Category Archives: education

Eric the Meddler

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Our Missouri Attorney General has sued China for not coming clean about COVID. He has meddled in how Pennsylvania ran its 2020 presidential election. He sued more than a dozen school districts that had decided their students were safer if they wore masks to limit COVID exposure. Now he is demanding emails from academics that he thinks are critical of him or might be teaching something he finds it politically advantageous to criticize.

Does this sound like the person whose duties are described on his own office webpage?

The Attorney General serves as the chief legal officer of the State of Missouri as mandated by our Constitution. The Attorney General is elected by Missouri voters, serves a four-year term, and is not subject to constitutional term limits.

The Attorney General’s Office represents and provides legal advice to most state agencies; defends challenges to the validity of state laws; enforces civil law, including consumer protection and environmental laws; defends the State’s interest in civil actions, including bankruptcies, workers’ compensation claims, professional licensing cases, and habeas corpus actions filed by state and federal inmates; and serves as a special prosecutor in criminal cases when appointed. In addition, the Office handles all appeals statewide from felony convictions.

The Attorney General’s Office brings and defends lawsuits on behalf of the State and prepares formal legal opinions requested by State officers, legislators, or county attorneys on issues of law. The Office represents the State in litigation at all levels ranging from a variety of administrative tribunals to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Frankly, it seems our attorney general hasn’t read his own webpage lately, although he seems to be pretty loose in his interpretation of bringing and defending lawsuits on behalf of the State.

A few months ago, Schmitt’s office filed open records requests with the University of Missouri-Columbia. One demanded three years of emails seemed to target a research program to help teachers helping teachers promoting social emotional learning. The Rand Corporation says social emotional learning gives students “the skills they need to work in teams, communicate their ideas, manage their emotions — even stand up to a schoolyard bully. For anyone who has ever complained that kids these days don’t have the strength of character, the stick-to-it-iveness, of previous generations, here’s one way to better ensure they do.”  The second letter demanded four years of emails from a couple of Journalism School professors sent to the head of Politifact, a political fact-checking website.

Why is he interested in these things?  Schmitt’s office has told The Kansas City Star he’s “simply trying to get to the bottom of the fact checking process.”

—whatever the heck that means.

His latest target is Missouri State University Assistant Professor Jon Turner who reacted on Twitter after Schmitt asked parents to report “divisive” curriculum in their kid’s schools.

The Missouri Independent has reported that Turner tweeted that Schmitt used to be known as a moderate state Senator but since becoming AG, he has become “so ANTI-TEACHER I just can’t wrap my mind around the flip-flop” and he said he was working to “make sure this dangerous, hateful political jellyfish never gets elected to anything again.”

Schmitt did not take such remarks lightly.  His office fired off a letter to the university demanding all of Turner’s emails for the previous three months as “part of a fact-finding process we undertook that was looking into the practices and policies of education in our state,” as Schmitt’s spokesman put it.

Turner has told the Independent that his reseach looks at the four-day work week and other challenges facing rural schools, not something Schmitt’s office should bother Schmitt.

Turner says Schmitt’s “attempted intimidation” has just made him more concerned that Schmitt is politicizing his position.

Schmitt also has targeted MSU. Earlier his office demanded emails from various professors and documents related to a training seminar sponsored by the University called the “Facing Racism Institute.”.

The University describes the institute as “the area’s leading program for uncovering racism and understand its impact on individuals and the workplace. It says more than 600 people have attended the institute. The university says, “Racism is still a powerful force in our lives and community. The Institute challenges participants of all backgrounds to be part of an equally powerful dialogue. We provide a safe space and neutral guidance needed to help that dialogue emerge.”

Again, it appears he hasn’t read his own office’s mission statement on its web page although he takes the language about bringing lawsuits on behalf of the state rather freely.

A good friend of your correspondent, who headed the Springfield Chamber of Commerce for many years, called the Institute “the best experience that we have found to have people understand the challenges and perspectives of folks unlike themselves. It is hard to be inclusive if you don’t understand what others might feel like.”

Itt appears that Eric Schmitt is guilty of something we hear his party blasting the Democratic congress and administration for:  government overreach. Whether he has, as Turner says, politicized his office is something we’ll let you decide.

Some of those he has targeted accuse him of trying to intimidate them. Others think he’s involved in political meddling in things that are not part of his official duties (read the intalicized description of the AG’s duties again).

In truth, he’s just being political.

