Category Archives: government

Do We Really Want To Be Like Tennessee?

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Advocated for Amendment 5, the income tax elimination, like to point to Tennessee as a state that flourishes without an income tax.

As usual, campaigns—whether personal or policy in nature—cherry-pick simple issues and dislike honest discussion of the complexity of our way of life.

The Pro-Five campaign has been long on deception.  Equaling Tennessee is not big deal. In most cases our lives will be no better if we decide to move from being 30-something in sales taxes to Tennessee’s 7th highest in the nation.

I don’t want to be like Tennessee. I want to be Missouri—the best Missouri

Let’s look below the deception and see if the things that really matter in how we live are worth voting for 5.

The newest ranking of states by U.S. News says it would not be much of an improvement.  Among the fifty states, Tennessee ranks 24th.  Missouri is 31st.

Ending the income tax might please Missouri’s rich folks but it will not appreciably benefit Missourians as a whole.  U.S. News ranked the states in eight categories and in 22 subcategories.  Here is how we match up with Tennessee, the sweetheart of the Pro-Five set: The numbers on the left are Missouri. Tennessee is on the right.,

44  Crime and Corrections 40

22  Economy  13

32  Education  31

17  Fiscal Stability 5

43 Healthcare  39

35  Infrastructure  39

17 Natural Resources 34

8  Opportunity  22

The survey breaks down the categories this way:

CRIME AND CORRECTIONS

35 Corrections Outcomes  8

40 Public Safety  46

ECONOMY

9 Business Environment 17

28 Employment 15

34 Growth 11

EDUCATION

30  Higher Education 37

27 Pre-K-12 20

FISCAL STABILITY

18 Long-term stability 1

18 Short-term stability 22

HEALTHCARE

40 Healthcare Access  37

39 Healthcare Quality 21

39 Public Health  48

INFRASTRUCTURE

22 Energy 31

33 Internet Access 13

36 Transportation 14

NATURAL RESOURCES

23 Air and Water Quality 16

20 Pollution  39

OPPORTUNITY

12 Affordability 17

34 Economic Opportunity 39

14 Equality 26

You can go to the U. S. News website to get some breakdowns of these categories.

Here is the main point:  Missouri’s goal is not to be as good as Tennessee but to be BETTER THAN TENNESSEE.  That is going to take some really deep and non-partisan (if there’s any chance of that) policy-making that sees our state holistically and encourages Missourians to see beyond themselves.

Abraham Lincoln told Congress in 1861 that circumstances had forced a break from the status quo: “As our case is new, we must think and act anew.”

We the people, and those we elect must not be afraid of thinking and acting anew if we want a better state.  A simplistic step being offered Tuesday that favors some and disadvantages many others is the wrong direction to go.

Notes From a Not-Quiet Hill

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I’m typing this between phone calls to check on my Medicare program, my burial plans, the unclaimed property that might be waiting for me, an accident claim with my name attached to it and who knows what else because I’m not answering and the people who are spending hours calling me aren’t leaving messages so I can call them back. How rude.

I am disappointed, however, that no candidates have called.  You’d think that with the emphasis President Trump placed on redrawing my Congressional District that he would be calling about his preference.  Maybe he’s saving his energy for the general election.

We could discuss whether he can take away my citizenship after about seven generations or so (I honestly do not know if my earliest ancestors were legal immigrants.  We are learning that it’s never too late for ICE to execute justice on those who think they are legal.

Back to the phone calls—

There are so many I can’t recall all of them.  Yesterday our phone started ringing with robo calls at 9:15.  Our last call came at about 6:15.  There were so many that our caller ID stopped at 14 and our landline stopped counting at 50 sometime yesterday afternoon.

If a candidate for Congress or for the U.S. Senate wants to curry my favor, hey will announce the introduction of legislation enacting penalties on companies that show up on my caller ID as someone, some place, or some thing that they are not.

I swear, the entire city of Mokane called but never left a message.  It WAS kind of entertaining for a while listening to the Lady of the Phone pronounce the names of the Missouri places calling us.

Political junk in the mailbox.  Insurance junk on the telephone.  Billboard junk on our highways (well, on I-70 anyway).  Talk junk in the White House.  If there was any more junk, I’d be living in a landfill.

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Speaking of I-70—I drove back Sunday night from the race in Indianapolis and rather quickly realized I had made a mistake of coming back on 70.  At night.  Especially at Kingdom City where I thank Heaven I was the only car on the road at the time as I sought the exit lane and then navigated the new traffic circle.  The entrance to the circle seems designed for truckers who sit up high and can see over the end of the bridge railing to see if there are vehicles coming around.  But my car is small and I had to pull into the circle to see peek around that end.

It probably will be very nice when it is finished.  But Sunday night I didn’t feel particularly safe getting into the circle. I am becoming more friendly with Highway 50.

Now, back to our main theme—

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One of our candidates is shown on the teevee carrying a rifle and telling us he’s going to stop the Chinese from buying our farmland. Pete Hegseth should be proud of this testosterone-loaded commercial.

I don’t vote for testosterone. And I’ve seen enough of people who pledge to “fight” for our rights by showing us a gun instead of an original idea. Eric Greitens wore that theme down to the nubbins. He was able to blow up some targets and he couldn’t blow things up when He became one.

What this present candidate hasn’t mentioned is what he’ll do to the Chinese who already own some of our farmland—-in this case, the properties that used to be Smithfield Foods, which sold its holdings in north Missouri to Chinese interests a few years ago. Will he go into the embassy in Washington, point his gun at the ambassador and demand the Smithfield land be given back?

