Committee to Elect Niemeyer for Missouri 15 - MO

Gerrymander What?

I had a nice question from a college student today about gerrymandering and what I thought.&#160; First, the layout for districts is, and I think pretty much always has been, a mess.&#160; Here's a good link to what this looks like on the state level for US Congressional districts, http://nationalatlas.gov/printable/images/pdf/congdist/pagecgd110_mo.pdf.&#160; In some areas, it makes some kind of sense.&#160; The outstate areas are largely cut on county lines, but things poke in and out seemingly at random.&#160; The 6th district contains Cooper county on the south side of the Missouri River, but loses Ray county.&#160; Why?&#160; Ponk and Taney counties are both chopped up in southwestern Missouri, St. Louis City is chopped in half by the 1st and 3rd districts, and St Charles county is chopped in half between the 2nd and 9th.&#160; None of this makes any sense.

So what would I do differently?&#160; First, districts are set according to population, so Missouri, with a population of about 6 million, and 9 congressional seats should have around 650-700,000 people in each district.&#160; Where possible, we want to follow logical lines, so we'll use city and country boundaries where we can, and we also want districts to be of similar makeup.&#160; Rural, urban, suburban and outlying areas also make boundary reasons.&#160; St Louis City, has a population of about 350,000, and the metro area adds another 1.6-7 million.&#160; Chopping St Louis city in thirds and connecting it outwards to areas at the edge of the metro mean both urban and rural interests could be substantially underserved.&#160; That's obviously not the best way to go about it.&#160; But the current map, with the 9th wrapping around for lower St Charles, the Second shooting up into Lincoln, and the 3rd down into Ste Genevieve is weird.

This is still much better than real messes like Chicago or what Tom DeLay did in Texas, but the US house is about population.&#160; The state house districts are much more confusing.&#160; The 15th district, where I'm running, has a little chunk of St Peters in it, and the western line dodges and weaves like championship boxer.&#160; Some places it follows roads, some streams, some it seems like someone said "look at the pretty butterfly!"

My personal opion?&#160; Draw the lines based on population, geography, and logical divisions.&#160; In some places that will favor one party, in some places it will favor the other, but it will be based on something real, not someone throwing spaghetti at a map.

Immigration

Immigration needs to be handled at multiple levels.&#160; There are something like 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States, but the numbers here in Missouri are minor, in the area of 60 to 90 thousand.

The biggest problem is there are good reasons for them to want to come here.&#160; They're called jobs and dollars.&#160; If you live somewhere and can’t make enough to feed your family or even yourself, it makes sense to go somewhere you can.&#160; That means the United States, and for some of them, that means Missouri.

While 60 to 90 thousand is a sizable group, it's more than manageable. So what do we need to do?&#160; First, go after employers who hire illegal immigrants.&#160;

We need to take away the incentives on employer side of the fence.&#160; There are employers out there, knowingly hiring illegal immigrants.&#160; And there are laws on the books for dealing with them, but prosecutors don’t like going after those employers because they’d be “eliminating jobs.”&#160; They’re full of crap.&#160; By hiring them under the table they’re stealing jobs from people here.&#160; By hiring them under the table, they’re dodging responsibilities that cost the rest of us even more money.&#160; This has to stop.

For a great example of this, head a couple hundred miles north to a little town called Postville, Iowa.&#160; This past spring, Postville had the biggest immigration bust in the history of the INS, with close to 400 people picked up.&#160; Part of the reason the warrant was issued to go in?&#160; The owners of the meat packing plant there had said in a prior deposition they couldn’t track who was working for them because they were all a bunch of illegals!&#160;

Have any of those employers been charged for breaking the hiring laws even though they knew what was going on?&#160; No.&#160; In fact the only charges brought were by Iowa, not for immigration issues, but because they were also violating child labor laws!

The important point is, we need to enforce the laws as they stand, and make the penalties make sense.&#160; By knowingly hiring illegals, employers are breaking the laws on hiring, and dodging their responsibilities.&#160; If you want to see who is really getting away with something, it's not illegals getting sub-minimum wage you should look at, it's the guy hiring them for four bucks an hour.&#160; That’s where to look, and it’s time for them to face the music.

Economy: Main Street, Wall Street and the White House

The following was sent to me yesterday and I wanted to share it as it sums up what is currently going on in Washington very well.

"Dear American:

I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude.

I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion dollars US. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you.

I am working with Mr. Phil Gram, lobbyist for UBS, who will be my replacement as Ministry of the Treasury in January. As a Senator, you may know him as the leader of the American banking deregulation movement in the 1990s. This transactin is 100% safe.

This is a matter of great urgency. We need a blank check. We need the funds as quickly as possible. We cannot directly transfer these funds in the names of our close friends because we are constantly under surveillance. My family lawyer advised me that I should look for a reliable and trustworthy person who will act as a next of kin so the funds can be transferred.

