Category Archives: government

The Ring-Tailed Painter Puts a Governor in his Place 

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One of the great untapped resources for great stories from Missouri’s earliest days is the county histories that were compiled in the 1870s and ‘80s.

A few days ago, our indefatigable researcher was prowling through one of those old histories to make sure a footnote in the next Capitol book is correct and I came across the story of how Wakenda County became Carroll County.  That led to digging out the 1881 history of Carroll County where I met a fascinating character.  The account concluded with his departure for Texas and that led to an exploration of the early history of Texas. And there was the same guy, with a different name, who was part of the discontented Missourians that lit the fuse for the Texas Revolution.

I’ve written him up for an episode of Across Our Wide Missouri that I’ll record some day for The Missourinet.  The story will be shortened for time constraints.  But I want you to meet one of the many fascinating people whose often-colorful ghosts live in those old books.

The first settler of Carroll County “combined the characters of trapper, Indian skirmisher, and politician….a singular man, eccentric in his habits, and fond of secluding himself in the wilderness beyond the haunts of civilization. He was rough in his manners, but brave, hospitable and daring…He was uneducated, unpolished, profane and pugilistic.”  An 1881 county history says Martin Palmer, at social gatherings “would invariably get half drunk and invariably have a rough and tumble fight.”

He called himself the Ring-Tailed Panther, or as he pronounced it, “the Ring-Tailed Painter” and said he fed his children “on rattlesnake hearts fried in painter’s grease.”  A county in Texas is named for this “half horse and half alligator” of a man.

Martin Palmer was the first state representative from Carroll County in a state legislature that was a mixture of the genteel gentlemen from the city and rough-cut members of the outstate settlements.  During the first legislative session, held in St. Charles, some of the members got into a free-for-all and when Governor Alexander McNair tried to break up what Palmer called “the prettiest kind of fight,” Palmer landed a punch that knocked our first governor to the ground.   He told McNair, as he put it, “upon this principle of democratic liberty and equality,” that “A governor is no more in a fight than any other man.”

Wetmore’s Gazette, published in 1837, recorded that Palmer and his son loaded a small keel boat with salt as they headed for the second legislative session in St. Charles, planning to sell the much-valued mineral when they got there.  But the boat capsized in the dangerous Missouri River. The salt was lost and Palmer and his son survived by climbing on the upside-down boat and riding it until they landed at the now-gone town of Franklin. He remarked, “The river…is no respecter of persons; for, notwithstanding I am the people’s representative, I was cast away with as little ceremony as a stray dog would be turned out of a city church. “

He became a state senator in the third legislative session but left for Texas shortly after, in 1825, as one of the early Missouri residents to move to then-Mexican Texas.

A short time later he was accused of killing a man in an argument. He went to Louisiana and raised a force of men, returned and arrested all of the local Mexican government officials and took control of the area around Nacogdoches. He pronounced himself commander-in-chief of the local government in what became known as the Fredonian Rebellion and ordered all Americans to bear arms. He held “courts martial” for the local officials, convicted them, and sentenced them to death, then commuted the sentences on condition they leave Texas and never return.

Fellow Missourian Stephen F. Austin opposed the rebellion and wrote it was being led by “infatuated madmen.” It ended a month later when the Mexican Army arrived and Palmer went back to Louisiana. But some historians believe it became seed of the later Texas War for Independence.  Palmer later returned to become a key figure in the Texas Revolution.

He was elected a delegate to a convention at Washington-on-the-Brazos. When Sam Houston moved for adoption of the Texas Declaration of Independence, Palmer seconded the motion. He chaired the committee that wrote the Texas Constitution. But he knew it meant war with Mexico. He wrote his wife, “The declaration of our freedom, unless it is sealed with blood, is of no force.”

By now he had changed his last name from Palmer to Parmer. One contemporary observed, “He had a stubborn and determined will and showed impatience of delays…Hewas a unique character but with all he was a man with the best of impulses—honest, brave and heroic.” A fellow delegate called him “a wonderfully fascinating talker…a man absolutely without fear (who) held the Mexicans in contempt.”