Charleton Heston is dead.  He was not buried with a gun in his cold dead hands. It was impossible.  He was cremated.

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And please spare me all of cow cakes about ending waste, fraud, and abuse. Anybody who makes a big deal of that in a campaign is long on slogans and short on facets and is greatly unoriginal.  PLUS, they’re insulting the hundred or thousands of people who got into public office making the same promise by implying they were liars because it’s still going on. I have yet to hear from any of those candidates who promised to root out those terrible things, stretching back for several decades, who showed me at the next election time what they had accomplished anything. PLUS PLUS, I hope these candidates are not using the Trump playbook for eliminating WFA.

Wouldn’t it be nice to find a candidate that didn’t waste my time, use a fraudulent telephone number, and abuse my intelligence, or volunteer to shoot the bogey man of the day?

The problem with too many political campaigns is that they insult the voters by treating them as idiots.

Enough of this howling in the wind.  I need to grab my Red Ryder Daisy BB Gun and chase off a Chinese land-grabber somewhere.

And don’t try to take it away me. I’m going to consult with one of those callers who wants to talk about my final expenses and tell them I want to be buried with my BB gun in my cold dead hands so that I can the security force at St. Peter’s gate.  He must be getting some real doozies of  souls knock, knock, knocking on Heaven’s Door.

Amendment 1 

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(We intended to post this last Friday but it didn’t make it (we don’t think it did anyway)

Missouri is one of eight states without state park admission fees. Amendment 1 maintains that distinction.

We might think Amendment One would be a no-brainer.  It extends a popular, small, sales tax for ten more years.  But those disposed to vote “No” on everything next month might add a touch of uncertainty to this issue.

Voting “no” on everything is irresponsible.  So is voting “yes.”  Government, even something so small as one-tenth of a cent, requires responsible thought.

This one-tenth of a cent sales tax is earmarked for financing state parks and programs retarding soil erosion. When it was initially approved, Missourians weren’t so sure it was a good idea.  It was a 50.1-49.9 approval, about 1700 votes..  But it was renewed with a 69% favorable vote in 1988,  renewed again eight years later with two-thirds of the vote, with a 71% majority in 2006 and most recently almost 80% in 2016.  It has won with an average of about 71.5%.

Renewal should easy. But in 1984 it was on the ballot with  a Kansas City proposal to let the city issue bonds without voter approval if two-thirds of the property owners in a special benefit district wanted them. Fifty-nine percent of the voters said “no” on that one.

The third issue seemed benign—renaming the Department of Consumer Affairs, Regulation, and Licensing (CARL) the Department of Economic Development. It passed 61-39 percent, so we know voters were discriminating in casting their ballots.

DNR observes, “Since 1984, Missouri farmers have implemented more than 295,000 structural and management conservation practices on cropland, hayland, pastureland and woodlands. Through these conservation efforts, Missouri has stopped more than 194 million tons of soil from eroding, enough to fill the lanes of I-70 from St. Louis to Kansas City over 52 feet high. These practices were supported by over $975 million from the Parks, Soils and Water Sales Tax since 1984.

And what do our state parks get?  “Free admission to all state parks and historic sites,” and these other bullet points—

  • Enriches visitor experiences with improvements, such as the new Spirit Trail and playground at Knob Noster State Park, a new visitor center at Deutscheim State Historic Site and upgraded playgrounds at Bothwell Lodge, and Bennett Spring state parks.
  • Offers a variety of overnight accommodations from walk-in campsites to full service cabins and modern lodges.
  • Enhances campground amenities such as upgraded electric, showerhouses and restrooms.
  • Improves accessibility, including track chairs, 360-degree virtual tours and tram tours for senior citizens.
  • Provides ongoing maintenance and repair of more than 2,000 structures, 3,000 campsites and 1,000 miles of trail.

We are proud of our state parks.  We like not to see soil erosion providing a problem for our streams.  It’s only a tenth of one percent. We’ve gotten our money’s worth from this little tax and we should keep getting it.

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Amendment 5

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We pay income taxes at our house because we know that we have to pay for the things we expect government to provide for us at various points in our lives. We’re both retired and we live on a flexible income rather than one popularly described as “fixed.”  But Amendment Five nonetheless is more ugly sister to us than it is Cinderella.

I don’t think I can count how many times our legislature has cut this or that tax with the promise that it will bring more businesses to our state, that it will create more jobs, or even that it will keep us from losing another congressman.

If all of those promises were true, our Center State would be bursting with national company headquarters and international trade offices and hundreds of new jobs. But since we aren’t, the solution to the problem might not lie in cutting taxes again.

Supporters of Amendment 5 repeat the same tired promises.  They’re bombarding us with manipulative advertising that never addresses the specifics of the proposal. We expect opponents to respond in similar fashion, reminding us again that political advertising and truth are, at best, cousins.

Governor Kehoe has trotted out the moth-eaten Republican statement that, “State government doesn’t have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem, and continuing to spend faster than we grow our economy is not a sustainable path forward.”

So the answer is to cut funding for services Missourians want our government to supply to them?  Or to shift the burden of taxation?

How long will we have to wait this time for the economic boom to arrive and everything comes up roses for me and for you, too?

