Matt Blunt Takes Food From Mouths of Auto Dealers' and Leasers' Children

Blunt launches new policies for state vehicles:

Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt is taking steps toward saving the state more than a half million dollars a year in vehicle fleet costs.

The state is implementing two new efforts to reduce waste and cost for taxpayers, he said. The first policy requires employees using state vehicles to use an Internet-based tool, called Trip Optimizer, to calculate potential travel costs and find the most cost-effective travel option for instate trips.

In addition, the state is rolling out the Smart Lease program, which consolidates fleet leases and purchases and allows the state to refinance agencies' existing lease-purchase obligations, fund the energy-performance initiative and finance future equipment needs for the state.

When he's not busy cutting Medicaid roles, Matt Blunt cuts plane usage and makes driving more efficient among state employees. Someone not in the throes of hysteria about pet programs being cut or arbitrary lines in eligibilty being nudged might think it's remarkably consistent of the governor to try to rein in the state budget.

We at DMB2008 would be most disappointed in the direction the state would take when Matt Blunt is drafted onto the Republican ticket in 2008. But we can get over it.

DMB 2008 Recognized!

Missourians Fired Up! have recognized DMB2008 as a force with which to reckon in Missouri politics:

#9 - Brian J. Noggle: (last week: unranked) Noggle --the apparent ringleader of a triumvirate of delusional bloggers whose pre-posting routine may or may not include ingestion of heavy doses of peyote and other hallucinogens-- and his semi-regular lunatic ravings about a putative Draft Matt Blunt Presidential run in 2008 are really beginning to unnerve the Guv. While Matty B. is no doubt flattered than anyone would want to draft him for any task besides checking streetside dog carcasses in Al-Qaim for IED's, he could do without Noggle's incendiary headlines. His bonehead efforts at humor include such blogpost gems as "Matt Blunt Beats Mentally Disabled", "Matt Blunt Knocks Off the Disadvantaged", and "Matt Blunt Ex-communicated, Not Allowed in Right to Life Clubhouse." Noggle obviously has yet to figure out that the right wing has zero appreciation for irony --how else to explain their party's straightfaced and quasi-religious devotion to the star of such classic films as "Bedtime for Bonzo"? The guv is quickly losing patience with Noggle, leading to his Top Ten debut.

Thank you, Missourians Fired Up!, for this distinction as the only blog on the list! We here do seek to draw attention to the good things the governor does and highlighting his policies with which we agree; indeed, as readers know, these very qualities make him presidential timber for our libertariative leanings.

Matt Blunt: Puppet of Right Wing Christians?

Apparently not. Matt Blunt:

"Because I seek to make the right decisions, and because the relief of suffering is among our most basic values, I consulted my faith, conscience and the Scripture in considering medical research on new treatments and cures for terrible diseases,” Blunt told Missouri Baptists. “I support a ban on human cloning. Like this convention, I support research on stem cells from adult tissue. I believe that public dollars should support research with adult stem cells. As to SCNT -– somatic cell nuclear transfer -– I do not believe that life has been created, since there is no fertilized egg. If I believed the process created life, I would oppose it."

Richard Land:

Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, criticized Blunt's position, saying the governor is trying to play "word games" by using phrases that few understand.

"An embryo is a fertilized egg, period," Land told the Missouri Pathway newspaper in June. "The only difference between you and me and a fertilized egg is time."

If I am not mistaken, according to the scriptures, the difference between you and me and ashes and dust is time, too, but that's hardly a reasonable argument against dusting and vacuuming it. Believe me, I've tried it.

Phyllis Schlafly Looks Closer To Home

In her latest column, she mentions Matt Blunt favorably:

A majority of Americans agree with the statements that "judicial activism" has reached "a crisis," that judges "ignore traditional morality," that judges are "arrogant, out-of-control and unaccountable," and that judges who ignore voters' values "should be impeached."

The survey questions quoted what the lawyers obviously thought were the most extreme statements made by U.S. Reps. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, Lamar Smith, R-Texas, and Republican Gov. Matt Blunt of Missouri. Nevertheless, the majority of survey respondents came back with answers that said, in effect: Right on, we're fed up with the imperial judiciary.

