Governor’s Mansion: Everything Must GO!

1/27/08


Governor Blunt has lost his lease! All merchandise priced to move! Especially those pesky emails we don’t want the public to see! Missouri’s Republican governor Matt Blunt (son of Congressman Roy Blunt) announced to a stunned audience last week that he will not be running for reelection as governor. This was especially unexpected since he had been fundraising like Jerry Lewis and had already started running negative campaign ads against Democratic rival Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon. Hey Matt, what’s with the sudden 180? In his own words:

“What we set-out to achieve four years ago has been accomplished… After a great deal of thought and prayer, and with the knowledge that we have achieved virtually everything I set out to accomplish, and more…I feel we have changed what I wanted to change in the first term there is not the same sense of mission for a second.”

Wait, really? Your excuse for quitting is, essentially, “all done here!”? It appears so, which seems odd and flimsy at best and downright idiotic and suspicious at worst. It’s not like being governor is akin to being camp councilor, where, you know, when the summer’s over your job is fucking done. But hey, sure, political figures who are at the top of their game, 37-years-old and have done nothing wrong walk away from office all the time. About as often as Ann Coulter has experience periods of lucidity, I’ll wager. Oh, but don’t fret; Blunt is a Republican being investigated for wrongdoing, so naturally he tacked on this tired old piece of refuse:

“Melanie and our son William Branch mean the world to me. I have spent more time away from them than I would like. We are ready for the next chapter in our lives and I am looking forward to spending more time with them.”

Ohhhhhh, good gravy. The family card, Matt? You’re playing the family card? How could--oh sweet Jesus what's wrong with that kid? I don't want to be cruel, but are Blunt and his wife related? It looks like that thing from The Island of Dr. Moreau. Yeesh.

Why is Blunt really tucking tail? Basically, it’s a huge election year, and he’s a big, fat, smelly liability for the Republican Party. Not only is Blunt’s office and Blunt personally being investigated for knowingly deleting interoffice government emails (which are public record in Missouri and illegal to trash) but he was informed by his lawyer that they shouldn’t be doing it. Not only did Blunt continue the policy, but he fired his attorney Scott Eckersley, and then went into Eckersley’s personal email account fishing for information about to whom the scrupulous lawyer blew the whistle. If you have any doubts whether Blunt is guilty of this crime, one only has to turn to the press conference he gave a few weeks ago about the charges. Blunt took questions for about 3 minutes, then his eyes appeared to glaze over as he cut the reporters short in mid-question and almost sprinted from the room like a gazelle spotting a lion. It was very strange and hilarious.

As for the claim that Blunt has accomplished all he set out to do, he has had a not-unimpressive record. If you don’t care about people, that is. His big selling points in yesterday’s release were balancing the budget, boosting education, reducing unemployment, and medical care for the poor. Quickly, we’ll take them into account.

1. Balanced Budget
He did do this. Without raising taxes. All he had to do was gut Medicare and slash social services. However, if Blunt’s plans for this year were implemented, we were looking at a $400 million budget deficit in 2 years, according to the Missouri Budget Project.

2. Boosting Education
This seems to have been done, there was more money for some schools and universities, but I’m sure Hanni would know more about it than I would.

3. Reducing Unemployment
Again, he did accomplish this. For awhile. Unemployment hovered between 5 ½ and 6% in 2004 when Blunt took over. Between August of ’05 and July of ’07, unemployment ranged between 4.6 and 5.3%, with the average being 5%. It hasn’t been below 5% since then. I will say it’s not bad; even a 1 percentage point drop means 25,000 more people are working, but the 90,000 “new jobs” Blunt claims to have created is rather misleading.

4. Medical Care
Okay, frankly this one baffles me. Blunt’s balanced budget and cash for other programs pretty much came from dismantling huge swaths of Medicaid and other social programs. His program ended health care for 125,000 Missourians. Most cuts were:

A. 61,000 low-income parents — mostly working mothers — with incomes between 30 percent and 75 percent of the poverty line (between $4,800 and $12,100 per year for a family of three), after certain deductions;[2]
B. 4,600 senior citizens and people with permanent disabilities with incomes from $6,900 per year (for an individual) to $9,600;
C. 3,000 working people with temporary disabilities (receiving medical assistance under General Relief);
D. 1,150 people who recently left welfare for work;
E. 13,600 children and adults who would lose coverage because of stricter application requirements and increased paperwork; and
F. 24,000 children who would lose Medicaid (MC+) coverage because their families are unable to pay increased premiums.

http://www.cbpp.org/4-4-05health.htm

Since I’m running long I won’t even touch on the fact that Blunt has made it more difficult and supported legislation to ban pharmacists from distributing emergency contraception, or the fact that he would be pleased as punch if medicine and science in the Show Me State went back to leaches and ether.

So…you might say I’m skeptical when he dusts his hands and claims “we is done!” Not the worst governor we’ve ever seen, but I’m not sad to see him go. Also, what horrific things could possibly be in those emails for Blunt to risk deleting them even when he knew it was illegal? My guess: Weasel fights in the state office.


Sources: http://www.cbpp.org/4-4-05health.htm
Employment: Dept of Labor
http://www.kansascity.com/281/story/433207.html
Governor’s Press Release - transcript