After independence was won, Parmer served in the Texas congress and later was appointed Chief Justice of Jasper County, Texas.  He died there at the age of 71. He is buried thirty feet from the grave of Stephen F. Austin, “The Father of Texas,” in the Texas State Cemetery.

In 1876, the Texas Legislature honored a Parmer, “an eccentric Texan of the olden times,” by naming a panhandle county for him.

Missouri’s “Ring-tailed painter,” and fighting Texas pioneer Martin Parmer, born as Martin Palmer died, appropriately, on Texas Independence Day, March 2, 1850.

It’s Not the Silliest Thing I’ve Ever Heard 

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But it’s among ’em.

I’m sure there must have been things that were sillier.  But the push by some members of Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s caucus to expunge Donald Trump’s impeachments is moves the needle on our Outlandish Scale.

They want to say officially that the impeachments never happened.

The House and Senate never debated his impeachments—two of them—no matter what hundreds of pages of the Congressional Record show.  Or newspaper stories.  Or archived video and audio of hours of proceedings.  Or personal memories.

Major issues foreign and domestic loom over the Congress but there are people who think one of the most important things to do is say the House did not impeach Donald Trump.

If the House didn’t impeach him, what were those trials in the Senate all about then?

Here we fall back on some trite observations familiar to all of us:

You can’t un-ring a bell.

You can’t put toothpaste back in the tube.

Other perceptions come to mind:

You can close the barn door, but the horse is already gone.

You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.

What are they going to do if they pass their expungement resolution?  Come around to my door and tell me “Fuggedaboudit?”  What will they do if I don’t?

Donald Trump is the only president to be impeached twice. Period.

Whether he likes it or not, he’s past history. And the number of people who care what he likes is diminishing.

Don’t waste time on Trump when there’s Joe and Hunter Biden to maul.  Trump is outdated liverwurst. The Bidens are fresh meat.

And in your spare time, address the debt limit and the budget.  And clean up the daily accumulating mess represented by New York’s third district congresman.

But as far as erasing impeachment? Move on. Get over it.

Support your local bureaucrat

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Governor Parson last week recommended a pretty healthy pay increase for state employees.  It’s a much-needed step for a much-underappreciated group of people.

Bureaucrats.   You know, those shiftless people who wrap everything in red tape when they’re not standing outside the front door of a state building, smoking.

Truth be told:  I’m married to a former bureaucrat.  She doesn’t smoke. She never took a state paycheck while frustrating taxpayers with poor service.  She never had anything to do with red tape. She was one of thousands of people who spent their days in cubicles performing everything from mundane tasks to examining situations that would be dangerous to public health and well-being.  She shuffled a lot of paper.  She created a lot of paperwork.  She was a necessary small cog in a very big wheel of a system designed to serve a public too easily bamboozled by opportunistic power-seekers who believe their best road to importance is attacking people such as her.

She left her cubicle behind several years ago to manage a bigger but far less lucrative project: Me.

We hope the legislature acts quickly on the governor’s recommendation of an 8.7 percent cost of living increase.  But his generous gesture constitutes a problem for some in our political world who cavalierly rattle on about shrinking government.  It also presents a problem for those who are eager to cut taxes so they have something to brag about in their 2024 campaigns.

The estimated cost of these salary increases is $151.2 million and that’s only the start.  The number will grow as time passes and more people find state salaries attractive enough to replenish a diminished state workforce—particularly in fields such as prison guards and mental health workers and social services workers, three fields—among many—that require courage and compassion many would find difficult to summon in those professional circumstances. The number also will grow as other increases are approved.

As welcome and as necessary as this expenditure is, it also should temper the enthusiasm of some to reduce the state’s ability to finance it today and properly to augment it tomorrow, lest it lead to layoffs in poorer economic times that will lessen or cancel the progress they create.

These proposed raises fly in the face of those who base their popularity on the time-worn concept of “shrinking government.”  Doing nothing has produced pretty good results for them, although it might be difficult to explain when constituents want to know why they can’t get services government should be providing but can’t get because of too many empty cubicles.

