St. Louis's Democrat Machine

One party rule in both St. Louis city and county has atrophied the heartland of America. That one party, the Democrat Party, has built a machine lubricated with crony capitalism that bends justice to further its own political ends. We’ve witnessed the effects of this machine on the national stage a couple of times. In one instance we watched as justice was delayed for Kenneth Gladney only to eventually be denied as the Rev. Elston McCowan and Perry Molens were exonerated of assaulting Gladney. In another instance, the University of Missouri St. Louis’s (UMSL) course in Labor Studies seemed to advocate violence as a tactic in union negotiations yet no charges are brought when one of the professors is alleged to have assault someone. Those two cases are emblematic of the crony politics that reaches from St. Louis to Missouri’s capitol in Jefferson City and even to Washington, DC.

St. Louis has a long history of voting irregularities including dead people and pets casting ballots. While the situation has improved, there are still concerns about vote fraud. More worrisome is the collusion between Secretary of State Robin Carnahan’s (D-MO) office and ACORN:

A staffmember of the Missouri Secretary of State was directly contacted by ACORN to secretly coordinate a press strategy for the suing of the state of Missouri.

This email thread is the clearest proof that Robin Carnahan was not only aware of, but her staff colluded with Project Vote to sue the state of Missouri, without harming Robin Carnahan.

That suit would provide $500,000 to the left-wing lawyers at ACORN and Project Vote (sister organizations) from the state of Missouri.

Robin’s brother, Tom, does not hold public office, but he did receive $107 million dollars from the stimulus bill to build wind farms:

…[Tom Carnahan] figured out how to work the system so he wouldn’t have to have his brother and sister do illegal things to make him rich. It doesn’t matter if [Russ Carnahan (D-MO)] was handing money envelopes to government officials. He didn’t need to.

That’s a great example of the crony capitalism of the St. Louis Democrat machine: enact legislation that enriches your family members and donors. While the Carnahan’s have figured out how to turn public money into family heirlooms without resorting to envelops of cash, their comrades in the city are sometimes more direct about their financial needs:

U.S. District Judge Henry Autrey ordered 39-year Talibdin “TD” El-Amin of St. Louis to serve 18 months in federal prison and two years of supervised release for soliciting and accepting a bribe of $2100. He was also ordered to pay back the bribe money.

A few years earlier, TD El-Amin’s wife, Yaphett El-Amin, lost a primary race for the Missouri State Senate to Jeff Smith. In November of 2009, Smith was sentenced to a year and a day for obstructing justice. Those charges stemmed from an election filing in his 2004 bid for the US Congress. A bid he lost to Russ Carnahan.

Earlier this month, Carnahan staffer Sara Howard took a job with St. Louis County Assessor Jake Zimmerman. Zimmerman was elected to his County Assessor position in April. During the short campaign, the crony capitalism of St. Louis county property assessments came to light:

Jake’s father resides at 736 Audobon. Searching on the county website, we see this.

In 2010, The value of the house drops from $687,100 to $572,800,000….

Stuart Zimmerman’s assessment dropped 16.635%. The closest neighbors saw only a 2-3% decrease, with many receiving very large increases.

In addition to a revolving door between county Democrat campaigns and county offices, there’s another revolving door between the main stream media and St. Louis city hall:

Post dispatch editorial writer Eddie Roth was hired by Mayor Slay for a cash strapped City of St. Louis. The salary is $75,000 for a made up position of Chief Performance Officer. This is a prelude to city control and is ominous to city taxpayer and police officer alike. This blatant payoff to Mr. Roth explains why the Post Dispatch has been the water boy for the Slay administration.

I wonder if Eddie Roth’s pay and benefits may have been put to better use saving one of the thirty city firefighters that were let go earlier in the year due to budget cuts. Budgets are all about priorities and politically motivated sinecures top that list.

Not all Democrat campaign workers get a job after the election. Some get a favorable nod from the justice system. Last summer someone firebombed Russ Carnahan’s campaign office. That bit of domestic terrorism is allegedly the work of a Carnahan campaign worker. To my knowledge, no charges have ever been filed.

That’s similar to the lack of charges in the alleged assault on blogger Adam Sharp by industrial sabotage lecturer Don Giljum. Still, no charges have been filed against Giljum despite video evidence, physical evidence, and witness testimony corroborating Sharp’s account of the event.

You’ll recall that Giljum and co-lecturer Judy Ancel taught a Labor Studies course at University of Missouri. The course used a video connection between St. Louis (UMSL) where Giljum led the class and Kansas City (UMKC) where Ancel lectured. Philip Christofanelli wrote about his experience as a student in the course as well as the conspiracy among administrators to try to punish him.

The injustice of a lack of charges against Giljum pales in comparison to the judicial travesty that’s befallen Kenneth Gladney. Gladney’s assailants, Rev. Elston McCowan and Perry Molens, were cleared of wrong doing though McCowan, a former St. Louis mayoral candidate on the Green ticket, did admit to hitting Gladney:

McCowan, a Baptist minister, got chuckles in the courtroom when he testified that he didn’t turn the other cheek because it “hadn’t gotten hit yet.”

Pastor Harris Himes who witnessed the attack on Gladney and agrees that this was a miscarriage of justice listed several problems with the case the county brought as have others. With McCowan and Molens’s expensive defense attorney, D’Agrosa, and a favorable court it looks like justice is for sale in St. Louis.

Adding insult to these injustices are the inexplicable actions of Missouri Republicans (yes, Republicans) in the state’s General Assembly. They have orchestrated a special session to consider an Economic Development (EcoDevo) bill. That bill includes funding for an Aerotropolis (sometimes called the China hub) to be built around Lambert-St. Louis airport. Approximately, $300 million dollars of tax credits are earmarked for the construction of warehouses; however, there are already 18 million square feet of available warehouse space in the area. However, it’s even better than that:

…new warehouses can only be built in “gateway zones”. Those zones can only be created by County Executive Charlie Dooley (D) in St. Louis county or Mayor Francis Slay (D) in St. Louis city. In short, Missouri’s Republican controlled General Assembly, led by Speaker Steve Tilley (R), wants to oil the St. Louis Democrat machine with $300 million dollars to dole out to their cronies.

It is time to put an end to the Tilley-tropolis bill and take away some of the lubricant for St. Louis’s Democrat Machine.