Monthly Archives: March 2022

The Hypocrisy of Term Limits

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Sometimes we write stuff here that won’t move the public needle but we do it to get something off our chest and into whatever public discussion flows from these pieces.  Truth be told, these columns have limited readership and since I don’t mess with Facebook or other social media platforms (I have a life and it is not lived between my thumbs), this wisdom reaches only a few feet from the mountaintop from which it is dispensed.

But today, we need to expose term limits for the hypocritical entity that they are. And the hypocrisy that voters showed in approving them thirty years ago this year.

We related some of the problems a few days ago.  There are two major points today, one that can be made in just a few words and the second one that will take a little more. The point, however, is the same—term limits are voter apathy and voter hypocrisy at their worst:

The first point is one we’ve made before—that voters gave up their right to vote for the people who represent them in the legislative chambers when they adopted a law saying they did not want the right to vote their state representative a fifth term or their state senator a third term.

They just threw away their votes.

Voters said we must have term limits to get new, fresh blood into our governments—-and then immediately contradicted themselves.

The same voters who approved limiting Missouri House members to only four two-year terms voted in the same election to return 53 members to the House of Representatives for a fifth term.

Of that 53, four were returned for their ninth term, one for a tenth term, two for their eleventh term and one for his SEVENTEENTH term.

Two years later, Missourians voted for 36 of these same people for still another term and gave fourteen others a fifth term or more.

And in 1996 voters sent 22 of them back again! And they gave 13 representatives fifth terms.

The last person affected by term limits to serve in the House of Representatives, as far as we have been able to determine, was Chris Kelly of Columbia, who was elected to his ninth and last term in 2012 after having been away from the House for several years.  He could have run for a tenth term but did not.

In all, Missouri voters who think term limits are good public policy have voted 263 times to elect state representatives to a fifth term (one was elected to a 19th during this time).

The Missouri Senate, a much smaller body, has seen voters send its members back for more than two terms 32 times.

That’s almost 300 times for both chambers of our legislature. .

And what does that say?

It says that if voters have a chance to vote for someone they like, they’ll do it.  But those voters of 1992 decided you and I won’t have that opportunity.

The second point is that term limits miss the target.  The real issue is POWER.  Instead, term limits cripples SERVICE.  The most dangerous people in our political system are the people in power.  They set the agendas.  They decide what legislation will be heard in committees or debated on the floors of the House and the Senate. They are in positions that attract financial support that hey might wish to share with a favored few.

Terms limits can be, should be, applied to those who can manipulate the system.  Speakers and Presidents Pro Tem have the power. The Governor and the Treasurer have policy and financial power in state government and limiting that power is a safeguard as would be limiting the years a person can lead a legislative body.

There is no doubt that incumbency has its advantages at campaign times.  But the answer to that advantage is not in taking away the right to vote for that person again instead of for an opponent. It is in making challengers more equal in presenting their cases.  Reforming the way campaigns are financed is an answer. The challenge is in finding a constitutional way to do it.

One way to start is to change term limits laws to apply to those in power and to restore the citizens’ right to pick their public servants.

Will voters reclaim their right?  In today’s political climate, it’s extremely doubtful regardless of how much we owe it to ourselves as voters and our system to do it.

There are people who are dying today to keep their version of democracy alive.  We smug Americans who too readily wrap ourselves in our flag and use it to justify all kinds of dubious remarks and actions cannot fully appreciate  how desperately millions of others want to hang on to something we regard so casually and irresponsibly and are willing to give away with so little thought.

But term limits are what we have and that’s what we are thirty years after Missourians gave away their right to vote for those speaking for them in the chambers where our laws are made.

SPORTS:  El Hombre Returns; Mr. and Miss Show-Me Basketball; RACING: Six for Six in NASCAR; and Red Bull returns to form.

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(PUJOLS)—In part it’s a sentimental gesture. In part, it’s a hope that there’s a little something left in the tank.  The Cardinals’ signing of Albert Pujols as a platoon-DH and part-time first baseman gets one this generation’s greatest hitters back to St. Louis.  Pujols is 42 now. His best eleven years were with the Cardinals, followed by a decade with California and Los Angeles where his skills slowly eroded and the pennants the Angels anticipated when they signed him never happened.  It’s one last go-around.  Expectations might be measured by the modesty of his contract—one year, $2.5 million.

But to see him hit one more………

An instant memory.

(SHOW-ME BASKETBALL)—The top men’s and women’s high school basketball players in Missouri this year are Ysabella Fontleroy of Springfield Kickapoo High School and Luke Norweather of Blair Oaks in Wardsville.  She has verbally committed to Baylor. Norweather is evaluating invitations.

Missouri has a mixed record of keeping its top high school players at colleges and universities in Missouri.  Nine of the twenty Mr. Show-Me Basketball players have played with Missouri teams for all or parts of their college careers (including Norweather who has not declared).  Onlysix of twenty Miss Show-Me Basketball players have stayed in Missouri, the most notable being Sophie Cunningham who now plays in the WNBA.

The Missouri Basketball Coaches Association makes the awards.

