Kinder gets Business Journal award

Of the 197 legislators in the Missouri Senate and House of Representatives, 18 were honored with the St. Louis Business Journal's inaugural legislative awards. State Sen. Peter Kinder of Cape Girardeau, who represents the 27th District, was one of those honored.

Here is what the Business Journal had to say:

Sen. Peter Kinder's district includes his hometown of Cape Girardeau, but as a leader in the Senate, his efforts encompass the entire state.

Elected Senate president pro tem in 2001, Kinder has pushed for a new stadium for the St. Louis Cardinals and a transportation package for the entire state.

He provided the Senate leadership that moved the transportation measure to the August ballot for voters and helped resolve a worsening state budget crisis, said Dan Mehan, president and chief executive of the Missouri Chamber of Commerce.

Kinder also kept the Senate moving on an election-reform measure that addresses concerns of voter fraud in St. Louis during the 2000 presidential election. ...

Mehan said Kinder backed business interests while taking on other issues such as transportation and education. "He showed an ability to govern rather than just promote an ideology."

Kinder's exposure to St. Louis and the interests of the region extends back 30 years when Kinder was a high school volunteer on a campaign for Jack Danforth, who was then seeking re-election as Missouri's attorney general.

"Since then he's become my mentor," Kinder said of the former Missouri senator.

Kinder's other work impacting the (St. Louis) region has included efforts to launch local charter schools, such as the Lift for Life school, which serves disadvantaged children, and the newer St. Louis Academy.

"I'm a passionate believer that parents need more choices in education. One size does not fit all," he said.

While the funding package that included a new stadium for the Cardinals and a Ballpark Village was defeated, Kinder said he still believes the development is an important one -- and is aware of the political capital he may have lost at home by backing the plan.

"When I got the job as senator pro tem, I took a view that what is good for St. Louis is good for Missouri," he said. "There's no question it was not a winner with the broad public. I just feel like you try to do what's right and move on down the road."

His leadership came through for the entire state when he worked with Democrats and Republicans to balance the state budget.

In late April the state released word that actual cash receipts had fallen $230 million below what had been projected. Kinder said the revenue bill was patched together without a tax increase, yet managed to squeeze out some new sources of revenue.

Kinder, 48, managed the late Bill Emerson's first campaign for Congress. After serving three years with Congressman Emerson, he worked for Drury Industries from 1983 to 1987 as a staff attorney. In 1987, he became associate publisher of the Southeast Missourian and is currently the assistant to the chairman of the newspaper.

He sits on five senatorial committees, four joint committees and the Commission on Local Government. -- Rick Desloge

Note: Kinder, who was selected by all the judges, may have been the only unanimous choice of the panel selecting the legislators for this honor.

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U.S. food sales to Cuba are growing, despite export restrictions. Since November 2001, farmers have sold $90 million of food to the island. It would be much more if credit sales were allowed. But ... at least the United States gets paid up front while Cuba stiffs foreign creditors.

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The fire this time: In December 1995, a storm hit the Six Rivers National Forest in northern California, tossing dead trees across 35,000 acres and creating dangerous fire conditions. For three years, local U.S. Forest Service officials labored to clean it up, but they were blocked by environmental groups and federal policy. In 1999 the time bomb blew: A fire roared over the untreated land and 90,000 more acres.

Bear this anecdote in mind as you watch the 135,000-acre Hayman fire close to Denver. And bear it in mind the rest of this summer, in what could be the biggest marshmallow-toasting season in half a century. Because despite the Sierra Club spin, catastrophic fires like the Hayman are not inevitable, or good. They stem from bad forest management -- which found a happy home in the Clinton administration.

In a briefing to Congress last week, U.S. Forest Service chief Dale Bosworth finally sorted the forest from the tree-huggers. He said that if proper forest management had been implemented 10 years ago, and if the agency weren't in the grip of "analysis paralysis" from environmental regulation and lawsuits, the Hayman fire wouldn't be raging like an inferno.

Bosworth also presented Congress with a sobering report on our national forests. Of the 192 million acres the Forest Service administers, 73 million are at risk from severe fire. Tens of millions of acres are dying from insects and diseases. Thousands of miles of roads, critical to fighting fires, are unusable. Those facts back up a General Accounting Office report, which estimates that one in three forest acres is dead or dying. So much for the green mantra of "healthy ecosystems."

How did one of America's great resources come to such a pass? Look no further than the greens who trouped into power with the last administration. Senior officials adopted an untested philosophy known as "ecosystem management," a bourgeois bohemian plan to return forests to their "natural" state. The Clintonites cut back timber harvesting by 80 percent and used laws and lawsuits to put swathes of land off-limits to commercial use.

We now see the results. Millions of acres are choked with dead wood, infected trees and underbrush. Many areas have more than 400 tons of dry fuel per acre-10 times the manageable level. This is tinder that turns small fires into infernos, outrunning fire control and killing every fuzzy endangered animal in sight. In 2000 alone fires destroyed 8.4 million acres, the worst fire year since the 1950s. Some 800 structures were destroyed-many as a fire swept across Los Alamos, New Mexico-and control and recovery costs neared $3 billion. The Forest Service's entire budget is $4.9 billion.

That number, too, is important. Before the Clinton administration limited timber sales, U.S. forests helped pay for their own upkeep. Selective logging cleaned up grounds and paid for staff, forestry stations, cleanup and roads. Today, with green groups blocking timber sales at every turn, the GAO says taxpayers will have to spend $12 billion to cart off dead wood.

One solution would be to follow the lead of private timber companies, whose forests don't tend to suffer such catastrophic fires. Their trees are an investment; they can't afford to let them burn. Americans should feel the same way about theirs. -- Excerpt from a Wall Street Journal editorial

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In this November's elections ... Democrats are betting on Social Security as their ticket to victory in a fierce battle to win back the House and retain Senate control.

It's the senior vote that's at stake. Over-65ers will cast roughly one-fourth of all votes this November. In early polls, they favor Democrats slightly and are inclined to think the party will do more than the GOP to protect seniors' Social Security benefits.

In the Democrats' rhetorical blitzkrieg, which will be targeted at vulnerable GOP seats:

A claim that the GOP will trim benefits to pay for new private investment accounts ... anathema to most Democrats. They'll say the GOP wasted the federal budget surplus on tax cuts, so there's no way to prop up Social Security without cutting benefits. Their main thrust: Don't give Republicans full control in Washington.

But they'll offer no solution, confident that core Democrats ... union members, minorities, women ... are content to do nothing for now.

The GOP will play defense by going on offense. The president will take to the stump, promising no decreases in benefits and no hikes in taxes or the retirement age. He'll denounce "Democrat scare tactics" and note that private accounts would be voluntary, investable in bonds and/or stock indexes and would use just a small share of FICA taxes. -- Private newsletter

Gary Rust is the chairman of Rust Communications.