Author Archives: bpriddy

A Reading List

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This is the last week of the legislative session.  Time is even more precious now and the risk that some worthwhile things will be talked to death is greatest.

This session already will be remembered as the year the Missouri Senate became a reading club.  A lousy one.

Not only were the choices of reading material poor, the reading of the material was fingernails-on-the-blackboard irritating.

Not only was their choice of material and their delivery of it lifeless, spiritless, colorless, arid, tedious (we could go on—we found a listing of 50 synonyms for “boring”), it set a low bar for being educational.

If unrecoverable hours of members’ lives will be taken from them, they at least should have the opportunity to turn the torturous time into a learning experience.

To solve this problem, we suggest that the Senate set aside funds to hire temporary personnel who have professional reading skills and employ them as part-time reading clerks—overnight reading hours would demand heftier salaries but it would be a small price to pay for making the Senate a more enlightened chamber.  Accompanying this recommendation is a suggested rule change that any group fomenting a filibuster must commit to staying in the chamber for the duration of the readings, thus guaranteeing that SOMEBODY will learn something.

Herewith, then, we offer a reading list for filibusters in hopes that consumption of those hours will provide participants and listeners alike some value.  We regret that we cannot guarantee that the readers can do a better job than they did this year.

Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality by Danielle Allen, a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. While most of us have read the Declaration or have heard it read, this book is a highly-informative explanation of the care that went into each paragraph and sometimes each word of our nation’s foundational document and how the elements of the Declaration fit together and constitute the legal framework that led to the writing of the United States Constitution.

America’s Unwritten Constitution: The Precedents and Principles We Live By, by Akil Reed Amar, who teaches Constitutional Law at Yale College and Yale Law School. Amar is considered “one of America’s pre-eminent legal scholars” who explains why the Constitution does not set forth all of the rights, principles, and procedures that govern our nation. He maintains that the Constitution cannot be understood in textual isolation from a changing world and the laws that change with it.

The End of White Christian America by Robert P. Jones, a former psychology professor at Missouri State University who now leads the Public Religion Research Institute, that examines what is happening because our nation is no longer an evangelical majority white Christian nation and the political and cultural effects of that change. The book explores that change, its implications for the future, and why those who fear the future should instead understand how the positive values of white Christian America will survive.

New World, Inc., by John Butman and Simon Targett. The authors explain that it was commerce, not religious freedom, that was the motivating factor for the earliest explorations and settlements of our nation.

The Wordy Shipmates, by Sarah Vowell. Ms. Vowell is greatly entertaining in explaining who the Puritans on which so much of our standard history is based really were as human beings—and they were pips and not necessarily pure..

Marooned: Jamestown, Shipwreck, and a New History of America’s Origin, by Joseph Kelly, takes us to the dangerous, desperate times overlooked in our usual histories. We do not often consider that those who came to this side of the Atlantic placed themselves in a hostile world for which most were unsuited to settle with no guarantees that new supplies to sustain them would arrive later  It also explores the papal-approved concept that if a land was not populated by Christians, it was proper—a duty, in fact—for Christians to take that land regardless of the cost to those who inhabited it.

El Norte: The Epic and Forgotten Story of Hispanic North America, by Carrie Gibson.  Long before the Pilgrims and the Puritans arrived on this side of the pond, the Spanish were here as conquerors, settlers, enslavers, missionaries, and adventurers.  But most of our history is based on, as poet Walt Whitman put it, the idea that this nation was founded as a second England.

There are several others that could broaden understanding of who laid the foundation for our country and the opportunities and the missed opportunities to recognize them that shape our attitudes today, and not always in a positive way.

If the Senate, or a small part of it, wants to kill time and possibly beneficial legislation (for somebody) in the process, it should at least contribute to improving the general knowledge of our nation, at least for the Senator who should fill his mind while killing everybody else’s time, and for those who might stick around if there’s something worthwhile to listen to.  And with these books, there is.

We offer these suggestions with no hope that they will amount to anything.

But that doesn’t keep individual members of the legislature—and the public—from becoming better citizens by broadening their understanding of our nation’s roots.

