Category Archives: Congress

Disintegration

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We’ve heard it several times in recent days and heard it again this past weekend when a talking head on one of the talking head shows said we are watching “the disintegration of the Republican Party” with the indictment of ex-president Trump and the early support he’s getting from his ardent supporters including two former Missouri Attorneys General.

Senator Josh Hawley calls the charge “an assault on our democracy, pure and simple,” interesting words coming from a man who encouraged that huge crowd of “tourists” to “tour” the U. S. Capitol in a memorable way two years ago.

His successor, Eric Schmitt, calls it “a purely partisan case.”  Schmitt is remembered because he decided to meddle in the 2020 election in four states in what surely was a non-partisan defense of popular democracy. Schmitt, as we recall, was 0-for-4.

And newly-minted Congressman Mark Alford from Raymore, who thinks prosecutor Alvin Bragg  “will clearly dig up old parking tickets if that means Donald Trump cannot run for President,” and says the charges are “nothing short of political persecution.”  Alford was one of Trump’s endorsement successes in the elections last year.

Politico reports, by the way, that Trump went 10-11 in his congressional endorsements last year, eight of those victories coming in districts that already leaned Republican, including Alford’s district.

It is important to remember that Trump is by far not the first federal public official to be indicted. Kentucky Congressman Matthew Lyon was found guilty of violating the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798. He was re-elected while he spent four months in jail.

Until now, the highest federal official indicted was Vice-President Spiro agenew, who pleaded no contest to income tax evasion in 1973.

Much is made of Donald Trump being the first PRESIDENT indicted.  It’s worth noting historically but it has no meaning otherwise.  Lyon was the first member of the House to be indicted. Joseph R. Burton, in 1904, was the first sitting senator to be indicted—by a federal grand jury in St. Louis. He was convicted of taking a bribe, fined $2,500 and ordered to serve six months in jail in Ironton, Missouri. He resigned after losing two appeals to the Supreme Court.

The point is: Somebody has to be first.  Trump is the first ex-president to be indicted.

Point noted. He joins a firsts list of  Lyon, Burton, and Agnew.

Now, get on with it.

The headlines have gone to those who have thundered their support of Trump.  Slight notice has been paid to those who have been more judicious in their comments, if they have commented at all.

The silent ones will be the ones who count when it comes to a post-Trump GOP.

It seems obvious that inter-party support for Trump is declining and the ratcheting-up of the noise on his behalf is a strident indication that the remaining Trumpists know their grasp on the short hairs is weakening.

The Republican Party is not “disintegrating” as those who speak more broadly than discretion should suggest are suggesting.  Indictment by indictment, more and more Republicans will be willing to do unto Trump what he has done unto so many others—throw him under the bus (The phrase, by the way, is believed to have started in British politics in the late 1970s).

Here’s the difference between the Trump era of the Republican Party and the post-Trump era—it is the difference between a fish and a tree.

An old political saying, from an unknown origin is, “A fish rots from the head down.”  It generally means that when the leader of a movement dies, the movement will, through time, die too.

But a political party is not a fish.  A political party is more like a tree, which grows from its roots.  Its tip might die but when the dead part if lopped off, the lower part regrows.

So it will be for the Republican Party.  The focus today is on a diseased top branch.  When removed, whether by a windstorm of justice or by intentional cutting and pruning by those who are tired of dealing with it, the roots and the trunk will remain and they will sprout new branches and new, clean leaves.

The focus today is on an element of the national party.  But the roots and the trunk of the party are at the state level and they will remain, and not just in Missouri. The windstorm or the cutting and pruning might make the tree less attractive for a while or reduce its output of political fruit, but it will survive.

Many years ago, our last family vacation before children left for college and ultimately for the real world, we went to Yellowstone National Park.  It was the year after the great fires had blackened so much of the land.  But already we were seeing small green leaves emerge amidst the charred stumps and scorched grass.

The Republican Party will not disintegrate despite gloomy forecasts from talking heads, although the rotten top branch might be transformed in the political fireplace into an “ash heap of history” a phrase attributed to Ronald Reagan, whose party Trump usurped.

If You Think Congress Is A Mess Now—-

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You’d better hope some Republicans in the U.S. House fail in their efforts to take away your rights to make it better.

Several of these birds are trying to whip up support for a change in the United States Constitution to limit the number of times you and I can vote to send someone to represent us.

They say they want to confront the “corruption” of career politicians.

House Joint Resolution 11 would limit House members to six years and Senators to twelve years.

That’s worse than Missouri’s term limits and Missouri’s term limits, take the word of one who has watched the impact from the front row, are a disaster.

Congressman Ralph Norman of South Carolina finished Congressman Mick Mulvaney’s term with a special election win in 2017. He has since been elected in 2018, 2020 and 2022.

Do you sense a whiff of hypocrisy here?

Do you suppose he will voluntarily step aside after this term?

His bill has 44 cosponsors.

His term limits idea would work the same way our term limit amendment worked when it was adopted 31 years ago.  The clock would be reset so a member could only run for three MORE terms after the amendment would go into effect.  Past terms would not count.

So let’s assume his idea is passed by the Congress (fat chance, at least in this term) and then is ratified before the 2024 election. He could still run in ’24, ’26 and ’28. So, the sponsor of this three-term limit could serve six terms and part of a seventh.

And if voters in his state react the same way Missourians reacted, he would.

His argument is the same debunked argument we heard in 1992. He told Fox News Digital last week, “It’s inappropriate for our elected leaders to make long-term careers off the backs of the American taxpayers. We’ve seen the corruption it can led to. While there is value in experience, it’s easy to become disconnected from those you serve after too many years in Washington. Most American support term limits, but the problem is convincing politicians they ought to serve for a period of time and then go home and live under the laws they enacted.”

