Category Archives: Politics

Rape Theology

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The Missouri Senate went after the legislature’s favorite annual punching bag the other day—Planned Parenthood.  It argued about a bill that would keep the organization from collecting Medicaid reimbursements for dispensing family planning and other women’s health services including cancer screenings.

Planned Parenthood hasn’t provided abortions for a couple of years in Missouri.  But that’s not enough for the PP-haters who don’t want the folks working for the organization to even say the word. And suggesting someone who has thought through the issue and still wants an abortion to places in other states, well, that is calamitous.

One Senator wants to make it a crime for a woman to seek an abortion—although she’d have to leave the state to have it.  He also would have rapists castrated or shot.

Apparently the Senator is not familiar with Article 1, section 8, Clause 3 of the United States Constitution that gives Congress exclusive power over trade among the states. It also limits state powers to limit interstate commerce. And abortions ARE interstate commerce. But ignoring the U. S. Constitution has not been a problem in the legislature on the hot issue du jour for some time.

Another Senator says rapists should get the death penalty and suggested forcing the victim to carry the fetus to term created by the rapist who should be executed “may even be the greatest healing agent you need in which to recover from such an atrocity.”

Still another suggested that rape might be “mentally taxing…(but) it doesn’t justify an abortion.”

Missouri Independent reports she continued, “God does not make mistakes. And for some reason he allows that to happen. Bad things happen. I’m not gonna be able to support the amendment because I am very pro-life.”

I have often remarked that nothing screws up faith more than religion, or as one of my favorite cartoonists expressed it a few years ago:

To describe rape as “mentally taxing” is completely inappropriate.  So is the idea that executing the rapist would be a great healing agent. An African-American member of the senate attributed her existence to the rape of her great-grandmother, a slave, who by her white master.  The event was “mentally taxing” enough that the victim killed herself.

Several years ago, a similar argument against putting rape and incest exemptions into the abortion was pushed by a woman state representative who argued that it is God’s will that  something beautiful (the birth of a child) could result from something so bad as rape or incest.

I wrote in the old Missourinet Blog that, that kind of reasoning argues against rape being a crime. If God intended something beautiful, a baby, to result from something so ugly as a rape or incest, then God must have intended for the rape and incest to happen—especially since God is perfect.  And if that’s the case, rape should be considered an Act of God, not a crime.  After all, God does not make mistakes.

This is why we have, presumably, a separation of church and state.  Religious Dogma should not replace a law of humanity.  But it does and there are many who want to erase that separating line entirely. To do so would thus make one religion more free than others. And that would mess up the idea that this is a nation that practices religious freedom.

My theocracy is better than your theocracy. My God is better than your God. That’s what it all boils down to.

The major flaw in the “God does not make mistakes” argument is that God created people who make mistakes because God gave people free will.

So we live in an imperfect world and reconciling the imperfections in a way that makes living more humane is a never-ending argument. Killing others in the name of God has only produced never-ending wars.

Killing the rapist raises questions about the entire right to life philosophy. Would it be a “healing agent” to kill the rapist of a pregnant ten-year old girl who will likely not understand why she is left to bear what some consider God’s Gift? And if the product of a rape is a gift from God, how can killing the bearer of that gift be considered correct policy?

It is not our intention here to argue whether there should be abortions. But there are two innocent lives involved, not one.  And to try to make rape a theological issue is a political Gordian knot.

If we accept that God is perfect then we must accept that it was God’s will that we mortals are imperfect. And as imperfect creatures we make imperfect decisions. The challenge is in determining the fairness of the way we deal with those imperfections.

Maybe some issues are beyond the law and ongoing gyrations trying to make them fit within a law that carries equal rights and compassion for everyone the law touches is beyond human capabilities.  In those instances, the decision should rest with the individual, their doctor, and God.

Turn to faith, not religion, for the ultimate guidance.

Replace The National Bird?

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The hard right wing of the Republican Party keeps proving there is no limit to their lunacy.  It is so pronounced that we are surprised they haven’t advocated replacing the Bald Eagle with the Loon as our national bird. Maybe they’re too busy cooking up conspiracies to get to that.

Out with the elephant as the party symbol. In with the Loon.

I have decided these people need a sense-of-humor transplant for starters.  Have you ever seen any of them indicate any sign of sincere happiness about anything?  But if they got the transplant, who would be the first ones they would laugh about?  The mirror holds the answer.

There seems to be no end to their absurdity, to wit:

Not content to maintain that the 2020 election was rigged, they now are all a-twitter (or maybe all a-X) about how the NFL has rigged the playoffs and the upcoming Super Bowl so the Chiefs will win and Taylor Swift and boyfriend Travis Kelce will announce they endorse Joe Biden for re-election.

I kid you not.

Dominick Mastrangelo and Sarakshi Rai wrote for The Hill last week that Swift, a person of the year for Time magazine and the dominant figure in the entertainment world led some artificial intelligence-composed fake images “broke the internet,” has become an obsession with the nutcase caucus of the GOP.

Swift endorsed Joe Biden four years ago and has been “somewhat active” politically otherwise. “Swift’s incredible popularity is also bringing to the forefront various ugly sides of 21st century American life, from explicit AI-generated deepfakes of the superstar that briefly closed down Taylor Swift searches this week on X to unfounded conspiracy theories,” they wrote,.

Vivek Ramaswamy, a paragon of reasonableness, wrote the morning after the Chiefs beat the Ravens for the AFC championship, “I wonder who’s going to win the Super Bowl next month. And I wonder if there’s a major presidential endorsement coming from an artificially culturally propped-up couple this fall. Just some wild speculation over here, let’s see how it ages over the next 8 months.” None other than Elon Musk responded, “Exactly.”

Other inmates running the far right asylum chimed in. Jack Lombard, an activist who lost a bid for the House two years ago, went on social media to proclaim that he has “never been more convinced that the Super Bowl is rigged.”

Somebody named Mike Crispi who is described as the host of a Rumble video on Musk’s social media site says the NFL has “totally” rigged the Super Bowl, “all to spread DEMOCRAT PROPAGANDA.”  And, he says, halftime entertainer Usher is going to have to share the spotlight with Swift, who “comes out at the halftime show and ‘endorses’ Joe Biden with Kelce at midfield.”

“The NFL is totally RIGGED for the Kansas City Chiefs, Taylor Swift, Mr. Pfizer (Travis Kelce),” Crispi said “All to spread DEMOCRAT PROPAGANDA. Calling it now: KC wins, goes to Super Bowl, Swift comes out at the halftime show and ‘endorses’ Joe Biden with Kelce at midfield.”

This isn’t something that just became obvious to the loon flock. The writers for The Hill record that Jesse Watters, a FOX News host, said a few weeks ago that this conspiracy isn’t just focused on the Super Bowl.  The Pentagon’s psycholical operations unit has tought about turning Swift into “an asset.”

A lot of people think she already is, and a good one, but in an entirely more complimentary way. “It’s real,” Watters is quoted as saying. “The Pentagon psy-op unit pitched NATO on turning Taylor Swift into an asset for combatting misinformation online.” Somehow a report by Politico that a presenter at a NATO cyber conference referred to Swift as a powerful influencer has turned her into a tool for the psy-op unit.

