Category Archives: legislature

I respectfully beg to differ

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(We live in a time when disagreements seem unresolvable, when disputing forces seem more interested in fighting than serving, when disagreeing is, to use a term we wish had never come up, weaponized. Dr. Crane reminds us that disagreement can be a positive part of our existence, if respect is part of it, as he asks—-)

ARE YOU ON OPPOSITE SIDES?

Doubtless each of us knows someone in his circle of acquaintances who is intellectually contrary. Such as one delights on every occasion to take the opposite side.

If he is within a religious community he will take his stand firmly for atheism.  If he is one of the scoffers, he will argue just as valiantly for the church. He is a standing minority report. He is a crooked stick that will not lie in the woodpile. Like Goethe’s Devil he is the spirit who constantly denies.

This type of person is the steady, normal crop in the field of humanity. We would not get along without them. They keep the kettle of thing stirred, which otherwise would settle and spoil. These are they that keep the course of social life pure as a running stream and prevent it from becoming like a green stagnant pool.

They supply ginger for political campaigns. They are the party out of power. They are the watchdogs of progress. Without them religion would harden into a cruel tyranny of superstition, falsehoods would be crystallized into power, and ancient fraud live forever.

They harass mankind into being honest.

If it ain’t broke—

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Break it.

We have a place at the end of each of these musings for you, dear reader, to straighten out the author on points in which his thoughts obviously and erroneously vary from the truth.  In your opinion.

Feel free to utilize that space, especially with this entry because your worthy author seems to be missing badly the whole point of the legislative effort to rewrite some of our election laws.  Those doing the rewriting say our election system is flawed and need to be made better. Others  think the re-writers are limiting rather than enhancing voting rights and opportunities.

We must be missing something.  Big.

—because Missouri’s Secretary of State has offered zero complaints, as far as we know, about last year’s elections. We have heard zero complaints of voter fraud here.  No federal lawsuits were filed in Missouri contesting the outcome(s).  In fact, our Attorney General, who was so vigilant at spotting fraud and shortcomings in several other states’ elections, has offered not one legal peep about things here.  The two-third majorities were maintained in both chambers of the General Assembly, so it appears there was no nefarious plot to undermine the lawmaking structure of our state.

More than three-million people voted, the first time that many people took part in a November election. It beat the 2.9-million who voted in the 2008 election of President Barack Obama. The raw number might have been a record but the percentage of eligible voters fell short of projections and short of the 78% vote when Bill Clinton was elected over George H. W. Bush, who had the worst performance for a Republican since Abraham Lincoln in 1860. Bush was hurt because Ross Perot had the best performance for a third party candidate here since John Bell Williams, also in 1860.

So what was broken last year?

Why is there a provision saying no change in voting laws can be made within six months of a presidential election?  Just last year the legislature made a change in response to a pandemic that was making many people nervous about going to polling places.  Mail-in ballots were allowed but they are outlawed in this bill. We have not heard any loud yelling, seen any frantic arm-waving, and heard of any lawsuit filed complaining this system generated anything but greater opportunity for citizens to exercise one of our most cherished rights, especially during one of our greatest health crises in history.

The good thing is that this is just a statute.  And this ban on changing laws within six months of an election can be repealed, just as the bill repeals mail-in ballots.  And we wouldn’t be surprised to see a repeal of the repeal if the party makeup of the legislature ever happens.

Present law allows the election authority—the county clerk or the metropolitan election authority—to appoint two judges from each major party to serve at each polling place. The proposed law says the political parties will recommend potential judges but says they don’t have to live within the jurisdiction of the election authority.  So the election authority, which is given the power to throw out people it deems unqualified to be judges, instead of going back to the parties can instead appoint somebody from outside the voting area—namely the county or the city?  Could the election authority, for example, dismiss local election judge candidates (we see nothing in the bill allowing an appeal of that action) and install, let’s say, a perceived looney advocate for a national candidate instead?

Please tell us we have just hatched a conspiracy theory.  We hate conspiracy theories and have no desire to be associated with one.

Another section allows the chairman of each county political party committee to designate a watcher for each place where votes are counted (that’s present law).  But the new language says the poll watcher does not have to live within that jurisdiction.  See the above question.

Are we reading another section of the proposed election law changes to say that we are doing away with electronic voting machines?  And going back to paper ballots?  We must have missed all of the complaints about how voting machines corrupted the elections in Missouri in 2020.

As we understand it, (from section 115.237—please pardon the technical language) the bill refers to “direct-recording” machines but not to electronic COUNTING machines. When I voted last November, I used a pencil to filling a little oval on a voting card and then fed the card into an electronic tabulating machine.  That’s okay but anything of a higher technology is not to be allowed.  Correct?

Absentee ballots can’t be cast until three weeks before the election and can only be cast at a designated location—seemingly a further limitation on mail-in voting—and require a photo identification (Did I miss anything about absentee voting by the military far overseas?).  BUT the bill does eliminate lying about the reason for voting absentee.  Last year Nancy and I voted absentee, citing our age which made us especially susceptible to the virus. Had we been required to say we were going to be out of town that day, we would have sworn that we would be and would have driven outside the city limits, turned around, and come back, thus being honest.

Should we be bothered by a provision that absentee ballots that do not arrive by the time polls close on election day will not be counted?  They “shall be deemed cast when received prior to the time fixed by law for closing the polls on election day.”  This applies to absentees mailed from halfway around the world as well as absentees left in a drop box.  This is kind of an awkward issue, isn’t it? We have heard for years discussions about the timing of sending out absentee ballots to our military in time for them to be voted and returned within proper time limits to be counted and we don’t know that there has ever been a system that guarantees every vote case before election day is counted whenever it arrives home. Given the mess our postal system is in today (we are never sure when we’ll get our mail anymore), maybe it makes sense to be a little more flexible than the bill allows.  As for drop boxes—-what is to keep an election authority from waiting for two hours past poll-closing to empty drop boxes in areas inclined to vote against the election authority’s wishes?   Doesn’t sound as if those votes will be counted even if they went into the box the day before election day.

In the days when we were in the chambers listening to debates or in the hearing rooms when bills were considered and justified or attacked by sponsors and critics, we might understand better the motivations behind this bill.  But we’re just another old guy on a quiet street—who is a voter—and we don’t have that kind of access.

