Cowards in the Statehouse

The Republicans have cancelled two town-hall meetings with Missouri citizens hurt by the Medicaid cuts that have gone into effect with Republicans in control of all the branches of state government. The meetings they have cancelled are especially cowardly: The meetings they cancelled were to be held in Cape Girreaudeau and Springfield...The two impoverished areas of south Missouri that put them in power, they promptly punked. Make no mistake. Matt Blunt is from Springfield, and his father, Roy Blunt, the new Majority Leader, represents the area including Springfield in the US House.

Southwest Missouri, and the boot heel of the southeast experience some of the most grinding poverty in the country. The people there are reliant upon Medicaid because there are no jobs in the rural areas, and the few that do exist don't provide benefits. The people in the southern half of the state are the reason he is in office. The college towns of the northwest and northeast parts of the state, and the metro areas of Kansas City and Saint Louis went strongly enough for McCaskill that Blunt would not have pulled it out without a stronger than average showing where he had home-field advantage. And while they were voting for two Blunts, they stayed on that side of the ticket and sent several new Republicans to the statehouse. It is turning out that that was a big mistake.

What has happened in Jefferson City since January is unconscionable. Those freshmen Rethuglicans are the ones who, when the cuts were being debated, made predatory animal sounds when a Democrat likened the cuts to a National Geographic special that shows how predators go after and kill the weak and infirm.

After that episode I called my 22-year-old son and asked him if he had heard the story reported, or had he read the paper. He told me he had and I asked him what he thought. He said "I think their mothers failed. If I ever acted like that, my age and position wouldn't matter, you would march into the chamber, drag me out by the ear, and hold me bent over in half while you called a press conference on the capital steps to apologize for me, and to extract an apology from me."

I had to admit he knows his mother. Ask him some time about the time I disrupted a meeting of his high school soccer team that was getting ready for Parade Magazines annual "Make a Difference Day." He went to Catholic School, but for education reasons, not for religious reasons. He had been enough of a smartass in religion class - and put it in writing! - that the Sister called me. I went to her room and read what he wrote. I said "Excuse me, Sister. I will be right back." I went down to the first floor where Tyler was in his meeting and I excused myself when I entered and walked to where he was sitting and grabbed his ear. I held it all the way to the third floor. When we got back to Sister's classroom, Tyler was ready to apologize, and they were his own words. He told Sister that his own emerging beliefs were his, and no matter what they would eventually be, he had no right to disrespect her beliefs and do so in such a crude and crass manner. He was a junior and co-captain of his soccer team. He then went back to his meeting and told everyone what he had done and then he said "And you saw what My Mom did to me. So I apologize to you all that my behavior disrupted our meeting." (Tyler had something to go on when he made that prediction about what would happen if he were ever to exhibit such poor manners in public.)

I never heard a word of mortification come out of the mouths of any of their mothers. One politicians mother did laugh it off like it was a funny, funny joke and the "silly 'ole liberal media was jest blowin' this whole thang way out of proportion!" And I wonder how they got that way? If she is representative, I don't wonder any more.