Over on the pro-Trump Newsmax channel, talking head Greg Kelly warned that public admiration of Ms. Swift could bring the wrath of God down upon her followers because it’s idolatry. “If you look it up in the Bible, it’s a sin,” he proclaimed, without mentioning any concerns about what has been called the Trump Cult.

And what would the loon caucus be without George Soros to drag into any discussion?  Alison Steinberg, a host on another pro-Trump channel (One America News) complained with not a scintilla of evidence that she is “owned by Soros.”

FOX News recently noted that her short flight in her personal jet from New Jersey to Baltimore to watch the AFC championship game produced three tons of CO2 emissions. The story was a personal attack on her, however, rather than an explanation of why the burning of that fossil fuel contributed an infinitesimable amount to climate change. Ignored in the enthusiasm to attack someone who might influence voters away from the network’s favorite ex-president was any mention that said ex-president is an ardent protector of coal mining that continues to produce the fuel that has powered the Industrial Age from the beginning and is a major contributor to mankind’s contribution to our changing climate.

Rolling Stone magazine has reported that the former president is still smarting because she was named Time magazine’s person of the year instead of him. Citing a person close to the former president and another source, it says, “Trump has also privately claimed that he is ‘more popular’ than Swift and that he has more committed fans than she does.”

None other than Trump lawyer Alina Habba, whose defense of the former president resulted in an $83 millon judgment against him, has asked on social media, “Who thinks this country needs a lot more women like Alina Habba and a lot less like Taylor Swift?”

Boy, is THAT ever a hard question to answer…………

The fact that Taylor Swift IS a significant influencer and that her influence has grown since 2020 has put some fear into the hearts of people who cannot grasp that things happen that are not the result of a conspiracy against them and their leader(s).  And there are grounds for their fears.

A Newsweek poll done by Redfield and Wilton strategies of 15-hundred respondents showed 18% of them were “more likely,” or “significantly more likely” to vote for someone Swift endorses.

And that is precisely what the MAGA crowd  wants to discourage. FOX personality, Brian Kilmede, has given some advice that Swift can sweep aside without a thought: endorsing Biden would be “the single dumbest thing a mega superstar could ever do.”

We can think of several dumber things.  Instantly.  Because a lot of mega, or MAGA, superstars have done a lot of dumb things. As far as we know, Taylor Swift never recommended people drink bleach to ward off COVID or other made other similar squirrelly recommendations, for example.

“Why would  you tell half the country that you don’t agree with them in this highly polariezed time? You stay out of it…it would be the craziest thing you could ever do. And Biden isn’t worth it,” he said.

Jeanine Pirro, another FOX personality chimed in that Swift should not “get involved in politics” because she might “alienate her fans.”

How odd that these critics worry about the costs she might incur from exercising her freedom of speech while their own idol complains his freedom of speech is being limited because his message is the exact opposite of hers.

Former CNN talker Chris Cuomo, now doing a similar show on Nexstar’s News Nation, calls these ravings a “mashup of madness” and confesses, “I don’t know what they’re talking about. I don’t know what they’re playing at. It’s completely divorced from reality. No one with a working brain can believe this energy that they’re putting into this. She hasn’t even endorsed anybody. Who cares who she endorses.”

The Biden campaign, Chris. It has indicated the obvious, that he’s open to the idea. She endorsed him in 2020 and her endorsement likely will carry even more weight now. think of how many more people would show up for a Taylor Swift political rally than show up for a Donald Trump political rally.

We have never met Ms. Swift and doubt we ever will. But she sounds far smarter than those who are incubating the latest crop of loon eggs. She is highly capable of making her own decisions without counsel from Kilmede and others who conveniently overlook the log in their own eyes*, thank you—and that is precisely what this bunch is afraid she will do.

Taylor Swift scares the bejeesus out of this crowd because she is admirable for the way she encourages others through her music to be better and to do better. They hate her because she is intelligent and sincerely enthusiastic about things like football and one player—-who seems to be a nice guy away from the ferocity of the game—in particular.  And she speaks her mind— intelligently. I bet you could get a cogent answer if you asked her about the Civil War.

While on the other side, we hear only the tremulous sound of the loon.

(*Matthew 7:3-5: Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? 4 Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.)

(Photo credit: National Audubon Society)

Jean

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We liked Jean Carnahan at our house.  She was never at our house but we were at her house a few times when she and Mel were governor and first lady.

Jean died last Tuesday after 90 years of a life well-lived. And shared.

We always think of them as “real” people, the same folks when dressed in their government clothes in Jefferson City for a few years that they were in their farm clothes back home in Rolla many more years than that. Not all first-couples have that quality.

She several times talked with me about the book she was writing about the history of the Governor’s Mansion and I cherish the two signed copies of If Walls Could Talk that are on the bookshelf in our living room. She wrote several others after her time in Washington.

In all my career as a reporter, I kept those I covered at least at arm’s length.  The Carnahan’s, especially Jean, I allowed as close as my wrist because of that “real people” quality. When she was appointed to the U. S. Senate, I told her that our relationship would have to change because she now was only a news source. She seemed disappointed.  I was not pleased to have to tell her that.

A personal story—

Mel got his pilot’s license and one evening he showed up at the Columbia airport to get some flight time on the way to a campaign meeting in St. Louis.  He needed someone to fly to Hermann with him who could fly the plane back to Columbia while he, Jean, and their Highway Patrol escort went on to St. Louis.  The young flight instructor on duty at the time was our son, Rob, who flew to Hermann with the governor.

The plane’s engine would not re-start after they landed so the Carnahans invited Rob to join them for dinner at a German restaurant they liked in downtown Hermann.  So there was Robb, a kid trying to pile up enough flying hours to get a job flying cargo somewhere, having an unexpected dinner with the first family of Missouri.  By the time they were finished, the plane’s engine had cooled enough that it could start and the group parted ways.

The news of the fatal crash in October,  2000 hit our son hard, as you might expect. The day that the governor’s casket was in the great hallway of the governor’s mansion so the public could pay tribute, Jean came down the grand stairway and went outside to greet the office staff that had come over from the Capitol.  When she came back in, she noticed me standing in the library just off the great hall.  She came over and hugged me and said, “We’re so glad we got to know your son.”

It took a little time to resume the role of the stoic reporter just coverina a story. But that was Jean.

This great lady, burdened by terrible loss of her husband and one of her sons with incredible dignity, thought at that time of that evening in Hermann with a kid flight instructor.

Rob flies for Southwest Airlines today but that dinner with the Carnahans is one of the most memorable experiences of his life. But, that was just Mel and Jean being Mel and Jean.

Her official portrait in the Executive Mansion captures part of her nature.  The group that works to preserve the mansion says her outfit honors working women by wearing the kind of professional dress working women would wear. She is holding the flower that blooms on the Dogwood, our state tree. She later wrote on her Facebook page, “I always thought a computer keyboard would have been a more appropriate depiction.”  Jean computerized the mansion by setting up a website and creating a database for all of the assets of the old house.

