Monthly Archives: October 2024

Winning for Missouri: More Like the Mugging of Missouri 

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One last shot at Amendment 2 before next Tuesday’s vote on it. And a warning that this amendment might have far-reaching results that have gone unnoticed.

Unfortunately, these considerations are being offered to late to be circulated enough to make a difference. But let’s put the issues on the record. Or at least, this person’s perspective.  Disagreements are welcome in the box at the end of this entry. We’ll talk about the casino industry’s efforts and we’ll discuss some sports teams questionable claims late in this post.

A key part of the proposed amendment is the sports wagering tax rate—10% —a back door tax cut of about 25% for all forms of gambling.

And here we must note that later we will discuss a clause in the proposed amendment that can lead to later mischief that will further disadvantage the state and its people.

The industry-supported legislation has never defined sports wagering as a special category.is listed as just another kind of game of skill.  In the lengthy list of those allowable games, it has been inserted after “Double down stud” or “any video representation of such games.”

It is that last clause that nobody has talked about.  But it’s important for future developments in the casino industry.  Here’s why.

People are not going to casinos as they once did.  The generation that has spent hours at the slot machines and the tables is dying off. Admissions are almost half what they were a dozen years ago or so.  As this trend continues, the casino industry must find ways to get customers to play these games. If they won’t go to the casinos, the casinos must—in effect—take the games to the consumers. This amendment is a template for later proposals to expand remote wagering to other forms of gambling.

This amendment legalizes remote betting in our casinos for the first time. Some of our casinos already have tested a version of remote gaming within the casinos, calling it “hybrid gaming.” In those casinos, customers who can’t find room at their favorite gaming table have gone to a nearby computer terminal, have set up their account, and have placed bets at the table as if they were there.

The tests haven’t generated much revenue. But the system has been tested.  No matter what the industry calls it, whether it’s fifty feet from the table or fifty miles from the sportsbook, it’s remote wagering. Don’t be surprised if casinos become more involved with it.  And that phrase is going into the constitution if voters approve Amendment Two.

We are not sure if that phrase in the amendment will mean casinos can offer remote betting on table games and slot machines without more legislative action. But it would not be in the proposal if the industry did not have a reason for it being there.

The Casino industry cleverly set the parameters for the discussion of sports wagering early:

—We can’t do sports wagering at 21% (the rate the state established more than three decades ago for table games and slot machines (incidentally, about 85% of casino revenues come from the slots).

—Sports wagering is different from other forms of gambling and needs special treatment.

Neither statement is true.

The industry has consistently claimed sports wagering is unique and requires its own special betting area and its own special tax rate, the latter reason justified differently year-to-year in bills introduced in the legislature.  The first bills proposed a tax rate of 6.25% (the lowest in the nation), 6.75% (the present low), 8%, and 10%.  The industry has seemed to have trouble sticking to its story when advocating a tax rate of less than 21%.

A couple of years ago the Senate tried to make the rate 12% and there was talk that the casinos would compromise on 15% because it was the average of the states around us.  We’ll get to that in a little bit.

The truth is that sports wagering is just another item on the gambling menu and its presence on that list supports that point. But the casinos have tried to get the legislature to believe it is special. And they want voters in a few days to believe it, too, so they can get a cut in overall tax rates (by our calculation) of about 25%.

The industry has never produced any independent studies in any legislative hearing we have attended, to justify the claim that sports wagering is a fragile flower needing lots of TLC, including the low tax. None of the pro-amendment advertising has offered any justification for it either.  And the voters, who understandably don’t closely follow the policy-making, or lack of it, by the legislature are left to make decisions based on thirty-second television commercials of questionable verity.

One industry argument has been that casinos will spend a lot of money establishing a unique area where the sports wagering can take place, an argument that falls apart because all forms of gambling have THEIR unique betting areas.  It’s why you can’t roll dice at a blackjack table. You can’t play poker at the roulette wheel table. You can’t play craps at the poker table and you can’t bet on where the ball will land on the big wheel at the Texas Hold ‘Em table.

There is nothing inherently unique in sports betting, regardless of industry claims. It operates the same way as other forms of wagering.  The consumer has money; the casinos have a system that will take all of it through time. The player at the poker table places a bet. So does a bettor in the sports betting area. The casino processes the bets, paying the winners and keeping the losers’ money. At the end of the day, the casino proceeds go into the same bank account with the proceeds from table games and slot machines.

Every year, the industry seems to have changed its justification for a sweetheart tax rate, raising a simple question that should been asked but never was: “How can the industry’s claims be trusted if it cannot stick to its own story?

In 2019, the industry demanded a 6.75% rate because “that’s what they charge in Las Vegas.”  A quick review of the Nevada gaming laws showed something the industry avoided telling our lawmakers: that 6.75% ALL forms of gambling in Nevada.  The industry also neglected to tell the legislators that the Nevada gaming law allows no deductions and no carryovers of casino losses from one month to the next, as is proposed in Amendment 2.  It was pointed out that the Nevada template would mean that Missouri would have two choices: either lower its present tax rate to 6.75 so all forms of gambling would be treated uniformly or to charge sports wagering a 21% tax.

Here are other reasons offered for a low tax rate:

—The casinos need to keep the extra money to properly promote and advertise this unique form of gambling. A representative of Penn National Gaming told a House committee in 2022 that a higher tax would hinder Missouri’s ability to compete with illegal gaming sites. He said, “When you are able to spend more in marketing, you are able to drive more in volume and revenues.”

The position of the industry that money should be taken away from the education fund and from home dock cities to subsidize promotions and advertising was questionable when the industry was generating revenues of about $1.7 billion at the time. Wouldn’t you think the industry should pay for its own promotions and advertising?

A critic argued that there is no reason the state should subsidize advertising for an industry of that size by reducing funding for the school systems and home dock cities (ten percent of the gaming tax goes to the thirteen host cities of Missouri’s casinos).  Additionally, major betting companies already were advertising on professional sports broadcasts and have stepped up their advertising since.

The proposal for using money traditionally earmarked for the education fund to publicize and promote sports wagering included no accountability language that would have required casinos to show the money actually had been used as proposed instead of just pocketed.

They also claimed the money not given the state in taxes was needed to convince Missourians to quit using illegal betting sites.  We’ll touch on that a little bit later.

—The casinos originally claimed the house advantage in sports wagering is “only” four percent (in 2023 the industry testified it was five percent).  But a study done for the UNLV Center for Gaming Research indicates that four percent is higher than most popular table games, sometimes double or more, and the industry has never asked for a favorable tax rate for table games.

In truth, the house advantage for sports wagering is more than four or even five percent, as the casino industry has claimed in some later legislative committee hearings. The website legalsportsreport.com charts statistics month-by-month in every state from the first month sports wagers were made in that state. As of last Sunday night, the webpage calculated $408-Billion dollars had been wagered in states allowing casino gambling on sports. The casino advantage worked out to 8.6%, more than double what the industry told legislators, and adding up to $35.1 Billion dollars.

Delaware, which has the highest tax on casino revenues, had the highest house advantage—25.1 to 46.5.  Delaware taxes casinos at a 50% and we’ve not heard any organized opposition to it.

Another excuse has been that Missouri needs a low tax rate to compete with surrounding states. Kansas is at 10. Iowa’s rate on casino earnings is 6.75, and according to an industry spokesperson. Missouri needs to have a low tax to keep Missourians from going to another state to place their sports bets.

The industry has presented no independent studies indicating casino customers care about the amount of taxes the casinos pay. In reality, the so-called competition rests on a simple question: Does Missouri have legal sports wagering? If Missouri legalizes it, Missourians presumably will place bets here because they don’t have go to some other state.

The industry also claimed it needs to have a much lower tax so it can pay for building sportsbook facilities within the casinos. If ninety percent or more of sports wagering will be done remotely, there’s not much reason for an elaborate sportsbook.  And, besides, building a sports betting facility in a casino should be considered a normal business expense with its own tax implications at the end of the business year.

This amendment has been called a “compromise between the stakeholders”—the six professional sports teams, the casino industry, and the remote betting industry” by St. Louis Cardinals president Bill DeWitt III.