The Missouri Budget Project says the lack of more decent pay has resulted in the decline of state government jobs by 13.2 percent between February 2020 and June 2022. Governor Parson says there are 7,000 unfilled positions in state government and employee turnover is unacceptably high.

Those are numbers of which the “shrinkers” might take pride.  And now, here comes their conservative state leader trying to undo much of the hard-won results of their successful efforts to starve the beast. His common-sense proposal is a challenge to those who think effective and efficient government is possible only if fewer people run it and they’re content with being under-rewarded.  They’re just bureaucrats, you know.  Twenty-first century Bob Cratchits.

One of the goals of the suggested pay increases is to improve recruitment and retention of workers. Oh, Lord, that must mean he supports Big Government!!!

No, he doesn’t. He’s pushing for effective government and we can’t have effective government if we don’t have enough people to do the jobs that effective government requires.  And we can’t get—and keep—enough people if we (us taxpayers) aren’t responsible enough through our representatives and senators to pay them a more-worthy salary.

So, legislators, support your local bureaucrats.  And don’t follow up with something rash that will later set back whatever progress is attained through the governor’s recommendations

We’ve Seen This Before 

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It’s called the tyranny of the minority.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Do you know how to tell—

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—if a politician is lying?

His lips are moving.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Disgrace” is spelled S-A-N-T-O-S.

Notes from a quiet  street  (Happy New Year edition) 

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For the rare and cherished few who expect to find something new on this site a couple of times a week, we must explain that it is not because we had run out of pithiness. It is because a company that calls us a “valued customer” apparently doesn’t value our customership very much at all.

On September 29, Mediacom laid a cable on top of our street to restore our internet service after the Socket folks ripped up the buried line while digging to install their fiber optic cable.  A couple of weeks later I suggested to the folks at the local Mediacom office that it would be good to bury that cable before the first big snow brought out a snowplow that would collect it—and who knows how many above-ground connector boxes and private mail boxes that the cable pulls down as the snowplow proceeds down the street.

That line was still lying on the street until the afternoon of December 22.  It snowed and as I had told the foretold in the Mediacom office and the first snowplow did yank out the.  I saw several feet of orange cable in the yard of a neighbor up the street. On the 20th, I had visited the local office for a second time and a friendly lady behind the desk said repairs are usually made within 24 hours. I told a nice Mediacom lady from Iowa who answered the company trouble line that I expected this problem to be solved regardless of the temperature (which was below zero, you might remember) within 24 hours. The company sent us a notice that it would be a week before anything was done, that repairs would be made on the 28th and required us to be at home between 10 a.m. and noon.

On the afternoon of the 27th, Mediacom—without ever calling us or ringing our doorbell—stretched a new line across the top of the street. The line was only partly covered so vehicles going over it did not damage it. The next day, the Mediacom tech person who was supposed to respond rang our door bell. We had a nice discussion in which he told me, among other things, that we would lose our internet service as many times as the snowplows came out this winter.  Too bad. But that’s Mediacom Life.

I sent a letter to the editor of the News-Tribune, who published it yesterday. Several folks at church or at the noontime restaurants we checked out told me they agreed with it. They’re apparently valued customers, too.

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I made a big mistake the week before Christmas.

I bought a new computer because my old hard drive was dying.

For the price I paid for the computer, I could have bought about eight of Donald Trump’s superhero cards.

Buyer’s remorse has not yet set in, though.

If you bought any of them, would you let me know if any of them show him as a Capitol policeman on January 6, 2021 or as a Ukrainian freedom fighter?

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There’s this old and somewhat indelicate saying, “When you’re up to your ass in alligators, it’s too late to drain the swamp.”  The release of the January 6 Committee report has called that observation to mind in reference to someone who once promised to drain a certain swamp.

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One of the fun things about researching history is prowling through the millions of pages of old newspapers at the State Historical Society.  And reading the old advertisements is often fun.  I made a copy of a headline for one and it’s magneted to our refrigerator.

It says “Ice Cream is Real Food.”

Now that’s real truth in advertising.

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State Conservation Department Director Sara Pauley Parker wrote in her Missouri Conservationist  “Up Front” column in December of 2021 that she’s a dog person. She wrote, “I especially appreciate dogs that will look you in the eye, know their role in life, and want to serve honorably.”