The Carnahans had a good time in the mansion and especially enjoyed visits from children. They started the annual Halloween Spooktacular highlighted by Mel dressed as Dracula and appearing from a window on the second floor. She held a Children’s Hour at the Mansion and they had Easter egg hunts each year. A fountain created by Jamie Anderson was installed near the front porch to celebrate the mansion’s 125th anniversary commemorates children’s health.

She wrote on her Facebook page after the 2019 visit, “I recall my vision for the sculpture came from seeing an old photo of children playing in the abandoned fountain, that was placed on the lawn more than a 100 years ago. In today’s fountain, the girl atop the basin, her toes barely entering the water, is reminiscent of the shortened life of 9-year-old Carrie Crittenden, who died at the mansion of diphtheria. Her presence is a vivid reminder of the health care needs of children today.

“The African-American boy is inspired by the youngster, who once stayed in the Mansion barn. As he reaches out to grasp the flowing water, he denotes opportunity for all children. The other boy, modeled after my grandson, stands against a backdrop of leaves, birds, and fish, reminding the viewer of our need to protect the environment for future generations to enjoy.”

She paid her last visit (as far as I know) to the mansion in 2019 (shown here with First Lady Teresa Parson standing on the grand staircase under the official portrait of former first lady Maggie Stephens, described by Jean as “one of the flamboyant and benevolent residents of the old home.”)

When the Carnahan administration began, Jean and Mel decided the governor’s office need to be refreshed for the first time since the Hearnes administration moved into what originally was a big waiting room for people seeking meetings with the governor. As Betty Hearnes had supervised that makeover, Jean Carnahan supervised the update.  Furniture was repaired and some stored items were returned. The ceiling was repainted with the state seal included—Mel was given the brush and painted the last start, now known as the “Carnahan Star” in the ceiling seal—and the worn carpet with the state seal in it was replaced with a lighter carpet with the state flower in it so visitors wouldn’t walk on the seal.  She had the seal framed and it decorated a wall in her Washington office and, I was told, became part of the decoration of son Russ’s office while he was a member of the U.S. House.

She became the first woman U.S. Senator from Missouri when Governor Wilson appointed her to serve in Mel’s place after he had been elected posthumously.  She was the same kind of Senator-person as she had been here in Missouri.  Thoughtful.  Quiet.  Effective.  Disappointed when she lost to Jim Talent in 2002 but still always looking for things to do, people to know, adventures to be had.

My wife, Nancy, always enjoyed Jean’s restaurant critiques and other comments she posted on social media after she resumed private life in St. Louis.

We have now within a span of weeks lost two special former first ladies, Betty Hearnes and Jean Carnahan, who were as comfortable to be around in the mansion as they were when they were around the folks at home. They might have seen themselves as ordinary people who lived in extraordinary circumstances and they never outgrew that  understanding of themselves.

The life well-lived.  We all want that at the end, don’t we?  They had it.

(Photo credit: Carnahan family, Jefferson City News-Tribune, Missouri Mansion Preservation, Jean’s Facebook page)

The Illiterate

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Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley has been getting a bad rap.

Comparatively speaking, at least.

She’s been slammed for her fumbled answer to a question about the causes of the Civil War, saying it “was basically how government was going to run, the freedoms, and what people could and couldn’t do.” Later, at another town hall meeting, she tried to do some damage control by saying  slavery was “a very talked about thing” as she grew up in the South. “I was thinking past slavery and talking about the lesson that we could learn going forward. I shouldn’t have done that.”

But Haley sounded like an honors graduate from Harvard, a Rhodes Schlolar,  and a Nobel Laureate in History compared to our former president’s comments about the Civil War while campaigning in Iowa:

The Civil War was so fascinating. So horrible, was so horrible but so fascinating. It was, I don’t know, it was just different.  I just find it—I’m so attracted to seeing it. So many mistakes were made.  See, there was something I think could have been negotiated, to be honest with you. I think you could have negotiated that. All the people died, so many people died, you know.  That was a disaster. If you got hit by a bullet in the leg you were essentially going to die or lose the leg. That’s why you had so many people, no legs, no arms, if you got hit in the arm or the leg it meant that you were up because the infection, gangrene, it was just such a, you know, sort of a horrible time.  But that’s. I was thinking to myself because I was reading something and I said this is something that could have been negotiated, you know, and it was just for all those people to die and they died viciously. That was a vicious, vicious war, and in many ways—look they’re all this, there is nothing nice about it. But boy, was that a tough one for our country. But I think it’s, you know, Abraham Lincoln.  If you could have negotiated it, you probably wouldn’t even know who Abraham Lincoln was. He would have been president but he would have been president. He wouldn’t have been the, Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln would have been different. But that would have been okay. It’s, it would have been a thing and that I know very well.  I know the whole process that they went through and they just couldn’t get along and that would have been something that could have been negotiated and they wouldn’t have had that problem. But it was, it was a hell of a time.  

“A tough one for our country…..a hell of a time.”

Good Lord!

I haven’t read anything so stunningly ignorant since I took an essay test in the seventh grade on a chapter in a social studies book I had neglected to read during the previous week.

Negotiate?  Forty years of negotiation after the Missouri Compromise (does he have any idea what that was?) didn’t prevent it. Yes, it was a tough one for our country.  But it ended slavery, which the blithering former president failed to mention, assuming he can perceive and recall any educated discussion of it.

He did mention Abraham Lincoln, although disparagingly, but what would your expect from him?.

Trump’s lack of interest in reading, even detailed security reports during his presidency, is beyond legendary. Every time we watch him deliver a cringe-producing message from a teleprompter we wonder if he can read.  He clearly hasn’t mastered an art first proclaimed by that great American philosopher, George Burns—“Sincerity, if you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”

He is known to read things about himself.  But to expect him to know anything about the Civil War, the writers of the Constitution, the meaning of the Declaration of Independence—–not a chance.  He wouldn’t know the significance of Martin Luther King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail and imaginining him reading out loud anything from Shakespeare to song lyrics from Le Miz invokes near-terror.

That’s why we get gibberish on almost any subject—-and for some reason there are people who think his brand of universal illiteracy should be the template for the American mentality.

When the Civil War is boiled down to a discourse on missing arms and legs while he claims to “know the whole process that they went through,” there is no ignoring the fact that this “stable genius” is an intellectual empty vessel who enjoys his own internal cranial echoes.

Is our former president really the best the party of Lincoln, can negotiate?

When you tax something—-

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It’s a cliché.  “When you tax something, you get less of it.”

That’s shorthand for a Ronald Reaganism: “If you want more of something, subsidize it; if you want less of something, tax it.”

Would that economics could be so simple.

A bill in the legislature this year would excuse residents of St. Charles and Jefferson Counties from paying the St. Louis City one-percent earnings tax.  That’s a tax that St. Louis collects from people who come to the city to work and then leave it to go home in those two counties.

One of the supporters of the bill has trotted out the old cliché to justify it.

The trouble with cliches is that they are so easily punctured.

Those who think earnings taxes are appropriate note that daily job emigrants are served by St. Louis police and other St. Louis first responders, among others, that they drive on the city’s streets, contribute to the city’s trash burden, that they go to city hospitals or doctor’s offices if they get sick or hurt during working hours or recreational tie at the ballpark, and on top of it all, they have jobs in St. Louis that they don’t have at home.

