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Late last year, and months after Doug Bagby filed his ridiculous lawsuit against Angela Pearson, Morse, Harwell & Jiles (MHJ) Insurance jumped into the ring and filed another slander suit against Pearson. MHJ Insurance is owned in part by Charles Moffitt. Mr Moffitt sits on the executive board of the same bank as Doug Bagby. In an interview in the St Louis Post Dispatch, Moffitt actually besmirched our fine city by stating he lived in one of the few desireable places to live in town. On Thursday, Councilwoman Angela Pearson's attorney filed a response and counter-claim to the MHJ Insurance's lawsuit. In her response, Pearson claims she is not guilty of the accusations because her statements were true, subject to absolute

SEMO.net has confirmed that the City Attorney is included in the City's health insurance program. We believe 100% of his personal medical insurance premiums are paid for by our city and 67% of his family coverage are paid for as well. How can that be? He's not a full-time employee. I called nine other Southeast Missouri city halls (Malden, Dexter, Sikeston, Farmington, Fredericktown, Jackson, Ste Genevieve, Kennett, Charleston) and NONE of them pay their attorney's medical insurance premiums. One City Clerk told me emphatically over the phone when I asked about medical insurance for their attorney, "Of course not, he has his own private practice!" Our City Attorney also has his own private practice at Duncan & Pierce Law Offices which is allowed by our

Poplar Bluff Schools moved to "Common Core" at the beginning of this year, some larger schools have been incorporating it since 2010 and it is mandated by Governor Nixon and the Dept of Education that all schools start Common Core by next school year. There are so many reasons why I oppose Common Core. For many it sounds like "Common Core" is just the next new schooling buzzword (ie, No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, etc.), but its so much more than that. Let me sum it up like this: Common Core allowed the business and political but non-academic world to create standards of what students should learn at each age. Then President Obama used multi-million dollar educational

The drama of Poplar Bluff politics and business have made it into the headlines of the St Louis Post Dispatch with "Political novice draws scorn and lawsuit for questioning business as usual". The long article, over 40 paragraphs in length, is an intriguing outsider's view of the last five months of accusations, innuendos and lawsuits. Once again, Doug Bagby drags me into the story and refers to me as a "disgruntled small-business owner" but most of the strangest quotes come from Sammy Schalk of Gamblin Lumber and Charles Moffit of MHJ Insurance. Schalk is quoted as saying:  “You don’t want dunderheads on welfare on the bank board.” And Moffitt is quoted a few paragraphs later inferring that Poplar Bluff doesn't

The City's 2012 audited financial statements were finally approved earlier this month which allows us to look at how City Cable performed in 2012 without the "subsidizing" of Open Access. The financials show that the city would have made $317,756 more over the past two years had they not closed down Open Access to the citizen owned network. City Cable has lost money four of the last five years. But that really isn't a bad thing. After all, the city loses money on our street department. If run efficiently, I would never oppose the city losing money on (ie, investing in) our telecommunications infrastructure. But let's look at the numbers for City Cable department: 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 Total