Category Archives: education

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.”

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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.

Food at It’s Best

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“Ignorance and laziness have won,” said retired British journalist John Richards a while ago.

Richards, who turned 96 when he made that observation, started the Apostrophe Protection Society about twenty years ago.  He crusaded for the correct use of the “much abused” apostrophe.  But he has given up.   He told the London Evening Standard late in 2019 there were two reasons for disbanding his organization: “One is that at 96 I am cutting back on my commitments and the second is that fewer organisations and individuals are now caring about the correct use of the apostrophe in the English Language. We, and our many supporters worldwide, have done our best but the ignorance and laziness present in modern times have won.”

His society was a small one.  Depressingly small, it seems.  He told the Standard he started the APS after he saw the “same mistakes over and over again.”  He hoped to find a half-dozen people who felt the same way.  He didn’t find a half-dozen.  Within a month of his announcement of the founding of the society, he said, “I received over 500 letters of support, not only from all corners of the United Kingdom, but also from America, Australia, France, Sweden, Hong Kong and Canada.

But that wasn’t enough (Note the apostrophe).

That sentence is an example of one of the three simple rules Richards has given for proper use of the apostrophe.

  1. They are used to denote a missing letter or letters.
  2. They are used to denote possession.
  3. Apostrophes are never used to denote plurals.

And there’s a corollary.  “It’s” only means “it is.”  The possessive version is “its.”  The cat had its breakfast.

Otherwise, this sign says “Food at it is best.”  The Towne Grill in Jefferson City isn’t (note the proper use of the apostrophe to symbolize the elimination of the letter “o”) going to change its (note proper use of the possessive) sign.  It has become an institution in Missouri’s capital city, a quirky but incorrect use of the apostrophe that is part of the city’s (proper use of the apostrophe to denote the possessive) culture.

The Apostrophe Protection Society seems so English.  The story about it reminded us of Professor Henry Higgins in Lerner & Lowe’s Broadway musical “My Fair Lady,” of a half-century ago.  Professor Higgins decided to teach an untutored London flower girl to speak proper English and lamented:

An Englishman’s way of speaking absolutely classifies him
The moment he talks he makes some other Englishman despise him
One common language I’m afraid we’ll never get
Oh, why can’t the English learn to

Set a good example to people whose
English is painful to your ears?
The Scots and the Irish leave you close to tears
There even are places where English completely disappears

In America, they haven’t used it for years!

To end this on a couple of more serious notes:

First, John Richards died earlier this year—March 30.  He was 97. Mr. Richards’s Washington Post obituary is at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/john-richards-dead/2021/04/25/9c7c1994-a425-11eb-a774-7b47ceb36ee8_story.html.

Second, I had a friend named Ed Bliss who used to write news for Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite at CBS.  Ed, who died several years ago, often conducted newswriting seminars at our conventions of news directors. I can still hear him say, “We have become a nation slovenly with language. The slovenliness in grammar, punctuation, and spelling is all about us.”

If we lack respect for our language in speaking and writing, we limit our abilities as a people to communicate effectively and we damage the trust we can have in one another. Today, we shout more than we speak; we talk but we don’t listen; we tweet more than we write; we dismiss one another with disparaging personal assessments.  In the midst of this noise, this transformation of the grace of our language into crudeness, it is no wonder that a group that upheld something as small as an apostrophe should feel that “ignorance and laziness” have won.

It’s not just the continued improper use of apostrophes that should concern us.  Our language deserves better use than we are making of it. We cannot respect one another if we do not respect the language we use with one another.

 

What we’re made for 

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(Sometimes we have to be reminded of our proper roles and the proper place in our lives for our possessions and our institutions.  Today, Dr. Frank Crane tells us there is a difference between—)

USE AND BEAUTY

The Sabbath, said the teacher, was made for Man, and not Man for the Sabbath.

The bearin’s of which, as Dickens would say, is in its application.

Any Institution was made for Man, and not Man for the Institution.

The college, for instance. No, friend Procrustes, whilst we appreciate your zeal to make a record for yourself as President, yet we would remind you that we are sending our boy to your University for the good he can get out of it, and not for the benefit he can be to it. He is not there for you to find out how far he falls short of your standards, nor what glory he can add to his Alma Mater; He is there for you to find out what’s in him, and to develop that. We don’t care a hang about your grand old traditions and things, except as they help you in being the making of our particular pup.

