Kander issues statement on passing of ethics legislation

Rep. Jason Kander, D-Kansas City, issued the following statement concerning the passing of ethics legislation today:

This bill represents an improvement over current law, but I will not declare victory over corruption when we have merely tip-toed into the fight. I voted today to limit political money laundering, outlaw the obstruction of ethics investigations, and expand the powers of the Missouri ethics commission.

However, I’m disappointed that we missed an important opportunity to restore campaign contribution limits, to prohibit lawmakers from working as political consultants for one another, to close the revolving door between legislators and lobbyists, or to disclose potential conflicts of interest. That is why I whole-heartedly support the comprehensive, bipartisan ethics bill passed by the Speaker’s special committee on ethics. As I said when I filed a bipartisan proposal last year, my bill alone cannot tackle the ever-evolving and wide-ranging problem of public corruption.

There is lots of work remaining. I will continue my efforts to advance true, comprehensive ethics reform to a vote in the next legislative session.

Nodler: Thank you for the opportunity to serve

In his latest report, issued on the final day of the 2010 legislative session, Sen. Gary Nodler, R-Joplin, thanks his constituents for eight years in the Senate:

The close of the 2010 legislative session brings with it the end of my final term as your state senator.  For eight years, I have been honored to serve the 32nd Senatorial District and I feel proud of the accomplishments that have been made.  The Senate has been an enjoyable place to work, and I have truly appreciated this chance to continue my time as a public servant.  

I was first elected to the Missouri Senate in 2002.  This was a particularly important time for the state Legislature due to the advent of term limits.  Voters approved an amendment to the state’s constitution in 1992 limiting the years a legislator may serve in the General Assembly.  The amendment excluded from term-limit calculations any legislative service initiated before the amendment’s effective date.  During my first two years in the Missouri Senate, I had the privilege of being able to serve with some of these experienced legislators.  This experience of working with and learning from some of Missouri’s best lawmakers truly enriched me as a senator.

The pace and attitude of the Legislature today is certainly different than when I began my service, but the strength of the Missouri Senate continues to lie in the people who make it function.  This includes my 33 current colleagues as well as the many senators who have worked with me throughout the past eight years. Of particular mention, I would like to thank Barbara Mustoe, who has been a part of my staff since I began in the Senate and remains a stabilizing force in my Capitol office.  Jake Heisten, who began in my office in 2006, has done a great job in the district during the past year.  There are also the many Senate departments and staff to highlight, including research, appropriations, communications, caucus staff, and so many more who have made serving in the Missouri Senate a joy.   

Most of all, the people to thank for my years of service are you—the people of the 32nd District.  You are the ones who have motivated and inspired my work.  There were so many times during my Senate career when I have been proud of the many generous, dedicated, and accomplished constituents in our communities.  The 32nd District is my childhood home, and I believe it includes some of the best citizens in this state.  Thank you, my neighbors and fellow citizens, for giving me the opportunity to serve you. 

As I pass the torch on to the next senator for the 32nd District in 2011, my office in Jefferson City remains open to take your phone calls and respond to your correspondence.  During the interim, I will continue these weekly columns and will issue news releases as events and items of interest arise. 

Government: Ellefsens should spend four to five years in prison

Federal prosecutors are asking that Brian and Mark Ellefesen, convicted in 2009 of fraud and filing false income tax returns, be sentenced to four to five years in prison.


In a sentencing memorandum filed Wednesday in U. S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri, Assistant U. S. Attorney Steven Mohlhenrich said that Brian Ellefsen's claim that he should get a lighter sentence because he voluntarily paid $480,000 in back taxes should be disregarded, since he did not make the payment until after he learned he was under criminal investigation.

"Defendant Mark Ellefsen did not pay a dime of restitution. In 2005 and 2006, after being informed of the grand jury investigation, and in an attempt to avoid indictment, Brian Ellefsen filed amended personal returns which partially acknowledged the fact that he had evaded taxes

for the years 1997 through 2002. Defendant Brian Ellefsen attempted to buy his way out of a crime."

Mohlhenrich noted that Brian and Mark Ellefsen had been warned time after time by various persons that the offshore account scheme in which they were participating was illegal.

"Nonetheless, Defendants made the decision to use, and continue to use, the Aegis trust system to hide over a million dollars from

the IRS."

Ellefsen asks for home incarceration, community service

In a sentencing memorandum filed Thursday in U. S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri, Carthage accountant Mark Ellefsen asked to be allowed to serve his time at home and be allowed to do community service.

In the eight-page document, Ellefsen's attorney notes that Mark Ellefsen "did not participate" in the tax avoidance scheme that has him and his brother Brian, a Carthage physician, facing a June 2 sentencing after being found guilty of fraud and filing false tax returns.