 

 

The Light

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—is starting to grow larger at the end of the tunnel.

The last week and a half of the legislative session is here.  It’s time for legislators wanting another two or four years in Jefferson City to get the heck out of town and start telling the folks why they deserve another term, or a term of some other kind that lets them remain at the public trough.

The biggest budget in state history, bloated with federal pandemic relief funds, must be resolved by Friday—and it probably will be.  But the session is likely to be recalled for its divisions in the Senate and the lost first half of the session to filibusters that went beyond making a point, whatever it was.

It won’t be much to go home and brag about in this campaign year.  And for those who will be spending their last days as decision-makers for the state, this year won’t be much of a legacy to be mentioned in the last newspaper article written about them.

It could be worse.

We remember when sessions went until June 15 in non-election years with a midnight adjournment.  Given what we’ve seen this year, we are intensely grateful that custom was ended some time ago when reason was more present in the General Assembly.

New Winners

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Two drivers pick up their first wins of the year—-although one has to wait an extra day.

INDYCAR)—INDYCAR has finished the part of the season preceding the traditional month of May at the track that gives the series its name.

Pato O’Ward has ended Team Penske domination of the early part of the INDYCAR season with a focused victory at Barber Motorsports Park, his first win since one of the June races at Belle Isle in Detroit last year.  The win moves O’Ward from ninth to fifth in the points. Palou’s runnerup finish moved him top the top of the points list. McLaughlin remains second with previous points leader Josef Newgarden dropping to third with a 14th place finish.

It’s O’Ward’s third career win in INDYCAR and it tightens the standings after the first four races of the year.

The race boiled down to tire strategy and a fight between O’Ward, Alex Palou, and Rinus VeeKay.

VeeKay had a two-second lead on O’Ward just before the two, plus Scott McLaughlin, pitted on the 62nd of 90 laps. VeeKay led coming out of the pits but O’Ward got past him on the course’s fifth turn to take the lead for good.  Palou’s quick pit stop two laps later put him between O’Ward and VeeKay but O’Ward held the lead at almost one second for the remainder of the race.

The next action for INDYCAR will be at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. The drivers will run on the infield road course on May 14th before re-tuning their cars for the famous squared oval and the 106th Indianapolis 600 on May 29th.

(NASCAR)—Everybody was chasing Chase at the end of the two-day NASCAR Cup race at Dover—Chase Elliott, becoming the last of the four Hendick Motorsports drivers to snag a win this year.

Elliott took the lead from Ross Chastain with 52 laps left on the one-mile concrete oval and led Ricky Stenhouse Jr., across the finish line under the thirteenth caution flag of the race.  Chastain finished third but not without ruffling the feathers of Martin Truex Jr., who tried to pass him on the outside on the final lap but lost control of his car when Chastain moved up the track.  Truex spun and hit the inside wall.  He kept his car running and salvaged 12th.

Elliott, the 2020 season champion had gone 26 races since his last win last July at Road America.

The race was moved to Monday after rain interrupted Sunday’s race after 78 laps. Denny Hamlin’s disappointing season got worse when his car lost a wheel. Under NASCAR rules, the teams’ crew chief, tire changer and Jackman will be suspended for four races.

Elliott is the ninth winner in the first eleven races of the year.  The 16-car playoff field won’t be set until 15 more races are run.

NASCAR heads to Darlington next weekend.

(FORMULA 1)—Formula 1 is back on track in Miami next Sunday.

(Photo credits: Bob Priddy)

 

Premonition

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Your faithful chronicler was invited to speak to a group of freshman, sophomore, and junior State Representatives last week. It turned out they all were Republicans, including some Republican candidates for the House.

If Democrats want to hear the nonpartisan speech, I’d be glad to do it for them.

In fact, the words of a Democrat had a prominent role in the early part of the speech.  I had recited some facts about being raised in a Republican family. But I came of age in the Camelot era, a pedigree that I hope is somewhat behind my efforts as a reporter to harass both parties equally.

