“Winning for Education” Makes Losers of Teachers, Veterans

If you are a teacher, know a teacher, and/or are part of a teacher’s organization, you need to read what we are going to tell you about the sports betting proposal on the November ballot, Amendment 2, which is deceptive and hardly moves the financial needle for teacher’s salaries.

If you are a veteran, know a veteran, and/or are part of a veterans group, you need to read what we are going to tell you on Wednesday about the sports betting proposal on the November ballot, Amendment 2. It makes veterans even bigger losers than they have been.

Today we’re going to talk about the casino industry’s manipulation of voters with its campaign that will not deliver, by far, the great benefits to public education system the casino industry wants voters to think it will.

We are going to throw a lot of numbers your way today. The numbers are based on the casino industry’s own statistics as reported annually to the Missouri Gaming Commission and a couple of other sources.

They again suggest the casino industry is not shooting straight with us. But that’s not unusual.

We do not mind if you favor sports wagering.  But if you vote for it on the basis of the advertising by “Winning for Education,” the front organization for the casinos and their sports team bedmates, you need to know what you are doing TO our teachers, not for our teachers.

First: some basic information.  Missouri’s thirteen casinos generate revenue for state programs and services from two sources: a 21% tax on casino adjusted gross revenues (what’s left after all successful bettors are paid off) and admission fees ($2 per admission; we won’t distract you with the process of determining admissions; that’s for our next post about making veterans bigger losers than they have been for more than a decade).

Missouri had 521 school districts in fiscal year 2023. We will use that number in our calculations. It had 88,669 classroom teachers and 18,097 administrators and supervisors (including people such as guidance counselors, school nurses, and librarians), in 2,355 buildings.  The enrollment for the 2022-23 school year was 861,494.

The legislature approved a budget for the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education of $10,394,092,704 for the 2022-23 fiscal year.

Gaming consultant Chris Krafcik estimates total state revenue from the 10% tax on sports wagering will produce $4.7 million in the first year and $38.7 million in the fifth year of sports betting.

If we divide those figures by 521, the number of school districts, we find that sports wagering will produce an average of only $9,021 per district in the first year.  In year five, the number rises to $74,280 per district.

If we divide those numbers by 88,669 (the number of classroom teachers listed above) we find the average teacher could get a raise of $53.00 in the first year and a raise of $436 in the fifth year. Not even close to keep up with the cost of living.

If we spread those amounts among teachers AND administrators, all 106,756 of them, the average wage increase in the first year is $44 and in year five, it is $369.

That’s less than a tank of gas in the first year and not many groceries in the fifth one.

If, after looking at these numbers, that you still believe the industry commercials saying sports wagering will make any significant difference in the Missouri teacher salaries, I will sell you the Gateway Arch. The attractive teachers in the commercials who talk of sports wagering generating more than $100 million dollars in five years are blowing smoke.  While the statement might be true in terms of raising that amount of money, the suggestion that it will produce anything meaningful for teachers is cattle byproduct.

Let’s assume the elementary and secondary education budget does not increase in the next five years.  Simple division indicates $38.7 million for education in the fifth year of sports wagering would add .00037% to that budget.  Four ten-thousandths of one percent, to round things up.

It’s even worse. These numbers only involve elementary and secondary education.  The proposed amendment says funds will go to higher education, too.

Missouri has SIXTY-SEVEN institutions that are accredited as degree-granting post-secondary education institutions. There are thirteen public universities.  There are 39 private universities (which are not excluded. The language of the amendment says only “higher education.”), and thirteen community colleges.  There also are some schools from other states that offer programs or degrees in Missouri.  The amendment contains no language limiting the funding to public post-secondary schools, not does it address in any way those out-of=state institutions with degree programs here.

We haven’t come up with how many faculty, staff, and administrative employees those higher education institutions would add to the pie.

But the school won’t get all of that money to begin with, assuming there is money from casino taxes.

Money for education will not be used for education until amounts are taken out for:

—Regulation.   The Missouri Gaming Commission can have some of that money if the various licensing fees casinos will pay do not fully pay the costs of regulation, and

—“the greater of 10% of such annual tax revenues or $5,000,000 to the Compulsive Gamblers Fund.”

Those paltry raises we’ve calculated for our elementary and secondary school folks might wind up being measured in pennies, or pocket change.

If, after looking at these numbers, that you still believe the industry commercials saying sports wagering will make any significant difference in the Missouri teacher salaries, I will sell you the Gateway Arch. The attractive teachers in the commercials who talk of sports wagering generating more than $100 million dollars in five years are blowing smoke.  While the statement might be true in terms of raising that amount of money, the suggestion that it will produce anything meaningful for teachers is cattle byproduct.

Let’s assume the elementary and secondary education budget does not increase in the next five years.  Simple division indicates $38.7 million for education in the fifth year of sports wagering would add .00037% to that budget.  Four ten-thousandths of one percent, to round things up.

And that doesn’t even calculate how much MORE education would get if sports wagering would be taxed at the same rate as other forms of Missouri gambling, 21%.  But Amendment 2 sets a rate at less than half of that and then has provisions that can significantly lower taxable revenue or even make it a deficit, meaning there will be some months when the casinos put NO money into the education fund.

The amendment also allows casinos to carry over the loss to the next month’s calculations, lowering tax revenue for that month too—or increasing the possibility that a casino can calculate another zero-revenue/zero tax month.

In the 2023 legislative session, a Senate bill proposed boosting the minimum teacher’s salary from $25,000 to $38,000 and increasing the salary for a teacher with a master’s degree and at least ten years of experience from $33,000 to $46,000.  The bill never came to a vote because of internal dissension within the Senate, thanks to the Freedom Caucus.

The National Education Association  April 24, 2023 released a report showing Missouri ranks 50th in starting teacher pay with an average of $34,502 with only 43 districts paying started new teachers $40,000 or more. The report calculated a minimum living wage was $46,944.

A World Population Review study of 2024 salaries lists Missouri as one of seven states starting teachers at less than  $50,000 with only Montana paying less.  The overall Missouri average teacher salary in this study is $53,999, ranking Missouri 46th ahead of Mississippi, South Dakota, Florida, and West Virginia.

Yeah, sports wagering will solve a lot of problems with our teacher salaries and other education system problems.. Suuuure it will.

Don’t bet on sports wagering because it will do wonderful things for our schools. It won’t.  Amendment 2 just makes the drop in the bucket even smaller, thanks to the sweetheart tax rate and the deductions that now will allow a reduction of taxable revenue.

We aren’t sure why any dubious proposition that appears on our ballots thinks it can succeed by telling you it will do great things for education. They don’t. And this one surely won’t.

Governor Joe Teasdale once told me, “I’ll never lie to you but there will be times when I won’t tell you the truth.”   I interpreted the second half of that sentence to contradict the first.  But that’s the kind of disinformation campaign being waged by the casino industry and its bedmates, our major league sports teams.

But what do you expect from an industry that is built on the concept that you will be a loser more often than you will be a winner?

Give your local education leaders these numbers and see how many of your teachers would make commercials endorsing this proposal.

Amendment 2 will be a loser for our schools.  You can bet on it.

Centennial

A big centennial event slipped past us in Jefferson City last weekend and nobody seemed to notice.

Sunday, October 6, was the 100th anniversary of he dedication of the Capitol.

Local historian Michelle Brooks did a presentation about it last night for the Historic City of Jefferson. I couldn’t go because I was doing a presentation at the library about the 250th anniversary of the First Continental Congress—the one before the Declaration of Independence was written but the one that created a document that created our country.

A whole chapter of the Capitol dedication will be in my next book, a history of the capitol and some of the history of the people who worked in it, for it, against it, and died for it.

The Capitol Commission, which has been doing centennial observances since a 2011 event in the rotunda commemorating the fire that destroyed the 1840 Capitol, has been focused more on restoration and renovations for some time now and is doing persistent and diligent work on bringing the Capitol back to the way the original designers intended for it to look.

A massive exterior effort in recent years has brought Ceres down from the dome for restoration and cleaning (who wouldn’t need it after being hit by lighting about 300 times), the statues and the fountains have been cleaned and repaired.  The stonework has been cleaned and tuckpointed.

Inside, the great stained glass window over the grand stairway is back in place and the vaulted ceiling has been restored to its original color.  The contractor let me get up on the scaffolding for some personal time with it a few days ago.  The cleaning and restoration of he window, which was installed about 1917, has brought out details that had been hidden for years and the restoration of the original wall colors makes the window’s beauty even more striking.

The legislative library will be open soon after cracks in its ceiling have been fixed and the room and its columns have been restored to their original colors.

Eventually, the double-decker offices that now house state representatives and are handicap Inaccessible will be turned into single-story offices again but that is an ongoing struggle linked to other issues—-where to put these people and who has to move to where else when that happens being a question that has been unresolved for a long time.

The goal is to return our capitol to the majesty it was when it was dedicated in 1924.  The House of Representatives was restored in 1988 and the Senate in 2001.  The trip to visit the window as something of a trifecta for me.  I am one of the few people who has touched the ceilings of both legislative chambers, and the window is the icing on the cake. And when Ceres was on display before she was put back on the dome, I got close to her.  In fact, her face is on the back of my business cards.

I often have wondered what Egerton Swartwout, the architect of the Capitol, would think of it if he were to walk in to it today and see so many of the things that were put in it in his day are still there.  I know he’d be dismayed at some of the abuses the building has undergone—the double-decker offices one of the greatest, and the decades of monochrome off-white paint that has covered the color scheme that he created to highlight the architectural details of the monumental rooms, and so forth.

The dedication was held in 1924 although the building was occupied starting in 1917.  A dedication planned for 1918 had to be cancelled because of the war and the building languished undedicated until 1924 when members of the commission that oversaw its construction started a movement to dedicate the building while they were still alive to enjoy it.