Only one of the 44 co-sponsors is a Democrat, Rep. Jared Golden of Maine. He says the House of Representatives was “never intended at its inception to be a place where someone served for 30 years.”

His argument harkens to the Articles of Confederation, which set limits for members of Congress at six years.  But when the Constitution was written after delegates learned the Articles just didn’t work, the delegates opted for a system of checks and balances, the bittest check and balance being the voters.

James Madison, considered the Father of the Constitution, wrote in Federalist Paper 53 that “[A] few of the members of Congress will possess superior talents; will by frequent re-elections, become members of long standing; will be thoroughly masters of the public business, and perhaps not unwilling to avail themselves of those advantages. The greater the proportion of new members of Congress, and the less the information of the bulk of the members, the more apt they be to fall into the snares that may be laid before them.”

Madison’s allies felt the better check on corruption was regular elections than short turnovers in office.

They placed their confidence in the citizens, in the voters. Not so for this bunch.

Golden is serving his third term right now.  Let’s see if he files for re-election next year.

Among those fervently in support are Matt Gaetz of Florida, a prime example of the kind of person who would bring dignity to the office. He is serving his fourth term. Want to bet he will voluntarily decide he has been around more than long enough next year?

Another bandwagon rider is James Comer of Kentucky, also a four-termer.

Representative Don Bacon, another four-termer, thinks this idea is just ducky, too.

Gaetz thinks term limits would help lead to a “more effective legislature.”

If one calls the process by which Speaker McCarthy was elected earlier this year “effective,” I guess he has a point.  Drawing a name out of a hat would have been more effective.

Comer says his constituents are “excited” about the idea. Does that mean they would be “excited” to see him leave after this term?  They can prove how excited they are about term limits by kicking him to the galleries in 2024.

Bacon, who doubts this thing will fly in the U.S. Senate, thinks it’s a “good thing.”  We’ll see just how “good” he really thinks it is at filing time next year.

The tragic thing about this kind of gut-thinking rhetoric is that those who spout it aren’t honest about the “corruption” they claim they want to fight.

We wonder what a close look at their campaign finance reports will show.  Who has their hooks in them?  What is their voting record on issue their big-money donors are interested in?

What do the budget hawks among them think should be slashed or eliminated?  Things on which average folks rely?  Or might it be things the wealthy use to get wealthier—you know, all those things that the big-money folks receive with the questionable contention that the benefits will trickle down to the little people such as you and me or those below us on the economic scale?

Let’s put it this way:

If you are not scared out of your shoes that this entire notion, from its national security and national defense implications and that the national economy would be left in the hands of Matt Gaetz (four terms), Marjorie Taylor-Greene (second term), or Lorena Boebert (second term)—or even relatively responsible people—who would have only four years experience heading into their last terms forever, you should be.

And let’s not even think about talking about George Santos and whether his colleagues from the majority party should have term limited him after three DAYS.

Consider our current House of Representative members:

Cori Bush  second term

Ann Wagner  tenth term

Blaine Leutkemeyer  eighth term

Mark Alford  first term

Emanuel Cleaver  tenth term

Sam Graves  twelfth term

Eric Burlison first term

Jason Smith sixth term

If you favor term limits in Congress and if you voted for five of these people in the last election, you’re an undeniable hypocrite. Bush, Alford, and Burlison are still using training wheels.

But the other five are, in the eyes of Norman and his deluded disciples, corrupt, serving “on the backs of taxpayers,” “disconnected,” and—God help us—career politicians.

Forget that the voters decide every two years if their careers should end. .

The Hell with the voters.  They don’t know what they’re doing when they send their representatives and their senators back for another term. The crew behind House Resolution 11 is clearly the moral superiors of the voters and they know that you and I have no business making the decision more than three times on who will represent us although your critical observer has no trouble suggesting there are some people who should be limited to one term—and even that is too long in a few cases.

The responsibility for the good or bad in our government remains with the voters. There are problems with manipulative media and the influence of secret and unlimited money. Perhaps if Norman and his friends focused their considerable intellectual efforts on those issues, they would do more good than they will by limiting the choices you and I can make on election day.

But that’s too hard.  Helping to educate a public with an increasingly short attention span when it comes to politics takes far more effort than telling them, “We’ve fixed it so you only have to endure these crooks for six years. And then you can elect another one.”  Encouraging citizen irresponsibility is easier.  And it sounds better.  And it might get them elected to a fourth term.  Or more.

Term limits is an unending train wreck.

I’m not buying a ticket on that train and I sure hope you don’t either.

 

 

Now Here’s a Match Made in—– 

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Marjorie Taylor Greene and George Santos.  What a pair.

They’re attacking our schools for “sexualizing” our children with school library books. They want to remove “sexually explicit material” from schools. They’re co-sponsoring a bill with Rep. Cory Mills of Florida, who wants to “end the sexualization of children in schools.”  News of the proposal was first reported by LGBTQ Nation.

Well, sure.  The last thing we need are some eight-year olds thinking about sex AND READING about it in Alex Comfort’s latest edition of The Joy of Sex that is on the shelf next to Green Eggs and Ham in the elementary school library.

As long as we’re advocating a federal law that regulates what children of whatever age can read, perhaps someone can refer us adults to a list of peer-reviewed research that proves schools are sexualization Petrie dishes.

A Congressional website says the bill wants to “prohibit a publishing house from knowingly furnishing sexually explicit material to a school or an educational agency, to prohibit Federal funds from being provided to a school that obtains or an educational agency that distributes sexually explicit material, and for other purposes.”

Well, there goes the Bible:

You are my private garden, my treasure, my bride, a secluded spring, a hidden fountain. Your thighs shelter a paradise of pomegranates with rare spices. (Song of Solomon 4:12-13)

“Mom, I know what thighs are but what do they have to do with a pomegranate?”