RACING:

(NASCAR)—This was a weekend for people named Chastain.  Jessica won an OSCAR Sunday night for her portrayal of the wife of televangelist Jim Bakker, Tammy Faye.

Ross Chastain, a Florida watermelon farmer who is 15 years younger than the Oscar-winner and not directly related to her,  beat and banged his way through the last turns at the Circuit of the Americas to become the third first-time winner of the year in the NASCAR Cup series. He’s also the sixth different driver to pick up a win in the series’ first six races.

Austin Cindric and Chase Briscoe also have picked up their first Cup wins this year.

Chastain’s win, his first in 121 Cup races also is the first win for Trackhouse Racing, the team that bought out Chip Ganassi last year.  It’s Chastain’s fourth straight finish in the top three (he was second in the last two races).

Chastain, A. J. Allmendinger, and Alex Bowman fought for the lead going into the nineteenth turn of the last lap with Chastain who bumped the rear of Allmendinger’s car, sending him into the side of Bowman, spinning out Allmendinger.  Chastain beat Bowman to the line by 1.3 seconds. Allmendinger wound up 33rd.

(FORMULA 1)—Max Verstappen, his problems in the last race behind him, picked up his first win the year at the Saudi-Arabia Grand Prix, finishing ahead of the two Ferraris that swept the top spots the previous weekend.  Teammate Sergio Perez, who started from pole, provided a Red Bull bookend to the Ferraris of Charles LeClerc (the previous week’s winner) and his teammate, Carlos Sainz.

Mercedes continued its early-season struggles with George Russell finishing fifth and teammate Lewis Hamilton struggling home tenth.

(INDYCAR)—INDYCAR heads to one of his most popular venues, Long Beach, the weekend after next, the third race of the year in the series.

(Photo credit:  Bob Priddy)

 

 

The Obit

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We’re all going to have one, eventually.  Some help write theirs, or write the whole thing (see the New York Times recent obituary for former Secrtary of State Madeline Albright).

I had to remind Missourinet reporters from time to time that people die.

They do not, I told them, enter into rest, make the transition, cross to the other side, pass away, or any of the myriad euphemism that we use to escape saying someone died.

Years ago, one of my journalism school professors said “passing away” refers to a quarterback who throws a pass that goes over the hands of a leaping receiver, clears the goal post, flies out of the stadium, and is last seen disappearing into the distance.  “THAT,” he said, “is passing away.”

While at the Missourinet, I kept a file of those euphemisms.  I was astonished at its length.

Published obituaries often come from the families of the dead rather than from the pen of a newspaper writer, which is okay as part of the grieving process.  Few newspapers have reporters on the obit beat, but an obituary written by one of those people is considered a form of literary art.  The Albright obit in  The New York Times is an example of the obituary as literary art. Some of its previous write-ups are in book form.

One of our favorite obituaries is one that pulled no punches.  Accuracy was more important than tribute in this obit published by the London Telegraph, April 21, 2005: (To get full enjoyment, we suggest you put on your best English accent and read it aloud)

—

The 10th Earl of Shaftesbury, whose death aged 66 was confirmed yesterday, demonstrated the dangers of the possession of inherited wealth coupled with a weakness for women and Champagne.

Shaftesbury, who disappeared last November prompting an international police investigation, was tall, debonair, affable and rather shy.  He tried after his own fashion to be true to the liberal philanthropic family traditions of his ancestors, notably the first Earl (1621-83), founder of the Whig party in Parliament, and the 7th Earl (1801-85), the great 19th century evangelical social reformer.

He served as president of the Shaftesbury Society, which the 7th Earl had founded, and—as a keen music fan—was chairman of the London Philharmonic Orchestra from 1966 to 1980.

He was also respected as a conservationist.  On his 9,000-acre estate at Wimborne St. Giles, Dorset, he planted more than a million trees and, in 1992, was joint winner of the Royal Forestry Society’s national Duke of Cornwall’s Award for Forestry and Conservation. He also served as president of the Hawk and Owl Trust and as vice-president of the British Butterfly Conservation Society.

It was said, after his mysterious disappearance from a Cannes nightclub, that the 10th Earl, like Gladstone, had been devoting himself to helping vulnerable young girls working in nightspots on the French Riviera to start new lives. But as the mystery deepened, it seemed that his interest was more than merely philanthropic.

Indeed, Lord Shaftesbury had always exhibited a weakness for exotic women. At Eton he had famously penned an article for the college magazine in which he described English debutantes as “round-shouldered, unsophisticated garglers of pink champagne.”  His subsequent amorous career was notable for his avoidance of the species.

He met his Italian-born first wife, Bianca Le Vien, the ex-wife of an American film producer and 12 years his senior, during a skiing holiday. They married in 1966 but divorced owing to his adultery with an unnamed woman, in 1976. The same year he married Swedish-born divorcee, Christina Casella, the daughter of a diplomat, with whom he had two sons.

That marriage, too, ended acrimoniously, in 2000, and he embarked on a long string of short-lived and expensive love affairs with younger women distinguished by their exotic looks and equally colourful past histories.