St. Louis and Kansas City have earnings taxes.  Many years ago, when financier Rex Sinquefield, long an opponent of earnings taxes spearheaded a drive that got law passed requiring the two cities to re-approve their earnings taxes every five years. The Post-Dispatch reported a few days ago that Sinquefield had donated $25,000 to the campaign of the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Phil Christofanelli, a candidate for the state senate.  In the process of requiring the five-year re-enactment of the tax in the cities, voters also approved a statewide ban on any other city ever considering such a tax.  Voters thus gave up their right to decide what is bests for their town on this issue.

The problem with the cliché is that the word “it” needs to be defined.  Does this bill mean the elimination of the tax will bring thousands of new workers to St. Louis?  Where will they come from—St. Charles and Jefferson Counties?  Will they leave their jobs in those counties where they don’t pay an earnings tax now to flock to St. Louis just because employees won’t pay it there any more?

Will elimination of the tax result in lower prices for goods and services? It’s hard to visualize why it would.  Will it make funding public services more difficult?

The cliché has a big problem; the definition of “it.”

A look at Missouri’s loosened marijuana laws tends to indicate high taxes are no barrier at all to the weed businesses.  Maybe if we jacked up the tax even higher there would be less marijuana sales. Or maybe not.  I recall when cigarettes were two dollars a carton (ten packages). Big price increases did not seem to be the factor in reducing smoking many years later. Smoking laws were a much bigger factor.

Property. If you tax it,  you get less of it?  It’s true that increasing taxes might force someone to move into a less-expensive home.  But the old property is still there—for someone else to inhabit.  People go away but property doesn’t.

Yes, there is less in the pocket but there is more for “it,” and by “it” we talk about the institutions and services that are necessary to protect us, to heal us, to educate us, to make it possible for us to go from one place to the next—taxes are the only way there can be more of “it.”

So the cliché is just that, and cliché’s sound good but they are just surface words that substitute too often for careful thought.

(It’s kind of like a former colleague who once remarked, “Stereotypes are so handy because they save so much time.”)

It’s a campaign year, though, and tax cuts always are cheap and easy things to promise and they do seem to persuade some voters who fail to realize the consequences of the cuts, especially when the economy drips and the programs those services finance aren’t available when they are needed the most.

Maybe in a campaign year, we should levy a wordage tax on politicians.  There’s a lot of “it” that, under this philosophy, would go away.

Maybe the tax should be a pretty big, now that you mention……….

How Our Major League Sports Teams Are Plotting A Massive Rip-off Of The State 

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

Most of our patrons do not read the Tuesday entries that focus on sports. We ask that you carefully read this one, however, at least the first part.

(SPORTS WAGERING PETITION)—-Our six major league sports teams have crawled into bed with an industry whose sole characteristic is greed and the people of Missouri could become their abused children.

The teams, fed up that the legislature has failed to legalize sports betting, have launched a petition campaign highly favorable to the casino industry and detrimental to the public to put the issue on the ballot.

It’s a rip-off of major league proportions.  The Cardinals, Royals, Chiefs, Blues, and Missouri’s two major league soccer teams are collecting petition signatures to ask voters to let them and our thirteen casinos pocket millions of dollars with a sweetheart tax package that will take millions away from Missouri schools, veterans, and even the host cities of the casinos.

Hidden in the deal is a big tax cut for the casino industry that is made bigger with provisions that lower the amount of money to be taxed.

The petition campaign constitutes nothing less than a mugging of the state of Missouri.

Let’s begin with a simple question.  Would you knowingly bet eleven dollars, knowing that the most you ever could win would be TEN dollars?

That is what the teams and the casinos are going to do to Missourians.  The state is guaranteed to be a loser with the very first bet.  Here is how it will work if voters fall for this scheme:

Missouri’s casinos pay a twenty-one percent tax on revenues remaining after they have paid off winners of bets.  So much money is bet in Missouri that the casinos have approached revenues of two-billion dollars in each of the last two years and are on track to equal last year’s record or set a new revenue record for a third straight year.

Simple elementary school mathematics shows how the teams’ casino allies will grow immensely wealthy with this scam while the things that are supposed to be financed with the gambling tax are massively short-changed.

The proposed tax rate on sports betting is only ten percent, eleven percentage points below the rate charged for the last thirty years of casino gambling on table games and slot machines. Thus, the state would give up eleven of the present twenty-one percentage points to get ten

The American Gaming Association’s latest annual report says Missouri would be the twelfth state with a tax of ten percent or less.  Fourteen states have tax rates above ten percent or that top out above ten percent, including three states that charge fifty and fifty-one percent. Only five states on the AGA’s chart show rates of less than ten percent.

But there is something dark behind the petition’s demand that the rate be ten percent here.

Ten percent and twenty-one percent produce an average of 15.5 percent, an effective twenty-five percent tax cut for all Missouri casino gambling.

While the teams’ sophisticated advertising campaign will tell voters the proposal wll generate millions of dollars more for the state education fund and for their host cities, the truth is that it will produce less.

Financial analysts who advise the Missouri General Assembly forecast taxable revenes from casino gambing will jump from almost two billion dollars to $2.4 billion within four years.  A twenty-one percent tax of that amount would produce $504 million with ninety percent going into funding for elementary and secondary public schools. The other ten percent would be distributed to the thirteen cities that have casinos in them and to one county that shares revenues with the casino city.  An average tax of 15.5% would produce $372 million, again with the 90-10 split, $132 million less than if the twenty-one percent tax is maintained.

While $372 million dollars on the low end might seem to be an impressive sum, here is something else the casinos and the sports teams will never tell you in their promotions and advertising:

The Missouri Gaming Commission reports that casinos in the last fiscal year paid gambling taxes of $403.3 million dollars on revenues from slot machines and table games alone.

Approving sports wagering as proposed in the petition will take more than thirty million dollars away from the state, not add revenue.

Our metropolitan areas will feel the difference most acutely.  Host communities in the St. Louis metro area, which has four casinos, will lose $5.6 million in the first four years of sports wagering under the petition plan.  We wonder if Cardinals President Bill DeWitt III, who has been the spokesman for the teams during legislative committee hearings, has ever thought of what this plan will cost his main ticket-buying community.

Host communities in the Kansas City metro area, also with four casinos, will lose $3.65 million, something we bet the Chiefs and the Royals haven’t considered. .

Our figures are based on projections made by legislative fiscal analysts.

Legislative fiscal analysts forecast the ten percent tax will cost the thirteen host cities more than eleven million dollars, total, in the first four years of wagering, money they would receive if sports wagering were taxed at the same rate as slots and table games.  Amazingly, the association that represents those cities doesn’t seem to care. It has endorsed whatever the casinos have asked for from the legislature. One wonders if the city councils or the citizens of those communities has ever heard how much they have lost in the past thirty years because the two-dollar admission never having adjusted for inflation and how much they will lose if the petition passes.

By our calculations, using the Bureau of Labor Statistics annual inflation calculator, the state already has lost almost $1.1 Billion in admission fees because casinos are paying the same fee they paid when the first two of them opened thirty years ago this year.