It was a huge event with speechifying going on all afternoon and an elaborate 1920s-style pageant (folks, I think it would be considered pretty awful today but back then it was some doin’s) that portrayed various epochs in state history.  The last act was halted because of a heavy rain and lightning storm that rendered the unpaved roads of the day quagmires, and the bridge across the river dangerous.

Perhaps it was an appropriate bookend to the story of the present Capitol, which began with a rainstorm and a single lightning bolt that hit the dome of the old Capitol on February 5, 1911 and not only destroyed the building, but it created the last great challenge to Jefferson City as the seat of government.

A peach farmer from West Plains generated the greatest threat. But that’s another story. (Some folks say that Sedalia tried to get the capital designation then but that’s not true.  That happened in 1896.)

But that’s another story.  And if the book gets published it might make interesting reading.  It sure was interesting writing, I can tell you that.

So happy anniversary to our Capitol.  And to our Capital City which will celebrate its BIcentennial as the seat of state government in a couple of years. What a great time that will be to commit to being a greater city.

Sports: Kansas City Doubles UP; Mizzou Doubles Down (and more)

(ROYALS)—The Kansas City Royals come home for a pair of games, starting tomorrow, after splitting two playoff games in Yankee Stadium.  Yankees starter Carlos Rodon’s fun night lasted three innings before longtime nemesis Salvador Perez ripped a fourth-inning home run that helped the Royals take a 4-0 lead.  The Yankees later cut the lead in half but the bullpen again held tight at the end.

The stars of both teams, Aaron Judge and Bobby Witt Jr., were not factors in either game. Witt went 0 for five. Judge had a hit in three at-bats.

Royals starter Cole Ragans struggled through four uneven innings (five K’s and 4 walks, three hits and the Yankees’ first run) but four relievers kept the Yankees at bay until Jazz Chisholm’s solo homer in the 9th.  Rodon struck out the side in the first inning, finished with seven of them, but also gave up all four runs on seven hits.  The Yankees wound up using seven other pitchers.

(CHIEFS)—Now, this is more like it.  The Kansas City Chiefs are 5-0 for the first time since Patrick Mahomes’ first season, 2018.  Mahomes passing and power running by the rejuvenated Kareem Hunt gave the Chiefs a 400-yard offense and a 26-13 win going into a bye week.

The Chiefs had to settle for field goals instead of touchdowns four times, however, and none of Mahomes’ passes were for touchdowns.  Mahomes finished 28 for 39 with 313 yards including 102 to JuJu Smith-Schuster and another 70 to Travis Kelce.

(MIZ)—The real world has come to the Missouri Tigers.  They threw away their top ten ranking against Texas A&M in an embarrassing beat-down Saturday that dropped them from ninth in the ratings to 18th in one and 21st in another.

The results come after a four wins, one of which was a hairbreadth win over Vanderbilt.  But maybe that win was underrated against a team considered an SEC doormat.

The doormat beat previously second-rated Alabama 40-35 in Nashville.

USA Today’s Dan Wolken did a scathing review of the losses by Alabama and Missouri, among others last weekend:

Alabama’s flop at Vanderbilt leads college football Misery Index after Week 6 (msn.com)

The loss to A&M is the worst Tiger loss since the 66-24 hammering administered by Tennessee in 2022.  Missouri had only 254 yards of total offense while the devense was

It was the greatest margin of defeat for Missouri since a 66-24 loss at Tennessee in 2022. The Aggies out gained the Tigers 512 to 254 yards in a dominating effort, at least by A&M

Missouri has Massachusetts on the schedule for a feel-good fifth win against a lesser school next Sunday.  UMass is 1-5 after a 34-20 loss to Northern Illinois last weekend.

(CARDINALS)—The St. Louis Cardinals have decided Turner Ward isn’t the answer to the team’s offense.  He’s been fired as the hitting coach after a year in which the Cardinals lacked a consistent offense, especially getting runners in scoring position across the plate.

Ward had a 12-year playing career. The Cardinals were his third team as a hitting coach. Oliver Marmol will be back as the manager but the team indicates his coaching staff is unknown for now.

The Cardinals finished 12th in the National League in runs, 12th in home runs  and 13th in runs batted in. Opponents outscored them by 47 runs.

Also not back, apparently, will be Matt Carpenter, who will start a broadcasting career on the MLB Network during the playoffs. He finished his fourteenth major league season (with three teams) by hitting .234 this year with four homers and 15 RBIs. He only batted 157 times.

(NASCAR)—Another non-playoff driver has played the role of a spoiler in the chase for the Cup Championship—Ricky Stenhouse Jr., who beat Brad Keselowski by six-thousands of a second. It’s not a record by a long shot (or short shot). But what is a record is the crash five laps from the scheduled end of the race that involved 27 cars. Thirteen cars were not involved in that one, a few that had been sidelined by earlier shuts. Seventeen drivers finished on the lead lap because their cars were not damaged or were not damaged enough to be sidelined.

The crash provided a reprieve for some drivers outside the cutline for the next round of the playoffs and was a setback to some others headed for much better finishers.

Next weekend’s race on the Charlotte Roval (the road course inside the oval course) will determine which eight drivers will stay in the hunt for the Cup.  Chase Elliott holds eighth place in the points, thirteen points ahead of Joey Logano and twenty up on Daniel Suarez.  Austin Cindric and Chase Brisco seem to need a victory to make the next round.

Stenhouse’s win is his first in 65 races. He becomes the latest driver to end a long winless streak this year. His win is the third one in the first five playoff races taken by a non-playoff driver.

(INDYCAR)—Michael Andretti has sent his fans a message—that “decades of running flat out doesn’t come without sacrifice” and it’s time to turn his team over to his partner, Dan Towriss.  He says it’s time “to spend more time with my beautiful family, including my 10-year old twins, embrace my new Nonno title and explore new things on a personal level and with my other businesses.”

Andretti, who is 62 and the son of Mario, has been racing cars for more than forty years either as a driver or an owner (he was a go-kart terror as a kid, winning 50 of 75 races, starting when he was 11. He drove his first championship-level open wheel race for the CART series in 1983. He won the championship four times. His 42 wins rank him fifth on the all-time IndyCar list. He holds the unfortunate record of leading the most Indianapolis 500 laps without winning the race—as a driver.

He retired from full-time racing in 2003 and bought into a team owned by Kim and Barry Green. The team has grown in the years since and is now known as Andretti Global. It has won national championships and he finally posted wins in the 500, as an owner.

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IndyCar is adding a unique race to its schedule in 2026—-a race in Arlington, Texas that will have the cars running a 2.73-mile course around the stadiums where the Dallas Cowboys and the Texas Rangers play.  The race is scheduled for March 26, after the football season and just before baseball season starts.

 

A Milestone and a Concert (10/7/24)

This entry hits a milestone.  Hitting a milestone is better than hitting a pothole, which I did a few weeks before trading my car for a new one.  That pothole on the eastbound shoulder of I-70 just after Kingdom City was the Grand Canyon of potholes and caused almost $5,000 in damage to the right front tire and the suspension on that corner.

So a milestone is much better.  The phrase “than hitting” contains the one-millionth word written for this series of commentaries that have kept me from finding more interesting hobbies.  It’s one small bleat in the cacophony of voices social media has allowed to flood our Holocene.

Now, to start the next million—-

A Concert of Missouri Music

Suppose we were to have a band or orchestra concert (with special performers) that featured only Missouri music.  What would you include?  Here are some suggestions. We’ve scouted out a few on Youtube.  Perhaps you can add to the list. And then, where and when should the concert or concerts be held?

Some of the artists listed have died.  But others have performed these songs.

One Warning:  Some of these things might force you to watch a fund-raising message from one or the other of our presidential candidates that you can’t get out of. OR a piece of trash about how wonderful sports betting will be for our schools.  Sorry to put you through those awful experiences.  But as British poet William Congreve wrote in 1697 about the calming effect music can have on an angry person:

Musick has Charms to sooth a savage Breast,

To soften Rocks, or bend a knotted Oak.

I’ve read, that things inanimate have mov’d,

And, as with living Souls, have been inform’d,

By Magick Numbers and persuasive Sound.

What then am I? Am I more senseless grown

Than Trees, or Flint? O force of constant Woe!

‘Tis not in Harmony to calm my Griefs.

Anselmo sleeps, and is at Peace; last Night

The silent Tomb receiv’d the good Old King;

He and his Sorrows now are safely lodg’d

Within its cold, but hospitable Bosom.

Why am not I at Peace?

Now, a proposed concert:

The Missouri Waltz   (75) Johnny Cash – Missouri Waltz – YouTube

The St. Louis Blues   (75) W.C. Handy “St. Louis Blues” On The Ed Sullivan Show – YouTube

The St. Louis Blues March  (75) Glenn Miller Orchestra directed by Wil Salden – St. Louis Blues March – YouTube

A medley of the fight songs of our four-year state universities

From the movie Meet Me in St Louis: Meet Me in St. Louie, Louie; The Trolley Song; Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas (also from soundtrack)

Themes from  movies: Bonnie and Clyde,  The Long Riders, Tom Sawyer (a 1973 Disney production filmed at Arrow Rock), and With a Song in My Heart (a biopic about Columbia singer Jane Froman)

Music from Big River (Roger Miller’s Broadway musical about Huck Finn)

Everything’s Up to Date in Kansas City (from Oklahoma.)

Music from The Unsinkable Molly Brown Broadway musical

Going to Kansas City ((95) “Kansas City” by Wilbert Harrison – YouTube)_

Maple leaf Rag and other Scott Joplin tunes (perhaps as a medly)

Alfred E. Brumley medley: Turn Your Radio On; If We Never Meet Again (This Side of Heaven); I’ll Meet You in the Morning; He Set Me Free; I’ll Fly Away.

