Category Archives: legislature

Us vs. It—Part XI, Reasons to Act

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I bought something from the internet the other day—a photograph from a company that sells archived news photos from decades ago.  No sales tax was charged by the company, which is in a nearby state.

The purchase is a reminder.

If the state needs money—and it surely does—

There is no better time to finally approve collecting a sales tax on purchases made through the internet.

The Missouri General Assembly has gone to great lengths to avoid enacting such a requirement for a decade or more. It has refused to create a collection policy of our own and it has rejected suggestions Missouri join a multi-state compact that collects sales taxes.

Past efforts have been attacked by those who use a faulty argument to avoid the responsibility needed to enact the bill.  “It’s a tax increase,” opponents claim.

Dishwater!

The state sales tax is not—let me emphasize that, NOT—being increased. If the law requiring the state sales tax be paid on purchases on the internet were to pass, the state tax you and I pay when we buy from an internet vendor would be the same as the tax charged when we buy from a hometown business. I should be able to duck a citizen responsibility to contribute to the well-being of others by buying something through the internet.

The argument in favor of an internet sales tax is even more compelling in today’s plague-mangled economy.  Hundreds of local businesses have closed because of stay-at-home orders. Many have not reopened and some never will reopen.  But one of our neighbors (yours and mine) who owns a brick-and-mortar business knows that customers who used to buy things at that store have been buying them on the internet while the store has been closed.

The problem of local folks visiting stores, checking the prices, and then buying the same thing from an internet vendor already was a problem before virus-caused closings forced consumers to increasingly rely in the internet.  Now the question becomes whether they will go back into the hometown stores when they open?

Passing a law requiring Missourians to pay the same sales tax on internet items that they have to pay for local in-store purchases is more symbolic than profitable for the merchant.  But at the same time, promoting the reopening of brick-and-mortar businesses without taking a step that offers a slight whiff of equality with internet vendors seems pretty inconsistent (although you might have a stronger word).

The need to do this has been increased by an executive order signed by our president that he says will resume the expired supplemental unemployment payments.  The executive order will pay $400 but the states will have to contribute $100.

The legality of the executive order aside, Missouri’s general revenue fund needs every penny it can generate whether for supplemental unemployment payments, virus-fighting efforts or maintaining services even at their reduced levels.

Our state leaders have insisted time after time that testing is the key to controlling the Coronavirus in Missouri.  At this point, it’s anyone’s guess whether Congress and our president can agree on a stimulus package that will include billions of dollars for state testing. Lacking that, it’s hard for someone well detached from the ins and outs of the statehouse these days to imagine where the state will find money for that testing without further wrecking the state budget, let alone where it will find money for its share of unemployment payments without the same result.

Where the state of Missouri would find $100 multiplied by several thousand each week is a troubling question.  The governor already has withheld or vetoed hundreds of MILLIONS dollars to balance the state budget.  Schools are opening and education at all levels has been badly bruised by the necessary budget actions. Inflicting deeper cuts to the biggest places to cut, education and social services, could be tragic at a time when schools, in addition their normal expenses, have to face the costs of keeping students, faculty, and staff safe from the virus.

By making Joe or Josephine Missouri pay the same sales tax on a coat from a Internet Inc., as Sarah and Samuel Showme have to pay for the same coat from a Main Street store, Inc., Missouri’s leaders and lawmakers can send a little positive message to the businesses they want to reopen despite health uncertainties at home by collecting needed funds from consumers who want to avoid a few pennies in sales tax by buying online.

The virus has produced all the justification needed to finally impose an internet sales tax. It won’t entirely solve the state’s financial problems. But it could at least partly equalize the competition for the local dollar, provide at least some of the funding for the state’s contribution to the supplemental jobless benefit, and/or ease the depth of any additional budget cuts or withholdings.

Unfortunately, this is a campaign year and candidates will stampede away from advocating anything that can be called, however erroneously, a tax increase no matter how desperate the virus causes the state to be for additional funds. Perhaps we’ll have to wait until January to see if those whose political futures have been determined by then will screw up the courage to take this step.

