Author Archives: bpriddy

If I Were a Lawyer–

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—in the District of Columbia, I would have been at work for a more than a month signing up as clients Capitol and District police officers and their families for a gigantic personal injury lawsuit against Donald J. Trump. I imagine there have been some pretty busy attorneys already.

I also might be signing up the families of the men and women now in custody and facing prison time because they believed Trump summoned them to Washington to do his bidding and upend the 2020 election results by stopping the certification of the Electoral College votes.  These families are facing economic damage caused by the loss of a wage-earner and might face a certain level of social ostracism because a family member took part in January 6th (there is no need to say “the January 6th insurrection” or “riot,” because this is a specific date that will mean something, as 9-11 means something without further definition). A massive class action civil lawsuit featuring dozens of hours of powerful witness-stand testimony will be difficult to counter by defense counsel saying, “He didn’t really mean it to turn out that way” or calling the damage lawsuits violations of his First Amendment free speech rights.

One might be able to say many things and escape penalty for saying them. But there is a penalty for the damage those words produce.

The creativity of the legal profession is likely to produce other clients with other claims of other kinds.  It would not be surprising that Mr. Trump’s financial empire, such as it is, to be placed in incredible jeopardy.  It will take legal representation of epic brilliance to defend him from devastating financial liability.

In every lawsuit, in every argument, Trump’s involvement in the worst assault on our system of government since the secession of southern states if not in all national history will be recalled. Every case will batter him personally as well as financially and likely will undermine his political credibility further.

But civil court proceedings are not the only difficulty facing the former president. Criminal investigations of the financial dealings of Trump and his family as well as investigations into his efforts to change election results—and who knows what other possibilities exist—appear to be lurking in the offices of federal and state prosecutors.

The chutzpah displayed in his post-trial claim that he will be a significant influence in the 2022 elections or a viable presidential candidate for 2024 will become more questionable as each of these possible civil and criminal cases moves forward.

The aftermath of his second impeachment trial could be worse for him than the week just past.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s post-trial speech scathingly rejecting Trump’s presidency can be seen, might be seen, by many as the first significant step by the Republican Party to be a party it used to be—a party greater than Donald Trump.

Some see McConnell’s speech as duplicitous, pointing to his former role as Majority Leader when he suggested the House impeachment charges should not be delivered to the Senate while Trump was still in office and then claiming the Senate could not convict Trump because the charges had not been filed before Trump left Washington.

Although McConnell’s statement is unlikely to lessen public cynicism toward government, his direct post-trial attack on Trump is something on which the party can build—if it will.

In his own post-trial statement, Trump never mentioned January 6.  He never mentioned the assault on the capitol.  He never mentioned any regrets that his mob imperiled the people who voted to acquit him. He never extended any sympathies to the people injured in the assault or who died that day and in succeeding days because of those events. He still has not admitted that he lost the election, continuing to emphasize his 75-million votes, still refusing to acknowledge that somebody else got seven-million more through the same processes that gave him 75-million. He promised to reveal a new “vision” soon for American greatness. Let us hope his new definition is better than his old one.

Having survived the latest political questions about his actions that day, perhaps he should spend some time developing a vision for dealing with the legal problems likely to come.  No beautiful wall around Mar-A-Lago will keep the lawyers out.

Those in the Middle

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Abraham Lincoln was born 212 years ago today.  He was the second Republican to run for President and the first to win. A lot can happen to a political party, and has, in the 160 years since he entered the White House.

The party made a critical decision about its future when it nominated him, a moderate in a time of rising radicalism, to run for President of the United States. Today’s Republicans might be facing a decision about their party’s future that is no less serious than the party’s decision in 1860. There is concern, however, about who are the people who will make that decision or who will take it in its future direction.

Sarah Longwell runs a conservative website, The Bulwark, and does a conservative podcast.

She made an interesting point this week about some people who have, by and large, escaped the spotlight that is shining on our ex-president and on the insurrectionists he is accused of spending months motivating to take actions that will put many of them in prison.

“Hold Them All Accountable,” says the headline on her website entry last Tuesday.  She asks, “What of the elected officials whose months of lies agitated and radicalized the crowd, even before it was incited to insurrection?”

And who are these people she thinks are running under the radar?

“Finding 17 Republican senators to convict Trump is a Herculean task, not least because many of them joined him in feeding the lie that brought these people to the Capitol in the first place. In this regard, this trial is unique for having members of the jury who are not just not impartial, but are both witnesses and accomplices to the crime.”

Longwell reminds us to remember that more than one-fourth of Republicans in the Senate were on-record objecting to certifying the Electoral College results. She calls their demands for investigations into Trump-claimed extensive voter fraud “nothing less than hype-man interjections meant to bolster Trump’s claims that he ‘won in a landslide’ and that the election was being stolen.”

She especially targets our own Josh Hawley along with colleagues Ted Cruz, Ron Johnson, and Lindsey Graham who “were happy to jump in front of every available television camera to discuss the unprecedented allegations of voter fraud no matter how discredited those allegations were.”

She also scorns some house members: Louis Gohmert who suggested “violence in the streets” was the only thing left after a federal court refused to order Vice President Mike Pence to reverse the results; Madison Cawthorn, who suggested people call their congressmen and “lightly threaten” them if they didn’t reverse the results; Mo Brooks, who said just before the insurrection, “Today is the day American patriots start taking down names and kicking ass.”

She recalls 126 House Republicans joined the Texas Attorney General’s lawsuit questioning the results in four swing states.

“So now, while those arrested for the Capitol attack are—rightly—facing hard time, the Republicans and members of Conservatism Inc., who filled these thugs’ heads with poison and pointed them toward the Capitol are ‘moving on,’ their campaign fund flush with the millions they raised claiming they were going to ‘stop the steal.’”

She quotes former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s observation that, “The mob was fed lies. They were provoked by their president and other powerful people.”

Longwell says that means that ‘the elected officials who fed these people lies should be held accountable in some way, too.”

Sarah Longwell finishes, “Call witnesses. Prosecute the case. And never forget who the enemies of democracy were.”