But there are far more stakeholders than that. None of their representatives were invited to work on this “compromise.” Where were representatives of public education, host cities, veterans, the Access Missouri Scholarship Program, the National Guard program that provides veterans’ funeral escorts, people who develop gambling problems (we have seen several studies indicating those problems will triple with sports wagering), or even the Missouri Gaming Commission?

Here’s an answer: They were not invited because they were not considered participants in drafting gambling policy. Instead, they are industry targets whose only usefulness is based on how much money the industry can take from them or keep from programs benefitting them.

There’s one more stakeholder. The legislature, hired by the citizens to protect their interests. But the legislature has been MIA in protecting its constituents. The “compromise” is not a compromise at all.  It was, instead, an agreement to have the legislature give each of the stakeholders what they want. When the legislature fumbled several chances to satisfy the teams and the casinos, Amendment 2 was created.

It’s important as we reach the conclusion of these discussions to ask, “How did we reach this point?”

One reason this issue is on the ballot is that the legislature refused to resolve a competing issue—the legality of the gambling machines in many of our convenience stores, Video Lottery Terminals.

Supporters of video lottery terminals, while professing that they are legal, want the legislature to make them legal. The casinos see them as competing for their slot machine revenues and have not allowed an up-or-down vote on the VLT bills.  Supporters of the VLTs have filibustered the sports wagering legislation, demanding VLT legalization legislation be part of any sports wagering measure. The stalemate, especially in the Senate, has been a key factor in the pretty disgraceful deadlocks there that have resulted in historically-low levels of bill passage during the last three sessions.

The legislature lacked the courage in the face of extensive and aggressive lobbying by the casino industry to establish policies protecting the state’s interests and year after year considered the industry proposals without question. Only once that I recall did I hear a legislative committee member seriously press the chief industry lobbyist on some of these issues—Senator Denny Hoskins who was the leader in the unsuccessful efforts to legalize VLTs—was told he was out of time before he had finished his questioning. The replies he had received were vague at best.

A couple of years ago, I talked to the sponsor of a bill raising the tax rate to ten percent. A year earlier he had sponsored the industry’s bill that set the rate at eight percent. “What’s magical about ten percent?” I asked. “Last year it was only eight.”

He responded, “I figured that if ten was good enough for Jesus it was good enough for me.”

I was stunned for a second or two, and when I recovered my composure, I asked, “Jesus had twelve disciples not ten.  Can I get you up to 12?”

All I got in response was a smirk.

I found his responses to my questions arrogant, disrespectful, and dismissive. While I would not use the same phrases to characterize those who have advocated for this legislation, I think it is accurate to say there has been a certain confidence on their part that no outside opinions would be tolerated in the annual legalization efforts.

The legislature’s refusal to challenge industry-backed bills year after year is an indication of who has been in charge of things in the Capitol on this issue. Its inability to deliver what the industry—and in the last few years, the pro sports teams—wanted means the issue is likely to be put into the Missouri Constitution next week and the legislature will not be able to change things to protect the interests of the people of Missouri very easily.

I expect the mugging of Missouri and its people to succeed next Tuesday.  And we can thank a few generations of the people we think represent us at the Capitol for aiding and abetting it through their inaction.

 

 

Sports: Salvy’s Honor; Baseball Playing Ending, Dealing Beginning; Chiefs Roll and Build; Tigers Hurting;

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(BASEBALL)—The baseball season is down to its last five games, maybe to its last two, as the World Series moves to Yankee Stadium after the Dodgers took the first two games in Los Angeles.  By this time next week, certainly a week after that, we’ll get the first hints of how the teams will reshape themselves for 2025.

(ROYALS)—-One of baseball’s most prestigious awards, the Roberto Clemente Award, has gone to Royals catcher Salvador Perez. He’s being recognized as an outstanding representative of the sport “through extraordinary character, community involvement, philanthropy, and positive contributions, both on and off the field.

 

Perez is 34, a thirteen-year member of the Royals, the only team for which he has ever played. He was a major factor in the team reaching the playoffs for the first time in a decade, hittig .274 with 27 home runs and 104 runs batted in.  He is a five-time Gold Glove winner and could win his fifth Silver Slugger Award.

His merit-worthy work has not just been in Kansas City. He has distributed food to thousands of people in his home town of Valencia, Venezuela, helped create the Carlos Fortuna Foundation in Colombia, honoring the memory of the Royals minor league pitcher who died at the age of 22 of liver cancer. The organization is supervised by Monica Ramirez, who was the Royals English-as-Second-Language instructor and helped Perez learn English in 2007. He also donated one-million dollars to the Kansas City Urban Youth Academy.

He was presented the award during a pre-game press conference at Yankee Stadium before last night’s game three of the World Series.  He’s the first Royals player to win the award, named for the great Pittsburgh outfielder who died in a plane crash while on a humanitarian mission in 1972.

(CARDINALS)—The Cardinals are on a budget-cutting spree and some inside observers expect a lot of faces from 2024 will be elsewhere either because of trades or because of free agency.

John Denton of MLB.com recently took a look at the possibilities, suggesting Ryan Helsley won’t be back next year and Nolan Arenado probably doesn’t want “to go through a rebuild”  although Arenado, whose offensive production has declined in the lasts three years, has a no-trade clause in his contract.

Paul Goldschmidt will be a free agent in a few days and the Cardinals, who have watched his offensive production decline in the last two years, do not appear likely to want to re-sign him to the size of contract he would want.

Helsley is seen as prime trade bait, as is Sonny Gray.

Lance Lynn had a solid season but it was a one-year deal. Kyle Gibson and Andrew Kittredge also could go.  The departure of Goldschmidt, Gibson, Kittredge, and Lynn would cut $60 million from the payroll—and cutting the payroll is a big goal of team management.

Another name being kicked around as a soon-to-be former Redbird is Wilson Contreras.

Regardless of how all of this turns out, the 2025 Cardinals will be younger, cheaper, and more future-focused.

(CHIEFS)—The Kansas City have made the Oakland, Los Angeles, Las Vegas Raiders their 13th straight victim (counting last year’s playoffs) and will be the last NFL team to lose a game this season. They continue to build strength in a season notable for its losses with low-risk, high-return trades.

The Raiders’ 20 points was three more than the Chiefs defense has been averaging this season and the first time the Raiders have hit the 20-mark since September 29. The last score came with little time left in the game and the outcome of the game beyond doubt.

The KC defense might have saved the game for the Chiefs after a Mahomes interception left the Raiders within smelling distance of the end zone line by stopping the Raiders on a fourth-and-goal from the three-yard line.

The Chiefs defense held the Raiders to just 33 yards rushing, less than 1.6 yards per attempt. It’s the second time this year Las Vegas has averaged less than two yards per rush. It’s happened only two other times in all of the NFL games played this year.

Receiver DeAndre Smith, obtained earlier in the week in a trade with the Titans, was targeted three times and caught two passes for 29 yards. The Chiefs gave up a conditional fifth-round draft pick to get him.

Yesterday, the Chiefs did it again by dealing for Patriot’s linebacker Josh Uche, an edge rusher with four years of NFL experience as an edge rusher. They gave a 6th round draft pick to get him. He’ll be a free agent at the end of the year. He has a couple of sacks. The Chiefs defense has recorded only 15 sacks in their first seven games, tying them for 26th in the NFL with three other teams, including the Patriots. They have only four players with more than two sacks this season.

The trade deadline is next Tuesday.

So far, the chiefs have filled vacancies caused by injuries and have taken steps to strengthen the squad during the season. If, as things evolve, they have a surplus of talent at the end of the year, they also will have an attractive assemblage of trade bait to use for off-season lineup strengthening.

(MIZ)—-The Missouri Tigers have struggled to live up to their pre-season hype as a championship playoff possibility and their 35-0 loss to Alabama has left them hanging on to a national ranking by their fingernails.  They’re 25th and 21st in the top-25 polls with a quarterback whose hurting and a backup who has been ineffective, as well as a vaunted defense that two big-time teams (Texas A&M and Alabama) have vaulted over by combines scores of 75-10.