We covered Eric Schmitt when he was a state senator.  We found him to be a thoughtful conservative.  We watched him struggle to pass a major autism bill.  We watched as he tried to transform Lambert-St. Louis Airport into a major trade hub with China—in a time when China’s economy was booming and its geopolitical ambitions had not turned perilous.

We kidded him about his claim that he was the tallest person ever to serve in the Missouri Senate, especially after we found an old newspaper clipping indicating he might only have tied for that distinction.

He’s not that Eric Schmitt today.

Perhaps political ambition is behind it.  Perhaps his advisors have told him he has to behave as he has behaved and is behaving because that appeals to a political base ginned up by and encouraged by Donald Trump—a man who has no compunction about dragging others down to his basest level.

Too bad the old Eric Schmitt isn’t the one running to join Josh Hawley representing Missouri in the U.S Senate. He seems to have left himself behind when he crossed the street from the State Treasurer’s office in the Capitol to the Attorney General’s office in the State Supreme Court building.

The silent letter

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We have a big stack of table games that we like to play with friends. One that we like is Bananagram.  I often complain because, unlike Scrabble, there are no points for the letters. And without points, how do we determine a winner?

Nancy just unzips the cloth banana and spills out dozens of tiles with different letters. We turn them upside down and pick the proper starting number of them (usually trying to pick tiles from various parts of the pile—as if that makes any difference) and then each person starts his own little word-building.  The end result is a crossword-looking series without any lines and with no clues.  If you have leftover tiles after you spell your first series of words, you say the proper word and everybody draws another tile. The person who runs out of tiles first is the winner.

But there are no points!!!   How do we identify a winner after a night of full-contact Bannanagram if the losers of each game don’t get points?

We also play other word games such as Quiddler and Wordspiel.  And other non-word card games including one with five suits called Five Crowns.  And games that aren’t word games such as Labyrinth,  Dominoes, and Rummikub.

Whether it’s because we play word games at the table or because we make a living out of stringing words into columns or articles or books or speeches, we find the English language pretty fascinating.  Maybe it goes back to one of our first jobs being the proofreader of the National Broom and Broom Corn News, which had an unpleasantly picky and prickly editor, in Arcola, Illinois or because we had some pretty good English teachers along the way.  (The NB&BCN was a contract print job that the Arcola Record-Herald published for the broom corn industry that was big in central Illinois then).

That’s probably why we had to do some hard thinking when we saw an article in Mental Floss by Michele Debczak about the only letter in our alphabet that cannot be silent.

(Let’s pause here for a bit so you can ruminate on this. Come back whenever you’re ready.)

The English language is a really hard language and a lot of us never learn it or never quit learning it.  The other day I admonished a friend for saying something such as, “George and myself are going to the game next Friday.” That sentence construction is fingernails on a blackboard.  Suppose George wasn’t going with you.  Would you say, “Myself is going to the game Friday?”  Think of a sentence that way and you’ll probably say or write it correctly.

Psychosis.   Gnu.  (In Africa a couple of years ago, I took a picture of several Wildebeests standing around.  I called it “Gnus Conference.”)  Mnemonic.  Silent letters.

Some letters have multiple personalities. Hard and soft “c,” or “g.” A great example is “Ghoti,” which is pronounced “fish.”  You know, “gh” as in “enough.”  “O” as in “women,” and “ti” as in “action.”

Ms. Debczak points to some foreign words we have appropriated for our own use that have silent letters.  French gives us the silent “z” as in “Chez.” Spanish gives us a silent “j,” as in “marijuana.”  Come to think of it, the “z” in Debczak probably is silent.

She apparently has read the Merriam-Webster Dictionary because she says the only letter in that entire dictionary that is never, ever silent is (drum roll):

V

If the “v” were silent, we would be saying “I loe you.”  Politicians would proclaim “ictory” after citizens had cast their “otes.”  Poetry would be “erse.”  Olive oil would be extra “irgin olie oil”  We’d have to find another word to describe these political times. “Diisie” would not work.

Get out your dictionary. Look at all the “V” words.

Let us know if you find one with a silent “V.”   And once you’ve done that, find the rhyme for “orange.”

 

Banned Book Week

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I have a pin that I wear on rare occasions that says, “I Read Banned Books.”

And I do.

I’ve read Huckleberry Finn.  The Bible (well, parts of it), Grapes of Wrath, Lady Chatterley’s Lover (not just the good parts), In Cold Blood, The Naked and the Dead—–

Probably more.

