Author Archives: bpriddy

Donnie and the press

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(An Elton John tune has been going through your observer’s mind for the last few days)

Donald Trump doesn’t like reporters. “You know my opinion of the press—very low,” he said at a recent press conference. “The media is among the most dishonest groups of people I’ve ever met,” he has said. “Seventy-five percent is absolutely dishonest, absolute scum, scum,” he has proclaimed.

“The media frankly is made up of people—in many cases, not in all cases—who are not good people,” he said. “I think the political press is among the most dishonest people that I’ve ever known…I find the political press to be unbelievably dishonest.”

Just to set the tone of this entry early, let it be known that this observer is proud to have been “scum” for more than a half-century. It is, believe it or not, a strange badge of honor given by people such as Donald Trump to carry the label of not being “good people.”

One might be tempted to respond, “That’s true. Of course, do not forget that people are known for the company that they keep. And guess who we’ve been keeping company with.”   But that would be snarky and unprofessional and will be left unsaid.

Trump’s attitude means we are doing our jobs. And people like Donald Trump don’t believe we should do our jobs, which is questioning the honesty and credibility of people such as Donald Trump.

Trump seems to think his characterizations of the press will (a) make his followers love him even more without reservation and (b) intimidate the press.   We don’t know if any of his most loyal adherents will ever be bothered by the things they are learning from those of us whom Trump despises but we do know that efforts to intimidate the press don’t work. Good reporters don’t back off, especially when people such as Trump have no responses to their questions beyond name-calling.

Trump has threatened to change libel laws if he’s elected President so he can sue reporters more easily. He regularly ignores the fact that he is not running for dictator, but is running for an office that is only one-third of government and that he cannot by himself determine what the law is.

One thing journalists know above all else about libel law is that truth is an absolute defense. That standard is terribly unwelcome to people such as Donald Trump who seem to think truth should be defined as whatever falls from their lips.

What triggered the newest broadside was solid reporting by David Farenthold of the Washington Post. You recall Trump bragged in January at an event he held when he skipped an Iowa Caucus debate that he had raised six million dollars for veterans’ groups in one hour, including one-million dollars he personally donated.

He lied.

He and his campaign have now admitted, in fact, that the total amount raised in the last five months is not six million dollars but 5.6, even with the million dollars Trump finally did contribute—late last month.

The Post did a lot of spade work to discover only half of that amount had been distributed to veterans’ groups by early May. And Trump had NOT contributed one-million dollars in January. He wrote a check May 24th, the day more distributions were made—after Farenthold started asking questions that Trump’s people either refused to answer or tried to squirm out of answering. Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks retorted, “If the media spent half as much time highlighting the work of these groups and how our veterans have been so mistreated, rather than trying to disparage Mr. Trump’s generosity for a totally unsolicited gesture for which he had no obligation, we would all be better for it.”

The response is a cheap and completely unoriginal one that is not uncommon when reporters start pressing candidates for the truth. Attack the questioner for asking the question. Ms. Hicks conveniently ignores the reams of stories that have been written about mistreatment of veterans, whether by the VA or even in Arlington National Cemetery, and more reams of stories written every year about the work of local and national veterans’ organizations. Mr. Trump’s “generosity” was not expressed in January, when he said it was, but was only expressed (for lack of a better word) in May after Farenthold started asking questions and others started picking up the story. An “unsolicited gesture for which he had no obligation” is a curious phrase, certainly. Was it an “unsolicited gesture” or was it a well-staged event to take the spotlight away from a debate he dodged with his opponents? Is there no obligation when one says in January that he has contributed one-million dollars—but he hadn’t?

There is every indication that questions about Trump’s character (and Hillary Clinton’s character as well) will only intensify, not because the press has a vendetta against them (some undoubtedly do, as some undoubtedly are apologists) but because the stakes are high and the spotlight must be harsh.

So let’s be clear. To Donald Trump, fair press coverage is any coverage that lets him spout, unchallenged, anything that he says as gospel.   Those who don’t believe that is the role of the press are “scum.”

Forty years ago, when the Arab oil embargo drove up energy prices and inflation was leading to home loan rates of almost twenty percent, Joe Teasdale won the Missouri governorship by promising to lower utility rates and fire the Public Service Commission, which sets the rates for state-regulated utilities. He knew it was economically impossible to lower utility rates and legally impossible to fire the members of the PSC. But it was a populist message that resonated just enough for him to get into office. He referred to those of us in the Capitol press corps who had questioned him repeatedly on the issue as “jaded.”

At his first press conference after his election, he found himself facing several Capitol reporters wearing pins reading “Jaded J. C. Reporter.” It was a pin reporters were proud to wear and some of those reporters, now long gone from the Capitol, still have those pins.

Perhaps it’s time the reporters covering the Trump campaign started wearing pins with the word “scum” on them.   It would be an honor to have one.

And it would be a message to the man on the stage that name-calling will not stop fact-checking, and will not give a free pass to demagoguery.

See Spot(s) Run

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Your faithful observer is starting to see spots before his eyes.

“Spots” is broadcast-ese for “commercials.”  Political commercials.  Most particularly, Republican candidates for governor.  Three of them were almost cheek-to-jowl in one of the late night shows the other night.

The timing of two of the commercials was—uh—awkward, shall we say?

Only about forty-eight hours after the Orlando incident, Eric Greitens was blowing up something with (what appears to these eyes unfamiliar with weapons) a military-style assault rifle.  His solution to politics-as-usual is to fire about 13 shots in two seconds until something he is shooting at explodes.  Some folks we have talked think it was poor manners to continue running these spots in the immediate wake of the Orlando tragedy.

Catherine Hanaway uses a shotgun to also blast “career politicians” while touting the mom, home, and apple pie virtues and claiming that she “passed” a law expanding gun rights (to be honest, SHE didn’t pass it, the legislature did). And the question arises with her commercial too—whether it was poor taste to brag about expanding gun rights in the wake of Orlando. It might seem odd to some that she criticizes career politicians after a career that began as a manager of Senator Bond’s campaign in northeast Missouri in 1993, election to the Missouri House in ’98, her extensive work recruiting candidates and donors to help Republicans gain control of the House, her term as Speaker, her losing candidacy for Secretary of State in 2004 and her subsequent political appointment as federal prosecutor in eastern Missouri under the George W. Busch administration.