Like the finest apple tree in the orchard is my lover among other young men. I sit in his delightful shade and taste his delicious fruit.” (Song of Solomon 2:3)

“Hey, Dad, where’s your apple?”

And then there’s the family sleep-over:

After Sodom was destroyed, Lot took his two daughters to live with them in a cave. One day, his older daughter said to the younger: “Our father is old, and there is no man around here to give us children — as is the custom all over the earth. Let’s get our father to drink wine and then sleep with him and preserve our family line through our father… So they got their father to drink wine that night also, and the younger daughter went in and slept with him. Again he was not aware of it when she lay down or when she got up. So both of Lot’s daughters became pregnant by their father. (Genesis 19:35)

As far as “sexually explicit material,” that’s right up there.  And then we have this rather explicit advice from First Corinthians:

The husband should fulfill his wife’s sexual needs, and the wife should fulfill her husband’s needs. The wife gives authority over her body to her husband, and the husband gives authority over his body to his wife. Do not deprive each other of sexual relations unless you both agree to refrain from sexual intimacy for a limited time so you can give yourselves more completely to prayer. Afterward, you should come together again so that Satan won’t be able to tempt you because of your lack of self-control.

Critics of proposals such as the one addressed by these two—dare we describe them in Shakespearian terms as “strange bedfellows”—suggest “sexually explicit material” is code for the LGBTQ community, a favorite flogging target of the far right. And, bearing in mind some descriptions of the sexuality of Santos, should we wonder if his sponsorship of such an act is self-flagellation? He is, after all, one of ten LGBTQ members of Congress and the only one who identifies as a Republican and further, is the only member of Congress who reportedly competed in a drag queen contest.

Will the new rule keep children from reading about his performance?

While much of the focus is on the “sexually explicit” language, the concluding words, “and for other purposes,” also is troubling.  Those words seem to open the door for some serious mischief dealing with various kinds of intellectual freedom.

Cultivating a fear of others who are different from us is a hot ticket for some in the political game and we should not become tolerant of it.

Perhaps we should not be reluctant to remind those who want to make their morality your law and mine that Mark has reminded us that “adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly…come from inside and defile a person.” Personally, your scriptural interpreter emphasizes “malice, deceit…(and) arrogance” in thinking of these two political giants.

We wonder if any of these folks have read Paul’s letter to the Christians at Ephesus: “Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.”

The bill, it is nice to hear, does not have a large number of sponsors, nor does it have a lot of support and faces many speed bumps in its road. We hope the eventual result is four flat tires.

Presidents Day

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On this Presidents Day, we pause to think of Missouri’s Presidents.  There are two, only one of whom is a native. And there might be a third.

And then there are a lot of folks who once entertained thoughts of high political grandeur but who fell by the wayside.  We spent some time back in a Missourinet studio last week talking for today’s edition of “Showme Today” about our presidents and some of our presidential wannabes.

In the old railroad depot in Atchison, Kansas is the smallest presidential library in the country. It’s considered an unofficial one because of the peculiar circumstances of David Rice Atchison’s perhaps-presidency.  His grave stone in Plattsburg tells a story:

Missouri’s northwesternmost county is named for him, way up in the corner. For years, Missouri and Nebraska feuded over 5,000 acres known as McKissick’s Island that was left on the Missouri side of the river after a flood in 1867 changed the river channel. The U.S. Supreme Court decided in 1904 that McKissick Island was still Nebraska territory. It took 95 more years for the two states to agree on an interstate compact approved by Congress that created the legal boundary. But the only way Nebraskans can get to it is by driving through part of Iowa and into Atchison County, Missouri.

Atchison, Kansas is 24 miles southwest of St. Joseph. David Rice Atchison was from Liberty but in the days of “Bleeding Kansas” when the state was deciding if it would be slave or free, Atchison led one of the groups of “border ruffians” who went to Kansas and voted to elect a pro-slavery legislature.

He served two terms in the U. S. Senate. He was so popular that he was elected president pro tempore thirteen times. In those days, the vice-president presided over the Senate and the pro tem was elected and presided only on those rare times when the vice-president wasn’t there.

Vice-President George M. Dallas left the Senate for the rest of the session on March 2, 1849 and the senate picked Atchison to preside in his place.

Presidents were inaugurated later back there—March 4th (the 25th Amendment adopted in 1933 moved the date to January).  The date fell on a Sunday in 1849. Pesident James Polk signed his last bill early in the moring of March 4 because the Senate had been in session all night. In fact, it didn’t adjourn until 7 a.m.

Incoming President Zachary Taylor did not want to be sworn in on the Sabbath and did not take the oath of office until noon, Monday, March 8.

Some argue that Atchison, as president pro tem, was in line to be president of the country under the succession act of 1792.  But Congress had adjourned its session that Sunday morning, meaning Atchison no longer held a Congressional office and therefore there was no line of succession.

He never claimed he was president, “never for a moment” as he wrote in 1880. The truth seems to be that there was no president and no congress for almost a day. In those days of slow national and international communication, there was no crisis.

That’s why the Atchison presidential library, those two display cases in the railroad depot, is “unofficial.”

Incidentally—there was a corresponding controversy in 1877 when Rutheford B. Hays, apparently seeking to avoid another Atchison affair, took took the oath of office in a private ceremony on Saturday, March 3.  But President Grant’s term did not end officially until March 4th. Some think that meant we had TWO presidents for a day.

Speaking of Grant—

Missouri claims him although he was not a native.  He married Julia Dent, the daughter of a wealthy St. Louis County farmer and took up farming in the area.  Grant was Ohio-born and his real name Hiram Ulysses Grant.  He didn’t like his first name and preferred to be known byhis mddleone. He became known as Ulysses S. Grant because Congressman Thomas Hamer nominated him for appointment to West Point apparently not realizing his first name was Hiram and addig a “S” as a middle initial—Grant’s mother’s maiden name was Simpson.