So we wonder what all the fuss is about in making these changes after three million of our 4,338,133 registered voters found a way—-with the bipartisan help of the 2019 legislature—to cast ballots in a 2020 election that produced absolutely none of the bombast, accusations, and conspiracies that were generated in other states, usually by people who don’t live in those states.

Let us know.  This obviously isn’t Twitter. You can use as many helpful words as you wish.

 

 

Finally—

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Somebody has come up with a way for the legislature to improve financing of our roads and bridges while also anticipating the growth of electric vehicles and their impact on future transportation infrastructure funding. The idea is halfway through the legislative process but some observers think the road ahead is uphill. And the hill is the House of Representatives.

Your loyal observer observed the last part of Missouri Senate debate on the bill sponsored by Senate President Pro Tem Dave Schatz of Sullivan last Thursday morning, shortly before the Senate adjourned for spring break. Schatz, who thinks returning to gravel roads is not much of a solution to our present road upkeep problems, has gotten his gas tax increase bill through the Senate but he had to work for it.

Passage of the bill was reminiscent of some of the bi-partisan collegiality and compromise in which the Senate takes pride but which has too often in many recent years been missing.

Earlier in the week, Schatz’s plan for a 15-cent per-gallon fuel tax increase ran into a roadblock thrown up by the conservative caucus, a group of senators that seemingly opposes any kind of a tax increase any time (the present tax rate of 17 cents a gallon ranks Missouri 49th in the country in fuel tax level).  Our last gas tax was a phased-in tax that peaked in 1996.

MODOT doesn’t buy much asphalt, cement, or winter salt and the equipment to spread it for 1996 prices these days.  But it sure could use the estimated $460 million a year the increased tax will produce when it’s fully effective.

The compromise bill phases in a 12.5 cent increase through five years.  For those who think roads and bridges can be built and maintained for free, there’s a provision that lets people save all of their receipts printed at the pump and then claim a full rebate of the new taxes.  It’s a nice touch to mollify some no-tax folks, many of whom won’t keep track of all of those receipts to claim 2.5 cents per gallon at the end of the year.

We calculate that somebody traveling 12,000 miles a year in a vehicle that gets 20 miles per gallon would get back $15, not much money for the hassle of saving all those receipts.

We’ve observed previously in some of these conversations the growing number of vehicles that do not contribute to the cost of maintaining our road and highway system, which is why we are gratified to see a provision in this bill that increases present EV fees by twenty percent during the next five years.

As we understand present law, the owners of Alternative Fuel Vehicles have to buy a decal from the state. For cars that are not powered by electricity, that decal is $75. AFVs weighing 18 tons or more have to have a $1,000 decal in the window.  For plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, the decal costs half of the fee for vehicles that powered by fossil fuels.

But is that half-off fee proper for EVs fair to the road system?  That’s where another welcome part of Schatz’s bill kicks in. It establishes the “Electric Vehicle Task Force” within the Revenue Department to recommend future legislation on ways EVs can appropriately contribute to the infrastructure they use.

There is never an ideal time for a tax increase as far as the public and some members of the legislature are concerned.  But two or three pennies a gallon will mean that the state can afford do more than to apply cold patches to potholes and keep fingers crossed that rusty bolts on bridges will hold on a little bit longer.

I’d rather pay a little more at the pump than read about school buses winding up in a rural creek on the wsay to school.

There’s no guarantee the House will accept Schatz’s plan or recognize the compromise work that got it passed (every Senate Democrat joined with some of the members of Schatz’s party to pass the bill).  From our lofty position, however, it seems to be a prudent, responsible approach to dealing with a major problem today while laying the groundwork for dealing with our electric-powered future.

 

Talktalktalktalktalk

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You might think that somebody who has endured the number of filibusters your faithful observer has endured would join those who think they should be banned or in some way limited.

You’d be wrong.

Those who favor limits of some kind appear to miss a point.  A limited filibuster is not a filibuster.

Filibusters are not intended to be entertaining although there were some of those that your observer endured that had their moments—the night then-state senator Sam Graves started reading the names of the high school graduates from his district and started over every time he was interrupted.

Or when Senator Marie Chappelle-Nadal decided to make a filibuster an audience-participation event and invited people listening to the Senate’s internet feed to send her text messages suggesting topics, or asking questions she could answer.

Then there was Senator Matt Bartle’s one-man version of Jimmy Stewart’s imitation of one in “Mr. Smith goes to Washington.”  He lasted something like 17 hours, taking advantage of quorum calls to dash off to the bathroom while the Senate was idle and waiting for enough Senators to get off their office couches and sleepily go into the chamber just long enough to be counted “present.”

I can recall several of them that lasted so long I had to leave the Senate press table to go to the Missourinet newsroom to do the morning newscasts.  At least a couple of times I listened to the internet feed while I was putting the newscasts together.  I think there might even have been a couple of times when I returned to the Capitol and the senators were still burning legislative time off the clock.

They’re most effective in the final weeks when time is running short and the debate calendars are running long with bills that are ready for final votes. The House limits the amount of time someone can hold the floor so the Missouri House doesn’t have much chance of having all that fun.  But the Senate has no such limits.

And it never should.  Nor should Congress.

The filibuster can be a futile time of railing against the inevitable—as can happen when one party has a two-thirds majority and therefore doesn’t need to compromise on anything and can just wait until the minority, or part of the minority, chews up precious hours of debate time and finally runs out of energy.

They’re most effective when the numbers are closer.  Many filibusters are resolved when opposing sides finally decide to find some compromises that previously had been rejected and start talking about lessening the most objectionable parts of the legislation.  But when one party is so dominant that it doesn’t need to compromise on anything, compromise is hard to see

When that happens, the participants in a filibuster hope some members of the other party will start seeing the time their bills needed to gain passage is disappearing, and they start pressuring their majority colleagues to stop this thing so there will be a chance for passage of other bills before the final adjournment.

As unpleasant as most of them are, as many times as this veteran observer of them realized hours of his life were disappearing in the ocean of blather and boredom (the same hours would disappear more pleasantly at home and in bed), they are an important part of government, a protection against steamrolling the minority or a faction of the majority.  When you have no other weapons; when you are heavily outnumbered even by members of your own party; when you want to kill an abhorrent idea or even one that could be better if the overbearing sponsor doesn’t want anybody tampering with his precious idea—-talk becomes the only weapon.