I’m hoping the Missouri House and the Missouri Senate will be kennels, starting Wednesday.

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It’s hard to beat honey by itself and honey-butter on a hot roll is an unacknowledged delicacy.  A old newspaper ad I came across recently urges people to “Get that quick relief that brings back the normal ‘pep’ and energy. Don’t suffer a minute longer than you actually have to.” The cure?  Dr. Bell’s Pine Tar Honey for Coughs and Colds.

If Dr. Bell’s cure isn’t tasty enough, you might try a spoonful of a variation made by the Certified Hospital Products Company: Pine Tar Honey and Eucalyptus (Mentholated).

Menthol.  That will do the trick.

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Retired Missouri football coach Gary Pinkel has been inducted into the National Football Foundation College Football Hall of Fame, something he could not have imagined after his teams had gone 10-14 in his first two years in Columbia.  In fact, he admits he started wondering if he’d made a mistake going to Missouri and if he would last much longer.

In his first four years the Tigers were 22-25.   But Missouri kept him.

The Tigers played their 34th bowl game a few days before Christmas. (Their 35th bowl game was Covided out a couple of years ago).  Their fourth bowl loss in a row left Eliah Drinkwitz’s record at 17-19.

The fourth year will be a critical one for him, as it was for his predecessor, Barry Odom.  Odom was sacked when his Tigers were 25-25.  But Gary Pinkel was only 22-25 after four years and Missouri kept him.

How have other Mizzou coaches done after four years? Larry Smith was 18-27.  Bob Stull was 12-31-1 before he left the field and became an athletic director at another school.  Woody Widenhofer was 12-31-1 and Al Onofrio was 22-24.

Incidentally, Don Faurot, whose name is on the field on which Drinkwitz’s players perform, was 0-4 in bowl games.

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Tomorrow is Utopian Community Day

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Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day. Many of us will simulate a day in Plymouth Colony more than four centuries ago although the way we do it will be a far cry from what really happened.  Often not acknowledged by those who cling to that idea is that the colony we celebrate today was an experiment in socialism and that experiment was repeated several times in Missouri.

Plymouth is an early example of the human search for Utopia, a place defined by British social philosopher Sir Thomas More a century earlier as a place of a perfect social and political system. California historian Robert V. Hine defined such a community as “a group of people who are attempting to establish a new social pattern based upon a vision of the ideal society and who have withdrawn themselves from the community at large…”

Plymouth began as a socialist utopia not by the wishes of the religious group seeking to escape the oppression of the Church of England but by the demands of the businessmen who allowed them aboard the Mayflower.

The Council of New England created a contract that was signed by the church separatists we now call Pilgrims in the summer of 1620. The new colony would be jointly owned for seven years. But the separatists, not having funds to invest in the colony, would have to work off their debt. Profits would go into one pot with expenses paid from that fund. After seven years the profits would be divided according to the number of shares that each settler held.  Land and houses would be jointly owned and the separatists were required to work seven days a week. When several of the group dropped out, the organizers of the expedition recruited other adventurers to take their place.

So the Pilgrims became, in effect, indentured servants in a socialist colony.  Their debt was not fully paid off for 28 years. By then the Puritans, who had first arrived in 1629, far overshadowed the Plymouth Colony. John Butman and Simon Targett in New World, Inc., record that Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay merged along with the islands of Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket, and the provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick to become the Province of Massachusetts Bay.

By then, the leaders of the socialist colony of Plymouth had realized communal ownership and communal sharing was not working.  Colony leader William Bradford and his supporters decided to allow private ownership of the land. Each family was given a parcel. “God in his wisdom saw another course fitter for them,” he wrote.

The search for a utopian community in America did not end with Bradford’s pilgrims giving up on communal living. And in some places, it still goes on.

Roger Grant wrote in the Missouri Historical Review in 1971, “Missouri’s Utopian movement, which became one of the largest in the country in terms of number of colonies established, followed the national pattern of having communities that were both religious and secular, communistic and cooperative.”