She was interviewed on NPR”s Morning Edition earlier this week and host Sacha Pfeifer asked her how penalties could be exacted against those in Congress who supported The Big Lie. She answered, “Unfortunately, the electoral process is going to take a long time to play out…So it has to be the rest of our culture. It has to be with the process of shame.  You need the business community to stand up and say we draw a bright line for people who objected to this election, that that is disqualifying to hold public office for people whotold lies to voters. Fifty million people believing that the election was stolen is an existential threat to our democracy.”  More specifically for the business community, “Withholding their donations, saying we are not going to donate to politicians who objected to a free and fair election.”

She thinks newspapers have a role with “editorial boards calling relentlessly for the resignations…We’ve got billboards up through our Republican Accountability Project calling for a lot of these foficials to resign. There is—needs to be a relentless public pressure that says what they did was wrong and be very clear about that becuae it was wrong.”

Longwell thinks it will be difficult for government to have a Biblical “physician, heal thyself” attitude because “so many Republicans participated in this problem that they’re not really going to hold each other accountable…Democrats essentially have to do it (but) then it looks entirely political, which is why the rest of the culture sort of has to step in here.”

She urged “as many Republican senators as possible (to) stand up and do the right thing now because it’s really going to matter, showing people that there is come accountability even within your own party.”

The entire article is at: https://thebulwark.com/hold-them-all-accountable/

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Sarah Longwell might not set well with the Trump true believers.  She has a background as a Republican strategist and is a former Senior Vice-President and Communications Director for noted GOP lobbyist Richard Berman.  She now runs her own communications company in DC. She was the first woman to sit on the board of Log Cabin Republicans, a Republican organization that refused to endorse Donald Trump in 2016.  She resigned as chairman of the board when the organization endorsed him in 2019.  Now a Never-Trumper, she leads a group called Republicans for the Rule of Law, an organization she founded with noted conservative writer Bill Kristol.  The organization advocated for Trump’s impeachment and removal two years ago.

Impeachment Rides Again

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The second Senate trial of Donald Trump begins today with Trump’s same threatening shadow over those who might personally and intellectually believe he deserves no sympathy but who are unable to resist his politically-threatening presence. .

If it is improper to impeach and convict someone whose behavior in office so strongly breaches all bounds of propriety after he or she vacates the office, how then can that person be held accountable for his direct or indirect actions?  How is justice to be exacted on behalf of the Republic?

Is Lady Justice to be stripped of her scales by the calendar or does she carry them into his or her political afterlife ?

The Senate voted 56-44 yesterday afternoon that Lady Justice is mobile.

We encourage you to watch these events on C-SPAN as much as you can. Stay away from partisan sources.  Watch, listen, be informed by an organization that lets you watch, form your own opinions, and decide if justice is done.

There is considerable doubt that enough Republicans will join with Democrats to reach the two-thirds majority needed to convict Trump. Based on the vote that the proceeding is constitutional, Democrats need to pick up eleven Republican votes to convict.

In truth, conviction would appear to be more likely if these proceedings were done in secret as we observe the strong secret caucus vote of confidence for Representative Lynne Cheney who was facing party punishment for voting to impeach.  But the public vote to take away committee appointments from Marjorie Taylor Greene for her outlandish advocacy of numerous debunked conspiracies found few Republicans willing to step up.  It is easy to be courageous if those who seek to intimidate you do not know who you are. But courage in public despite a penalty that might be threatened or imposed is rare no matter how much it is justified.

Honor is achieved in the light, not in the darkness.

Should the Senate fail to generate the needed two-thirds vote to convict, the former president might once again proclaim victory.  It is a mistake for others to respect that proclamation.

Even if the final vote is 51-50, with the Vice President breaking a tie, the Senate will achieve a majority that Trump never achieved in either of his presidential elections.  In 2016 he achieved only 46.1%.  In 2020, he achieved only 46.9%.

Forget all of the pap about getting 74-million votes.  He lost. By millions of votes. Chris Kobach, whose investigation failed to turn up all the fraudulent votes Trump claimed were against him in 20-16 won’t be able to find fraudulent votes in 2020 either.  God knows Rudi Giuliani tried even harder last year than Kobach did in ’16, tried so hard he’s being sued for billions by the companies that made the voting machines.

Let all of the senators regardless of whose side they are on (willingly or fearfully) and all of us listen to and see the evidence from both sides.  Our Senators and 98 of their colleagues eventually will vote and we hope they will vote their conscience, not their fear of retribution.

And as we noted in observing Trump’s first trial, a verdict of “not guilty” is not the same as finding him “innocent.”   By whatever gauge anyone might use to consider Trump’s behavior, the word “innocent’ cannot be used with validity.

A lot of people who are in jail or are out on bond facing tough charges and hard time will not connect “innocent” to him.

(Incidentally, has anyone heard of Trump calling the families of those who are facing those charges, or calling the families of any of those who were hurt or who have died because of the onsurrection to offer any comfort or, in the case of police officers injured in protecting the building and the people who work in it, any sympathy?)

We shall wait for honor and courage to be displayed by those who sit in judgment of Donald J. Trump.

Fifty

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Pardon us if there is a certain self-congratulatory feeling to our story today. It’s not intended. I’m just going to tell a story.

Listeners to a Jefferson City radio station at 7:35 a.m. fifty years ago today heard a young radio announcer tell them a story about the famous prohibition terrorist Carrie Nation, who started her national tour that made her a household name in the fight against demon rum on February 8, 1901.

It was Missouri’s Sesquicentennial year, just a few days after Governor Hearnes had kicked off the observance by dedicating the restored first State Capitol in St. Charles.

A few days ago, Governor Parson kicked off the state’s Bicentennial with his inaugural speech at our present Capitol.

And the radio program is still on the air.

It was called “Missouri in Retrospect” when it debuted on one station, KLIK, in 1971. It’s known as “Across Our Wide Missouri” in numerous communities throughout the state and, we suppose, in all corners of the world through the Missourinet web page.