The Church was made for Man, and not Man for the Church. And if your meeting-house is just occupied in keeping itself up, parson, why, close it up and start a hennery…We don’t care about how much money you raise, nor how beautiful are your vestments, nor how high your theology, nor how numerous your membership, nor how gay your stained glass. Are you helping friend Man? Are you making him sober, industrious, clean, and honest? Are you developing in him a civic conscience? Or are you simply being good—so good you’re good for nothing? Come, produce! Or quit!

The House was made for Man, Ma, and not Man for the House. Let the boys play marbles in the dining-room, and the girls have their beaux in the parlor, and grandpa smoke his pipe in the kitchen, and everybody raid the ice-box at 11 p. m. if they want to; what better use can carpets be put to than that children’s knees should wear them out a-gleemaking, and what are sofas for if not for spooning, and kitchen-warmth and cheer if not for old folk homing? Use the old home up, and get a better product—of love and laughter and undying memories.

Books were made for Man, and not Man for Books. Use ’em. Thumb ’em. Mark ’em. Go to bed with ’em. Carry ’em on trains. And don’t own books that cannot be carried down through the Valley of Every-day as the soul’s lunch-basket.

The most perfect ornament is that which is of the most perfect service to Man. No cane is so beautiful as the one grandfather wore smooth on a thousand walks; no chair so lovely as that one mother consecrated by many a night of rocking the baby; no table so priceless as that one where father used to write; no pipe so pretty as the one he smoked; no dress so charming as that one that still has the wrinkles in it worn there by the little girl gone—gone forever into heaven, or womanhood.

It’s the human touch that beautifies. Nothing can be warmly beautiful that is not, or was not, useful.

And Democracy is beautiful because it exists for the welfare of the People that compose it, and not for the glory of the Dynasty that rules it.

The State was made for Man, and not Man for the State.

Notes from a Quiet Street  (Hot Summer Days & Nights Edition)

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We have officials from Missouri and many other states who are threatening to punish school districts and local health departments, in particular, if they institute mask mandates.  Our Attorney General, Eric Schmitt, is the chief guardian against local mask mandates and he now has a class action lawsuit forbidding school districts from having the mandates. He says parents and families should decide if children wear masks, not those who act in loco parentis when hundreds of children are together.  Parents and families, he says, should make decisions based on science and facts—-as if officials in charge of hundreds of children in close contact with one another can’t make decisions based on science and facts.  Or should not be allowed to make decisions based on science and facts.

The lawsuit also cites a low COVID death rate among school children.

Isn’t one child dying from this plague too high a death rate?

We find all of this energy by governors and attorneys general—almost unanimously Republicans—on this issue peculiar.

Remind us again which party is it that does the most griping about government over-reach, especially the federal government telling states (who know what’s best for their citizens) what should be done.

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One thing we’ve noticed about the pandemic, and now “the pandemic of the un-vaccinated,” is that no preacher has tried to capitalize on it as God’s punishment for this or that nation condoning this or that whatever.  Perhaps it is because all nations, whatever their faults, are fighting this thing—and deciding what human trait is being punished is impossible to determine, even by those who in the past have claimed exclusive knowledge of God’s intent.

But maybe God can’t get in a word edgewise amidst all of the conspiracy cacophony that has helped give the pandemic new vigor.

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There’s been a slew of book released revealing more about the more chaotic last chaotic days of the Trump administration. It is unlikely—we certainly hope it is unlikely!!—that we will ever again see so many books from so many insiders so critical of a president. But there’s one insider book we are waiting for although it might not come until the author determines that he will be more benefitted than damaged by his words.  Potential bombshell-author Mike Pence seems to think the success of his future is still too closely tied to his recent past to discuss it.

But, boy oh boy, the tales he could tell…….

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We notice, by the way, that the former VP is becoming more visible on the public speaking circuit.  He’s hitting some of the big venues—a few weeks ago he repeated his lamentable attack on Critical Race Theory at the inaugural Feenstra Family Picnic in Sioux Center, Iowa.

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Watching the drought envelop the West, we are reminded of some jokes that we heard back in the very hot summer of 1953 while growing up on our little Illinois farm.  That was the summer when the thermometers reached the 90s in late May and the heat wave ran well into September with several days in the triple digits.  In fact, the last 90-plus day was not until October.  Few homes or cars were air conditioned and I can recall my mother closing the curtains in the morning to keep out the sun during the day.

It was so hot that I saw three dogs chasing a tree.

We got a little rain one day and we sent what was in our rain gauge to the University to be analyzed. It came back only 35% moisture.