The first group of utopians to come to Missouri, he says, were Joseph Smith’s Mormons in 1831 who arrived in Jackson County, planning to establish a “New Jerusalem,” a communistic religious community, near Independence.  But Missourians felt Freedom of Religion did not include Mormons—much as the Puritans of New England felt that those who did not follow their strict Puritan policies had to be expelled—thus leading Baptists Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson to found Rhode Island.

German mystic William Keil created the towns of Bethel and Nineveh in northeast Missouri after becoming dissatisfied with the Methodist Church. As he was forming his movement, some dissatisfied followers of “Father” George Rapp joined up, bringing with them Rapp’s communistic ideas but not bringing with them his ideas about celibacy. But he became worried that the outside world was encroaching on his kingdom, so he took his followers to Oregon, where the movement died when he died.  Bethel still exists as a community.

Others tried to form utopian communities as years went by. Andreas Dietsch founded New Helvetia in Osage County. He believed agriculture was the key to a good life, that all property had to be community property because, as Grant wrote, such an arrangement would prevent “man’s greed from destroying the good life.” But he died before his community could be established.

Cheltenham, a secular community, was founded in 1856 by French communist Etienne Cabet, floundered early and his flock moved to Nauvoo, Illinois after the Mormons abandoned it for Salt Lake City. This movement also died when its founder died. Cheltenham is now a neighborhood in St. Louis.

Alcander Longley created several communal colonies, beginning with Reunion, in Jasper County in 1868, Friendship in Dallas County in 1872 and another Friendship Community in Bollinger County in 1879, Principia in Polk County in 1881, Jefferson County’s Altruistic Society in 1886 and others in other years in other places, and Altro in 1898.  Lack of Capital doomed all of these places within a short time.

Agnostic George H. Walser founded Liberal, in Barton County, as a town that restricted religious buildings and saloons and tried to replace religion with intellectual organizations.  He built a fence to keep churches out but Christians moved inside the fence and held services over Walser’s objection. Liberal survives but not as the isolated intellectual utopia Walser hoped for.

So tomorrow, we celebrate socialism in Plymouth, throughout this country, and in Missouri.  And we celebrate the triumph of capitalism over socialism, as happened in so many utopian communities in our nation’s and our state’s histories.

“Socialism” has lost its meaning as an effort for all to share equally in the bounty of our nation and has become a political epithet spoken largely from one side of the political aisle.

Perhaps there’s room to give thanks tomorrow for the things that have been branded as “socialism” in our history— “every advance the people have made,” as our own Harry Truman put it. “Socialism is what they called public power…social security, bank deposit insurance…free and independent labor organizations…anything that helps all the people.”

The Pilgrims, and people such as Walser, Longley, Kiel, Cabet, Dietsch, and others here and elsewhere show us how Socialism does not work.  But when a farmer is able to turn on an electric light, when the retired person gets a social security check, when our money is safe if the bank is not, a little socialism sure is nice.

The Pilgrims never found the utopia they came here to enjoy.  All these years later, we’re still looking for it, too.

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Thirty years ago—–

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I remember a young Attorney General who could envision an almost limitless political future for himself.  The governorship was within his grasp. And after that, there would be Washington, the U.S. Senate.  And from there?   I don’t know how much he dreamed of things beyond the Senate but he had followers who did.

He had won a bruising primary election for governor, outrunning the Secretary of State and the State Treasurer.

But then he lost the general election for governor.  And a few months after that, he lost a lot more.

Bill Webster, son of a state senator once considered one of the most powerful men—some thought he was THE most powerful man—in state government had withstood months of intense news coverage and weeks of campaign commercials linking him to major political scandal.

In June, 1993, Bill Webster, facing two federal felony charges of conspiracy and embezzlement pleaded guilty to one charge of using his office staff, equipment and supplies for his campaign.   He was sentenced to two years in prison.

Webster lost his political future and his law license. The last we heard, however, he has done well as a Vice-President of Bartlett and Company, a major agri-marketing firm in Kansas City.