Compared to those two is John Brunner, who so far has advertised nothing more than his promise to create more jobs and an emphasis that he’s so rich he “can’t be bought.” We’ll wait to see if he shows anything indicating he has something else to offer or any specifics about how he can create more jobs in a state where the unemployment rate is just above four percent, a figure that fits several definitions of “full employment.”

We didn’t see a Peter Kinder spot while Greitens, Hanaway, and Brunner were hoping late night viewers would find something significant in guns and generalities.  But he had been on the air earlier attacking the unmitigated evils of the Left, which is nothing new for him.

Perhaps the candidates will tell us in spots to come what they’ll do to solve Missouri’s problems—poor school funding, poor transportation funding, medical care and mental health services, whether they think significantly higher sales taxes are preferable to a graduated income tax, stuff like that requiring more than platitudes, diatribes, and firearms.

The campaigns by Hanaway, Brunner, and Greitens blasting career politicians certainly seem targeted at Kinder, who has been in office either as a Senator or Lieutenant Governor since 1993, the year that Hanaway became a campaign worker for Senator Bond.

Another spot thrown into the mix during that late night show regurgitates attack ads from Brunner’s 2012 Senate race, accusing him of not paying some taxes on time, setting up offshore tax-avoiding accounts, and refusing to make his tax returns public. The spot is backed by one of those character-assassinating super-PACS that lacks the courage to be honest about who is giving it money.   In this case, it’s something called LG-PAC.

Brunner admitted four years ago he and his company missed some payment deadlines.

And for an outfit that won’t reveal the source of its funding for this kind of advertising smears to criticize someone for considering his personal tax returns a private matter—and would YOU want your tax return made public?—is, to say the least, blatant hypocrisy.

LG is an organization that does have to tell the Internal Revenue Service who its donors are.  But Joe Mannies with St. Louis Public Radio, one of the state’s top and long-time political reporters, says the report apparently doesn’t have to be filed until after the August primary.  And don’t bet that LG will be willing to reveal what IT files with the IRS.

So what is LG-PAC?  Several reporters have tried to find out.  It’s registered with the Federal Elections Commission, not the Missouri Ethics Commission, although it is spending money on a state race.  It’s run by Kansas Citian Hank Monsees.

A check of its website indicates it has Brunner, Hanaway, and Grietens in its sights.  But it also has a picture of a smiling Kinder and a link to a newspaper article about one of Kinder’s positions.  Kinder disavows any knowledge of LG’s leanings although the webpage seems to tilt his way.

Scott Faughn at the Missouri Times has reported the outfit’s bank is located in Virginia and has no branches in Missouri.

LG isn’t alone is this swamp.  Mannies also notes American Bridges, which admits its largest contributor is financier George Soros, is most likely to support Democrats and liberal policies.  It’s targeting Senator Blunt.  Blunt, on the other hand, has Karl Rove’s One Nation Super PAC, which already has announced big spending on his behalf. Not connected to the Blunt campaign, of course, but it is unlikely to say anything nice about Blunt’s challenger, Secretary of State Jason Kander.

Another one is called Missouri Rising, an arm of America Rising. It already has done some anti-Chris Koster stuff.

The Missouri legislature and the United States Congress could expose who’s too gutless to openly admit supporting this kind of campaigning that only further weakens public confidence in the election and governmental process.

But gutless birds of a feather flock together. And neither the legislature nor the Congress wants to disturb gutless geese that lay golden eggs.

Five grams

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The state used five grams of pentobarbital in May to execute Earl Forrest, the 87th Missouri inmate executed by lethal injection since George Mercer died in the gas chamber at the old penitentiary more than twenty-seven years ago.  Mercer was executed in the gas chamber because the prison system did not have a place for lethal injections. Although gas was still an option, the gas chamber was no longer safe to use. It was good enough for the inmate’s experience but the chamber’s sealing gaskets were so bad that it was likely no witnesses would have been left alive to testify that he had been legally executed. The chairs were removed from the gas chamber and a gurney was placed inside for Mercer.  

Twenty-five men remain under death sentences in Missouri but it might be some time before your correspondent or someone else on behalf of the Missourinet goes back to Bonne Terre for another execution.  

Forrest was the 22nd execution these eyes have watched.  Those men were responsible for at least 36 murders.  Several, including Forrest, were considered likely killers in other states or were suspected but not charged in other Missouri murder cases. 

He killed three people, including a Dent County Deputy Sheriff, in a meth-related incident.  Death for Forrest came peacefully, a situation that seems unfair to many.  When the curtains around the execution room were opened, witnesses could see him lying on the medical gurney, his head turned toward those he had invited as his witnesses.  He, as has been the case with all of the others we’ve seen, was tightly strapped down so that only his head and feet could move.  Although the time of death was set at 7:18 p.m., he might have died sooner.  He stopped wiggling his feet and talking to his witnesses only about 45 seconds after the drug started flowing.   The curtains are closed after five minutes to let the medical staff check for signs of life, then reopened when they have certified the inmate is dead.  

The Attorney General’s office calls witnesses a few days later to see if we saw any signs of suffering or pain, just in case death penalty opponents try to claim the drug causes the recipient to suffer.  For the record, we have never seen any of the 22 men we have watched indicate any sign of pain and suffering.  Forrest showed no indication of discomfort.

Missouri used to use a three-drug procedure to produce death.  But it now uses only one because of court rulings and industry actions against the use of FDA-regulated drugs for executions.

These 112 men, living and dead—the 87 executed and the 25 waiting—are not the only ones who have been sentenced to death by lethal injection in Missouri.  The Corrections Department says 181 men and five women have been given that sentence. What about the others?  

The department gives reporters an information packet at each execution that includes a list of the disposition (a pretty cold word, but we are talking about murder cases here) of all of those sentenced to death.  You may interpret what we are about to tell through whatever lens you view the death penalty.  For some, it will be an indication that the system works.  For others, it will be an indication that it is flawed and might have led to executions of innocent men.   Some, perhaps many, of those who have been re-sentenced to life without parole won new trials and took a plea bargain instead of risking another death sentence in a new trial. 