And as consumers of these columns know, I am clearly corrupted, probably an abuser of something or other, and have read a forbidden word or two that most second-graders already know.

This is the fortieth anniversary of Banned Books Week, It was started at a time when there was a sharp rise in actions to take books out of schools, libraries and even out of bookstores. It was created by Pittsburgh librarian Judith F. Krug who became the director of the American Library Association’s Office of Intellectual Freedom. Later she joined the Freedom to Read Foundation and after Time magazine did an article in 1981, “The Growing Battle of the Books,” founded Banned Books Week.

One of the biggest promoter is a century-old (founded in 1922) organization called PEN America, which says it “stands at the intersection of literature and human rights to protect free expression in the United States and worldwide.” Originally the acronym stood for “Poets, Essayists, Novelists.”  But the group has broadened its tent to include playwrights and editors and even more people. So “PEN” is no longer an acronym for anything but the organization is for free exposure to ideas.

Not long ago the organization calculated about 140 school districts spread throughout 32 states had issued more than 2,500 book bans, efforts that it says affect almost four=million students in more than five-thousand individual school buildings. It has identified at least fifty groups with at least 300 local chapters advocating for book bans.  It says most of those groups have formed in the last year.

PEN America keeps an annual index of schoolbook bans.  That list for the school year ending June 30, 2022 lists 2,535 instances of banning 1,648 titles.  The organization says 674 of the banned titles address LGBTQ+ themes or have characters who are in that category. Another 659 titles featured characters of color and another 338 addressed issues of race and racism.

Political pressure or legislation designed to “restrict teaching and learning” (PEN”s phrase) were involved in at least forty percent of the bans.  Texas had 801 bans in 22 districts. Florida had 566 in 21 districts. Pennsylvania had 457 in 11 districts.

The organization says the movement is speeding up resulting in “more and more students losing access to literature that equips them to meet the challenges and complexities of democratic citizenship.” It says, “Ready access to ideas and information is a necessary predicate to the right to exercise freedom of meaningful speech, press, or political freedom.”  It cites this except from a 1978 decision in a Federal Court case in Massachusetts:

“The library is ‘a mighty resource in the marketplace of ideas’ … There a student can literally explore the unknown and discover areas of interest and thought not covered by the prescribed curriculum. The student who discovers the magic of the library is on the way to a life-long experience of self-education and enrichment. That student learns that a library is a place to test or expand upon ideas presented to him, in or out of the classroom… The most effective antidote to the poison of mindless orthodoxy is ready access to a broad sweep of ideas and philosophies. There is no danger in such exposure. The danger is in mind control.”

Sixteen instances of book banning are on the new PEN index.  Six are from Nixa. Four are from Wentzville.

(3 actions)  Alison Bechdel, Fun House, A Family Tragicomic, banned in classrooms, Nixa May 2022; Banned pending investigation, North Kansas City and Wentzville (October, 2021)

Echo Bryan, Black Girl Unlimited, the Remarkable Story, banned in library, Nixa,  February 2022

Jano Dawson, This Book is Gay, banned in libraries, Lindbergh School District, October 2021

Jonathan Evison, Lawn Boy, banned pending investigation, Wentzville School District, October, 2021

Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing, banned in libraries, Nixa, May, 2022

Lisa Jewell, Invisible Girl, a Novel, banned pending investigation, Wentzville School District October 2021

(Two actions) George M. Johnson, All Boys Aren’t Blue, banned in libraries and classrooms, Nixa School District, May, 2022; banned pending investigation, North Kansas City School District,  October, 2021

Kiese Laymon, Heavy, an American Memoir, banned pending investigation, Wentzville School District, October, 2021.

Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye, banned in libraries of the Nixa School District  February, 2022.

Logan Myracle, l8r g8tr, banned in libraries and classrooms, St. Francis Howell School District,  October, 2021

Elizabeth Scott, Living Dead Girl, banned pending investigation, Rockwood School District, March, 2022

Nic Stone, Dear Martin, banned in classes, Monett R-1 School District, December 2021

Jeanette Walls, The Glass Castle, banned pending investigation, Nixa February, 2022

I am a writer, a journalist, an author, a longtime supporter of my local and regional libraries. I do not have much patience with those who want to dictate to me what I might read, how I might speak, or what I might think.

Perhaps I am the kind of person those who want to dictate those things fear.  Fear is a lousy reason for running a society or a nation.  People who are different will not go away and keeping someone from reading about them won’t drive them away.