He became a familiar figure in some of the loucher nightspots on the French Riviera, where he cut a curious figure in his leather trousers, pink shirts, and large red-and-black spectacles; he was notable for his habit of flashing his money around as he bought drinks for a succession of nubile female companions.

In 1999 he had begun a relationship with Nathalie Lions, a pneumatic 29-year old whom he had met in a lingerie shop in Geneva, where she was working as a model. They became engaged, and he paraded her around London, Barbados and the south of France, maintaining that she was a member of the Italian royal house of Savoy. He admitted to lavishing some £1 million on her in cheques and expensive gifts, including a £100,000 Rolex watch and an Audi TT sports car.

But their relationship came to an end in 2002 after it was revealed that she was, in fact, a French nude model and former Penthouse “Pet” with silicone-enhanced breasts.

Later that year, he married Jamila M’Barek, a Tunisian divorcee with two children, whom he had met in a Paris bar where she was working as a hostess. She separated from him in April 2004, claiming that he had become an alcoholic and “sex addict,” regularly overdosing on Viagra and having testosterone injections. Among several bizarre stories, she alleged that, on one occasion, she had returned unexpectedly to their flat in Cannes to find her husband in the company of a large Arab gangster and two Arab women who were rifling through the wardrobes. Her husband was on a stool singing and dancing; the women left with a car-load of her belongings.

In August 2004 Shaftesbury was reported as having taken up with a 33-year old Moroccan hostess known as Nadia. He installed her and her two children in their own flat and, a month later, asked her to become the fourth Countess of Shaftesbury.

On the evening of November 5, 2004, Shaftesbury left the Noga Hilton Hotel in Cannes and, as was his regular habit by this time, entered a basement hostess-bar nearby. Within 24 hours he had vanished, setting off an international criminal investigation.

The saga of “Le Lord disparu” send the French media into a frenzy, and spawned a multitude of theories. In February his estranged wife, Jamila M’Barek was arrested by French police and allegedly admitted that she was present when the Earl was killed in her home; but she insisted that she was only a witness to a fight involving her husband and his killer. She and her brother Mohammed have both been placed under investigation for murder which is a step short of formal charges under French law.

Anthony Ashley-Cooper was born on May 22, 1938, the elder son of Major Lord Ashley, elder son of the 9th Earl of Shaftesbury KP, PC, GCVO, CBE. Lord Ashley, who died in 1947 before he could inherit the earldom, had shocked London society by marrying the model and chorus girl Sylvia Hawkes.  After their divorce she went on to marry Douglas Fairbanks Sr., followed by Clark Gable. Anthony was the son of his father’s French-born second wife, Françoise Soulier.

He was educated at Eton and at Christ Church, Oxford, and as a young man was a keen climber and skier. He succeeded to the earldom at aged 22 on his grandfather’s death in 1961.

The 9th Earl had, by prudent financial planning, arranged matters so that his heirs would avoid death duties.  The young earl therefore came into an estate which included the family’s 17th century home and large estate in Dorset, several other properties and a collection of art and other valuables.  By the 1990s his wealth was said to be in the “low millions.”

It was another ancestor, the 3rd Earl, who had bequeathed to his wayward descendant the wisest counsel: “The extending of a single passion too far or the continuance of it too long,” he observed, “is able to bring irrecoverable ruin and misery.”

Shaftesbury’s body was found in the south of France on April 5; yesterday it was announced that DNA tests had confirmed his identity.

By his second marriage, Lord Shaftesbury had two sons, the eldest of whom, Anthony Nils Christian, Lord Ashley, born in 1977, succeeds to the earldom.

—

Now, THAT’S an obituary!

PQ 

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The PQ is more formally known in parliamentary circles as the Previous Question.  Moving the previous question forces an immediate vote on whether debate should continue.  If the motion passes, a vote is immediately taken on the issue.

It’s a maneuver intended to stop endless debate that is leading to nothing productive. It has never been used, in your observer’s experience, by the party in power against a member of its own party.

But when endless debate within the majority party impedes productivity, the PQ against a member or members of the majority can become a matter of enforcing discipline.

The filibuster was rare and so was the previous question for most of the legislature’s history.  Both are internal disciplinary matters that have lost their value because of their abuse, one by excessive and unchecked use and the other by partisan practice.

Both are tools for advancement of the governmental process if they are respected as such.  Clearly, the filibuster has become a punitive tool abused by those who believe their actions will not be challenged by their own majority party.

In recent years the previous question has been used as a punitive step by the majority to avoid reconciliation and compromise with minority concerns.

The disrespect of the legitimate purposes of both has weakened respect for equals in the Senate chamber and has impeded progress in public policy.

Given conditions in the Senate this year, this seems to be the time for the majority party to use the previous question on some of its own members.

Such a departure from custom will send a strong message that there will be discipline in the Senate that allows the lawmaking process to progress.

Filibusters have had one of two results:

First, the majority side realized that time is exceedingly valuable and the only way to preserve it for important work is to reach sufficient compromise on an issue that the disagreeing parties will agree on a half-loaf that is better than no loaf at all. The lawmaking process advances, leaving continuation of a disagreement for another day—and another compromise.