Filibusters are awful things.  But today’s pest is tomorrow’s ally. The tables might turn and those who are forced to listen today might be the talkers tomorrow and it’s important to recognize that possible reciprocity.  Respecting in others the tool you might need to use someday yourself is important.

They work better when the competing parties respect each other enough to be willing to work out their differences.  But when the two sides are so antagonistic that talk is impossible, extensive talk becomes even more essential.

Filibusters are part of our democratic-republic form of government.  They might not be nice but they’re essential.

Sometimes they result in talking a bill to death.  Other times they talk a bill into a better life.

Tools, after all, often have dual purposes.  And the filibuster is an important tool in our political system.

How a Possum Stopped Radicalization 

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We’ve seen something such as this before:

A political party seized by a charismatic leader with radicalized followers at a time of national division sees voter suppression as one of the keys to maintaining its power and threatens to drive the other party into oblivion.  But the party develops an internal fracture between the radical wing and the more traditional element and there are fears that IT will be the party going into oblivion.

From this contentious time there emerges a possum and over time, it rescues both parties.

This was the political situation in Missouri fifteen decades ago.

During the Civil War, the interim government—Governor Price and several members of the legislature had fled to Arkansas to set up a government in exile that finished the war headquartered in Texas—Radical Republicans left in control in Missouri adopted a loyalty oath to make sure Missouri would have only Union-loyal officials in charge.  The Radical movement had begun about the time the Republican Party began in the mid-1850s, their name coming from their demand for immediate end to slavery. During the war, they were opposed by the moderate wing of the party led by Abraham Lincoln, who had run fourth in the 1860 election in this state, as well as by Democrats, who were more oriented toward southern sympathies.

The Radicals confirmed their control of Missouri government with the election of Governor Thomas Fletcher in 1864, thanks in part to the organizational skills of St. Louis lawyer Charles D. Drake who in 1863 argued for a new state constitution and disenfranchisement of all Confederate sympathizers. Carl Schurz, a future U.S. Senator and a leader of Missouri’s German citizens, called him “inexorable” and said Republicans “especially in the country districts, stood much in awe of him,” which might sound familiar today.

Radical Republicans pushed through The Drake Constitution, named because of his influence, in 1865. It contained a harsh loyalty oath that basically denied citizenship rights to anyone who would not pledge that they had given no support to the rebellion. Regardless of loyalty during the war, even if a person were a Union General, citizens could not vote, practice a profession, or serve in positions of public trust unless they swore to that oath. Drake and his Radical Republicans produced a list of 81 actions that defined disloyalty. For six years the Drake-led Radicals controlled politics in Missouri and Drake became a United States Senator.

Missouri’s moderate Republicans were reeling during those years and Democrats feared for their own party’s existence.  And this is when the possum was born that saved both political groups.

Drake’s Radicals began to see rising opposition from those who called themselves Liberal Republicans—remember this was 1870 and the two words, “liberal” and “Republican” were not an oxymoron.

The Liberals had had enough of Drake and his Radicals by the time the State Republican Convention was held in Jefferson City on August 31, 1870.  The Committee on Platforms filed two reports, a majority report from the Liberals favored immediate re-enfranchisement of former Confederates.  The Radical, minority, report favored a statewide vote on the question. With former Confederate supporters banned from voting, the outcome of the election pretty clearly would have maintained Radical Control.  When the convention adopted the Radical position, about 250 Liberals walked out and nominated their own ticket with Benjamin Gratz Brown its candidate for Governor.  The Radicals nominated Joseph McClurg for a second two-year term.

Democrats, still weak shortly after the U. S. Supreme Court threw out part of the loyalty oath, decided not to put up a statewide ticket.  William Hyde, the editor of The St. Louis Republican, a Democratic newspaper despite its name, is credited with creating what became known as “The Possum Policy.”  Instead of running its own slate, the Democrats threw their support behind the Liberal Republican candidate, Brown.

Walter B. Stevens, in Missouri, the Center State, 1821-1915, records an exchange of telegrams after the State Democratic Convention decided to support Liberal Republicans in which former U. S. Senator John Brooks Henderson—who did not run for re-election after voting against convicting President Johnson of impeachment charges—told Brown, “The negroes of this state are free. White men only are now enslaved. The people look to you and your friends to deliver them from this great wrong. Shall they look in vain?”

Brown wired back, “The confidence of the people of this State shall not be disappointed. I will carry out this canvass to its ultimate consequence so that no freeman not convicted of crime shall   henceforth be deprived on an equal voice in our government.”

The Democrats’ “Possum Policy” helped Brown defeated McClurg by about 40,000 votes, effectively ending the Radical Republican reign in Missouri.

The Liberal Republicans, created for the sole purpose of ending radicalism within the party, could not survive on their own. Governor Brown’s Secretary, Frederick N. Judson, reflected, “A party based upon a single issue, called into being to meet a single emergency, could not in the nature of things become permanent…and though its party life was short, it is entitled to the imperishable glory of having destroyed the last vestige of the Civil War in Missouri. A nobler record no party could have.”

National Democrats failed to follow the Missouri party’s “Possum Policy” and in 1872 nominated a presidential ticket of Horace Greeley, the New York newspaper publisher then in failing physical and mental health, and Benjamin Brown of Missouri—-a move that antagonized the national Liberal Republican movement and led to a crushing defeat for Democrats as Liberal Republicans opposed to the Grant administration had no place to go and so supported it anyway. With that, Liberal Republican movement died nationally.

In Missouri, the re-enfranchised Democrats elected Silas Woodson to succeed Brown as Governor, beginning Democratic control of the governorship until Republican Herbert Hadley was elected in 1908.

Missourians adopted a new constitution in 1875, throwing out the punitive Drake Constitution.  It lasted until our present State Constitution was adopted in 1945, the longest-standing constitution in state history.

Republicans paid a price to overcome the radicalization of their party 150 years ago but paying that price made sure that the rights of thousands of people were no longer endangered or no longer remained limited.