This stuff can get pretty complicated but we think we have a pretty good handle on the people who have been facing a death sentence but are not facing it now, and why.

Thirty-nine inmates have gotten new trials that resulted in sentences of life without parole.  One of them has since died.  Those surviving range in age from 36 to 76. Two are women.

Five more were sentenced to life with a chance for parole after fifty years. They are now 55-68 years old. Although one is now in his 37th year in prison, he is not thirteen years from possible parole because his new sentence came after a new trial and the clock is resent with that new sentence.  He’s 61 now and still has a long time to go.

Four men were resentenced to life for a lesser crime, second-degree murder.  Two, ages 46 and 55, remain in prison.  One completed that lesser sentence in 2010 and was released. The fourth died in prison.

Fifteen inmates facing the death penalty have died of natural causes.  They were 33 to 82 years old. Two were women.

One inmate became a prison murder victim four years after he arrived in a state prison.

Three have committed suicide. One killed himself at the age of 61, ten months after being sentenced. One died at 31.  The third, a woman, committed suicide in her cell at age 43 just a few hours after a jury had convicted her in her second trial.  

One inmate, whose conviction was reversed not long after being put in prison, was transferred to a federal prison on federal charges and remains there. If he’s released, he still faces the murder charge in Missouri.

A half-dozen have been released, some after their convictions were reversed, including one who was retried and convicted of manslaughter and then released after finishing the manslaughter sentence.

Some inmates are awaiting new trials and we’ll assign them to a category after those trials take place. 

Four inmates are under a “special circumstances” category.   The death sentence for Roosevelt Pollard is under a stay because he’s been declared mentally incompetent.  His conviction remains and if his condition improves, he still could be executed.  He’s been in prison thirty years and is now 53. 

We’re not sure where to put David Barnett although he could be the fortieth inmate in the “life without parole” category.  His conviction was reversed last year by a federal judge and sent back to the lower court.  The prosecution had 180 days to file a request for a new death sentence. It appears that time has elapsed, meaning Barnett automatically gets life without parole.

Two inmates achieved “special circumstances” status under Governor Mel Carnahan.

Darrell Mease, who murdered a man, his wife, and their paraplegic son, was scheduled for execution January 27, 1999.  That would have been the second day of Pope John Paul II’s visit to St. Louis.  The Missouri Supreme Court re-set the date for February 10 after realizing the situation with January.  The Pope, in a private conversation with Carnahan, urged him to show mercy to Mease.  Carnahan, who had approved 26 executions by then, later said that he could not resist making an exception with Mease after the Pope looked him in the eye and asked for mercy.  So Mease shows up as one of the 39 on the “life without parole” list.

William Boliek, now 60 years old, was to be executed in 1997.  But two days before he was to die, Carnahan ordered a three-member board to investigate claims that his court defense had been inadequate.  The board submitted a report to Carnahan who was killed in a plane crash in 2000 before acting on its recommendations.  The wording of Carnahan’s stay is such that only he could have lifted it. Governor Holden asked the Missouri Supreme Court to vacate the stay but the court refused.

It’s hard to predict how many of the 25 still under a death sentence will be executed.  All still have enough appeals remaining to lead to speculation that Forrest will be the only execution this year.  Questions about the pentobarbital used for executions remain.  Two days after Forrest’s execution, Pfizer announced steps to keep any of its products from being used for executions.  Industry observers say that shuts the door on access to open-market drugs used in that process.

The Corrections Department refuses to identify the source of the drug it uses although some sources say Missouri gets it from a compounding pharmacy in Oklahoma.  Texas and Georgia also get the drug from compounding pharmacies. 

Licensed pharmacists, licensed doctors, or a third party supervised by a licensed pharmacist can mix or change the ingredients of a drug to tailor medication for a specific purpose.  Sometimes a patient needs medicine in liquid form although it is available on the open market only as a pill the person cannot swallow.  Or maybe the medication has a dye in it that causes an allergic reaction.   The compounded drug is not under Food and Drug Administration regulation, meaning the FDA cannot verify its safety or its effectiveness.

Regardless, five grams of pentobarbital does the job.  Effectively.

Tearing up the Senate

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Work crews have started tearing seats out of the place where visitors to the state Senate have watched floor activities since 1919 so the Senate can get those pesky reporters farther away from being able to see and hear what is going on. Or not.

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Seats installed during the restoration of the chamber in 2001 were stacked along a fourth floor hallway wall when we dropped by the other day.  We haven’t heard what will be done with them although it seems the most sensible thing would be to store them somewhere safe so they could be put back in place when a less-vindictive mood runs the place.  We won’t rehash what that’s all about here.  We’ve flailed at that subject in earlier entries that you can find in the archives.

We have preserved a historic moment in this process—the last time (for now, we hope) that members of the Capitol press corps were allowed to sit at what has been the press table since the earliest days of the building.

senate press table2

That’s Bob Watson of the Jefferson City News Tribune, the senior Senate reporter, in the blue suit on the right.  Summer Ballentine of the Associated Press is on the other side of the table, in the orange jacket.   Most of the others are Senate staff members except for the fellow next to Summer.

That’s Senate President Pro Tem Ron Richard, who decided earlier this year that people such as Bob and Summer are so undeserving to cover the Senate from that table anymore that the Senate will spend $12,000 for each of the ten positions around the table to move them and their colleagues to the gallery on the other side of the chamber.

Senator Richard lectured his colleagues during the session about honoring Senate traditions and rules.

One of the Senate rules is that Senators will not sit at the press table when the Senate is in session.  We think it was in session when this picture was taken.  Majority Floor Leader Mike Kehoe was in the Chair.

Will the Senate behave any better or any worse now that the scourge of the Press is removed from its sight?   Will the reporting of the actions of the Senate be better or worse because reporters now will occupy space where spectators have been able to sit for 97 years?

senate press table3

The first test will come during the September veto session.  It would be good, however, for the Senate to remember that the Press might now be out of sight—-but it shouldn’t be out of mind.

 

 

A religious experience, not a crime

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We’re going to wade into the murky waters of religion and politics today in search of reason and logic.