It began with a couple of old books on the shelf in the newsroom that I turned to when I thought there needed to be a better way to celebrate the sesquicentennial than to do stories about the latest sign or the latest old building that had been rescued from the wreckers.  The longtime head of the State Historical Society of Missouri, Floyd Shoemaker, had written a series of newspaper columns decades earlier outlining something that happened on a particular day in a particular year. There were some dates not covered in the two volumes of Missouri Day-by-Day, and some topics not covered—sports and crime in particular.

We thought it would be good for people to be a little better-educated about their state’s history and, by extension, Missouri’s part of ournation’s history.

KLIK continued to run the programs for a few years after I left late in 1974 to become news director of the Missourinet, founded by my former assistant news director Clyde Lear and our former farm director, Derry Brownfield. Clyde and I had to help a lawyer make a boat payment or two before we got an out-of-court settlement of a lawsuit that the manager of the radio station filed trying to keep Across Our Wide Missouri from being on the network.

One other voice has been heard doing these programs on the Missourinet.  Missourinet reporter Ron Medin voiced the stories for several days in 1983, I think it was, while I was out of work after taking a line drive in the left eye while pitching in a softball game.

As this entry is written, a stack of envelopes is sitting within arms reach, potential new stories waiting to be written.  Ernest Hemingway is there.  The story of his time as a reporter for the Kansas City Star is waiting to be written.  So is the story of Fred Harvey, whose railroad-station restaurants before 1900 made long-distance travel a little more civilized. And Clarence Earl Gideon, a “no-account punk” from Hannibal whose lawsuit guaranteed to poor people could get a court-appointed lawyer if they couldn’t affird one. There’s a fat envelope with the story of St. Louis native Butch O’Hare—for whom O’Hair International Airport in Chicago is named. Bob Ford, the killer of Jesse James is there, as is Fred Harmon, the St. Joseph artist who created the cartoons strip of years gone by called “Red Ryder,” the character for whom a b-b gun was named.  There’s Tom Mix, the silent movie cowboy star who made his first feature film in Missouri, and Jean Baptiste Point DuSable, who lived his last several years in St. Charles after creating a trading post that became Chicago.

All waiting to be written.  Stories to be told.

And there are about eight file drawers of similar envelopes in the basement.

One day my assistant news director at KLIK, the afore mentioned Clyde Lear, looked across the table between our desks and said, “Priddy, you ought to put this stuff in a book.”

A few years later an editor at Independence Press (in Independence, Missouri of course) named Margaret Baldwin decided the stories were worth publishing.  They became three books, the proceeds of which made a big dent in our children’s college expenses.

I suppose I am better-recognized for telling those stories of Missouri’s past than I am for all my years of reporting the news in a career that has lasted long enough that what once was just another story one day is now Missouri history.

If I live forever, I’ll never write all of these stories.  It doesn’t help that Missourians keep making history.

Independence Press printed the last of the three books several years ago. I have the only remaining inventory in our storage locker or in our garage and sometimes in the trunk of my car. But when they’re gone, they’ll be out of print.

There are two things about becoming an author—

Somebody, I don’t recall how, once said that writing a book is a former of eternal life. I wasn’t real sure about that until the way I was at the Library of Congress in Washington and filled out a call slip for volume one just the grins and a few minutes later, a library employee emerged from the bowels and laid the book on the desk in front of me.

The other comment came from former Missouri Treasurer Jim Spainhower who, in addition to being a politician was an ordained minister in our denomination who had written a book called Pulpit, Pew, and Politics.  He told me when the first volume came out that I was now entitled to begin my prayers, “O Thou who also hast written a book….”

There are now five books with my name on them on a nearby shelf, soon to be joined by a sixth—about the history of the Missouri Capitol.  And there are files for two more in boxes behind me.

It all began on this date, February 8, 1971.

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Hal

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Let me tell you about meeting Mark Twain.

Well—-Hal Holbrook, actually.

He was Mark Twain longer than Mark Twain was Mark Twain. Actor Hal Holbrook died about two weeks ago although word of his death didn’t come out until this week. He was 95.

I saw “Mark Twain Tonight” the first time at the Stephens Playhouse in Columbia, as I recall, in the early 1960s and I think maybe a second time there.  Definitely a third time many years later at Jesse Hall at the University and a final time on May 16, 2014 at the Miller Performing Arts Center here in Jefferson City.  Nancy and I got to be part of the meet-and-greet bunch backstage after the show in Columbia and then again at the Miller Center.

There is an interesting, perhaps remarkable, story about his Jefferson City performance.

Mark Comley, my successor as president of the Community Concert Association, shared my enthusiasm for Holbrook as Twain.  The association decided to go for broke and bring him to the Miller Center even though he cost every penny of our annual budget.  But we thought a sell-out would justify the investment even if it didn’t quite cover the entire cost and we’d gain some recognition for the association that would pay off in the next season. I was disappointed that we didn’t sell every seat in the auditorium.  Big crowd, but it was disappointing to see that so many people in our city passed up a chance to see one of the great acts in the history of the American theatre.

It was the last day of the legislative session and as usual, the last week was exhausting.  I missed most of the first half of the show and didn’t have the energy for an after-show dinner at Madison’s (they kept their back room open so the concert board and guests could dine with Holbrook at midnight).

Holbrook was 89 then and showed plenty of energy in the show and in the post-show meet-and-greet afterward. He had removed his makeup (he told me in an interview in 2016 that he had to use less of it as he aged into the age of Twain, who he portrayed as being 70).

He stopped and spent time with each person. I told him I had hoped we’d be able to get him to the Capitol to see the various tributes to Twain (the Huck Finn art of the Benton mural, the bust of Twain in the rotunda’s Hall of Famous Missourians, and a—in my opinion— fairly undistinguished portrait of him) as well as a painting in the Senate of Francis Preston Blair Junior, the son of the man Holbrook played in the movie, Lincoln.

We took a couple of friends with us, Larry and Peggy Veatch who had lived in Hannibal for many years where Larry was the minister of the First Christian Church for a long time—and Holbrook had spent part of his performance on Twain’s ruminations on religion.  He and Larry had quite a conversation.

