Oh what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practise to deceive.
~ Sir Walter Scott

SEIU thug Elston McCowan just can’t seem to keep his story straight.

As 24thstate.com’s Jim Durbin points out, Reverend Elston McCowan is having some consistency issues with his version of the events on the night of Congressman Carnahan’s health care town hall.  His original story of that night’s events come from a St. Louis Post-Dispatch article published on August 8th.

But Elston McCowan, an SEIU staffer, said Gladney was actually an instigator. McCowan accused Gladney of attacking him as he walked to his car. McCowan said he suffered a dislocated shoulder.

“Out of nowhere, the guy just assaults me,” said McCowan, 47, of St. Louis.

McCowan’s quote makes it clear that he was jumped by Kenneth Gladney.  This wording makes it clear that there was absolutely no interaction between the two before the altercation.  If only McCowan would have stuck to this story.

After much backlash (and probably a lot of coaching from the SEIU), McCowan is changing his story.  His new version of events appears in, wait for it, Links: The International Journal of Socialist Renewal.

Walking outside, McCowan saw Gladney selling buttons of Obama in blackface and Obama smoking weed. Feeling insulted, McCowan asked why a black man would be hawking material denigrating the first black president as he pointed to one of the buttons.

“When I pointed at the button, Gladney slapped my hand. So I told him not to hit me and pointed at it again and repeated my question. He smacked my hand even harder, hit me several times and pushed me down. As I went down, I grabbed him by reflex to break my fall. I hit my shoulder and something popped. I lost consciousness for a moment but soon realised that Gladney continued to hit me.

“Another SEIU guy, Perry Molens, came over and told Gladney, ‘He’s a minister and won’t fight back. He can’t see out of one eye. Stop hitting him!’. When Gladney kept on, Perry tried to get him off of me and threw a punch in the process.

“I don’t know why Gladney had an attorney on hand, but his attorney came over yelling ‘You two attacked him!’. Gladney went off to find cops and told them to arrest us. The cops wouldn’t listen to us and did what the Tea Party people told them to do. They arrested me, Perry, a newspaper reporter and three supporters of healthcare reform.”

This is a decidedly different story.  No longer is McCowan claiming that Gladney attacked him out of nowhere.  He now says that the dispute was over buttons of Obama in blackface and smoking pot.  It is a seemingly small change in the story, but if McCowan is willing to lie about how this we know he is certainly willing to lie about who the instigator was.

Here’s the other problem: No one can prove that these buttons exist.  Here are the six buttons that Gladney attorney David Brown says Gladney was selling (via same 24thstate.com posting)

Not one of those even has Obama pictured in it.

Jim put out a challenge: Find a picture of the buttons that McCowan was supposedly questioning.  A blogger by the name of Adam at St. Louis Activist Blog claimed to find the conclusive evidence.  He’s got a screen cap of a button with Obama in it that was on the board of another one of the button sellers (apparently another black conservative who was selling buttons for Gladney attorney David Brown The owner of this board is David Brown himself.  He runs a business on the side selling merchandise at political events.  He sold some of his buttons to Gladney.).

This is Adam’s conclusive evidence that a button of Obama smoking weed existed.  The problem is that the picture shows nothing of the sort.  In fact, I’m betting that most people here on RedState have probably seen the source image for this button several times.

Now, I will grant that I am one of the biggest squares around.  Even I can tell that this is not a picture of Barack Obama smoking pot.  It’s just your average, every day cancer stick (AKA tobacco cigarette).  I guess I could give a certain amount of leeway given the replacing of the word HOPE with DOPE why one would make this mistake considering that you really can’t see the difference on a low-resolution image taken from a YouTube video.  You would think that someone would make sure their evidence was air tight before going to print with it. {Oh, and Andy.  I’ve got a screen cap of your post.  Don’t try to send it down the memory hole.}

While it is true that Andy has shown that more than six buttons were for sale, there is still no evidence to support McCowan’s assertion.  He has already told two different versions of what happened that night.  How many more does he have to tell before he finally admits the truth?

Then again, McCowan isn’t the only one lying from that night.

Note: Corrected information comes from a follow-up post by Jim on 24thstate.com.