Bob Dyer Songs: River of the Big Canoes (Bing Videos), Ballad of the Boonslick ((75) Ballad of Boonslick – Bob Dyer (Songteller) – YouTube); The Jim Johnson ((77) The Jim Johnson – Bob Dyer (Songteller) – YouTube); After He Painted These Walls (about the Benton mural in the capitol) (Bing Videos); Bingham’s song (Bing Videos); Jim the Wonder Dog ((77) Cathy Barton & Dave Para – “Jim the Wonder Dog Song” – YouTube)

Frankie and Johnny ((95) Frankie and Johnny by Jimmie Rodgers (1929) – YouTube)

Jesse James ((95) The Ballad of Jesse James – YouTube)

Sweet Betsy from Pike ((95) Harry McClintock – Sweet Betsy From Pike [ORIGINAL] – [1928]. – YouTube)

Walking to Missouri (1952 song about Harry Truman returning home) ((95) Carter Sisters ~ Walking to Missouri – YouTube)

They Gotta Quit Kicking My Dog Around (Bing Videos

And for the conclusion: Missouri Anthem (Neal E. Boyd of America’s Got Talent did a great rendition of what should replace the Missouri Waltz as our state song, a song composed by Brandon Guttenfelder).  Neal E. Boyd and Brandon K. Guttenfelder – MISSOURI ANTHEM – YouTube

Or a beautiful orchestral version:

Neal E. Boyd – MISSOURI ANTHEM Orchestral 2013 – YouTube

Neal E. Boyd died more than five years ago and it’s a great shame that The Missouri Anthem that he performed so magnificently is not more widely honored.  He rose from a background of poverty in southeast Missouri to achieve brief national fame as the winner of the third year of the America’s Got Talent TV show.  He died at the age of 42 from various ailments.

The song should replace the dirge adopted in 1949 by the legislature (it once was known as the Graveyard Waltz) as our state song. The bicentennial of Missouri’s permanent state capital city would be an appropriate time to do that.

Your ideas?

Fact-Checking the VP Debate

We turn again to Daniel Dale and his staff of fact-checkers at CNN to straighten out the information that gushed at us during Tuesday’s debate among the candidates for Vice-President.  We use the CNN analysis because it does not just offer true-false responses but because it places remarks in contest.

As has been the case with previous presidential debates (Trump vs. Biden and Trump Vs. Harris), the predominant questions about truth and shades of truth are from the Republican side. While President Trump, after the debate with VP Harris complained he had been fact-checked far more frequently than Harris had been, the observation is merited that his arguments merited checking more than hers.

In political debates, candidates limited by time sometimes speak in headlines that do not allow more complete explanations.  That is when the checkers step in with context that helps consumers make their own evaluations of the accuracy or the (sometimes intentional) inaccuracy of remarks.

As we have reviewed these findings, we find Dale and his staff found fifteen statements from Vance that were questionable but only two from Walz.

One Walz statement was branded as “false;” the other statement “needs context.”

In Vance’s case, five needed context, four were misleading, five were false and one overstated a statistic.

Here’s how the CNN staff appraised the debate points:

Vance mischaracterizes Harris’ role on border policy

Sen. JD Vance claimed that Vice President Kamala Harris was appointed the “border czar” during the Biden administration. “The only thing that she did when she became the vice president, when she became the appointed border czar, was to undo 94 Donald Trump executive actions that opened the border,” Vance said.

Facts FirstVance’s claim about Harris’ border role is false. Harris was never made Biden’s “border czar,” a label the White House has always emphasized is inaccurate. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is the official in charge of border security. In reality, Biden gave Harris a more limited immigration-related assignment in 2021, asking her to lead diplomacy with El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras in an attempt to address the conditions that prompted their citizens to try to migrate to the United States.

Some Republicans have scoffed at assertions that Harris was never the “border czar,” noting on social media that news articles sometimes described Harris as such. But those articles were wrong. Various news outletsincluding CNN, reported as early as the first half of 2021 that the White House emphasized that Harris had not been put in charge of border security as a whole, as “border czar” strongly suggests, and had instead been handed a diplomatic task related to Central American countries.

A White House “fact sheet” in July 2021 said: “On February 2, 2021, President Biden signed an Executive Order that called for the development of a Root Causes Strategy. Since March, Vice President Kamala Harris has been leading the Administration’s diplomatic efforts to address the root causes of migration from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.”

Biden’s own comments at a March 2021 event announcing the assignment were slightly more muddled, but he said he had asked Harris to lead “our diplomatic effort” to address factors causing migration in the three “Northern Triangle” countries. (Biden also mentioned Mexico that day.) Biden listed factors in these countries he thought had led to migration and said that “if you deal with the problems in-country, it benefits everyone.” And Harris’ comments that day were focused squarely on “root causes.”

Republicans can fairly say that even “root causes” work is a border-related task. But calling her “border czar” goes too far.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Walz on jobs from Biden’s climate law

Touting the Biden-Harris administration’s Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, a major climate law for which Vice President Kamala Harris cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate, her running mate, Tim Walz, spoke of how the law created “200,000 jobs in the country,” including building electric vehicles and solar panels.

Facts First: This claim needs context. While it’s clear that a significant number of new clean energy jobs were created as a result of the Inflation Reduction Act, the “200,000” figure includes jobs that companies have promised to create but aren’t finalized. And other counts of new clean energy jobs have come up with smaller figures. 

There are several data sets that track climate law investments, all of which differ slightly. Walz’s number of jobs created by President Joe Biden’s climate law is slightly smaller than a June tally by communications group Climate Power that found a total of 312,900 jobs publicly announced by companies following the IRA passage through May 2024.

E2, another clean energy group that tracks Inflation Reduction Act-related investments and jobs, has counted over 109,000 new clean energy jobs created or announced from August 2022 to May 2024 – significantly lower than the Climate Power number. A recent report from the US Department of Energy found 142,000 new clean energy jobs were created in 2023.

Not all of these jobs have already been created. Climate Power’s topline number also didn’t distinguish between construction jobs building new factories and the long-term jobs at those factories – jobs building batteries, solar panels and electric vehicles, among other things. Enter your email to sign up for CNN’s “What Matters” Newsletter.

 

Bottom of Form

Different entities use different methodologies when analyzing data, so it is difficult to determine an exact figure. Regardless, there’s no question there’s a huge amount of clean energy investment, and a significant number of new jobs building EVs and renewables like wind and solar are being created by the Inflation Reduction Act tax credits. The 2024 Energy Department report showed clean energy jobs made up more than half of the total for new energy sector jobs and grew at a rate twice as large as the overall US economy.

The report also acknowledged how the sudden growth in the clean energy sector from the Inflation Reduction Act has made it difficult to track all the jobs that are being created.

From CNN’s Ella Nilsen 

Vance on migrants in Springfield, Ohio

Sen. JD Vance said that schools and hospitals in Springfield, Ohio, are “overwhelmed” because of “illegal immigrants.”

“Look, in Springfield, Ohio, and in communities all across this country, you’ve got schools that are overwhelmed, you’ve got hospitals that are overwhelmed … because we brought in millions of illegal immigrants to compete with Americans for scarce homes,” Vance said.

Facts First: Vance’s statement, referencing the Ohio town subject to a firestorm of misinformation about Haitian migrants this summer, is misleading.

We don’t know the immigration status of each and every immigrant in Springfield, but hundreds of thousands of Haitians have official permission to live and work legally in the US. The Springfield city website says, “YES, Haitian immigrants are here legally, under the Immigration Parole Program. Once here, immigrants are then eligible to apply for Temporary Protected Status (TPS).” Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine wrote in a New York Times op-ed about Springfield in September that the Haitian immigrants “are there legally” and that, as a Trump-Vance supporter, he is “saddened” by the candidates’ disparagement of “the legal migrants living in Springfield.”

Many Haitians came into the country under a Biden-Harris administration parole program that gives permission to enter the US to vetted participants with US sponsors. And many have “temporary protected status,” which shields Haitians in the US from deportation and allows them to live and work here for a limited period of time. Some received that protection after the Biden-Harris administration expanded the number of Haitians eligible in June. Others have been living in the US with temporary protected status since before the Biden-Harris administration.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Danya Gainor

Vance’s claims about Biden-Harris immigration executive orders

Sen. JD Vance said that the United States has a “historic immigration crisis” because Vice President Kamala Harris “wanted to undo all of Donald Trump’s border policies” with “94 executive orders” that did things like “suspending deportations” and “decriminalizing illegal aliens.”

Facts First: While the Biden-Harris administration has signed dozens of executive orders about immigration, Vance’s comments about the administration decriminalizing illegal immigration through executive order aren’t true. Harris did, however, say she supported decriminalizing illegal immigration – a position she’s since reversed.

When she was a candidate for president and a sitting US senator, Harris filled out an American Civil Liberties Union questionnaire in which she expressed support for sweeping reductions to Immigration and Custom Enforcement operations, including drastic cuts in ICE funding and an open-ended pledge to “end” immigration detention.

Harris has since acknowledged that some of her stances have evolved over time but that she holds core beliefs that remain unshakable: “My values have not changed,” she said in an August interview with CNN’s Dana Bash.

From CNN’s Hannah Rabinowitz

Walz falsely claims Project 2025 calls for a pregnancy registry

Gov. Tim Walz claimed that Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation think tank’s detailed right-wing blueprint for the next Republican administration, says people will have to register their pregnancies.

“Their Project 2025 is going to have a registry of pregnancies,” Walz said.