Please reply with all of your bank account, IRA and college fund account numbers and those of your children and grandchildren to wallstreetbailout@treasury.gov so that we may transfer your commission for this transaction. After I receive that information, I will respond with detailed information about safeguards that will be used to protect the funds.

Yours Faithfully Minister of Treasury Paulson"

This is an absolute train wreck.&#160; The White House and Hank Paulson asking for $700 Billion, with no oversight, and in fact statutory blocking of oversight written into their proposal is a complete insult to every person in this country.&#160; It is socialism for corporations, and social darwinism for everyone else.

I agree that something needs to be done or we could be looking at the same situation my grandparents saw during the 30's.&#160; I think we all agree, soup kitchens, and 20% of the country unemployed is no way to go.&#160; That does not mean handing over a blank check to a bunch that has demonstrated they are untrustworthy is any solution.

Bailing out Wall Street, where we have companies in bankruptcy handing out $2.5 Billion in bonuses to the people who ran the company into the ground, but not covering Main Street, where insane medical bills cause half of the personal bankruptcies (not people spending crazy, people whose lives are on the line) is just plain stupid.&#160; They're not taking care of the people, they're taking care of their rich buddies.

Government needs to be open, so people can check up on what it is doing, and honest, so we're not wasting all of our time doing that checking up.&#160; Right now it is neither.&#160; There may be people out there who dislike things I would support, but I'll be upfront about it.&#160; All you have to do is ask.

Healthcare

Missouri’s current health care is a black hole.&#160; In 2005, Governor Blunt and the Republican Legislature chopped over 100,000 people from the state Medicaid rolls.&#160; It’s their opinion that if you make $5000 a year that you make too much to receive healthcare benefits. They then say they’ve done a great job containing health care costs.&#160; Here at home in the 15th District, Sally Faith voted for those 2005 cuts.&#160; This past year, the issue came up again, and while she voted to put people back in the program, she then voted against the money to actually do it.

This is what that means.&#160; Those people have to go to the emergency room, the most expensive place to go for health care, because they have neither the money nor the insurance to go elsewhere.&#160; Of course, that means they can’t pay the bill, so hospitals have been increasing ER fees so they can get more money out of those people who can pay, namely, people with insurance.&#160; To keep their profit margins up the insurance companies respond by charging more in premiums.&#160; End result?&#160; More people who can’t afford insurance, who then go to the ER rather than regular health care providers, putting us right back where we started.

Containing costs?&#160; Thanks for the punch line Sally.

The first thing to do here is reinstate the Medicaid cuts from 2005; get health care costs get back under control.&#160; Second, for people without insurance, build sliding scale assistance based on income, especially for children.&#160; We NEED to get people out of the ER and doing normal preventative care.&#160; People change the oil in their cars, but don’t do it for their bodies.&#160; That’s stupid, and the broken health care system keeps it happening.

It also costs Missouri business.&#160; Last year Bombardier was trying to decide if they were going to build their new plant in Kansas City, or if they were going to build it in Montreal.&#160; They built it in Montreal.&#160; Why?&#160; It wasn’t wages, those are higher in Canada.&#160; It wasn’t environmental rules, those are tougher there too.&#160; One of the issues was health care.&#160; The complete lack here, and the complete coverage there made a difference.

Community Involvement

This wasn't a topic I was expecting to post about, but then I wasn't expecting tonight's events either.&#160; I spent much of this evening at Francis Howell High School with other members of the Democratic Party as part of Howellapalooza.&#160; It was quite the event, food, groups, bands and you name it, and I'd like to thank the school district for offering a table and inviting us out.&#160; Myself, Kristy Manning and Russ Craven were all there as candidates, and a number of other people were there representing the county party and groups, as well as a contingent from the Obama campaign.&#160;

In an event of this size, showing up to show support for the schools means something.&#160; Whether it be me, members of our party, a representative for the campaign or what have you, the 10 or so of us who came out for the party and various campaigns were there to show our support for the schools (and promote ourselves, it is election season after all, and denying that would be really cynical).

Being as this was Francis Howell High, and about as far away from the 15th District as you can get, I didn't really expect too many people from my district to be there, and it's hard to say how accurate that guess was, people were moving all over, so there was no way to talk to the entire crowd.&#160; What I did know was that the school district had offered the same table courtesy to the opposing party.

Now I've lived in the district for 8 years, but have not met our current representative, so I thought I would go over and introduce myself.&#160; Their table was in another area, so off I went, had a short chat with some of the folks with the MNEA (the teachers) but didn't see the opposition.&#160; This left me a bit confused, after all, one of the other people had gone past and said their opponent was present, so I went back and looked again.