Mark (Comley) told me a remarkable story about midnight dinner the next time I saw him. It seems that Mark’s favorite routine is Twain’s recounting of the story of the skipper of little boat impressed of his own self-importance who crosses paths with another ship and its skipper who put him in his place.   Holbrook often used the story, originally told by Twain at a dinner in his honor in Liverpool, England on July 10, 1907 to close his shows. He hadn’t done it at the Miller Center and Mark mentioned it to Holbrook at the dinner.   Holbrook grew quiet for a time–And then did the entire routine. You can see it as Holbrook sometimes did it on stage:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_rTMNnxwSE

Mark figured that Holbrook had gone quiet for a little while because he was sorting through the hundreds or thousands of Twain stories stored in his memory until he found the story of “The Mary Ann.”

The first half of his shows were filled with wry and humorous observation of Twain.  The second half of the show turned serious pretty soon when he did the reading from Huckelberry Finn when the boy has to decide if he’s going to lie to protect his friend Jim, the room was always absolutely still, the audience moving only so much as necessary to breathe.

He spent about an hour with me on the phone in 2004 when he was appearing at then-Central Missouri State, the University of Missouri-Columbia, then at Kansas University. That was his 50th year of being Mark Twain.

Somewhere, in a box of recordings of interviews and events we covered in forty years at the Missourinet is a CD of that interview.  I’ll find it someday and post it.  I do remember that he told me he often updates his show with new Twain material but he never went beyond Twain’s thoughts. He never thought, “What would Twain say” about contemporary issues.  But Twain’s social commentary covered such a wide range of topics that many of his observations of 19th century situations fit contemporary events.

Holbrook didn’t exactly invent the one-man show portraying a historic figure but as Mark Dawidziak at the Center for Mark Twain Studies  put it, “Holbrook not only unleased platoons of Mark Twain impersonators (several in almost every state), he popularized the one man show about American figures. He soon was followed by James Whitmore as Will Rogers, (then as Harry Truman, and Theodore Roosevelt), Henry Fonda as Clarence Darrow, Julie Harris as Emily Dickinson, and Robert Morse as Truman Capote, just to name a few.”

But, in truth, many of the Twain impersonators weren’t really impersonating Twain.  They were impersonating Holbrook.

Samuel Clemens started using the pen name of Mark Twain in 1863. He died in 1910 at the age of 75 after 47 years if being Twain.

Hal Holbrook retired his act, and himself, in 2017, his health no longer strong enough for tours and performances.  He had been Mark Twain (among other characters in numerous movies and TV shows) for seventy years.

Patriot

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I am a patriot.  And I do things patriots do.

I stand for the national anthem.

I put my hand over my heart, or somewhere near it, when the flag passes by or when I say the Pledge of Allegiance.

When I say the pledge, I say it as a pledge not as a rote statement poorly delivered:

I pledge allegiance (pause)

To the flag (pause)

Of the United States of American (pause)

And to the Republic for which it stands (pause)

One nation (pause)

Under God (pause)

With Liberty and Justice for All.

After which I sometimes mutter, “Play Ball,” because it just seems like the right thing to do.

But I say the pledge the way it ought to be said:

“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America (comma) and to the republic for which it stands—One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”  I usually finish and drop my hand while other about me are saying “Under God.”

I don’t rush through it. It is my personal pledge, said as one not said as a group rote.  I confess that the phrase “under God” is bothersome because it assumes something we might believe but cannot know. Perhaps someday it will permissible to say, “One nation, hopefully under God….”

That position is heavily influenced by Abraham Lincoln, whose family lived in the town where I was born, and who practiced law as a circuit-riding attorney in the two towns where I was raised. He once supposedly said, “My concern is not whether God is on our side; My greatest concern is to be on God’s side, for God is always right.”  Scholars have not been able to confirm that Lincoln actually said that and the statement might be distilled from part of the oration given at Lincoln’s funeral in Springfield Illinois on May 4, 1865 by Reverend Matthew Simpson of the Methodist Episcopal Church, who had a “long and intimate friendship” with Lincoln:

“To a minister who said he hoped the Lord was on our side, he replied that it gave him no concern whether the Lord was on our side or not, “For,” he added, “I know the Lord is always on the side of right;” and with deep feeling added, “But God is my witness that it is my constant anxiety and prayer that both myself and this nation should be on the Lord’s side.”  

I stand for the flag, but I respect others who do not see the symbolism in our flag that I see. I have not walked in their shoes or in the shoes of their ancestors. I cannot be confident that I am on God’s side in such circumstances because to do so would be to assume that God is not on the side of others or wished others to be less free than me.  While others might be comfortable in assuming they know the mind of God and are therefore entitled to a definition of patriotism that allows them to judge others from their sacred viewpoint, I cannot reach that level of confidence. I prefer the other approach—hoping that I should be on God’s side rather than assuming that God is on mine.

It is a liberating rather than a confining position for it leaves me free to accept others and to see their possibilities, which I believe is the direction a great nation must go if it is to be even greater.

It enables me to suggest to those who cite early American naval hero Stephen Decatur’s after-dinner toast (“Our  Country! In her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right; but right or wrong, our country!”) that adhering to such a sentiment requires no consideration of the narrowness of it.

English philosopher, lay theologian, critic, and writer G. K. Chesterton was more abrupt in dismissing the idea by saying it is equivalent to saying, “My Mother, drunk or sober.” His comment is drawn from his first book of essays, The Defendant, published in 1901.  The sixteenth chapter is “A Defence of Patriotism”

Better, I find, are words from Missouri Senator Carl Schurz, a German immigrant who became a Civil War General, St. Louis newspaper publisher, and later Secretary of the Interior, from the Senate Floor on February 29, 1872:

“The Senator from Wisconsin cannot frighten me by exclaiming, ‘My country, right or wrong.’ In one sense I say so too. My country; and my country is the great American Republic. My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right.” 

He elaborated on those thoughts on October 17, 1899 at the Anti-Imperialistic Conference in Chicago:

“I confidently trust that the American people will prove themselves … too wise not to detect the false pride or the dangerous ambitions or the selfish schemes which so often hide themselves under that deceptive cry of mock patriotism: ‘Our country, right or wrong!’ They will not fail to recognize that our dignity, our free institutions and the peace and welfare of this and coming generations of Americans will be secure only as we cling to the watchword of true patriotism: ‘Our country—when right to be kept right; when wrong to be put right.’”