Second, the minority party is able to either achieve enough of their points to step back from the confrontation, or no compromise is possible but the minority position will have a chance to be heard before other business can be brought up, eliminating the need to use the previous question.

In both cases, the purpose of the filibuster is respected.  The dignity of the Senate as a great deliberative body is protected.  And the concept that “everybody is a senator” is honored.

Allowing the filibuster to be abused creates a climate of disrespect that impedes public policy progress.  So does overzealous use of the previous question.  But judicious use of both retains a balance of discipline within the system.

And using it, even on a member of the controlling party, to restore Senate discipline seems to be a worthwhile step to take, especially if the purpose behind the motion is made abundantly clear to both sides.  It is likely there will be heated criticism from those who have locked down the Senate repeatedly for the first two months of this session but it is possible that most of the Senate membership will appreciate the message that our system of government is supported by a discipline of common respect among members.

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Sports Page: Cardinals/Royals–MU Coach, and Racing

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(MLB)—Missouri’s Major League Baseball teams are off to a 3-0 start after the first weekend of games in Florida and Arizona.  The Cardinals posted wins over the Astros and the Mets. Dylan Carlson and Paul Goldschmidt homered in Sunday’s win over the Mets. The Royals beat Arizona 11-10 in a game indicating, as the old saying says, hitters are ahead of pitchers at the start of spring training. Emanuel Rivera, Michael Taylor, and Salvador Perez homered. The Royals won it with six runs in the last three innings.

(TIGERS BASKETBALL)—University of Missouri curators reportedly will meet today and are considered likely to approve the hiring of Dennis Gates as the latest Tiger basketball coach.  Gates has led Cleveland State for the last three years with a 50-40 record but in his last two seasons the team has gone 39-19 with one trip to the NCAA tournament and one to the NIT.

RACING NUMBERS: 600, 5 FOR 5, AND 1-2

(INDYCAR)—Roger Penske called it a career as a sports car driver in 1965 to concentrate on his car dealership in Philadelphia.  He backed a car in the Daytona 24 Hours the next year, beginning a career that last weekend gave him his 600th victory across several racing platforms.

Josef Newgarden passed Penske teammate Scott McLaughlin on the outside of the last turn to win a thriller at Texas Motor Speedway by less than seven one-hundredths of a second.  McLaughlin was going for his second straight win to open the INDYCAR season and had led 186 laps in the 248-lap race.

Penske (shown here in one of his less-buttoned down moments after kissing the bricks at Indianapolis in 2018 after Will Power gave Team Penske it’s seventeenth 500 win and a year before Simon Pagenaud provided Penske’s 19th Indianapolis 500 victory) met Newgarden in victory circle with a bonus—six $100 bills, a bonus for winning the Penske’s 600th race. Newgarden called the win “unbelieveable.”  His drivers have won both races this year. Last year, Penske drivers had only three victories for the entire season.

Marcus Ericsson had his best finish in an INDYCAR oval race, at third, just 1.35 seconds back. Third Penske driver Will Power was fourth with Scott Dixon, the six-time series champion, crossing the line fifth.

Sixth was seven-time NASCAR champion Jimmy Johnson, who as running his first INDYCAR oval race after spending last season running only ovals.  Johnson used his extensive stock car experience at Texas to move from his 18th starting position to sixth, by far his best finish in open-wheel racing.  He said he became more comfortable as the race progressed. “Once we hit the halfway point of the race, I really could sense and feel the car,” he said. “It became second nature, and off I went. We knew going oval racing would help and today got us into the competitive mix.”

(NASCAR)—William Byron has become the fifth winner in the first five races of the year in NASCAR’s top series.  In a wild race at the re-designed Atlanta Motor Speedway that saw 46 lead changes involving twenty drivers and eleven caution flags, Byron pounced with ten laps to go and got past Bubba Wallace, then held off Ross Chastain at the finish by .145 seconds.

The win is Byron’s third in his five-year, 149-race career. All five winners this year have yet to see their 30th birthday.  Austin Cindric, the Daytona 500 winner, is 23. Kyle Larson, the defending series champion, is 29. Alex Bowman is 28 and Chase Briscoe is 27.  All five might be in the ten-race playoff at the end of the season.  But there are still 21 races to go and eleven places to fill in that field. If more than 16 drivers win a race this year, the ones with the most standings points will make the playoffs.  A driver also must finish in the top thirty in points.

At the end, 28 of the 37 starting cars had been involved in crashes during the race.

It was another “close” finish for Chastain, his second straight runner-up and his third time in three races he’s been in the top three.  He came back from two laps down after a blown tire sent him into the wall on the 95th lap of the 325 laps in the race and he was penalized for improper refueling.

Third place went to Kurt Busch, who also recovered from an on-track incident. Chastain teammate Daniel Suarez finished fourth, giving NASCAR’s newest team—Trackhouse Racing—two cars in the top four. Corey Lajoie picked up his first top-five career finish as he escaped being involved in a three-car crash at the finish line that left Wallace finishing ninth.