The Matt-mentum builds!

(Previously: Phyllis Schlafly Needs To Look Closer To Home.)

Matt Blunt Ex-Communicated, Not Allowed In Right To Life Club House

Missouri Right to Life declares Blunt no longer 'pro-life':

Missouri Right to Life says it no longer considers Republican Gov. Matt Blunt "pro-life" because of his support for early stem cell research.

The declaration this week by one of the state's more powerful lobbying groups deepens a fissure with the self-described "pro-life" governor that formed during the past legislative session.

Although Blunt supported anti-abortion legislation, he opposed efforts by Missouri Right to Life to ban a form a stem cell research known as therapeutic cloning. More recently, Blunt expressed his support for a proposed ballot initiative that specifically allows the procedure.

We here at DMB2008 don't find a disconnection between wanting to prevent abortions and wanting continued exploration of scientific techniques that can improve actual life instead of continuing to champion potential life within clumps of cells which might or might not mature into living humans.

But we at DMB2008, some of us anyway, are particularly anti-life anyway.

Regardless, we support Matt Blunt in his desire to make Missouri a science-friendly place for research even at the expense of his support from knee-jerks. It's leadership, and it indicates integrity, that Matt Blunt is not in the pocket of even the most powerful of the Republican lobbying groups.

Matt Blunt Goes Into Lion's Den, Has Breakfast

Governor Matt Blunt attended a breakfast meeting of private organizations and defended state government funding cuts and emphasized the role of private organizations in helping those who cannot help themselves:

In the wake of state Medicaid cuts that ended services for 90,000 Missourians, Gov. Matt Blunt and social service agencies said Wednesday they must work together to help the poor.

Blunt, one of a panel of speakers on finding health-care and other solutions for the poor, told a St. Louis audience of 300 faith-based and other service providers that social safety nets are being threatened by the loads they bear. He cited a need to balance taxpayer-funded programs and those of non-profit agencies.

Blunt said economic growth in Missouri is essential to lifting people out of poverty, and his vision is to create an entrepreneurial environment in the state.

Of course, his message is lost on those whose very budgets are traded for increased prosperity and rising standard of livings to the people whom organizations claim to serve:

While the breakfast meeting emphasized public-private partnerships, the head of the agency that sponsored the event suggested these were not an avenue for the state to abdicate its role.

"We're not letting government off the hook," said Theresa Mayberry-Dunn, president and chief executive officer of Grace Hill Settlement House, a century-old social services agency that will lose $1.7 million in state assistance for its St. Louis health clinics for the poor as a result of recent Medicaid cuts.

Matt Blunt Puts Unemployment Form Processors Out Of Work

Matt Blunt apparently is driving unemployment office people out of work and unceremoniously dumping the unemployed into employment: Missouri Unemployment Remains at Lowest Level in Four Years:

Missouri's unemployment rate for September went from 4.6 percent in August to 4.8 percent last month. In August, Missouri's unemployment rate dropped a full point and both August and September figures are the lowest since 2001. The not-seasonally-adjusted rate was 4.6 percent in September, little different from August's 4.5 percent rate. A year ago, September's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 5.7 percent while the not-seasonally-adjusted rate was 5.9 percent. Since the beginning of the year, more than 38,000 new jobs have been created in Missouri.

"While I am pleased Missouri's unemployment rate continues to be at its lowest level in four years, there are certain times of year when employment numbers can fluctuate," Gov. Matt Blunt said. "Regardless of those fluctuations, we are encouraged that we have seen sustained employment growth throughout most of the year." Nonfarm payrolls showed 16,000 fewer jobs in September than in August, but this decrease seems mostly the result of timing for the beginning of the new school year. Some industries reported higher employment in September. Manufacturing employment was up by 1,100 jobs, while construction added 1,000. The group of "other services" including personal services added 2,200 jobs over the month.

Heartless, I tell you.

