After reviewing his various legal actions on behalf of the people of the state, and comparing same with his competitor, one candidate I am behind is Jay Nixon for governor of Missouri.
Black River News writes on an ad paid for by Ed Stewart in the local Ironton newspaper:
These same groups [ed. Sierra Club, Audubon Society, and the Missouri Coalition for the Environment], working with Jay Nixon, want to see this area turned into a huge wilderness resort. These same groups would like to see schools and towns disappear from the map. They would like to see farms and homes disappear off the map. For at least a couple of decades these same groups working with Jay Nixon have kept any new mines from appearing on the map in Southeast Missouri.
Can I vote for Jay twice?
Contrary to myth, environmentalists support smaller communities; in fact, the more active of the environmentalists live primarily in smaller communities. We work to ensure that community natural resources aren’t raped by big interests; work to develop a thriving visitor and tourism economy, support cottage industries and small businesses, as well as helping to find ways to utilize the resources responsibly.
I grew up in a lumber community where scraps from the timber processing were burned without filter, making the sky almost unbreathable in the summer. I watched as automation eliminated 98% of the jobs, while leaving behind the ragged remnants of a broken community; the company providing token funding so that the schools were barely kept in subsistence (thus ensuring that the people didn’t fight back no matter how abusive the timber interests were).
Rather than wanting to see schools close down, environmentalists want to see that the community’s schools are adequately funded. We want all schools in the state to be adequately funded, if for no other reason than most educated people see the wisdom of taking care of the environment.
As for small farms, there’s not an environmentalist around who won’t help small farmers learn all the many techniques they can use to grow their crops, raise their livestock, and not pollute streams; or their own kids, when it comes to that. It’s the big corporate farms that don’t care about the land.
Environmentalists work to see that every community thrives because the land, air, and water are clean, and the wildlife abundant and healthy–not to mention the trees not all cut down, the land not paved over and sick or dying from exploitation. Environmentalists believe, more than anything, in quality of life, and we live up to that belief: not just mouth words about ‘family values’, while working to ensure that the next generation inherits only despair.
Big business, on the other hand, well what does it do for communities? I’ll tell you one thing: it decides in the economic interests of the company, not to mention the next quarter’s stockholder reports, not to do the work necessary to maintain a dam so that a billion gallons of water doesn’t come rushing down a hill–almost destroying one of this state’s greatest natural treasures. Knock on wood, no one was killed, eh?
You know why I stay in Missouri? To make sure people like Ed never get a good night’s sleep again.