Cross-posted at my personal blog.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch wrote a very dishonest op-ed ["Defending the Indefensible"] attacking what they call “opponents of health reform”.  Here is my response that I left for them on their web site:

This is Elston McCowan.

Elston K. McCowan is a former organizer – now the Public Service Director of SEIU Local 2000 – and board member of the Walbridge Community Education Center, and is a Baptist minister, has been a community organizer for more than 23 years, and now, he is running for Mayor of the City of St. Louis under the banner of the Green Party of St. Louis.

[ed: This was from before the election.  McCowan is now a former nominee of the Green Party.]

All of that sounds wonderful, doesn’t it?  Well, except for the position with the SEIU and the whole Green Party thing (think Cynthia McKinney).

The problem with McCowan is that he is something more.  McCowan is a thug.

You’ve actually seen McCowan before.  He was in a video that has been played on just about every blog on the right, mentioned on countless radio programs and has even seen play on cable news.  The video sparked the protest that I attended on Saturday outside of the SEIU office here in St. Louis.  See if you recognize him now.

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Those were the words of Kenneth Gladney.  These words however were spoken by his lawyer since Gladney was under heavy medication as a result of the beating he took at the hands of SEIU thugs.

If you can’t see the video it is of a speech by St. Louis Tea Party’s Bill Hennessey and the attorney for Kenneth Gladney.

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Patterico highlights how two different groups of people are spending today.

{Update} Appologies to anyone who I pushed off the front page, I clicked the wrong button.  This was supposed to be a RedHot.

If you live in a state that is having budget problems (Hint: You are living in a state that has budget problems), your legislature is probably trying to figure out how to fix said problems.  There’s lots of ways to do this, but only some of them actually make sense.  One of the politically least popular (especially in Purple to Blue states) is to cut taxes.  And when I say cut taxes, I mean cut, eliminate, end, cease, destroy taxes.  Why do this?

As Arthur Laffer (Yeah, the Laffer Curve guy) and Stephen Moore point out in the Wall Street Journal, people are sensitive to higher taxes {h/t QandO}.

Here’s the problem for states that want to pry more money out of the wallets of rich people. It never works because people, investment capital and businesses are mobile: They can leave tax-unfriendly states and move to tax-friendly states.

And the evidence that we discovered in our new study for the American Legislative Exchange Council, “Rich States, Poor States,” published in March, shows that Americans are more sensitive to high taxes than ever before. The tax differential between low-tax and high-tax states is widening, meaning that a relocation from high-tax California or Ohio, to no-income tax Texas or Tennessee, is all the more financially profitable both in terms of lower tax bills and more job opportunities.

Updating some research from Richard Vedder of Ohio University, we found that from 1998 to 2007, more than 1,100 people every day including Sundays and holidays moved from the nine highest income-tax states such as California, New Jersey, New York and Ohio and relocated mostly to the nine tax-haven states with no income tax, including Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire and Texas. We also found that over these same years the no-income tax states created 89% more jobs and had 32% faster personal income growth than their high-tax counterparts.

Re-read that last paragraph again.  1,100 people a day!  89% more jobs!  32% faster income growth!  Those aren’t insignificant numbers.  Those should be the big neon lights that even politicians can understand.  Who wouldn’t want to be the Speaker of the House, Governor, Senator, whatever who helped bring about that kind of success.  You’d practically be set for life (barring any, ahem, indiscretions).

What’s more is that many of these high tax jurisdictions are trying to make their taxes higher.  It’s almost like they are trying to give their Millionaires (and even Billionaires) away for free.

The Buffalo News: Golisano leaving New York to escape income taxes {h/t AoSHQ}

ALBANY — Ending any speculation about another possible run for governor, Rochester businessman and Sabres owner B. Thomas Golisano said Thursday he will be moving his legal residence to Florida to escape New York state taxes.

Baltimore Sun: Maryland plan to tax millionaires backfires {h/t Dan Mitchell}

But as the state comptroller’s office sifts through this year’s returns, it is finding that the number of Marylanders with more than $1 million in taxable income who filed by the end of April has fallen by one-third, to about 2,000. Taxes collected from those returns as of last month have declined by roughly $100 million.