We started thinking about Bill Webster when we learned of a court ruling involving another now-former attorney general who has visions of greatness.   Last week, Jefferson City Circuit Judge Tom Beetem ruled that Josh Hawley’s taxpayer-financed office staff used private email accounts and equipment to “knowingly and purposefully” conceal public records of communications with political consultants involved in Hawley’s campaign for the U.S. Senate.

Josh Hancock, writing last week for Missouri Independent, reported, “The emails, text messages and other documents at the center of the lawsuit show that early in his tenure as attorney general, Hawley’s campaign consultants gave direct guidance and tasks to his taxpayer-funded staff and led meetings during work hours in the state Supreme Court building, where the attorney general’s official office is located.”

A spokesman for Hawley’s campaign, Kyle Plotkin, has maintained that investigations have found no wrongdoing. One such investigation, he claimed, was done by “a Democratic state auditor.”

He apparently has not read a state auditor’s report suggesting that Hawley and his staff might have misused state resources but their use of private email and text messaging made a definite determination impossible.

Webster went to prison for misuse of state resources.  Hawley has gone to Washington

Ya Got Trouble Right Here in River City

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“Gotta figure out a way to keep the young ones moral after school,” the professor told the citizens of River City, Iowa.

Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft thinks he has a way to do that.  He proposes taking away state funding for local libraries that don’t adopt written policies that allow any parent or guardian of a minor “to determine what materials and access will be available to a minor,” particularly any materials that might appeal to that minor’s prurient interests.

The ultimate moral policeman would be the Secretary of State, whoever it is now and whoever it might be in the future.

Librarians throughout the state are not reacting kindly to his idea.  And local library boards, who are better cross-sections of community standards than one person at the state capital, by and large resent his meddling.

If you want to read the proposed rule, go to: https://www.sos.mo.gov/CMSImages/AdRules/main/images/15_CSR_30_200_015.pdf

We are now within a thirty-day public comment period before the legislature’s Joint Committee on Administrative Rules decides whether this overreach should become state policy.

One local library trustee who is known for wordiness minces no words in his response:

I am a trustee of a local library board, a position I have held off and on for more than twenty years. I was a delegate to the most recent White House Conference on Libraries and Information.  I am a published author of five books with a sixth book under consideration by publishers.

I am a reader.

I believe in the First Amendment.

I do not believe in censorship.

I do not believe in government overreach.

I am not a card-carrying member of the American Civil Liberties Union, but I do carry a valid library card.

The proposed rule on “Library Certification Requirements for the Protection of Minors” is a terrible rule and should be rejected by the Joint Committee on Administrative Rules.

This rule potentially gives the Secretary of State, whoever it might be or whoever it might become, the power to determine whether a library shall receive state funds based on his interpretation of what, as the rule states, “appeals to the prurient interest of any minor.”

The Secretary has issued a statement saying, “When state dollars are involved, we want to bring back local control and parental involvement in determining what children are exposed to. Foremost, we want to protect our children.”

The intimation in this statement that local control of libraries has been lost is irresponsible. Public libraries are governed by boards made up of local citizens. There has been no loss of local control.  “Parental involvement in determining what children are exposed to” likewise seems to suggest parents have been restricted in considering whether a book that might be proper for someone else’s child to read is improper for their own child to have.

He also has said, “We want to make sure libraries have the resources and materials they need for their constituents, but we also want our children to be ‘children’ a little longer than a pervasive culture may often dictate.”

I am afraid that the statement only invites chaos. If libraries are to serve “their constituents,” they must have a wide range of materials available to a broad range of individuals at various levels of maturity. To expect librarians to determine the level of maturity of every nine-year old who walks into their buildings is unrealistic.

When I first heard about this rule, my first question was, “Who makes the ultimate decision?”  It appears the answer is the Secretary of State.  To place one person in a position of second-guessing professional community librarians is dangerous.

The proposed rule does not define this critical phrase which puts the Secretary of State, as the supervisor of the patronage position of State Librarian, in the position of making subjective judgments about the prurience of any single publication that is objectionable to “any material in any form not approved by the minor’s parent or guardian.”

“Prurience” is not defined nor is “age appropriate,” three words that open the door to onerous penalties based on an interpretation of one parent and/or one state official. And stoking fear of some kind of vague “pervasive culture” that the statement suggests has invaded our public libraries and motivates the professionals who manage them is completely uncalled for.