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Amendment 4

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I believe in the in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Petitioning Government for the redress of grievances is a sacred right of the American people but supporters of Amendment 4 on Missouri’s August ballot say it is too easy to turn those grievances into amendment to the state constitution.  It should be harder, than it is, as it is harder to amend the U. S. Constitution than it is to pass a law.

Amendment 4, as is the case with term limits, aims at the wrong target.

Here’s what it does and doesn’t do.

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The Seven Deadly (Social) Sins 

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I love discussion groups.  Sitting around and exploring issues, thoughts, events.  I recently came across something that could make for an interesting evening.

Or interesting any time, really.

Although usually credited to Mahatma Ghandi, this list apparently began with English Anglican Priest Frederick Lewis Donaldson (1860-1953).  He made his list public when he was the Canon, or Administrator, of Westminster Abbey and delivered them as part a speech on April 1, 1925.

We find his list of the Seven Deadly (social) Sins useful as we discuss political leadership at all levels in our country today:

  1. Wealth without work
  2. Pleasure without conscience
  3. Knowledge without character
  4. Commerce without morality
  5. Science without humanity
  6. Religion without sacrifice
  7.  Politics without principle.

He sent them to India to Mahatma Ghandi, who put them in his weekly newspaper, Young India, six months later.

Several books have been written that use these statements as their basis. The internet also is full of interpretations of them.  We like the summary at exploringyourmind.com.

(I gave the list to my minister who wrote about them in our weekly church newsletter.  He added an eighth one: unity without humility, commenting, “Too often people demand unity when what they really want is conformity. They want silence instead of conversation. Agreement instead of relationship. Control instead of community…Unity honors the dignity and humanity of others even when we disagree. It listens before speaking. It seeks understanding before judgment. It makes room at the table.”)

In his article a century ago, Ghandi wrote:

A Fair friend sends me “Crisp Sayings” by Dan Griffiths on crime and wants me to find room for them in these pages. Here are some extracts which a Satyagraphi  (a person who practices nonviolent resistance) can readily subscribe to:

“State law is not necessarily moral. Crime is not necessarily immoral.”

“There is a world of difference between illegality and immorality.”

“Not all illegalities are immoral and not all immoralities are illegal.”

Who can say that whilst not to crawl on one’s belly at the dictation of an officer might be an illegality it is also an immorality? Rather is it not true that refusal to crawl on one’s belly may be illegal but it would be in the highest degree moral? Another illuminating passage is the following; “Modern society is in itself a crime factory. The militarist is a relative of the murderer and the burglar is the complement of the stock jobber.” The third excerpt runs as follows;

“The thief in law is merely the person who satisfied his acquisitive in ways not sanctioned by the community. The real thief is the person who takes more out of society than he puts into it.” But “Society punishes those who annoy it,—the retail and not the wholesale offenders.”

Ghandi published the “Seven Deadly Sins” after that with the comment, “Naturally, the friend does not want the reader to know these things merely through the intellect but to know them through the heart to avoid them.”

The entire issue of Young India  can be found at: Full page photo.  The last page, under the title “Practical Vendata” offers an interesting view of Hindu philosophy (Vendata) compared to the teachings of Jesus.

We have wandered a bit because, as usual, one thing has led to another. Getting back to the beginning: Where are we as a people and as a nation on this list of deadly social sins—-and how do we move closer to becoming repentant sinners?

Ozymandias Trump  

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President Trump’s insatiable need to memorialize himself, whether it’s by putting his name on a long-standing building such as the Kennedy Center, minting gold coins, putting his signature on our currency, building a disgracefully tacky ballroom onto the White House, building a Trump Arch in Washington and now we have seen the plans for his presidential library.

All of this is his vain effort to immortalize himself as something far more than what he is brings to mind a couple of 19th Century British poet friends who engaged in a friendly competition to see whose work would be published first. They probably had heard the announcement that the British Museum had acquired an eight-ton statue of Rameses II.

Both had experienced the classical education of the day, which probably led them to a story by the First Century, BCE, Greek historian Diodorus Siculus who described a great Egyptian statue with the inscription, “King of Kings Ozymandias am I. if any want to know how great I am and where I lie, let him outdo me in my works.”

Horace Smith wrote:

In Egypt’s sandy silence, all alone,
Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
The only shadow that the Desert knows:—
“I am great OZYMANDIAS,” saith the stone,
“The King of Kings; this mighty City shows
The wonders of my hand.”— The City’s gone,—
Naught but the Leg remaining to disclose
The site of this forgotten Babylon.

We wonder — and some Hunter may express
Wonder like ours, when thro’ the wilderness
Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,
He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess
What powerful but unrecorded race
Once dwelt in that annihilated place.

The better-known of the poems is the one with the same name, Ozymandias¸ by Percy Bysshe Shelley, considered one of the greatest of the English romantic poets, who drowned in a sailing accident at the age of 29.  This is the one we are most likely to see in our English textbooks and in the compilations of great poems.

I met a traveler from an antique land,

Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

The poem is considered a commentary on the impermanence of power and the fleeting of time.  Litcharts.com puts it this way:

The speaker relates a story a traveler told him about the ruins of a “colossal wreck” of a sculpture whose decaying physical state mirrors the dissolution of its subject’s—Ozymandias’s—power. Only two upright legs, a face, and a pedestal remain of Ozymandias’s original statue, and even these individual parts of the statue are not in great shape: the face, for instance, is “shattered.” Clearly, time hasn’t been kind to this statue, whose pitiful state undercuts the bold assertion of its inscription. The fact that even this “king of kings” lies decaying in a distant desert suggests that no amount of power can withstand the merciless and unceasing passage of time.