We recently came across an article by Noah Millman in The American Conservative from 2017 about teaching children about patriotism, “if you want them to understand their country’s crimes and failures as well as its achievements.”  Love of country, he suggests, cannot be narrow because love, if true love, cannot ignore differences. He cited Chesterton’s comment as he outlined why patriotism cannot be selfish but must involve responsibility for others, just as love grows from an awareness of, and acceptance of, and a responsibility for another.

People feel an attachment, and a willingness to fight to protect, their homes, and their communities. That can take noble and ignoble forms — sometimes fighting to defend your community means committing injustice (as, for example, if you band together with your neighbors to prevent someone from a disfavored ethnic group from moving to the neighborhood). But the feeling is rooted in a direct experience, not an abstract attachment.

For any political community larger than a city, though, that attachment necessarily becomes abstract. So you need to teach your children why they should care about that larger community, be proud of it, and treat it as constituent of their identity…

Chesterton famously quipped that the sentiment, “my country, right or wrong” is like the sentiment, “my mother, drunk or sober.” But the thing about the latter is that she is your mother whether she’s drunk or sober — it’s just that your obligations change based on her condition. If she’s drunk, you won’t let her drive — instead, you’ll make sure she gets home safely.

The question, then, is how you teach your children to see their country as, in some sense, like a mother when their relationship is necessarily abstract rather than directly felt. A love of country based on the lie that your mother is never drunk will be too brittle to survive any kind of honest encounter with reality. But it seems to me equally problematic to say that you should love your country because it is on-balance a good one. Does anyone say about their mother that they love them because on-balance they are sober?

Filial love is first and foremost rooted in gratitude for existence itself. That applies to adopted children as well; we are not born able to fend for ourselves, but radically dependent on others’ love and care, and however imperfectly it was provided if we survived at all then it was provided in some measure. And that gratitude extends to the larger society. None of us were raised in the wilderness; whoever we are, we are because of the world that shaped us, and we are grateful to be ourselves even if we are not always happy being ourselves.

In this time when the word “patriot” has been abused and has been turned into a term of narrowness, when love of country has been defined as fear or hatred of those who are different and therefore unacceptable, when violence has become a sanctioned way of expressing patriotism, it is time to learn what love is.

Paul defined it for us in one of his letters to the believers at Corinth: “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered. It keeps no record of wrongs.”

Sounds like an outstanding definition of what a Patriot is, or should be. This is a time to be a Paulist Patriot. But being a Paulist Patriot will require a stern unwillingness to let Chesterton’s drunk mothers prevail.

I stand with Paul. And Schurz. And Lincoln.

I am a Patriot.

The First Day

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This is the first day of the week for most of us after the day of rest on Sunday, the seventh day, in the Christian tradition.  This week will have two “first” days.

Nancy and I will get our first Pfizer COVID-19 immunization shots Thursday morning.

I don’t think I’ve written much personally about this pandemic in all these months but as I went back and looked at the first few entries in what I call “The Journal of My Pandemic Year,” starting in March that it’s obvious this has been a tense time because of the uncertainty that has pervaded our lives—what do we dare do about relations with friends and relatives; when can we go without masks (never, when we‘re going to be indoors with others), a daily  unspoken question about whether we might have picked up the virus somewhere and were soon to be sick, the whole business of—in effect—living only with ourselves day in and day out, week in and week out, month by month as we watched the calendar change and saw only chaos in our national leadership on this and other subjects.  And now we’re only days away from becoming immune.

We’re not down to counting hours yet; that won’t come until we near the date for our second shot. But making it to that first shot after all this time, all this uncertainty, all these days with all spontaneity removed from life, all the game nights we missed playing Five Crowns, or Rummikub or Labyrinth, or Quiddler, or something else with friends; all of the fellowship from church and other events gone—-just getting here while 400,000 other Americans didn’t—

I suppose some folks might feel almost guilty that they made it and so many more did not. I don’t think we do.  Asking, “Why me?” is, I think, a waste of time.  Why NOT me?  I don’t think the uncertainty of life has ever been more present, other than for a few minutes at a time, than it has been in these ten months when it has been part of every hour of our day.

And now I have “Pfizer shot 945 Cole Cty Health Dept 3400 Truman Blvd” written in my Day-Timer for next Thursday, February 4th.

All we have to do is just hang on for a few more days.

Today.

Tomorrow.

Wednesday.

Thursday morning, 9:45.

And then the other shot on the 25th.

That shot Thursday morning will be part of what truly will be the first day of the rest of our lives.

 

 

 

Will This Be Mike Parson’s “Lost Speech?”

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It was a pretty good speech, the one Governor Parson delivered Wednesday. It was the annual State of the State speech.  Governors have been giving them since Alexander McNair did the first one on November 4, 1822 at the start of the Second General Assembly of the State Of Missouri. The speech lasted about 17 minutes.  Governor Parson’s speech lasted about 42 minutes.

As far as we can determine, his speech was historic because it was the first SOS address that did not take place before a joint legislative session meeting in the House chamber.  Even in the St. Charles Capitol, where the House and Senate met in adjoining rooms, the Senate joined the House for McNair’s 1822 speech.

And, as far as we can determine, it was the first time a State of the State Address was not given during a joint session.  In fact it wasn’t given during a session of the legislature at all.  Neither chamber was in session. Another historical point.

Mark these circumstances down to an external historical event that had become too internal—the COVID-19 pandemic.  The House leadership decided Wednesday morning that the House could not be used because of fears the event would turn into a super-spreader of the virus.  The situation was so out of hand in the House that it didn’t even meet the previous week.

That near-last hour decision provoked a big scramble that resulted in moving the speech to the Senate where there is far less room for social distancing on the floor or in the galleries. We’ve heard there were concerns the Senate could muster a membership majority for an afternoon joint session.