The rule creates the potential for the kind of decision referred to by Justice Potter Stewart who discussed the threshold test for defining obscenity in Jacobellis v. Ohio in 1964:

“I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description [“hard-core pornography”], and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it…”

By working backward from the parent to the Secretary of State, this rule indicates that a library could lose state funding if one parent of one child disagrees with a library’s policy on collection acquisitions by finding one book that the parent feels appeals to the child’s “prurient interest” and files the objection with the State Librarian and the librarian’s supervisor, the Secretary of State.

I do not believe our libraries and our librarians are  the “dance at the arm’ry” referred to by Professor Harold Hill in The Music Man:

“Libertine men and scarlet women, and ragtime, shameless musicThat’ll grab your son, your daughter with the arms of a jungle, animal instinctMass-stariaFriends, the idle brain is the devil’s playground.”

Libraries are not devil’s playgrounds. Librarians are not “libertine” or “scarlet” but are instead highly professional defenders of the right to read, the right to know, the right to think.  I believe they carefully evaluate additions to the collections, but they recognize that children as well as adults mature differently and determining “age appropriateness” is one of their most difficult tasks.

But if my children were still young readers, I should be the one to decide what they bring home. It is not my place to decide what should be available to another child of the same age but a higher maturity.

We refer to these institutions as free public libraries. I believe the word “free” means more than an institution that does not charge a membership fee that limits access to intellectual exploration and growth.

This is a bad rule that places one person in a position of denying funding to one of the most important institutions in any community because he or she agrees with one parent who finds one book objectionable.

Moral judgments are personal. The power to force others to bend to the moral judgment of any single political officer by cutting off funding to a library should never be allowed.

This rule is anti-freedom at several levels and has no business being part of state government. While I am concerned with our children remaining children, I am more concerned with what happens with a politician being a politician and what it can mean to the liberties of us all.

I urge the committee to reject this proposal.

Bob Priddy

Jefferson City

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Our Fiery Trial 

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Perhaps we as a nation have once again pulled back from the brink of the destruction of our Democracy.

A lot of pundits and other common observers take comfort that the Red Wave fueled by a leader seemingly capable of almost anything to regain power did not develop.  In the days since, the Republican Party has noticeably indicated it no longer fears Donald Trump as much as it once did.

He isn’t going away—although “going away” might assume a different focus if we start seeing post-election indictments. He and his core believers are still a force.  How the party reckons with him while reshaping itself will be difficult. But last week convinced many in the party that it cannot continue down the Trump rabbit hole.

Democrats should not see themselves as victors last week. They have only dodged a bullet.

Your faithful observer was born in a town in which Abraham Lincoln’s family lived briefly, and grew up in two small towns where Lincoln practiced law as a circuit-riding attorney.  Perhaps because Lincoln lies deep within him that he offers to you today Lincoln’s words on the need for a unified nation and the verdict that awaits if it fails in that effort.  He spoke to Congress on December 1, 1862 of his vision and he issued a warning.

Although the words were spoken in the Union’s dark early days of the Civil War, they remain meaningful today at a time when some are breathing suggestions we will have another civil war and others are involved in one within their political party.

Will not the good people respond to a united, and earnest appeal from us? Can we, can they, by any other means, so certainly, or so speedily, assure these vital objects? We can succeed only by concert. It is not “can any of us imagine better?” but, “can we all do better?”

The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise—with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.

Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation.

“WE MUST DISENTHRALL OURSELVES, AND THEN WE SHALL SAVE OUR COUNTRY.”

In this time when it seems our leaders only see themselves in terms of the power they want to gain, perhaps they should pause to reflect on the long line of history that will be built after them and whether they will be lighted “in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation.” History likely will not consider the legacies of many of them kindly.

It is not their responsibility alone.

It is ours, for we choose them.

We can do better.

We have the chance to do better in just two years.  How will our grandchildren’s grandchildren look back at the choices we will make?

We will be the history they study?  Will they be proud of that history that we cannot escape?

We should be mindful of the history we are creating.