I Was Right About Koster After All - Darn It

I've been intending to do a "mea culpa" posting about my views on Chris Koster. In the primaries, I opposed him vehemently, and questioned his commitment to his new-found Democratic principles. Since then, I've wondered if I was, perhaps, mistaken about his sincerity.

It turns out I my fears were justified.

While others have rightfully complained about his "benign neglect" approach toward Sunshine Laws, I've been hopeful that Chris Koster is doing a good, if imperfect, job.

Unfortunately, Monday morning's paper shows that Koster is an anti-environmental leopard that has no interest in changing his spots. He is using his Attorney General position to actively work toward polluting Missouri's history, coincidentally in alignment with the financial interests of his campaign funders.

Back during the campaign, I wrote about CAFOs and Koster's support of them. CAFOs are Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, more commonly known as factory farms. Koster has chosen to side with the corporate interests rather than the environment, and I wrote about this ugly failure at least twice; it was and remains an important issue of local people not wanting to be subjected to stomach turning stench in the name of corporate profits.

Now Chris Koster is using his office to try to put a factory farm within stench distance of the Arrow Rock State Park.

For a while there, I thought Koster was truly a Democrat, and that my opposition to his candidacy was mistaken. Unfortunately, Koster is choosing corporate interests over local concerns, and profits over the environment. I was right, darn it.

His actions hurt worse because they are the actions of a Democratic office holder.

Bad News for Koster's CAFOs

As described earlier on this blog, Chris Koster likes factory farms (a/k/a CAFOs). He likes them so much that he wants to prevent local people from having a voice in where they can locate their sewage lagoons and generate their stink. If you would prefer to avoid pig feces and urine next door, you definitely do not want Chris Koster to be in charge of our environmental laws.

Blog CCP put up a great post on Monday about a CAFO that is trying to argue that it can put 4800 pigs about 400 yards away from a soldier's front door. "He's not there now, anyhow," the factory farm argues. Disgusting people pushing a disgusting farm. Koster's work on behalf of CAFOs has been focused on preventing local communities from having a voice in allowing corporate pig farms, so that small towns cannot fight back to save the home of their local soldier. That's the sort of crowd that Koster is running with. Sound like Democrats to you?

This morning's paper brings more attention to Koster's CAFOs. The first paragraph gives just a whiff of the stench that Koster wants to inflict on Missouri's small towns:

Industrial farms where animals are kept tightly confined present a serious and growing threat to humans, animals and the environment, a private commission reported Tuesday.

The article goes on to point out the dangers in the antibiotics and waste products of these pig factories.

Ironically, the conclusion reached by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health is the exact opposite of what Chris Koster wants to impose. Where Koster has been trying to rob local communities of the right to interfere with corporate pig farms to locate wherever they want (such as next door to a soldier's home), the bipartisan commission says that local control is better than state control.

Would a real Democrat support corporate pig farms?