There is at least one letter from Grant during his West Point years in which he signed, “U. H. Grant.”  In time he came to accept the Ulysses S(for Simpson) Grant.  His tactics during the Civil War led to his nickname of “Unconditional Surrender.

Grant’s father-in-law gave the young couple some of his land for their own farm. But the venture was unsuccessful. He also was unsuccessful in other business ventures.

He rejoined the Army at the start of the war and was a Colonel based in Mexico Missouri when he read in a newspaper that he had been appointe Brigadier General.  He commended the unit at Jefferson City for a few days before being dispatched to southeast Missouri where he began building his fame.

Missourian Mark Twain became his close frend in his last days when the family was living in very poor conditions—there was no presidential pension then—and Grant was slowly dying of throat cancer.  Twain arranged to have Grant’s two-volume autobiography published after his death. Sales gave the family some financial security.

In 1903 the Busch family bought the land, now known as Grant’s Farm. Today his farm, his cabin, and the mansion of the Dent Family are part of the Busch family estate.

And that brings us to our native-borne president, Harry Truman, who also has an “S” that means nothing. He was born in Lamar, in southwest Missouri, a town where famous Wyatt Earp had his first law enforcement job.  He also has an S between his first and last names but, unlike Grant, it’s not a mistake.  Formally, there’s no period after the letter because it doesn’t stand for any specific name although he often put a period there.  The “S” honors his two grandfathers, Anderson Shipp Truman and Solomon Young.

His extensive story is a familiar one to Missourians but there’s a special angle that links Jefferson City to the Man from Independence.   In the 1930s while he was the Presiding Judge of the Jackson County administratie court, President Roosevelt appointed him to head the administrations jobs program.  Three days a week, he drove to Jefferson City where he did business out of a fourth-floor room at the Capitol.  It was during that time that the Pendergast political machine in Kansas City called him to a meeting in Sedalia to tell him he was going to challenge incumbent U.S. Senator Roscoe Patterson in the 1934 election.  There are those who think the Pendergasts wanted him to lose so they could put their own man in the presiding judge’s chair and get Truman out of Jackson County politics. Truman, however, beat Patterson, beginning a career in Washington that led him in 1944 to the vice-presidential nomination and ultimately his historic years in the White House.

We’ve had some others who sought the presidency or thought they might seek it.

Governor Benjamin Gratz Brownan Unconditional Unionist in the Civil War and a founder of he Republican Party in Missouri.  He tried to get Abraham Lincoln replaced as the Republican nominee in 1864, strongly opposed President Johnson’s Reconstruction policies, was defeated in the 1872 convention by New York newspaper editor Horace Greeley—and they ultimately were crushed by former Missouri failed farmer U.S. Grant.

Congressman Richard Parks Bland was the leader going into the 1896 Democratic National Convention.  But his marriage to a Catholic woman generated opposition within the party and he lost to William Jennings Bryan on the fifth ballot.

Champ Clark, the only Missourian to serve as Speaker of the House, was the leading candidate at the 1912 Democratic Convention. Although he was favored by a majority of delegates he never could get to the required two-thirds.  It took 46 ballots for the convention to choose Woodrow Wilson over him.

Young Christopher Bond was seen as a rising star in the Republican Party when the convention met in 1976 in Kansas City and was on a short-list of potential running mades for Gerald Ford. His 12,000 vote upset loss to Joseph Teasdale in November crashed dreams of the White House. But he beat Teasdale in a 1980 rematch and went on to a distinguished career as a United States Senator.

Thomas Eagleton sought the vice-presidency under George McGovern’s campaign. But reports that he had undergone some electro-shock treatments for depression ended is VP run a few weeks after the convention.

Congressman Jerry Litton was a charismatic candidate for the U.S. Senate in 1976 who died with his wife and two children and two other people when their airplane crashed on takeoff from the Chillicothe Airport on their way to a victory party in Kansas City.  Litton was known to think he was presidential material. Jimmy Carter, who was elected President that day, thought that Litton would be President some day.  The Senatorship went to John Danforth.  His top aide told me sometime afterwards that Danforth wasn’t sure he could have beaten Litton.  The what-if game can ponder whether we might have seen a Reagan-Litton contest or a Litton-Bush 41.

We haven’t had a serious contestant since, although there are rumors that Josh Hawley would like to be the running mate of Donald Trump in 2024.

Some presidents bring honor to the office. Others bring dishonor and all of them fall somewhere in between.  Today we honor those who served and the office they held.

It is one of the Monday holidays decreed by Congress in 1968. Although we call it Presidents Day, Congress has never changed its original designation:  Washington’s birthday.

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We’ve Seen This Before 

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It’s called the tyranny of the minority.

Watching Congressman Kevin McCarthy trying to appease an unwilling minority in his party so he could realize his dream of becoming Speaker of the House was agonizing last week.  But for those of us who follow Missouri politics it as not an unfamiliar experience.

Remember the 2021 legislative session when an ultra-conservative segment of Senate Republicans held the entire chamber hostage when they couldn’t get their way on a congressional redistricting map?  Day after day they refused to let any other business be done until they could get their way. On a few occasions the remaining Republicans got some support from minority Democrats to move something—a relationship that really steamed the tyrannical minority.

In Washington last week we watched Kevin McCarthy come about as close to making the Speakership a figurehead position in his effort to get enough of his hard right party members to let him have the job.

As the process wore on, we wondered if it occurred to McCarthy that he had to protect the Speakership, not just his own personal ambitions. Neutering the Speakership sews the seeds of anarchy in the House.

We saw in the Missouri Senate last year the dangers of deadlock caused by those who replaced public service with political power.  To see the same scenario played out on a national scale is disastrous for those who have some faith in our system.

