—being another chapter of ruminations on things not worth full blogifying.
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Good Lord!!! When is Chris Koster going to quit telling us the Farm Bureau has done the unthinkable and has endorsed a Democrat and when is Eric Greitens going to stop talking about being God’s gift to veterans and start talking about the rest of us? Or do candidates no longer feel any obligation to tell us how they’re going to work with the legislature to rebuild our infrastructure, keep college kids from accumulating debts they’ll carry into middle age, take care of our mentally ill, and see that we are safe from one another?
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That’s a key, you know. The major national candidates seem to be running for dictator, not president. They’re all about what THEY are going to do, as if there is no congress that will be involved. Do we expect much more from our candidates for governor?
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And how many of the candidates who are blaming today’s woes on “career politicians” will admit that they want to be “career politicians?” We haven’t heard one of them say they only want to serve two years (or four) and then rejoin the masses.
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Your obedient servant has been reading again. The new book is Donald F. Kettl’s Escaping Jurassic Government: How to Recover America’s Lost Commitment to Competence. He believes it is possible.
Kettl is a former dean of the University of Maryland’s Public Policy School and is a fellow of the Brookings Institution, named for Missourian Robert S. Brookings. It’s considered pretty even-handed. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, after analyzing a decade of Congressional records, found Conservatives quoted its findings about as often as Liberals.
It’s a pretty interesting read for government groupies. We’ll be talking more about it later, no doubt. Feel free to read ahead of us.
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This might be a good place to list from time to time how Missouri stacks up with other states in various programs. Our first entries: 49th in support of public defenders, says the public defender office. The Brookings Institution in August listed us the nation’s sixth best state for advanced manufacturing job growth and 9th for output growth in that category. A new audit says Missouri has had the lowest public university tuition increases in the last eight years (for which Governor Nixon delivers a big pat on the back to himself—although supplemental and degree fees have gone up 112% to make up for that accomplishment). But the state ranks 39th in state appropriations to higher education per student, 43rd in state funding per $1,000 personal income. Governor Nixon says our unemployment benefits rank 43rd out of all fifty states. We had some other rankings in an earlier post: https://bobpriddy.net/2016/08/02/missouri-nothing-special/
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Did you know that the University of Missouri football team has won a national award? This graduate of the school did not. It wasn’t in the latest alumni magazine. No press release about it has come to our email.
It’s not like the recognition came from some obscure special-interest group. Nope. This one came from ESPN. And we wouldn’t have known about it if fellow UMC graduate Ray Hartmann hadn’t written about it.
https://www.stlmag.com/news/think-again/mizzou-football-players-racial-protest/
Thanks, Ray.
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Went to a class reunion recently in Illinois and listened to classmates talk about the disastrous state of Illinois government that they say is largely controlled by Speaker of the House Michael Madigan of Chicago, who has been the Speaker for 32 of the last 34 years. If you’ve paid attention to the news, you know that Illinois government is far messier than Missouri government (at least we don’t put our governors in prison). These folks think term limits is the only way to get rid of political bosses like Madigan. We told them term limits is the last thing Illinois should do to itself—that it’s been the worst thing to happen to Missouri government since post-Civil War loyalty oaths. Madigan is 74 but my friends in Illinois worry that he’s immortal.
Their county’s state representative is seeking his fourth term this year. His predecessor served six terms before being elected to the state senate. Giving up the right to re-elect your own state representative or senator to get rid of one representative from another district is, as we unfortunately have seen in Missouri, a foolish thing to do.
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The highway signs on the way back told us to drive in the right lane unless we were passing. But, doggone it, the passing lane is always so much smoother.
Could Missourians at least approve enough of a gas tax increase to fix the driving lanes?
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We have tried—and have failed—to recall a single candidate for significant office in Missouri or elsewhere who blamed himself or herself for their loss. It’s always somebody else’s fault—the media, unfair statements from an opponent (ignoring their own unfair statements about that opponent), a “rigged” election system even after the loser had to win a primary under the same system to become a general election loser. We’ve never heard any losers admit, “The people didn’t buy my stuff.”
Donald Trump already is putting together his list of excuses. He’s already saying the election will be “rigged” if he loses. And, of course, the blasted media for reporting what he says. Interesting, isn’t it, that the system that let him brag about how many primaries he won and how many votes he got wasn’t “rigged” then?
We haven’t heard who might be on Hillary Clinton’s list if she loses. The press, of course, would probably be there. We suppose the vast right-wing conspiracy would be on it, too.
I’ve got news for these folks. We in the news media don’t mind getting blamed. In fact, the last thing most real reporters want is to hear a candidate crediting them for an election victory.
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The Russian Olympic doping scandal and the banning of most Russian athletes and the NCAA’s investigation of the University of Missouri basketball program appear to have something in common.
Today’s athletes and coaches get punished for the sins of their predecessors. That strikes us unfair.
We’re not sure how this could be done legally, but wouldn’t it be better for the NCAA to develop a way to fine an offending coach an amount (plus a penalty) equal to the amount of the scholarships the offending players received during the coach’s tenure and maybe require the offending players to refund to the University the amount they received for their scholarships?. Or something like that. Making the players refund their scholarship money might be a little draconian, though. We’re not sure if they should know better when they’re 17 or 18.
And maybe an athletic director should get slapped around a little bit, too.