Brady Cook, already limited by a high ankle sprain, left the game with a hand injury after striking a defensive player’s helmet while throwing a pass. He finished his day with only 30 passing yards on 7 completions. As we prepared this post, Coach Drinkwitz had not indicated the severity of the injury.

Missouri has its second bye week of the season this weekend, giving the walking rounded some time to recover. Two other key parts of the offense, running back Nate Noel and wide receiver Mookie Cooper, missed the Alabama game.

The Tigers will have to run the table against Oklahoma (4-4), South Carolina (4-3), Mississippi State (1-7), and Arkansas  (5-3) to finish with a double-digit win total, a possibility but backup QB Drew Pine will have step up his game.  So far, he’s 35 for 55, but only for 248 yards and his three interceptions against Alabama were killers.

Pyne has not been able to show the results he had in 2022 when he took over at Notre Dame and led the Fighting Irish to an 8-2 record the rest of the way that season, throwing for 2,021 yards, 22 touchdowns and only three interceptions. Pyne should be better-prepared for the Oklahoma game. In the next two weeks, he’s likely to get most of the practice snaps—if not all of them, depending on Cook’s injuries.

(MIZ, Volume II)—Basketball is here.

An exhibition game against Lincoln University, in Jefferson City, went the way it was expected to go—a rout for the Missouri Tigers against the Lincoln Blue Tigers 90-45 and it wasn’t that close.  But it was the highest scoring total since the Tigers ran off 92 against Missouri Southern in 2015 when the margin was one point more, 92-46.  Missouri’s biggest lead was 50 points with 8:44 to go in the first half.

It was the first competition for Missouri’s top-five recruit class and 13th rated transfer class.

Junior guard Mark Mitchell scored 15 points in the first half and finished with 22.  Caleb Grill (pictured), who sat out of most of last year with a wrist injury, had 20 as the two shot 14 of 17 from the field and 7 of 8 from the rim.  Missouri led 53-19 at the half.

Real basketball for Missouri begins next Monday night at Memphis.

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There’s no break in the recruiting work in college basketball these days.  A week before the regular season opened, Missouri announced it has landed four-star power forward Nicholas Randall for the Class of 2025.

Randall is a St. Louis native now playing for Compass Prep in Chandler Arizona, a 6-7, 225 pound forward ranked 120th in the recruiting class by 247Sports. Missouri beat out Creighton and San Francisco to get him. He joins Tolton High School (Columbia) point guard Aaron Rowe in a recruiting class already ranked 69th in the country with plenty of time for additional signings.

(BLUES)—The St. Louis Blues have started the season at 5-4.  It’s early but there are questions abut how competitive the Blues will be against teams already ahead of them in the standings. They were impressive with their 5-1 win over the Toronto Maple Leafs only to fall 5-2 to the Montreal Canadians who went into the game with three losses and a tie in their last four games. (ZOU)

—-Now, the wheels go round and round—

(NASCAR)—Tyler Reddick pulled off another of his epic drives to win a spot in the final four for the NASCAR Cup.  Reddick, whose gutsy drive in a wreck-damaged car at Talladega kept his championship hopes alive two weeks ago, went from third to first on the last lap at Las Vegas, sweeping past defending NASCAR champion Ryan Blaney on the last turn. The win makes him the second driver locked into the final four for the last race of the year in two weeks.

At Talladega, Reddick was five points below the playoff cutline with five laps left and was caught up in the largest crash in NASCAR history.  “I was spinning around backward and hit front and back,” he said after the race, but he kept his car on the track and finished 20th, ahead of six of his contenders and well into the field for the playoffs.

His banzai final lap at Las Vegas carried to a two-tenths of a second win over Blaney, who now almost needs to win next weekend on the Martinsville short track to defend his championship in the season’s last race at Phoenix.

Reddick’s last-lap heroics drew enthusiastic reviews from team co-owner Michael Jordan, the NBA Hall of Famer. “Little kid drove his ass off,” said Jordan. He just let go. He just went for it and I’m glad. We needed it.”

Little kid? Reddick is five feet, five inches tall.  Jordan is 6-9.

(INDYCAR)—A case of Patomania broke out in Mexico City in the leadup to the Formula 1 race there last week.  INDYCAR star and Mexican native Pato O’Ward was there for his first ride in a Formula 1 car in his native land.  He wasn’t there to qualify for the race, but to try out the car on the Autodromo Hermano Rodriguez.  And he did pretty well, actually, with a hot lap time of 1:19.245 in his McLaren in the first of three practice sessions.

McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown praised O’Ward as “the most popular driver in INDYCAR” whose popularity is “growing by the moment.”  He thought the practice runs were important to building a fan base in Mexico. “I believe that people who like Formula One will also like INDYCAR if they’re unfamiliar with it.”

The other two practice sessions were for Formula 1 regulars who turned increasingly faster laps until Ferrari’s Carlo Sainz topped the field with a lap of 1:15.946.

INDYCAR is in discussions to run one of the series races in Mexico. O’Ward says he’s been saying “for years” that an INDYCAR race would draw well in Mexico and he thinks fan reaction to his test run proves his point.

Brown thinks Mexico is “a huge market” for motorsports and will draw attention throughout the world to INDYCAR.

(FORMULA 1)—News accounts sometimes close with a “kicker,” usually an anecdote intended to amuse the consumer after a diet of serios stuff.

This is the first time we have done such a thing.  Ferrari put its two drivers on the podium after the Mexican Grand Prix, with Carlos Sainz the winner, McLaren’s Lando Norris in second, and Charles Leclerc in the other Ferrari third.

In the post-race press conference, Leclerc described his near-crash with Norris, recognizing immediately that he had said something that had had caused a penalty for points leader Max Verstappen in an earlier race. “”I was like f*** and then luckily… Oh no, oh no, I don’t want to join Max!”

Well, he is joining Max.  Formula 1 has a policy that language used in public forums “meets generally accepted standards for all audiences and broadcasts. F1 wants no “coarse [or] rude” language that might “cause offense.”  Verstappen used the same word after the Singapore Grand Prix. Leclerc will get the same penalty—an “obligation to accomplish some work of public interest.”

Here is the interesting part: When Verstappen was called to account by the race stewards, he—as a Formula 1 statement put it—“explained that the word used is ordinary in speech as he learned it, English not being his native language.” 

It appears these two guys have learned our language all too well.

Formula 1 has four races left and four post-race news conferences left for drivers to practice their English language.

(Image credits: Perez—KC Royals; Caleb Grill—Instagram; Uche—Chiefswire; Reddick—NASCAR; OWard—Bob Priddy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ephesians 6:11 

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This is the Bible verse that Donald Trump’s evangelical supporters cite to show that God kept him from being assassinated this summer in Pennsylvania.  Since the shooting occurred at 6:11 p.m., some of those who thump Bibles that he uses for fun and profit more than he uses them for any guidance claim God wants him to win next week’s election.

It is an absurd example of using the Bible by taking one verse out of context or of avoiding all of the other 6:11 verses in the Bible.

Ephesians 6:11 is a manmade division of the scriptures and 6:11 might easily have been some other chapter and verse had not Robert Etienne, a printer in Paris, divided the Greek New Testament as he did, into the chapters and verses in 1551.  He used his system when he published the Hebrew Bible two years later.

The sixth chapter of Paul’s letter to the Christians at Ephesus contains 24 verses.

Reading the entire letter in which Paul defines what it takes to be a Christian does not work very well for those who grant the ex-President holy status.  Chapters five and six seem more applicable to Mr. Trump than the out-of-context verse 11.

In these two chapters, Paul tells the Ephesians to be “imitators of God” and to “walk in love.”

“Among you…there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or any kind of impurity or of greed,” he tells them.  That seems more applicable to the candidate than the one that, it is claimed, clipped his ear.

“Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk, or crude joking…No immoral, impure, or greedy person…has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God,” he advises the Ephesians.  Hmmmm. That seems to fit somebody we know more than one verse that some think means God is on his side.

Paul advises them (and us, if we think the scriptures have any contemporary relevance), “Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of such things the wrath of God is coming on the sons of disobedience.”  Sons of disobedience might fit the speeches and subsequent events of January 6, 2021 more than explaining how someone’s life was “spared” in a shooting.