As I was researching some of the material for the speech, I came across the speech President Kennedy would have delivered at the Texas Trade Mart. As history records, the world ended for him ten minutes or so before he was to arrive there. The conclusion of the speech reaches across the generations since that day in Dallas.  Here’s the part of that speech that made it into part of my remarks last week:

“In this time of division and hostility, of narrowness and demagoguery often fueled by fear of the different instead of the opportunities presented by the things we have in common, it might be good to reflect on some of President Kennedy’s words again.  The other day I came across some words he would have spoken at the Dallas Trade Mart on November 22, 1963, a day I remember vividly as a young reporter.

Ignorance and misinformation can handicap the progress of a city or a company, but they can, if allowed to prevail in foreign policy, handicap this country’s security. In a world of complex and continuing problems, in a world full of frustrations and irritations, America’s leadership must be guided by the lights of learning and reason or else those who confuse rhetoric with reality and the plausible with the possible will gain the popular ascendancy with their seemingly swift and simple solutions to every world problem.

There will always be dissident voices heard in the land, expressing opposition without alternatives, finding fault but never favor, perceiving gloom on every side and seeking influence without responsibility. Those voices are inevitable.

But today other voices are heard in the land – voices preaching doctrines wholly unrelated to reality,…doctrines which apparently assume that words will suffice without weapons, that vituperation is as good as victory and that peace is a sign of weakness…

We cannot expect that everyone, to use the phrase of a decade ago, will “talk sense to the American people.” But we can hope that fewer people will listen to nonsense…

We in this country, in this generation, are – by destiny rather than choice – the watchmen on the walls of world freedom. We ask, therefore, that we may be worthy of our power and responsibility, that we may exercise our strength with wisdom and restraint, and that we may achieve in our time and for all time the ancient vision of “peace on earth, good will toward men.” That must always be our goal, and the righteousness of our cause must always underlie our strength. For as was written long ago: “except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.”

It has been too long since we heard that kind of uplifting challenge. And it’s time for leaders with courage to speak that way again.”

The crowd provided a standing ovation at the end of the talk, which was nice. I hope that means they didn’t think they were listening to nonsense.  And that they won’t go out and deliver it.

Motivational posters

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Your correspondent dislikes walking into a room—usually somebody’s office—decorated with motivational posters.  You know them.  Lovely pictures with some syrupy words about success, or greatness, or achievement, or—motivation.

The motivational poster industry probably has been around forever; I think I have read of some motivational sayings painted on the walls at Pompeii.  But they’ve become noticeably popular in the last two decades or so.  We will leave it to various “ologists” to study what has changed about us to warrant such treacle.

There always was this feeling that anybody who really needed one of these saccharine decorations must have been short of self-esteem—or working for bosses who think a treacly poster can be a transformative influence on the employee.

I know several apparently well-adjusted folks who have these things on their offices.  As far as I know they do not spend any time every day meditating on them and pondering the significance of the message. They seem to be perfectly normal people who do their work competently every day.  I’ve known some of them long enough to know that the poster in their office has not changed the high-quality work they have always done anyway.

All of this is why my newsroom work station, for several years, sported a calendar from Despair.com (https://despair.com/collections/demotivators) that countered the hard-hitting soupy sayings on walls elsewhere in the building.  Every couple of months there was a new mini-poster taped under my name thingie.

Now, understand that news people have a tendency to be kind of anti-establishment, independent, unruly, and untidy souls who have an inborn pride in being to some degree as manageable as a wheelbarrow full of frogs.  Or cats.  Or Beagle pups. We are only slightly more manageable than a wheelbarrow full of canaries.

But my work area used to be decorated with beautiful pictures such as one showing several hands hoisting a trophy with the big word, “Winning” beneath and the ensuing paragraph: “Because nothing says, ‘You’re a loser’ more than owning a motivational poster about being a winner.”

There are several others—enough that I did not have time to acquire them all.

One that some legislator with a sense of humor might want to hang in the outer office where visitors can see it. If features a lovely early evening sunset-illuminated Nation’s Capitol and its reflection in a mall pool.  It says “Government,” and beneath it are the words, “If you think the problems we create are bad, just wait until you see our solutions.”