In the most recent fiscal year, the state received $57.9 million in admission fees. Had the fees been adjusted annally for inflation, it would have received $113.5 million. But inflation works both ways.  The $57.9 million the state did receive had a purchasing power of only $29.5 millon because of the loss of purchasing power of the two 1993 dollars. Remember, half of the two-dollar admission fee goes to the host cities.  But their association doesn’t seem to care.

And it’s worse.

Buried within the petition are six deductions not allowed in today’s law that will reduce taxable income by several millions of dollars. The deductions encourage casino bookeepers to try to show their casino produced a monthly loss on paper.  If they can, the schools, home dock cities and other state entities listed as beneficiaries of this new form of gambling will receive zero revenues that month.

But it’s far worse than that.

If a casino can show that it had a paper loss for a month, the amount it claims as loss will carry over to the next month and be used to calculate that month’s profit or loss, again reducing the casino’s tax payments. Can anyone name any other business or industry in Missouri that is allowed to calculate their taxes this way?

Two states provide scary examples of the dangers of the carryovers for Missourians to consider.  In November, 2022, Louisiana casinos reported a statewide loss of $25.6 milllion because some of the casinos took bets made by a Texas furniture store owner that the Texas Rangers would win the World Series, which they did. In the same month, Maryland casinos reported a statewide loss of $33.6 million after they spent more than $60 million in promotional credits as part of the state’s launch of mobile betting.

But it’s far worse than that.

Let’s go back to the admission fee. Casinos also pay the state a two-dollar admission fee for each person who goes through the turnstiles to the gambling floors. If the gamblers stay longer than two hours, the casino pays another two dollars—a policy that began on the first day that casinos opened thirty years ago this year when they actually were boats and river cruises actually were possible.

A prediction was made at the East Coast Gaming Conference in 2019, a few months after sports betting was legalized by the U. S. Supreme Court, that within five to ten years, ninety percent of sports wagers would be placed online. Just two years later, gambling analyst Larry Henry reported on Casino.org that more than eighty percent of sports bets already were being placed online and New Jersey, the first state to legalize sports betting after the court ruling, 92 percent of sports wagers had been placed online in 2021.

If Missouri follows national trends, ninety percent of sports bets soon will be online and not made by people who go through the turnstiles of our casinos.  Under the petition, those online bets will produce zero revenue for programs and services whose budgets have suffered greatly because turnstile admissions have declined by about forty-seven percent in the last twelve years.

Who is suffering the most? The Veterans Commission Capital Trust Fund, which provides money for veterans nursing homes. Admission fee funding of care for our veterans has dropped by 63 percent in the last decade.  Nothing in the petition does anything to reverse that trend.

The Missouri Gaming Commission’s budget has declined by more than twenty percent in the last decade. It has twenty-three fewer employees than it had then. And it is facing a major increase in enforcement responsibility if the petition passes. The commission will collect some licensing fees but the petition also requires it to use some of its new money to pay for a problem gambler’s assistance fund.

Numerous studies have indicated gambling addiction will at least triple with the introduction of sports wagering and remote betting.  The money to be set aside for “compulsive gambing prevention” comes out of the commission’s pocket. It comes out of the taxes benefitting schools and home dock cities and fees going to the gaming commission. Nothing in the petition requires the casinos or the teams to contribute directly to a fund to counter the problems their new form of gambling will create.

And two more things before we go.

The casino industry has spent a lot of time and resources trying to convince your legislators and mine that sports wagering is a stand-alone issue that need special care and feeding.  It is not.  Their own bills just add “sports wagering” to the list of games of skill in our state laws.  In the now-seven years that sports wagering bills have been introduced, not one has said anything that defines sports wagering as differing from poker, blackjack, craps, or any other table game or slot machine.  A bet is a bet is a bet.  And if you bet long enough the casino will have all of your money whether you bet on the spin of a wheel, the fall of a card, the roll of a die, or the pull of a lever.

The committee backing the petition campaign says sports wagering will provide new good-paying jobs.

Will it generate enough new jobs to replace the 5,600 people laid off in the host cities during the last fifteen years?  Will it replace the $100 million-plus in payrolls lost each year by the host cities in that same period?

Everybody loses except the teams and the casinos in this petition campaign. People going into casinos know they’re playing on tables tilted against them. That’s fine.  But before Missourians support this blatant deception against our state by the casinos and our sports teams, they should look at how much they will lose regardless of whether they gamble.

The casinos have never dealt the top card on the deck to the legislature while trying to convince it to approve sports wagering.  Now they, with their sports team bedmates, are doing the same with the general public.

The legislature could fix all of this during this session. But don’t expect it to. There are 197 state representatives and senators in our General Assembly.  The Associated Press has reported that casinos, sports teams, online sports betting companies, and video gaming terminal inerests have hired about eighty lobbyists to pressure the people we presume represent us into representing those interests instead. That’s one lobbyist for ever 2.5 members of our legislature. It is hard to grow a backbone and do what is right on this issue when  you are surrounded by lobbyists backed by interests with bottomless checking accounts and a willingness to support re-election bids or to support opponents for those with the courage to reject the ongoing mugging of Missouri.

The only recourse Missourians will have if this petition gets enough signatures to be on the ballot later this year is to vote it down.  If they fail to do so, their state will be a big loser.

(All of the statistics used in this entry are drawn from the annual reports of the Missouri Gaming Commission, the American Gaming Association, legislative staff fiscal notes for pro-casino legislation, and the U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. We never have seen the homework the casinos to justify the claims they have made in the past or the present).

Now, we take a look at the history behind a cold football game, a cold-shooting basketball team, and the latest from baseball’s hot stove league)

(CHIEFS)—The regular season wasn’t pretty for the Kansas City Chiefs but they looked almost as solid as the frozen field at Arrowhead Stadium Saturday night with their dominating 26-7 wild card playoff win over the Miami Dolphins, a team that hasn’t won in forever  in cold weather.

The game goes into the record books as the fourth-coldest game in NFL history.  Here’s where it fits in:

December 31, 1967  Lambeau Field, Green Bay comes from behind to beat Dallas 21-17 on the famous Bart Starr quarterback sneak behind center Ken Bowman and Right Guard Jerry Kramer who pushed Defensive Tackle Jethro Pugh aside just enough for Starr to cross the line.  Temperatur at the start of the game: -13. Wind Chill  -48. The game was dubbed “The Ice Bowl.”  Green Bay went on to defeat the Oakland Raiders 33-10 in Super Bowl II.

January 10, 1982  “The Freezer Bowl”  Riverfront Stadium, Cincinnati. Coach Forrest Gregg, who played in “The Ice Bowl” is now the coach of the Bengals, who beat the San Diego Chargers 27-7. San Diego’s only touchdown was scored by former Missouri Tiger Kellen Winslow.  Game time temperature: -9  Wind Chill -59.  Some of the players in this game, as in the Green Bay-Dallas game reported health problems for the rest of their lives because of the playing conditions.

January 10, 2016  TCF Bank Stadium, Minneapolis. Seattle beats the Vikings 10-9 when Bill Walsh’s field goal attempt goes wide left with 22 seconds on the clock. Minus-6 with a windchilll of minus-25.