M. Ellefsen's participation in the scheme was outlined in the documents:

The Aegis Trust System was started in Chicago, Illinois, by Edward Bartoldi, a graduate of Harvard Law School, and Michael Vallone. The Internal Revenue Service began its nine-year investigation of Aegis in June 1996. Undercover agents, such as Michael Priest, were fully involved with Aegis by 1998, even attending offshore seminars. At one point, the Aegis system was presented to the Pennsylvania and Ohio Bar Associations during CLE’s.

At another, the system was presented at insurance seminars as a legitimate way to decrease taxes and increase the ability of one to make charitable contributions. In hindsight, one wonders how such things could happen, but they did. And when they did, these events were used to affirm and reaffirm the legitimacy of the Aegis Trust System to its clients nationwide. Fancy offices and limousines and inches thick manuals packed with faux legalities were all deployed against Aegis’ own customers to convince them they were doing something that was perfectly legal, something that the nation’s elite families did all the time. When a question was raised by a client, Aegis made certain that the advice they received was all “in house.” A cease and desist order was never sought to prevent Aegis from doing business. 

At its height, Aegis had over six hundred clients. Only a handful of clients were prosecuted; the rest were settled civilly.

Brian Ellefsen became a client of Aegis after he was solicited by a so-called “tax and trust expert,” Jim Quay, who was the brother of an Emergency Room doctor working at McCune-Brooks Hospital in Carthage, Missouri. The initial sales pitch was asset protection from malpractice and divorce, along with substantial tax avoidance. As office manager, Mark Ellefsen was asked by his brother to look into the Aegis program.

Mark Ellefsen did not personally participate in Aegis program and there has never been a question as to the accuracy of Mark Ellefsen’s personal returns. With regards to his personal returns, Mark has always been an honest taxpayer. Mark Ellefsen was paid a straight salary as office manager and received no economic benefit from his brother’s participation in the Aegis scheme. Mark Ellefsen erroneously believed that he was not personally responsible for the way his brother chose to handle his income taxes.

Apart from his involvement in this incident, Mark Ellefsen has always been a law-abiding citizen. From August 1994 until March 1995 he served as a police officer with the St. Louis County Police Department. Mark enlisted in the United States Army in 1988. Since that time he has provided exceptional service and was commissioned in 1991. Records from the U.S. Army National Guard confirm his exceptional service and he has numerous positive evaluations. Mark has been described as a highly-disciplined soldier.

Later in the filing, M. Ellefsen's lawyer make the argument for a lighter sentence:

It is submitted that a sentence of home incarceration combined with community service would be sufficient to reflect the seriousness of the offense, protect the public from future crimes, promote respect for the law, and provide just punishment. A sentence of home incarceration and community service is still very serious and would provide deterrence to others who would consider engaging in such conduct. Mark Ellefsen certainly understands the seriousness of his offense. He has learned a tremendous amount from the experience and has vowed to never be involved with this type of activity

again.

Mark Ellefsen has not committed an act of violence and the public should not require any protection from any possible future crime.

The document also noted that a lighter sentence would enable M. Ellefsen to be able to make restitution to victims of the crime.

McCaskill; Stop gambling with our economy

In this op-ed column, Sen. Claire McCaskill stresses the need for more accountability on Wall Street:

There's an old expression for gamblers: ‘the House always wins.' Whether the gambler wins or loses, the casino always makes money. For too long Wall Street has gambled with our economy and gotten rich off the backs of hard-working American families.

After they brought our financial system to its knees, Wall Street executives walked away with multi-million dollar compensation packages. Now that our economy is beginning to show signs of recovery, it's time to change the rules of the game so that this kind of thing won't happen again. We need better oversight and accountability on Wall Street. We need transparency in the derivatives market, and we need to give regulators the authority to break up failing banks so that institutions will never again be ‘too big to fail.'

As much as I hated the idea of bailing out a failing industry, in 2008 if we had let the big banks go under our country's economy would have collapsed entirely. That's why you saw John McCain, Barack Obama, and Kit Bond all agree that the financial rescue package was necessary. And although the government has been repaid most of the bailout money with interest, we need to now turn our attention to preventing future bailouts.

For too long, big banks and credit card companies have held all the cards, and that can't continue. As the Senate considers Wall Street reform legislation in the next few weeks, I will be looking for some key measures to be included in any legislation so that American taxpayers are never again left holding the bag for Wall Street.

Banks must be held accountable for their risky behavior. Because the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) couldn't intervene with big investment banks as they can for smaller banks, Congress was forced to choose between providing financial assistance or facing complete collapse of our credit markets nationwide. By giving the FDIC the authority to take over and break up failing financial institutions, to replace the management and to ensure that responsible parties bear the losses, we can move away from the idea of ‘too big to fail.'