Us vs. It—part VII, Thoughts from a Quiet Street, Pandemic edition

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A lot more thinking happens on the quiet street when you can’t mingle with your usual social groups and when you have to stand in the middle of the street to talk to your neighbor. It is amazing how profound one can be if the only one you can talk to up close is yourself.

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We’ve been keeping a journal of our thoughts about the pandemic year since March 28. No idea when we’ll stop because there’s no idea when the virus will stop. It’s not too late for you to start one, too. And you should. The State Historical Society has suggested it as a worthwhile time-filler for you and as a valuable historical resource in the future for those who want to see what life was like during this event. The society has some journals from the Spanish Influenza years and they give us some insight behind the newspaper headlines we have in our microfilmed newspaper files (about 60-million pages worth). Personally, a lot of mental wandering goes on as we reflect on each day’s events. Hopes and fears. Anger and frustration. Funny occurrences. Next-door sorrow. The disappearance of our children’s inheritances. Struggles to pay the rent, the mortgage, and the grocery and pharmacy bills. The sound of birds as we take our daily walks. The real story of this era will be found in the daily journals we keep and put into historical societies and other archives. And what we are experiencing can be instructive decades from now (we hope) when another pandemic sweeps the world.

As long as you are cooped up, write about it. It can be therapeutic.

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Today, tomorrow, and Friday are all that’s left of this legislative session, a historic one because of the circumstances facing it. The legislative session of 1820 when lawmakers created state government, the sessions leading up to the Civil War and the turbulent governance years during the war, and the longest session in history after adoption of the 1945 Constitution might be considered equally unique. The 1945 session that started on January 3 lasted 240 days for the House, which adjourned on December 12, 1946, about three weeks before the 1947 session began. The Senate met for 251 days and adjourned on November 25. The legislature met every other year back then but the 1945 session ran through ‘46 because the legislature had to change so many laws to make them conform to the new Constitution.

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This session will be remembered because of the virus that extended spring break, caused a re-write of the state budget, and rewrote the rules for floor debate, not to mention the images of masked people in committee hearings and on the chamber floors. Depending on how irrational the omnibus bills that have materialized in the closing weeks because so many different issues were combined in one bill because of lack of time for regular processes, we might see an unusual number of vetoes or court cases challenging the legality of the bills passed.

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This business of quarantining might not seem as difficult to retired people as those with jobs. Retired people have been working from home for years.

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We do wish our state and national leaders would don masks when they go out in crowds or to check on how well businesses are reopening. This is not a time for, “Do as I say, not as I do.” Please, folks, be the example of what you promote.

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We suppose a lot of you have binge-watched a lot of television in the last several weeks. Your vigilant observer and his faithful companion are going to have to make a list of all the shows we’ve been binge-watching, just to keep track of which ones we’ve exhausted, which ones we’ve tried and didn’t think merited continuing, and which ones are still active. The other night we accidentally watched a third episode of something we gave up on after two shows several weeks ago. If we don’t keep a list we’re probably going to waste another 46 minutes on the fourth episode sometime in the future.

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Nancy has the sewing machine humming today making masks. She made a mask for informal occasions last week and she’s working on a “tuxedo” mask for me now that I can wear for a formal occasion or when I want to look as dignified as I can look with hair that hasn’t been this long since the high school senior play when I was a cousin in “Hillbilly Wedding.” You probably haven’t heard of it. For good reason.

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Cole County kicks off its bicentennial year with an event at Marion on June 5th. Maybe I can wear my formal mask for that. Marion was the first county seat of Cole County, back before Moniteau County was split away from us. Our first courthouse and county jail were built on Howard’s Bluff, just down Highway 179 from the Marion Access to the Missouri River. For most of the county’s history, we’ve been told it was named for Stephen Cole, “pioneer settler and Indian fighter.” But that’s about all we’ve known about him. We’ve spent the last couple of months or more trying to learn more about him. And we’ve come up with some surprising stuff. If you want to know about it, come out to Marion on June 5th. We’re going to be joined by some Cole ancestors.