McCarthy was finally picked on the 15th ballot when Congressman Matt Gaetz, who had proclaimed himself a never-Kevin vote switched to “present.”

So now the House of Representative can get down to business.  But the narrowness of the Republican majority and the divisions within the party are likely to prove hazardous to McCarthy’s House leadership.

And don’t forget that a favorite punching bag of the Republicans, President Biden, holds a veto pen and there appears to be zero chance that the House can get a two-thirds vote to override a presidential veto, assuming it can get its legislation through the Senate and to the president’s desk..

The spectacle has not ended with McCarthy’s selection as Speaker.

Politics is an imperfect science but we never have seen such a time as when good will seems so unachievable.  Did any of us elect any of them to think that there is nothing more important than who sits in what office in one building in Washington, D.C.?

Today we mourn the (temporary, we hope) passing of the ideal of majority rule. A tyrannical minority can be put in its place if the two major factions would recognize they must create the majority—and in the creation of a bipartisan majority, return sanity to our system.

We still have the hope that somebody will be unafraid to scale the wall separating the parties and produce enough unity to overcome the tail that thinks it can wag the congressional dog.

The Speakership is more important than any individual that aspires for it. If protecting the office and its responsibility and its power means reaching across the partisan wall, let the reaching begin.  We need to know that the tyrannical minority is not in charge.

But frankly, we’re not sure it won’t be.

Do you know how to tell—

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—if a politician is lying?

His lips are moving.

This old and cynical joke that cavalierly diminishes all of those who seek to serve honorably has found new circulation thanks to a New York congressional candidate who told lie after lie during his campaign, got elected, has grudgingly admitted to some of his lies, but is unrepentant and as of the writing of this entry plans to take the oath of office.

George Santos is a Republican and (so far) the leadership of his party has been pretty silent about his admissions and the additional lies uncovered by reporters. About the only thing that seems to be true about him is that he’s a Republican. For now, anyway.  If his clay feet, which have crumbled at least ankle-high, continue to crumble, he might be most appropriationly listed as (P-NY), for “Pariah” from New York.

“I am not a criminal,” he told The New York Post. “This will not deter me from having good legislative success. I will be effective. I will be good.”

Whether he is not a criminal is open to some question. Did his claims constitute fraud?  Did he lie to obtain campaign donations, thus defrauding donors?  Did his lies result in financial gain?  Did he lie on his campaign financial disclosure forms, a potential criminal act? And those are starter questions..

He claimed to be the grandchild of Ukrainian natives who escaped the holocaust by going to Belgium and then to Brazil. Investigators say he is not.  He’s a native Brazilian and there are shadows over his life there.

He claimed to be Jewish. He released a position paper during his campaign saying he was “a proud American Jew.”  That was then. Now he says he never claimed to be a Jew and that he’s Catholic who is “Jew-ish,” a comment that the word “outlandish” is inadequate to describe. He says his grandmother told him stories about being Jewish before she converted to Catholicism. His grandparents were born in Brazil.  The Democrat he beat in November says Santos’ lies about his Jewish background are more than offensive—“It’s sick and obscene,” he says.

In the campaign he claimed that he had been openly gay for more than a decade and is married to another man.  But another news organization has learned he was married to a woman that he divorced in 2019 and has found no record of his marriage to the man Santos says is his husband.

He claimed to have worked with two of the biggest names in the financial industry—Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, neither of which says his name ever appeared on their employee rolls. He says he probably could have used “a better choice of words” in making that claim.

He claimed to have attended New York University and to have graduated from Baruch College. Now he confesses, “I didn’t graduate from any institution of higher learning.” He says he is “embarrassed and sorry for having embellished my resume.” But he excused himself by commenting, “A lot of people overstate in their resumes or twist a little bit.”

Embellished his resume?  And it’s okay because “a lot of people” do it “a little bit?”

What he has done is more than “a little bit.”  He lied and now he’s lying about lying. In fact, he has created a waterfall of lies including how much property he does or does now own, and how many dogs his nonprofit dog rescue group rescued.

The silence of his party’s leadership, particularly his future colleagues in the United States House of Representatives is tragic in this time when distrust of those who seek public service or those who win positions of public service is so strong.  Santos tars all of them with his irresponsible campaign and his petulant responses to those who have exposed him for what he is—a man who was incapable of truth during his campaign and seems incapable of admitting the depth of his lies after his election.

Unfortunately, the public doesn’t see him as the exception to the rule. Unfortunately, the public has come to believe his kind IS the rule.

But I know from years of front-row coverage of politics and politicians that people of his kind are the rotten apple that spoils the barrel.

The Santoses of the political world damn the saints of the political world. It is up to those who will take office for the first time in 2023 to be the kind of people who eventually leave public life having uplifted public opinion about those who go from being “one of us” on election day to being “one of them.”  It will be a heavy lift.  Honor is a great weight.

Failure of his party, particularly those who will be leaders of his party colleagues in Washington, to censure—even expel—him will deepen mistrust in all of those in either party, further damaging our republic and furthering the aims of those who seek to capitalize on distrust in it to strengthen their hopes for control.

“Disgrace” is spelled S-A-N-T-O-S.

The Appointing-est Governor—and some other election history

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Governor Mike Parson is going to have to do it again.

He’s going to have to appoint a new State Treasurer and a new Attorney General.

This time he has to appoint a new Attorney General to replace an elected Treasurer that he appointed Attorney General who now is off to Washington to become the second straight Attorney General Parson will replace.   Let’s walk through our governor’s record of appointing more statewide elected officials than any other governor.

Mike Parson ascends to the governorship with the resignation in disgrace of Eric Greitens (by the way, does anybody know where he has landed after Missourians found him significantly unfit for the Senatorship?).  Attorney General Josh Hawley, who eschewed any ambitions for immediate higher office when he became AG and then did exactly that, becomes a U. S. Senator. Former State Senator Eric Schmitt is elected State Treasurer.  Not all of these things happened at once. They accumulated over time.