We also need to properly monitor and constrain risk-taking at the largest Wall Street firms. America has grown and thrived because of our ability to invest in good ideas and good people. That fundamental principal should never change, but we simply can't allow big banks to abuse the system by taking enormous risks with our economy.

The rules we are proposing are common sense. Banks shouldn't be allowed to leverage 30-1 bets with money they don't have. We need to bring transparency and accountability to the derivatives markets, ensuring that complicated, exotic financial transactions are transparent, and that both parties have the capital to make good on transactions.

During my recent small business roundtables around Missouri, I heard repeatedly from community bankers that they are nervous about any increase in regulation. I am doing my best to make sure that we don't increase the burden on the small guys who are already highly regulated and who didn't cause this crisis in the first place. Rather, this is about leveling the playing field for the small community banks by making sure that big banks and other non-bank financial institutions can't continue to game the system.

After experiencing this economic recession and seeing how it is affecting average people's pensions and small businesses' ability to get loans, it's clear to me we can't afford to let Wall Street go back to the same old tricks. Big banks have got to start putting some skin in the game for the risks they're taking. It's time to stop selling America short.

Joplin Globe hangs Chart reporters out to dry

(The following is my post on today's Daily Kos.)

A tradition of journalism I have admired since the first day I worked for a small town weekly newspaper in 1977 has been the way newspapers stand up for college and high school journalists when they run afoul of the powers that be.

Newspapers, whether in metropolitan areas or in the backwaters of the United States, have banded together to aid student journalists who refuse to back down in the face of overwhelming pressure.

I had the privilege of being one of those newspapermen who backed the youngsters and I never hesitated. The First Amendment is the backbone of this nation, and its first line of defense should always be those who practice journalism.

Sadly, in these days when newsmen are no longer in control of their business and have seen it run into the ground by a neverending stream of those who have risen through the advertising ranks, it is no longer a given that newspapers will defend the First Amendment.

In Joplin, Missouri, the city that I call home, the newspaper appears set on providing a roadblock to the First Amendment and leaving a group of courageous young journalists and their advisor out to dry.

Controversy has never been a stranger to Missouri Southern State University’s student newspaper, The Chart. The newspaper has provided a steady stream of top-notch journalists to Missouri and in doing so has received many honors.

The newspaper has never been tested as much as it has since the hiring of Bruce Speck as the university president two years ago.

Speck was the only person to interview for the most important position on campus and since taking the helm he has been at the center of much criticism, both for his management style, his efforts to dismantled the university’s much praised international mission, and an abortive, secretive attempt to bring a medical school to Joplin.

The Chart has been on top of each controversy involving Speck, thanks to the hard work of Editor Brennan Stebbins and the guidance of advisor T. R. Hanrahan. For that diligence, Speck, his aides or board members have removed copies of the newspaper from a recruiting fair, have done their best to undermine it in the community, including the use of planted comments on my blog, The Turner Report and on other venues, and have threatened Hanrahan’s livelihood.

The community’s “professional” newspaper, The Joplin Globe, has been 10 steps behind The Chart on every MSSU story, but for a short time appeared to be making an effort to catch up.

Bruce Speck was under so much fire; he completely stopped talking to the media. All requests to talk to him had to go through his public information director, and every one of those requests was denied.

Enter Michael Beatty.

Beatty, the former publisher of the Baltimore Examiner, took the top position at the Joplin Globe at the beginning of the year. And if there was any hope that he would usher the Globe into a brave new world of hard-hitting journalism it ended April 6.

As I noted on a Turner Report post last night, Beatty sent an e-mail to Bruce Speck, which revealed that the Globe had dropped public information requests on items that could have embarrassed Speck, offered to arrange a meeting with him, Speck, and the Globe’s editor to give him “examples of positive stories” the Globe wanted to run about MSSU, and offered Speck advice on how to manage the news.

I suppose it comes as no surprise that the university is a major advertiser in the Globe, as are those who have been pushing for a medical school in Joplin.

So it is sad, but no surprise, that Michael Beatty failed to follow the rich tradition of newspapermen who battled to defend the First Amendment.

And it is no surprise that he has left Brennan Stebbins and the band of intrepid reporters at The Chart, to fend for themselves.

There is one consolation to the story, however. Michael Beatty’s e-mail to Bruce Speck was not uncovered through a leak from some disgruntled university employee. It was revealed through good old-fashioned reporting.

The e-mail came to light thanks to a Freedom of Information request from the Chart.

Now that is the First Amendment in action!

Joplin Globe publisher to MSSU President: Is there anything else you would like us to kiss, Bruce?

It is an outcome only Bob Barker can appreciate.