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As far as we have been able to determine, Stephen Cole was never in Cole County unless he stopped here while canoeing back and forth from Boonville to St. Charles.

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Something we’ve noticed when we go on our almost-daily two mile walks through the neighborhood. Men drivers who go past us are more likely to wave than the women. And all drivers have a tendency to swerve into the other lane of the street even though we’re hugging the curb when they go by.   We always walk toward oncoming traffic, which we were taught long ago is the proper way to do it.

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A few nights ago we were on YouTube and came across Johnny Carson’s 17th anniversary Tonight Show. It occurred to us that we enjoyed Carson because he was funny. Today’s late-night hosts seem to have lost that spirit. Of course, Johnny Carson didn’t have Donald Trump to kick around.

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Therefore, we’re thinking of using this space next week for some Coronavirus humor.

Us vs It—part IV, Best guess

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(Before we get to the main point of today’s missive, your constant observer must confess that he feels a slight fever and has trouble breathing every time he hears the phrase “new normal.” He would quickly recover if the political and media leaders more accurately referred to the next positive step as the “new ABnormal.”   Likewise, he would be interested to see if President Trump could communicate without using the word “beautiful,” including the usual hand gestures.)

Legislative leaders, last we heard, are still thinking of reconvening the session on the 27th despite concerns by some members that the recall will be happening just about the time some analysts say Missouri will hit its Coronavirus peak.

Several issues could be before the House and Senate but the biggest one is the state budget for the fiscal year that starts July 1. The Missouri Constitution says the legislature must adopt a budget by the next-to-last Friday of the session, in this case, May 8.

Our lawmakers face complicated and sad choices. Today we are going to try to explain how our state government has no good alternatives and why. Please stay with us because this will be a long class.

Here’s some history of why the Missouri Constitution requires passage of a budget a week before legislative adjournment and what that means in today’s circumstances.

Last nights of legislative sessions were usually quite wild until 1988. We recall when the legislature adjourned at midnight and the last budget bills, “Midnight Specials,” some called them, hit the floor minutes before the deadline. Chaos might not be an adequate word to describe those minutes when the legislature rushed to pass last minute budget bills. The fact that everybody was exhausted and not a few were feeling the effects of early celebration of the session’s end added to the disorder.

But in 1988, Article 3, Section 25 of the Missouri Constitution was changed to say, “No appropriation bill shall be taken up for consideration after 6:00 p.m. on the first Friday following the first Monday in May of each year.” That left the session’s final week for consideration of regular legislation, created a less chaotic ending, let members get home to their families before midnight and let the reporters file their stories before sunrise the next morning. Your faithful correspondent thinks it was one of wisest laws ever enacted in the state of Missouri. Until then, members of the General Assembly had a tendency NOT to go home after midnight adjournment but to go out to the Ramada Inn after midnight and get really serious about celebrating. And it often was sunrise or later before he could go home from his Missourinet newsroom.

If the General Assembly fails to enact a budget by the deadline, what happens? If economic uncertainty makes it unrealistic to adopt a reasonably realistic budget during the regular session, the Constitution allows the governor to call a special session to get a budget done for the fiscal year starting July 1. The General Assembly also could call itself back. But it will be easier for the governor to do it, and he would. The legislature has never operated a budget on the basis of a continuing resolution, as Congress too often has done, so it is unlikely to take that strategy—-which (to a non-lawyer) seems to be unconstitutional in Missouri anyway.

A special session in June is not unprecedented.

The legislature in 1997 failed to appropriate money for Health and Mental Health, nor did they appropriate money for their own salaries as well as those of judges and statewide officials. That last problem arose when legislators argued they could not appropriate money for themselves and others until they have approved funding for everybody else. Governor Carnahan called a special session that, we recall, started right after the regular session adjourned so the last two budget bills could be approved. It took six days to do it because the legislative process of introducing and passing bills takes a little time.