(FORMULA 1)—Ferrari has posted its first 1-2 finish since the 2019 Singapore Grand Prix, with Clarles LeClerc driving for the scuderia’s first victory in 46 races.  Carlos Sainz finished second with Lewis Hamilton and new teammate George Russell fourth.

The race was a disaster for defending F1 champion Max Verstappen and the Red Bull team.  Verstappen dropped out with steering a fuel system issue.  Teammate Sergio Perez, running second, spun out on the last lap. He also was battling fuel system problems.

The last time neither Red Bull car finished a race was the Austrian Grand Prix in 2020.

 

Jurassic government

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How many times will we hear the cheap, vague, promise to “fight big government” in this campaign year.  Candidates pressed by their voters—and the voters need to do this is great intensity—might come up with a statement that equally cheap and vague.

We’ve run into someone who actually thinks about that. He’s also realistic about what needs to happen—and what realistically can NOT happen,

Maybe he’s just whistling in the wind, but Professor Donald Kettl is suggesting the push toward smaller government is counterproductive.  He’s not arguing for bigger government but he does argue that there is an alternative to the philosophy that cutting “the size” of government is the silver bullet that will solve government’s problems.

Kettl is a former dean of the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy and is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, one of the most prominent think tanks in Washington.  It calls itself non-partisan although media reports put it barely on the left side of the liberal-conservative scale (53 on a scale of 100).  Regardless of where you fall on that scale, his observations are worth evaluating.

Unlike many who rail against “big government” or proclaim government is “too big,” Kettl puts some serious thought behind what his contentions.

Kettle begins his 2016 book, Escaping Jurassic Government, with an observation partisans on both side of the government aisle seem to agree on: “There is a large and growing gap in American government, between what people expect government to do and what government can actually accomplish.”   Government, he offers, comes out poorly when the public compares what it can do with what the private sector does, an image worsened by the cynical “and sometimes nasty view” expressed through social media.

But he points to the contradictory nature of the public’s attitude toward government when he speaks of “citizens’ rising—and sometimes impossible—expectations about what government ought to do for them,” and continues, “No matter the issue, the first instinct when problems arise, even among the biggest advocates for smaller government, is to see government as the cavalry and wonder why it doesn’t arrive faster to help save the day….Almost no one likes big government, but no one expects to have to cope with problems alone.”

The result is what he calls Jurassic government.  “Like the dinosaurs, government is strong and powerful. But like the forces that led the dinosaurs to extinction, government is failing to adapt to the challenges it faces. American government struggles with its most important and fundamental decisions. Even worse, it too often fails to deliver on the decisions it makes. That wastes scarce public money and leaves citizens disappointed,” he writes.

How did we get here?   It’s simple, he says.  This country has lost its commitment to competence in government.  And he argues that competence cannot be restored simply by cutting funding for programs and agencies.

His book focuses on the federal government.  But the points it makes apply, too, to state government.  The goal, he says, is competence, not necessarily size.  “We need to restore government’s capacity to deliver on what we decide as a country we ought to accomplish…We do have it within our grasp to restore confidence that what the government seeks to do it will do well.”   But it won’t be easy.

Kettl notes that the growth of government has been a bipartisan affair—Democrats creating three and turning one into two.  Republicans have created three new departments and have reduced one (Nixon kicked the Post Office out of the cabinet).  But in terms of the thirty-two countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the United States has has fewer government employees as a share of the national workforce than the average among the OECD countries).  It might be surprising to realize that only one in eight federal bureaucrats work for the federal government.  Government spending as a share of the economy  is less than the average spending of those 32 nations.  Kettl says government employment has been flat at the state and local levels since the days of Ronald Reagan. The number of local government workers  has increased, however, as population has increased.

Is privatization the answer to reducing government costs? Kettl maintains it is not and, in fact, reduces accountability.  He cites several instances in which government has been criticized for failing to do its job—but it is the private contractor to whom that job has been outsourced that has failed—and accountability has suffered.

He notes the greatest increases in government costs is in entitlement programs while total government spending has stayed pretty flat.

He thinks liberals who want to increase government spending won’t get far because slow long-term economic growth will not provide much new money to pay for many initiatives.  And while conservatives want to cut government spending, most of the federal budget is consumed by payments on the national debt, entitlements, and defense spending.

At the state level, he says, the outlook is not good.  “The U. S. Government Accountability Office forecasts that state and local governments could face structural deficits for the next fifty years,” he writes.  Aging populations will put pressures on state governments while public opposition to higher taxes “make it unlikely” that state spending will grow.

The upshot of all of this, he suggests, is-–as he puts it in one of his chapter titles—“Government’s Size Can’t Change (Much),” and to condense much of the book into a line or two: cutting government’s ability to pay its bills only reduces government’s ability to do the things it is supposed to do well.

There is much, much more in Kettl’s book, a lot of it challenging traditional political rhetoric.  He thinks today’s efforts to “cut” government size actually is cutting government’s competence and it is the declining competence of government that creates a distrustful public that criticizes the government for not meeting its obligations. It seems to this reader that he is pleading for those in government as well as those who pay government’s bills and want government services to throw away the bumper stickers and to put on their thinking caps.