Apparently there is an alternate contemplation: “They may seem inefficient and feckless at times, but your Representatives in Washington just want what’s best for you assuming you’re a major corporation. Otherwise, you’re pretty mush screwed.”

Another poster shows a stack of newspapers with the big word “Media,” followed by, “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies right to our faces.”

And there’s one labled “Conspiracy” that says, “Never attribute to stupidity that which can easily be explained by a pathological blood lust for control.”

Or one showing hands raised in high fives and labeled, “Teams,” with the note, “Together we can do the work of one.”

And of course the poster reading “Motivation,” which advises, “If a pretty poster and a cute saying are all it takes to motivate you, you probably have a very easy job.  The kind robots will be doing soon.”

I’m waiting for the poster that says “Treacle.”  The accompanying line should be a pip.

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Sports: Racing—Another Last Lap Gift; Fast and Green; F1 is Bullish

(NASCAR)—For the second race in a row, a collision between two leaders within yards of victory hands a race to a driver running third. And for the second straight week, the winning driver led only one lap in the race.

The beneficiary of the misfortune for the first two cars was Ross Chastain, the 16th leader in a race that saw 41 lead changes and four racing cautions involving fourteen of the thirty-nine starting cars, leaving only twenty-one competitors on the leader’s lap at the end.

Chastain was behind Erik Jones and Kyle Larson who were set for a drag race from the last corner to the finish line when Jones moved to block Larson, leading to a collision that knocked both cars out of the way for Chastain to drive to the checkered flag. Larson finished fourth and Jones was able to get home sixth.

The win is Chastain’s second of his career, the second of his career, and the second for Trackhouse Racing, which bought out Ganassi racing at the end of last year. The eighth-generation watermelon farmer from Florida celebrated, as he does with all of his wins, by climbing on top of his car and throwing a watermelon to splatter on the track.

Jones was trying to give team owner Richard Petty his first win since 2014. He and Larson had swapped the lead six times in the last eighteen laps.

NASCAR returns to short-track racing next weekend when it takes its show to Dover.

(INDYCAR)—Two days of testing for all entrants for the Indianapolis 500 have shown many drivers prepared to go faster—and they will when the track opens for all-out testing next month.

This year’s points leader, Josef Newgarden, and two-time 500 winner Takuma Sato were the only drivers to top 229 mph and only five drivers (Newgarden, Sato, Tony Kanaan, Scott Dixon, and Scott McLaughlin logging single laps faster than last year’s slowest qualifying speed for the race, 228.353 mph.

To put some perspective to these “slow” speeds:  Newgarden’s fastest lap on the 2 ½ mile four-turns, four straightaways course was only 39.2125 seconds.

Arie Luyendyk set the all-time record for the fastest single lap in 1996, at 37.616 questions and an average speed of 239.260.  Although the speeds are ten miles per hour different, the lap times differ by only about 1.5 seconds.

Twenty-one cars qualified for last year’s race at more than 230 mph for a four-lap average, with eleven topping 231, paced by Dixon’s pole speed of just under 232 mph.

Only 32 cars and drivers ran test laps.  The starting field for the 500 traditionally is 33 cars but the field is still one short. Speedway officials have promised, however, that a 33rd car will be entered.

The laps during the three test sessions are not intended to check out qualifying trim. But they will provide data that will help teams set up the cars for practice and qualifying for the 500 when it resumes May 17.

INDYCAR’s next race is on the road course at the Barber Motorsports Park next Sunday.  -0-0-0-0

There once was a time when the color green was considered unlucky in the early racing that was the foundation of Indianapolis-car racing.  But Jim Clark’s Lotus in 1963 buried that “curse.”

Now ALL of INDYCAR and the Indianapolis Motor Speedway are going green starting with the 500 next month.

We won’t see them in this race but we will see tires during Friday’s Carb Day pit stop contest made of a natural rubber from the guayule shrub. The what?