In 2003, Governor Holden and the legislature got into a big snit and he vetoed appropriations bills for education and social services. He called a special session in June that was unproductive. With time running short, he called another one. The legislature told him to take it or leave it. He finally signed appropriations bills for elementary, secondary, and higher education on the last day of the fiscal year.

Special sessions usually cost more than six figures a week, mostly for legislative travel expenses and per diem payments. However, the expenses of one this year would be significantly reduced by savings realized by the shutdown of the legislature from mid-March until late April—except for the couple of days lawmakers returned this month to pass the important supplemental appropriations bill.

After the legislature approves a budget and the governor signs it, he will have to make sure the state does not fall into constitutionally-forbidden deficit spending. Given what is likely to be an indefinite period of economic uncertainty, it would not be surprising for the governor to sign a budget but withhold funds from various services and programs to make sure the budget remains in balance for the entire fiscal year. He can announce spending restrictions when he signs the budget and he can make adjustments throughout the year, although the later in the year he makes them, the harder it is for agencies and their employees to deal with them.

Under the circumstances any budget the legislature approves is likely to be only a best guess.

Governor Parson will have to adjust it downward, if necessary, to keep it in balance. We have seen examples of that within the last few days when the governor withheld $228 million in the current budget because the diving economy makes the amount of money available for the fourth quarter uncertain.

Education has a tendency to absorb the biggest share of cuts and withholds. Here is why.

Joe and Josephine Missouri might have trouble understanding why it’s so painful to make cuts in the state budget of almost $30.1 BILLION dollars proposed by Governor Parson in the flush days of January. If you are a Joe or a Josephine, we hope we can help you understand some important things about that thirty-BILLION dollars.

The legislature can decide how to spend only about one third of that money and even then it is limited in what it can do.

More than ten billion of those dollars come from the federal government for state-run federally-financed programs.

Another ten billion dollars is considered “other” funds. Those are funds that are dedicated to specific purposes. Gas tax money that goes for our road and bridge system is one example. The Conservation Sales tax money that funds our wildlife areas and Conservation Department programs is another. The special sales taxes that help fund our state parks system and help limit soil erosion is another one. Gambling proceeds that fund a tiny part of education. The legislature can’t fiddle with those because the Missouri Constitution sets them outside of legislative control.

That leaves $10,431,666,579 that the governor’s budget proposal said was under control of the state. But even that is not fully in play because other state mandates require funding for some things. One-third of that ten-Billion goes to Elementary and Secondary Education under the statutory formula for funding K-12 education. Other mandated spending eats up another $5.108-Billion.

So out of that thirty-billion dollars-plus, the legislature actually only has $1.881,921,936 to play with, if you will. But remember, that’s the figure the governor recommended back in January when the restaurants and malls and theatres and bars were open and we could go wherever we wanted to go.

When big budget withholdings have to be made or when cuts have to be made—as they have been and will be—that $1.9 billion dollars is the place to cut. That’s only six percent of the entire proposed budget.

Of that $1.9 Billion dollars, two state departments consume $1.102 Billion—Higher Education and Social Services. The next two are Elementary and Secondary Education ($136 million), and Corrections ($107 million). That chews up about $1.345 Billion of that $1.9 Billion dollars. But there are five other state agencies. The governor proposed $365 million to fund them. There’s another $166 million that falls into the “other” category. A good chunk of those “other” funds go to Elementary and Secondary Education and Social Services with relative pocket change scattered through several other agencies.

In his COVID-19 daily briefing on April 9, Governor Parson was pretty direct. “We’re gonna have to rebuild the budget,” he said. His January proposal is junk because of the pandemic.