Governor Mike Parson appoints outgoing State Senator Mike Kehoe to the Lieutenant Governorship.

He appoints Treasurer Schmitt to the Attorney Generalship to replace Hawley when Hawley lights out for Washington.

He appoints former House Budget Chairman Scott Fitzpatrick as the Treasurer, replacing Schmitt.

Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft quietly watches what’s going on, preferring to wait until 2024 when he will decide where he wants to go.

Roy Blunt decides that being the second-oldest person to serve as a U. S. Senator from Missouri does not mean he should try to become the oldest coot in Missouri Senatorial history, and announces his retirement.*

Eric Schmitt, with nothing to lose because his term as AG doesn’t run out for two more years, sees a chance for greater glory, downs a big glass of Trump Kool-Aid, and wins a race to replace our truly senior senator.

Fitzpatrick, with nothing to lose because his term as Schmitt’s successor as Treasurer, claims the last Democratic statewide office by being elected State Auditor.

As of the morning after the election, Governor Mike Parson has to appoint a new Treasurer and a new Attorney General.  Several ambitious people, knowing that incumbency will have advantages if 2024, think they could give up whatever they are doing now to fill those vacancies.

Governor Parson has until January to decide who will be the latest to get single-digit license plates and a leg up in the 2024 campaign for statewide office.

Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft continues to quietly watch, knowing that one of his potential opponents in the Republican Governor’s primary in 2024 is now otherwise occupied.

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Eric Schmitt will be the fifth Missouri Attorney General to become a United States Senator. He’ll be the second in a row to move from AG to Senator.  Using the Attorney General’s office as a stepping stone to federal office is a fairly recent circumstance in politics.

Tom Eagleton was the first former Attorney General to make the leap, but he did it from the Lieutenant Governor’s office where he served after being Attorney General.

John Danforth was the first to move directly from Attorney General to the Senate.  He was elected in 1976, defeating former Governor Warren Hearnes. Hearnes was chosen by a Democratic Caucus after Congressman Jerry Litton was killed on election night on his way from his Chillicothe home to a victory party in Kansas City. He had upset former Governor Hearnes and Congressman Jim Symington, who had been favored by many people to succeed his father, Senator Stuart Symington.

Some time after that, Danforth’s top lieutenant, Alex Netchvolodoff, told me that Danforth wasn’t sure he could have beaten Litton.  Danforth had voluntarily established campaign spending limits.  Litton had no qualms about spending as much as necessary and although I heard he had spent 96% of his liquidity to win the primary, he was a charismatic figure with eyes on the White House who was capable of raising huge sums of money.

John Ashcroft was the next AG to become a U.S. Senator, but he did it after serving eight years as governor.

Josh Hawley, who took office as Attorney General and said he had no plans to immediately seek higher office, did just that in 2020, as we noted earlier.

And now Eric Schmitt becomes only the fifth Missouri Attorney General in our two centuries of history to make the leap, only the third to do it directly.

*Roy Blunt will be 72 years, 11 months, and 24 days old when the new Congress begins with Eric Schmitt as his replacement.  Only Stuart Symington was older when he left the Senate. He was 75 years, six months and one day old when he departed.

He will become our seventh living former U.S. Senator. The others are John Danforth, Christopher Bond, John Ashcroft, Jean Carnahan, Jim Talent, and Claire McCaskill.

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When Eric Schmitt celebrated his victory last week he said, “We want our country back.”  Hmmm…..that’s the same thing a lot of voters thought they were doing when they reduced the Great Red Wave to a ripple.

Electing Time Travelers

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Some of the people we elected yesterday will decide how we travel through time.

This weekend we fell back from daylight savings time to standard time. Officially the change comes at 2 a.m. yesterday. There always are some folks who don’t get the message or forget the message and find themselves arriving at the end of church services instead of at the beginning, or an hour late for tee time if they worship the putter instead.

There are a lot of folks who think we should have daylight savings time year-around.  Going back to standard time will give us more daylight in the mornings but we’ll be in the dark an hour earlier in the evening. The Hill reported last week about the efforts in Congress to keep daylight time year around. It cites a poll that says, “Most Americans want to abandon the time change we endure twice a year, with polls showing as much as 63 to 75 percent of Americans supporting an end to the practice. But, even if the country does do away with the time change, the question still remains whether the U.S. should permanently adapt to Daylight Saving Time (DST) or Standard Time (ST).”

Most of the country is on daylight time eight months of the year and switches to standard time for four months. There are always some contrarians, of course. Hawaii and Arizona stay on standard time all year.  Hawaii decided the Uniform Time Act of 1967 meant nothing to a state that is so close to the equator that sunrise and sunset are about the same time all year.

Arizona has a different reason.  It doesn’t want to lose an hour of morning time when it’s cool enough for people to go outdoors in the summer.

Residents of or visitors to Puerto Rico, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, the Virgin Islands and American Somoa don’t tinker with their clocks twice a year either.

And there’s the rub, as Hamlet says in his soliloquy.  Some folks like permanent standard time because it’s more in line with our circadian rhythms and hels stave off disease. But in March, the U.S. Senate passed a bill that would make DST permanent—the Sunshine Protection Act (who thinks up these insipid names for bills?)—because of its economic benefits because more Americans would go shopping if it remains lighter in the early evening hours.

The movement to protect the sunshine has been led by Senator Marco Rubio of the Sunshine State of Florida. He says the change would reduce the risk of seasonal depression.  That strikes us as a little silly and reminds us of the time when Missouri decided to adopt DST in 1970 when some of the ladies who were regular listeners of “Missouri Party Line” on the local radio station where I worked were vitally concerned that their flowers would not get enough sunlight if we tried to “save” daylight.