If you’re in government, his study is worth reading.  If you are one of those paying the taxes and taking the services, it’s worth reading, too.

The dinosaurs, he says, didn’t think about the changing world around them and move realistically to adapt.  And we know what happened to them.

We think that his thoughts are worth serious consideration whether you’re the 53 or the 47 on the liberal/conservative scale.

Escaping Jurassic Government: How to Recover America’s Lost Commitment to Competence,  by Donald F. Kettl, published by Brookings Institution Press, Washington, D.C., 2016.

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Two Worlds

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The General Assembly is spending this week on its annual spring break, a few days to relax, unwind and reload. And to do a little campaigning or campaign planning perhaps.

They’re back in the real world this week.  For those who haven’t seen their other world, the differences are hard to understand.

When a member of the Missouri General Assembly steps through an entrance of the Missouri Capitol, that person is stepping into a small, confined, hot world with little respite that tends to consume even the best of people for most of the first five months of the year before it spits them back out into the world from which they came.

And they’re glad to come back seven months later to step out of their comfortable home world through those doors and back into the collision of wills, the competition of ideas, and the fight over the words yes and no.

They move from a world of service to others into a world of demands from others. And the demands are unrelenting, sometimes with consequences implied if the demands are not met.

They might be active at home on issues of poverty, food shortages, spouse and child abuse, veterans needs, church work, homelessness, and other social issues that can’t afford high-powered influence in the hot little world that is the Missouri Capitol. And as they deal in the capitol with pressures from those that can afford to apply them, it might be hard to think of their gentler work at home.

Imagine lives lived in fifteen-minute segments, each segment featuring someone who wants something, or a world of one or two-hour meetings to listen to proposals pleasing to those in the Capitol hallways, and days of increasingly long sessions arguing about the propriety of answering demands and which ones to answer.

Imagine all of this far from the comfort of home, family, friends, and co-workers with whom they share their streets, or coffee, or church pews.

It is hard to remember in those eighteen weeks or so who is more important—the people they meet on the street back home or the people they meet in the hallways of the State Capitol.

Seldom is there time or opportunity to think about things in depth, to study issues in depth, to look for pitfalls in legislation in depth. The pressure to take what they are given, often not knowing all that is within the proposition, is enormous. Sometimes the pressure squeezes out reason, leads to action counter to what is best to those back home, and demands action without burden of thought.

This is the world of unrelenting movement, of unrelenting asks and demands, a world far detached from the freedoms enjoyed where they live.

Furthermore, it’s more than consuming. It’s addictive.

Plaques on the office wall from those whose bidding they have done. Checks in the campaign account to encourage or reward a vote.  Intense seeming friendships today that disappear when the last vote is cast that can benefit a person, a group, a cause.

This is the other world of the people we send to represent us in Jefferson City. As individuals, they return home the same people.  As a group, however, in the capitol they become “government,” an enemy to many.

Is there is a way to improve this system?

Ideally, yes.  Sometimes it’s a matter of those sent to Jefferson City to show courage in the face of pressures, to question more closely the things asked of them. But sometimes it’s the case of those who vote to send others to represent them in this small stone world we call the Missouri Capitol meeting a citizen’s responsibility to pay attention to issues that are not always “my backyard” issues.

Government does not take place only in the Capitols of our country.  Its roots are in the home towns of those who are sent forth. And the folks at home need to care, to pay attention, and to hold accountable those who are to speak for them in that hot little world.

 

Sports: Racing, etc.

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But first: Stick and ball news—

We now enter the busiest time of year for stick and ball sports.

The first players showed up during the weekend at spring training sites in Florida and Arizona, ending an extended winter of discontent in baseball.  Opening day is less than a month away. There will be 162 games with day/night doubleheaders making up for games previously cancelled.

College basketball tournaments are underway for men and women but the main focus, although not the exclusive province of great basketball, the NCAA Tournament, begins tomorrow afternoon.

The USFL is back after a 37-year absence.  Old-timers might remember it played three years, 1983-85 and had grand plans to compete head-to-head with the NFL in the fall of 1986.  But it collapsed before that season could start. The league filed an anti-trust lawsuit against the NFL and won treble damages.  The jury awarded only $1 in damages, which was tripled to three dollars which didn’t do much to offset the $163 million dollars theleague lost.  The planned move to the fall was led by the majority owner of the New Jersey Generals, Donald J. Trump, who thought it would provoke a merger with the NFL.  The new United States Football League owns all of the trademarks of the original league but has no other connection with it. But that’s why we’ll see some names that might ring a bell with those who remember the original.

The National Hockey League still has about six weeks to go before it begins the long, long second season. The Blues are in good shape for the playoffs, second in their division, not likely to catch the Avalanche but hoping to hold off the Wild.

The National Basketball Association, which has former Missouri Tigers Jordan Clarkson and Michael Porter Jr., is a few days less than a month away after which it will compete with the NHL with its long, long second season.  Missouri has not had an NBA team since the Kansas City/Omaha Kings (the former Rochester Seagrams, Rochester Eber Seagrams, Rochester Pros, Rochester Royals, Cincinnati Royals) left town to become the Sacramento Kings in 1985.