There are only two of the two-thousand-plus plant species that produce rubber that have been extensively domesticated. One is the rubber tree that is most associated with the Amazon basin region. The other is a little shrub found in the deserts of southwestern United States and northern Mexico. Both have been developed commercially after almost becoming extinct as the demand grew for more rubber products. The shrub tire will be used in the pit stop contest and then as the alternate tire in the Nashville race later this summer.

Penske Entertainment, the owners of the Speedway, say all tires delivered to the Speedway in May will be delivered in electric vehicles.  All electricity at the Speedway next month will be paid for with renewable energy credits. Recycling and food recovery programs will be increased. And some Speedway souvenirs will be made of recycled plastic or will be reusable and sold from a store inside an electric truck.

(FORMULA 1)—Defending F1 champion Max Verstappen finally had the race he expects to have at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix at Imola, Italy—leading all the way from pole to win for the first time this year and cut his points deficit from 43 to 17.  Teammate Sergio Perez took second after points leader Charles Leclerc spun his Ferrari off=course near the end. Lando Norris was third in a McLaren.

Mercedes’ handling problems remain unsolved and its chances of winning a ninth straight Constructors’ Championship are growing more questionable.

The best Mercedes  could do was a fourth place for George Russell.  Lewis Hamilton came home a distant 14th.  Team boss Toto Wolff acknowledged after the first practice that the handling was so poor that Russell and Hamilton had to lift before reaching top speed on the straightaways because of severe “porpoising,” or bouncing. Wolff apologized to both of his drivers for the cars they were given to drive.

F1 is off for the next two weeks.

 

Hate

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We picked up a copy of The Southern Poverty Law Center’s The Year in Hate & Extremism 2021 the other day. It lists, state-by-state the groups it considers to be hate and extremist organizations.

The SPLC was founded in 1971 as a civil rights and public interest litigation organization. It has become known for filing suits against white supremacist organizations and other discriminatory groups. It promotes tolerance education programs.

Some of those the conference has listed have criticized the listings as being politically-motivated or not warranted or so broad they are not accurate.

There are thirty Missouri organizations on the 2021 list.  Thirty out of 733 hate groups spread throughout the 50 states.  Nineteen of Missouri’s thirty groups are “general hate” (10) and “general antigovernment” (9).

We have no active KKK, racial Skinhead, neo-confederate, anti-immigrant, anti LGBTQ, conspiracy proponent or constitutional sheriffs organizations.

This does not mean, of course, that there are not those who fall into those categories as individuals or that these movements have not infiltrated mainstream politics, society, and religion. Clearly there are many people who have bought into the ideology of these groups. The SPLC singles out one political philosophy in particular.

The storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 exposed an alarming reality: that extremist leaders can mobilize large groups of Americans to use force and intimidation to impose their political will…They’ve coalesced into a political movement that is now one of the most powerful forces shaping politics in the United States….Within the GOP, a radical faction is attempting to rout the few remaining moderates unless there is a robust counter-effort from democracy supporters.

Let’s be clear.  The SPLC is not saying every Republican is within this sphere. We know many who are not.  But many of these groups or those individuals buying into their rhetoric see that party as their best vehicle to achieve power and they see the upcoming midterm elections as their best road to the top.

Just as it took a record involvement of Democrat, Independent, and disaffected Republicans to defeat Donald Trump in 2020, so it is likely to take a record forceful involvement of mainline Republicans (along with some Independents and crossover Democrats) in the August primary and the November general elections to blunt this movement in Missouri.

The commission warns of the danger of these groups and those supporting their attitudes.

Extremist groups have also found ways to insert themselves into mainstream politics. In the aftermath of Jan. 6, they shifted their efforts to local politics, focusing especially on COVID safety protocols and school curricula. Hard-right organizations disrupted school board and city council meetings around the country and, in the process, created space for more extreme and bigoted voices. As a result, public servants have experienced a wave of threats that will likely continue as the country heads toward the 2022 midterms.

We have talked to many people who shake their heads, unable to understand why some office-holders and candidates who have seemed thoughtful and reasonable people until now are sounding as unreasonable as several seem to be—or either side of the ballot.

The mainstream citizens, the ones who shake their heads is despair at what our politics have become, must be vigilant and active in 2022. Sitting back and wringing their hands is not an option.