So for the rest of this week, be a good American.

Read a banned book.  There’s a list of them above.

 

 

 

 

Tread Carefully

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The Missouri General Assembly convenes in a special session in a few days to consider a significant cut in the state’s income tax and other issues.

The past and the present and two seemingly unrelated situations suggest this is a time to tread carefully—-although, this being an election year, politics could take a higher priority than should be taken in considering the tax cut.

Let’s set aside politics for a few minutes and raise some concerns based on years of watching state tax policy be shaped.

Days after Governor Parson announced he was calling the legislature back to cut the income tax, President Biden announced his program to eliminate a lot of college student loan debt.  The two issues, seemingly wide apart, actually are related in this context. It will take some time to explain.

We begin with the Hancock Amendment. In 1980, Springfield burglary alarm salesman—later Congressman—Mel Hancock seized on a tax limitation movement sweeping the country and got voters to approve a change to the state constitution that tied state government income to economic growth.  If the state’s tax collections exceeded the calculated amount, the state had to send refund checks to income taxpayers.

Some of the Hancock Amendment was modeled on Michigan’s Headlee Amendment adopted two years earlier. But the timing of Hancock could not have been worse.  While Michigan’s amendment was passed during good economic times, Missouri’s Hancock Amendment went into effect during a severe economic recession considered to be the worst since World War II.

Missouri therefore established a limit that had a low bar. There are those who think the state has suffered significantly because of that.

Except for one year the Hancock Amendment has worked well.  Too well, some think, because it has encouraged state policy makers to underfund some vital state programs already hampered by Hancock’s low fiscal bar.

In 1998, the state revenues exceeded the Hancock limit, forcing the Revenue Department to issue about one-billion dollars in refund checks (averaging about forty dollars per household).

The legislature decided it did not want to repeat that. So it decided to cut taxes to keep from hitting the Hancock limit again.  Not a bad idea, except that when the national and state economies took a dive, financing of state institutions and services was severely lowered.  Had the refund program remained in effect, the economic downturn would have meant no refunds but institutions and services would have been hurt far less because the tax base would have stabilized funding.

The MOST (Missouri Science and Technology) Policy Initiative, a fiscal think tank, has recorded twenty tax cuts from 1993-2013.  The result is that Missouri is almost four-billion dollars under the revenue limit set by Hancock, according to the latest annual study done by the state auditor.

Missouri is unable to do a lot of things it could be doing because the legislature eroded the state tax base instead of issuing checks.

Now the legislature will consider an even deeper tax cut.

Nobody likes to pay taxes. But there has been cultivated in our state and nation a culture that seems to think the benefits of government—education, public safety, infrastructure, care for the sick and elderly and indigent, and other parts of our lives we take for granted—should be free.  Or, to the way of thinking of some people who don’t need those things, eliminated.

How does the Biden program to forgive billions of dollars in student loans provide a cautionary element to consideration of the Parson tax cut?

When I was in college in the previous century, I knew many people who worked their way through school. Some could do it with part-time jobs on campus or in the community. I had one friend who worked for a semester and then took classes for a semester.  I have one friend who  financed his college education by selling thousands of dollars worth of Bibles and other religious books during the summer.

But the expense of a college education today makes that kind of self-financing impossible, or almost impossible.  And here is a major reason why.

Back when my generation and the generation after us, probably, could work our way through school, the state provided for a substantial cost of higher education.  Today, the percentage is much lower.

Last year, one of Missouri’s most distinguished attorneys—who also was appointed by Governor Parson to the Coordinating Board for Higher Education—W. Dudley McCarter, noted in The Columbia Missourian, “After striving to attain this goal over the past 10 years, the state of Missouri has now succeeded in becoming the state that is at the very bottom in funding for higher education. No, it is not Mississippi, Arkansas or Alabama — it is Missouri. Over the last 10 years, state funding for higher education has increased nationwide at an average of 12.40% with some states increasing funding by over 40%. In Missouri, however, funding has decreased during that same period by 13.70% — the only state that had reduced funding. When adjusted for inflation, the decrease is actually over 26%. The national average for funding is $304 per student, with some states providing over $700 per student. In Missouri, the funding is less than $200 per student.”

The downward trend has been going on far longer than that. The internet site Ballotpedia has noted that state appropriations per full-time student dropped by 26.1% in the first decade of this century, about twice the national average.

