Franklin County Democrats

Missouri NEA Legislative Update
Week 5, No. 2, January 31, 2012
By Otto Fajen     
MNEA Legislative Director

ACTION ALERT:  HOUSE COMMITTEE TO HEAR TENURE REPEAL BILL

The House Elementary and Secondary Education Committee will hear HB 1526 (Scott Dieckhaus) on February 1.  The bill eliminates the current tenure law for new hires, and places new hires into a system of contracts of up to four years.  The bill also substantially changes the existing tenure law, eliminating seniority as a factor in decisions regarding reduction in force.  The Association strongly opposes the bill.

The bill also includes numerous mandates regarding teacher evaluation systems, such as requiring at least fifty percent of evaluations to be based on student test scores and prohibiting districts and employees from designing evaluation systems within collective bargaining negotiations.

ACTION NEEDED:  Your help is needed!  Please call, write or e-mail to urge your state representative to oppose HB 1526, the Tenure Repeal Bill. The following link will connect you to the MNEA Legislative Action Center Action Alert on HB 1526.

Type in your zip code and the alert will automatically be directed to your state representative.  The Action Alert contains a brief summary and a brief, editable message box to help you send an email to your state representative on the issue.   Your message will have a greater impact if you personalize the message and add your own concerns regarding the bill.

Write Your Representative

continue reading…

Missouri NEA Legislative Update
Week 5, No. 1, January 30, 2012
By Otto Fajen     MNEA Legislative Director

ACTION ALERT: VOTE “NO” ON PAYCHECK DECEPTION ATTACK ON WORKERS

The Senate may act on one or more bills attacking labor unions when the members convene for floor debate during this week’s session.  The Senate Small Business and Industry Committee approved SCS/SBs 553 and 435 (Dan Brown) and the bill is on the Senate calendar for floor debate.    The bill eliminates authorization for public labor union payroll deductions for payment of union dues. The bill also revises authorization for public labor union payroll deductions for political action.

The Association strongly opposes the bill.  This attack is just more of the same old politics.  All employees have the constitutional right to an effective union voice in their employment and to work together to support  political campaigns without undue interference from state policies that would undermine those rights.

ACTION NEEDED:  Your help is needed!  Please call, write or e-mail to urge your state senator to oppose SCS/SBs 553 and 435, the paycheck deception attack. The following link will connect you to the MNEA Legislative Action Center Action Alert on SCS/SBs 553 and 435.

Type in your zip code and the alert will automatically be directed to your state senator.  The Action Alert contains a brief summary and a brief, editable message box to help you send an email to your state senator on the issue.   Your message will have a greater impact if you personalize the message and add your own concerns regarding the bill.

Write Your Senator

continue reading…

So what’s Republican Sen. Brian Nieves so worked up about these days? Is it the fact that two of the counties in his district rank among the unhealthiest in the state? Is it that, of the 114 counties in Missouri, Franklin County is the 5th most polluted and Ameren Missouri’s coal-fired power plant in Labadie is the second worst mercury polluter in the nation. Perhaps it’s that Missouri now ranks number one in job loss? Nope. None of those things.

Of all the things that there are for a state Senator to get righteously pissed off about the thing that has Nieves seething white hot with anger is his belief that parking for the press at the state capitol is too convenient. So meter maid, Brian Nieves, has introduced groundbreaking legislation that aims to do something about this travesty of injustice.

Sweet Jesus. Is this the best we can do in District 26?

Meet The Press

MR. GREGORY: You’ve been more pointed when you talk about in favor of Governor Romney. You say he will never embarrass you. Do you think Newt Gingrich will embarrass the party?

GOV. CHRISTIE: I think Newt Gingrich has embarrassed the party over time. Whether he’ll do it again in the future, I don’t know. But Governor Romney never has.

MR. GREGORY: You say he’s embarrassed the party. How and where do you worry he might do it again that makes him unelectable?

GOV. CHRISTIE: Well, listen, David, we all know the record. I mean, he was run out of the speakership by his own party. He was fined $300,000 for ethics violations. This is a guy who’s had a very difficult political career at times and has been an embarrassment for the party. You remember these times, you were here. So the fact of the matter is, I don’t need to regale the country with that entire list again except to say this. I’m not saying he will do it again in the future, but sometimes past is prologue.

It’s funny, not long ago Franklin County Presiding Commissioner, John Griesheimer, used those exact words to describe Sen. Brian Nieves (R-26) to me. “He has been an embarrassment for the party.” The thing is, Griesheimer, like Christie, doesn’t fully appreciate how radicalized the Republican base has become. There’s simply no more room for moderates in today’s GOP. The Reagan era is over.

Players like Nieves and Gingrich get it, and are more than happy to provide tons of red meat for their own narcissistic gain and to hell with the establishment. In the case of Nieves, he has little else to offer the party faithful but fear and victimhood, virtual catnip for the persecuted conservative who is afraid of everything from Muslims to Medicare. Gingrich, on the other hand, has a few ideas. They’re just awful ideas.

Moderate Republicans who embraced the teabaggers and the fire breathers back when they were blessedly re-branding conservatism after George W. Bush so thoroughly discredited it (I thought irreversibly at the time) must have figured they’d be able to rein them in once the elections were over. But they appear to have unleashed a Kraken of radicalism in their ranks that is threatening to devour them instead.