And of course there’s golf and tennis and soccer.  And before too long the ground will be warm enough in Missouri for some sand volleyball in our city parks.

Now:  Racing

(NASCAR)—A three-lap shootout with four of NASCAR’s young guns at Phoenix has gone to Chase Briscoe, driving a car owned by his childhood hero, Tony Stewart, and sporting Stewart’s old number—14.  Briscoe had to survive three late-race restarts to get his first Cup win. He finished about eight-tenths of a second ahead of Ross Chastain, Tyler Reddick, and Ryan Blaney. Two of the oldest drivers on the circuit, Kurt Busch, 43, and Kevin Harvick, 46, filled out the top six.

For those keeping track of such things, Briscoe also became the 200th driver to win a Cup Race in NASCAR’s almost-75 year history.   Harvick’s finish was his 18th top ten at Phoenix. Only two other drivers in NASCAR history have matched that consistency.  Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt Sr., had eighteen straight top tens at North Wilkesboro, which no longer hosts NASCAR’s top series. Harvick has another streak going that he’d prefer to break sooner rather than later. He hasn’t won a race since September 19, 2020.

The win was an emotional one for last year’s series Rookie of the Year. “I was crying the whole last lap,” he said later. “Just seven years ago I was sleeping on couches, volunteering at race shops and was literally driving home to give up.

Next up for NASCAR is the first race on the newly-redesigned track at Atlanta which has been repaved since last year with progressive banking in the turns.

(INDYCAR)—The second race of the year for America’s premier open-wheel series is this coming weekend at the Texas Speedway.  It will be the first high-speed banked oval run for six rookies.  INDYCAR set up a nine-hour test last week for Kyle Kirkwood, David Malukas, Romain Grosjean, Devlin DeFrancesco, Christian Lundgaard, and Callum Llott.  Grosjean was there voluntarily. He’d done his oval testing last fall at World Wide Technology Raceway across the river from St. Louis. But he took the opportunity to get acquainted with a bigger, faster track.

A quasi-rookie in the race will be seven-time NASCAR champion Jimmie Johnson, who ran only road courses last year.  Most of his NASCAR career was on ovals and he expects to do better than his career-best 17th place finishes on road courses. Johnson won 83 Cup races, 82 of them on ovals. He’s confident of better things in the five INDYCAR oval races this year after testing on the ovals at Texas and Indianapolis last year.

One of INDYCAR’s hottest young talents has landed a Formula 1test driver job with McLaren. F1 rules allow teams to use one of last year’s cars to test young talent.  If Colton Herta is impressive enough he could land an FP1 opportunity.  Formula 1 requires rookie drivers to have at least two FP1 sessions  before they can race. FP1 lets new drivers get accustomed to the current car in test sessions held before a race with the first session (FP!) focusing on car setups.  FP2 gives experience in simulated long race runs. FP3 lets them work on qualifications laps and more setups. Herta plans to fit those sessions in between his INDYCAR races this year.

(FORMULA 1)—Formula 1 has wrapped up the last pre-season testing with three days on the track at Bahrain. The top rivalry, a carryover from last year’s heated championship run, is still Red Bull vs. Mercedes.  Mercedes turned the most test laps at Bahrain but was short of the top of the speed charts.  Red Bull had the only laps below 1:32. Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton, who lost his chance for a record eighth championship because of a controversial race administration issue last year, says Red Bull looks “ridiculously fast” but he says Mercedes is still the better team.

Red bull driver, defending champion Max Verstappen thinks Mercedes wasn’t showing its full capability during the tests.

The season opens Sunday on the Bahrain circuit.

(Photo credits: Bob Priddy)

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The Whirlwind

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This year is the thirtieth anniversary of two major decisions made by Missouri voters.  One has proven itself to be a disaster for Missouri’s political system and the other has led to proof of the fallibility of the first.

Missouri voters hypocritically approved legislative term limits with a 75 percent favorable vote on November 3, 1992.

On the same day, Missourians went 62 percent in favor of what was then called “riverboat gambling.”

These two events have become a toxic political brew in our system of government.

In today’s discussion we are going to look at term limits.  Later we will discuss casino gambling.

The Old Testament minor prophet Hosea, a contemporary of more important prophets Isaiah and Micah, warned metaphorically of the downfall of Israel for its various sins—lying, murder, idolatry, and covetousness, along with spiritual and physical adultery, these latter two characteristics personally experienced by Hosea and his wife Gomer.  Gomer carried on with another man.  The faithful Hosea accused Israel of spiritual adultery.

He warned that Israel and Judah would fall:

“They sow the wind and reap the whirlwind. The stalk has no head; it will produce no flour.”

Term limits was the wind.  We are reaping the whirlwind in the Missouri General Assembly—most particularly in the Missouri Senate.  But the term limits whirlwind is not just blowing in the Senate which heads towards its spring break at the end of this week with only one bill approved in weeks of division, derision and disrespect. It is felt less in the House where its impact is less visible because it is more controlled.