We’ve had some time to mentally chew on Representative Tila Hubrecht’s thought in the waning days of the legislative session that a pregnancy resulting from a rape is a “silver lining” from God. All kinds of liberal thinkers and organizations have jumped all over her assertion made during House debate on the bill saying a woman’s egg is a person just a soon as a man’s sperm hits it even if the circumstances leading to the presence of the sperm are violent. The bill passed the House but didn’t have enough time to cause trouble in the Senate before adjournment.

The personhood bill did not contain the usual exemptions that allow abortions in cases of rape, incest, or to protect the life of the woman. “It’s not up to us to say, ‘No, just because there was a rape, they cannot exist,’” Rep. Hubrecht said, the “they” referring to a person created by the sperm and egg. “Sometimes bad things happen—and they’re horrible things, but sometimes God can give us a silver lining through the birth of a child.” And she added, “When God gives life, he does so because there’s a reason, no matter what. I’ve met and talked with the different people who have been conceived by rape. There is a reason for their life.” We were not there when she said those things so we don’t know if she gave examples of the reasons for those lives.

She apparently is not alone in her feelings in the Missouri legislature and elsewhere. The Charleston Gazette in West Virginia reported about the same time that Delegate (that’s what they call Representatives in West Virginia) Brian Kurcaba said during a committee hearing, “Obviously rape is awful. What is beautiful is the child that could come from this.”

In Indiana, U. S. Senate candidate Richard Mourdock said in 2012, “I think that even when life begins in the horrible situation of rape, that is something that God intended to happen.” Mourdock lost his race.

All three of these folks might be surprised to consider what they are really saying. If God intended pregnancy to occur, GOD IS INVOLVED IN FAMILY PLANNING! And we pretty well know what these folks think of organizations and individuals offering family planning advice.

Of course, all of this discussion is pointless because Congressman Todd Akin assured us during his Senate bid four years ago that a woman’s body can “shut the whole thing down” in cases of “legitimate rape.” He argued, as Rep. Hubrecht has argued, that the punishment should be of the rapist, not of the fetus. The Akin theory, however, seems to indicate pregnancy can only occur during illegitimate rape, whatever that is.

Not long after Hubrecht’s comments, Octavio Chorino and Peter Greenspan offered an op-ed piece in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch agreeing with Hubrecht and the others that “violence against women is unacceptable.” But they found the “notion that good may come of such a violation to be dangerous at best…and any suggestion that there is a bright side to sexual violence is an offense to all survivors.”

They noted other consequences of rape including transmission of sexually transmitted diseases as well as extensive physical and psychological injuries that can affect a woman for the rest of her life. “These consequences are very real and they should not be diminished by the claim that any rape has a silver lining,” they wrote. Unlike Hubrecht, Kurcaba, Mourdock, and Akin, these professionals have had real-world experience with rape and incest victims. “Exposing sexual assault victims to the risks inherent in pregnancy and childbirth is effectively punishing her for her own assault. This is unacceptable,” they said.

Chorino is the president of the Missouri Section Advisory Committee of the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Greenspan, also a doctor, is the group’s legislative chair. But what do they know? They didn’t even address the issue of God’s will and Rep. Hubrecht’s inclusion of that issue takes the debate beyond the practical issues on which Chorino and Greenspan based their article.

Their experiences and their observations are not likely to concern the “silver lining” believers anyway.   We have seen no indication that those who want Missouri to have the strongest anti-abortion standards in the nation care much about the second life involved—that of the rape or incest victim.   They certainly didn’t show it during debate on the personhood bill in this election session of the legislature.

The comments, “When God gives life, he does so because there’s a reason, no matter what” and “sometimes God can give us a silver lining through the birth of a child” began to percolate in our head on a recent trip. You know how the mind sometimes looks for something to wonder about other than the many miles yet to go. In this case the mind decided to test the validity of an idea by taking it on a logical line and then asked a simple question:

“If God has a reason for causing a pregnancy through a man’s sexual act with an unwilling woman because ‘when God gives life there’s a reason no matter what,’ why should the man face a criminal charge for what logically is an act of God?”

Then the mind went on. “When does God decide a pregnancy should result from the rape or incest? While the act is in progress? Or does God decide immediately after the event that this is an opportunity to create a life? Or—-

“If God has a reason for a rape or incest-caused pregnancy, does it not follow that God had a reason for the rape or incest?

“If God gives life, and does so because there’s a reason, no matter what, what is that reason? Is it punishment for something the woman or the young girl did that was wrong in God’s eyes? Or, conversely, is it some kind of reward for doing something good such as allowing oneself to be a rape or incest victim, or is it a reward for the rapist or the person committing the incest?

“How can a God-blessed result occur except through a God-inspired act?”

The driver, not being a Biblical scholar, could not cite any examples from the Bible of a God-inspired result that did not begin with a God-inspired or directed act so he did not reply.

“But,” said the mind, “Don’t supporters of the position need to provide a definitive logical answer that does not limit an omnipotent God? If God has the power to create physical life, does not God have to ordain the circumstances under which that life is physically created?

“And doesn’t God have to ordain the circumstances under which the life is physically created because the life would not be created without that violent act?

“And if that is the case, isn’t the argument severely weakened that the perpetrator of the act should be punished rather than the life created being ‘punished’ because, as she said, ‘There is a reason for their life?’ Are not the perpetrator and the new life equal partners in this process and therefore equally blameless?

“In a climate that argues that religious freedom needs more protection, how can it be logically argued that an act, even a violent one, that is motivated by God’s decision to begin a new life no matter what should not be recognized as a religious act, not a criminal act?

“Is rape or incest that creates a life, for which God has a reason no matter what, therefore an act of God?

“And further, should not the woman logically forgive her rapist or her incestuous relative because her STD and her physical and psychological injuries were necessary to create the pregnancy God had a reason to create under these circumstances no matter what?”

And the driver finally responded to his mind out loud, “Your arguments are interesting. But they are flawed because you use the word, ‘logically.’ And logic seems to be the farthest thing from the thinking of those who support the ‘silver lining’ concept.”

And the driver tuned the radio to the old-time radio channel that was re-broadcasting a 1951 Jack Benny show and both of them drove on.