Today’s Post-Dispatch ran this editorial regarding gifts from local politicians that most of us wuld like returned.  A puzzling look back at the actions of pols from Peter “strip club” Kinder to local hater of the unemployed Brian Nieves.

For the 2011 legislative session of the General Assembly Missouri ProVote graded all Missouri State Representatives and Senators based on their voting records on issues such as providing a voice to workers, protecting human rights, expanding quality, affordable health care, and preserving women’s reproductive rights. So how did our hometown boys do?

• Rep. Scott Dieckhaus – 0%
• Rep. Paul Curtman – 14%
• Rep. Dave Hinson – 8%
• Rep. Dave Schatz – 14%
• Sen. Brian Nieves – 0%

Congratulations to Paul Curtman and Dave Schatz for breaking out of the single digits. For all the scores: 2011 Legislative Scorecard.

I suppose it will come as no surprise that Brian Nieves is participating in something called “The 2nd Amendment Freedom Rally & Gun Show.” Nor will it shock anyone that the door prize is either a Glock 23 or 27, or that there will be “AR-15 and other “Black Gun” demonstrations” and “a heart pounding, adrenalin pumping, ‘Shoot – Don’t Shoot’ simulator used to train Police, SWAT and FBI on quick, real life shooting scenarios!”

But I think a lot of people might be surprised to learn that the event is being held at the Franklin County Baptist Association Building and, according to Nieves’ email announcement, we have a “God Given Right to Protect Ourselves and the 2nd Amendment.” Funny, I don’t recall that part in the Bible.

It takes some effort to simultaneously bastardize Christianity and The U.S. Constitution in one single event but I think Nieves and the local Baptist Association have managed to pull it off.

Brian Nieves “Call Me Crazy” ringtone

We can have a difference of opinion. We can even spin the facts one way or another to fit our point of view. Sometimes we might even get our facts wrong. I know I have. But to willfully write down words you know to be untrue and then commit them to print is the mark of a liar. That’s what the Washington Missourian has done by publishing Brad Hildebrand’s most recent letter about me. In it Hildebrand says I complimented his radio station and was a regular listener. But he and Bill Miller both know that’s not true.

This is the letter I wrote that Hildebrand was responding to:

On June 4 The Washington Missourian published a letter to the editor by Brad Hildebrand, the general manager of a local radio station, in which he defended Sen. Brian Nieves’ regular practice of bullying by writing …

“I was bullied as a kid. It made me tougher and a better person …”

Apparently Hildebrand’s childhood experience didn’t make him tough enough. In a new letter published on June 28 he laments that he’s “being hit with the shrapnel and becoming collateral damage due to inaccurate statements and false characterizations of my stations and me personally.”

What did he expect?

Hildebrand traffics in vitriol. His type of radio programming thrives on confrontation and personal attacks. This is how he makes his living. He’s not some innocent bystander. But when the personal attacks are aimed at him he falls to pieces.

If Hildebrand is going to profit from giving mean-spirited carnival barkers like Nieves a microphone to spew his own brand of “inaccurate statements and false characterizations,” then he should expect to get caught in the crossfire once in awhile.

If he can’t handle that he should pick a different radio format. Until he does he should stop his bellyaching and spare us the sob stories.

Hildebrand’s response is not simply an “inaccurate statement” or “false characterization.” He is openly, knowingly lying, and the Missourian has gone along with it. Sure, it is a schoolyard taunt on the same maturity level as “I know you are but what am I?” That’s what people like Hildebrand do when they are backed into a corner and can’t defend themselves through logic or reason. I get that. I expect that from people like him. Lying is his fallback position. It’s his stock and trade. It’s why he is so comfortable featuring other dishonest people like Brian Nieves on his radio station. But I thought perhaps Miller was different. I thought he had a bit more integrity. I thought he had been around long enough to know the difference between fact, opinion and bald face lying. I guess I was wrong. In the end, I have to remind myself they are all part of the same tribe. Conservative. Authoritarian. Liars.

Charles Jaco featured the long-term unemployment situation with this report on last night’s news and again this Sunday morning.  He notes that the low-wage service sector jobs like those being offered at job fairs don’t even come close to the manufacturing jobs lost in the St. Louis area the last several years.  A couple friends of mine – John Caragher and Mike Moore are interviewed and give some real perspective on the difficulties of the unemployed. 

Yesterday there was a protest at the district office of Representative Fuhr, one of the Lembke, Nieves gang that filibustered an unemployment extension until the initial 26 weeks of eligibility for Unemployment benefits had been reduced to 20 weeks.  Missouri is currently the only state in the nation with only 20 weeks of unemployment benefits.  So if you get laid off or terminated and it takes more than 20 weeks to find a job, thank Senators Lembke and Nieves for the “opportunity” and “choice” to withdraw funds from savings just so you can continue looking for work.

I’d heard rumors this one was coming down the pike and here it is. Shawn Bell has filed a personal injury lawsuit against Brian Nieves in Franklin County accusing him of “false imprisonment, “assault” and “intentional infliction of emotional distress,” for an altercation last August, according to FiredUpMissouri.com.

And hoo boy, is Nieves going to be angry. Those evil, subhuman, thugs at the Missouri Courts have gone and published his home address on the internet, putting his family at risk.

Screen capture from CaseNet