It is likely the best-guess budget for the programs and services all of us use will take some really painful reductions for the fiscal year starting July 1. Everybody is going to be hurt to some degree. Programs already dealing with serious problems are going to be dealing with even bigger ones.   The biggest programs are going to take the biggest hits because that’s where the money is. People are going to lose jobs. People relying on those programs will struggle even more than they struggle now.

The people we elect to work for us are facing the possibility that they will have to hurt many of us. Do not think that when they show up at the Capitol on the 27th, or whenever the decision is made to reconvene the legislature, that they will not anguish about what they have to do.

If you were in their place, which of YOUR neighbors would you choose to hurt even more than they already are hurting?

Most of us can rage against our circumstances. These folks are the ones we have chosen to get beyond rage and do something about the circumstances facing us. They will have no easy choices.

Quixote

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I have a friend who thinks efforts to convince the legislature to make the casino industry financially support saving the irreplaceable treasure that is the Steamboat Arabia Museum is equivalent to Don Quixote tilting at windmills.

Maybe it is.

But if you never tilt at windmills, the windmills always win.

The Senate Appropriations Committee last week took a look at two of this year’s bills legalizing casino wagering on sports. After listening to the testimony on similar bills during the last two sessions, I decided it’s time to change the narrative.

—-Because the entire focus so far has been on what the casino industry wants. What it wants the legislature to do is to ignore the state’s promises to fund some important state and local services and programs with taxes the casinos don’t want to pay.

This is what I told the committee in the limited time given for individual testimony (this, by the way, is not a complaint about that. Committees try to shoehorn their meetings between other hearings and floor sessions and time is precious. So they try to make sure everybody gets to speak who wants to speak):

I am Bob Priddy, a resident of Jefferson City. A year ago when I was talking with most of you about a proposal to have casino admission fees increased by a dollar to finance construction of a National Steamboat Museum to house the artifacts from the steamboat Arabia when that museum closes in Kansas City in 2026, my research took me to a number of related issues. Sports wagering is one.

I do not oppose casinos, nor do I oppose sports wagering. I do not oppose the casinos making a lot of money. But I am concerned by the steps the industry takes to keep it. These bills are prime examples.

There is not one word in either of the sports wagering bills you have heard this morning that protects the state’s interests in casino gambling.

Taxes on adjusted gross receipts—21 percent—produce revenue for education.

Two-dollar admission fees paid to the state are split with one dollar going to home dock communities and the other dollar going to the Missouri Gaming Commission and a series of programs it administers for veterans homes and cemeteries, college scholarships, and help for those addicted to gambling.

The bills protect the interests of five corporations that operate thirteen businesses, to the detriment of services that are supposed to be supported by casino taxes.

During some House Interim Committee meetings looking at sports gambling and other casino issues last fall, witness Chris Krafcik of Eilers and Krejcik, a research and consulting firm in Irvine, California, suggested casino income from sports wagering would be 289-million dollars at maturity. The industry’s own numbers show that’s more revenue than was produced from ALL table games in the last fiscal year.

But these bills would tax those sizeable new revenues at less than one-half to less than one-third of the rate of tax on the table games. One of the tax rates would the lowest in the nation.

The result? A significantly lower contribution to education funding from this new form of gaming.

In other hearings the proponents have suggested lower taxes because the house advantage in sports wagering is “only” five percent. But a 2015 study from the University of Nevada-Las Vegas Center for Gaming Research indicates a house advantage of five percent is actually pretty high, not very low.

Proponents also have said sports wagering would bring more people to casinos although I have not heard any specific forecasts. Attendance at our casinos has been dropping since fiscal 2010-11 and it’s down another three percent so far this fiscal year. State admission fee income is at its lowest in more than two decades. It will take a whole lot of people drawn to casinos to bet on sports to offset those ongoing losses.

At a conference last year, industry analysts suggested that within five to ten years, 90 percent of sports wagering would be done remotely. Only ten percent would be done in person in casinos—and they did not suggest how much of that ten percent would be people already in the casino who visit the sports book.