Elsewhere in that chapter he advises people to “have no fellowship with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them, for it is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret.”  Mr. Trump brands those who expose “fruitless deeds” as “Fake News.”

There’s some great advice about how husbands and wives should treat each other that might do him some good or might have done him some good.

The sixth chapter, the one in which the evangelistic supporters pluck out of context to prove it was God who caused the shooter to carefully miss the speaker that day in Ohio, addresses children and parents.

It also tells slaves how to behave. And he offers advice to their masters.  As we recall, slavery was ended, although at terrible cost, by a war that Mr. Trump says could have been avoided if Abraham Lincoln had negotiated.

If Mr. Trump had any sense of history he would know that negotiations had gone on for decades, even before the anti-slavery language was removed from the Declaration of Independence almost 250 years ago.  Missouri came into the union in 1821 because of heavy discussions about slavery that led to a mutual appeasement policy that let the debate rage on.  Lincoln took office telling the South he did not want to end slavery; he just didn’t want it to expand to newer states.

We have an idea of what Mr. Trump’s solution would have been had he been in Lincoln’s place in 1861: let the states decide.

And that brings us to the celebrated eleventh verse and the later verses that it is easy to ignore for those who want religion to focus on power.

Paul was writing from a Roman prison to the Christians in Ephesus who had seen many pilgrims make trips to worship a pagan god.

The twelfth verse reads, “For our struggle is not against the flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this world’s darkness, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”

Do you suppose that could be read to mean we should be more concerned about Vladimir Putin, President Xi and Supreme Leader Kim than we should be about a non-existent flood of fentanyl-lugging criminals and mental patients released from Central American prisons and mental hospitals so they can come here and take over Colorado apartment buildings and eat our pets?

“Take up the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you will be able to stand your ground…Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, and the breastplate of righteousness arrayed,” says verses thirteen and fourteen.  Unfortunately for the “belt of truth,” Mr. Trump seems to be a suspenders sort of guy.

And righteousness?  Calling people names after they have spoken out about your love of Hitler, your respect for dictators, and your various slanders and assaults, verbal and otherwise, on individuals and institutions—-is that an example of righteousness all of us should follow?

Near the end of Chapter Six, Paul asks the Ephesians to “pray in the spirit at all times, with every kind of prayer and petition.”

I’m waiting for Mr. Trump to open one of his rallies with an off-the-cuff prayer. I worry, however, how I could tolerate a two-hour prayer

He certainly had his chances twice in one day last week—at a “Believers and Ballots Faith Town Hallk in Zebulon, Georgia and a Turning Point event right after that in Duluth, Georgia.

Sarah Posner, in an opinion piece for MSNBC (or as Trump likes to call it “MSDNC,” for Democratic National Committee, wrote that one the participants in the town hall meeting, held at a church, asked Trump about a new survey showing 32 million regular church goers might not vote this fall.  When the questioner asked him for a message to those voters encouraging them to vote, the best he could do was respond, “Christians are not tremendous voters,”  which might be a surprise to a lot of us. Then, she reports, he “rambled for nearly three minutes on themes of religious persecution by ‘not nice’ and ‘stupid’ people, guns and COVID restrictions, without completing coherent sentences or thoughts.”

Turning Point is run by conservative evangelical Charlie Kirk, who also is an election denier. The AP reported that Kirk called this election “a spiritual battle,” and charged Democrats “stand for everything God hates.”  Posner says Kirk and another conservative, Jack Posobiec, have been the big promoters of the Ephesians 6:11 protection plan.

She concludes, “Amid GOP panic over losing women and swing voters who support abortion rights, Trump appears adrift in his evangelical mobilization, meandering through disconnected verbal thickets of insults and boasts, unable to focus on issues or hammer home talking points.”

We don’t want to exhaust our participants in these discussions much more than we already have. But we decided to look up some other 6:11 Bible verses, chosen at random.

Genesis 6:11 says “Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence.” So God authorized the great flood.

The sixth chapter of Ruth has some good advice for somebody on our ballot next week, beginning a verse earlier:

“10 For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. 11But thou, O man of God, flee these things; and follow after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, meekness.”

The sixth chapter of Matthew offers some caution to those who make good social and political hay from religious organizations. It begins with “Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.”  This is the chapter that includes the Lord’s prayer and Verse eleven prays, “Give us, this day, our daily bread.”

First Timothy, 6:11 reads, “…Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness.”  Nice, but it doesn’t seem to describe the person who survived an assassination attempt.

We could go on but we will not, to your great relief we are sure. We close with the Sixth Psalm that does not have an eleventh verse.  But its ten verses seem to fit our situation.

1 Lord, do not rebuke me in your anger
or discipline me in your wrath.
2 Have mercy on me, Lord, for I am faint;
heal me, Lord, for my bones are in agony.
3 My soul is in deep anguish.
How long, Lord, how long?

4 Turn, Lord, and deliver me;
save me because of your unfailing love.
5 Among the dead no one proclaims your name.
Who praises you from the grave?

6 I am worn out from my groaning.

All night long I flood my bed with weeping
and drench my couch with tears.
7 My eyes grow weak with sorrow;
they fail because of all my foes.

8 Away from me, all you who do evil,
for the Lord has heard my weeping.
9 The Lord has heard my cry for mercy;
the Lord accepts my prayer.
10 All my enemies will be overwhelmed with shame and anguish;
they will turn back and suddenly be put to shame.

Beyond Hope

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He’s not deranged.

He’s not unhinged.

Both words have been used frequently to describe him.

He is just plain sick.

Try to imagine that you are one of the children of Arnold Palmer.  Try to imagine being a resident of Springfield, Ohio.

Would you tolerate unmitigated sewage of this kind about your family or your town at your dinner table?

He thinks he’s being funny when he talks about genitalia, whether it’s describing it in admiring (or is it envious?) terms or whether it’s in claiming he can have his way with some people if he grabs theirs.

He thinks it’s a good thing to libel an entire town and the people who live and work there, to make citizens whose culture is not native to the community afraid?

—to tell a lie because it gets you publicity and the bigger the lie the more you can overwhelm those who won’t wade through the treatment plant with you.

How furious would you be—perhaps after you’ve gotten over the embarrassment of hearing your father described as Trump described Arnold Palmer?

Pam Palmer Wears, a daughter of the great golfer, called Trump’s commentary about her father “inappropriate,” one of the biggest understatements of our recent political history. And she said it was a waste of voter’s time. Palmer described himself as a political conservative but Wears told ABC news that her father would “cringe” at the thought of Trump. In fact, she recalls, he did..

She called Trump’s commentary “a waste of the voters’ time.”

“”The people coming to these rallies deserve substance about plans Trump has as a candidate, if he could elucidate on some of the threats he’s made to people. I mean, these are important issues that should be discussed for people when they’re getting ready to vote, and using my dad to cover the important things just seems unacceptable to me.”

She said her father “was very modest,” continuing, “We’ve lost our sense of outrage in this country over just about everything, and I’m not sure that’s okay.  There are other things about my dad that would be better to focus on.”

And she recalled her father, talking shortly before his death, about his strong dislike of Trump:

“My dad didn’t like people who act like they’re better than other people. He didn’t like it when people were nasty and rude. He didn’t like it when someone was disrespectful to someone else. My dad had no patience for people who demean other people in public. He had no patience for people who are dishonest and cheat. My dad was disciplined. He wanted to be a good role model. He was appalled by Trump’s lack of civility and what he began to see as Trump’s lack of character.”

I’m not sure I would be that restrained if someone were to stand in front of a large audience and make that kind of personal comments, regardless of their truth, about someone in my family.

When I take my ballot for the November election in a few days, I’m likely to vote against this sick bully and I will be hard-pressed to vote for anyone who has become aligned with him.

John Dean, who became famous fifty years ago with his damaging testimony against President Nixon in a Watergate hearing, told Nixon one day in the oval office, “I think that there’s no doubt about the seriousness of the problem we’ve got. We have a cancer within—close to the presidency, that’s growing. It’s growing daily. It’s compounding. It grows geometrically now, “

We know who would fit that description today.