 

Orthodontic thoughts on ethics

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Well, the legislature passed four ethics bills this year, didn’t it? 

So what? 

Missouri went into this legislative session as the only state that did not limit lobbyist gifts to lawmakers, had no cooling-off period before legislators could return to the halls to lobby former colleagues, and no limits on campaign contributions. 

One out of three ain’t bad, as somebody who got a “D” in elementary school English might have said.  But while the legislature deserves a little credit for passing four ethics bills this year, they were all singles. Lawmakers hardly swung for the fences.   They didn’t strike out, certainly, but they didn’t hit much more than bloop singles.  We still don’t have limits on lobbyist gifts and the last thing in the world the powers that be in the legislature wanted to do this election year was address campaign contribution limits.  

But they can campaign on how they cleaned up government.  They won’t campaign on the idea that they only used a whisk broom, however.

The bills passed this year say legislators have to wait six months from the end of their terms before they can become lobbyists.  That means they can’t represent you and me at the capitol during the next legislative session (assuming you and I are the ones who would hire them; there are plenty of others who might).  But by the time the veto session rolls around in September, 2017, those whose terms run out in January can be renewing old acquaintances or augmenting the lobbyist corps putting on the pressure for veto overrides, or laying the groundwork for the 2018 session. And it’s likely that a majority of those with whom they served will still be around, particularly those who will be leaders by then.  

Lawmakers also decided they should not be allowed to hire fellow lawmakers as paid political consultants, a bill triggered by one incident a couple of years ago.  It’s okay legislation but this is hardly a political cancer cure.

Another bill requires candidate campaign finance reports to be filed electronically with the state ethics commission.  Some candidates have utilized a provision in existing law to escape filing with the state by filing with local election authorities.  This bill closes the least shortcoming in the current campaign finance law that eliminated all campaign donation limits.  When that bill was passed, the sponsor said eliminating limits was just fine as long as there was proper reporting of donations.  But the legislature ignored the T. Rex in the room this year when it did not require non-profit political action committees, the Super PACs, to report to the ethics commission who was providing them with money that is often used to bludgeon candidates targeted by big donors who don’t want anybody to know they are behind the so-called dark money in politics today. And they didn’t reinstate any limits on direct donations to candidates or to parties. 

The fourth one says former office-holders can’t invest leftover campaign funds and must dissolve their campaign committees before they can become lobbyists six months after leaving office.  An office-holder who has a large pot of leftover campaign money cannot invest it and use the return on the investment to fund other candidates, for example. 

Bloop singles that fall between the shortstop and the left fielder.   Why aren’t they at least line drives? 

Read the bills: HB1983, HB1979, HB2203, and HB1474.   Look for any penalty provisions. 

We’ll save you the drudgery. Folks, there are no penalties in any of these bills. They seem to be toothless.

If Representative Furd’s term ends with the swearing-in of his successor and now-former Representative Furd shows up in the hallway an hour later lobbying on behalf of the Missouri Association of Left-handed Trombonists while still having $43.92 in his campaign account, what will happen?  Will legislators refuse to let him buy them dinners (the bill limiting lobbyist gifts failed this year, you recall)?  Will Thelonious Furd—friends will now call him “Thel” instead of “The gentleman from Melvin County”—be shunned and find himself standing alone in a third floor alcove?  Will former colleagues block his text messages on the cell phones they might check while debating whether music stores should be able to refuse to sell mouthpieces to gay musicians because of a sincerely held belief?   Will somebody be able to get a court order that says he has to stand in the Capitol yard?   

Was the Missouri Ethics Commission given any authority to write rules dealing with the return of Thel?   Not in this bill. 

If Thel decides he wants to be a campaign consultant for a sitting representative with dreams of glory as Melvin County Administrator, is there a penalty for either him or his former colleague?   We didn’t see one. 

And if he files a report with his county clerk showing that he still has $43.92 instead of filing it with the ethics commission, what severe penalty does he face?   Ah!  There he might be in some trouble because the ethics commission can fine people for not filing proper campaign finance reports and THIS new law appears to put him under that jurisdiction.  

All of this speculation comes from a common citizen living on a quiet street in Jefferson City who used to be able to walk over to the sponsors of these bills and check the teeth in any such propositions. There might be some provisions in other sections of the statutes that would be the teeth for these bills but, from this lofty perch it seem the best we can we can say to most of this year’s ethics legislation is, “Nice gums.” 

The best government money can buy

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A television show in the days when TV was black-and-white dramatized what happened to people when someone gave them a million dollars, all taxes already paid, to spend as they wished.    That was back when a million dollars was A MILLION DOLLARS!!!!!

I would sometimes sit in study hall trying to figure out how to spend one million dollars.  Just spend it.  Not invest it in something that would gain value.   Just spend the whole darned thing. 

That was back in the days when a new Cadillac cost more than two-thirds as much as my father earned in a year in a pretty good job as a district manager for Massey-Harris, the farm equipment company.  We had a three-year old DeSoto. 

I struggled to think of how I could just blow a million bucks.

One thing that never occurred to me was that I could buy a political candidate.  Or an office-holder.  They were a lot cheaper then.  And I did live in Illinois.  Governor William G. Stratton was a few years away yet from being accused of tax evasion. Unlike several of his successors, however, he was acquitted of his charges. 

What must it be like to have an unlimited amount of money—a million dollars seemed unlimited to me all those years ago?  What must it be like to just sit down one day and write out, say, almost SEVEN million dollars to front groups that can use that money to, shall we say, “favor” certain candidates in the August and November elections?  Or the front group can use the money to personally and politically damage people who won’t sell out?  

Rex Sinquefield and his wife wrote a bunch of checks one day last week. The Associated Press says the checks went to the Missouri Club for Growth, Missourians for Excellence in Government, and the Great St. Louis Committee.  Someday we will reflect on what committees like those really should be named. 

Do you ever wonder, as we sometimes do, what it must be like to just open a checkbook and write a check for $2,800,000 as easily as you might write a check for thirty dollars’ worth of groceries?   Just write it, sign it, and rip it out of the book.