Being out of power did not and does not mean being without influence. History tells us we became a better nation because political courage manifested itself at the right time within the Republican Party.  In the long term both parties saved themselves.

We are not advocating that the Republican National Committee adopt a “possum policy” in 2022 or in 2024 to stamp out radicalization within the party nor are we saying splitting the party will be the solution now that it was then. But history reminds us of the dangers of radical politics and the sacrifices that have to be made, sometimes on both sides of the aisle, to make sure it does not overwhelm us.

Will This Be Mike Parson’s “Lost Speech?”

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It was a pretty good speech, the one Governor Parson delivered Wednesday. It was the annual State of the State speech.  Governors have been giving them since Alexander McNair did the first one on November 4, 1822 at the start of the Second General Assembly of the State Of Missouri. The speech lasted about 17 minutes.  Governor Parson’s speech lasted about 42 minutes.

As far as we can determine, his speech was historic because it was the first SOS address that did not take place before a joint legislative session meeting in the House chamber.  Even in the St. Charles Capitol, where the House and Senate met in adjoining rooms, the Senate joined the House for McNair’s 1822 speech.

And, as far as we can determine, it was the first time a State of the State Address was not given during a joint session.  In fact it wasn’t given during a session of the legislature at all.  Neither chamber was in session. Another historical point.

Mark these circumstances down to an external historical event that had become too internal—the COVID-19 pandemic.  The House leadership decided Wednesday morning that the House could not be used because of fears the event would turn into a super-spreader of the virus.  The situation was so out of hand in the House that it didn’t even meet the previous week.

That near-last hour decision provoked a big scramble that resulted in moving the speech to the Senate where there is far less room for social distancing on the floor or in the galleries. We’ve heard there were concerns the Senate could muster a membership majority for an afternoon joint session.

As a result, neither chamber was in session. The Senate gave permission for the speech to be given there, much as it gives permission for the Silver-Haired legislature and other mock legislatures to use the chamber. Reports indicate about one-third of the Senate membership stayed away.

The House Information Office, which has a pretty sophisticated audio/video system it uses for special events in the House, managed to move all of its gear into the Senate galleries and strung all of its cables, and mounted all of its cameras in a matter of a few hours and produced a high-quality video feed on the governor’s Facebook page (maybe I’ll tell you sometime how close the Missourinet once came to beginning daily video feeds on its webpage many years ago).  I watched it.  I thought it was flawless.

The galleries of the Senate chamber were uncomfortably crowded with Parson cabinet members, guests who would become show-and-tell examples of certain points the governor wanted to emphasize, other special folks and as many House members as wanted to crowd in.

Normally, the House and the Senate appoint a special escort committee to escort the Governor into the House chamber.  But with neither chamber being in session there could be no escort committee—another possible first.

At the appropriate time, the back doors opened and in walked a masked Governor Parson.  Alone.  No handshakes on the way in, as usually happens.  Fist bumps only during the walk down the much-shorter than usual center aisle.

Forty-two minutes (and probably about 6,000 words) later, the governor put has mask back on and he and Teresa walked hand-in-hand back up the aisle and out of the chamber.  I’d never before seen a governor and First Lady walk back down the legislative aisle after a State of the State speech.  Another touch of history on that day.

There was no State of the State message in the First General Assembly—

—because we weren’t a state then.  Congress had given Missouri permission to elect a state legislature and state officers and draft a proposed State Constitution in 1820.  McNair gave the first state governor’s inaugural address on September 19, 1820, almost eleven months before Missouri was a state.  His three-minute speech was so short that a goodly number of legislators were still in a grog shop down the street in St. Charles and missed it. They wanted him to have a do-over and he refused.  Then came the 17-minute SOS in 1822.

As we have researched the history of the Capitol, we have come across a lot of State of the State messages in legislative journals.  Some are amazing.  For a good part of our history the governor did not deliver the message. He sent the message to the House, often with the Secretary of State or his personal secretary carrying it.  Then somebody read it.  And read it and read it.

And read it.

Long ago we learned that the average person speaks at about 150 words per minute.  It’s a natural pace for most of us. Any faster and the listener is tense, waiting for the next work.  Any faster, and clarity of speech might suffer.  So, using the 150 wpm standard, here’s how long some previous State of the State speeches have lasted.

On November 22, 1836 (the legislature in those days met after the harvest and quit in time for spring planting, “Lieutenant Governor and Acting Governor” Lilburn Boggs delivered a speech that covered seventeen pages of the House Journal. The word counter on my computer says the speech was 8,873 words long. Whoever read it probably took about an hour to give.  It’s hard to imaging many applause breaks since the big buy himself wasn’t reading it.  So there was little to keep people awake.  Maybe they didn’t suffer as much as we think because in those days church sermons of two or three hours were not uncommon and the listeners were sitting on split log benches without backs.

John Cummins Edwards, the youngest governor in Missouri up to that time, used 6,681 words in 1846, a more modest 45-minute speech, probably.

Sterling Price’s Christmas Day State of the State speech in 1854 was 7,114 words long, would have lasted a couple of minutes longer than Edwards did.  His speech took 12 pages of the House Journal.  We’re not sure if this was the first time it happened, but after the speech, the House ordered thousands of copies printed, including 2,000 copies in German—as more and more Germans started flowing into Missouri from their country that had been torn by revolutions for several years.

We ran out of energy on the John Marmaduke speech in 1887. It took up 19 pages.

Joseph Folk was a populist who was elected in 1904.  He was so full of ideas for cleaning up a corrupt government that his SOS took 14,071 words to express. All those words probably took two hours and 22 minutes to read.

TWO HOURS AND 22 MINUTES!

Forrest Donnell, the governor that majority Democrats tried to keep from taking office in 1941, gave his final SOS  on January 3, 1945. He could have spent a lot of time talking about his accomplishments steering our state through most of the World War, but he didn’t.  4180 words, 28-30 minutes.

The first State of the State given by Warren Hearnes in 1965 took 3,063 words.

By the time Donnell and Hearnes spoke, governors were delivering their own remarks. That is likely to be the greatest motivation not to talk endlessly.

The longest SOS we ever covered was Joe Teasdale’s first one.  Since the Missourinet broadcast it, we clocked it.  An hour and 17 minutes.  It seemed interminable.  And it was still more than an hour shorter than Folk’s message.