The Southern Poverty Law Center concludes:

The United States must…look for ways to build a more resilient democracy…Even more, a reinvigorated vision of a more inclusive democracy is necessary, ne that creates a stark alternative away from the destructive path of the hard right. That means expanding and protecting access to voting, creating legislation to protect people who face discrimination, promoting civics education and teaching students an anti-racist curriculum, and ensuring all Americans have healthcare, housing and other vital services so they can lead safe and dignified lives.  History tells us that the threat is real, but it also reminds us that we can turn the tide.

Some of this language can be dismissed easily as “hard left” language and in the poisoned atmosphere of our politics today it is easy to dismiss it instead of exploring it.

Our state is protected by the explorers, not the fighters.  None of us should be afraid to explore even if we face the hateful charge that we are “woke,” or some other word or phrase intended to brand us as immaterial.

It is a truism that if you cannot intellectually justify your point, you can always think you win by calling someone a name, giving them a brand, assigning them to a mythical place of dismissal. Such pronouncements should be dismissed out of hand.

Getting back to where we started—

Missouri being the home to thirty groups considered hate or extremist organizations is not something to be proud of. Letting them or individuals sharing their views dominate our political discourse is a danger to all of us no matter what side of the aisle we are on.

A silent majority can become a silenced majority if it is afraid to assert its power against those bent on destruction and control.

Perhaps naively, we place our hope in that silent majority, that silent courageous majority, that we hope is quietly waiting to turn itself loose on our election days in 2022.

 

Sports Page—-Racing: A Dirty Easter Gift

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(NASCAR)—Two of NASCAR’s young guns tried to race each other cleanly for the win on the Bristol dirt track Sunday night but wound up giving a gift to another driver, an old guy who was running third when Tyler Reddick and Chase Briscoe ran out of room headed for the finish line.

Briscoe went inside on the last turn, couldn’t hold the line, and spun himself and Reddick out yards from the finish line.  The spin let Kyle Busch pick up the win, his first of the year, 60th of his career.

Reddick got his car straightened out but Busch came off the last turn at full speed and beat him to the finish by a third of a second.  Briscoe finished 22nd.

The win means Busch has tied Richard Petty’s record of recording at least one win in 18 consecutive years.  His 60 wins rank him ninth all-time. He leads all active drivers.

The race started late because of rain and then was red-flagged when another shower turned the track too slimy to run. The rain moved out quickly and track officials got the dirt back into racing shape in about 20 minutes so the race could go to the end.

Joey Logano, Kyle Larson, and Ryan Blaney rounded out the top five.

The race was the ninth of the year. Busch is the eighth driver to win this year meaning the playoff field is now half full with about two-thirds of the season left to determine the 16 drivers who will take part in the 10-race championship runoff.

Fourteen yellow flags that slowed things down for about one-third of the 250-lap (125-mile) race lowered the average speed to only 34.973 mph, smashing Ned Jarrett’s 1965 slowest-winning speed record of 61.826 mph.  It’s even slower than the winning average of the exhibition race on the special track around the football field at the Los Angeles Coliseum at the start of this year. That one went to Joey Logano at 39.029 mph.

NASCAR puts all the slow stuff behind it next week when it moves to Talladega, where Bill Elliott set a still-standing NASCAR record for the fastest lap ever, at 212.809 in 1987.  In the race that year, Bobby Allison’s serious crash tore out several yards of safety fencing, narrowly missing going into the crowd.  NASCAR immediately moved to slow down the cars by instituting restrictor plates for Talladega and Daytona.

(INDYCAR)—INDYCAR has an open test at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway tomorrow and Thursday. Jimmie Johnson plans to take part in the tests on the oval although his right hand will be in a carbon fiber splint because of a broken bone incurred during one of his three crashes at Long Beach.  He also plans to race at Barber Motorsports Park on May 1 as he gets ready to race on the IMS road course on May 14th and run his first Indianapolis 500 fifteen days later.