That was the winter is snowed a little bit but the snow was so dry we just shoved it into the ditch and burned it.

Not sure but those might have been told by Sam Cowling on Don MacNeill’s Breakfast Club that broadcast from Chicago for 35 years on the NBC Blue Network (which became ABC Radio) and is known as the program that created morning talk and variety as a viable radio format.

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Several months ago we told the story of a Cole County man who got married into a family situation that sounded like the story told in the song, “I’m My Own Grandpa.”

Well, we’ve found another one.  From the Sedalia Capital, a newspaper founded when Sedalia was making an ill-fated run at taking the seat of government away from Jefferson City, February 21, 1925 issue.  Page 5 has a picture of a nice-looking lady captioned, “Miss Ruth Davis’ marriage to her stepbrother, Andrew Jean Stormfeltz at Kansas City, Mo., made her mother also her stepmother and her mother-in-law, and her stepfather her father-in-law. She’s her own stepsister-in-law.  Figure it out.”

We’re not genealogist enough to know, but would that make their children their own cousins, or their own aunts and uncles, step or otherwise?

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CRT

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A legislative committee has started holding hearings on Critical Race Theory, a 50-year old academic and legal-studies concept that has been weaponized for political advantage in the last few years.  Among the strongest criticism is that it rewrites history, changing the narrative from a nation founded on Christian values to a narrative that makes white people ashamed of their race (even, some critics say, brainwashing kindergartners into being ashamed of being white).

CRT has become so pervasive in our civic discussion that my Sunday School class talked about it a Sunday or two ago.  More accurately, I talked about it to the Sunday School class.

Faith is a personal thing and while I was comfortable discussing it with that class, I am not one who is comfortable publicly waving it about. But I often find myself in these divisive times turning to Paul’s letter to the Galatians (people living in modern Turkey) that admonishes, “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” There are slight differences in the wording depending on the version of the Bible you prefer but the sentiment is the same.

Unfortunately, we live in a world where even many professing Christians of all races still seem to miss Paul’s point. Among its virtues, Critical Race Theory points to the many times when the concept of “you are all one” has been violently meaningless.

As for re-writing history: history needs some rewriting so that it is more history than myth.

To pretend that race has not been a major force in the history of the United States is deception, a willingness to accept myth rather than recognize a historical record that should compel us to be better than we are—regardless of our race. To suggest that it does not still influence attitudes and standards is to disrespect those who have walked a different path than yours for generations.

We should not fear raising the issue of ongoing racism in America.  Although I wish it were not true, it is hard for me to dismiss accusations that there remains a current of it in our country—especially after my experience in discussing removal of Jefferson City’s “Confederate Rock” and listening to an African-American woman who favored its removal read an unsigned letter she received that referred to her thirteen time as a “Nigger” and suggest that she is the kind of woman the Ku Klux Klan was created for.

There, I’ve used the word. I refuse to remove its ugliness by turning it into the linguistic pablum that is “N-word.”  We do no service to ourselves as a people by avoiding the issues behind it and barely beneath society’s surface.

I live in a part of Missouri sometimes referred to as “Little Dixie” because of the high percentage of enslaved people before the Civil War—the 1860 census showing almost ten percent of Missouri’s population in 1860 was enslaved.  Cole County, where I live, was at 10.3% and, perhaps because of the heavy anti-slavery German population, was one of the lowest counties in this region.  Across the river, the census showed almost 26% of the population of Boone County was slaves. Callaway County was at 25. A little ways upstream, 37% of the population of Howard County was slaves. One-third of the population of Saline County was enslaved.  More than one-in-five residents of Cooper County were slaves.

Within my lifetime, I remember the day a black couple moved into an upper-middle class white neighborhood in Columbia and in the newsroom where I worked, we listened to the police monitors for any signs of trouble. There was none.

I was ten feet away from Jefferson City’s leading realtor the night he urged the city council to defeat an ordinance saying people of color could live anywhere in town they could afford to live because of what it would mean for property values.

I have seen history and I have read historical myth—-do any of you remember from your elementary or even high school history lessons when slavery was ever discussed except in the context of the Civil War?

Here’s an interesting little piece of information that underlines the history-as-myth proposition:

Massachusetts—where the righteous Pilgrims and Puritans supposedly founded a nation based on Christian values and religious freedom (a myth of its own)—became the first British colony to legalize slavery, in 1641. Did anybody ever hear that in the Pilgrim stories we were taught as children?  Or even the stories we relate each Thanksgiving as adults?