NY Daily News: Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh says he’ll leave New York over Gov. Paterson’s tax increases

Rush Limbaugh, the conservative talk show king, announced this week that he’s ditching his New York digs and finding another alternate location for his top-rated show in the wake of Gov. Paterson’s “stupid, punitive, massive tax increases.”

So, message to the rest of the states: Cut your taxes.  Better yet, eliminate your income tax.  I know.  It sounds crazy.  I assure you, you will find other ways to fund government.  Heck, that many incoming Millionaires is sure to spur economic growth.  Economic growth means sales taxes, property taxes, etc, etc, etc.

In a related message, Bill Whittle has a message for the millionaires: Leave Now.  His message is to the nation-at-large, but the notion is the same.  This punish the rich mentality will only be at the detriment of the jurisdiction raising the taxes while benefiting those jurisdictions with low taxes.

(Click to view video.  Opens in new window/tab.)

A lot of people here in St. Louis are up in arms over this campaign ad released by Brewster McCracken, a candidate for Mayor of Austin, TX.  McCracken levels some harsh reality.  St. Louis once was one of the premier cities in the United States.  As he says, we hosted the Olympics and the Worlds Fair in the same year.  We once had a very large industrial base [which with the announcement that Chrystler will close both plants in Fenton has pretty much sunk to next to nothing].  Over the past few decades though, things have gotten bad.

Drive Highway 70 from the county towards downtown.  Once you pass the airport, you see the side of the highway littered with abandoned buildings.  Businesses are leaving the City for the County in droves [St. Louis is one of those cities where the County and the City are wholly separate government entities.].  People who live in the County now only venture downtown for sporting events.

So what has been one of the dominate factors as to why St. Louis has been declining for decades?  One party rule.

The Democrats have had exclusive control over the office of Mayor of St. Louis since 1949.  That’s 60 years of a political party that makes decisions based on what gets them elected, not what will encourage new business and entertainment opportunities to move downtown.

There has been no shortage of digital ink on the despicable reporting on CNN by Susan Roesgen.  Here at RedState alone:

Objective CNN Reporter to Chicago Tea Party Attendee: “Why Are You Complaining? Don’t You Know Obama Gave Your State Billions in the Stimulus!?” - Jeff Emanuel

We Have a Winner! Absolutely, Positively WORST Tea Party Day Coverage in the Galaxy - Skanderbeg

Don’t Expect to See Jon Stewart Rail on Susan Roesgen Again - Moe Lane

A CNN Reporter’s Selective Outrage - Josh Painter

Avoiding Criticism: CNN Shuts Down Anti-Tea Party Reporter’s Email Address - Warner Todd Huston

And that is just on the front page.  There are dozens of other diaries along with hundreds of comments on this topic (including this diary that has video from the Founding Bloggers on what happend after CNN stopped rolling it’s cameras).

It’s important to keep in mind, that despite the networks slogan of being “The Most Trusted Name In News” (and who doesn’t love hearing Darth…er…James Earl Jones’s booming voice saying that?) they really have not earned that trust.

You see, back in the first Gulf War, CNN covered the “War in the Gulf” like no other network: They faked it.

That’s right.  That was actually aired on CNN.  {I know, I thought it was a spoof myself.}  That is none other than St. Louis’s own (KTVI Fox 2 and KTRS 550) hack Charles Jaco.  [Jaco has been a bit of hack on the Tea Parties himself: reporting the false narrative of astroturfing, calling us whiners on his radio show, and various other liberal talking points.]

So, when people start to wonder where CNN’s credibility has gone.  I wonder when they ever had it.

Imagine you are a Doctor.  You are fed up with the current situation in the health care market, so you decide to do something about it.  You see lots of people who lack health insurance.  Because of this they are forgoing needed trips to the doctor for regular check ups, ect.  You decide that you will set up a plan whereby uninsured patients pay you a monthly access fee and then a very low co-pay when they actually come in for a visit. [Astute observers will recognize that this is essentially concierge medicine.  This is likely to be one of the ways that a market based system will solve the problem of the uninsured.]  Your idea opened up a way for patients to get access to care that they did not have before.  This is an achievement to be celebrated.  Or not?