Less poetic but nonetheless powerful on its own is a quote attributed to General George S. Patton; you might recognize it as it was spoken by George C. Scott at the end of the movie about the general:

““For over a thousand years Roman conquerors returning from the wars enjoyed the honor of triumph, a tumultuous parade. In the procession came trumpeteers, musicians and strange animals from conquered territories, together with carts laden with treasure and captured armaments. The conquerors rode in a triumphal chariot, the dazed prisoners walking in chains before him. Sometimes his children robed in white stood with him in the chariot or rode the trace horses. A slave stood behind the conqueror holding a golden crown and whispering in his ear a warning: that all glory is fleeting.”

Donald Trump  doesn’t seem to be the kind of person who would know who Percy Bysshe Shelley was (it has been widely reported that he seldom reads anything, even his daily security reports—there have been stories that staff members dumb them down for his short attention span) and while it would not be surprising to learn that he did see the Patton movie, he likely is incapable of understanding that all of his efforts to immortalize himself will someday be nothing more than the equivalent of a pile of ancient stones in the desert of history, an ancient 21st Century Ozymandias.

(Image credits: Statue—Society of Classical Poets; Trump Library—Youtube)

The Boodle Scandal, part Two

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Monday we promised you an opportunity to see a forgotten Missouri political, one of the most sensational ones of the Twentieth Century. Muckraker Lincoln Steffens described how money can distort public policy, a common and visible public concern today.

What was this scandal about?  An innocent everyday-used substance that is part of our diet today. Steffens’ magazine article is long. As you read it, you might think, “Nothing has changed.”  We’ll comment afterward what happened to some of the participants in his historic controversy.

Enemies of the Republic

Lincoln Steffens

[Reprinted from McClures, VOL. XXIll, October, 1904 No.6]

THE POLITICAL LEADERS WHO ARE SELLING OUT THE STATE OF MISSOURI, AND THE LEADING BUSINESS MEN WHO ARE BUYING IT – BUSINESS AS TREASON-CORRUPTION AS REVOLUTION

EVERY time I attempted to trace to its sources the political corruption of a city ring, the stream of pollution branched off in the most unexpected directions and spread out in a network of veins and arteries so complex that hardly any part of the body politic seemed clear of it. It flowed out of the majority party into the minority; out of politics into vice and crime; out of business into politics, and back into business; from the boss, down through the police to the prostitute, and up through the practice of law, into the courts; and big throbbing arteries ran out through the country over the State to the Nation-and back. No wonder cities can’t get municipal reform! No wonder Minneapolis, having cleaned out its police ring of vice grafters, now discovers boodle in the council ! No wonder Chicago, with council-reform and boodle beaten, finds itself a Minneapolis of police and administrative graft! No wonder Pittsburg, when it broke out of its local ring, fell, amazed, into a State ring! No wonder New York, with good government, votes itself back into Tammany Hall!

They are on the wrong track; we are, all of us, on the wrong track. You can’t reform a city by reforming part of it. You can’t reform a city alone. You can’t reform politics alone. And as for corruption and the understanding thereof, we cannot run ’round and ’round in municipal rings and understand ring corruption; it isn’t a ring thing. We cannot remain in one city, or ten, and comprehend municipal corruption; it isn’t a local thing. We cannot “stick to a party,” and follow party corruption; it isn’t a partizan thing. And I have found that I cannot confine myself to politics and grasp all the ramifications of political corruption; it isn’t political corruption. It’s corruption. The corruption of our American politics is our American corruption, political, but financial and industrial too.

Miss Tarbell is showing it in the trust, Mr. Baker in the labor union, and my gropings into the misgovernment of cities have drawn me everywhere, but, always, always out of politics into business, and out of the cities into the state. Business started the corruption of politics in Pittsburg; upholds it in Philadelphia; boomed with it in Chicago and withered with its reform; and in New York, business financed the return of Tammany Hall. Here, then, is; our guide out of the labyrinth. Not the political ring, but big business,-that is! the crux of the situation.

Our political corruption is a system, a regularly established custom of the country, by which our political leaders are hired, by bribery by the license to loot, and by quiet moral # support, to conduct the government of city, state, and nation, not for the common good, but for the special interests of private business. Not the politician, then, not the bribe-taker, but the bribe-giver, the man we are so proud of, our successful business man-he is the source and the sustenance of our bad government. The captain of industry is the man to catch. His is the trail to follow.

We have struck that trail before. Whenever we followed the successful politician his tracks led us into it, but also they led us out of the cities-from Pittsburg to the State Legislature at Harrisburg; from Philadelphia, through Pennsylvania, to the National Legislature at Washington. To go on was to go into state and national politics and I was after the political corruption of the city ring then. Now I know that these are all one. The trail of the political leader and the trail of the commercial leader are parallels which mark the plain, main road that leads off the dead level of the cities, up through the States into the United States, out of the political ring. into the System, the living System of our actual government. The highway of corruption is the ” road to success.”

Almost any State would start us right, but Missouri is the most promising.