A study done a few years ago for Missouri State University showed that, nationally, student higher education tuitions made up 30.8% of higher education revenues in 1993. By 2018, tuition was financing 46.6% of higher education costs—and the costs were higher. It was during that time that student borrowing ballooned to offset declining percentages of state and federal higher education support.

The Biden student loan forgiveness program deals with those who have debts already. It does nothing to prevent current or future students from incurring crippling student debts, because government has reduced its support for higher education.  And now, the legislature is being asked to reduce state revenues even more.

We lack the expertise to get too far into the weeds of economic nuance.  But reducing the state’s ability to meet its fiscal responsibilities in the future, whether it’s in higher education or numerous other fields is a long-term issue that must be approached with great caution.

Things are flush right now, thanks partly to inflation and the massive injection of federal Covid relief funds in the last few years.  But Missouri still is far short of its own limit on the state tax burden and still far short in funding numerous human-service needs.

It is politically popular in an election year to cut taxes. The public seldom recognizes the long-term penalties that might result.  Tomorrow’s college graduates might be among those paying a high price for today’s popular tax cut and incurring new student debt burdens.  And if a recession hits next year, as some economists keep predicting, some unfortunate results of this year’s tax cut could become painfully clear.

Governor Parson has taken a wise step in meeting with members of both parties to explain why he thinks a tax cut is appropriate today. We suspect he had an easier sell with member of his own party than he did with the other side. We expect some passionate discussion of this issue during the special session.

We also expect a cut will be enacted.  We hope, however, that we do not have a repeat of the unfortunate post-refund tax cuts of decades ago. We must be careful as we consider what we might do to ourselves, our children, and our friends.  Tread carefully.

A Reading List

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

Abdicating Authority

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

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

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

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

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

The other two points unfortunately are combined.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-0-0-0-0-

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

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

Reductio ad absurdum

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The life of retirement on this quiet street provides an opportunity for time to reflect on some of the great political thinking of our times as well as some of the not-so-great ideas. State legislators can be counted on as great thought-fodder producers. They’ll be back in the big-time fodder-manufacturing business in about, hmmmm, ten weeks.  Personal experience has led to the observation that selective self-righteousness always produces fodder. The quality of the fodder sometimes can be measured by a Latin phrase.

Latin does not often spring to the mind of the journalist, but we recall that the introduction of a couple of proposals during the 2015 legislature sent us scurrying to our source for Latin expressions.  It was the first session in which we were not present to subtly suggest some ideas were bereft of intelligence.

One proposal could have eliminated the sales tax that provides the bulk of funds for the Missouri Department of Conservation.  The department wanted to know where the state would find the $110 million dollars to pay many department’s bills if voters kill the tax. The representative didn’t have an answer to that question.

On the other side of the rotunda, a senator wanted to eliminate hunting and fishing permits because, he said, Missourians already pay the conservation sales tax and charging a fee to hunt the critters the conservation sales tax provides habitat for is double taxation.  That’s another $40 million dollars the department would not have so it can pay for all of the stuff it does.

Neither of these fellows suggested how the department could continue to function if it lost $150 million dollars a year, about 85% of its funding.  And if you think the legislature would look very hard for a new funding source, you don’t have a clue about the ideology of the legislative majority.

For example, the legislature started fiscal year 2014-2015 more than $400 million short of the amount it promised public schools they’d be getting by then under the school funding formula.  Do you really think a legislature that lacks interest in meeting its responsibility to pay for the education of Missouri’s children would show any great interest in finding new money to take care of deer, turkeys, otters, elk, prairie chickens, trout, bats, hellbenders, glades, and what little prairie there is left in Missouri?

The legislature solved the problem of funding shortages for education.  It rewrote the formula to reduce its responsibility.

We think the Latin phrase that tops our discussion today means “reduction to absurdity,” a concept that goes back to the great Greek seekers of logical thought who tested the truth of an  argument by seeing if it remained valid when extended to the point of absurdity.

The representative who wanted an end to the conservation sales tax said it’s not “good politics” to have a funding source “that never has an end to it.”  He wanted a statewide vote on whether to continue it.

Hmmmm.   Let’s extend his argument. Had he thought of a proposal for a statewide vote on the income tax?   The state sales tax?  The cigarette tax?   The alcoholic beverage tax?  Since the Farm Bureau jumped to support his bill back then, we wondered if the same standard should apply to the soil conservation and state parks sales tax. Those taxes don’t seem to have any ends either.