The state of New York has determined that this very practice runs afoul of their insurance regulation.   You see, in the state of New York only licensed insurance companies have the right to charge flat rates for unplanned medical expenses.  As a result, Dr John Muney has had to dramatically raise his rates that he charges for unplanned procedures and abandon the monthly access fee.

The result of these regulations is that hundreds (if not thousands) of people being served at Dr Muney’s clinics in New York now no longer have access to affordable health care.  Isn’t that what advocates of government control were fighting for?

This highlights something I have been saying for a while.  Our health care problem will not be solved by mandating health insurance (or replacing private insurance with government run insurance).  The same disincentives to create innovative ideas like Dr Muney’s will exist under either option.  That leaves us with the false choice of the current situation or the equally bad “universal” health care.  Dr Muney created an option that required no subsidization by government.  And he did it while still making money.  What was wrong with that?

Legislators in the state of Oregon have proposed a tax on the distribution of a life insurance policy’s death benefit.

Oregonians who purchase life insurance and annuity products to assure the financial security of themselves and their loved ones would be hit with a tax that undermines their carefully-made financial protection, long-term savings and retirement income. H.B. 2854 would impose a tax on the life insurance benefits received by Oregon families suffering the death of a loved one. It would also impose a new tax on savings through life insurance and annuities.

This strikes me as monumentally stupid.  I understand that Oregon (like many other states) is suffering a budget crunch, but this has to be one of the least sensitive decisions that has been (or yet to be) made.  Why would you, at a time of deep grieving, want to make the problem worse by telling the family of a deceased individual that the government has to take it’s cut of your forsight to plan for your loved one’s early demise.  This is yet another case of government punishing those who act responsibly.

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Senator McCaskill has somehow managed to position herself in the eyes of the general public as a fiscally minded politician.  I’d say a healthy part of that comes from her time as the State Auditor here in Missouri.  People tend to think of the Auditor as a position of someone who knows what is and what isn’t good spending.  McCaskill is definitely trading on that experience.

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Much has been written over the past few weeks on the impending stimulus pork-laden, debt bill.  Unfortunately, it seems that the Democrats in charge of the Senate see fit to ram this bill down the throats of the American public.  With that in mind, I’m wondering what criteria they are using when they consider projects.  I wonder this, because I’ve been reading through the spending requests made by the U.S. Conference of Mayors on StimulusWatch.org.

The mayors of the State of Missouri have submitted 403 projects with a price tag of a whopping $3,760,293,491.00.  Several of these projects are set to fund the Metrolink system in the St. Louis metro area.  There is a lot to like about Metrolink (especially the fact that you can park in better lots than you can find downtown when you go to a sporting event), but why should the City and County of St. Louis expect other states to foot the bill for these projects?

You see, St. Louis County residents recently rejected an additional sales tax that would have been used to fund Metrolink.  Doesn’t it seem a bit odd to ask someone else to pay for something your own citizens won’t pay for?

Brilliant state roundup. Fronted by Erick. But don’t forget to put the state in the tags or it won’t show up on the state blogs.

With the announcement from Missouri’s Senior Senator Kit Bond, there is going to be something that hasn’t happened in Missouri for a very long time: a race for an open Senate seat in Missouri.  This has sparked some major interest, both here in Missouri and nationally as everyone starts to watch the jockeying for who will be the junior Senator. {Ugh, this means that Classy Claire McCaskill will be our senior Senator from Missouri.}  Here’s the rundown of those who are or ought to be considered for the post.

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Promoted from the Diaries by Jeff.

Under former Governor Mitt Romney, the state of Massachusetts undertook the largest single step towards single payer health care of any government entity in the United States to date.  It has created a myriad of problems, chief of which is a massive headache for those who are now forced to pay for insurance that they never wanted or can’t afford.  The plan, in a nutshell, requires all Massachusetts residents to purchase a state approved private health insurance plan or pay into a state run plan.  This mandatory purchase law, with concurrent restrictions on what qualifies as “insurance”, has lead to the nation’s largest increases in premium.

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