Bush Legacy Tour

ST JOSEPH, MO- St. Joseph is an hour outside of Kansas City and is the town where the Pony Express began and where outlaw Jessie James had his final fatal standoff. We did not make our trip to St. Joe to celebrate the history of the Wild West, however.  We paid a visit to St. Joe because their Congressman has been a supporter of the Bush/McCain conservative policy agenda.   The plan was to pull up directly in front of Representative Sam Graves’s office located on the third floor of the main post office building. Our logistics person headed down to site ahead of the bus to secure the parking spaces necessary. When she arrived, she ended up dealing with local police and homeland security. Apparently Rep. Graves’s office had gotten wind about our visit and his staffers made great strides to alert law enforcement of the malfeasance about to occur with our pulling up a bus and allowing folks to see the voting record of their boss.  They even resorted to having their staffers move their cars from their spaces in a lot to the meters in front of the post offices so that we could not park there. Their diabolical plan worked and we were a whole two car lengths behind being directly in front of the office building, causing the press and the public to walk an extra twenty feet to see the bus!  Checkmate Graves! If Representative Graves and his staff put nearly this much thought into governing for working and middle class people, perhaps we would not be paying him a visit at all. 

Representative Graves has been a reliable voted for the conservative agenda. Rep. Graves Supported Bush’s Multi-Trillion-Dollar Tax Breaks for Wealthy in 2004. Time and time again he has voted to keep troops stuck in Iraq and has done little for those returning home by voting against the 21^st Century GI Bill. His stance on healthcare includes voting against the State Children’s Health Insurance program and not allowing Medicare to negotiate for cheaper drug prices for our seniors. That is not the only vote Graves has cast against seniors. In 2004 Graves told The Kansas City Star that he would support Bush’s plans to privatize social security through initiating private savings accounts. Graves also voted against raising the federal minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25 over two years.  With gas prices at $4 a gallon and food prices sky-rcoketing, it is difficult to imagine how Graves think anyone could made ends meet on $5.15 an hour.

Graves and  Cheney

In front of Graves's office