Missouri law has long held that it is a crime “to take any woman unlawfully against her will and by force, menace or duress, compel her to…be defiled.”  Our present statutes use different language but that’s the way the law was in 1855 when a Callaway County slave named Celia, purchased by farmer Robert Newsom at age 14 was raped by Newsom on the way to his home. She had three children, at least one by Newsom, When she was 19 or 20, she killed Newsom in self-defense when he tried to rape her again.  She was hanged because the law against defilement of an unwilling woman did not apply to slaves.

Along the way we might have heard something about the Dred Scott Case but we’ve forgotten that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in that case that slaves—as well as free persons of color—could never be U.S. citizens.

Is it useful to know that the Missouri House of Representatives was completely white for a century before Walthall Moore of St. Louis became the first African-American member of our legislature?  Or that, in 1939, the University of Missouri—under a Missouri Supreme Court order to admit Lloyd Gaines, an African-American, to its law school in Columbia used an “out” in the order to establish the Lincoln University law school in St. Louis for black students?

Is it useful to know that no black person served as the foreman of a Missouri jury until 1945? Or that we didn’t have a state Human Rights Commission until 1957 (and, unfortunately, still have to have it today)? Or that we did not have a black member of the Missouri Senate until 1960? Or that there were no black Highway Patrol troopers until 1965?  That we didn’t send an African-American to Congress until 1968?  Or we didn’t have any person of color on our State Supreme Court until 1995?

Or that Missouri did not elect a black woman to Congress until LAST YEAR?

And that, to this day, outstate Missouri is generally not a place where a person of color stands much of a chance of serving in the Missouri General Assembly?

There is absolutely nothing wrong with recognizing these seldom-mentioned parts of our past or of our contemporary lives. There is absolutely nothing wrong with learning, at whatever age, what our society has been and, knowing that, understanding what our society still can be.

And, to the discomfort of many who are comfortable with the status quo, what it eventually WILL be.

Critical Race Theory makes a lot of people uncomfortable because it challenges us to understand that we live in a complex human society of colliding political, legal, and social interests that are affected by long-standing and often subtle social and institutional norms.

History, not myth, recognizes that we have painfully slowly grown more equal despite ongoing reluctance to do so and demographics and other studies of our evolving society that indicate the trend will continue. Some feel threatened by that slow growth and have taken to flame-throwing attacks that CRT (as former Vice-President Pence put it recently) is “a state-sanctioned racism, pure and simple.”

“America is not a racist country. America is the most just, noble and inclusive nation ever to exist on the face of the earth,” he said.

He needs to read more history and believe less myth.

What is happening here?  This largely academic concept has been around for decades. Why is it suddenly “state sanctioned racism?”

The answer is obvious.  Donald Trump discovered that this largely-academic topic has become something he can exploit for his personal political purposes and there are those who think their political futures or their grasp on political power can be enhanced by agreeing with his ongoing mendacity and his fear-stoking rhetoric.

How deep is racism in our country today?  I can’t quantify it but I know from watching and listening that we have some distance to go before we are the “most just, noble and inclusive nation” that Pence prematurely proclaims. I do not fear CRT’s reminders that we can be better than we are.

I also lack the perspective of being part of another culture—black, brown, yellow, or red—and comparing my culture’s history to my perceptions of the dominant culture.  I do not descend from slaves and sharecroppers, migrant field hands, people imprisoned during wartime because of their national origin, or people living on reservations—but I have been to those places and I have spoken with those only a generation or two or three removed from the times people were herded into camps because of their Asian heritage or whose not-distant ancestors were taken from their Native families to be “Americanized” at schools..

So I do not resent nor do I fear Critical Race Theory because it demands examination of parts of our history that have been glossed over in the story of our nation as a “shining city on a hill,” as President Reagan called us in misquoting Puritan minister John Winthrop. His 1630 sermon aboard the Arbella before it landed at Massachusetts Bay, although delivered in a different time and for a different purpose, gives us a recipe for national greatness that starkly differs fromfrom what is sometimes heard in criticism of CRT:

“…The only way to…provide for our posterity, is to follow the counsel of Micah, to do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God. For this end, we must be knit together, in this work, as one man. We must entertain each other in brotherly affection. We must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of others’ necessities. We must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality. We must delight in each other; make others’ conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the same body. So shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. The Lord will be our God, and delight to dwell among us, as His own people, and will command a blessing upon us in all our ways, so that we shall see much more of His wisdom, power, goodness and truth, than formerly we have been acquainted with…For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world.”

