The Lawyer is a Ass

I don’t ordinarily comment on state level matters, but today I reached my limit on the Jetton/Wood confrontation that is causing so much havoc. The juvenile attitude of Ron Jetton has filled my barf bag to overflowing.

(For those not from Missouri, a little background: About a year ago a law was passed to the effect that landowners could declare their area a village and so by-pass environmental and zoning laws enforced by the country where their land was located. Obviously, this was a piece of legislative idiocy, and the day after it passed a very wealthy landowner in the Ozark hills near Table Rock Lake declared his land a village. A State Representative from the area accused the Speaker of the House, Ron Jetton, of engineering the law and slipping it through at the last minute as an amendment to another law that was guaranteed passage.)

Back in the’70s when the Nixon Administration launched all kinds of regional planning efforts, this area went bonkers with protestations about land owner’s rights and big brother intervention, but the value of those planning and regulatory efforts has been well proven in the intervening 35 years.

When I read in this morning’s paper that a CAFO hog farmer is applying for village status so that he can duck state and county monitoring of his waste management – or more likely his failure to manage waste – I hit the ceiling. This is exactly the kind of outcome we all expected the first day we heard about the passage of the law to enable Robert Plaster to decide the environmental rules for his own little kingdom in Stone County.

This area is in need of far more regulation of environmental utilization not less. The Ozarks is one of the world’s most blessed regions of woods and waters. They are definitely our most precious shared resources, and any degradation or potential degradation of those resources should be of concern to each and every Ozarker.

Not only should every building in the region be subject to zoning regulations, but CAFO operations should be required to harvest waste rather than allow it to run off. They could be major contributors to regional methane production rather than major polluters. Not only should CAFO farmers be subject to restrictions on environmental degradation, but every farmer should be barred from allowing livestock to have direct access to flowing waterways. Not only should individual dwellings throughout our counties be subject to zoning restrictions regarding waste management, but our codes should require more effective management methods than traditional septic systems which collectively are one of the most powerful polluters of our waterways.

The fight between Jetton and Wood about who did what to whom is an eighth grade level spat that’s really just between Jetton and his ego. He has probably put together a smoke screen designed to block his actions from view, and he has enough confidence in it to stand his ground against Wood’s accusation that he ramrodded the act behind Congress’ back.

Even if Jetton didn’t do that, the upshot of all this is that more than a year from the passage of that heinous law nothing at all has been done to correct it, and the entire state is going to suffer while Jetton pouts. The only winner in all this is the CAFO farmer who has a state law to point at while he “legally” breaks a ton of other laws that would otherwise apply to his “village”.

In my opinion that “village” is nothing more than the same pile of pig**** that Jetton’s position amounts to, and both of them stink.


Be the change you wish to see in the world. -- M. K. Gandhi

Individually we have little voice. Collectively we cannot be ignored.
But in silence we surrender our power. Yours in Peace -- BR

The reason for going was to keep the crude flowing and raise a false flag abroad. – from a poem by Jack Evans titled 3500 Souls - http://www.myspace.com/paralegal_eagle