As a result, neither chamber was in session. The Senate gave permission for the speech to be given there, much as it gives permission for the Silver-Haired legislature and other mock legislatures to use the chamber. Reports indicate about one-third of the Senate membership stayed away.

The House Information Office, which has a pretty sophisticated audio/video system it uses for special events in the House, managed to move all of its gear into the Senate galleries and strung all of its cables, and mounted all of its cameras in a matter of a few hours and produced a high-quality video feed on the governor’s Facebook page (maybe I’ll tell you sometime how close the Missourinet once came to beginning daily video feeds on its webpage many years ago).  I watched it.  I thought it was flawless.

The galleries of the Senate chamber were uncomfortably crowded with Parson cabinet members, guests who would become show-and-tell examples of certain points the governor wanted to emphasize, other special folks and as many House members as wanted to crowd in.

Normally, the House and the Senate appoint a special escort committee to escort the Governor into the House chamber.  But with neither chamber being in session there could be no escort committee—another possible first.

At the appropriate time, the back doors opened and in walked a masked Governor Parson.  Alone.  No handshakes on the way in, as usually happens.  Fist bumps only during the walk down the much-shorter than usual center aisle.

Forty-two minutes (and probably about 6,000 words) later, the governor put has mask back on and he and Teresa walked hand-in-hand back up the aisle and out of the chamber.  I’d never before seen a governor and First Lady walk back down the legislative aisle after a State of the State speech.  Another touch of history on that day.

There was no State of the State message in the First General Assembly—

—because we weren’t a state then.  Congress had given Missouri permission to elect a state legislature and state officers and draft a proposed State Constitution in 1820.  McNair gave the first state governor’s inaugural address on September 19, 1820, almost eleven months before Missouri was a state.  His three-minute speech was so short that a goodly number of legislators were still in a grog shop down the street in St. Charles and missed it. They wanted him to have a do-over and he refused.  Then came the 17-minute SOS in 1822.

As we have researched the history of the Capitol, we have come across a lot of State of the State messages in legislative journals.  Some are amazing.  For a good part of our history the governor did not deliver the message. He sent the message to the House, often with the Secretary of State or his personal secretary carrying it.  Then somebody read it.  And read it and read it.

And read it.

Long ago we learned that the average person speaks at about 150 words per minute.  It’s a natural pace for most of us. Any faster and the listener is tense, waiting for the next work.  Any faster, and clarity of speech might suffer.  So, using the 150 wpm standard, here’s how long some previous State of the State speeches have lasted.

On November 22, 1836 (the legislature in those days met after the harvest and quit in time for spring planting, “Lieutenant Governor and Acting Governor” Lilburn Boggs delivered a speech that covered seventeen pages of the House Journal. The word counter on my computer says the speech was 8,873 words long. Whoever read it probably took about an hour to give.  It’s hard to imaging many applause breaks since the big buy himself wasn’t reading it.  So there was little to keep people awake.  Maybe they didn’t suffer as much as we think because in those days church sermons of two or three hours were not uncommon and the listeners were sitting on split log benches without backs.

John Cummins Edwards, the youngest governor in Missouri up to that time, used 6,681 words in 1846, a more modest 45-minute speech, probably.

Sterling Price’s Christmas Day State of the State speech in 1854 was 7,114 words long, would have lasted a couple of minutes longer than Edwards did.  His speech took 12 pages of the House Journal.  We’re not sure if this was the first time it happened, but after the speech, the House ordered thousands of copies printed, including 2,000 copies in German—as more and more Germans started flowing into Missouri from their country that had been torn by revolutions for several years.

We ran out of energy on the John Marmaduke speech in 1887. It took up 19 pages.

Joseph Folk was a populist who was elected in 1904.  He was so full of ideas for cleaning up a corrupt government that his SOS took 14,071 words to express. All those words probably took two hours and 22 minutes to read.

TWO HOURS AND 22 MINUTES!

Forrest Donnell, the governor that majority Democrats tried to keep from taking office in 1941, gave his final SOS  on January 3, 1945. He could have spent a lot of time talking about his accomplishments steering our state through most of the World War, but he didn’t.  4180 words, 28-30 minutes.

The first State of the State given by Warren Hearnes in 1965 took 3,063 words.

By the time Donnell and Hearnes spoke, governors were delivering their own remarks. That is likely to be the greatest motivation not to talk endlessly.

The longest SOS we ever covered was Joe Teasdale’s first one.  Since the Missourinet broadcast it, we clocked it.  An hour and 17 minutes.  It seemed interminable.  And it was still more than an hour shorter than Folk’s message.

But unlike all of those other State of the State messages, the one given by Governor Parson this week might become a “lost speech.”   Why?

Because it wasn’t given to a joint session. In fact it wasn’t given to a session of either chamber of the legislature.

As we write this, we haven’t seen the journal from yesterday, Thursday, yet. But since the speech was given outside of the legislative day, it doesn’t qualify to be in the journal.  If that’s how it turns out, the speech will achieve still another historic first—-there won’t be an official record of it in either journal.  Perhaps a century from now somebody who has the questionable intelligence to spend hours reading legislative journals will wonder why there was no State of the State message in 2021.

There was one. Pretty good one. Well-delivered. Well-covered by the media. But if it’s not in the journals, it will be Mike Parson’s “lost speech.”

UPDATE:  The unapproved journals of the House and Senate for the day of the speech, which are available on the web pages of the chambers, do not include the speech.  

 

People’s Interests Being Dealt a Losing Hand

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Several bills have been introduced to legalize casino wagering on sports in Missouri this year.  Most are versions of bills that have failed to gain passage for the past three years.

None of the bills has a single word protecting the state’s interests in casino gambling.  Not a single word.

What are the state’s interests?

Funding for public schools.

Funding for various veterans’ services.

The National Guard

Funding of a college scholarship program.

Funding for a program to help people who become addicted to the casinos’ products.

Funding for the cities that are hosts for casinos.

The first hearing on one of the bills took place yesterday in a Senate Committee before which I raised this issue last year. In the year since, there has been time to dig deeper into this concern. And the concerns have become deeper.