If we want to be the “city on a hill,” it is clear that divisiveness perpetuated by self-serving narrow attitudes and political rhetoric, is not the face we claim is an example to the world.  Winthrop’s sermon delivered 391 years ago tells us what we yet need to be.

If we are honest, we must not fear confronting our past and dealing with the lamentable vestiges of it that remain. CRT should not be seen as a sudden contemporary push to “shame” the white race.  To the contrary, it should be seen seen as a fifty-year-old challenge to be a better people—of all races—than we have been.

Much of the focus on CRT is on white-black relationships. But be aware that it is much more than that. There are branches to examine structural discrimination against Latinos, Jews, women, the disabled, Native Americans, and white immigrants.

There is no limit to the study of our inequalities, for knowing our inequalities gives us the understanding we need to end them. To paraphrase Franklin D. Roosevelt in his 1933 inaugural address, “The only thing we have to fear is ourselves.”   What he said after the actual phrase, however, is valid on this issue—his definition of fear as “nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance,” after which he noted, “In every dark hour of our national life, a leadership of frankness and of vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. And I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.”

That’s a hope that will stand us in good stead in a time when some see currying distrust and division as the key to their success, whatever the price might be to the nation.

It is better to remember:

We must delight in each other; make others’ conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the same body. So shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.

Or as the Gospel tells us: “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

Given a choice of following the words of Paul or believing the words of Pence, I shall always take Paul.

 

Simile When You Say That, Pardner

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One of my favorite satellite radio channels Radio Classics, maybe because I’m so old that I remember when radio was filled with diverse entertainments instead of the steady diet of super-inflated egos who pour division and distrust into democracy’s gears.

One thing television has taken away from radio is the detective show in which the main character is the narrator who explains in often-colorful phrases the world in which he or she lives.  Many of these shows were created in era of hard-boiled detective novels and magazines, thus leading to a lot of similes that left vivid images in the listeners’ minds.

Let’s face it, television and movies cannot come close to showing what we see in our minds and they did it with similies.

The king of the detective simile was Pat Novak, played by pre-Dragnet Jack Webb on “Pat Novak for Hire.”  The other day Radio Classics played an episode called “Agnes Bolton.”

To refresh your memory of high school freshman English, a simile is a figure of speech in which something is compared to something different.

Pat Novak was a tough private eye living on the financial edge with a boat rental business in San Francisco. Webb’s narration throughout the program described his situations and those he met, including a friend who tells him during the show, “You’re never on the right side of things. You’ll always be in trouble because you’re a bad citizen. You’re a shabby half-step in the march of human progress. You don’t know the difference between good and evil. For you, all of human endeavor is a vague blur in high heels…You might as well try to recapture melancholy or ventilate a swamp. Ya haven’t a chance. You’ll never be any good.”

The writers for the show were Richard Breen and Gil Doud.  It must have been fun writing Webb’s narration as Pat Novak.  Even those who were raised after the dawn of television can probably hear in their own minds Jack Webb’s clipped, blunt, reading:

Around here a set of morals won’t cause any more stir than Mothers Day at an orphanage.

It doesn’t do any good to sing the blues because down here you’re just another guy in the chorus.

About as likely he would show up as a second pat of butter on a 50-cent lunch.

A smile as smooth as a pound of liver in a bucket of glycerin.

His eyes swept the room like a $10 broom.

She was at least 50 because you can’t get that ugly without years of practice.

(Her complexion) was red and scratchy as if she used a bag of sand for cold cream.

Her hair hung down like dead branches of a tree.

The way she fit (into a telephone booth), a sardine ought to be happy.

He was making noises in his throat as if he was eating a pound of cellophane.

(I couldn’t get anybody to talk to me.) I might as well have been selling tip sheets in a monastery.

If you keep your foot on a bar rail, you’ll find it’ll do more good for your arches than for your brain.

I better have a drink first; there’s an ugly taste in my mouth. I think it’s saliva.

It wasn’t raining hard anymore…It sounded quiet, almost private, like the sound a woman makes when she runs her fingernail up and down her stocking. It got on your nerves at first and then you learn to enjoy it.

Her main talent is more dimensional than dramatic.

(She was) stretched out as dead as a deer on a fender.

Her skin reminded you of a piece of felt that was almost worn out. But the rest was all right.

Riding with (him) is just about as safe as eating an arsenic sandwich.

The rain was hitting the windshield and it was like trying to see through a mint julep.