Either way, having only ten percent of the sports bettors in the casinos won’t do much to improve on-site wagering.  

And it certainly won’t do much for the state’s income from admission fees.

Again, the bill seems to abundantly protect and enhance the interests of the casinos but do nothing or next to nothing for the state’s interests.

And I have not addressed how the two-dollar admission fee, established in 1993, is enriching the industry while producing a negative economic impact on state services the fee is supposed to support—and how within five years the casinos are likely to make more from admission fees than they pay to the state.

Point Two: This is not just a sports gambling bill.

It is the first major move to a 21st century gambling industry. But state law and regulations remain creations of the 20th century and their adequacy should be evaluated to protect the states’ interests.

This is the first proposal for remote gambling but more will come as casinos try to appeal to a new generation of people who don’t go to the casinos but will use the electronic devices they have grown up with to place bets. Casinos must attract that demographic to replace the older constituents who are dying off—and they’re not being replaced through the turnstiles by the television and internet generation.

The spread of remote wagering already is being planned by the industry that is developing new games that can be played remotely.  

These bills offer nothing to protect the state’s interests in these circumstances.  

In these two areas the legislation tilts the already-tilted table more in favor of casinos and farther away from the state’s interests in financing services with casino income.

As I understand these proposals—

Casinos want a new form of gambling that will produce big income gains but they don’t want sports wagering taxed the same way table games producing less revenue are taxed. The justifications for such lower tax rates in light of these numbers seems to make little sense, to me at least and I hope to you.

Whether this committee or the general assembly feels it appropriate to advance these proposals that have no protection for the state’s interest, or to put them aside until the economic scales can be brought more into balance is a decision for this committee. But I hope you will seriously consider these issues that have not been much, if any, part of the discussion until now.

I have prepared a lengthy memo that goes into greater detail—and includes citations for the statements I make—that I will send to the chairman later today after I have added a few tweaks based on this morning’s testimony. I know how busy legislators are at this stage of a session but I hope you will dig into that material for more details on what I’ve been saying and seriously consider whether these proposals are in the best interests of six million Missourians or just in the best interests of five corporations and thirteen businesses.

Will the committee take any of these words to heart in a campaign year when the interests pushing these bills have a lot of influence? Will the state’s interests be protected by those elected to serve in a building where the state motto is carved over the main entrance: “Let the Welfare of the People be the Supreme Law?”

Exonerated?

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We got a message from Eric Greitens last week proclaiming, “We’ve been exonerated.”

—as in not guilty of criminal charges.

As we discussed last week, “not guilty” does not mean “innocent.”   But the Greitens news release said the Missouri Ethics Commission found “no evidence of any wrongdoing” by Greitens.

Well, except for that little finding that his campaign has been fined $178,000 because a political action committee supposedly independent of Greitens’ gubernatorial campaign violated laws requiring independence. The commission says the failure to disclose that A New Missouri, the non-profit set up to support the Greitens agenda, paid for a poll that was given to the Greitens campaign—a violation of rules requiring the reporting of gifts.

Greitens told his faithful followers in his emails that the ruling “makes it clear…our justice system was abused. Lies were told and bribes were paid in a criminal effort to overturn the 2016 election.” He points out that “some of the people” who lied about him face criminal charges for lying under oath and evidence tampering.

Frankly, we‘ve heard just about enough of this “overturning an election” business. Getting elected is a gift, not a license. And one thing government does from time to time is take away the license of someone who misbehaves behind the wheel, in a profession, or even misuses the gift of public office.

Some of the people” actually is one person, William Tisaby, who was hired to investigate the Greitens sex scandal is scheduled for trial next month on six charges of perjury and one of tampering. Greitens resigned as governor in a plea deal with Tisaby’s boss, St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner, that she would drop criminal charges connected to the sexual affair if he quit.

Greitens’ email message to the faithful quickly becomes a pity plea. He cites “constant harassment and vitriol, the lies—repeated and magnified over and over again—the vicious attack on family and personal finances.” The months since he left office, he says, have been “the hardest of my life” with “plenty of dark days.” But he’s been uplifted by “how compassionate, strong, and loving most regular people are.”