Yesterday, I talked to the Senate Appropriations Committee about, first, the much-lower tax proposed for sports wagering adjusted gross receipts and, second, about the multi-million dollar damages that tax will cause to elementary and secondary education. Other concerns will be voiced as other bills are brought up for hearings.

None of these bills should be sent out for floor debate until they have been extensively revised to protect the state’s interests.

Please understand that these comments do not oppose casinos or sports wagering. But they do oppose the Missouri General Assembly being skillfully maneuvered into passing new gaming laws that degrade the state’s interests and the interests of the people of Missouri.

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After listening to three years of committee hearings on proposed sports wagering legislation, I am left with the impression that the proposals are being presented as if the issue is unique, separate from other forms of gambling and therefore should be treated as a special category.

It would be erroneous to accept that concept.

The creation of legalized sports wagering can be likened to the addition of a new kind of cheeseburger to the menu at McDonald’s. The biggest difference is that McDonald’s is not lobbying you to lower the sales tax on the cheeseburger while leaving it the same for all of its other products.

Sports wagering is just one more activity in which casino customers can take part. One more item on the gambling menu. But the menu also contains the same products it always has had. Separating one product from the other for taxation purposes makes no sense, whether is a sports bet or a cheeseburger.

This year’s proposed legislation makes it clear that sports wagering will not be done in some other building but will be done on the property of the casino, a phrase that bears scrutiny because it does not specifically say the activity will take place within the wagering area of the casino, a clear position for the state to take. Nonetheless, the assumption seems to be that bets will be accepted within the casino, processed within the casino, and—when necessary—paid within the casino—the same as with bets in all other forms of casino gambling.

Betting on sports is no different than betting on the fall of the cards, the roll of the dice, or the circling of a little white ball.  You will hear me say it many times in these discussions: a bet is a bet is a bet. It’s done in the same facility; the money goes into the same bank account; the taxes are paid on both kinds of money—although the casinos want much less tax charged on proceeds from sports betting by calling for a much lower rate and then by re-defining AGR to make less money taxable by exempting things from the taxable amount in some of the bills.

The proposed legislation accepts that casino winnings on sports bets will be considered part of the casino adjusted gross receipts (AGR) and part of those receipts will be funneled to public education. But the industry claims some of those receipts are not equal to the others for taxation purposes. Once again, a bet is a bet is a bet. That’s the central issue.

Although I have not seen a federal or state income tax form filed by any of our casinos, I doubt that there is one line for taxable income and a second line for taxable sports wagering income on those forms. The federal tax on that income is the same regardless of the source of the income. There is no fair reason why the state tax on AGR should be different from the tax on AGR generated by other forms of gambling.

Sports wagering is NOT something apart from the rest of the casino operations in either space, processing of bets, or in accumulated casino income.

The casinos argued in an earlier hearing that the tax on adjusted gross receipts should be much less than the tax on other forms of gaming because the house advantage on sports wagering is “only five percent.”  That is true. But it’s not the whole truth.

The house advantage of sports wagering is more than the house advantage of several other games offered by the casinos. A study done for the Center for Gaming Research at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas indicates the house advantage is lower than five percent for some of the other gambling opportunities in casinos, yet the industry has never sought a lower tax rate on those games.

Because sports wagering is just another gambling opportunity within the casino, the income from which is part of the general profits of the business, there is no reason to grant sports wagering a preferred tax rate or a different definition of AGR than is used for other gambling activities—as is proposed in this year’s sports wagering bills.

Missouri has 28 years of history to support this argument.  For almost three decades the monthly financial reports of the State Gaming Commission have broken out revenues from table games from revenues from slot machines for each of our casinos. Table games contribute about 15% of the revenues; electronic gaming devices, as the category is called, contributes the other 85%.

For almost three decades, the casinos have had no problems with the revenues from those two sources combined into one AGR figure and taxed at 21%.  Now, however, the industry wants you to approve and new, and what is likely to be the second-most lucrative revenue stream, but they want the legislature to approve a far lower tax rate for it—a tax rate that will undermine support from the other two categories for elementary and secondary education.

I have been told that casinos say they cannot do sports wagering with a 21% tax on AGR.  That’s THEIR problem.  The legislature has a responsibility and that responsibility is not to solve the casino industry’s problems.  The legislature’s responsibility is to the people back home–the school teachers and children, the veterans, the college kids needing a state scholarship, the home dock citis.

If the casinos “can’t do sports wagering,” there still will be gambling on sports.  It just won’t be legal.  and the casinos won’t make any money from it.  That’s their choice.

DAMAGE TO ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY EDUCATION

Various sports wagering legislation this year proposes tax rates on sports AGR of nine percent, 6.75 percent, 6.25 percent and 6.0 percent. (The particular bill heard yesterday proposes a nine percent rate)

The present tax on AGR from all other forms of gaming is 21 percent.  Ninety percent goes into a fund for elementary and secondary education. Ten percent goes to the home dock cities.

We can explain the problem with a fourth-grade-style arithmetic example.

Johnny’s mother wants to make some apple pies.  She gives him some money and tells him to guy ten apples. There will be enough to buy something for himself if wants it.

Johnny buys ten applies and, seeing plums also on sale, buys a plum to eat on the way home. At the checkout counter, he learns the apples cost $2.10, or 21-cents per apple.  His plum costs 6.75 cents.  The first ten items cost 21-cents each. The last one lowers the average cost of the eleven items to 19.7 cents each.

Using this example, the tax rates proposed for sports wagering could lower the average AGR tax to 19.91% (nine percent rate), 19.70% (the proposed 6.75% rate), and 19.66% (the proposed 6.25 rate, which would establish a new low rate in the nation), and 19.64% (the 6.0% rate proposed in a House bill).

In fiscal year 2018-19—the last full year before the pandemic significantly affected the casino business, the casinos reported to the Missouri Gaming Commission that $15,160,505,906 had been bet in their slot machines.  Table games produced “only” $1,255,959,366 for a total bet in our casinos of $16,416,465,272.  The slot machines had a payout rate of 90.3%.  Table games had a “hold” of 20.8%–meaning table games produced a 79.2% pay out.