Or maybe $500,000 for the Eric Schmitt for State Treasurer Campaign.  Or another $500,000 for the Kurt Schaefer for Attorney General Campaign.   Or five checks totaling $2,133,128 to convince voters that people in St. Louis and Kansas City should stop paying the earnings taxes that provide the majority of city operational funding?   And when you lose, well, it’s just money.

Just sit down and dash them off. 

We haven’t mentioned that the Sinquefields have donated all of $5,000 (note, only one comma and only four numbers) to the Missouri Republican Party.  Why support a party that encourages all kinds of people to run for public office when you can write a check that supports only YOUR kind of people.   

It’s June. It’s time for the mud and the money to start flowing in mass quantities.  We wonder if many voters will begin to consider mass quantities of money flowing to particular candidates or to particular causes are toxic.  We wonder if many voters will decide the beneficiaries of mass quantities of money or who benefit from the mud thrown at opposing candidates by political action committees financed by those mass quantities of money are good reasons to think somebody is trying to buy somebody else and is using their big-dollar checks to get something they want that the rest of us can’t afford to bid for. 

We wonder if many voters will look at the beneficiaries of these funds and wonder if those candidates can really be THEIR kind of people or if they’re just the kind of people that a few can afford to put in favorable positions.  

If we get the best government that money can buy, be worried that it could be the kind of government the rest of us cannot afford to have, perhaps run by those who will be less responsive to the rest of us because we are not THEIR kind of people.

The Mysterious 4

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We’re making our traditional May trip east this week, a trip we’ve made almost every year since 1954.   Thirty-three people who were a long ways from being born then will be racing to see who wins the 100th Indianapolis 500.

If you’re looking for some of the usual political analysis that usually occupies this space, forget it today.  If you don’t care about humankind’s eternal quest to be faster than someone else, move along.  As Lt. Frank Drebin of Police Squad fame used to say, “There’s nothing to see here.” There’s more to life than politics.  One of those things is racin’.

We’re always looking for Missouri story angles when we cover the 500 for the Missourinet.  This is the story of a Missouri angle and a Speedway mystery.

The Indianapolis Motor Speedway is America’s oldest track built for the racing of automobiles.  People were racing cars a decade or more before the first race track in the world to be called a Speedway held its first races in 1909.  But those races were held on roads and streets or on tracks originally intended for racing horses.

The first Indianapolis 500 was in 1911, a time when Ray Harroun’s Marmon Wasp was considered the height of high-tech racing because he installed a rear-view mirror so he wouldn’t have to carry the weight of a riding mechanic who would tell him who was behind him, and because it had a tapered aerodynamic tail with a little fin on the back.

Races weren’t held in 1918 and 1942-45 because of wars.  Otherwise, a 500-mile race has been part of Memorial Day for generations of Americans.

One of the cars in the Speedway museum is Jim Rathmann’s winning Ken-Paul Special from 1960.  At least that’s what the sign in front of it says.

IMGP8717 (2)

It’s a design referred to as a roadster, a car with an engine that’s offset with the driveline running alongside the driver on the left side, not beneath him.  It let the cars corner better and have a lower center of gravity than the designs of 1911 that extended into the early 1950s. It was built by A. J. Watson, one of the wizards of race-car construction in that era.   It carries the number 4.

But is this really the car that won what has been called “the greatest two-man duel in 500 history?”

The 1960 race saw the lead change 29 times, mostly in the second half of the 200-lap race.  That record stood until modern aerodynamics and uniform chassis design led to 34 lead changes in 2012, and  broken in 2013 when there were 68.

Rodger Ward, the 1959 winner, led twenty of the first 95 laps. Rathmann led 33.  Pole-winner Eddie Sachs, 1952 champion Troy Ruttman, and Johnny Thompson split the other 42.  But from the time Rathmann moved back into the lead on the 96th lap, it was just him and Ward.

Rathmann and Ward swapped the lead fifteen times before Ward had to slow down with three laps left because he saw that he had worn his tires down to the cord.  He finished second, about thirteen seconds back. Ward won the race a second time in 1962 and remains one of three drivers in 500 history who finished in the top three six races in a row.

That was an era when the saying, “There are old race drivers and there are bold race drivers but there are no old, bold race drivers” as all too true.  Before that year was out, Johnny Thompson, Jimmy Bryan, and Al Herman—all starters in the race—were killed in racing crashes.  Tony Bettenhausen died in a practice crash at the Speedway not quite a year later.  Shorty Templeman was killed in 1962.  Don Branson was killed in 1966. And Eddie Sachs was killed with rookie Dave McDonald in the horrendous first-lap crash of 1964.

And 1964 brings us to the second part of the story.

St. Louis was celebrating its bicentennial that year and one of the cars in the race was Wally Weir’s Mobilgas Special driven to eighth place by Bob Harkey.

Harkey 1964

The car is now owned by race car collector Bob McConnell of Urbana, Ohio, who has restored it to its 1964 appearance, complete with the “St. Louis Bicentennial 1764-1964” logo on the right side of the engine cover.

He claims this is the car Jim Rathmann drove to victory in that epic duel with Rodger Ward.  Rathman drove the same car in 1961 and practiced with an inverted airfoil mounted over the cockpit in an early experiment to increase downforce.

Rathmann wing 1961

But the wing proved impractical and was discarded for the race. Rathmann also had it in the 1962 race.  Webster Groves (Mo.) driver Paul Russo couldn’t get it up to speed in 1963.  Harkey’s drive in it in 1964 was the last year it made the 500.

By then the roadster era was fading away as rear-engine cars took over.  Many of the roadsters were heavily modified to race as supermodified cars in the northeast at places like Sandusky, Ohio and Oswego, New York.   Eventually those designs became outmoded and many of the old roadsters were junked.  Several, however, have been put back together and restored.  And that’s the case with the Watson roadster that McConnell had at the Speedway last year.   He says the Speedway museum knows about his car and his claim of its lineage.

He was looking for Harkey to drop by to visit the car when we dropped by first.

https://youtu.be/OOD2nQKGRqI

A couple of things to note:  The tires on this car are not the kind of tires used in the races in the 1960s.  Those tires had little or no tread and they changed a great deal from this car’s first race in 1960 until its last race in 1964.