But unlike all of those other State of the State messages, the one given by Governor Parson this week might become a “lost speech.”   Why?

Because it wasn’t given to a joint session. In fact it wasn’t given to a session of either chamber of the legislature.

As we write this, we haven’t seen the journal from yesterday, Thursday, yet. But since the speech was given outside of the legislative day, it doesn’t qualify to be in the journal.  If that’s how it turns out, the speech will achieve still another historic first—-there won’t be an official record of it in either journal.  Perhaps a century from now somebody who has the questionable intelligence to spend hours reading legislative journals will wonder why there was no State of the State message in 2021.

There was one. Pretty good one. Well-delivered. Well-covered by the media. But if it’s not in the journals, it will be Mike Parson’s “lost speech.”

UPDATE:  The unapproved journals of the House and Senate for the day of the speech, which are available on the web pages of the chambers, do not include the speech.  

 

People’s Interests Being Dealt a Losing Hand

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Several bills have been introduced to legalize casino wagering on sports in Missouri this year.  Most are versions of bills that have failed to gain passage for the past three years.

None of the bills has a single word protecting the state’s interests in casino gambling.  Not a single word.

What are the state’s interests?

Funding for public schools.

Funding for various veterans’ services.

The National Guard

Funding of a college scholarship program.

Funding for a program to help people who become addicted to the casinos’ products.

Funding for the cities that are hosts for casinos.

The first hearing on one of the bills took place yesterday in a Senate Committee before which I raised this issue last year. In the year since, there has been time to dig deeper into this concern. And the concerns have become deeper.

Yesterday, I talked to the Senate Appropriations Committee about, first, the much-lower tax proposed for sports wagering adjusted gross receipts and, second, about the multi-million dollar damages that tax will cause to elementary and secondary education. Other concerns will be voiced as other bills are brought up for hearings.

None of these bills should be sent out for floor debate until they have been extensively revised to protect the state’s interests.

Please understand that these comments do not oppose casinos or sports wagering. But they do oppose the Missouri General Assembly being skillfully maneuvered into passing new gaming laws that degrade the state’s interests and the interests of the people of Missouri.

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After listening to three years of committee hearings on proposed sports wagering legislation, I am left with the impression that the proposals are being presented as if the issue is unique, separate from other forms of gambling and therefore should be treated as a special category.

It would be erroneous to accept that concept.

The creation of legalized sports wagering can be likened to the addition of a new kind of cheeseburger to the menu at McDonald’s. The biggest difference is that McDonald’s is not lobbying you to lower the sales tax on the cheeseburger while leaving it the same for all of its other products.

Sports wagering is just one more activity in which casino customers can take part. One more item on the gambling menu. But the menu also contains the same products it always has had. Separating one product from the other for taxation purposes makes no sense, whether is a sports bet or a cheeseburger.

This year’s proposed legislation makes it clear that sports wagering will not be done in some other building but will be done on the property of the casino, a phrase that bears scrutiny because it does not specifically say the activity will take place within the wagering area of the casino, a clear position for the state to take. Nonetheless, the assumption seems to be that bets will be accepted within the casino, processed within the casino, and—when necessary—paid within the casino—the same as with bets in all other forms of casino gambling.

Betting on sports is no different than betting on the fall of the cards, the roll of the dice, or the circling of a little white ball.  You will hear me say it many times in these discussions: a bet is a bet is a bet. It’s done in the same facility; the money goes into the same bank account; the taxes are paid on both kinds of money—although the casinos want much less tax charged on proceeds from sports betting by calling for a much lower rate and then by re-defining AGR to make less money taxable by exempting things from the taxable amount in some of the bills.

The proposed legislation accepts that casino winnings on sports bets will be considered part of the casino adjusted gross receipts (AGR) and part of those receipts will be funneled to public education. But the industry claims some of those receipts are not equal to the others for taxation purposes. Once again, a bet is a bet is a bet. That’s the central issue.

Although I have not seen a federal or state income tax form filed by any of our casinos, I doubt that there is one line for taxable income and a second line for taxable sports wagering income on those forms. The federal tax on that income is the same regardless of the source of the income. There is no fair reason why the state tax on AGR should be different from the tax on AGR generated by other forms of gambling.

Sports wagering is NOT something apart from the rest of the casino operations in either space, processing of bets, or in accumulated casino income.

The casinos argued in an earlier hearing that the tax on adjusted gross receipts should be much less than the tax on other forms of gaming because the house advantage on sports wagering is “only five percent.”  That is true. But it’s not the whole truth.

The house advantage of sports wagering is more than the house advantage of several other games offered by the casinos. A study done for the Center for Gaming Research at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas indicates the house advantage is lower than five percent for some of the other gambling opportunities in casinos, yet the industry has never sought a lower tax rate on those games.

Because sports wagering is just another gambling opportunity within the casino, the income from which is part of the general profits of the business, there is no reason to grant sports wagering a preferred tax rate or a different definition of AGR than is used for other gambling activities—as is proposed in this year’s sports wagering bills.

Missouri has 28 years of history to support this argument.  For almost three decades the monthly financial reports of the State Gaming Commission have broken out revenues from table games from revenues from slot machines for each of our casinos. Table games contribute about 15% of the revenues; electronic gaming devices, as the category is called, contributes the other 85%.

For almost three decades, the casinos have had no problems with the revenues from those two sources combined into one AGR figure and taxed at 21%.  Now, however, the industry wants you to approve and new, and what is likely to be the second-most lucrative revenue stream, but they want the legislature to approve a far lower tax rate for it—a tax rate that will undermine support from the other two categories for elementary and secondary education.

I have been told that casinos say they cannot do sports wagering with a 21% tax on AGR.  That’s THEIR problem.  The legislature has a responsibility and that responsibility is not to solve the casino industry’s problems.  The legislature’s responsibility is to the people back home–the school teachers and children, the veterans, the college kids needing a state scholarship, the home dock citis.

If the casinos “can’t do sports wagering,” there still will be gambling on sports.  It just won’t be legal.  and the casinos won’t make any money from it.  That’s their choice.