January 13, 2024 Arrowhead Stadium,  Chiefs beat the Miami Dolphins in the southernmost NFL cold game on record, 26-7. Harrison Butker’s four field goals and two extra points outscore the Dolphins, who lost their eighth straight game played in below-freezing temperatures. Quarterback Tua Tagovailoa dropped to 0-5 in games played below 45 degrees.  Game time temperature: -4  Windchill -20. At the end it was -9 and -28. The extreme cold sent 69 people to aid tents run by the city fire department. About half were for hypothermia symptoms and fifteen people were taken to hospitals where seven were suffering from hypothermia, three for frostbite and five for various other reasons.

      The game broke the record for the coldest game at Arrowhead Stadium.  The Chiefs beat the Broncos 48-17 on December 18, 1993. Footall Reference reports the temperature at the start of the game was 0.5 degrees.

December 10, 1972  Metropolitan Stadium, Minneapolis Green Bay 23, Vikings 7. Temperature at game start 0. Wind Chill -18. Green Bay’s running backs, John Brockington and MacArthur Lane combine for more than 200 yards rushing, 99 by Lane, who had come over from the St. Louis Cardinals that year. Later, Lane was with the Kansas City Chiefs and in his last year in his career, 1978, rushed for 144 yards against  the Bills. He was 36 years and 199 days old and remains the oldest player to rush for more than 100 yards in an NFL game.

January 20, 2008  Lambeau Field  New York Giants 23 Packers 20 on a 47-yard field goal 12:25 into overtime by Lawrence Tynes. Temperature -4, Wind Chill -24.

December 26, 1993  Lambeau Field  Packers vs. the now-LA Raiders. Packers win 28-0. Game time temperature 0, Wind Chill -22.

January 15, 1994  Ralph Wilson Stadium, Buffalo, Coldest game played at Orchard Park in Buffalo. Game start temperature 0, Wind Chill -32. Bills come from behind in the fourth quarter with a fourth quarter touchdown pass from Jim Kelly to Bill Brooks to win 29-23.

December 3, 1972  Metropolitan Stadium, Minneapolis. -2 at the start with a windchilll of -26. Vikings kicker Fred Cox outscores the Bears with three field goals and two PATs in a 23-10 Minnesota victory.

Kansas City’s defense again was dominant, keeping the Dolphins out of the red zone all night long.  Miami’s only score was a 53-yard touchdown pass and run to former chiefs receiver Tyreek Hill who otherwise was not a factor in the game. The win against Miami moves the Chiefs into next week’s game against the Buffalo Bills, who beat the Pittsburgh Steelers last night in the game delayed for a day because of a typical Buffalo winter storm that dumped more snow into the stadium than an army of scoopers could remove on Sunday.

(miz)—The Missouri Tigers reached the halfway point of their regular season Saturday, losing their sixth game in their last seven outings and could drop below .500 tonight when they play league-leading Alabama on the Crimson Tide’s court.  Alabama is 11-5 overall with a five-game winning streak. Missouri is now 8-8. The Tigers join Arkansas and Vanderbilt in the SEC cellar with 0-3 records.

SB Nation’s Sam Snelling reports the Tigers have not defeated a high major opponent since losing Caleb Grill early in December with an injury to his non-shooting wrist. He had surgery  and might be back later this month.

Snelling suggests coach Dennis Gates is giving his veteran players a chance to right the ship, but it’s not working. Five of his guys have played more than 100 games in their college careers with Nick Honor accounting for 139. Noah Carter, John Tonje, Connor Vanover, and Sean East II all have more than 100 games. He wonders when Gates will realize his veterans aren’t getting the job done and when he will start building for tomorrow with his younger guys. (zou)

(BASEBALL)—No big new signings by the Royals and the Cardinals but the Redbirds have made an interesting front office move by hiring Chaim Bloom as an advisor. Bloom was with the Boston Red Sox until he was dumped by Fenway Sports Group despite being credited by some with cutting spending while rebuilding the team’s farm system.

He’ll be an advisor to Cardinals President of Baseball Operations John Mozeliak, who plans to step aside after the 2025 season, prompting questions about whether Mozeliak is grooming his successor. Mozeliak warns against jumping to conclusions. “where it leads to, we’ll see,” he says.

It’s the second major advisory step taken in the off-season by the Cardinals, who signed Yadiar Molina earlier as an advisor, prompting speculation about his role growing from advisor to manager.  Molina is managing in the Puerto Rico winer league and wants to manage in the bigs.  Present Cardinals manager Oli Marmol is in the last year of his contract. Mozeliak does not expect friction between the M’s.  Although he’s a supporter of Marmol, he also recognizes the Cardinals cannot have another year with problems on the field and in the locker room.

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Uncertainty

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I want to talk to you today about my greatest hero and about his life and his times which resonate in these uncertain days.

I want to tell you about helping George Clooney make a movie.  But Clooney, whose work I admire, is not the hero of this story.

Back about 2005, I was wrapping up my second chairmanship of my profession’s national organization, the Radio-Television News Directors Association (now the Radio Television Digital News Association) when George Clooney’s production company reached out to us to help with some information about Edward R. Murrow.  I also was the organization’s historian so the response fell to me.

Edward R. Murrow was, and is, my hero. To be involved, even in such a minor way as I was in producing an Oscar-nominated Murrow movie produced by George Clooney—who can be as serious as a heart attack in his work although many of his movies are light-hearted—is one of the most important distinctions I have gathered.

Murrow had given his greatest speech at our convention in 1958, three months after See It Now was killed by CBS boss William S. Paley. It’s known as the “wires and lights in a box” speech.  It’s also considered his professional suicide speech because he was critical of the early network television news decisions as he warned: “This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it’s nothing but wires and lights in a box….”

Here’s the entire speech, should you choose to listen, from our convention more than 65 years ago:

Bing Videos

I provided the background information and a copy of the organiztion’s 1958 logo for the opening and closing segments of the movie.  You won’t see my name or that of RTNDA in any of the credits, but that was my contribution. I am not bothered by the omission. It was, after all, a minuscule part of the story.

When the movie came out, RTNDA had a reception in Washington where Clooney, Strathairn, and Grant Heslov (who played a young Don Hewitt, the creator of Sixty Minutes), attended.  I have a signed movie poster in my loft office.

Seventy-one years ago, he said:

“If we confuse dissent with disloyalty–if we deny the right of the individual to be wrong, unpopular, eccentric or unorthodox–if we deny the essence of racial equality then hundreds of millions in Asia and Africa who are shopping about for a new allegiance will conclude that we are concerned to defend a myth and our present privileged status. Every act that denies or limits the freedom of the individual in this country costs us the confidence of men and women who aspire to that freedom and independence of which we speak and for which our ancestors fought.”

McCarthyism was ramping up in America at the time.  There are those who feel we are in our greatest peril since then, perhaps greater.  Reading these words reminds us that we as a people have been where we are before and we have survived because reporters such as Murrow (and we still have some today although we are also bombarded by many on the other side) refused to back away or had no fear in confrontations with demagogues. The story of a free nation seems to be cyclical, which is one reason to study unvarnished history.