The result was an AGR of $1,735,757,881, or 10.57% of the total amount bet and Missouri’s tax on the AGR amounted to 2.2% of all funds bet in slot machines or at gaming tables.

The math shows that a nine percent tax on AGR (the definition used for all other forms of gaming in Missouri) would cost elementary and secondary education about $17 million. The loss to schools would top $21.2 million at the lowest rate proposed.

I don’t know how many members of the General Assembly want to go home and tell their school superintendents they favor legislation that would pump tens of millions of dollars into casino profits while cutting state funding to education by $17-21 million with no realistic hopes of recovery. It will take a lot of PTA chili suppers to make up the difference.

All of this is based on numbers supplied to the Missouri Gaming Commission by the casino industry in Missouri.  We believe it shows the depth of loss the state will incur if the legislature passes these gaming bills without major rewriting.

The extensive homework behind these observations is below.

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All discussion of percentages and holds and payouts aside, here is what the current AGR tax rate produced in that fiscal year and how much the state would have lost if the tax rate were reduced.

21%       $364,509,155    Existing rate

9% (19.91) $345,589,394     Reduction of $18,919,761 ($17,027,785-$1,891,976)

6.75%  (19.7)  $341,944,303     Reduction of $22,564,852 ($20,308,367-$2,256,485)

6.25%  (19.66) $341,249,999     Reduction of $23,259,156 ($20,933,240-$2,325,916)

6.0%   (19.64)  $340,902,848  Reduction of $23,606,307 (21,245,676-2,360,631)

It might be argued that the increased AGR of sports wagering would have offset those losses.  How much betting would have been necessary to bring about that offset?

It would have taken an AGR increase totaling $210 million to produce $18,900,000 at 9%

It would have taken an AGR increase totaling $336 million to produce $22,680,000 at 6.75%

It would have taken an AGR increase totaling $372 million to produce $23,251,000 at 6.25%

It would have taken an AGR increase totaling $ 394 million to produce $23.640,000 at 6.0%

Actually, the AGR increase would have had to be even more substantial because the sports wagering bills re-define AGR through a series of exemptions that would have lowered the amount of money that was taxable.

If, using the 2018-2019 fiscal year as the basis, we calculate how much more would have to be bet on sports to reclaim the lost funds, and understanding that AGR represents 11% of the total amount bet (we’ve rounded up the percent), then the amount bet on sports to recover the lost funds at the four tax rates advocated in this year’s bills would be:

9%—$2,079,000,000

6.75%—$3,326,400,000

6.25%—$3,682,800,000

6.0%—$3,374,938,195

And further, there would have been another loss occurring because of the lower tax rates because the schools and home dock cities would be losing income from the AGR if it had been  taxed at the present 21%.  For example:

$210,000,000 taxed at 21% would have earned $44.1-million.

$336,000,000 taxed at 21% would have earned $70.56 million.

$372,000,000 taxed at 21% would have earned $78.12 million.

$394,000,000 taxed at 21% would have earned $82.74 million

In other words, the schools and home dock cities, while waiting to collect $22,564,853 at 6.75% would have been foregoing $70.56 million that would have reached them at the current 21% rate.

The loss to elementary and secondary education and to the home dock cities, therefore would have been (approximately) $25.2 million, $48 million, $54.8 million, and $59.1 million.

Elementary and Secondary Education (and the home dock cities) will NEVER catch up.

The goal for the casinos in adding sports wagering is to INCREASE their AGR.  This study shows how much the DECREASE in elementary and secondary education and the home dock communities might have been if the average AGR tax had been lowered, that it would have taken hundreds of millions of dollars in wagering to REPLACE the funds lost by elementary and secondary education through the lowering of the average AGR tax rate, and the income loss while waiting to replace lost income through increased wagering would have been an even larger financial setback.

Casinos don’t seem to care about elementary and secondary education, veterans, college kids, problem gamblers, or even their home dock cities.  Somebody has to raise these issues. Perhaps you might ask your legislator about whether he favors passage of legislation that will undermine financing for all of these issues we’ll be raising in subsequent hearings.

I hope legislative committees don’t send any of these bills to the floors for debate without substantially rewriting them to protect the interests of the state.

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Looking Beyond

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(Looking inward has its value but only for a while.  Better worlds are made by looking outward, looking beyond ourselves, looking to what can be for others.  It is called “vision,” and Dr. Frank Crane returns to this Monday space with a reflection for us and a hope we might offer to others as he gives us—)

A PRAYER FOR VISION

O Lord, open my eyes.

Cure my blindness that I may see past the tall buildings of cities and perceive the souls thereof, past the dark material into the luminous spiritual, past the hard things visible until the fluid, eternal things invisible.

All about me are the barriers that cut off men’s view of the wide vistas. Make my eyes to  have X-ray power to pierce through, and to be like telescopes to see affair.

Let me see beyond the quick satisfaction of hate to the long joy of forgiveness.

Let me see beyond appetite to the pleasure of self-control.

Let me see beyond greed to the luxury of giving.

Let me not love the one woman less, but through her the welfare of all women.

All around and about my own children stand innumerable children everywhere; may my vision reach them, that I may strive to live for them also.

Let me see past revenge unto the strength and wisdom of forgiveness.

Let me see past binding price to sunny healthfulness of humility.

Let me see past profit to usefulness.

Past successes to self-approval;

Past passion to poise;

Pas the heat of desire to the light of renunciation;

Past the glare of power to the abiding beauty of service;

Past the rank, poisonous growth of self to the fragrance and flowers of unself.

Take my life out of the narrow pit and set up upon a high mountain.

I want to see, to see, and not forever to be a prisoner of prejudice, a bat of blind custom, a mote of ignorance, a convict in the penitentiary of fear, a frightened rat in the house of superstition.

Let me see beyond the boundaries of my country until all the world;

Past competition to cooperation, past war to world government;

Past party to patriotism,

Past patriotism to humanity.

Let me see past the night to the renewing dawn;

Past gloom to glory, past death to eternal life, past the finite to the infinite;

Past men and things and events to God.