Greitens is not the first political figure to experience “dark days” because he or she fumbled the big chance to be significant.

But he’s right, you know. History shows that even disgraced politicians remain human beings. To go farther, if you get a politician out of his or her theatre of operations, they’re just regular folks (most of them, in our experience). And if we are honest with ourselves, we’ll admit that the face we wear while practicing our profession often is not the face that our friends outside the profession recognize. The ruthless politician, the toughest lawyer, the matter-of-fact doctor, the hard-bargaining car dealer, the flinty-eyed reporter are different people when they’re barbecuing hamburgers with friends or coaching their child’s sports team.

Greitens’ email shows the kind of magnanimity that people in his position eventually realize regardless of how much they maintain they have been persecuted. Dwelling on the hurt and resentment gets one nowhere. “Hang on, keep faith, and have courage—life comes back around and it offers a lot of joy, and purpose, and love.”

Sounds like the roots for another book. “A friend” told the Washington Examiner, a conservative monthly political publication, that Greitens is writing one. The same person said Greitens is preparing to launch a new service organization. The Mission Continues, the veterans services organization Greitens founded in 2007, became embroiled in the Greitens investigation when it was revealed he had used the organization’s mailing list to solicit campaign donations. The Missouri Ethics Commission fined the Greitens campaign $1,000 for that little episode (The campaign paid $100 of the fine and promised not to sin like that again with that organization). The Mission Continues continues, by the way.

However, his comment that, “The deepest possible tragedy in all of this would come if we let them change who we are” indicates an inability to grow beyond what he was. And what he was was a not-very-good-governor. He was arrogant. He was secretive. He tried to control the message although that didn’t go well in the end. He believed he could force some members of his own party to support ideas that weren’t going to fly by divulging their personal phone numbers on the internet. He was derogatory toward the legislature and saw no need to patch things up after he was in office for his critical but publicly-popular comments during the campaign.

And we shouldn’t forget that he quit when a legislative investigation headed toward likely impeachment had cornered him on possible serious campaign finance violations. The special investigative committee basically gave him a choice of revealing intertwined big-money links between various committees providing financial fuel for his political ambitions, or leaving town. So he announced his resignation, took no questions, and got out of Dodge.

It’s not altogether helpful for Greitens to suggest he’s not going to change his spots.

There have been rumors that Greitens would emerge and run for the governorship this year as an Independent; the Republican Party could hardly be expected to welcome him back. But the “friend” who spoke to the Examiner said he does not expect to seek political office this year although his options remain open for the future.

Greitens’ email says he’s not thinking of revenge, which is “about the past,” he said. “Justice is about the future…the future is bright.”

There is light at the end of the tunnel for Eric Greitens. “The future is bright.”

Unless, of course, that’s the headlight of a locomotive.

That House investigation shut down after the resignation before all the questions were asked or answered. He would prefer those efforts not be resumed in his future public life.

Eric Greitens will have a political shadow over him for a long time. He still has a core group of believers of seeming Trumpian loyalty that he was speaking to with his emailed statement. But it will take more than commercials showing him blowing up stuff and claiming he was wrongly persecuted to convince the general public it can trust him again.

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Dr. Crane of truth and lying

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(The cynical observation that “you can tell when a politician is lying; his lips move” is easy to make in these times but it also is unfair to the large majority of people we elect to serve us. We like to think good people are elected to work in a badly-flawed system where they find their principles challenged daily. Make no mistake: there are liars abroad which is why we have extensive fact-checking after each presidential debate or presidential rally, news availability, or statement. It is comforting to think, no matter how realistic such thoughts are, that the more honest person will emerge victorious. The real world doesn’t always work that way but we cannot abandon hope. Here’s Dr. Crane on

THE TRUTH IN ADVERTISING

Listen, young man! The cleverest man in the world is the man that tells the truth, and tells it all the time, not occasionally.

