that charter schools need to meet the same standards of accountability, transparency and respect for the rights of students, parents and  staff as apply to district-operated public schools.  Currently, serious remedial action is needed to improve that accountability for sponsors and charter schools, and the state should adopt and implement those reforms and verify that they are working to ensure charter schools meet those standards before considering expansion of charter school territory or sponsorship.  Accordingly, the Association opposes the bill and will seek to limit charter school legislation to correcting those deficiencies without concurrent expansion of either charter school geography or sponsorship.

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Another Important Voting Day in 2 Months – APRIL 3

Please support Education in Franklin County by supporting and campaigning for approval of
“Proposition I” – a proposal to expand and improve facilities in the School District of Washington. The plan includes construction of new facilities and renovation of existing buildings to provide the educational environment that our students deserve. The proposal is on the April 3 ballot.
Websites to help you:

http://citizensforgreatschools.org/cfgs/

http://www.facebook.com/SDofWashington

http://www.sdow-mo.schoolloop.com

if you click on the Quick Links bar, Prop I, you will get information about the proposition:

http://www.sdow-mo.schoolloop.com/cms/page_view?d=x&piid=&vpid=1325750068276

THANKS FOR CONSIDERING THIS REQUEST TO MAINTAIN THE QUALITY OF EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES FOR OUR CHILDREN.

Missouri NEA Legislative Update    Week 6, No. 1, February 6, 2012

By Otto Fajen    MNEA Legislative Director

BUDGET COMMITTEES

The House Appropriations-Education Committee will meet on February 7 to begin the analyst markup phase for the DESE budget books for the K-12 schools budget.  The meeting gives committee members the opportunity to ask questions of staff regarding the various programs in the DESE budget.

VOTER ID

The House again debated HB 1104 (Shane Schoeller) on February 6, but did not bring the bill to a first round (Perfection) vote.  The bill is implementing legislation for SJR 2, regarding voter photo ID requirements, should it be approved by voters.  The bill requires a person seeking to vote in a public election to provide election officials a photo identification.  Missouri NEA believes voting is a constitutional right that should not be restricted by unnecessary voter photo identification requirements or other additional barriers to the voting franchise.  The Association opposes the bill.