There were all kinds of opportunities for “good politics” then.  And if we listen to our legislators who continue to argue that lower taxes will mean more businesses will come to Missouri and create all kinds of new jobs, the expansion of the “good politics” plan could create a business development expansion that would make the Oklahoma Land Rush look like a small-town homecoming parade.

Now, let’s look at the senator’s double taxation argument.  There are all kinds of double taxation that also should be eliminated under his reasoning. We pay a sales tax for the opportunity to own our cars and our trucks and our snowmobiles and our wave runners.  But then we pay a second tax so we can stick a license plate on the front and the rear of the things, or put decals on the side.  And then we have to pay a third tax if we want to put fuel in them. And property taxes, don’t forget them. Forget double taxation.  We’re talking about QUADRUPLE taxation!!!

We pay property taxes that help finance our public schools and universities.  But then we have to pay laboratory fees, sports fees, band fees—and we have to pay to buy or rent textbooks so our children can learn something in the schools we’ve already paid taxes to support, sometimes higher taxes because the legislature continues to refuse to meet its self-imposed obligations. Clearly, those who use our schools are being taxed every bit as unfairly as the people with guns and bows and arrows are being taxed (don’t forget the sales taxes they paid to buy those things) to use the woods where the deer and the turkey play.

We pay taxes to finance our court systems at the county level.  And then we pay additional tax after tax after tax hidden behind the phrase “court fees” for various and sundry parts of the judicial system.  People who make mistakes that put them in court are being double-taxed. In fact, they’re being taxed in multiples, not just as a double tax.

There are astonishing possibilities for even more “good government” in other categories we haven’t touched on here.

The Representative withdrew his proposal fairly soon after introducing it after publicity about it raised big questions about the devastation it would cause. The Senator’s bill underwent major modification and was reduced to something that applied only to people living outside Missouri but who owned at least 75 acres here, which doesn’t exactly peg the logic meter.

We realize it’s never fair to criticize the efforts of others if the critic has no alternatives to offer.  In that spirit is a suggestion that lawmakers should avoid such pennyy-ante tax and fee proposals and focus on a broader “good government” system that lets taxpayers decide how to spend their money—because as we have often heard some legislators say, the taxpayers know how to spend their money better than government does. For example:

—-A law that designates each month as “pledge month” for certain government programs and services.  Let Missourians phone in amounts they would pledge for those services.   January could be Department of Natural Resources and Department of Public Safety Pledge Month.  February could be Department of Transportation and Department of Agriculture Pledge Month.  And so it would go.  We could eliminate an entire large state agency under this plan and that would make advocates of smaller government ecstatic.   We wouldn’t need a Department of Revenue any more. We could set up a smaller Office of Pledge Compliance and save a bundle.

We wonder how things would go for Legislature and Elected Statewide Officials Pledge Month.

Or perhaps we could have a statewide car wash for the Highway Patrol weekend.  A Statewide Social Services Bake Sale weekend.  A statewide garage sale for Mental Health.

Take a Conservation Agent to Lunch Day at the venison chili parish picnic.

See, folks, all the great thinking is not exclusive to legislative chambers when it comes to tax policy.  Any of us can think of things those people think about.

 

 

 

 

Racial Centennial

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Lost in this year’s numerous Missouri BIcentennial observance is a CENtennial event that hints at the idea that there is a cultural problem in the telling of our history.  We cannot let this year slip away without observing that—-

A significant event from 1921 has been overlooked.

Republicans gained control of the Missouri House for the first time since the post-Civil War Reconstruction period in 1921. There was something special about that crop of Republicans.

The flavor of the historic moment, and of the times, was captured in the Jefferson CityMissouri State Journal in January of ’21:

The Fifty-first General Assembly of Missouri was about to convene. The majestic corridors of Missouri’s new capitol with their classic lines were filled with people approaching the chambers of the two houses…The hall of the House of Representatives, with its imperial columns and lofty galleries, was he center of attraction…It was the Missouri of Thomas Hart Benton, Francis Preston Blair, William Joel Stone, Francis Marion Cockrell, George Graham Vest, Sterling Price, “Jo” Shelby, and a thousand figures of great renown…

Down the middle aisle filled with Missouri’s chosen, came a negro waiter from the City of St. Louis, fresh from the pots and pans of the City Club’s kitchen. He walked with the assurance of the state’s exalted. He strode with the confidence of one invested with new authority, and his black countenance shown with the pleasure of his new role, his eyes sparkled with delight. Passing beyond the lesser lights, he took his seat near the Speaker’s dais, and claimed his own.  Alone, of all the desks in the hall, his was piled mountain high with floral tributes from his race. Others were bare of decoration, but his was conspicuous for the profuseness of its splendor.