—All of those are from that single show.  If a person loves descriptive writing or wants to learn something about it, I suggest they listen to some of these great old detective shows.

Various people have proclaimed, “Theatre is life; film is art; television is furniture; but radio is imagination.”  Have you ever seen on television anything that has shown you someone “as dead as a deer on a fender?”  Or seen anything on television as sensuous as “the sound a woman makes when she runs her fingernail up and down her stocking?”  What we see with our eyes is often so inadequate when compared to what we see in our minds.

This is a good opportunity to pay tribute to those two writers. Their names are unfamiliar. In fact, we don’t pay much attention as the credits roll at the end of our movies or TV shows and name of the writer(s) show up.

Richard Breen started as a freelance radio writer who moved to movies. He won an Oscar as the screenwriter for 1953’s Titanic.  He was nominated for writing A Foreign Affair in 1948 and for Captain Newman, M.D., in 1963.

Gil Doud also wrote for the Sam Spade radio series.  He wrote one episode of the radio Gunsmoke and adapted five of John Meston’s Gunsmoke radio scripts for the early television versions of the show. He didn’t match Green’s screenwriting credentials but he did write Thunder Bay starring James Stewart in 1953, Saskatchewan with Alan Ladd the next year, and Audie Murphy’s To Hell and Back in 1955.  He also wrote episodes for the radio shows Suspense and Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar.

These guys were writing for radio in the era when people such as Mickey Spillane were beginning their tough murder mysteries with (from Spillane’s The Big Kill):

“It was one of those nights when the sky came down and wrapped itself around the world.  The rain clawed at the windows of the bar like an angry cat and tried to sneak in every time some drunk lurched in the door. The place reeked of stale beer and soggy men and enough cheap perfume thrown in to make you sick.”

Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer novels and the radio shows written by people such as Breen and Doud create images no television program or movie could ever show.  It’s the power of the written word.  And the spoken word.

Let’s conclude this colorful reminiscence with part of the script from the opening of the tenth Pat Novak show, “Go Away Dixie Gilliam.”  It’s from https://www.genericradio.com/show/07d5af03664522b5:

Ladies and Gentlemen, the American Broadcasting Company brings transcribed to its entire network, one of radio’s most unusual programs:

MUSIC: BRIEF, DRAMATIC INTRO, THEN SOFTEN FOR NEXT LINE

ANNOUNCER: Pat Novak, For Hire.

MUSIC: UP AGAIN BRIEFLY AND FADE OUT

SOUND: HARBOR AMBIANCE DURING NOVAK’S INTRO LINES

SOUND:FOOTSTEPS OUT OF THE FOG

 

NOVAK: Sure, I’m Pat Novak, For Hire.

SOUND:HARBOR OUT

MUSIC: CUP AS HARBOR FADES. PLAY BRIEFLY AND THEN SOFTEN AS NOVAK CONTINUES.

NOVAK:

That’s what the sign out in front of my office says: Pat Novak, For Hire. Down on the waterfront in San Francisco you always bite off more than you can chew. It’s tough on your wind pipe, but you don’t go hungry. And down here a lot of people figure its better to be a fat guy in a graveyard than a thin guy in a stew. That way he can be sure of a tight fit. (Pause) Oh, I rent boats and do anything else which makes a sound like money–

MUSIC: OUT

NOVAK:

–It works out alright, if your mother doesn’t mind you coming home for Easter in a box. I found that out on Wednesday night at about 9 o’clock. I closed the shop early and I came home to read. It wasn’t a bad book, if you ever wanted to start a forest fire. It was one of those historical things and the girl in it wandered around like a meat grinder in ribbons. Ah, I was moving along alright. She was just getting her second wind before going for the world’s record when the door to my apartment opened and the place began to get kinda crowded. From where I sat, the crowd looked good.

SOUND: SOFT FOOTSTEPS APPROACH UNTIL LEIGH’S FIRST LINE

NOVAK:

She sauntered in, moving slowly from side to side like a hundred and eighteen pounds of warm smoke. Her voice was alright, too. It reminded you of a furnace full of marshmallows.

 

My God!  “Like a hundred and eighteen pounds of warm smoke….”  Let NCSI or Law & Order try to match that.

Some of our women readers might consider this language blatantly sexist.  It’s hard not to agree.  Perhaps in our comment box below, some might want to suggest some similar similes describing men. Just remember, this is a family blog, rated no higher than PG.

This concludes our refresher course on SIMILIES.

And how much better our minds were when radio brought them to us