Facts FirstWalz’s claim is false. Project 2025 does not propose to make people register with any federal agency when they get pregnant. And there is no indication that a Trump-Vance administration is trying to create a new government entity to monitor pregnancies.

Project 2025 is firmly anti-abortion; it proposes, among other things, to criminalize the mailing of abortion medication and devices. But it does not propose to require people to register their pregnancies.

The Project 2025 policy document, released in 2023, proposes that the federal government take steps to make sure it is receiving detailed after-the-fact, anonymous data from every state on abortions and miscarriages. The vast majority of states already submit anonymous abortion data to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on a voluntary basis – the CDC has collected “abortion surveillance” data for decades – and all states already submit some anonymous miscarriage data under federal law.

Minnesota, the state run by Walz, is one of the states that voluntarily submits abortion data to the CDC. And Minnesota posts anonymous abortion and miscarriage data on the state health department’s website every year.

The Project 2025 policy document says the existing federal Department of Health and Human Services should “use every available tool, including the cutting of funds, to ensure that every state reports exactly how many abortions take place within its borders, at what gestational age of the child, for what reason, the mother’s state of residence, and by what method.”

The document also says the department “should also ensure that statistics are separated by category: spontaneous miscarriage; treatments that incidentally result in the death of a child (such as chemotherapy); stillbirths; and induced abortion.” And it says, “In addition, CDC should require monitoring and reporting for complications due to abortion and every instance of children being born alive after an abortion.”

In the context of the CDC, the word “monitoring” is used to mean statistical tracking. For example, the existing CDC webpage that displays anonymous state-by-state abortion data says, “Since 1987, CDC has monitored abortion-related deaths” through its Pregnancy Mortality Surveillance System. Neither “monitored” nor “surveillance” means the CDC is spying on individuals during their pregnancies.

Trump dodged the question when asked in a Time magazine interview earlier this year whether states should monitor women’s pregnancies to ensure compliance with an abortion ban, saying, “I think they might do that” but that “you’ll have to speak to the individual states.” Walz is free to criticize Trump for this answer, but nowhere in the interview did Trump make an actual proposal to create a new pregnancy-monitoring government body.

Heritage Foundation Vice President Roger Severino wrote on social media last month that Project 2025 “merely recommends CDC restore the decades-long practice of compiling *anonymous* abortion statistics for all states” – and noted that Minnesota already compiles such data.

Vance denied that a Trump-Vance administration would create a federal pregnancy monitoring agency when asked by CBS moderator Norah O’Donnell.

“Certainly, we won’t,” Vance said.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Katie Lobosco

Vance falsely says he never supported a national abortion ban

Sen. JD Vance said at Tuesday’s debate that he never supported a national abortion ban. “I never supported a national ban. I did, during when I was running for Senate in 2022, talk about setting some minimum national standard. For example, we have a partial-birth abortion ban … in place in this country at the federal level. I don’t think anybody is trying to get rid of that, or at least, I hope not, though I know the Democrats have taken a very radical pro-abortion stance,” Vance said.

Facts FirstThis is false. Vance previously said he “certainly would like abortion to be illegal nationally” in 2022 while running for his Senate seat in Ohio. He did say that he supported a “minimum national standard” to ban abortion in 2023. During the current campaign, however, Vance has deferred to former President Donald Trump’s stated view that each state should set its own abortion policy.

In 2022, while running for his Senate seat in Ohio, Vance said, “I certainly would like abortion to be illegal nationally” and that he was “sympathetic” to the view that a national ban was necessary to stop women from traveling across states to obtain an abortion. He also said on his website during that Senate campaign that he was “100 percent pro-life” and that he favored “eliminating abortion”; these words remained on his website until Trump selected him as his running mate in JulyAnd Vance said in an interview during the 2022 campaign that he wanted abortion to be “primarily a state issue,” but also said, “I think it’s fine to sort of set some minimum national standard.”

In November 2023, Vance told CNN’s Manu Raju and Ted Barrett in the Capitol: “It seems to suggest there needs to be some more interest in this building among Republicans in setting some sort of minimum national standard, whether that it’s 15 weeks or 20 weeks or the different ranges that are thrown out there.” He said, “We keep giving in to the idea that the federal Congress has no role in this matter. Because if it doesn’t … then the pro-life movement is basically not gonna exist, I think, for the next couple of years.”

Vance, emphasizing his support for certain exceptions to abortion bans, said on CNN in December 2023, “We have to accept that people do not want blanket abortion bans. They just don’t. And I say that as a person who wants to protect as many unborn babies as possible. We have to provide exceptions for life of the mother, for rape, and so forth.”

During his vice presidential campaign this year, Vance has aligned himself with Trump’s professed desire for a state-by-state approach to abortion policy rather than federal legislation. Vance said on Fox News in July, “Alabama’s going to make a different decision from California. That is a reasonable thing. And that’s how I think we build some bridges and have some respect for one another.”

From CNN’s Daniel Dale, Andrew Kaczynski and Em Steck

Vance falsely claims Biden administration unfroze $100 billion in Iranian assets

Sen. JD Vance claimed the Biden-Harris administration had unfrozen more than $100 billion in Iranian assets, which he said were then used to buy weapons.

“Iran, which launched this attack, has received over $100 billion in unfrozen assets thanks to the Kamala Harris administration. What do they use that money for? They use it to buy weapons that they’re now launching against our allies and, God forbid, potentially, launching against the United States as well,” Vance said, referring to Iran’s Tuesday attack on Israel.

Facts first: Vance’s statement is false. There is no evidence that the Biden-Harris administration unfroze more than $100 billion in Iranian assets. As part of a prisoner exchange last year, $6 billion in frozen Iranian assets were moved from restricted accounts in South Korea to restricted accounts in Qatar to be used for humanitarian purchases. The process for Iran to be able to spend those funds was expected to take months, if not years.

In the wake of the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo told House lawmakers that the US and Qatar had reached a “quiet understanding” not to allow Iran to access any of the $6 billion in Iranian funds for the time being, according to a source familiar.

Under the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, sanctions waivers would allow Iran to access frozen assets abroad. Estimates varied, but some said those assets could be worth more than $100 billion. Vice President Kamala Harris, who was California attorney general at the time, had no involvement with the nuclear deal, from which the US withdrew under former President Donald Trump.

From CNN’s Jennifer Hansler

Vance on Harris’ energy policies and China

Speaking about combatting climate change and bringing down planet-warming emissions, Sen. JD Vance suggested the fix was to “produce as much energy as possible in the United States of America, because we’re the cleanest economy in the entire world.”

Vance accused Vice President Kamala Harris of making climate change worse by supporting clean energy, saying her policies “actually led to more energy production in China, more manufacturing overseas.”

Facts First: A few parts of Vance’s claim are misleading and need context. First, while Vance is correct that China is currently the biggest global supplier of clean energy technologies and components, the Biden administration is trying to stop that by bringing more clean energy manufacturing to the US and moving the global supply chain away from China.

The Inflation Reduction Act, which contained the largest climate investment in US history, was designed to bring more manufacturing of electric vehicles, solar panels, wind turbines, large batteries and other components to the United States. The law’s EV tax credits were crafted with the intention of moving the EV supply chain away from China, which has long dominated the industry. Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who authored much of the IRA, changed its federal EV tax credits to move the supply chain for the critical minerals needed for things like EV batteries, solar panels and smaller rechargeable batteries away from China.

China will likely continue to dominate the global clean energy supply chain in the coming years. But the US is catching up; companies have announced over $346 billion worth of investments building new clean energy projects and factories in the US since the law was passed. According to the nonpartisan Rhodium Group and MIT, in the last two years, companies have invested $89 billion in clean energy manufacturing alone – a 305% increase from the prior two years.

From CNN’s Ella Nilsen

Vance on a Minnesota ‘born alive’ law

Sen. JD Vance claimed during Tuesday’s vice-presidential debate that Gov. Tim Walz signed a law that says doctors aren’t required to provide lifesaving care to babies that survive a botched abortion.

“The statute that you signed into law, it says that a doctor who presides over an abortion where the baby survives, the doctor is under no obligation to provide lifesaving care to a baby who survives a botched late-term abortion,” Vance said, adding that the law is “fundamentally barbaric.”

Facts FirstThis needs context. The law Walz signed in 2023 says that an infant born alive must be “fully recognized as a human person, and accorded immediate protection under the law,” and must be provided “all reasonable measures consistent with good medical practice.” While previous Minnesota law said that medical personnel needed to take steps to “preserve the life and health” of that infant using all reasonable measures consistent with good medical practice, the new law says that medical personnel must take steps to “care” for the infant using all reasonable measures consistent with good medical practice.

The key difference between the “preserve the life and health” language and the “care” language, experts say, is that the new law gives families the option to choose comfort care if their infant does not have a legitimate chance of survival.

Dave Renner, director of advocacy for the Minnesota Medical Association, which supported Walz’s change to the law, said in a September email: “The difference is the old law only focused on preserving the life and health of the infant, even if there was no chance of the infant living. The result was that infants who have no chance of survival were taken away from the parent at birth for extraordinary efforts to ‘preserve the life’ even though they would not succeed. It did not allow the grieving parent to hold their infant.”

Dr. Erin Stevens, legislative chair of the Minnesota section of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, said in a September email that under the new law, “any infant that is born alive in any circumstances who has a legitimate chance of survival will be provided sound medical care to encourage survival. No one is sitting by depriving healthy infants of nutrition and care.”

Stevens said that people who decide to terminate pregnancies at a very advanced gestational age generally do so because of a “particularly dangerous or life-threatening” new diagnosis and are offered either a surgical abortion procedure known as dilation and evacuation (D&E) or a delivery after a C-section or the induction of labor.