It might seem extremely dangerous to have the fuel filler cap so close to the exhaust pipe on the left side.  It was and that’s why one of the duties of a member of the pit crew as to slide an insulated cover over the exhaust pipe before the fuel hose was plugged in.  This car ran on methanol, a fuel that burns invisibly, so that insulated cover over the exhaust pipe was critical to safety.

The 1964 race is remembered as the last race in which gasoline-powered cars competed.  That was the year that McDonald’s gasoline-powered car crashed coming out of the fourth turn on the first lap and caught fire.  It bounced into the path of Eddie Sachs’ gasoline-fueled car and the collision caused a second, larger explosion.  Both drivers were killed. The race was stopped for the first time in its history.  Several other cars were damaged beyond repair and some of the other drivers suffered burns as they drove through the wreck site.  Parnelli Jones, who had won the race in 1963, bailed out of his methanol-fueled car later on pit road after a pit stop because it had caught fire. Methanol became the fuel of choice for this kind of racing after that tragic 500.  Racers now run on pure ethanol.

We talked to Speedway Historian Donald Davidson about the 4s—McConnell’s St. Louis Bicentennial car and the Speedway Museum’s Ken-Paul Special.  It’s a difficult issue, he told us, without coming down on either side.   It’s been a half-century since this Speedway devotee watched Jim Rathmann and Bob Harkey drive Watson roadsters with the number 4 on their noses.   A lot can happen to cars in those years.

The provenance of restored racing cars is not always easy to track.  By the time they’re available for restoration, they’ve been wrecked, modified, stuck on tops of buildings as advertising, left to gather dust in a shed—you name it.  They are basket cases sometimes—and the basket is missing a lot of parts, as Bob McConnell explained in his interview. Restoration sometimes means fabricating new pieces or finding parts from other wrecks that once were on a car like the one you’re restoring.   Both claims to the Rathmann car might have some legitimacy. And we join Donald not taking sides.

It’s good to be able to go into the museum and see so many of the cars we remember when they were the hottest, fastest things flashing past us with great roars, driven by legends and heroes.   But it’s also kind of melancholy because of those memories and the quietness of race cars on display. Not to get overly-dramatic about it, but it’s kind of the difference between seeing a living lion and standing next to a stuffed one.

Then there are people like Bob McConnell who not only restore racers such as Harkey’s St. Louis Bicentennial car, but run them.  Part of the celebration of the Speedway’s centennial era has been its invitation to people like McConnell to bring their restored racers back to the track, not only to display them, but to fire them up and get them back on the oval—and perhaps running in triple digits again—as you heard, he doesn’t know how fast they go because there’s no speedometer, but they don’t just cruise around.  They’re back for 2016. Unfortunately, Harkey won’t be.  He died last January.

We understand the Speedway is going to fire up the Marmon Wasp for the 100th race and have it bellow its way around the track again.  Neither it nor any of those old cars will ever push the limits of mechanical operation and human mortality as they once did.  But to see them, to hear them on the race track within hours of when today’s cars do push the limits does quicken the heart.

Wasp (ims)

Ray Harroun’s Marmon Wasp averaged about 74.6 miles an hour in 1911.  Look at some pictures of the cars people drove on the streets in 1911 and with a straight face say you’d be glad to drive one of those down a road at 75 mph today for even a couple of minutes, let alone for almost seven hours at an AVERAGE of 75.  On 1911 tires.

In 1954, when these eyes watched cars at Indianapolis for the first time, they beheld the first official lap run at 140 miles an hour on pole day.  One lap on the two-and-a-half-mile track by Jack McGrath at 141.033 (we remember things like that). Bill Vukovich won the race that year at 130.840.    Three years ago these same eyes, with bifocals now, watched Tony Kanaan go 500 miles at 187.433, the current record.   Whatever you might think about automobile racing, what the men and women on that track in this era are doing is astonishing, as astonishing as what their predecessors did.

Each era is filled with those astonishing performances.  We’re going back this week to savor the history and the history that will be made.

This year’s car with the number 4 is driven by Buddy Lazier who won the race twenty years ago.  His 1996 car is in the museum, too.

It will take about as long to travel from Jefferson City to Indianapolis as it took Ray Harroun to win the first 500.   And then on race day, somebody will cover the distance between a western suburb of Kansas City to Indianapolis is less than three hours.

Astonishing.

(photo credits: Bob Priddy; Indianapolis Motor Speedway; thisdayinmotorsportshistory.blogspot.com; Indianapolis Motor Speedway)

Statistics

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The end of a legislative session gives us, the voters, a chance to evaluate what we hath wrought for ourselves through those we have chosen to represent us.   Sometimes what we hath wrought is writ in numbers that are Practical (as opposed to theoretical) Political Science 101.  Lend ear and eye to today’s lesson that begins with statistics.

The Senate Information Office gives out a summary of the legislative session minutes after adjournment each May, a series of numbers that probably wouldn’t mean much to Mr. or Mrs. Joe Missouri if they got these numbers in their mailboxes.  However, let’s spend some time thinking about those numbers and what they might tell us.  The numbers are only part of the story of about seventy days of a legislative session, of course.

What passed and what didn’t pass is the real measure of a session and the motivations of its participants.  Senator Emory Melton once told your observer that passing legislation is only part of the job.  Defeating legislation is as important. Capitol Press Corps members exhaust themselves each year telling that part of the story.  They have to believe that readers, listeners, and viewers care enough to pay attention to their stories. There are times when fatigue is so heavy that only that belief keeps them going.

Two-thousand-forty bills were introduced this year (1,457 of them in the House).  The Senate passed 113 of its 583 bills.  Twenty-five of them were consent bills, non-controversial measures.  That leaves 88 bills that faced confrontational debate, that faced efforts to amend them, and passed with recorded votes of the Senators.  Those 88 bills represent only fifteen percent of all bill introduced in the Senate. Of those eighty-eight, only 57 were approved by the House and sent to the Governor for signature or veto.

The Senate received 254 of the 1,457 House bills.  Of that 254, sixteen were appropriations bills.  Passing a state budget is one of only two responsibilities the legislature has each year.  Actually, its responsibility is even less than that.  It is charged with paying the state’s debts and setting aside money for public schools.  But the legislature could have gone home after providing the money to keep state services flowing to Missourians.  Eighty-one of the 254 surviving House bills were approved by the Senate and sent to the Governor.