I didn't see anyone because no one was there.&#160; Not only had they left, but they took the sign that said whose table it was with them.&#160; No one would know they weren't there, because no one would know whose table the empty one was.&#160; Now I don't know why no one was there, maybe they had more pressing affairs.&#160; All I know is there were a probably a few thousand people who cared about our schools there tonight, but with one exception (who left early with the card saying who was supposed to be there) the Republican incumbents weren't among them.

Energy, Part 2, Ethanol?

Ethanol is a bad idea whose time to stop has come.&#160; Expansion means building more refineries for a technology that will be dead in 10-20 years.&#160; The price of corn is going up now, and some want to divert more of it away from feeding us to feeding our cars?&#160; Bad idea. When all is said and done, all expanding ethanol will do is raise food prices, end up raising energy prices because our cars and stomachs are fighting for the land, and be a dead issue in 20 years anyway because we’ll have moved on to something else.&#160; The land should be feeding us, not our cars.

This is the same reason to not support E85 cars.&#160; They work in Brazil where they use sugar beets and can grow them everywhere.&#160; We can’t do that.&#160; We have 6 times as many cars, and over 100 million more people.&#160; It won’t work here. It’s not a technology problem, it’s a logistical one.&#160; While we might be able to overcome that logistical problem with the right technology, it would cost more than it would ever be worth, and by the time it was done, we'll have moved on to something else.&#160; We’re better off going to hybrid and electric cars, and building efficient vehicles, not going down dead ends.

We can help promote that at the state level.&#160; As vehicle fleets are replaced, we can move to the kinds of cars and trucks that make sense.&#160; We can promote those cars with tax incentives like reducing or eliminating the sales tax for people and private companies who are buying them.&#160; That sort of thing isn't a new idea, just the sort of wise use of tax policy that hasn't been seen in far too long.

Energy, Part 1, Windmills

It’s time to get the state involved, because it’s painfully obvious private investment isn’t getting the job done. Where do we start?

Build Windmills.
Across the state, wind maps show where and what works. In parts, big windmills work. Those big things you see off the coasts work just fine there. For most of the state though, the averages aren’t good for those. What those areas are good for though is a smaller windmill, and as it turns out, a little research finds a nice company building them right here in Missouri.

Where are those areas? All over, but a good place is the Missouri and Mississippi river bottoms. They’re not good for other types of infrastructure, demonstrated by this year’s floods, but for windmills they are just fine. Windmill foundations go down a good ways, and the towers are basically immune to high water. Additionally, river valleys tend to maintain air flow.

Building them creates jobs, both for their construction and maintenance. The power generation would save the state money, and the bottom line is that we could actually turn a profit for the state by selling energy back to the power companies. Wind alone won’t do the whole job, but it’s a great place to start.

Education

Since the Republicans took over in Jefferson City, per student spending in Missouri is down and it shows.

With 6 million people in this state, we should have about 25 of the top schools that showed up in Newsweek’s top schools list.&#160; Instead, we’ve averaged a dozen.&#160; Last year we had the #1 college football team in the country, and were 50th out of 50 in funding colleges and post-secondary education.&#160; We’re failing our children; they will not be getting the good jobs that we had.

That is not to say that college is for everyone.&#160; For a lot of people going to trade schools is a great option.&#160; We’ll always need plumbers, electricians, and other skilled laborers.&#160; But we also need engineers and computer programmers, and that means college.&#160; We’re not investing in either of those, and it means that companies don’t come to Missouri.&#160; They simply don’t feel that they can get the educated skill base they need.&#160; It means that people who grow up here don’t stay, because the good jobs go somewhere else, so they follow those jobs.&#160; It means the companies we have now leave because their kids are getting a second rate education here.

This is not the fault of Missouri teachers.&#160; There is only so much you can do when you’re overworked and underpaid.&#160; We need more teachers, and we need good ones.&#160; That means more money invested both in colleges and in K-12 to hire and keep them.

We can either do it, or we can be another Arkansas or Mississippi.&#160; I’d rather be a good Missouri than slugging it out for the worst education in the nation.

Labor Day

I'd like to welcome people to the website.&#160; On a daily basis I plan to update things with more information.&#160; So if you don't see something you want to know about, ask and I'll get the website upload what you want to know.&#160; Over the next month I'll post what I sent in to various issue groups, and that may tell why they support or don't support me.

What I will say right now is something I said to the first group to endorse me.&#160; I was asked, "Why do you want our endorsement?"&#160; My answer was, "I'm here because your members should know what I think and what I want to do.&#160; If you want to endorse me, that's your decision.&#160; If you don't want to, that's also your decision."&#160; Endorsing me was their decision, I simply told them what I thought, and how I felt and let them make up their own mind.

As voters, I would like you to vote for me and hope you do.&#160; That is your decision.&#160; I'll tell you about me, what I think, how I feel, and on Tuesday, November 4th, I hope you vote for me.&#160; I want to be your next representative and will do a better job representing your interests, and fulfilling the call our state motto makes.&#160; The welfare of the people shall be the supreme law.