DAMAGE TO ELEMENTARY AND SECONDARY EDUCATION

Various sports wagering legislation this year proposes tax rates on sports AGR of nine percent, 6.75 percent, 6.25 percent and 6.0 percent. (The particular bill heard yesterday proposes a nine percent rate)

The present tax on AGR from all other forms of gaming is 21 percent.  Ninety percent goes into a fund for elementary and secondary education. Ten percent goes to the home dock cities.

We can explain the problem with a fourth-grade-style arithmetic example.

Johnny’s mother wants to make some apple pies.  She gives him some money and tells him to guy ten apples. There will be enough to buy something for himself if wants it.

Johnny buys ten applies and, seeing plums also on sale, buys a plum to eat on the way home. At the checkout counter, he learns the apples cost $2.10, or 21-cents per apple.  His plum costs 6.75 cents.  The first ten items cost 21-cents each. The last one lowers the average cost of the eleven items to 19.7 cents each.

Using this example, the tax rates proposed for sports wagering could lower the average AGR tax to 19.91% (nine percent rate), 19.70% (the proposed 6.75% rate), and 19.66% (the proposed 6.25 rate, which would establish a new low rate in the nation), and 19.64% (the 6.0% rate proposed in a House bill).

In fiscal year 2018-19—the last full year before the pandemic significantly affected the casino business, the casinos reported to the Missouri Gaming Commission that $15,160,505,906 had been bet in their slot machines.  Table games produced “only” $1,255,959,366 for a total bet in our casinos of $16,416,465,272.  The slot machines had a payout rate of 90.3%.  Table games had a “hold” of 20.8%–meaning table games produced a 79.2% pay out.

The result was an AGR of $1,735,757,881, or 10.57% of the total amount bet and Missouri’s tax on the AGR amounted to 2.2% of all funds bet in slot machines or at gaming tables.

The math shows that a nine percent tax on AGR (the definition used for all other forms of gaming in Missouri) would cost elementary and secondary education about $17 million. The loss to schools would top $21.2 million at the lowest rate proposed.

I don’t know how many members of the General Assembly want to go home and tell their school superintendents they favor legislation that would pump tens of millions of dollars into casino profits while cutting state funding to education by $17-21 million with no realistic hopes of recovery. It will take a lot of PTA chili suppers to make up the difference.

All of this is based on numbers supplied to the Missouri Gaming Commission by the casino industry in Missouri.  We believe it shows the depth of loss the state will incur if the legislature passes these gaming bills without major rewriting.

The extensive homework behind these observations is below.

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All discussion of percentages and holds and payouts aside, here is what the current AGR tax rate produced in that fiscal year and how much the state would have lost if the tax rate were reduced.

21%       $364,509,155    Existing rate

9% (19.91) $345,589,394     Reduction of $18,919,761 ($17,027,785-$1,891,976)

6.75%  (19.7)  $341,944,303     Reduction of $22,564,852 ($20,308,367-$2,256,485)

6.25%  (19.66) $341,249,999     Reduction of $23,259,156 ($20,933,240-$2,325,916)

6.0%   (19.64)  $340,902,848  Reduction of $23,606,307 (21,245,676-2,360,631)

It might be argued that the increased AGR of sports wagering would have offset those losses.  How much betting would have been necessary to bring about that offset?

It would have taken an AGR increase totaling $210 million to produce $18,900,000 at 9%

It would have taken an AGR increase totaling $336 million to produce $22,680,000 at 6.75%

It would have taken an AGR increase totaling $372 million to produce $23,251,000 at 6.25%

It would have taken an AGR increase totaling $ 394 million to produce $23.640,000 at 6.0%

Actually, the AGR increase would have had to be even more substantial because the sports wagering bills re-define AGR through a series of exemptions that would have lowered the amount of money that was taxable.

If, using the 2018-2019 fiscal year as the basis, we calculate how much more would have to be bet on sports to reclaim the lost funds, and understanding that AGR represents 11% of the total amount bet (we’ve rounded up the percent), then the amount bet on sports to recover the lost funds at the four tax rates advocated in this year’s bills would be:

9%—$2,079,000,000

6.75%—$3,326,400,000

6.25%—$3,682,800,000

6.0%—$3,374,938,195

And further, there would have been another loss occurring because of the lower tax rates because the schools and home dock cities would be losing income from the AGR if it had been  taxed at the present 21%.  For example:

$210,000,000 taxed at 21% would have earned $44.1-million.

$336,000,000 taxed at 21% would have earned $70.56 million.

$372,000,000 taxed at 21% would have earned $78.12 million.

$394,000,000 taxed at 21% would have earned $82.74 million

In other words, the schools and home dock cities, while waiting to collect $22,564,853 at 6.75% would have been foregoing $70.56 million that would have reached them at the current 21% rate.

The loss to elementary and secondary education and to the home dock cities, therefore would have been (approximately) $25.2 million, $48 million, $54.8 million, and $59.1 million.

Elementary and Secondary Education (and the home dock cities) will NEVER catch up.

The goal for the casinos in adding sports wagering is to INCREASE their AGR.  This study shows how much the DECREASE in elementary and secondary education and the home dock communities might have been if the average AGR tax had been lowered, that it would have taken hundreds of millions of dollars in wagering to REPLACE the funds lost by elementary and secondary education through the lowering of the average AGR tax rate, and the income loss while waiting to replace lost income through increased wagering would have been an even larger financial setback.

Casinos don’t seem to care about elementary and secondary education, veterans, college kids, problem gamblers, or even their home dock cities.  Somebody has to raise these issues. Perhaps you might ask your legislator about whether he favors passage of legislation that will undermine financing for all of these issues we’ll be raising in subsequent hearings.

I hope legislative committees don’t send any of these bills to the floors for debate without substantially rewriting them to protect the interests of the state.

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Dr. Crane on the Ticking Clock

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(The General Assembly has begun its 2021 session. Governor Parson has begun his four-years as the head of our state government. The work of the legislature and the work of the governor—and other elected officials—is limited by time, of which there is plenty now.  But by May 1, time will have become a fearful enemy. The General assembly must approve a budget about two weeks later and adjourn in less than three.  Campaigns in 2022 and 2024, now so distant, will become a weight on the shoulders of those who hoped their actions would become a praiseworthy legacy.  So it is that we turn to Dr. Frank Crane today and his observations about—–)

TIME

Old Father Time knows more than anybody.