Matt Blunt Inspires Private Donations

Hidden within this story, we find encouraging signs of philanthropy rebounding in the country:

Private donors, including many small-town newspaper publishers, have contributed or pledged nearly $150,000, said Gary Kremer, executive director of the State Historical Society of Missouri.

It's good that historically-minded well-to-do have come together to raise money for a good cause which they find worthy and which they want to support. However, instead of an inspirational story, this piece prefers to bash fiscal responsibility and Governor Blunt:

The fundraising push comes as the society grapples with a 10 percent budget cut in the current fiscal year, coupled with an expected additional 3 percent cut in appropriations.

Those cuts come on the heels of a $55,933 “extraordinary withholding” made by Gov. Matt Blunt in June — the final month of the 2005 fiscal year — meaning the society has seen its budget cut by $173,000 in the past several months.

It is so much easier when you can force the taxpayers to support your pet causes while you spend your disposable income on the frivolities of life, is it not?

It proves, though, that fiscal conservativism doesn't cut the knees out of functions that the government has absorbed through diffusion from private groups; if those groups tasked their raised monies to actually doing things instead of merely lobbying for the state to do things, who knows what they might accomplish?

Matt Blunt Knocks Off the Disadvantaged

Within this story, we find out that Missouri's governor operates hit squads:

However, critics of the proposed Medicaid reimbursement rate increase say it's more important to help people who lack any kind of insurance, especially after legislation backed by Republican legislators and Gov. Matt Blunt knocked about 90,000 people off...

Well, some would imply that's what actually happened, here's what the paper really reports:

However, critics of the proposed Medicaid reimbursement rate increase say it's more important to help people who lack any kind of insurance, especially after legislation backed by Republican legislators and Gov. Matt Blunt knocked about 90,000 people off the Medicaid rolls this year.

This particular piece offers the soapbox to doctors who want more money from the state's till and those who support Medicaid and want the doctors to have more money from the till and want more people on the Medicaid rolls.

Lost amid the din, we can almost imagine the sound of common sense: that doctors who weren't losing money on the substandard Medicaid reimbursement for services wouldn't have to raise those standard prices on everyone else to cover the Medicaid shortage and the costs of accommodating bureaucratic paperwork and eager-to-earn whistleblowers looking for a score on a receptionist's misplaced decimal point (which is Medicaid fraud, don't you know, and whomever fingers a doctor for it gets a percentage of the proceeds).

Sorry, I exaggerate; there's no tinkling of common sense in the registers only dogs can hear contained within this story, and no sympathy for a fiscal conservative governor.

Matt Blunt Beats Mentally Disabled

Or so one might think from this St. Louis Post-Dispatch story:

For two years, the Missouri Department of Mental Health kept sending mentally retarded people to a privately run home, even though its owners had a history of abuse and neglect and were barred by state law from caring for them.

During that period, 11 residents at the Kansas City-area home were choked, slapped, kicked, pushed to the floor and hit with a broom. One resident died.

A state audit criticized the department for the using the home. The audit also found that three other homes - two in the Kansas City area and one in St. Louis - employed workers with criminal backgrounds to care for mentally retarded residents. Before they were fired, the three workers sexually abused residents at those homes. The department declined to identify those homes.

The findings have parents fretting about what will happen to their severely mentally retarded children if the state-run Bellefontaine Habilitation Center closes, as Gov. Matt Blunt wishes.

Governor Blunt doesn't support beating the disabled; he does, however, support some fiscal responsibility to the state taxpayers. Also, accidentally, it might turn out to be better for the disabled who rely on the state for their support if the state doesn't directly minister them:

Of those investigations, 1,180 - about 75 percent - involved mentally retarded residents living in homes run by private businesses. The remaining 392 involved residents in the state-run centers. There are 5,352 mentally retarded residents in privately run homes, about 81 percent; and 1,275 are in centers run by the state.

So 75% of investigations involve privately-run homes, but 81% of the state's disabled and cared for live in those homes. So it sounds to me that the mentally-disabled are slightly better off in the privately-operated homes than in publicly-operated homes. However, that statistical correlation cannot hysterically bash the governor, so let us, like the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, ignore it.