The Senate has passed the bill, as we have noted. Final approval is iffy because the Lame Duck Congress has only seventeen working days left before it becomes history.  But if the House approves it, permanent DST would go into effect a year from now.

—Except in states that now operate on Standard Time. They won’t have to switch.  We recall the days before DST became more common when we had to change our watches when we crossed certain state lines.  Our annual trips from Central DST Missouri to Eastern ST Indiana in May always left us uncertain about whether to change our watches until we stopped some place with a clock and learned that CDST was the same as EST.

At least, I think that’s how it went.

Polling has found no consensus on which time should be the permanent time.

If we eliminate switching back and forth, we could be endangering our safety.  Various safety officials tell us that we should replace the batteries in our smoke and carbon monoxide detectors when we change our clocks.  To keep some battery life from being wasted, it is suggested that they be changed either when clocks are adjusted for DST or when they’re adjusted for plain ST.  That assumes the battery-changer remembers which time is the time to switch. We know of no one who marks their calendars for such events.

The article in The Hill’s series “Changing America” delves into the pros and the cons:

Sleep experts say the health benefits that could come from a permanent ST are crucial for a chronically sleep-deprived nation. In response to darkness, the body naturally produces melatonin, a hormone that helps promote sleep but is suppressed by light. Thus, having too much sunlight in the evening can actually work against a good night’s sleep. 

The status quo leads to circadian misalignment, or “social jetlag,” says Beth Malow, a professor of neurology and pediatrics and director of the Vanderbilt sleep division. Malow also authored the Sleep Research Society’s position statement advocating for a permanent ST. 

Under DST, our work and school schedules dictate our actions; while in an ideal scenario, environmental changes like lighter mornings and darker evenings would regulate sleep patterns, Malow explained in an interview with Changing America. 

“There’s a disconnect when we have to wake up early for work or school and it’s still dark outside and we want to sleep,” she said.

Light in the morning wakes humans up, provides us with energy, and sets our mood for the day. “It actually aligns us so that our body clocks are in sync with what’s going on in our environment,” Malow said.

Having more energy in the morning can also make it easier to fall asleep at night when it’s darker outside. 

Overall, ST “maximizes our morning light and minimizes light too late at night,” Malow said. 

When the body doesn’t get enough sleep, risks of developing heart disease, diabetes, and weight gain all increase.  Insufficient sleep is also linked to some forms of cancer.

Polls show younger individuals are less likely to support abolishing the clock change, largely because they’re more flexible than their older counterparts who support nixing the practice. 

But teenagers and young adults are at a higher risk of negative impacts from permanent DST, partially because they’re already primed for sleep deprivation.

“What happens when you go through puberty and you become a teenager is…your natural melatonin levels shift by about two hours, so it takes you longer to fall asleep,” said Malow. “[Teenagers] end up going to bed or being tired at 11 o’clock at night, even midnight sometimes, but they have to wake up early for school.” 

Students who wake up in darker mornings and drive to school could be at a greater risk of car accidents. The same is true for workers with early commutes and individuals in the north or on western edges of time zones who tend to experience more darkness overall.

“Sleep is really, really important to our health. And right now, what we’re doing is imposing mandatory social jetlag for eight months out of the year,” Malow said. “And we’d like to—rather than going to mandatory social jetlag for 12 months out of the year—to stop the clock and go back to Standard Time which is much more natural.” 

Despite the myriad of health benefits that come from adopting ST year-round, having more sunlight in the evenings if DST were permanently adopted is a tempting prospect for many Americans, especially those who work or attend school indoors all day.

Who got us into this mess?  The Washington Post says we can blame two guys. George Hudson, from New Zealand, wanted more daylight time in the late afternoon to collect bugs.  Britisher William Willett wanted more time to play golf late in the day.

Their idea didn’t catch on until World War I when Germany, bogged down in trench warfare with the French and the British, adopted it to save coal. England soon followed suit. It didn’t catch on in this country until 1917 when stockbrokers and industries lobbied for it. The Post says they overcame opposition from railroads that feared the time change would confuse people and led to some bad crashes.  And farmers opposed it because their day already was regulated by the sun and they saw no reasons to fiddle with the clocks.  David Prerau, who wrote Seize the Daylight: The Curious and Contentious Story of Daylight Savings Time, told the Post dairy farmers didn’t want it because they’d have to start their milking in the dark if they wanted to ship their product out on the trains. “Plus, the sun, besides giving light, gives heat, and it drives off the dew on a lot of things that have to be harvested. And you can’t harvest things when they’re wet.”  Getting up an hour early didn’t solve that problem.

This country adopted DST in 1918 with the Standard Time Act. DST was repealed the next year and wasn’t seen again until FDR reinstated it during WWII for the same reason it was instituted in The Great War—to save fuel.

In 1966, Congress passed the Uniform Time Law. In the 1970s we got permanent DST for a while, also an energy-saving issue because we were in the midst of an energy crisis caused by the Middle East Oil Embargo. That situation caused major inflation issues including in energy prices—at the gasoline pumps and in home heating and electric bills—to skyrocket. The great minds in Congress decided we needed permanent DST to reduce excess utility costs.  But the public didn’t like it and the experiment ended after ten months.

Then George W. Bush got the Uniform Time Act amended to change the sates when clocks were to spring ahead from April to March and we’ve had our present system since then.

Does it really work or is it just something to politicians to fiddle around with from time to time?

A 2008 Department of Energy report said the Bush change cut the national use of electricity by one-half of one percent a day.  Ten years or so later, someone analyzed more than forty papers assessing the impact of the change found that electricity use declined by about one-third of a percent because of the 2007 change.

More contemporary studies show similar small changes in behavior when DST kicks in.