It rages in the Senate where unlimited debate among the 34 members is still considered a virtue—as it should be if members respected it more than they abuse it.  The House has rules that are necessary in a chamber of 163 members to limit the time a member may speak on an issue.

The public, which has little interest in the more subtle or arcane factors of lawmaking, bought the idea that politicians should be limited to a maximum of eight years in the House and eight in the Senate because politicians are basically—

Crooked.

—Except for their own representative or senator.  While voting to limit House members to four terms and Senate members to two terms, many of those 1992 voters were electing their Representatives and Senators to terms five or three in many districts.

The voters voted to restrict their own right to vote when they for term limits.  This year, voters in will be prohibited from considering whether five of their Senators deserve a third term. In most of those cases, those Senators will never again have the privilege of representing their citizens on the floors of the House or the Senate.  Voters in 1992, most of whom do not live in those senatorial districts, decided these five are no longer fit to serve regardless of how distinguished their work might have been.

But terms limits is more dangerous than that.

Those of us who voted in that election were warned that term limits would destroy the institutional memory that is vital to lawmaking. Senior lawmakers who knew the value of respecting the other side of the aisle, of knowing that today’s enemy is tomorrow’s friend, who understood that collegiality benefitted the people of Missouri more than hostility, disappeared.  With no one to teach newcomers the importance of legislative control of the lawmaking process, that control passed to outsiders.

I watched the first crumbling of the legislative process.  The first piece fell the first time I heard the sponsor of a bill ask a colleague offering an amendment, “Have you run this past so-and-so in the hall?,”  clearly an indication that a blessing from a lobbyist (lobbyists are not allowed within the floor of the chambers during debate) was necessary for acceptance of the amendment.

Later as cell phones became more ubiquitous, I watched debaters with their cellphone in their hands checking for text messages that influenced the debate.  Technology has put the lobbyists in the chambers.

There also have been other indications that much of the power of lawmaking has shifted from the bests interests of constituents being argued on the floors of the House and Senate to the best interests of those in the hallways being transmitted into the discussion from outside.

I watched the disappearance of lawmakers capable of amendments written by hand during the debate, replaced by pauses in debate so a legislative staff member could write what he or she was asked to write—the origin of the amendment sometimes in a text message from outside.

In the entire first half of this legislative session, only one bill has been approved by both chambers and sent to the governor. Just one.

The wind the voters sowed in 1992 is the whirlwind of 2022 and in the splintered and often dedlocked Missouri Senate, at least, (and in the Congress as well) “The stalk has no head; it will produce no flour.”

And legislative bodies—Congress and state assemblies alike—seem unwilling to prove they serve above the low regard the public has for them.

 

“We should look for common honesty”

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He signed his letter, “A Voter,” which many newspaper editors would not allow today and rightfully so. Whether you let off steam or offer calm advice, the writers of letters to the editor should have the courtesy and courage to sign their names.

But hear the voice of “A Voter” from a time when our state was but three years old and the first presidential election since Missouri joined the Union was only weeks away.  He wrote to the editor of the Missouri Intelligencer, our first outstate newspaper—published in Franklin. The words in the June 5, 1824 issue are valid today.

It is…common, in all governments, for those who seek for offices, to woo the power that can bestow them; and, in our government, the man who cannot, or who will not, flatter the people, may content himself in private life…

To facilitate his design, the first object of a candidate is to discover our hobby; and when found, mount it and ride without mercy…My heart misgives me every time a new circular is announced, or whenever a fresh candidate mounts a stump, lest the poor jade should not be able to hold out to the end. It is thought, however, if a candidate rides gracefully, he will do…I cannot suppose that this is a general belief—but some, we know, have more confidence in vicarious power than others.

The time is approaching when we shall be called on to exercise that inestimable franchise of free men, the right of suffrage, to its full extent. And, as all power is primarily in the people, the right of suffrage is not only a privilege, but a duty obligatory on all; and to him that is remiss in this duty, the sin of omission may be fairly imputed.

In performing this duty, then, it is incumbent on us to deliberate before we act; and before we give our voices to any man to perform any of the functions of our government, if he has not passed the ordeal of a public trial, let us first, if possible, ascertain if he is the man he professes to be. 

I am aware of the impracticability of personally knowing every man who offers his services. But every man who is constitutionally eligible to important trusts under our state government is known by some in whose probity and impartiality others may justly confide. And, where we cannot obtain personal knowledge, the information of men of integrity and who have had opportunity to possess that knowledge, may be relied on.

I admit that it is vain to look for perfection in man…We should not look for great talents and splendid acquirements to fill every office.  But we should look for common honesty and if a man possess no other qualifications but such as would entitle him to a diploma from an academy for horse-jockeys, I think he is not entitled to any post of trust or profit under our government.

A lot of words are thrown around during election seasons, as we saw in 2020 and will see again this year, some irresponsibly and some sincerely. “Common honesty” might be a high goal, but it’s one we should demand of those who want our votes. To fail to do so is to sell ourselves cheaply.