His most famous broadcast was “See it Now” on March 9, 1954 when he used McCarthy’s own words to condemn him, concluding:

“We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine; and remember that we are not descended from fearful men. Not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were for the moment unpopular.

“This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy’s methods to keep silent, or for those who approve. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibilities. As a nation we have come into our full inheritance at a tender age. We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home. The actions of the junior Senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad, and given considerable comfort to our enemies. And whose fault is that? Not really his. He didn’t create this situation of fear; he merely exploited it–and rather successfully. Cassius was right. “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.”

David Strathairn recreated those remarks with great effectiveness in the movie.

Bing Videos

I invite you, especially if you are a reporter today or a young person wanting to be a reporter in this rapidly changing world of journalism, to watch this 1975 program about Murrow, produced by the BBC.

:Bing Videos

And I invite you to read this column from constitutional lawyer John Whitehead, written in 2005 when the movie came out. It seems appropriate now:

The Rutherford Institute :: Edward R. Murrow: “We will not walk in fear, one of another.” |

I close with Murrow’s words that are a challenge to all of us when there are those who believe they can seize power because they can intimidate a nation.

“This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy’s methods to keep silent, or for those who approve. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibilities.”

 Murrow reaches out to us seventy years after that broadcast. All we have to do is remove “Senator McCarthy” and fill in another name and we will understand the challenge we as citizens must not avoid meeting.

One of Murrow’s journalism descendents, Dan Rather, used to close his broadcasts with the word, “Courage.”

May all of us, we who are not descended from fearful men and women, find it in 2024.

 

Passive 

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Maybe it’s a case of thinking the old days were better than today.  Maybe not.

The legislature has returned to the Capitol.  Most people have no idea how quickly things move when the session starts or how intense the work is—or how contentious is can become if a partisan renegade group decides it must prevail, their minority status be damned.

For the last three years the sessions’ last week or so have become mired in political mud and the sessions have been the least productive in long, long memory because of conflicts between the legalization of those Video Lottery Machines that are pimples in our convenience stores and sports wagering legislation that seeks to give our casino a significant tax break to the detriment of our education funds and even to the further detriment of their own host cities.

But that’s a diatribe for another time.

It seems to from our high position that the baneful effects of term limits, about which we were warned in 1992, have produced another regrettable trend.

A passive legislature.

The loss of institutional memory because of term limits cannot be overstated.

One of the bigget warnings before 1992 was that term imits would transfer power from the chambers to the hallways, where lobbyists roam, because no senior members would be around to advise newcomers on the role of the General Assembly in the process of lawmaking and in the process of shaping state fiscal policy.

The transfer became obvious several years ago when, during debate, the sponsor of a bill would ask of another lawmaker proposing an amendment, “Have you checked with so-and-so out in the hall?”

Later the issue became even more egregious as I watched lawmakers during debate checking their cell phones for text messages from the paid influencers outside the chamber. Lobbyists are banned from being on the House and Senate floors. Physically.  But their electronic presence is undeniable.

As we have watched for these many years, it seems that the legislature today is more likely to accept legislation without question and without hearing the voice of the public as much as it once did. Although we don’t cover committee meetings as much as we did in our reporting days, we have been in a large number of them on the issue of sports wagering, a special interest of ours for several reasons.

The caisno industry, now unfortunately aided and abetted by our major professional sports teams that need millons of dollars a year to try to keep pace with bigger-market moneybag teams, has always presented bills that are—to be frank—terrible fiscal policy for the state and its people and especially for schools, veterans, and the casino’s home cities.

Glaringly absent is any aggressive interrogation of the industry.  I can recall only two instances in which any semi-extensive questions were asked and only one when the questions were aggressively put (and the industry’s response was hardly direct).

In the old days—and I intensely dislike using that phrase—it seemed the legislature, while heavily influenced by lobbyists (who have a place in the system) and their checkbooks, looked more critically at legislation.  And it seems that lawmakers who were more likely to be presented a problem took an initiative, now missing, to fix the problem.

Many legislative hearings where held at night so members of the public could more easily be present without missing a full day of work. Night meetings are scarce today, leaving the field more and more to those who can affort to buy representation.  The voice of the citizen is muted in today’s system and the general assembly is more susceptible to being influenced by political action committee money.

In the first year of my lobbying career (working on getting the casinos to pay to keep the Steamboat Arabia Museum in Missouri), I took some findings of casino greed to a member of the House who told me, “Oh, the casinos will be interested in this. I’ve already gotten two checks form them this year.” He apparently was totally unaware of what a self-indictment his statement was.

Some legislator’s offices are festooned with plaques from organizations thanking them for their support.  When I was running the Missorinet newsroom we had a rule that we would accept no awards from any organization we covered.

We were not their friend. Nor were we their enemy.

We are one of those in the halls again this year, raising our pitiful voice against the steamroller called the casino industry, hoping again that we will trouble the consciences of those who sit quietly while the industry presents its plans for getting richer and richer while the services that serve the people of Missouri that rely on revenue from the industry get poorer and poorer, and poorer still under proposed sports wagering legislation.

Somebody has to ask the questions.  Too bad it isn’t the people who are presented with bills the industry wants passed.

A Distinction Without a Difference

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We were intrigued by the reactions several days ago by the major Republican candidates for Governor to the Colorado Supreme Court’s 4-3 decision that Donald Trump is ineligible to be on thee Colorado primary ballot.  Intrigued but not surprised.

Jay Ashcroft said, “The State of Missouri will reject” the ruling. “The people of this state will make a decision as to who they want to be President of the United States.”  There’s a flaw in that proclamation. The ruling is not Missouri’s to reject. In fact there are Missourians who are turning handsprings and hoping it’s upheld. It’s a matter not from a Missouri Court but from a Colorado court and it is for the national justice system to decide on appeals.

Bill Eigel echoed, “Citizens pick presidents, not unelected liberal Justices.”  In November, yes.  But citizens also can bring lawsuits that might determine who’s on the Missouri ballot in November.

And Mike Kehoe sang from the same hymnal: “Voters have the right to decide who our President is, not unelected liberal judges.

How about unelected CONSERVATIVE judges?  Are they the only ones who can make decisions such as these?

Or, maybe, should only ELECTED judges have the right to rule on constitutional questions?  If they subscribe to that idea, they favor eliminating the Missouri Supreme Court, which is appointed.

What is it, gentlemen?

And while we’re at it, DID Trump engage in an insurrection on January 6, 2021 when he urged a big crowd to keep the Congress from certifying an election he lost?

Ashcroft, as the state’s top election official, is going to file a friend of the court brief supporting Trump’s candidacy when the case goes to the U.S. Supreme Court, presumably a court these three would endorse because Trump made sure it tilts conservative. A lower Colorado court had ruled that Trump could not be removed from the ballot because the 14th Amendment, the central arguing point for the Keep Trump folks, is vague about whether it covers the President of the United States. The issue is whether “officers of the United States” in the amendment includes the president who is the top officer of the United States. One of the responsibilities of Supreme Courts at the state and federal level is to clarify vague language in the statutes or the constitutions.

But how can a ruling from an unelected U. S. Supreme Court be acceptable regardless of what the ruling is because none of the Justices was elected, even the conservative ones?