One study supporting the economic advantage of permanent DST was done by JP Moran Chase six years ago.  The study looked at credit card purchases in the month after the start of DST in Los Angeles and found it increased by 9/10th of a percent.  It dropped 3.5% when DST ended.  That was good enough to recommend fulltime DST.

Another report showed robberies dropped by 7% during DST daytimes. And in the hour that gained additional sunlight, there was a 27% drop in that extra evening hour. That’s in Los Angeles.

Rubio maintains that having more daylight in the evening could mean kids would be more inclined to get their noses out of their cell phones, tablets, and computers and go outside and run around playing sports.

Maybe they could take up golf.  Or looking for bugs that proliferate in the twilight. Imagine a parent suggesting those ideas for their nimble-thumbed children.

So what’s better—having kids standing in the dark waiting for the morning school bus or riding the school bus into the darkening evening and arriving at home where the lights are all on?

The people we elected yesterday are likely to make this decision sooner or later. Let us hope they’re up to it.

 

Awful

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A few days ago, your faithful scribe heard someone say something terrible about the future of our democracy.  All of us should be threatened by her comment.

It was when Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker had his foot in his mouth for several says on abortion and other, issues.  Conservative radio talker Dana Loesch said, “I don’t care if Herschel Walker paid to abort endangered baby eagles. I want control of the Senate.”

In other words, the character of someone seeking public office is not important.  The candidate is seen only as a number in a game where power is the only issue.

Have we become so craven as citizens, as voters, that we don’t really care what kind of person we are putting in a position of authority over us that we will vote for someone whose only qualification seems to be that they will do whatever they are told to do regardless of what that action might mean to their constituents and to their country?

If the only thing that matters about a candidate is whether there is an R or a D after their name, we are selling ourselves out. We are putting our trust in people who owe US nothing but who will owe their handlers everything.  And in today’s political climate, too many political handlers care nothing about service to anybody but themselves.

The key word in Loesch’s assertion is “control.”   She and her ilk want to “control” you and me, not to serve us, not to look out for the best interests of the broad and diverse people of our country.

Be very afraid that the Loesch’s of this country will succeed.

Do not sell out yourself when you vote.

He’s Willing to Talk.  Maybe.

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But that doesn’t mean he will suddenly be stricken by a desire to tell the truth.

The January 6 Committee has issued a subpoena for Donald Trump to testify about his effort to stay in office, the opinion of the voters otherwise notwithstanding.

Shortly after the committee’s vote last Thursday, he asked on Truth Social, “Why didn’t the Unselect Committee ask me to testify months ago?”

Of course he had an answer to his own question: “Because the Committee is a total ‘BUST’ that has only served to further divide our Country which, by the way, is doing very badly – A laughing stock all over the World?”

He has indicated that he’ll testify but only if it can be in a public session.

Actually, Trump has been testifying in public for months.  His campaign rallies, ostensibly held to build support for candidates he favors, spend little time uplifting the candidates.  He spends the largest amount of time playing the victim of a gigantic plot against his poor, abused self.

—Which is what he would try to do if the session with the committee were held in public.  It’s pretty easy to contemplate what would happen.  He expressed his attitude in a fourteen-page rambling response to the subpoena vote hours after it was taken. It began:

“This memo is being written to express our anger, disappointment, and complaint that with all of the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on what many consider to be a Charade and Witch Hunt, and despite strong and powerful requests, you have not spent even a short moment on examining the massive Election Fraud that took place during the 2020 Presidential Election, and have targeted only those who were, as concerned American Citizens, protesting the Fraud itself,”

If the committee is a witch hunt, it pretty clearly has identified who is the keeper of the broom.  And if these citizens were only “concerned,” what would they have been like if they’d been upset?

Trump still thinks he’s in control of things.

He’s not.

He’s not in control of proceedings against him in New York.

He’s not in control of proceedings against him in Georgia.

He will not dictate conditions to the January 6 Committee.  He either testifies under its procedures or he faces a possible contempt of Congress charge, a criminal charge that carries a punishment of one to twelve months in jail and a fine of $100 to $100,000.

His greatest problem is, and has been, that in any formal investigation whether it is before a grand jury or will be before this committee he will have to take an oath to tell the truth.  And truth, despite the name of his internet platform, has been a stranger to him.

As Trump sulked out of office on January 20, 2021, the Washington Post’s fact checker column tallied up its work for his four years in office:

When The Washington Post Fact Checker team first started cataloguing President Donald Trump’s false or misleading claims, we recorded 492 suspect claims in the first 100 days of his presidency. On Nov. 2 alone, the day before the 2020 vote, Trump made 503 false or misleading claims as he barnstormed across the country in a desperate effort to win reelection.

This astonishing jump in falsehoods is the story of Trump’s tumultuous reign. By the end of his term, Trump had accumulated 30,573 untruths during his presidency — averaging about 21 erroneous claims a day.

 Is there any expectation whatever that this leopard will change his spots when he goes before the committee?

Committee chairman Bennie Thompson believes Trump should have a chance to tell the truth. He said before the committee took its unanimous vote: “He is the one person at the center of the story of what happened on Jan. 6. So we want to hear from him. The committee needs to do everything in our power to tell the most complete story possible and provide recommendations to help ensure that nothing like Jan. 6 ever happens again. We need to be fair and thorough in getting the full context for the evidence we’ve obtained.”

This committee is in no mood to give Trump a podium.  He has had a lot of them during the committee’s work and truth always has been in short supply on those occasions.

He can’t bully this committee. He can’t intimidate its members.  His best choice might be to meet under the committee’s rules and take the Fifth Amendment instead of answering questions, thereby avoiding possible perjury charges, as he did more than 400 times a couple of months ago when giving a deposition in the New York Attorney General’s investigation into possible real estate frauds.

Isn’t it interesting that telling the committee he is exercising his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination might be the most truthful thing he can say—or has said about those events?