He solves more problems than all the brains in the world.

More hard knots are unloosed, more tangled questions are answered, more deadlocks are unfastened by Time than by any other agency.

In the theological disputes that once raged in Christendom neither side routed the other; Time routed them both by showing that the whole subject did not matter.

After the contemporaries had had their say, Time crowned Homer, Dante, Wagner, Shakespeare, Whitman, Emerson.

Amost any judgment can be appealed, but from the decision of Time there is no appeal.

Do not force issues with your children. Learn to wait. Be patient. Time will bring things to pass that no immediate power can accomplish.

Do not create a crisis with your husband, your wife. Wait. See what Time will do.

Time has a thousand resources, abounds in unexpected expedients.

Time brings a change in point of view, in temper, in state of mind which no contention can.

When you teach, make allowance for Time. What the child cannot possibly understand now, he can grasp easily a year from now.

When you have a difficult business affair to settle, give it Time, put it away and see how it will ferment, sleep on it, give it as many days as you can. It will often settle itself.

If you would produce a story, a play, a book, or an essay, write it out, then lay it aside and let it simmer, forget it a while, then take it out and write it over.

Time is the best critic, the shrewdest adviser, the frankest friend.

If you are positive you want to marry a certain person, let Time have his word. Nowhere is Time’s advice more needed. Today we may be sure, but listen to a few tomorrows.

You are born and you will die whenever fate decides; you have nothing to do with those fatal two things; but in marriage, the third fatality, you have Time. Take it.

Do not decide your beliefs and convictions suddenly. Hang up the reasons to cure. You come to permanent ideas not only by reasoning, but quite as much by growth.

Do not hobble your whole life by the immature certainties of youth. Give yourself room to change, for you must change, if you are to develop.

“Learn to labor and—to wait!”

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The great quotation

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It is early in the legislative session, early in the work of a new Congress. In a troubled time, it is good to recall one of the great statements of what government must be and what those who serve in it must be.

The single line or the single paragraph that constitutes a memorable and motivating quotation from a prominent figure often is set forth to guide us.   The words sometimes are carved into great stone walls to encourage those who see them or serve under them to eschew pettiness for the sake of noble acts.

So it is with a quotation from English statesman Edmund Burke:

“Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays you instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.”

In today’s politics, loyalty is a word often used and sometimes ill-used.  Loyalty to an individual.  Loyalty to a party.  Loyalty to a specific constituency. Loyalty to personal ambition. Burke challenges those who feel or are pressured to feel a need to be loyal without thought.

The problem with loyalty is that it can limit the ability to do what is right.  It becomes an excuse to excuse. It can breed a fear of consequence that can stifle a motivation to do good. It can turn public service into self-service. At times, it endangers freedom.

The noble quotation can suffer from brevity.  Such might be the case with Burke, who later added:

Parliament is a deliberative Assembly of one Nation, with one Interest, that of the whole; where, not local Purposes, not local Prejudices ought to guide, but the general Good, resulting from the general Reason of the whole.

This is a time when all of us, and particularly those who represent us in our state and national governments, to take to heart what Burke said. All of it.

So we invite you to read this essential part of a speech to the Electors of Bristol on November 3, 1774, upon being elected to represent them in London, and in doing so we hope you gain dimension to his famous remark.  The language is the formal rhetoric of the late 18th Century but therein might be its power and the beauty of his clarity of thought.

Editor Francis Canavan notes in the forward to the book from which this text is taken, “Although he was skeptical of democracy as a form of government for any but small countries (and not optimistic even there), he did believe that government existed for the good of the whole community and must represent the interests of all its people. But…his idea of representation was not the radically democratic one that saw representation as a mere substitute for direct democracy and a representative as a mere agent of the local electorate whose duty it was to carry out its wishes despite his own best judgment… Rather, he argued in his Bristol speech, a representative was to act for the interest of his constituents, to be sure, but as part of a larger national whole, in accordance with the enlightened judgment that could be exercised only at the center of government and in possession of the knowledge available there. If nothing were at issue in politics but the question of whose will should prevail, clearly the will of the electors should. But for Burke, political judgment was a matter of reason: prudent, practical reason.”

It ought to be the happiness and glory of a Representative, to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with his constituents. Their wishes ought to have great weight with him; their opinion high respect; their business unremitted attention. It is his duty to sacrifice his repose, his pleasures, his satisfactions, to theirs; and, above all, ever, and in all cases, to prefer their interest to his own. But, his unbiassed opinion, his mature judgement, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you; to any man, or to any set of men living. These he does not derive from your pleasure; no, nor from the Law and the Constitution. They are a trust from Providence, for the abuse of which he is deeply answerable. Your Representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgement; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion. My worthy Colleague says, his Will ought to be subservient to yours. If that be all, the thing is innocent. If Government were a matter of Will upon any side, yours, without question, ought to be superior. But Government and Legislation are matters of reason and judgement, and not of inclination; and, what sort of reason is that, in which the determination precedes the discussion; in which one set of men deliberate, and another decide; and where those who form the conclusion are perhaps three hundred miles distant from those who hear the arguments? To deliver an opinion, is the right of all men; that of Constituents is a weighty and respectable opinion, which a Representative ought always to rejoice to hear; and which he ought always most seriously to consider. But authoritative instructions; Mandates issued, which the Member is bound blindly and implicitly to obey, to vote, and to argue for, though contrary to the clearest conviction of his judgement and conscience; these are things utterly unknown to the laws of this land, and which arise from a fundamental Mistake of the whole order and tenor of our Constitution. Parliament is not a Congress of Ambassadors from different and hostile interests; which interests each must maintain, as an Agent and Advocate, against other Agents and Advocates; but Parliament is a deliberative Assembly of one Nation, with one Interest, that of the whole; where, not local Purposes, not local Prejudices ought to guide, but the general Good, resulting from the general Reason of the whole. You choose a Member indeed; but when you have chosen him, he is not Member of Bristol, but he is a Member of Parliament. If the local Constituent should have an Interest, or should form an hasty Opinion, evidently opposite to the real good of the rest of the Community, the Member for that place ought to be as far, as any other, from any endeavor to give it Effect. I beg pardon for saying so much on this subject. I have been unwillingly drawn into it; but I shall ever use a respectful frankness of communication with you. Your faithful friend, your devoted servant, I shall be to the end of my life: A flatterer you do not wish for. On this point of instructions, however, I think it scarcely possible, we ever can have any sort of difference. Perhaps I may give you too much, rather than too little trouble. From the first hour I was encouraged to court your favor to this happy day of obtaining it, I have never promised you anything, but humble and persevering endeavors to do my duty. The weight of that duty, I confess, makes me tremble; and whoever well considers what it is, of all things in the world will fly from what has the least likeness to a positive and precipitate engagement. To be a good Member of Parliament, is, let me tell you, no easy task; especially at this time, when there is so strong a disposition to run into the perilous extremes of servile compliance, or wild popularity. To unite circumspection with vigor, is absolutely necessary; but it is extremely difficult. We are now Members for a rich commercial City; this City, however, is but a part of a rich commercial Nation, the Interests of which are various, multiform, and intricate. We are Members for that great Nation, which however is itself but part of a great Empire…All these wide-spread Interests must be considered; must be compared; must be reconciled if possible. We are Members for a free Country; and surely we all know, that the machine of a free Constitution is no simple thing; but as intricate and as delicate, as it is valuable.