Of the 2,040 bills introduced, only 138 made it all the way through the session.  That’s only 6.8 percent.

But there’s more.

Twenty-eight proposed constitutional amendments were introduced in the Senate, 59 more in the House.  Of those 87 proposed changes to the state constitution, only one got final approval.

So, as we interpret the Senate Information Office scoresheet, 139 of 2,127 measures introduced were able to get majority votes in both chambers, 6.5%.

The raw figures are a little deceiving because (a) several bills were identical and (b) several bills passed were combinations of several different bills.  But still, the number of issues that got overall legislative approval is quite small.

Some will look at that final number and think the legislature has wasted a lot of time and money.  While there might be a certain amount of truth in that suggestion (why the House and the Senate each have their own information offices AND partisan information staffs for each party always struck us as an extravagance), the numbers speak of the legislative process.

Sometimes the title of a final version of a bill is an indication of the difficult path legislation follows.  Here’s a pretty extreme example:  CCR#2 SS/SCS/HS/HCS/HBs 3021, 2979, and 3054 with SA1, SA2, SA5, SA6.

Theoretical House Bill 3021 went through a committee hearing.  Other bills had identical wording and also were heard. Several amendments were offered, leading the committee to combine the amendments and the identical bills into a new House Committee Substitute for 3021 and the other two proposals.  During floor debate, several more amendments were added so the sponsor introduced a new substitute on the House floor incorporating all of the amendments to make the bill a cleaner proposal for the Senate to consider.  A similar process happened in the Senate, where a committee combined several committee amendments into a Senate Committee substitute bill that picked up more amendments during debate, leading the floor handler to incorporate the changes into a single clean Senate Substitute that was approved with even more amendments, at least four of the six (actually there had been eight) that were offered being adopted.

The changed bill went back to the House where the sponsor wasn’t sure of the acceptability of the Senate changes so he asked for the formation of a conference committee made up of four members of the House and four members of the Senate to consider the changes and recommend a final version it thought would be acceptable to both chambers. In this case, the first conference committee report faced enough uncertainty that it was sent back for another review and a second report indicated the amended Senate substitute was, indeed, acceptable.  Since the bill originated in the House, it had to be approved there first before the final version was approved by the Senate and sent to the Governor for his consideration.

Not all bills go through that gauntlet but creating the laws that will govern six-plus million people in Missouri every second of every day can be a painstaking process.  Yes, there are times when even more pains need to be taken to get it right, but most of the time the process works.  And yes, sometimes the process works better for some Missourians than for others and, yes, more could be done if less time was spent on fighting over issues that pander to one voting bloc or another.   But it is all part of a process that gives elected humanity equal opportunities to display its worst nature as well as its best. And in the end, voters have a chance to display their worst and best natures and their decisions are reflected in the way the process functions.

In a competition of ideas, ideals, agendas, and ideologies, the gauntlet bills must run is exacting and highly competitive.  We’ve commented from time to time that it is a miracle that anything is accomplished.

Watching that process or being part of that process is an absorbing thing that draws you in and won’t let you go.  And then the gavel falls at 6 p.m. on a Friday evening and the numbers are added up and the pressure goes away and the process has more or less worked again.

When you don’t have to be quiet

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Spent some time at the University of Missouri-Columbia the other day and picked up the school year’s last edition of the student newspaper, The Maneater. A special part of the paper was devoted to the turbulent year on the Columbia campus.  The staff ranked events in various categories including the Top Five Worst of the year.

The Biggest Embarrassment was the Missouri Students Association.  The Biggest Letdown was the performance of the football and basketball teams.  Among the other “worsts” was Biggest Frustration.

It was the Missouri legislature.  The school administration for understandable political reasons can’t say things that students can. This has been a turbulent year for the young men and women on the Columbia campus.  Only a few were involved in the campus disturbances last fall but all of them have to live with the results of what the few did and the political fallout from those weeks.  We thought Maneater staff writer Amos Chen’s appraisal of the Missouri legislature was worth passing along because it comes from one of the thousands of students who were swept up in the politics of the year.  Here’s what he wrote:

Ronald Reagan once said, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” 

Through their frustrating actions over the past year, the Missouri legislature has more than proven Reagan’s famous words true.

In August, former Chancellor R. Bowen Loftin was called to testify before the Senate by Sen. Kurt Schaefer, R-Columbia, about the relationship between University Hospital and Planned Parenthood.  All this, despite the Missouri Attorney General’s Office later finding no evidence of wrongdoing.

Schaefer was back at it again in January when an email from former UM System President Tim Wolfe surfaced where he claimed Schaefer pressured him to deny then-MU associate professor Josh Hawley’s request for a leave of absence to run for Attorney General.  In a revelation that surprised absolutely nobody, Schaefer also happens to be running for that position.

That’s before getting to the “piece de resistance” of the entire affair—Missouri lawmakers response to the Concerned Student 1950 protests against racial discrimination, and former assistant communications professor Melissa Click’s call for “muscle” making national headlines. 

In March, the House Budget Committee became the latest to jump on the “let’s screw over MU” bandwagon, passing a budget slashing $1 million in funds for MU.  The budgetary hearing produced gems such as an amendment by Rep. Rocky Miller, R-Lake Ozark, reducing state funding for MU from $169,305,944 to $1 (not a typo).  The amendment was later withdrawn, not because Miller thought it wouldn’t pass, but because he was afraid it would.  I would write a joke about this but nothing I think of could possibly match the absurdity of this piece of political theater.

The Senate later came to its senses and restored the cuts, but it retained a $1 million decrease to administration to make sure the university knew who the real boss around these parts is. The final draft cut the UM System budget by $3.8 million.

From dubiously motivated witch hunts to politically influenced legislation, the actions of the Missouri legislature over the past year rightfully earns these legislators the title of Biggest Frustration.

We offer this with no endorsement or comment.  Sometimes the voice of someone who didn’t start a fight but whose life is affected by it says something.

Sometimes we wonder at the end of elections and at the end of legislative sessions whether the candidates or the lawmakers gave any thought to how their actions did anything to improve the public attitude toward government.  Amos seems to have given an answer.