“In the latter scenario of a delivery,” she said, “often that is pursued knowing the baby could be alive for a very short time after the birth but that that life would not be sustainable. Generally, these are the cases on mandated statistical reports of terminations that indicate live births after abortion. It’s not a ‘botched abortion,’ which many people envision as a D&E gone wrong resulting in a mangled, living baby. Many times, the reason a patient chooses the option of delivery is to have the opportunity to hold their baby and experience that precious time with them.”

She continued: “When there are mandates to resuscitate in such circumstances no matter how futile the attempts, the parents lose out on that opportunity and will never get that time back. It’s not only a waste of costly medical resources, but it’s cruel. Comfort care is provided as clinically appropriate.”

Former President Donald Trump has previously claimed that the new law allows the execution of Minnesota babies after birth. That is still murder in the state.

“This change does not allow ‘the execution of babies’ and to suggest so does not understand the change,” Renner said.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale and Jack Forrest

Vance claims DHS ‘effectively lost’ 320,000 children

Sen. JD Vance claimed the Department of Homeland Security has “effectively lost” 320,000 children.

“You ask about family separation. Right now, in this country, we have 320,000 children that the department of Homeland Security has effectively lost,” Vance said, referring to separating migrant families.

“Some of them have been sex trafficked. Some of them hopefully are at home with their families. Some of them have been used as drug trafficking mules. The real family separation policy in this country is, unfortunately, Kamala Harris’ wide-open southern border,” the Republican vice presidential candidate said.

Facts First: This claim needs context. An August 2024 report from the Homeland Security Department’s Office of Inspector General said Immigrations and Customs Enforcement reported more than 32,000 unaccompanied migrant children failed to appear as scheduled for immigration court hearings after being released or transferred out of custody between fiscal years 2019 and 2023 (which includes two years and four months under the Trump administration). The report added that the number could be larger, given that 291,000 unaccompanied migrant children were not given notices to appear in court. The report said that without the ability to monitor those children, ICE has “no assurances” those children “are safe from trafficking, exploitation, or forced labor.” The report does not say for certain that those children are being used in drug trafficking or are victims of sex trafficking.

The report, released August 17, said that of 448,000 unaccompanied migrant children (UCs) transferred or released from Homeland Security or Health and Human Services custody between fiscal years 2019 and 2023, more than 32,000 “failed to appear for their immigration court hearings.”

The report also said that ICE failed to issue a “Notice to Appear” for 291,000 unaccompanied migrant children in that timeline and that those children “therefore do not yet have an immigration court date.”

By not issuing the notices, the report says, “ICE limits its chances of having contact with UCs when they are released from HHS’ custody, which reduces opportunities to verify their safety. Without an ability to monitor the location and status of UCs, ICE has no assurance UCs are safe from trafficking, exploitation, or forced labor.”

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, told CNN last month: “Long story short, no, there are not 320,000 kids missing. 32,000 kids missed court. That doesn’t mean they’re missing, it means they missed court (either because their sponsor didn’t bring them or they are teenagers who didn’t want to show up). The remaining 291,000 cases mentioned by the OIG are cases where ICE hasn’t filed the paperwork to start their immigration court cases.”

Some right-leaning outlets, such as the New York Post and the Washington Times, took the report from the Office of Inspector General and combined those numbers, reaching the 320,000 figure of migrant children who are unaccounted for.

From CNN’s Jack Forrest 

Vance’s claim about Trump’s comments to protesters on January 6

Sen. JD Vance claimed that then-President Donald Trump said protesters should protest peacefully on January 6, 2021, when the Capitol was attacked and overrun by Trump supporters.

“He said that on January the 6th, the protesters ought to protest peacefully,” Vance said.

Facts First: This claim leaves out some key context. During his speech, Trump did tell protestors to “peacefully” make their voices heard and, in the same speech, told protesters they should “fight like hell” and used other combative language. 

During his speech that day, Trump told those attending: “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”

Trump, however, also made numerous other remarks in the speech in which he struck a far more combative tone.

Trump, for example, urged Republicans to stop fighting like a boxer “with his hands tied behind his back,” saying, “We want to be so respectful of everybody, including bad people. And we’re going to have to fight much harder.” Trump told marchers, “You’ll never take back our country with weakness.” After urging congressional Republicans and Vice President Mike Pence to reject the Electoral College results, Trump said, “And fraud breaks up everything, doesn’t it? When you catch somebody in a fraud, you’re allowed to go by very different rules.”

Trump alleged there would be dire consequences if his supporters did not take immediate action – saying that, if Joe Biden took office, “You will have an illegitimate president. That’s what you’ll have. And we can’t let that happen.” And he said, “We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”

Trump also spent much of the speech laying out a false case that the election was marred by massive fraud. And he falsely claimed, “We won this election, and we won it by a landslide.”

From CNN’s Holmes Lybrand

Vance on the number of undocumented immigrants in the country under Biden administration

Sen. JD Vance claimed during the debate that there are “20, 25 million illegal aliens who are here in the country.”

Facts First: That number is significantly higher than most estimates. 

While the exact number of undocumented immigrants in the country difficult to track, multiple estimates show it is probably smaller than the number Vance floated during the debate. For instance, a 2024 report from Pew Research Center estimated that the undocumented immigrant population in the US grew to 11 million in 2022. The report used data from the US Census Bureau’s 2022 American Community Survey.

In 2024, the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute estimated there were about 11.3 million undocumented immigrants in the US in 2021.

The Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that supports curbing immigration and criticized the Biden administration’s border policies, estimated there were approximately 12 million in May 2023.

From CNN’s Piper Hudspeth Blackburn

Vance on CBP One app

Sen. JD Vance claimed Tuesday that migrants who apply for legal status through a Customs and Border Protection app can have it granted “at the wave of a … wand.”

“There’s an application called the CBP One app where you can go on as an illegal migrant, apply for asylum or apply for parole, and be granted legal status at the wave of a Kamala Harris open border wand,” he said.

Facts First: This claim is false. CBP One allows users to schedule appointments to claim asylum with border authorities, but that does not mean that their request will be granted. The app is not a means to make an asylum application. It allows applicants to enter their information through the app rather than going directly to a port of entry.

The app was launched in October 2020, during the Trump administration, so people could access Customs and Border Protection services on their mobile devices. It was expanded during the Biden administration and is now “the only way that migrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border seeking asylum at a port of entry can preschedule appointments for processing and maintain guaranteed asylum eligibility,” according to the American Immigration Council.

From CNN’s Piper Hudspeth Blackburn 

Vance on inflation under Trump

Sen. JD Vance claimed at Tuesday’s debate that former President Donald Trump’s economic policies delivered 1.5% inflation for Americans.

“Because Donald Trump’s economic policies delivered the highest take-home pay in a generation in this country, 1.5% inflation, and to boot, peace and security all over the world,” Vance said.

Facts First: Vance’s claim needs context. The annual inflation rate, as measured by the Consumer Price Index, was indeed 1.5% in May 2019; however, the average inflation rate was north of 2.1% from January 2017 through February 2020, prior to the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

As a result of the Covid-19 pandemic and its quick and deep economic recession in the US, inflation slowed drastically as Americans sheltered at home and reduced spending on in-person services.

Including the pandemic-distorted pricing environment, the CPI averaged 1.9% from 2017 through 2020, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

For comparison purposes, during the Biden-Harris administration, the CPI averaged an annual rate of 5.2%

Inflation’s rapid ascent – which began in early 2021 and peaked at 9.1% in June 2022 before moderating to 2.5% in August 2024 – was the result of a confluence of factors, including effects from the Covid-19 pandemic, such as snarled supply chains, and geopolitical fallout (specifically Russia’s invasion of Ukraine) that triggered food and energy price shocks. Heightened consumer demand boosted in part by fiscal stimulus from both the Trump and Biden administrations also led to higher prices, as did the post-pandemic imbalance in the labor market.

From CNN’s Alicia Wallace 

Vance’s misleading claim that Trump ‘saved’ Obamacare

Sen. JD Vance said in Tuesday’s vice-presidential debate that former President Donald Trump could have “destroyed” the Affordable Care Act during his first term, but instead he “saved” it.

“He saved the very program from a Democratic administration that was collapsing and would have collapsed absent his leadership,” Vance said.

Facts First: Vance’s claim is misleading. During Trump’s administration, he and his officials took many steps to weaken the Affordable Care Act after failing to repeal it, though they did continue to operate the Obamacare exchanges. Also, during his term, the Department of Health and Human Services approved several state waiver requests that resulted in lower premiums for Affordable Care Act plans.

As president, Trump initially tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act but failed because congressional Republicans could not amass enough votes to kill the law in 2017.

Then, Trump put in place many measures aimed at undermining the law, which led to a decline in enrollment. He cut the open enrollment period in half, to only six weeks. He also slashed funding for advertising and for navigators, who are critical to helping people sign up. At the same time, he increased the visibility of insurance agents who can also sell non-Obamacare plans.

Trump signed an executive order in October 2017 making it easier for Americans to access alternative policies that have lower premiums than Affordable Care Act plans – but in exchange for fewer protections and benefits. And he ended subsidy payments to health insurers to reduce eligible enrollees’ out-of-pocket costs.

Plus, his administration refused to defend several central provisions of the Affordable Care Act in a lawsuit brought by a coalition of Republican-led states, arguing that key parts of Obamacare should be invalidated. The Supreme Court ultimately dismissed the challenge and left the law in place.

Enrollment declined until the final year of his term, which was in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic.

However, the Trump administration did approve several states’ waiver applications to implement reinsurance programs in their Affordable Care Act exchanges. This generally lowered Obamacare premiums by providing funding for insurers that enrolled many high-cost patients.