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INDYCAR still has a lot of schedule left to run but already there’s a lot of speculation about drivers moving to other teams in 2023.  The top buzz is about Alexander Rossi, whose contract with Andretti runs out this year. He’s been told he is free to make a deal with another team if he gets a good deal. Rossi won the Centennial Indianapolis 500 in 2016.

Rossi, however, isn’t able to talk to other tams yet because team owner Michael Andretti has exclusive rights to negotiating a new contract.  The year has started poorly for Rossi. Bad team strategy is being blamed for his 20th place finish at St. Petersburg to start the season. He had a battery failure and finished 27th on the Texas oval but had his best start and best finish of the year at Long Beach—starting fifth and finishing 8th.

(FORMULA 1)—Formula 1 heads to Ferrari Country next weekend with the Italian Grand Prix at the Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari in Imola, Italy.

Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc is having a dominating season, scoring 71 of a possible 78 points through the first three races.  He has two first and a second, two poles, and has turned the fastest lap in all three races so far. He is so far ahead that he would still lead the points if he goes scoreless in the race.

(photo credits: Bob Priddy)

Abdicating Authority

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The Senate Appropriations Committee has sent a House-passed bill on sports wagering to the floor for debate.  The bill taxes proceeds from sports wagering at eight percent rather than the 21 percent rate for all other forms of gambling.  Committee Chairman Dan Hegeman says there will be a substitute bill offered on the Senate floor that changes some of the provisions of the House bill.

I could have opposed this bill when it was before the committee a couple of weeks ago but decided not to do it because I’ve told this committee and House committees for about three years why the legislation written by the casino industry should be rejected—-because it does nothing or almost nothing for the state’s interests and, in fact undermines them.

The worst thing the bill proposes—so far—is a series of deductions from the taxes the casinos will pay the state.  The goal, plainly stated in the bill, is to let casino accountants turn profitable days into unprofitable days and then to carry over any paper losses to the next day’s calculations. And if the accountants can show enough days were losers, then an entire month will have no revenues that can be taxed.

This is what I told the committee—with some editorial modifications because this is a column not testimony.

First: The fiscal note on this bill talks about how much the state will gain, which isn’t much, but it does not talk about how much the state will lose because of the ultra-low tax rate proposed and other factors in the bill.  Eight percent of nothing is the same as 21% of nothing, and “nothing” is the goal.

The other two points unfortunately are combined.

This not only is the thirtieth anniversary year of the vote to legalize casino gambling, it also is the thirtieth anniversary of approval of term limits.  This legislation represents an unfortunate combination of these two issues.

We have seen the realization of two important things that critics warned would happen if term limits were adopted.

One was that imposition of term limits would eliminate the institutional memory of the General Assembly.

Institutional memory is passed along by the Elders in any society to newcomers.  It consists not only of previous experiences in what works and what does not. In the legislature’s case, it was a matter of teaching new members about traditions, practices, rules (written and unwritten), and behaviors that are essential to good governing.

It is a matter of understanding why people are “Ladies” and “Gentlemen” in the House and why the phrase, “Everyone is a Senator” is vital to the operations of the Senate.  Both standards are matters of respect and based on the idea that policy is shaped by debate among equals.  A debate between two gentlemen, two ladies, or a lady and a gentleman is a debate between equals. It is a matter of parliamentary discipline and political respect regardless of party, geography, color, gender, faith or any other factor.

“Everyone is a senator” is the same.  Senators debate Senators.  It is not us-versus-them.  Senator-to-Senator does not infer that one is superior to the other.

Institutional memory used to teach respect for the understanding that today’s opponent likely will need to be tomorrow’s friend. It was a system that worked for about 175 of Missouri’s 200 years. The sad result of the loss of that memory has been played out in the Senate this year.

The third warning we heard is that after institutional memory is gone, the General Assembly would lose the structure that protects its role as the people’s policy-maker.  Without that structure, without that discipline—critics warned—the power to make policy shifts to two elements that are permanent parts of government outside the chambers—the bureaucracy and the lobbyists.

The warning was that while legislators will come and go, both the bureaucracy and the lobbyists are permanent and their power grows.  And so it is with this bill.