(This transcript is drawn from  one of the four volumes of Burke’s writings and speeches, particularly: E. J. Payne, Select Works of Edmund Burke; Miscellaneous Writings; Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1999).

Stop the Steal—Missouri, 1941

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The sordid contemporary events that will forever be a lamentable chapter of American history strongly remind us of a similar lamentable chapter in our own state’s history.

This year is the 80th anniversary of the attempt by majority Democrats to steal the governorship from Republican Forrest Donnell, who had won the governorship by the narrowest margin in state history.  Here is how it went down:

Forrest Donnell, a Sunday-school teacher and lawyer from St. Louis officially defeated one of the pupils in his church class, Lawrence McDaniel, by 3,613 votes. McDaniel was backed by St. Louis Mayor Bernard Dickmann’s political machine that Donnell attacked as a potential successor of the infamous Pendergast Machine of Kansas City, badly weakened because “Boss Tom” had been sent to federal prison for violating tax laws.

Shortly after the election, State Democratic Committee Chairman C. Marion Hulen of Moberly announced the committee would investigate reports of “election irregularities.”  Committeeman Frank H. Lee of Joplin announced he had evidence that McDaniel had actually won by 7,500 votes.

In those days, the Speaker of the House, not the Secretary of State, made the official announcement of winning candidates. The legislature convened on January 8, 1941 but Speaker Morris Osborn made no pronouncements. At a joint session on the tenth, Osborn certified the Democratic candidates for statewide office as winners but refused to certify Donnell.

Traditional inaugural ceremonies on January 13th were cancelled.  Lt. Governor Frank Harris took his oath for a third term in the Missouri Senate, where the Lt. Governor is the chamber President.  The other statewide office holders took their oaths at the Supreme Court.  Donnell refused to be sworn by a Justice of the Peace and, instead, asked the court to order Osborn to declare him the winner. A second lawsuit asked the court to forbid a legislative committee from starting a recount.

Two days later, an angry Stark to a joint legislative session,

Your every thought and every effort should be to prove to the people of this great commonwealth that their faith in democracy is not misplaced, that democracy does and will work in Missouri. Nothing should be done at any time to shake the faith of our people in their democratic form of government. In these perilous times, it is doubly necessary that every public official in the state and in the nation should lean backward in an effort to serve the people strictly according to the constitution and the laws of the land without partisan bias and with only the welfare and the safety of our democratic form of government in mind.

Democrats started a recount anyway.  February was half-gone when the Supreme Court ordered Osborn, under the Constitution, to declare Donnell elected, allowing McDaniel to file a notice contesting the election, triggering a legal recount.  The Joplin Globe editorialized, “Larry McDaniel has at once forfeited the moral support of thousands of Democrats who from the first have been nauseated from the stench from the original office-stealing effort.”

Donnell (left) finally was sworn in on February 26, much to the delight of Lloyd Stark who said he was tired of “living out of a suitcase” while his fellow Democrats tried to overturn the election.

McDaniel’s 226-page contest petition was filed March 4, citing fraud, erroneous tabulations, irregularities, and vote-buying in 56 counties. He claimed that a complete would show that 24,263 votes cast for him were “wrongfully rejected” by election officials and that he was the real winner—by 30,000 votes.  Donnell’s 50,000-word response filed about three weeks later threw McDaniel’s claims back at him claiming problems in 91 counties such as irregular registrations, voting by minors, non-residents, and wards of the government. He claimed he should have an additional 9,000 votes.

The recount started in mid-April and by May had turned into a disaster for McDaniel.  Checked returns from St. Louis City and 81 counties had inflated Donnell’s victory margin by four-thousand votes.  A new joint legislative session was called after McDaniel had arranged for hastily-drawn letters withdrawing his contest. He said he had become convinced that reports by his party leaders and others that there had been massive fraud were “greatly exaggerated” and that he was convinced “beyond question of doubt” that Donnell had been elected. Because the recount was never completed, Donnell’s victory margin remains in our history books and in the official record as 3,613 votes, the second-closest race for governor in state history (Frederick Gardner defeated Henry Lamm by 2,263 votes in 1917).

Forrest Donnell was elected to the U. S. Senate, succeeding Democrat Harry Truman.  He served until 1951 and returned to St. Louis and his law practice. He was the last Republican Governor until Christopher Bond took office in 1973.  Donnell, then 88 years old, attended Bond’s inauguration and took part in the celebration late into the night.  He died in 1980 at the age of 95.

Democrats paid a price for their 1941 shenanigans.  Republicans took control of the House in the 1942 elections by a large margin.

One of the other casualties was St. Louis Mayor Bernard Dickmann who was heavily criticized by winner William Becker for trying to use the election contest of 1941 to establish St. Louis machine control of state government.

A new constitution drafted during Donnell’s term in office took away the power of the Speaker of the House to declare election winners and placed it in the hands of the Secretary of State, the top Missouri elections official, where it resides to this day.

(Photo credit):  Bob Priddy Collection