—a man with no morals. No regard for anyone else.

Donald Trump is the RINO he accuses others of being.  It would not be disloyal to the party—in fact, it might be a great sign of loyalty—to vote for every other Republican but not for hm.

The nation’s history is dotted with times that people have chosen the better of two evils.

It should not be that hard in 2024—unless you believe that the face of our country should be someone who think that a person’s genitalia is a proper topic of conversation.

It’s not.  It’s sick.

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Sports: Mizzou Miracle Doesn’t Impress Pollsters; Chiefs Roll to 6-0; Logano is Out, Then In, and Then REALLY In. 

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(Before we get started, we invite our readers to check on our series about Amendment 2, the sports wagering proposal on the November ballot, in which we address why the amendment is a bad idea for our teachers, our veterans, and even the host cities of our casinos.  We are not telling you how to vote, but we hope you’ll get a more honest understanding of what you will be voting on when  you read those three (so far) entries.)

(MIZ)—It might have been a legendary game but it was just a ho-hum event for the people who compile college football rankings.

Brady Cook’s dramatic return to the field after missing most of the first three quarters with an injury and engineering a 21-17 win against Auburn capped with a clock-beating 95-yard drive for the winning touchdown undoubtedly will show up on “greatest games” lists in the future.

But both major polls took Missouri down, perhaps noting that the Tigers again barely beat an opponent it was expected to beat.

The Tigers lost a spot in the coaches’ poll, falling to 17th.  The Associated Press took them down two spots, to 21st.

Auburn led 17-3 at the half, seven of those coming on a muffed punt reception that was recovered by Auburn in the Missouri end zone.  The Tiger Defense was stout all day while the offense was mediocre after Cook left early in the first quarter. His return put life back into the offense and that last methodical 95-yard drive was electric for the crowd.

The loss was a historic one for Auburn, which had been 150-1 in games in which they led by 14 in the second half.

ESPN’s Gamecast tells a crushing story for the other Tigers.  ESPN at one time said Auburn had a 94.3% chance to win the game.  And with 1:44 left, they were still at 88%.  But it all turned to ashes when Jamal Roberts scored a touchdown with 46 seconds left and no time outs remaining for Auburn.  Auburn drops to 2-5 with their third one-score loss of the year.

Missouri is 6-1 and is bowl eligible.  The significance of the bowl they’ll play in will be determined by the way they finish the seasons, beginning next week against Alabama.  The Crimson Tide dropped eight slots in the ratings after losing to Tennessee 24-17. The Tide will go into Saturday’s game ranked 15th.

(CHIEFS)—The Kansas City Chiefs are the NFL’s only undefeated team after beating the San Francisco 49ers 28-18 in the Golden Gate City Sunday. That’s a season high in points for the Chiefs. Patrick Mahomes had one of his lowest-rated games of his career with his second-lowest passing yardage totals.  But his personal-best 33-yard scramble kept a drive going that generated points. The backfield otherwise ground out time-consuming yardage and the defense didn’t let 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy have much breathing room.

The defense kept San Francisco out of the end zone until the third quarter, stopping for 49ers by forcing four punts, intercepting a pass, and surrendering only two field goals before a touchdown.

The Chiefs added JuJu Smith-Schuster to its list of walking (or limping) wounded. He went down with a hamstring injury he had been nursing all week in practice.

With Mahomes struggling in the passing department, the offensive line created opportunities for running backs. The Chiefs gained 186 yards on 37 rushes that led to four touchdowns.

The Chiefs take on the Raiders next weekend.

(SEC BASKETBALL)—The Southeastern Conference has held its pre-season basketball media days last week. Both the men’s team and the women’s team from Missouri haven’t gotten much love from media pollsters, with both teams forecast to be in the bottom half of the conference.

Missouri was winless in conference play last year. The Tigers lost five rotational players for 111 combined games last year, leaving men’s coach Dennis Gates “your hands are tied behind your back.”

Men’s coach Dennis Gates hopes his top ten portal class will and his high school recruit class that is rated number three nationally will produce a blend of “unbelievable talent.”

“I’m excited about our guys, meaning the first-year guys that’s in our program. I see how they’ve been able to adapt to our institution, to our community, and our entire community has accepted those guys with open arms, and these guys are comfortable…The portal guys that we did sign, we made sure that they’ve come from some great respectable coaches, and that’s where I wanted to kind of identify earlier to make sure that that took place also,” he told the media.

The spotlight recruit is Annor Boateng, a two-time Arkansas player of the year, “a 4.0 student, oung man who played in the band, plays the saxophone. His talents off the court is tremendous….As a basketball player, he’s a tremendous young man, multitalented, straight line driver, strong, physical…I look for him to make an impact.”

But there are several returnees Gates thinks deserve attention—Caleb Grill, who missed most of last year with a wrist injury, Trent Pierce, Ant Robinson, Aiden Shaw, and Tamar Bates. “They don’t shy away from confrontation [who] receive information like a sponge,” Gates said.

Missouri was an NCAA tournament team in his first year, a loser of every SEC game last year.
“Life happens in seasons,” aid Gates. “In real life you can’t start back at zero. That’s the unique part about basketball or college sports. We’re 0-0, just like everyone else.

Also hoping for a big turnaround in women’s coach Robin Pingeton who will be coaching her 15th year at Mizzou. Some observers are thinking her career at Missouri is on the line in the season ahead. Her team won two more games in the SEC last year than the men’s team.  But the Lady Tigers haven’t been to an NCAA tournament since 2018.

But Pingeton thinks bad times can lay the groundwork for better times. She told the media, “We all want the end result, which is a championship; we all want a deep run in the NCAA Tournament. That scoreboard is really, really important. But I also don’t want to shy away from the fact that sometimes when you go through hard times, those are where you really grow the most.”

The team has more height than it has last year with Tionna Herron, who is 6-4, joining Angelique Ngalakulondi, a 6-2 forward who was sidelined after eight games with an injury.

Pingeton is looking for an offensive boost with the addition of Nyah Wilson, who averaged 15.5 points a game for New Mexico last year along with 4.5 rebounds, two assists and 1.3 seals a game.

(BASEBALL)—The end of the World Series will end the baseball news blackout on coaching and managerial changes and player deals.

The Post-Dispatch has reported one of the first items to come from the St. Louis Cardinals will be the return of center fielder John Jay, who has been a coach with the Florida Marlins this year after a 12-year career that got him a Cardinals World Series ring in 2011. (the Marlins were managed this year by former Redbird Skip Schumaker, who has left the team because of “philosophical differences.”

Assistant coach Willie McGee is moving on to become a “special advisor.”

Speeding along—

(NASCAR)—-A week earlier, Joey Logano thought he had missed the NASCAR Championship semi-final round of races.  Sunday, he became the first driver guaranteed to run for the NASCAR Cup.

Logano stretched his fuel while leading the last 72 laps of the first race in the semi-final playoff round, and got the win that makes him one of the four drivers who will compete in the last race of the year for the Cup.

He ran just fast enough to beat pole-sitter Christopher Bell to the finish line by two-thirds of a second.

Logano is in the running only because Alex Bowman’s car was found to violate car weight rules a week earlier at Charlotte, forcing Bowman out of the playoffs and elevating Logano into the championship picture.

Some of the championship contenders had a rugged day in the desert.  Tyler Reddick rolled his car when he got together with Chase Elliott and Ryan Blaney on lap 90.  Reddick drove his bent car to the pits but it was too badly damaged to continue.

(FORMULA 1)—Formula 1 returned to the United States to run t the Circuit of the Americas, near Austin, Texas.  Charles Leclerc in a Ferrari led teammate Carlos Sainz across the finish line to give Ferrari its first 1-2 finish in the United States in eighteen years.  Lando Norris fought off series points leader Max Verstappen to finish third.

Formula 1 has one more race in this country—on the street circuit in downtown Las Vegas on November 23.

(photo credits: Cook, Missouri Athletics; Gates, Power Mizzou; Pingeton, Fulton Sun; Jay, MLB; Logano, Bob Priddy)

“Winning for Education” Turns Casino Host Cities Into Bigger Losers

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So this is what they get for three decades of being the hosts of Missouri’s casinos—a financial knife in the ribs.