He was the representative-elect from the Sixth District of the state’s FIRST CITY—the wealthiest, most highly cultured constituency in the state. He was the first negro to be elected to the Missouri legislature. Albeit he had neglected to meet the constitutional qualifications of paying taxes, he had  been provided by the St. Louis machine which had selected him, with what is known as a “politician’s lot” a space of ground scarcely large enough to accommodate a good-sized box, with taxes of the princely rate of $1 a year. He had won at the polls, and he held his seat. Walther Hall Moore had become a full-fledged Missouri representative.

The formalities prescribed by the Constitution—fossilized relic of the white man’s rule—were complied with, and the House adjourned.  He stood at his place, with the broad smile, so natural with men of his race, and divided his roses among a congratulating group of Republican members and their wives, who surrounded him in their eager desire to grasp his hand. They bore forth his flowers proudly, while a little group of blacks in the galleries cheered and the Lieutenant Governor of the state—like himself, a St. Louis Republican—welcomed him to his new duties.

The name was WALTHALL, not Walther.  A few days after the condescending description of his entrance into the House chamber he introduced his first bill—making Lincoln Institute “into a State university for negroes” and providing a million-dollar appropriation for that purpose. One account said, “This is one of the things demanded from the Republicans by negroes during the last campaign, but the Republican platform convention refused to include it in the platform.”  Nonetheless, Moore got his bill passed.”

Moore’s district was three-quarters white.  He was not re-elected in 1922, but was elected in ’24, ’26, and ’28.  He was a postal clerk, not a waiter.  He was 34 years old when he first took his seat in the House. He was just short of 74 when he died in St. Louis in 1960.

The year he died, three African-Americans were elected to the House: Baptist minister William Wright, lawyer Hugh J. White, and retired postal worker Henry W. Wheeler. All were from St. Louis.

It took another forty years before the first black State Senator was elected (Theodore McNeal) and the state has yet to elect a person of color to any of its executive branch positions—a century after Walthall Moore walked down the center aisle of the House of Representative to take his seat.

Someday, though…….

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Who should control sports wagering?

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Kurt Erickson’s article in last Friday’s Post-Dispatch should be a warning that the state’s control of casino gambling is in danger.

Erickson wrote that four of our professional sports teams are launching a petition campaign to legalize sports wagering, an issue the legislature has talked about for several years but has been unable to get out of its own way and approve.

The St. Louis Cardinals, the St. Louis Blues, the Kansas City Royals, and the St. Louis City soccer club have filed nine proposed petitions with the Secretary of State. One of them will become the focus of a campaign to amend the constitution to allow sports wagering. The proposals also establish various tax rates and earmark revenues from sports wagering.

Some of the proposals will lower the overall tax on casino gambling by creating a super-low rate on sports wagering revenues. The proposals also change the way funds from gambling taxes are allocated.

Both are issues of legislative concern—-and of concern to educators in particular.  Both are issues the legislature dealt with in the 1990s when casino gambling was first legalized. The earmarking of funds from casino gambling has been a legislative prerogative from the beginning. The legislature changed the earmarks once, moving portions of casino admission fees from support for early childhood education to support for nursing homes and cemetery development for Missouri veterans.

Legislative leaders need to protect the general assembly’s authority to determine the best interests of the people of Missouri—the people who send their representatives and senators to the capitol on their behalf.

The only way to do that is to approve sports wagering during the 2022 legislative session.

The BEST way to do that is to recognize that casino gambling laws enacted in the 1990s are no longer adequate thirty years later at a time when casino gambling as an industry and  public access to casino gambling are changing.

Additionally, it is time the legislature recognize that the two-dollar admission fee established in 1993 has become a multi-million dollar liability to the state and to the casinos’ own host communities.

Proposed legislation has been written, but not introduced, that addresses all of those topics.  One of the major provisions is increasing the admission fee to a contemporary amount that is the equivalent of 1993’s two dollars. The United States Bureau of Labor Statistics says the equivalent for this fiscal year is $3.67.  A new estimate will be released in February, during the legislative session.