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On the Minneapolis Front Lines

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Minnesota—a state of Lutherans, loons, lutefisk, and Lake Wobegon—is suddenly a war zone.  To hear the Trump administration describe it, it is filled with dangerous Somali fraudsters, and as HHS Secretary Kristi Noem put it, a “domestic terrorist” got what she deserved, a woman that Vice-President Vance claimed was influenced by a vaporous “left wing network,” and that President Trump accused of “violently, willfully, and viciously” running over ICE agent Jonathan Ross—characterizations all quickly issued with absolutely no knowledge of what happened to Renee Nicole Good, a recent Kansas City resident who had moved to Minneapolis about a year ago. Her wife, Rebecca, said in a statement, “We were raising our son to believe that no matter where you come from or what you look like, all of us deserve compassion and kindness.”

A recent editorial by the Wall Street Journal disputed the fulminations from Trump, Noem, Nance and their associates: “Minnesota’s Fraud Problem Isn’t Immigrants: It’s the vast size of the welfare state that corrupts them,” suggesting that generous benefits and numerous programs so large that comprehensive oversight is rendered impossible create opportunities for fraudsters. The Journal blamed both political parties for the situation.

When we were organizing the Missourinet in 1974, the first person I wanted on the my news staff was Jeff Smith who had worked with me at the now defunct KLIK radio station in Jefferson City right after he left Indiana University. Jeff was a terrific reporter whose career path took him into marketing and management. He and his wife Denny remain among our most cherished friends.

Jeff retired as a VP with Northwest Airlines and now is heavily engaged in non-profit work in Minneapolis. Among his colleagues are Somalis. Last week, just as the significance of the killing of Renee Good was starting to sink in, I asked Jeff and Denny to share some of their thoughts. Denny in particular has an interesting perspective on the immigrant situation, which became the focus of their comments.

Here is what they sent:

ICE Storm in Minnesota –

from Jeff and Denise (Denny) Smith

Four days ago, as we write this, Renee Good was shot and killed by an ICE agent in Minneapolis. Depending on which account you believe, she was either a hero or a domestic terrorist. There’s no doubt that the event sparked a storm of outrage on our cold, wet streets.

Unfortunately, we may never get a neutral account of what happened. The Federal government is acting as the sole investigator following its role as executioner. It’s the latest trauma our community has endured in the last seven months, including a fatal school shooting and the assassination of a State Representative.

Renee Good’s death is an outcome of the Trump administration’s decision to send more than 2,000 ICE and Border Patrol agents to Minnesota. Trump is clearly ratcheting up his determination to punish Minnesota for being blue.

As a white woman, born in the U.S., Renee Good wasn’t the chief target of these agents’ attention. Those would be people who are brown or black.

Minnesota has been home to us for forty years, since we migrated from Missouri for a career opportunity. Thank God we didn’t move from Mogadishu. If we had migrated from Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, we now would be labeled “garbage” by President Trump. If we wore a hijab or had brown skin, we would likely be afraid to leave our home, fearing an ICE agent’s impulsive imprisonment.

Somalis in Minnesota are neighbors and co-workers. They comprise the largest population outside of Mogadishu and our communities depend on them every day. Somali Americans have become integral parts of all aspects of a diverse Minnesota that ranks in the top ten states for health, education, our business environment and other measures.

Quoting the Sahan Journal, a local newspaper serving Somalis, “The vast majority of Somalis here and across the United States are U.S. citizens, and most who are not have legal permanent residency.” Among many professions, they provide needed services for people at Minneapolis/St. Paul International Airport. They care for older adults living in our communities for seniors. They work in our food processing plants. But, according to Trump, they’re not “legitimate” Americans.

By that definition, most likely, neither are you.

Only indigenous Americans have non-immigrant roots. The Twin Cities are home to more than 8,000 tribal members. But that population also does not feel safe. Last week, ICE detained four members of the Oglala Sioux Tribe because they could not provide proof of citizenship. They were unhoused and living under a bridge.

And they are not white.

Unless you are a Native American, you too are connected to an immigrant. Did your forebearers come from Poland, or Ireland, or Italy or, involuntarily, from Africa? If so, your ancestors knew what it’s like to be labeled “garbage,” or worse.

As a second-generation Sicilian, Denny’s grandparents and their families were vilified by white Americans as the new “Niggers” and were recruited to replace black cotton field workers during the great migration north by southern former slaves.

There’s always the “other” and they usually have dark skin.

We acknowledge that a few Somali Americans are at the center of the documented fraud in some Minnesota social service agencies. However, we trust that the fraudsters will receive swift justice and that the bureaucrats who allowed it will be held responsible.

We are alarmed by the Trump administration’s broad-brush judgements, especially of non-white Americans. We should not be so quick to judge entire populations. We should not be so quick to judge, period.

Our move introduced us to a region shaped by both harsh winters and remarkable cultural diversity.  Over the decades, we’ve witnessed how new waves of immigrants, from all corners of the globe, have been welcomed to the fabric of Minnesota, bringing fresh perspectives, food, traditions, and resilience. This blend of backgrounds has enriched our state and broadened our understanding of the world.

We’re glad we migrated to Minnesota and we pray for our city.

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For the record: Native Americans were not recognized as general citizens of this country, not even by the Fourteenth Amendment,  until June 2, 1924 but were not guaranteed the right to vote in every state until 1948.

It’s important to hear from people such as you and me in America’s occupied areas—-because ICE is among us, too. And so are immigrants.

The death of Renee Good is a case filled with complications and Minnesota authorities are not ceding the investigation and prosecution of the case to Trump’s FBI or any other federal agency whose trustworthiness is as limited as our President’s honesty.

But the basic point to remember is this:  The “domestic terrorists” in Minneapolis are the ones sent there by President Trump to punish a state that is not in his political column. His justification that people from those places he calls a “sh—hole countries” are committing massive fraud is a blatant slander of thousands of good people and a craven excuse for his abuse of power.