For three decades, ten percent of the casino gambling taxes have gone to the home dock cities and half of the admission fees, too, to pay for the police and fire protection, the infrastructure the cities provide so people can go to and from their casinos, use their bathrooms, and drink city water instead of some of the river water under the ‘excursion boat” where they gamble.

The cities have used some of that money for other improvements—parks, for example.

But not with Amendment 2, the sports wagering proposal on the November ballot.

They’re cut out of it. Completely.

None of the sports gambling taxes will go to the home dock cities.

There will still be an admission fee charged for those who go into the casinos to place their sports bets. But Winning for Missouri, the committee that is, shall we say, gloriously overstating the public benefits of sports wagering, has an economic study saying that, eventually, more than 98% of the bets will be placed online.  There will be no admission fee paid by the casinos for almost all of the sports bets.  And there is no fee in lieu of the admission fee.  They’re going to keep it all.

None of the sports gaming revenue will go to the cities, as it does for present casino table games and slot machines. Admission fees going to host cities will be minimal.

Once again, everybody loses except the casinos and the sports teams—including the host cities (the formal name is Home Dock Cities, harkening back to the days when the industry convinced voters there would be real boats traveling on our big rivers, before they became boats in moats—which is a good thing; we might tell that story in a later entry).

The host cities have been getting the short end of the stick for all of these three decades. For more than a decade, fewer and fewer people have been going to the casinos. At their peak, casinos counted about 54-million admissions.  In the last fiscal year, the admissions continued their decline toward 27 million.

Adding insult to injury is the industry’s refusal to let the legislature increase the admission fees so those home communities admission payments could keep up with inflation. The equivalent of two-dollar admission fee established in 1993 was $4.31 when we checked the Bureau of Labor Statistics calculator Saturday night.

Yes, we mean “let the legislature increase the admission fees.”  Your faithful correspondent has suggested increases to legislators for six years. One of the more frequent responses is, “The casino industry would never buy that.”

The suspicion in the hallways for some time that the industry is, in one way or another, buying something.  It has several political action committees with bottomless checking accounts.  And legislators have to run for re-election for an unfortunately limited number of times.

The influence of the casinos is so ingrained in the legislative process that their representatives don’t even try to justify their statutory or constitutional demands. They just make brief statements about how great sports wagering will be and then sit down.

Not making any accusations, mind you.  We’re just sayin,’ as the colloquial phrase goes.

Anyway—the $4.31 equivalency means the state is getting two 1993 dollars while the casinos keep $2.31 of 2024 money.

The casinos are making more off the admission fee than the state and the home dock cities are making. But the situation is even worse than what we’ve just shown.

Inflation has reduced the purchasing power of those two dollars to about 95 cents.  So, while the home dock cities and the gaming commission are starving for funding with two dollars that are worth 95 cents in contemporary money, the casinos are making $2.31, and the gap between what the casinos keep and what the state and the home dock cities receive widens each year.

Our extensive research and hours with the calculator indicate the home dock cities and the State of Missouri, since the first casinos opened in 1994, have lost almost $1.9 billion ($1,880,392,926) in outright cash payments and in purchasing power combined because the casinos have pressured the legislature into making no change.

Extensive research has calculated how much each of our thirteen cities has lost in the last eight years or so. The individual tables are available but we don’t want to spend the space here to print them. Perhaps that can be done at another time.

Has anyone told our thirteen cities they’re being taken for a ride by their “excursion gambling boats?” The cities are part of the Home Dock Cities Association that one might think would be working to keep the losses from continuing and increasing.  But we have seen representatives for the association spouting the casino line every time they’ve testified before legislative committees.  It’s okay with the association, apparently, that the people they represent keep losing funding and will see no improvement from sports wagering.

The association says it favors the casino position because casinos are economic drivers for the region.  Really?   Can they show any studies that prove it? They haven’t, and the industry’s own statistics reported to the Missouri Gaming Commission show a different story.

We started compiling comprehensive statistics three years ago with a five-year lookback and we have updated figures from the Gaming Commission’s annual and monthly reports. In the now-eight years of statistics, these are the combined losses in cash admissions payments and lost value of those payments for each of our casinos:

  1. Ameristar St. Charles  $46,399,739
  2. River City, Lemay $43,956,210
  3. Hollywood, Maryland Heights $42,069,051
  4. Horseshoe (form Lumiere Place), St. Louis $31,287,455
  5. Ameristar Kansas City $36,290,466
  6. Harrah’s NKC $29,250,328
  7. Argosy Riverside $27,274,214
  8. Bally’s KC $21,852,498
  9. IOC Boonville $13,568,851
  10. Century Cape Girardeau $12,712,770
  11. Century Caruthersville $7,200,880
  12. Jo Frontier $8,357,439
  13. Mark Twain, LaGrange $5,718,114

Amendment 2 will only increase those numbers.

Sports wagering backers say sports wagering will generate hundreds of millions of dollars that will make a big difference for the pay of our classroom teacher.

That isn’t true.  As mentioned earlier, if voters approved Amendment 2, only a few million will be added to the $10-Billion dollar annual budgets of the elementary and secondary schools and the additional multi-million dollar budgets of our colleges and universities.

The industry has testified that increasing the admission fee to benefit our veterans would be a hardship on the industry, especially the smaller casinos. Bunk. It wasn’t but a few years ago when they paid $100 million a year, or more, for a decade and were not whining about the payments being an economic threat.

The industry has offered no statistical evidence to support its contentions.  It has shown no independent studies proving any of the claims made in their advertising leading up to the vote in a few days on Amendment 2.

The industry can’t or won’t supply that information to support its promises and claims.  But everything written in his series of posts is backed up by lengthy research.

Not only have the casinos fought efforts to maintain the value of the admission fee for their host cities, they have laid off about 5,500 of their employees since the number peaked at 11,658 in 2008.  In the most recent fiscal year, the total was down to 6,079.

Will sports wagering bring back those jobs? Not with 98% of wagers made remotely.  We can see a few more people serving drinks in the modest, at best, sportsbooks that will be created in our casinos to handle the few walk-ins. There might be a few runners taking bets to the I-T people—who might represent the biggest employee boost. But the jobs needle won’t move very much.

Let’s look at how much of an economic driver the casinos have caused in our five non-metropolitan areas, where one might suspect significant economic impact would produce community growth. Here are the population numbers for those communities, the census of 1990 first and the 2020 census next:

LaGrange  1,990-825

Caruthersville  7,389-5,562

Cape Girardeau  34,435-39,540

Boonville  7,095-7,969

St. Joseph  71,852-72,473

Five thousand jobs are gone. Limited population growth in some places or losses in others do not indicate casinos are causing their host cities to flourish. Admission Fees are dropping by the thousands, cutting funding for their host cities in half.

We mentioned in an earlier the industry’s claim that casinos “give back generously. Here’s the truth:

Casino “donations” or “contributions” to local causes are pennies on the dollar. Charitable giving during the last six fiscal years has averaged 0.000391% of their adjusted gross revenues. Their adjusted gross receipts have totaled almost $10.5 Billion in those years and their total charitable giving has been just $4.1 million. That’s less than pocket change.  And most of those who read these entries give far more than four-ten thousandth of our personal revenues to charities each year.

Again, we have charted the “giving generously” figures for each casino for the last six fiscal years. But we don’t have room for the charts in this post.  They are available, though.

A few years ago, casinos started reporting how much their customers left behind for charitable donations.  We have spotted six times when the customers provided more than the casinos did.

And that’s just fine with the industry, which fights every effort to restore funding to the towns that welcomed the casinos as great economic boosts for the area. Maybe for a while they were— thirty years ago.  But now?

The casinos also do not mention fees in Amendment 2, and for millions of reasons. The host cities have been getting the short end of the stick every year and it’s been getting worse for a long time. It is going to get even worse for host cities if sports wagering is approved next month.

I often wonder if the thirteen host cities ever get reports from their association or consider Missouri Gaming Commission annual reports that track how their fee income has fallen off a cliff and sports wagering will not save it.