Those who favor the concept of originalist interpretation of the Constitution will enjoy this.

Ashcroft also argues that the amendment refers to people who take an oath to “support” the Constitution. But the presidential oath swears to “preserve, protect and defend” the Constitution.  It will be interesting to see how the judges in Washington D. C. split that hair.  It sounds from our high observation point like a distinction without a difference.

What does that mean?

A check of the logicallyfalacious.com website offers this explanation:

Claim X is made where the truth of the claim requires a distinct difference between A and B.

There is NO distinct difference between A and B.

Therefore, claim X is incorrectly claimed to be true.

Can one “preserve, protect and defend” the Constitution without being in “support” of it?  And in the reverse, can one “support” the Constitution without taking steps to “preserve, protect and defend” it?

As far as Ashcroft’s claim that “the people of the state will make a decision as to who they want to be President of the United States,” let’s wait to see if anybody files a lawsuit to keep Trump off the Missouri primary election ballot—-and how those unelected Missouri Supreme Court judges who early in their careers as lawyers had to take this oath:

I do solemnly swear that I will support the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of Missouri;
That I will maintain the respect due courts of justice, judicial officers and members of my profession and will at all times conduct myself with dignity becoming of an officer of the court in which I appear;
That I will never seek to mislead the judge or jury by any artifice or false statement of fact or law;
That I will at all times conduct myself in accordance with the Rules of Professional Conduct; and,
That I will practice law to the best of my knowledge and ability and with consideration for the defenseless and oppressed.
So help me God.

The oath allows some latitude. It’s okay to substitute “affirm” for “swear,” and it’s okay to substitute “under the pains and penalties of perjury” instead of saying, “So help me God” at the end.

Someday we’ll discuss the silly argument against “unelected” people.  After all, one of the three candidates we’ve just mentioned once was an unelected person serving in one of the state’s highest offices. That defect didn’t seem to limit his effectiveness in carrying out his sworn duties.  Just for the record, this is the oath that the Governor and Lieutenant Governor of Missouri take:

I ­­­­_________ do solemnly swear and affirm that I will support the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of Missouri and I will faithfully demean myself in the office of Governor (or Lt. Governor) of the State of Missouri.”

It’s different for members of the legislature.  The first part is the same but after swearing to support the Constitutions, it continues, “and faithfully perform the duties of my office, and that I will not knowingly receive, directly or indirectly, any money or other valuable thing for the performance or nonperformance of any act or duty pertaining to my office, other than the compensation allowed by law.”

—campaign contributions from those who approve of their voting record or who would benefit from their voting record notwithstanding (that part is not included).

Well, the Colorado case is headed to a bunch of unelected Justices in Washington to interpret a Constitutional Amendment written at the end of the Civil War to keep people like Robert E. Lee or our own Confederate Governor, Thomas C. Reynolds, who had sworn loyalty to the state and federal Constitutions and then tried to wipe out the government they’d sworn to uphold and protect to keep them from ever holding public office again.

University of Maryland law professor Mark Graber provides an almost line-by-line explanation of the amendment. We’ll find out eventually if this is the kind of thinking the Supreme Court will adopt, but his references to the original purpose of the amendment might be helpful to understanding in in its totality.

Does 14th Amendment bar Trump from office? A constitutional scholar explains Colorado ruling • Missouri Independent

The unelected Justices have a special oath that actually is two oaths in one, a Judicial Oath and a Constitutional Oath:

“I, _________, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me as _________ under the Constitution and laws of the United States; and that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.”

These judges who have sworn to “support and defend” the Constitution might decide if the oaths they took mean they also “protect and preserve” the Constitution.

(This entry was misdated for January 3, 2023 by mistake but has since been placed in its proper chronological context thanks to the eye of a long-time friend who commented on it two days before it was supposed to appear here.  let this be a reminder to all of us that it is now Twenty-twenty-FOUR).

 

 

Let’s See How This Plays Out 

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Your faithful observer is a Protestant who believes that a faith that is so much based on love, whether it is toward one’s enemies, or in following as much as I can Jesus’ comment record in John 13: “A new command I give youL Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” can in so many ways pas judgment on who can love who.

My congregation lost some members a few years ago when our minister announced that he was a pastor for the congregation but a minister to all of God’s people and that he would, therefore, perform same-sex marriages (he had been approached by a same-sex couple wanting a marriage ceremony several weeks earlier).

A few days ago, Pope Francis allowed priests to bless same-sex couples.  The declaration has been described by The New York Times as “his most definitive step yet to make the Roman Catholic Church more welcoming to L.G.B.T.Q Catholics and more reflective of his vision of a more pastoral, and less rigid, church.”

It seems to be a major step away from the church’s long-held doctrine that marriage is only between a man and a woman. It is not, however, a complete break from that doctrine because the new policy refers only to “blessing,” not sanctioning marriage, a sacrament, a ceremonial rite of the church. The new rule makes that clear.

The Vatican says the blessing should not be part of any formal service but instead should be done during a private meeting with a priest, during a pilgrimage, or during a visit to a shrine or during a prayer recited in a group.

Kansas city Bishop James Johnston says the declaration “recognizes that God desires the good for all persons, including those in objectively irregular same-sex or heterosexual relationships, and if one reaches out for God’s assistance, that should not be denied.”  But he emphasizes that it would be a mistake to say the Church is “now approving or validating same-sex unions or unions which are outside of marriage.” A blessing does not signify the approval of the union but “allows for ministers to bless people in these difficult situations that they may be assisted by God’s grace along the path of conversion and salvation.”

The St. Louis Archdiocese describes those who seek the blessings as sinners.   “When we seek out a blessing, we come as sinners to receive God’s grace and mercy inour lives,” says statement from the archdiocese. “Blessings serve to open one’s life to God, to ask for his help to live better and to invoke the Holy Spirit so that the values of the Gospel may be lived with greater faithfulness.”

The statement refers to the blessings as “an expression of the Church’s maternal heart…a reminder that we nurture and promote the Church’s closeness to people in every circumstance n which they might seek God’s help and grace.”

The statement is aimed at more than LGBTQ couples.  It also applies to people who have divorced and remarried without getting an annulment of the first marriage.

About the same time the Pope’s declaration was making news headlines, NBC was reporting, “Moe than 500 bills targeting LGBTQ people were introduced in state legisltures around the country in 2023.  Of those bills, 75 became law, including two in Missouri banning gender-affirming care and restricting participation in school athletics.”

One of the most potent moral forces in the Missouri Capitol for decades has been the Missouri Catholic Conference, the lobbying arm of the Catholic Church. I recall its opposition to legislation allowing the cessation of brain function to be a definition of death. And its opposition to abortion has never weakened.

Now the Vatican has softened its stance on LGBTQ issues. Will that action trigger any softening of conservative faith-based lobbyists on anti-LGBTQ legislation?

In matters of faith dictating law, will there be an emphasis more on pastoring than on rigid judging?

But then, how does rigid judging agree with loving one another?

And which should prevail in our lives and in our laws?

Let’s see how the Pope’s declaration carries out in our government halls and in the quiet rooms of our homes whether we be Catholic or Protestant.

Or even nothing at all.