The Wall Street Journal editorial board disputes Trump’s singling out of Minnesota and its Somali immigrants: “Minnesota’s Fraud Problem Isn’t Immigrants: It’s the vast size of the welfare state that corrupts them—not immigrants or a particular culture.” Others have noted the billions of dollars poured into Pandemic relief programs have led to massive systemic nationwide fraud, suggesting that Trump’s singling out Minnesota and its Somali residents for military intervention is far beyond the limits of reality.

None of us deserves what is happening in Minneapolis and in too many other places in our country today. As Renee Good put it, “No matter where you come from or what you look like, all of us deserve compassion and kindness.”

Compassion and kindness are two of the many things grievously missing in our national dialogue and particularly from our national leadership.

Maybe we’ll ask Jeff and Denny to report from the front lines of our president’s war on his own country again as the ICE campaign and the killing of a 37-year old poet simmer in this frigid time.

Sports: Missouri’s Miserable Monday; Beaultin’ Beau; Beaten Bears; and some Bad Basketball  

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(GOOOOOO CHIEFS!)— Kansas has won the biggest plum of its long-standing economic border war with Missouri, luring the Kansas City Chiefs west of our state line where they will play in a new and enclosed stadium starting in 2031. Their new playground will be in the same economic development area that houses the Kansas Speedway, where NASCAR and sometimes IndyCar run, a track originally proposed for an area near Kansas City International Airport but which lacked sufficient Missouri government enthusiasm to keep Kansas from grasping it and making it a place that has boomed economically and will boom even louder now.

The announcement that the Chiefs will move to Kansas means Missouri has been unable to hang on to a third NFL team—the Cardinals and the Rams from St. Louis and the Chiefs from Kansas City. All three have bailed out of Missouri in disputes about state support for new stadiums.

Kansas is going to build a domed stadium project costing $3-million near the Kansas Speedway and The Legends retail district. There also will be a $300 million practice facility in Olathe, Kansas—ending St. Joseph’s role as the Chiefs training camp.

Shortly before the announcement in Topeka, Kansas legislators unanimously voted to allow STAR bonds to be issued for as much as 70% of the costs of the stadium and a mixed-use district that will be developed around it. Tax revenues on liquor and sales generated within the district will pay off the bonds.

Chiefs owner Clark Hunt says the only thing that will change will be the location of Chiefs games. Otherwise, he said, the fan experience will remain the same and the team will compete for more championships.

Missouri has lost three NFL teams—the Cardinals, Rams, and now the Chiefs, all because it was not as aggressive as the teams’ owners wanted the state to be in financing new stadiums.  Kansas City also lost a major league baseball team, the Athletics.

It’s a huge economic loss to this side of the state line.  Governor Mike Kehoe had called the legislature into special session last summer to put together a bond package covering up to half of the costs of a new stadium or a massive overhaul of Arrowhead, plus $50 million more in tax credits for the Arrowhead project and a new stadium downtown for the Royals, plus financial help from local government.

But the financial help from local government evaporated last year when Jackson County voters gave a strong “no” vote to extending a local sales tax that would have paid for those projects.

Now, the Royals are in play and there is a report that “an affiliate” of the team has taken a mortgage on land in Overland Park, Kansas.

(SO, WHAT NOW?)—Well, there’s always the UFL.  St. Louis has its poor substitute for an NFL team. The domed stadium named for a now defunct airline where the Rams used to play is the home of the Battlehawks. Whether there still will be an Arrowhead Stadium for the Kansas City Whatevers, if the UFL expands, is undetermined.

(CHIEFS TODAY)—The Chiefs might have spoiled the Tennessee Titans’ chances of getting the first pick in the NFL draft, giving the Titans their first win in a dozen home games and only their third victory all season. Kansas City played most of the game with its third-string quarterback, Chris Oladokun, calling signals after Mahomes backup Gardner Minchew limped to the sidelines and then to the dressing room with a second-quarter knee injury. It was Oladokun’s first NFL game. He’s been on the taxi squad for the last couple of years.

The pitiful 26-9 loss guarantees the Chiefs with their first losing season since 2012, before the Andy Reid era began. The chiefs now are losers in four straight games, and six of the last seven. The Chiefs went into the game with the league’s eighth ranked defense and gave up 376 yards to rookie quarterback Cam Ward, who broke Marcus Mariota’s team record for most passing yards in their first season.

The Chiefs had only 133 yards of total offense and only nine first downs; the Titans had 22 first downs and . The Titans ran 70 plays; the chiefs only 43.  Oladokun finished 11/16 for 111 yards.

The Chiefs entered the game in a poor physical situation. Patrick Mahomes and right tackle Jawaan Taylor are on injured reserve and nine players were declare out, including five starters.

Things appear likely only be worse this week. They play the Broncos on Christmas night

(MIZPORTAL)—The instability of college football caused by the transfer portal that allows athletes to become carpetbagging mercenaries hired by schools looking for a golden arm or unstoppable legs, in particular, is a big deal for the Missouri Tigers.

Beau Pribula has turned into one of those carpetbaggers who found a bigger paycheck at Missouri than he was likely to get at Penn State couldn’t wait until after a bowl game helped the team get to before he told Mizzou he was looking for a greener pasture.