The Joplin Globe, southwest Missouri's fierce watchdog protecting the taxpayers' interests, has officially been spayed and neutered.

An e-mail sent from newly-minted Globe Publisher Michael Beatty to Missouri Southern State University April 6 shows that the Globe dropped attempts to dig deeper into the troubled situation at the university, offered to bring Editor Carol Stark to meet with President Bruce Speck to give him "examples of positive stories" the Globe wanted to run about MSSU, and offered Speck advice on how to manage the news.

The e-mail, which was released through a freedom of information request by the one newspaper that has actually been pursuing the truth behind the controversies at the university, The Chart, also indicates that the get-tough approach of Globe reporter Greg Grisolano to the MSSU story may be the reason why other reporters are now covering the university. It was Grisolano's Freedom of Information requests that Beatty stopped, in an apparent effort to curry favor with Speck, MSSU Board of Governors member Dwight Douglas, and most likely, the Joplin Area Chamber of Commerce leadership, which has steadfastly stood behind Speck, Douglas, and the doomed effort to bring a medical school to Joplin.

Beatty's love letter to Speck included the following passage:

"We wanted to do an arboretum story for Arbor Day, a story on the mansions (sic) renovation, a story on the Science Fair, of course, the Prairie Issue, and lastly on how you saved money for the university on the hiring of the two new VP's."

Beatty opens the e-mail by giving Speck the good news that the critical investigation into his presidency is apparently a thing of the past:

"You will hear that we are withdrawing our requests for your schedule, Rod's schedule, and your expenses."

After that opening, Beatty asks for the meeting with him, Carol Stark, and Speck. It looks as if access is the most important thing as far as Beatty is concerned:

"As I thought more about the issue of a spokesperson, I will share with you what I experienced in Baltimore. I was used to the spokesperson to be more of a facilitator of the organization on how the message should be controlled. Examples would be call to Rod (Surber) about a story, he knows how you want the story played out so he picks the spokesperson. This gives him/you appropriate individual time to develop the message. The process is really about controlling the message when working with the press and keeping transparency to the taxpayers."

          "I think we can find a middle ground so that all will be satisfied with the process."

Only in Michael Beatty's vocabulary can complete capitulation be defined as "a middle ground."

Jetton trial date to be set June 8

The trial date for former Speaker of the House Rod Jetton, R-Marble Hill, will be set June 8. The hearing was originally scheduled for today.

Jetton is charged with assault in connection with allegations of rough sex with a Sikeston woman. The case is being heard in New Madrid County Circuit Court on a change of venue from Scott County.

Missouri GOP has fun with Carnahan's contribution from Barbra Streisand

The Missouri Republican Party is having a field day with the information that Secretary of State Robin Carnahan received a $1,000 contribution from singer/actress Barbra Streisand:

Campaign finance reports reveal that Rubberstamp Robin Carnahan has taken campaign cash from quintessential Hollywood liberal Barbara Streisand.

 “Hollywood liberal Barbara Streisand ‘finally found someone’ who shares her radical views—and that someone is Robin Carnahan,” said Lloyd Smith, Executive Director of the Missouri Republican Party.  “Missourians are sick and tired of Hollywood elites like Barbara Streisand telling them how to think.  But now, Robin Carnahan is enlisting Babs’ help as she attempts to get back to Washington to rubberstamp Barack Obama’s liberal agenda.”

Streisand, who gave Carnahan $1,000 in February, is the poster child for the kind of West Coast, in-your-face liberal politics that Americans find so infuriating.

“Robin Carnahan has spent more time raising money on the East and West Coast than she has talking to real Missourians and answering questions from the public and the press,” said Smith. “By teaming up with Barbara Streisand, she is proving once again that she is out-of-touch with ordinary Missourians.”

Americans for Prosperity toasts Billy Long

Billy Long's Congressional campaign is touting a news release from Americans for Prosperity praising him for signing the group's No Climate Tax Pledge:

The Missouri chapter of the free market grassroots group Americans for Prosperity (AFP-MO) today applauded U.S. House candidate Billy Long (7^th District) for signing the group’s “No Climate Tax Pledge.” Long joins more than 500 lawmakers and candidates on the federal, state and local levels pledging to “oppose legislation relating to climate change that includes a net increase in government revenue.” 

“The one thing elected officials should be able to agree on is that global warming shouldn’t be used as an excuse to hike taxes on citizens and businesses,” said AFP-MO State Director Carl Bearden.  “We encourage all of Missouri’s elected officials and candidates for elected office to sign the pledge.”

Missouri signers include: Lieutenant Governor Peter Kinder; U.S. Representative and Senate candidate Roy Blunt; U.S. House candidates Vicky Hartzler and Bill Stouffer; as well as forty state representatives and five state senators.