Do not look for sports wagering to lead to reopened closed restaurants in our casinos. Not if only two percent of the sports bettors walk through the turnstiles. At one time, local restaurants feared the casinos would take away their business.  Today there’s far less competition from the casinos for the restaurant business in many of our towns.

One final thing before we go today:

The sports wagering proposal the casinos want to adopt in this election could be the prototype for expanded remote wagering in all other forms of gambling.  As walk-in traffic continues to dwindle, the casinos will be looking for more remote attachments to existing games.  Some casinos already have stuck their toes in those waters in recent years with hybrid table games—blackjack and other games in which people who can’t find room at the gaming table go to a computer nearby to place their bets.  The tests have not generated many dollars, relatively, but tests have been run.  Don’t be surprised if the casinos come back to our lawmakers and ask for remote slot machines and table games—again paying much less tax than those games pay now. It’s a characteristic of business that stacks the cards only for itself.

(We stayed at a casino hotel a few weeks ago and went to the breakfast bar where we placed an order and were given a tag for our table.  A few minutes later, a robot playing a catchy tune, came around the corner, and came down the aisle to my table, my order on its tray.  I took off the plate and the robot went back to the kitchen, trailing its little melody behind it. One nice thing, I suppose, is that I wasn’t given a choice of 15, 18, or 25 percent for a tip. I found myself wondering how soon there would be robots, not people, dealing the cards or spinning the wheel.)

There go more jobs.

Add the casino host cities  to the list of those whose situations will get worse if Amendment 2 is approved with its sweetheart tax rate, its deductions and carryovers, and its reliance on customers who carry casinos in their pockets.

This kind of thing should be handled by our elected representatives and senators, not written by two industries who place profit over any services to the people of the state.  But we have this proposal because our elected senators and representatives didn’t do their job.  Voters are well-advised to give them another chance by defeating a proposal that enriches the casinos and the pro sports teams and impoverishes our educators, our veterans, and the casinos’ own host cities.

Vote for Amendment 2 if you want.  But don’t do it if you think it will benefit anybody but the casinos and the sports teams, no matter what they tell you on the television or with misinformation you will find in your mailbox.

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“Winning For Education Makes Veterans Bigger Losers

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It’s about the time of year for the casino industry to put out its annual news release that the industry will “honor” veterans on Veterans Day, November 11, in “special ways.”  Veterans can get free or discounted meals (some specify the meals are from a limited menu) that day. They also can get a card for some free play, or spin a wheel for a chance at a free play card, or get complimentary tickets to a casino entertainment venue—stuff like that.

Of course, the casinos hope the veterans will drop a few dollars at the tables or the slot machines while they are there.

The truth is the casinos care about our veterans only in terms of how much they can take from their pockets and with sports wagering, their regard for veterans sinks to a new low.

“We give back generously,” says the industry’s Missouri web page.  Rubbish.

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 today about the sports betting proposal on the November ballot, Amendment 2, and circulate it. It makes our veterans even bigger losers than they have been. The casino industry behind this proposition could have written it to solve a major financial problem affecting our veterans. It did not do it.

Should veterans vote for it?  It’s up to them. But they should understand that the proposal does more TO veterans than it will do for veterans.

Basic fact: Missouri has seven veterans nursing homes that provide 1238 long-term skilled nursing beds. They are in Cameron, Mexico, St. James, Warrensburg, St. Louis, Cape Girardeau, and St. James.

Their major source of funding is from the casino $2 admission fee.  Funds raised from that fee go to the Missouri Gaming Commission, which uses some of that money to pay for regulation of the casino industry.  Nine million dollars a year are earmarked for the Access Missouri College Scholarship program and the National Guard Trust Fund that provides money for military rites at veterans’ funerals. A tiny amount goes to deal with problem gambling, if the Mental Health Department asks for it from the commissoion. After those deductions are taken, the remainder goes to the Veterans Commission Capital Improvements Trust Fund—which provides money for the seen nursing homes.

Admissions fees at our casinos that go to the veterans homes have been declining from $30.5 million in fiscal year 2012-2013 to just $11.2 million ten years later, a decline of 63%.

A report given to the Veterans Commission in July showed one-third of the nursing home beds were empty. It also showed the average daily cost of providing care had risen from $265 in 2018 to $469 in 2024, a 77% increase—and the purchasing power of each dollar was about 48 cents. .

Veterans Commission representative Aimee Packard told me last week, “Thankfully, the Governor and General Assembly have provided additional state funding to help ensure we are able to continue to care for Missouri’s Veteran heroes.”

Understand something else. These figures represent raw dollars.  Because the 1993 law that established the two-dollar admission fee had no escalator clause in it, the admission fee has never been increased to account for inflation.  The purchasing power of a 1993 dollar was only 47.5 cents in the most recent fiscal year, meaning the veterans homes are getting far less cash than they did a decade ago while the purchasing power of the buys a lot less at a time when the costs of care are substantially higher.

In other words, the Bureau of Labor Statistics calculated, as of Monday, the contemporary equivalent of two 1993 dollars is $4.42.  The casinos are paying the state two 1993 dollars with purchasing power of only 92 cents while they keep $2.42 in contemporary money. They are making more money on the admission fees than the state is making.

How’s that for supporting our veterans—which the industry has many times patted itself on the back for doing?

What does this mean for sports wagering and veterans?

Simply this:  Amendment 2 does nothing to stop this admission fee shortfall. Why?

Industry forecasts dating to 2019 were that 90% of all sports wagers would be done remotely within ten  years after the wagering is legalized, meaning there will be no admissions for 90% of all sports wagers.

Will the 10% of bettors who walk through the turnstiles to bet on sports be enough to offset the ongoing 2-3% in overall annual admissions?  If it does, the amount of money generated for veterans will be minimal.

And the casinos will pocket all of the revenue from remote sports betting without “contributing” (as they like to phrase it) a dime to the veterans nursing home fund.

Here’s the truth.  The casinos like to brag that they have “contributed” or “donated” (by now) $400 million to veterans nursing homes.

You know what donations and contributions are, don’t you?  That’s the money  you voluntarily drop into the red kettle at Christmas, the pledge you make to Alzheimer’s Walks and Cancer runs, the envelope you drop in the tray at worship services, the check you write to the United Way.

In 2012, when Governor Nixon asked the legislature to increase the admission fees by one dollar, the casino industry sent letters to Missouri newspapers saying (in excerpts): “As good corporate citizens, casinos do more than their fair share for military veterans…. No single industry in Missouri provides that kind of financial support to veterans programs…. We honor and support our military veterans and will continue to do so, and we ask legislators to find an equitable source of funding for veterans homes.”

No single industry provides that kind of support to veterans?  If the veterans homes had to rely on “that kind of support,” there would be a lot of boarded-up windows and “no trespassing” signs in a neglected yard.

“As good corporate citizens, casinos do more than their fair share for military veterans?”  Doing their “fair share” for veterans. Their fair share has withered in the last decade. The casinos have an interesting definition of “fair share,” don’t they.

With friends such as this, who needs enemies?

Let us be abundantly clear: The casino industry has provided money to the gaming commission and its worthy causes that include veterans only because state law FORCES the industry to make those payments. If this industry was such a great supporter of veterans and their nursing homes, wouldn’t you think it would have voluntarily maintained funding for those it might give a free or reduced-cost meal to on Veterans Day?

The casinos and their sports teams enablers could have written their proposed amendment to establish some kind of remote wagering fee that would stop the financial bleeding for the gaming commission and the veterans nursing homes.

But, no. They didn’t. The casino industry wants to pocket every dime it can, veterans be damned.

So much for giving back generously.

The Veterans Commission Nursing Home program is able to operate only because the legislature for several years has taken money away from other programs to keep the nursing homes open, even at a reduced level.

Before you vote to legalize sports wagering in Missouri, think what you are doing TO  our veterans, not for them.

Ask yourself: to whom do we owe a greater allegiance: casinos and millionaires playing sports—or our veterans.  And our schools.

If a ten percent tax on sports wagering proposed in the sweetheart deal that is called Amendment 2 will generate $100 million dollars for schools in the next five years, that means the casinos are going to have revenues of more than One BILLION dollars.