Pribula wasn’t so bad at Missouri that he wouldn’t likely do better with a second year in the system—although the system departed when the Offensive Coordinator Kirby Moore found a portal that he could go through, too—but Pribula didn’t exactly show that he was the next great NFL clipboard quarterback to be produced by Mizzou.

So Missouri becomes just another team headed to a bowl game with a patchwork lineup because some guys would rather go campus-shopping than play another game in their latest school’s colors.

(MIZOC)—Missouri’s new offensive coordinator is bringing experience from one of the Big Ten’s elite teams.  Chip Lindsey is moving to Missouri from the University of Michigan. He’s been a college coach for a dozen years in increasingly higher circles. His South Carolina team ranked 7th in the nation in total offense in 2023, averaging almost 500 yards a game. This year at Michigan, his teams averaged almost 400 yards

He and Mizzou and Eli Drinkwitz have some acquaintances with each other. During his three-year head coaching stint at Troy, his team lost to Missouri and Coach Barry Odom at Faurot Field 42-10 and fell to Drinkwitz’s Appalachian State 48-13. He has helped develop three quarterbacks who’ve made it to the NFL including Patriots starter Drake Maye,  and Jarrett Stidham and Nick Mullens. It’s not known what his role will be for the bowl game next weekend.

(THE BOWL)—The preparation for the game by freshman quarterback Matt Zollars will be different by game time. He and Coach Drinkwitz both know that he’s not a fill-in for the next game. He’s number one and the pre-game preparations are different.  This game and the spring practices can put him in a commanding position for 2026.  He has shown good potential as Pribula’s substitute for three games this year. The Gator Bowl could be the game in which he reduces or erases the word “potential.”

One thing to watch for—because his coach will be watching—-is how well he performs on third downs, passing downs. “You look at our four losses this year, you look at our three losses last year, look at our two losses the year before that—our inability to consistently convert third downs in critical games or throw the ball has been a major factor in our losses,” said Drinkwitz.

Virginia is looking for its first 11-win season. The Cavaliers go into the game having won two of their last three. Missouri’s season flattened out as it began facing top 10 fellow SEC Schools. They go into the wining with three losses in their last five game.

(NOT RUNNING AWAY)—-Although he could write his own check elsewhere, Ahmad Hardy is staying at Mizzou.  He admits he hadn’t gotten any offers: “I think they know I’m a Tiger, so they ain’t hit me up.”

That means Missouri will have an All-American running back for the new offensive coordinator.

Hardy would have been among the hottest properties if he wanted to go portalizing. His 1500 yards-plus performance—before a bowl game—ranks him 28th among all Missouri career rushers.  Another season such as this one could get him to third on the all-time list. He’ll likely have to stick around for another year to move past Larry Roundtree (3720) and Brad Smith (4289 who, as a running/passing quarterback also threw for 8799 yards.).

But—-the Tigers’ one-two backfield punch this season might not be complete next year. Running back Jamal Roberts, who gained an average of 6.2 years every time he got the ball this year (so far) is in play as a possible portal entrant. Coach Drinkwitz hopes some moneyed supporters will cough up a lot mor NIL funding to keep him at Faurot Field in 2026.

(MOSTPORTAL)—Missouri State Quarterback Jacob Clark, who finished his college career with a 34-28 loss to Arkansas State in a bowl game in Texas, has little good to say about the portal process.

He was sacked eight times as the Bears played without their starting left tackle Ebubedike Nnabugwu, the Conference USA’s best pass protector, who is portal bound. Also missing was right tackle Erick Cade, has played out his eligibility. Defensive end D. J. Wesolak took himself out of the lineup to protect himself for the portal. Starting center Cash Hudson, also reportedly headed for the portal, DID play but left the game in the fourth quarter with an injury.

Clark pointed to Texas-San Antonio coach Jeff Traylor whose team will play Florida International the day after Christmas without almost twenty players who are going portal shopping to show the absurdity the portal is creating in college football. Traylor has blamed “all of the tampering and the agents and coaches,” who are promising “incredible” financial deals to lure players into the portal. “I hate it because I really want to coach them in a bowel game, but they’re getting leveraged out of it…I never thought we’d be punished for making a bowl game by being leveraged.”

“You’re talking about teams that have $26 million to $40 million, and the number’s just too big, and who knows if they’re being told the truth? It’s sad, it really is sad,” he continued.

“There’s no such thing as tampering. Coaches talk to players, agents talk to players. Oh, then turn them in, coach. You think those players are going to give me the coach that’s actually talking to them? Why? It’s driving the price up. The more they get driven up, the price goes up higher and higher. As long as there’s people gonna pay it, who’s going to stop it? What’s going to stop this? What’s going to stop it? Only the freedom of process is going to stop because when there’s no money left, what are we going to all do?”

—a highly pertinent question.

Missouri State and Arkansas State both finish the year at 7-6.

(MIZSIX)—CBS’s Mike Renner thinks he has identified the top 150 potential NFL draft picks—and sixTigers are on the list. The last time six Mizzou players were drafted was 2023; the record is seven, in 1981.

Linebacker Josiah Trotter is the highest-rated Tiger at number 74. Defensive Tackle Chris McClellan is 85, IOL Cayden Green is 90. In the last third are Edge Rusher Damon Wilson at 105, WR Kevin Coleman at 110 and IOL Keagan Trost, 141.

The Winter Solstice means we are one step closer to the magical day when Spring training starts.

(BRAGGARTS)—-First, we lost the Chiefs. Then we lost a basketball game to Illinois—and it was the worst loss by either team in the history of the so-called “Braggin’ Rights” game between Missouri and Illinois.