From CNN’s Tami Luhby

Vance on the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act

Sen. JD Vance argued that former President Donald Trump’s economic policies have helped American workers, specifically citing the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

“If you look at what was so different about Donald Trump’s tax cuts, even from previous Republican tax cut plans, is that a lot of those resources went to giving more take-home pay to middle class and working-class Americans,” Vance said.

Facts first: Vance’s comments need context. While the 2017 law reduced taxes for most people, the rich benefited far more than others, according to a 2018 analysis by the Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan research group. 

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act contained an array of individual income tax reductions – including lowering many individual income tax rates, notably the top rate, from 39.6% to 37% for the highest earners.

More than 60% of the benefits were expected to go to those whose incomes are in the top 20%, and they were projected to get the largest bump in after-tax income, according to the Tax Policy Center.

Only a little more than a quarter of those in the lowest-income households would see their taxes reduced, and they were projected to have a very small bump in after-tax income.

Most middle-income taxpayers were expected to see a tax cut, but their boost in after-tax income was projected to be smaller than those at the top of the income ladder.

From CNN’s Tami Luhby 

Vance says illegal guns are flowing into the US from Mexico

Sen. JD Vance on Tuesday claimed that part of the United States’ issue with gun violence stems from Mexican drug cartels smuggling guns into the country from across the border.

“Thanks to Kamala Harris’ open border, we’ve seen a massive influx in the number of illegal guns run by the Mexican drug cartel … then the amount of illegal guns in our country is higher today than it was three and a half years ago,” Vance said.

Facts first: Vance’s claim is misleading. There is a proliferation of illegal guns crossing the US-Mexico border – but they are going from the US into Mexico, not the other way around.

Mexico has been plagued by gun violence for years – and the Mexican government has pinned bloodshed on the free flow of guns over the border from the United States.

An estimated 200,000 guns are trafficked from the US into Mexico each year, the Mexican Foreign Ministry has said – an average of nearly 550 per day. In 2021, Mexico sued several US-based gun manufacturers claiming they “design, market, distribute and sell guns in ways” that arm cartels in Mexico.

Mexico strictly controls the sale of firearms. There is only one gun store in Mexico, and it’s controlled by the army. That makes the large-scale smuggling of guns from Mexico into the US, where laws are laxer and gun stores plentiful, unfeasible.

From CNN’s Michael Williams

Erifnus Caitnop

I spent a few minutes with an old friend at another old friend’s funeral a few days ago and we wound up talking about his car that he affectionately calls Erifnus Caitnop.  John Drake Robinson has written some books about the adventures he and Erifnus have shared through the years.  Erifnus has 313 miles on the odometer and John told me his mechanic thinks the car can hit the half-million mile mark.

John doesn’t think he can last that long, though, but he agreed with me that Erifnus is a historical automobile that deserves to be in a museum.

John is a Jefferson City native.  He and his parents attended the same church we go to. His father, B. F. (“Buford,” John fondly calls him) Robinson was a fixture in the state education department for many years and was a beloved and friendly doorkeeper for the Senate for many ears in his retirement. So I have known the Robinsons, father and son, for more than fifty years.

I always feel strange saying something like that—knowing someone for fifty years.

Erifnus is historic because it is the only car that has traveled every mile of every highway in Missouri. 

At least, we think so.  We can’t imagine anyone else being that interested in doing something such as this.  Or maybe as crazy.

But we all have goals in our lives, some more expansive than others.  Driving on every mile of every highway in Missouri became John’s goal, especially while he was the State Tourism Director and had a reason to do all of that traveling.  I suppose he could have used a car from the state motor pool, but he chose Erifnus and, I have been told by one of those who worked with him, he did not always take the most direct route.

John is one of the most personable people you could ever hope to meet. And a lot of people had a chance to meet him in his odyssey.  His biography on Amazon notes:

He penetrated beyond the edges of civilization, peeked into the real American heartland, and lived to tell about it.

His books are “on the road” adventures blending local characters and mom-and-pop food into an archipelago of tasty stories. He dives deep into the wilderness, where the nearest neighbors are coyotes, and the bullfrogs sound like banjo strings.

When an interviewer asked if he ever “heard banjo music,” John replied, “Sure, all the time. And when I do, I grab a big bass fiddle and join in.”

Through all his travels, John shows a deep respect for history, and for the environment. As a former state director of tourism, he heard the question a lot: How can we balance tourism and the environment? His answer: “If we don’t preserve our natural heritage, and put back what we take out, these attractions won’t be worth visiting.”

Called the “King of the Road” by Missouri Life Magazine, John Robinson lives in Columbia, Missouri when he isn’t sleeping in his car. His articles and columns are regularly featured in a half dozen magazines.

This is Erifnus:

It’s a Pontiac Sunfire.  Spell it backwards.

I have been thinking a museum in Jefferson City would be a great place for Erifnus to continue telling its story, and John’s.  Unfortunately, there is no such museum.  We have two historical organizations in Jefferson City but neither has a museum that can accommodate Erifnus—or other historical city and county artifacts for that matter.  I think it’s time we have such a mseum, but that’s a separate discussion.

I’ve contacted a friend at the National Museum of Transportation in Kirkwood to see if Erifnus might find a place in its collection of automobiles, trains, and airplanes.  Jefferson City’s loss could be Kirkwood’s gain.

There’s another historic vehicle in central Missouri that HAS been saved although it’s not on display.  That’s William Least Heat Moon’s Ghost Dancing, the 1975 Ford Econoline van he used in compiling the stories in his famous Blue Highways. It’s in the storage area of the Museum of Anthropology at the University of Missouri’s Academic Support Center.

Both vehicles need to be displayed where people can appreciate them, the men who drove them, and the stories they have told that enrich us all.

John lives in Columbia so maybe Erifnus could find a home there, too.  But as a Jefferson City resident, I wish we had a place for it here because this is where John grew up and where his service as Director of the Division of Tourism did so much to create the tales of Erifnus and the stories its driver has written.

The Gun, The School, The Town , The Times

I took a gun to school once.

In a more innocent time.

A long, long time ago.

It was a revolver that held seven .22-short bullets.

It wasn’t loaded.

Here is the gun:

Well, not really THE gun. Our house burned down three weeks before Christmas when I was a high school freshman.  I lost my coin collection that included a mis-strike nickel that had two heads, several plastic model airplanes, a baseball card collection that probably included a Mantle rookie card, a few Red Man Chewing Tobacco cards, and assorted other baseball cards that would have put both of our children through college had the collection survived, a collection of Lone Ranger novels (since re-accumulated through the years), my old maid aunt Gertrude’s National Geographic collection that began in 1907 (I had looked through only a few as I sought out the ones that had stories about African natives whose lack of above-the-waist attire was very interesting to a boy my age), and the gun.

Today I would be rushed to the principal’s office; my parents would be called; I would be home-schooled for a while, to say the least.

My great-grandfather played the fife for the 126th Illinois Infantry that served under General Sherman at Vicksburg and then was instrumental in gaining control of northern Arkansas, including the capture of Little Rock.  He enlisted in another town in Moultrie County and after the war lived in what we called a big city in those days—Decatur—for sixty more years where he once owned an ice cream store.

His pistol was the first Smith & Wesson pistol.   Not THE first, but—well, you get the idea.

I think I took it to school because we were studying the Civil War in an elementary school class and it was no big deal.

I don’t remember the duck-and-cover drills some children of that vintage practiced, thinking that hiding under a school desk would save them from an Atom Bomb.   We had fire drills, though.  A couple of times a year.  Outside we’d go. Never in rain or snow but I do remember some cold days standing on the sidewalk while the teachers checked every room to make sure one of my classmates hadn’t decided to hide out.

I grew up in two towns in which Abraham Lincoln, then a circuit-riding lawyer, occasionally visited to take part in trials.  I have been told that the one in which I spent the most time had a Sundown Ordinance—no Negroes allowed in town after dark.  (I use the word because that’s the word that was used then.) Many years later I considered the irony of a town where Lincoln was a sometime-lawyer that told black people they were not welcome after sundown.  But then, as I have learned, Lincoln’s own attitudes toward black people were pretty undeveloped then.

My class was the first to graduate from the new high school that I could watch being constructed when I was in my Junior English class in the old high school—which was torn down a few months ago. Some black men from Decatur were part of the construction crew and one day one of my classmates told me he had heard that they planned to move their families to our town after the new school was built and “if they do, there’s going to be trouble.”

I couldn’t understand why he felt that way. I was young, innocent of worldly things.  I did not meet my first black people until the second semester of my freshman college year when the Residential Assistant for my dormitory floor brought a couple of black guys around to every room and introduced them.  To me they were just guys.  Years later, I figured out that the university was integrating the dormitories (I watched the first black football and basketball players perform for the school).  By the time I left, America had undergone a painful change. I had changed, too, picketing a segregated bowling alley one evening with my church group, and came to work in a segregated city with an HBCU that would taste violence during the Civil Rights struggle.

My little town surrounded by the rich land of the Illinois prairie still has high school sports teams unapologetically called Redskins. It’s about fifty miles from the University teams are called the Fighting Illini. My class ring, safely in a bank deposit box, features the abstract image of a Native American Chief.  Or at least the profile of a Native American in an ornate headdress.

Not commenting. Just saying.

One of our World War II heroes was a B-25 pilot who wasn’t satisfied to just fly over his hometown. He buzzed it.  Stood that plane on its wing and flew around the courthouse dome.  That was before we moved there.  By the time we moved there he was our school principal.  Col. Loren Jenne’s Army Air Corps uniform is in the county historical museum.  It’s a really, really good recently-built museum constructed with the help of an advisor for the Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield.  Visiting it for a reunion a couple of years ago made me realize how lacking we are in Jefferson City for a good local historical museum.

