Why Does Matt Blunt Hate School Administrators?

Blunt Announces School Spending Proposal:

Gov. Matt Blunt on Thursday proposed requiring public school districts to spend at least 65 percent of their money on student instruction.

Blunt's proposal would define instruction to cover everything from teachers' salaries and textbooks to the arts and athletics. But even so, Blunt said, a majority of Missouri's school districts currently would fail to meet the threshold.

Matt Blunt apparently didn't get the memo that the business of education is the business of education, not educating students, and that the goal of school districts is to lay waste their powers getting and spending. Instead of this sordid boon, Matt Blunt dares propose money go to education and not administration, consultants, reports, and whatever the hell else school districts spend their money on.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch's Bill McClellan Endorses Matt Blunt

Sort of:

....it's possible that Matt Blunt could someday be president.

He was governor at 34. If he is re-elected in 2008, he will be 38 when he starts his second term. He would then have to look around at the political landscape. If he thinks he can get the second spot on the ticket in 2012 - when he will be a 42-year-old two-term governor of a swing state - he can serve out his term. If he is not so sure about grabbing a spot on the ticket when he leaves the statehouse, he can run for the U.S. Senate in 2010 when Kit Bond, who will then be 71, is expected to retire. Blunt would run for the Senate as a sitting governor. He would be 40.

Well, not exactly, but although we at DMB 2008 are not journalists, we can take a soundbite out of context and run with it.

Bill McClellan then goes on to list Matt Blunt's accomplishments as governor, but he casts them in a negative light as one might expect. Smothering poor people, stealing cars for big business, whatever.

McClellan's scenarios, though, are too conservative for our taste (this sentence marks the first ever to include the words McClellan and too conservative); we would prefer, as you might expect, to see Matt Blunt president in 2009.

Matt Blunt Costs Metro Area Employers Money

Because as they continue hiring more people, they're paying out more in salaries and benefits:

In St. Louis , employment increased by 11,200 jobs, Kansas City employment grew by 8,700 jobs, Springfield added 3,300 jobs, Columbia employment grew by 2,100 jobs, Joplin added 1,800 jobs while non-farm payrolls were up by 700 jobs in Jefferson City and 300 jobs in St. Joseph.

"The consistency of these increases in jobs shows that more Missourians are heading back to work and that is good news for the families of our state," Gov. Matt Blunt said. "These very positive job numbers are also good for our economy as a whole and we are encouraged by the economic direction that our state is headed."

Columbia had the lowest unemployment rate among metropolitan areas at 3 percent while Kansas City topped the list at 5.1 percent. Unemployment was 3.5 percent in Jefferson City, 4.1 percent in Joplin, 4.7 percent in St. Joseph, 4.8 percent in St. Louis and 3.6 percent in Springfield.

Putting Missouri in the pocket of big business sorta seems to be putting big business's money into the pockets of Missourians, no?

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.