A few table scraps will fall to the floor for veterans.

Who needs money more—casinos or veterans and schools? Amendment 2 might produce a drop in education’s bucket.  But the veterans bucket will be increasingly dry.

Maybe it would be better for the people you elect to have the courage to represent their constituents on gambling issues.  But it’s going to take more political courage than I have seen for several years to do it.

Think about it. Feel free to circulate these postings to your teachers, teacher groups, and veterans and their groups.

Vote how you want. But understand who will be paying for you to have a chance to lose money betting on a sporting event. Our schools and our veterans, that’s who.

There’s a third group that will get the shaft if Amendment 2 passes: the casinos’ own host cities.  The casinos don’t give a damn about them, either.   That’s next.

One last thing today: We have a comment box at the bottom of each of these entries.  Several months ago, a person with the industry was heard in a crowded restaurant where were having dinner with friends say to them—in a voice loud enough to be heard by many of the other diners, “Don’t listen to him; he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

We invite the casino industry to use that box below to prove it.

Sports: Tigers Get Expected Win; Chiefs Off, Stunning NASCAR Announcement 

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(MIZ)—-Mizzou whomped Massachusetts last weekend. It would be news if they hadn’t, so let’s look ahead to a real-world game against Auburn next Saturday.

Auburn is 2-4 with a 31-13 loss to Georgia before their bye week. They come into the game against Missouri with three single-score losses to Cal, Arkansas and Oklahoma.

It’s Tigers against Tigers on Saturday,  Aubie against Truman in the mascot matchup. Missouri has won seven straight games at Faurot Field.

Missouri started rehabilitating itself against Massachusetts and gaining back two of the 12 slots it lost because of the Texas A&M debacle and heads into the game this weekend 19th and 16th in the polls.

Auburn head coach Hugh Freeze says he “couldn’t be more pleased” with the hard work of his defensive staff. But the Auburn Tigers have given up increasing numbers of points in four straight games with scores of 21-14, 24-14, 27-24, and 31-13.

Freeze says he and Missouri Coach Eli Drinkwitz are “made of a similar mindset of what coaching should be about.” Both were were assistance under Gus Malzahn during Malzahn’s eight-season stretch as head coach at Auburn. He says Missouri has “veteran guys that have proven to be some of the best in this lea whether they’re going against the top-tiered corners and safeties or not…It’s going to be a great test for us.”  Freeze says Auburn has to keep Missouri from making “explosive plays..” noting the matchup of Missouri’s receivers “is not one that you get overjoyed about” when you have a young secondary.

It’s Homecoming in Columbia, where the Tigers are undefeated. But they are 1-3 against Auburn, including a loss in the 2013 SEC championship game. The last time the two teams met, Auburn and Freeze beat Drinkwitz and Missouri 17-14 in overtime. Missouri has not beaten Auburn since 1973.

Missouri has been quiet about the apparent shoulder injury that forced Luther Burden III out of the game Saturday. Drinkwitz has said he will wait until the SEC injury report tomorrow to have more information.

(TIGER BASETBALL)—The media has pretty low expectations for Missouri basketball this season.  The conference basketball writers poll slots the Tigers men at 13th in the SEC this year. Missouri has been shut out in the pre-season list of the top three all-conference player list.

Statistician Kem Pomeroy’s KenPom rankings also puts Missouri 13th in the SEC and 53rd in the nation despite the Tigers having a top-13 transfer class and a top-five recruiting class.

Missouri will start trying to prove the raters wrong on November 4th when they open at Memphis.

The sports writers don’t expect much more from the Missouri women. They are picked to finish 15th in the SEC, with only Arkansas getting less respect in the pre-season outlook.  Tiger women were 2-14 in the conference last year which is two more wins than the men’s team got. The lady Tigers have no players on the first or second pre-season all-conference teams.

Tiger women tip off the season against Vermont, in Burlington.  They start the season with two true freshmen and four new transfers. (ZOU)

(CHIEFS)—Rashee Rice has had surgery on his injured knee. The good news is that it’s not a torn ACL.  The bad news, according to coach Andy Reid, is that it’s the posterolateral corner that was hurt.  “It’s probably the same result you’d get time-wise ,” says Reid. “It takes a while for that to come back.

Latest word on wide receiver Hollywood Brown: Don’t look for him this year. He’ll remain on the Il with his shoulder injury until the end of 2024.

And Isiah Pacheco: He has no timeline as he recovers from a broken fibula.

(BASEBALL)—The Royals finished off a gratifying season with a loss in the second round of the American League playoffs. The Cardinals packed it in after the regular 162 games.

Now will come weeks of speculation about trades, losses, desertions, free agent movements, and what the team should do and what trades it should make and so on and so forth.

When the teams DO something, it will appear in this column.

(SPORTS WAGERING)—Missourians will vote next month on whether to make betting on sports legal in this state.  Regular readers of bobpriddy.net know that your observer of the sports scene doesn’t mind people voting on the issue but they realize he considers the casino proposal disingenuous at best and filled with lies at the worst.

Do what you want, but don’t vote for sports wagering with the idea that you’ll be doing anything noble for education—or for anybody else but the casinos and the teams.  And watch for whether any of the teams expecting taxpayers to build them billion-dollar stadia or making millions of dollars in improvements on existing playing fields indicate they’ll spend any of the betting profits on those projects, thus lessening the investments they expect Missourians far from those playing fields to pay for.

So much for the stick and ball stuff.  Motorsports is in some turmoil as this article goes to press this week.

(NASCAR)—Is he in or is he out?  The answer for Alex Bowman is “out.” How can a car pass a technical inspection before a race and then lose so much weight during the race that it is ruled out of the playoffs after apparently making it to the semi-final round of eight?

It’s because Bowman’s car DID lose weight during the race.  Bowman was running 18th at the end of the race and would have been among the eight remaining drivers for the next three races before a final four drivers are decided.  But the disqualification of his car cost him 28 standing points and dropped him from sixth to ninth in the standings. Some of the points had been given him as the winner of the second stage of the race.  His demotion to last place, officially, means the stage winner was A. J. Almendinger, who is 46th in overall points.

A dash cam video from a competitor’s car saw Bowman’s car hitting a curb on the infield section of the Charlotte Roval, and a piece of the car’s underbelly flew off.  The piece appeared to be a rub block, a piece of hard rubber on the underside of the car that keeps the underbelly from hitting the pavement when the car becomes briefly airborne.

After reviewing events of the race, Hendrick Motorsports announced yesterday that it would not appeal the ruling.

Bowman’s disqualification puts two-time Cup champion Joey Logano back in the playoffs by four points.  Dropping out besides Bowman are Austin Cindric, Ty Gibbs, and Chase Briscoe.

Kyle Larson’s sixth victory of the year puts him back in the points lead by twenty points over Christopher Bell. They are trailed by Tyler Reddick, whose car was damaged in an early race crash that left him 26th in the late stages and below the cut line. Reddick ran a relentless final stage of the race and finished high enough to make the round of eight by three points over Logano. The Bowman disqualification  and Reddick’s run left Reddick third in the points standings heading to Vegas. He is trailed by William Byron, defending champion Ryan Blaney, Denny Hamlin, Chase Elliott, and Logano.  Elliott won the championship in 2020. Logano was the series champion in 2018 and 2022. Larson got the Cup in 2021. Hamlin has made the final four four times without winning a championship and is spoken of as a latter-day Mark Martin who finished second in the standings five times but never won the big trophy.

The next round of races that will see the field cut from eight to four begins next Sunday at Las Vegas.

(INDYCAR)—The season is over but preparations for 2025 put eleven drivers back at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway for more testing of the hybrid powerplant the teams used for the second half of the season. Each team in IndyCar was represented by one of its drivers.

Series champion Alex Palou had the hot lap at 224.342 mph, slightly faster than defending Indianapolis 500 winner Josef Newgarden’s 223.973.

IndyCar returns March 2nd at St. Petersburg, Florida, a street race.

 

 

“Winning for Education” Makes Losers of Teachers, Veterans

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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

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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.