The town library’s board room holds part of local resident’s collection of 700 hood ornaments and the former Illinois Masonic Home has one of the largest collections of sea shells in the country.

I had a laid-back high school history teacher who once told me he became a teacher because “it was better than working for a living.”  Everybody had to do a report on some historical event for his class. Mine was on the Battle of Gettysburg. It took as long as the battle took—three days. Even then I could write long.

I missed one of the biggest events in town history because I was in college.  Richard Nixon dropped in on this little town of about 3600 during his 1960 campaign. Town leaders had invited him and challenger John Kennedy to hold an old-fashioned debate at the annual buffalo barbecue.  Kennedy didn’t show but Nixon ate half a sandwich and then spoke to about 17,000 people who gathered in a park where I had learned to love playing baseball.  A Boy Scout who helped provide security at Nixon’s table picked up the remainder of his buffalo sandwich and took it home.  His mother put the remnant in a pickle jar and froze it.  Sixty years later, he published a book, The Sandwich That Changed My Life, recounting how the sandwich is still in that jar but occasionally had been on public display including the day he took it to Los Angeles for an appearance on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.  Carson gave him one of his half-eaten sandwiches, which led people such as Tiny Tim and Steve Martin to make additional contributions.

Nixon wasn’t the first presidential aspirant to visit my little town.  When Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas were holding their famous debates throughout the state—Lincoln was challenging Douglas for a seat in the U. S. Senate—Lincoln paused to give a speech in a little grove of trees that is now the site of the civic center. Douglas wasn’t there. However, a riot between Lincoln and Douglas supporters broke out on the town square during the 1858 campaign.

We had a Brown Shoe factory, as did many small towns, for decades. It was near the now-gone elementary school I entered late in my fourth grade year.  I hit a softball through one of its windows one day during a noon hour game on the vacant lot between the school and the factory. Foreign competition shut it down. The building is still there, re-purposed several times. .

I went away from that little town to study journalism at the University of Missouri.  In those first few days, new college students ask and are asked many times, “Where are you from?”  There were nods of the head when the answers were St. Louis, or Kirksville, or Joplin, or Polo, or Hannibal (my roommate), or other Missouri towns.  But when I said, “Sullivan, Illinois,” there was the second question:

“Where’s that?”

And I would reach into my back pocket and pull out an official Illinois State Highway Map, William G. Stratton, Governor, and I would unfold it and show them.  Today I would say, “It’s about 40 minutes north of Effingham” and everybody would know because Effingham, then a bowling alley and a gas station-small town on Highway 40, is a major stop on straight and boring I-70 between St. Louis and Terre Haute.  I’m sure some of my new classmates walked away thinking, “He’s too weird.”

In a few days, I’m headed back to Sullivan for my (mumble-mumble) class reunion. I cherish these get-togethers, especially as our numbers dwindle.  I have a nice red polo shirt, although I wish I could find an appropriate red and black sweatshirt or jacket to wear while I ride in one of the 1959 convertibles a classmate has arranged for classmates to ride in during the homecoming parade. It shouldn’t be as hard as it was the other day to find the right thing in Jay and Chiefs country.

But the other day I bought a new car that’s red with black trim and I hope that is appropriate.

A few years ago I came to the conclusion that the last time we met as a class was the night we graduated.  Now, we are the Community of ’59.  Then, were a homogenous group raised in the same county, for the most part, part of the same culture for the first 18 years of our life, no more acutely aware of the greater world beyond us than teenagers today probably are plugged into life outside their schools.  But since then, life has changed us, has filled us with our own unique experiences and we come together as diverse individuals shaped by the decades that have passed.

Yet, when I think of them, it is easy to see them in my mind as perpetually young. And when we meet, we don’t spend a lot of time reminiscing. Instead we talk as contemporary people who have been friends for a long, long time who have nothing to prove to each other or no reason to try to impress one another.  We are special friends bound together by long-ago experiences who can talk about present issues, even those on which we not unexpectedly differ, and then go back to our homes and our separate futures cherishing this one more chance to be with each other.

I’ve lived in Missouri (except for three summers while I was in college) for almost eighty percent of my life. Each year I travel from Jefferson City to Indianapolis for a couple of races.  I usually stop for lunch in Effingham.  And each time, I feel a little tug to turn north.

All of our towns and each of us have stories such as these. Someday, descendants I will never know, might read these stories.

Think about writing yours.

For them.

I went to school with a gun one day in a time my grandchildren probably would not understand, when the only drill we had to worry about was the fire drill.

That was a long, long time ago. But if nobody every tells about those times, how can anybody else ever hope that there ever can be that kind of safe era again?

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Sports: 7-Come-11 for Mizzou; Chiefs Escape Again; Royals in Danger; Cardinals Fans Send Message; and other stuff. 

By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(For the few who follow these sports musings, my computer seems to have become confused about posting sports entries.  So before the weeks is out, and for the historical record, this post is finally being posted, albeit several hours late).

(WANNA BET?)—-Before we dive into our weekly sports talk today, we want to call your attention to the first of a series of posts on your editor’s blog about the upcoming statewide vote on Sports Wagering.  If you go to bobpriddy.net and look for the entry for September 16, you will read about why sports betting might be fun for you but it will not be what the casino industry and our pro sports teams are telling you in their commercials.  We take no position on the issue itself but our pro sports teams have hitched their wagons to the casino industry and the casino industry is not shooting straight with Missouri voters.  In later posts, we’ll tell you why Amendment Two is not only NOT good for our schools, it’s terrible for our veterans and even for the host cities of our casinos.

Now, on with our regular show.

(MIZZ)—Missouri’s attempt to avoid a defeat from traditional SEC doormat Vanderbilt cost it some early-season esteem.  The Tigers dropped from 7th to 11th in the AP poll after slipping past the Commodores 30-27 in an overtime game more notable for what didn’t happen than what did.

Missouri won the statistical battle with 442 yards of offense to Vanderbilt’s 324, but erratic field goal kicking and the inability to cross the goal line once they reached the red zone left a lot of fans frustrated.  While the 442 yards might seem impressive, the 188 yards gained that did result in any scores is a telling statistic.

Missouri’s offense never seemed to find a rhythm while Vanderbilt’s quarterback Diego Pavia harassed the defense, beginning with a 60-yard TD pass that put Missouri into a 7-0 hole early. When Missouri was able to go up 20-13 in the third quarter, Pavia led Vanderbilt on an 80-yard touchdown drive to tie.

The fourth quarter provided a touchdown apiece but neither team could find the traction to take control.

Both teams scored touchdowns in the first overtime. In the second overtime, Missouri field goal kicker Blake Craig, who had an uneven day, got a field goal and when Vanderbilt stalled, its kicker, who had a slightly less uneven day, made his day, and his teams day, even worse by hooking the ball to the left.

Coach Drinkwitz, his staff, and his players have two weeks to figure out why the coffee hasn’t perked in the last two games.  They’ll play their first road game against Texas A&M on October 5. (ZOU)

(CONNOR WHO?)—Remember Connor Bazelack, who bolted from Missouri to become a high-expectation quarterback at Indiana?  He fled there for Bowling Green last year and decided to stay this year.  Last Saturday, Bowling Green played Missouri’s next opponent, Texas A&M and lost 26-20. Bazelak gave his team a chance to take a late lead when he threw a 65-yard touchdown pass but A&M recovered an onside kick with 38-seconds left to kill the Falcons’ chances.

Bowling Green is 1-2 with losses to then-eighth ranked Penn State, and then-25th ranked A&M by a total of 13 points.

Bazelak had two seasons at Missouri before one year at Indiana, where he set a school record with 66 pass attempts in one game. He threw for 13 touchdowns and 10 interceptions before heading to Bowling Green for 2023. He led the Falcons to the Quick Lane Bowl against Minnesota. His team led 10-9 at the half but lost 3024. Bazelak passed for one touchdown and ran for another. Afterward, he said he would stay at Bowling Green in hopes of winning a MAC championship.

(LOOKING AHEAD)—We are only six weeks away from the first Missouri Tiger basketball game.  November 4, against Memphis, in Memphis.  Missouri will have a chance to win its first SEC game since 2022 when it plays Auburn on January 4.  Missouri has a 20-game SEC losing streak going, including a tournament loss in 2023, and all 19 games (including the tournament) last year.

On to pro sports—-

(CHIEFS)—The Kansas City Chiefs played just well enough to win against the Atlanta Falcons although Falcons fans think the refs were the 12th player in red Sunday night.
The Chiefs survived 22-17, thanks to two stout late-game efforts by the defense, one of which appeared to have some officiating help (at least, to hear Atlanta fans and players speak).

Falcons QB Kirk Cousins, with 4:12 left in the game, had receiver Kyle Pitts in the Chiefs’ end zone, with smaller Chiefs safety Bryan Cook covering him. Cook appeared to be face-guarding Pitts, not following the flight of the ball, and appeared to hit Pitts early.  After the game, referee Tra Blank told the Atlanta Constitution why no red flag was thrown—because the officials in the moment and from their positions “did not feel that there was a foul committed.”  Pass interference calls are not reviewable, so officials could not check other views in the video system.

After the game, Atlanta coach Raheem Morris refused to comment, perhaps fearing a fine frmthe NFL for criticizing the referees: “I like my money. I’m smart enough to be aware not to dunk on the officials. They made the call, or didn’t make the call, it is what it is.”  He also noted the Falcons had another chance to win it, on the final play but failed.

The Chiefs have gone fourteen games without scoring thirty points. They are 9-5 in those games.

