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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

In Case You Missed It…Lawrence calls out Rep. Hartzler for her hypocrisy. Love it…

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Former President Bill Clinton gave the commencement speech and received an honorary doctorate degree at the school’s commencement ceremony for graduate students at the University of Central Missouri in Warrensburg. 

UCM is finishing a $36.1 million energy retrofit this summer. The Clinton Foundation was closely involved with the work that began in 2009 and will involve a dozen buildings on campus.

From the Colbert Report

Committee hears bill to help Prop C implementation

Disputes over wording have held up 2008 renewable energy law

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – The House Special Committee on Renewable Energy on Tuesday held a hearing on legislation sponsored by State Rep. Jason Holsman that would fix flaws in a voter-approved law to expand and promote renewable energy in Missouri.

Proposition C, which 66 percent of Missouri voters approved in November 2008, requires that minimum percentages of electricity sold in Missouri by investor-owned utilities be derived from renewable sources such as solar, wind, biomass and hydropower. Differences over how certain provisions of the law should be interpreted, however, have kept the measure from being implemented.A series of electricity-generating windmills.

House Bill 613 sponsored by Holsman, D-Kansas City, would clarify that utility companies would only get credit for renewable energy generated and delivered to Missouri customers. Some companies have claimed the existing law allows energy created and sold in other states to count toward its Missouri obligations under Proposition C.

“If this fix doesn’t pass, utility companies could have Missouri consumers pick up the tab for renewable energy generated and delivered to California customers,” said Holsman, who chairs the House Renewable Energy Committee. “The intent of Missouri voters was to promote renewable energy in Missouri, not other states, and it is my goal to ensure that intent is followed.”

The bill also would establish a hard 1 percent annual cap on costs that utilities can pass on to consumers. The change is expected to save ratepayers $1.8 billion from what the Missouri Public Service Commission estimates the existing wording of Proposition C would allow companies to pass on to their Missouri customers.

The committee will vote on the legislation next week.

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The Monologue from The Tonight Show….mentions Missouri & Senator Cunningham at about the 4:40 mark

If like me, the conventional wisdom that Evangelical Christians are to be defined as members of the social conservative movement drives you crazy,  and you occasionally feel as if your religion has been hi-jacked with an interpretation that makes no sense to you what so ever, this article is for you.-JP

Being an Oxymoron

by Tony Campolo Tuesday, February 1st, 2011

A few years back I was a guest on Steven Colbert’s popular television show, The Colbert Report. He introduced me as an Evangelical who is liberal on social issues. Then he added, “He’s a living oxymoron!”

Sadly, his words reflect the way Evangelicals are regularly perceived. Here in the United States, Evangelical Christians have become so married to the Right wing of the Republican Party that it is hard for those outside our faith community to imagine that a significant minority of Evangelicals have socially liberal politics. Yet over its history, Evangelical Christianity has championed some of our country’s most progressive social movements. Charles Finney, the dominant evangelist of the nineteenth century, was a major player in the anti-slavery movement, and his revivals provided much of the impetus for the women’s suffrage movement of that era. Back in those days, Evangelicals pulled their churches out of mainline denominations not because the denominations were too socially liberal on the race issue, but because they were not liberal enough. William Jennings Bryan of Scopes Trial fame, the darling of early twentieth century Evangelicals, was a pacifist who opposed America’s involvement in war. I gladly take my place in his train.

The word liberal has become a political label of ill-repute among many Evangelicals. But if by social liberal, you mean someone who believes America should guarantee medical coverage for all of its citizens; fund the public schools in poor urban and rural communities at the same level as those in rich suburban neighborhoods; be committed to progressive environmental policies; give more than four-tenths of one percent of its federal budget to help the poor of other countries; and give up its militaristic adventurism-then I embrace the label with enthusiasm.

I’m one of those pro-life Christians who is convinced that the outrageous number of abortions each year are more due to right-wing economic policies than to Roe v. Wade. In a society where many poor women must work outside the home at a ridiculously low minimum wage just to survive, yet have no access to daycare for their children, we should not be surprised if they seek abortion when faced with an unplanned pregnancy. Yet many of the Religious Right Christians who share my pro-life sentiments tend to oppose enacting legislation that would enable poor women to give birth and keep their children. No wonder one of our critics says, “Evangelicals are people who believe that life begins at conception and ends at birth.” Too often it seems like we care about protecting the unborn, but we’re not willing to provide for the born.