Illinois “outed” the Tigers everywhere—offense, defense, rebounding—in all facets of the game. Toward the end, the biggest question was whether the Fighting Illinois would double-up on the Tepid Tigers—and they almost did, 91-48.

Missouri heads into the SEC schedule 10-3 with losses to Illinois, Notre Dame, and Kansas, losses that could play a role in a couple of months when it comes time to decide if Missouri is good enough for post-season play..

Junior point guard Anthony Robinson talked on Sunday about a ‘TPD’ mindset, meaning tough, physical and disruptive, saying that would be a key to playing their brand of basketball and finding success against Illinois.

The Illini out-rebounded Missouri 43-24. They outscored the Tigers on second-chance opportunities 29-5. The Illinois defense produced miserable Missouri shooting—29% from the field, only 27% from the arc (6 of 22 from the three-point line).

Life won’t get easier with the start of the SEC schedule on January 3.  Florida.  The Seminoles are ranked 22nd this week.

(CARDS)—The St. Louis Cardinals have taken their first deep plunge into the trading market by sending catcher/first baseman Willson Contreras to the Red Sox for three right-handed pitchers: Hunter Dobbins, Yhoiker Fajardo and Blake Aita. Contreras waived his no-trade clause.

Dobbins was 4-1 last year for Boston. Eleven of his thirteen games were starts. He fanned 45 in 61 innings and had a 4.13 ERA before he tore a knee ligament early in July and had season-ending surgery.  Shipping off Contreras opens the door for Alec Burleson to become a fulltime first baseman. Dobbins takes Contrera’s spot on the 40-man roster.

Fajardo won’t be 20 until the 2026 season is almost over. He was with two teams in the minors last season, posted a 2-8 record but had a 2.93 ERA and whiffed 147 batters in 122 innings. Aita will be 23 next June.  He’s seen as a potential starter. He also was with two teams last year, went 5-7 with an ERA of 3.98.

Until the Contreras trade, the Cardinals had been making only small waves. Left Fielder Matt Koperniak was put on waivers, went unclaimed, and is headed back to Memphis for a third season. He hit .309 at Memphis in 2024 but had a disappointing ’25 when he dropped to only .246.

The Redbirds signed free agent pitcher Dustin May to a one year, $12.5 million contract. May missed three weeks last season with an elbow nerve inflammation and was 7-11 with a 4.96 ERA in 23 starts for Boston and Los Angeles. He’s struggled with arm problems throughout his career and had Tommy John surgery in 2021. He is 19-20 with a 3.86 ERA in 57 starts and 14 relief appearances in a six-year career.

(ROYALS)—The Kansas City Royals seem to be taking their time in the free agent/trade markets. This past week, they traded relievers with the Phillies. The Royals added veteran left-handed pitcher Matt Strahm, who came over from the Phillies in a trade for pitcher Jonathan Bowlan.

Strahm went 62.1 innings in 66 games, was 2-3 with six saves and a 2.74 ERA. Bowlan has been in 50 games in his two-year career, 1-2/3.86 last year with 45 Ks in 44.1 innings.

Now, a little tragedy, and some and history—.

(NASCAR)—Federal investigators say it will be quite a while to figure out why the plane of retired NASCAR Cup driver Greg Biffle crashed, killing Biffle, his family and others. Biffle, who was popular in the garages and was known for his philanthropic work, was named one of NASCAR’s 75 greatest drivers in its first 75 years. He won 19 of his 515 races, was in the top five 92 times and finished 175 races in the top ten. He was the runner-up for the 2004 Cup championship and finished in the top ten in points six times.

(INDYCAR)—There are few higher-ups in big-time sports who spend more time relating to fans and sometimes getting their hands dirty while doing it than Doug Boles, the President of IndyCar and of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.  Most often, he’s the guy looking cool in a blue suit in a crowd of one, two, or three hundred thousand people in verrry casual, if not sometimes outrageous, summer attire. The fact that he got a journalism degree before becoming a lawyer (three of my former Missourinet colleagues did the same thing, so we relate on that level, too) means he can speak board room lingo as well as he comfortably can wander among the hordes of folks who like to mix sunshine, hot dogs, beer, and really, really fast cars on hot summer weekends.

He finds adventure outside the office and inside the speedway and enthusiastically shares it with Speedway fans and worshippers with videos that he calls “Behind the Bricks.”

The track is called “The Brickyard” because it once was paved with millions of bricks that sometimes cause problems for the modern paved squared oval where cars have touched 240 mph before making a left turn. There still were a few feet of bricks on the main straightaway when my parents took me to the track for the first time.

His enthusiasm about the old place is shown in three recent episodes that shows us “under’ the bricks—a project to repave part of the track when some the old bricks shifted and caused a bump that cars going four miles a minute shouldn’t encounter, especially in a turn.  The project turned into an archaeological expedition that recalled the earliest days of the track and became three podcasts that mix technology, history, and the guy who runs the whole place.

Bing Videos

Behind the Bricks: Turn 2 Repave, Part 2

Behind the Bricks: Turn 2 Repave, Part 3

It’s grey and it’s cold and we’ve had a bad day in sports in Missouri. It seems like a long time before we’ll write again about daring men and women doing remarkable things when the asphalt over the old bricks is hot again. But Doug reminds us that the good times are waiting.

(Photo Credits: Stadium, Hardy—Instagram)