Travis Kelce against was not much of a factor, with four catches for 30 yards. After the game, Patrick Mahomes told Sports Illustrated  after the game that a lot of plays are being called for Kelse but “it’s like two or three (defenders) are going to him…I’m going to do my best to keep feeding him the ball whenever he’s there, whenever he’s open.” Mahomes thinks things will open up for Kelce as Rashee Rice and speedster Xavier Worthy, joined by a robust run game, get more involved.

(CARDINALS)—Only three questions remain for the Cardinals: whether they will finish at .500 or a little bit better, who won’t be back next year, and whether Ollie Marmol one of those who won’t be.

Last Friday’s loss to the Cleveland Guardians put the final nail in the playoff hopes coffin.  This season is only the third time this Century the Cardinals haven’t had any postseason opportunities.

The ‘Birds started the week 79-77. If they play .500 ball in their last two series, they’ll finish above break even.

Cardinal fans have sent a message that they’re not attracted to mediocrity or worse for a second straight year.  The end of the last homestand of the year left total attendance for 2024 at 2,869,783, the first time it’s been less than three-million since the latest Busch Stadium opened in 2006.

(ROYALS)—The Kansas City Royals are in danger of playing themselves out of the playoffs after a season that has brought a lot of hope and expectation from the fans.  But a disastrous week that has resulted in seven straight losses six to the Tigers and the Giants, have them on the brink of failure to make the playoffs for the first time since their World Series championship year of 2015.  They started the week at 82-74, tied with Detroit for the second wild card spot.  Minnesota is only one game back with six games left.

Sports Illustrated reports the Royals are at the bottom of the statistics in home runs, slugging percentage ad OPS and they have missed repeated chances to get a runner home from second base.

They have six games this week against the Washington Nationals (69-87) and the Atlanta Braves (85-71 and hoping to make the NL playoffs), all on the road.

Minnesota dropped out of a possible three-way tie for a playoff spot by losing a doubleheader to Boston Sunday.  If Kansas City and Detroit finish with the same records next weekend, Kansas City gets in because it has a winning record against Detroit this year.

Motoring on:

(NASCAR)—The field of playoff drivers eligible for the NASCAR Cup this year was winnowed from sixteen to twelve Saturday night at Bristol won by Kyle Larson in the most dominating performance in track history.  He took the lead on lap 35 and led 462 of the remaining 465 laps, giving up the lead only during pit stops. It’s his fifth win of the year, the most of any driver.

The race eliminated Ty Gibbs, who finished 15th; Martin Truex Jr., who was 24th; Brad Keselowski, finishing 26th; and Harrison Burton, who was 35th.  Larson leads the points for the remaining twelve drivers: Christopher Bell, Tyler Reddick, Willliam Byron, defending champion Ryan Blaney, Denny Hamlin, Chase Elliott, Joey Logano, Austin Cindric, Daniel Suarez, Alex Bowman, and Chase Briscoe.

Both Gibbs and Truex, who are teammates at Joe Gibbs Racing, were fast enough to contend for a slot in the second round. But they were TOO fast at a couple of critical points.  Truex was .09 mph too fast leaving his pit stall and Gibbs was too fast coming into the pits. The penalties put both at the back of the pack.  Keselowski, who owns part of the Roush Fenway Keselowski racing team never found the speed he needed, starting 23rd but never running in the top tier and finishing three laps off the pace.  Burton, who entered the playoffs 34th in regular season points but eligible because he won a race, was 78 laps behind but still running at the end, when he finished 35th in the 37-car field.

The first race in the next round will be Sunday at the Kansas Speedway. The playoff field will be narrowed to eight after the next three races.

(INDYCAR)—IndyCar has established its charter system, seen as an underpinning of the future stability of the series.  Ten teams have accepted charters for 25 cars that will be guaranteed starting positions in all races in the series except the Indianapolis 500.  Penske Entertainment President Mark Miles calls the system “an aligned and optimistic vision” that “provides greater value for our ownership and the entries they field.”

The charter system guarantees 25 cars will compete for 22 positions in the series Leaders Circle program, a system that provides more than one-million dollars per car, based on a points schedule, to qualifying teams.  A team also has to make the field in the Indianapolis 500 to be eligible for the funds.

Several teams will have three regular-season entrants: Andretti Global, Arrow McLaren, Chip Ganassi Racing, Rahal Letterman Lanigan, and Team Penske. With two are A. J. Foyt Enterprises, Dale Coyne, Ed Carpenter,, Juncos Hollinger, and Meyer Shank Racing.

The first race for the new system will be March 2 on the streets of St. Petersburg, Florida.

(FORMULA 1)—McLaren’s Lando Norris led from the start to a 30-second lead at the finish to win the Singapore Grant Prix and take another bite out of the big points lead Max Verstappen built up in the first half of the Formula 1 season.  But F1 numbers-crunchers say that there aren’t enough races for Norris to overtake Verstappen even if he wins all seven remaining races and Norris finishes second in all of them, a highly-unlikely event.

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Cold Cases 

We usually talk about big-deal issues and people in these entries but there are times when an issue overlooked in the rush of great thoughts about great issues catches the eye.  Such is the case with Ethan Colbert’s piece in the September 17 Post-Dispatch about the exhumation in Jefferson County of an unidentified man found in the Mississippi River thirty years ago.

On one hand, it’s about how DNA technology not available then will help identify him now. He was naked except for a pair of socks, with no tattoos or other easily-identifiable features or injuries.  On the other hand, it’s a story of how government works, or can work, on behalf of the people, especially the least of us. And you don’t get much more “least’ than this man.

Colbert reported Missouri cemeteries hold the remains of more than 115 unidentified men, women, and children, “such as the female toddler found inside a suitcase in 1968 along the riverbank in West Alton in St. Charles County, date back decades.Others are far more recent, including an infant who was found in July 2019 inside a freezer inside an abandoned St. Louis city residence. The boy, wrapped in a blanket, was wearing a diaper and a ‘Winnie the Pooh’ onesie.”

Authorities and the news media did all they could do thirty years ago to identify the man pulled from the river.  They combed missing person reports, published and broadcast information about a 160-pound man, 5-10, with a three-day beard. His fingerprints didn’t match any records at the state or federal levels. Nobody called the sheriff’s office to say the man’s description resembled someone they knew.

Some of these nameless people might be those whose families long ago filed missing person reports. Some might be victims of a crime whose perpetrator has been eliminated by the passage of time. They deserve to be known, as do all of us.

Colbert relates how State Representative Tricia Byrnes of Wentzville met with some families of missing people and then got $1.5 million put into the state budget requiring the state to pay the costs of exhuming and of identifying those John and Jane Does.

Highway Patrol Sergeant Eric Brown, speaking for the Patrol, told Colbert private labs that specialize in this kind of cold cases will have to be hired because none of the state labors has the equipment needed.

The Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department spent $1,700 of its own money to exhume the body of the unidentified man and it still hasn’t found a laboratory to do the DNA work, which is expected to cost another $2,300.  Once a lab is found, it could take as much as six months to finish its inquiry.

But few would doubt the value of spending $4,000 to resolve a family’s questions or of giving someone a name for a proper stone that marks their existence.

Sometimes the effort succeeds. Colbert recalled a 2022 case in St. Louis County when investigators learned a man had been missing since 1994 from Moline Illinois.  His family released a statement saying the discovery would provide “comfort to us and his friends.”

DNA technology has vastly improved in thirty years and the amount of DNA in various systems has partnered with that technology to solve lot of mysteries.  Private DNA repositories such as those available through Ancestry.com and other commercial ancestry companies have been used to identify victims of crime and their perpetrators as well as missing persons.

It is time consuming work, not much like the stuff we see on television where it seems DNA evidence can be processed within an hour-long program.

Missouri is investing a small amount of money in an effort to answer long-held painful questions asked by many people. Representative Byrnes’ legislation is an infinitesimal part of the $50-Billion state budget. But it might turn out to be the most important part of it to a lot of folks, living and dead.

It is so easy to think of government as a massive, faceless, unemotional entity.  But what it really is, is thousands and thousands of small and very human stories. Perhaps we will someday hear who this man in Jefferson County was. And maybe, someday, we’ll learn who the suitcase baby and the freezer child in the Winnie the Pooh onesie were.  And why somebody gave up on them.

 

The Mugging of Missouri—Preview (and a correction**)

The Missouri Gaming Commission has released its report for Fiscal Year 2023-2024. Your careful observer will be spending a few days updating his statistical tables while at the same time researching material for a speech at the Missouri River Regional Library on October 8th that will celebrate the 250th anniversary of the document that created this nation (no, it wasn’t the Declaration of Independence but I will be referring to two words in the Declaration as well as some words spoken in Washington four score and seven years later).

But when we return to the topic, we will show you why Amendment 2 not only represents a mugging of our public education system, but how it also deepens the decades of the casino industry’s mugging of our veterans nursing home program and their own host cities.

***We have corrected a paragraph in our previous post on Amendment 2 in which we addressed Highway Patrol security at casinos and said the casinos do not reimburse the gaming commission for those expenses.  We have corrected that paragraph to read:

The Highway Patrol provides security officers at our casinos. In the original version of this post, we reported the casinos do not reimburse the state for the costs of that security. We were incorrect. The annual report for FY2023-24, which became available to us after the original publication of this review, shows the casinos reimbursed the gaming commission $15.4 million for enforcement, a category that not only includes watching out for unlawful activity on the gaming floor but also includes investigations of those seeking various licenses connected to casino gambling.

We will continue to review our posts on this subject. It is not our intent to mislead our readers as we cast a critical eye at the claims of the industry and its allied professional sports teams.

Feel free to circulate these observations to friends, education groups, local newspapers, veterans groups, and your state legislators and/or candidates.  And don’t be afraid to react in the box at the end of our entries. We enjoy hearing from our participants in these public dialogues.

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