During the Bush Administration, an African-American preacher in Philadelphia joined forces with the Religious Right and the White House when he spoke out against the nomination of “activist” judges to the Supreme Court who would interpret the law beyond what the framers of the Constitution intended. I wondered if this preacher thought about all the advances for minority peoples that were the fruit of activist judges. Liberal judges are the ones who integrated public schools with their 1954 ruling in Brown v. Board of Education.Activist judges are the ones who obliterated policies that had allowed for racial discrimination in real estate sales, employment, and education. In reality, almost all of the progressive rulings that decimated Jim Crow went well beyond the intensions of the framers of the Constitution, many of whom owned slaves. Oh, how quickly people forget!

There are those on the Religious Right who argue that caring for the poor and needy is solely the responsibility of the church, and should not be funded with taxpayers’ money. Yet it is clear in Scripture that God holds governments responsible for playing a significant role in providing such care. Consider the words of the prophet Isaiah who warned: Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people, making widows their prey and robbing the fatherless. (Isaiah 10:1-2)

Also, Jesus declared that the day would come when nations would be judged by how they cared for the poor: “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. (Matthew 25:31-32).

Allow me to add to my advocacy for certain liberal social policies a commitment to fiscal conservatism. This present government, so supported by most Evangelicals, has mortgaged the future of our children and our children’s children. This is a consequence of funding the war in Iraq and giving gigantic tax breaks to the richest people in our country, as well as to huge corporations such as price-gouging oil companies. Our national debt increases by close to $2 billion each week, with the People’s Republic of China being the major party picking up our loans. The communists will not have to bury us, as Khrushchev had hoped.  Soon they will own us.

It has been said that the difference between a politician and a statesman is that the politician looks to the next election while the statesman looks to the next generation. Given that assessment, we have an absence of statesmen down there in Washington, when it comes to the national debt.

The Bible speaks more about justice that it does about anything else-except for love. But in the end, justice is nothing more than love turned into social policies. It is my own commitment to justice, inadequate though it might be, that makes me the kind of person I am. To that end this Evangelical is more than willing to be labeled a social liberal, even if it does make me a living oxymoron.

Senator. Claire McCaskill

U.S. Senator, Missouri

Posted: January 21, 2011 12:17 AM Cross Posted from The Huffington Post

One Senate Rule That Has to Pass

A few months ago, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and I wrote a post about what we saw as one of the biggest threats to Senate progress: Secret holds that allow a single senator to torpedo any piece of legislation, without giving a reason or even identifying him or herself. At the time, a few holdouts kept us from getting the bill to stop secret holds passed. But now, the Senate is about to finalize our rules for doing business for the coming year.

And if we really want to break up the logjams keeping us from getting things done, we need to make sure stopping secret holds is one of the rules passed.

Secret holds block progress and hinder accountability — it is time for them go.

Not only have we seen hundreds of nominations undermined, and bill after bill sidetracked, but just last month, a secret hold was used to block a bill that would have helped us reduce fraud and waste in the federal government.

The U.S. Senate’s governing rules will set the stage for how every piece of legislation we consider is handled. If we really want new Senate rules that will help us improve accountability and improve efficiency, we can’t let secret holds continue to hold the process hostage.

In this time of too much politics and too little progress, do we really want to let senators with an axe-to-grind unilaterally stop anything they disagree with, in secret, and with no accountability?

We simply can’t allow these political games to stop us from getting our work done.

The vote could be in less than a week — we simply can’t afford to wait, because this may be our last chance in a long time. It’s a new year, and a new Senate, with a new opportunity to work together.

Those who want to stay in the shadows and avoid accountability have managed to derail our efforts to stop secret holds many times before — but this time, thanks to your support, I think we can finally get this important change passed.

So please, join me, and nearly 19,000 others, and insist that a ban on secret holds is included in the new Senate rules.

http://www.StopSecretHolds.com

Thank you for your attention on this crucial issue.