Thursday, April 09, 2009

McCaskill Holds Grant-Writing Workshop

One of the great sources of funding for the entrepreneurial class in both the private and public sector has been through federally-funded grants. The grants spur research and development in areas as different as preventing friendly-fire incidents on the battlefield and helping address infant heart disease.

In this time of tight credit and wary investors, federal grants can provide the seed money to help get new businesspeople from the drawing board to the board room. They can also help expand existing programs and businesses by allowing them to hire new researchers or employees or to launch that new idea.

To help those ambitious folk here in Missouri, Sen. Claire McCaskill held a grant-writing workshop today in Columbia, Mo. Representatives from a dozen or more agencies were to be on-hand to help the hopeful craft their proposal.

Anecdotally, Talking Points Memo managing editor David Kurtz (who is based here in Missouri) wrote that his wife was going to attend, but after seeing the crowd of people, decided against it.

- Murphy

S(l)ay again?

That sound you heard was the collective yawn of the voting public in St. Louis City.


Despite a match-up that could have provided a vigorous debate between a long-time incumbent facing simmering anger from a large portion of the city voters, and a bright and ambitious former State Senator who has both worked with the Mayor, and felt free to criticize him, the result was a lopsided wallop.

It's not as if this was completely under the radar. There were some bright spots in the media coverage of the race, even if it barely rose above the NCAA wrestling coverage in many outlets.

It's likely that the feeling of Slay's inevitability coupled with a non-existant independant campaign by former State Senator Maida Coleman resulted in few swing voters. Most likely had made up their minds when they pulled the lever on primary day.

While the St. Louis American did try mightily to fire up interest in the race by pushing for answers on some of the difficult issues the city faces, Slay was able to walk away with some stock answers and Coleman's counters barely made it out of weekly circulation.

The American did a good job setting it up, and KWMU did try and press the candidates in their interviews, much of the rest of the media failed to even take a swing.

- Murphy