In the last five years, the gaming industry has given legislators 29 bills on sports wagering with the expectation those bills will be passed.  In these five years, not one member of the House and the Senate—I haven’t counted but probably 230 or more people have served in either chamber during that time—not one member of the House or the Senate has independently introduced a bill that puts the General Assembly in charge of this issue.

Not one bill has been written by any member of the Missouri Legislature that legalizes sports wagering on the state’s terms, that asserts the General Assembly’s authority to act on behalf of the people who elected its members. 

And so the warnings from 1992 have come sadly true.  For five years the Missouri General Assembly has abdicated its authority—on this issue—to those who are not physically Ladies, Gentlemen, or Senators, none of whom have any responsibility for, or obligation to the people who sent you here.

And that is why you are being asked by backers of this bill to tell the people who sent you here that it is okay with you if your veterans continue to see declines in financing for their nursing homes, why it is okay with you if the state’s promise of education funding from casino gambling is broken, why it is okay with you if the cities some of you represent that play host to casinos will continue to lose thousands and millions of dollars every year because the gambling industry tells you not to update outdated laws.

It’s not too late to regain control of the process. Committee or floor substitutes, or committee or floor amendments can do it.

But the industry doesn’t want you to do it.  So you have a choice.

When you go home on the evening of May 13th and you have coffee the next morning with some constituents and one asks if you did anything good here this year—what will you say?

—that you stood up for your teachers and your veterans and your home dock cities…..

Or will you say, “I voted to let you bet on a baseball game tonight.”

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Time is running short and pressure to pass what the industry wants in this election year is likely to increase. Now we will learn if the legislature has the spine to act on behalf of the people they meet at home or whether they’ll go with the people they meet in the Capitol halls.

We hope the teachers and the veterans and the college kids looking for state scholarship help, or the city leaders of towns with casinos—and even families of those who become addicted to this industry’s product—ask in these weeks before the election whether their legislator abdicated policy-making power to the people in the halls.

Theatre of the Inane

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Elon Musk, insanely wealthy and looking to fend off boredom, has decided he wants to buy Twitter. He says he’ll pay $43 Billion.  Twitter doesn’t want to be bought and thinks it has a poison pill that will keep it Muskless.  He has suggested these are just the opening rounds of what can become an increasingly nasty fight.

We don’t twitt. We don’t Facebook. Both refusals probably are to our disadvantage when it comes to sharing this twice-a-week wisdom. But, frankly, we have a life and it’s not spent focusing on what’s between our thumbs.

When Twitter first came along, the Missourinet news staff was told it was going to have to start using it because it was the coming thing in communication.  The example given of its usefulness was a narrative series (forgive me, friends, I abhor the word “tweets”) of a friend of ours who was going somewhere and reported at various times that he had arrived at the airport, had been checked in, was waiting to board, was boarding, and was sitting on the airplane that was spending too much time packing in the passengers..

The Missourinet staff was unimpressed beyond description.

A few days later, your observer, the now-retired Missourinet news director saw a message from a friend who told the world that she was going to have to stop on her way home from work to get a new sump pump.

The news director quickly dubbed Twitter “the theatre of the inane.”

While Twitter has proven to be useful in distributing news in real time (as well as lies, conspiracies, accusations, and general trash), it still is awash in inanities.

Representative Harry Yates of St. Joseph would not have liked Twitter if it had existed in his day. He introduced a bill in the 1925 legislative session making gossip and scandal-mongering a criminal offense.   He proposed fines of ten to one-hundred dollars or a ten-to-fifty day jail sentence for anyone “maliciously repeating or communicating any false rumor or slander detrimental or harmful to another person.”

Yates would, of course, be apoplectic about Facebook.

His bill never made it into the statute books. It had some obviously serious First Amendment problems. And worse yet, if people couldn’t gossip or be mongers of scandals, there would be little to talk about, especially at the Missouri Capitol.  The place is a hothouse for gossip of varying degress of veracity.

But then again, imagine how nice would be the Silence of the Thumbs, at least in some places, if Representative Yates had succeeded.