The proposed legislation increases the admission fee to $3.50, leaving seventeen cents unclaimed.

The proposed legislation increases the admission fee to $3.50.  We know the casinos will vehemently oppose this provision because they like to keep a dollar-67 in 2021 dollars for every two 1993 dollars they give the state (which have a purchasing power of only a dollar and nine cents now). They’re happy getting richer and richer while the state gets poorer and poorer

The proposal leaves seventeen cents unclaimed. The filing of the possible petitions has prompted a suggestion for the remaining seventeen cents.

We know from past experience that the private owners of professional sports teams will expect the legislature to put up state taxpayer funds to help pay for a new stadium. The tub-thumping for a downtown Kansas City Royals stadium is well-underway, in fact. The state does not have the major funds the teams want it to commit without cutting funding for other state programs.  A provision not yet in the suggested gambling reform bill could direct the unclaimed seventeen cents into a state fund for construction and renovation of professional athletic facilities, alleviating the inevitable pressure on the state for help with new professional facilities.

With wagering being permitted on sports, it is only proper that part of the proceeds from that activity be directed in that direction.

One reason sports wagering legislation has struggled and foundered in past legislative sessions is the effort to bring so-called grey-market gambling machines in convenience stores under state regulation. Efforts to make the two issues run in tandem have been counterproductive.

There is no doubt that it is important the state regulate those machines. But the stakes have been increased enough on sports wagering with the proposed petition campaign that the two issues should be separated and sports wagering should be a higher priority.

Nothing in what has been written today should be considered as opposing either sports wagering or regulation of the grey market convenience store machines. The author does not oppose either but does believe our gambling laws are outdated and are costing the programs the state once promised would be funded by those taxes and fees tens of millions of dollars a year.

The governor and the legislature have many issues to consider as priorities in the 2022 session. One of them is changing the law to make it harder to circulate petitions. We hope that issue will not obscure the importance of the sports wagering effort.

The proposed petition campaign should make state authority to regulate gaming and to appropriate the proceeds from it one of the major issues as a stand-alone matter that will not be endangered by other issues.

Sell Sell Sell

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(Selling encyclopedias one summer in college was not profitable enough to encourage a career in sales. But knocking on strangers’ doors in strange towns and convincing four in ten to let me in to give a presentation—making a sale to one of the four—did teach about selling myself, especially selling myself to people I did not know and who had no reason to want to know me.  Dr. Frank Crane offers his thoughts on—–)

SALESMANSHIP

Every young man should some time in his life have experience in salesmanship.

Selling goods is the best known cure for those elements in a man that tend to make him a failure.

The art of success consists in making people change their minds. It is this power that makes the efficient lawyer, grocer, politician, or preacher.

There are two classes of men. One seeks employment in a position where he merely obeys the rules and carries out the desires of his employer. There is little or no opportunity for advancement in this work. You get to a certain point and there you stick.

Such posts are a clerkship in a bank, a government job, such as letter-carrier, a place in the police force, or any other routine employment requiring no initiative. These kinds of work are entirely honorable and necessary. The difficulty is, they are cramping, limiting.

Some day you may have to take a position of this sort, but first try your hand at selling things.

Be a book-agent, peddle washing-machines, sell life-insurance, automobiles, agricultural implements, or peanuts.

You shrink from it because it is hard, it goes against the grain, as you are not a pushing sort of fellow. And that is the very reason you need it.

Salesmanship is strong medicine. You have to go out and wrestle with a cold and hostile world. You are confronted with indifference, often contempt. You are considered a nuisance. That is the time for you to buck up, take off your coat, and go in and win.

A young lawyer will gain more useful knowledge of men and affairs by selling real estate or fire-insurance than by law-school…

Get out and sell goods. Hustle. Fight. Don’t get fastened in one hole. Take chances. Come up smiling. So the best and biggest prizes in America are open to you.

Selling things, commercialism, business, is not a low affair; it is a great, big, bully game. It is a thoroughly American game, and the most sterling qualities of Americanism are developed by it, when it is carried on fairly and humanely.

There is incitement in it for all your best self, for your honesty, perseverance, optimism, courage, loyalty, and religion…

I mean to cast no slurs upon faithful occupants of posts of routine. They have their reward.

But…don’t look for a “safe” place. Don’t depend upon an organization to hold your job for you. Don’t scheme and wire-pull for influence and help and privilege.

Get out and peddle maps. Make people buy your chickens or your essays. Get in the game. It beats football.