Sometimes you can profit by a lie, but it is like dodging bullets; you never know when you are going to get hurt.

Lying is a game. Sometimes it is a very exciting game. But it is essentially gambling. And gambling, any sort of gambling, is not business.

The fundamental laws of business are just as accurate and as well established as the principles of geometry.

It is hard to see this, for our visual range is limited. Most us can see the crooked dollar coming today, but not the ten straight dollars it is going to lose us tomorrow.

Real business success is cumulative. It grows like a snowball. And the one thing that makes it keeps us growing, even while we sleep, is our persistent truthfulness and dependableness.

If you put an advertisement in the paper announcing goods worth five dollars for sale at two dollars, and if the people come and buy, and find out the stuff is not worth ten cents, you may make a one day’s gain, but you have alienated a lot of indignant customers and have started to saw away the posts that sustain your reputation.

If you have a store rented for a week only and propose to conduct a sacrifice sale of goods that will make everybody disgusted who buys then, then perhaps you may lie with a high hand and stretched-out arm.

But if you are in the town to stay, and want regular, returning, increasing, satisfied and friendly customers, it will pay you to stick to the old-fashioned truth.

Exaggeration is lying. It does not take long for the people in the community to get the habit of discounting twenty-five percent of all you say.

If you continually overstate and vociferate you must keep on getting louder, until you soon become incoherent.

But if you habitually state only what is soberly, honestly true, by and by everything you say will be away above par.

A man’s repute for truthfulness is as much a part of his capital as are his store and stock; so much so that he can raise money on it.

As civilization progresses, business becomes more and more an affair of credit, of trust. The very foundation of big business is trustworthiness. Therefore if you are ever going to get beyond the peanut-stand and push-cart stage of merchandise you must establish a basis of dependableness.

There is not one thing in this world, young man, that can be of as much value to you as building up a reputation such that men will say, “your word is as good as your bond.”

It is well to be clever and keen and Johnny-on-the-spot, it is well to look out for number one and to know a good bargain, but best of all is to have the world say of you:

“Whatever that man says can absolutely be relied upon.”

Let America Be America Again

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For many people, America has never been as great as some have nobly proclaimed it to be or proclaim to have made it. Again.

It’s good. But great? Yes, for some. For others, no. Can it be great if it is not great for all? We explore that issue today through the words of a great Missouri writer.

Langston Hughes is considered one of the nation’s greatest African-American authors, a Joplin native whose poetry and prose spoke powerfully of the African-American experience from the time his great grandmothers were slaves to the days when segregation was still a powerful and widely-accepted social institution. He died in 1967, still writing about what this country was but aware of what it could be or should be.

In 1935, he wrote a poem that portrayed the two Americas—the one he dreamed would come with a counterpoint describing the America he knew.

In our turbulent times today, it’s a good idea to think about Langston Hughes, who hoped for a better country while the real world around him seemed far from it. His voice from 85 years ago is a voice for many in these times and a challenge for others who are comfortable with their station.

Let America Be America Again

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There’s never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”)

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek—
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one’s own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean—
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today—O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I’m the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That’s made America the land it has become.
O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home—
For I’m the one who left dark Ireland’s shore,
And Poland’s plain, and England’s grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa’s strand I came
To build a “homeland of the free.”

The free?

Who said the free?  Not me?
Surely not me?  The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we’ve dreamed
And all the songs we’ve sung
And all the hopes we’ve held
And all the flags we’ve hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay—
Except the dream that’s almost dead today.

O, let America be America again—
The land that never has been yet—
And yet must be—the land where every man is free.
The land that’s mine—the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME—
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose—
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath—
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain—
All, all the stretch of these great green states—
And make America again!

Langston Hughes reminds us from generation to generation we have much work to do before we should proclaim ourselves great. Proclamation is cheap. Achievement of greatness is hard and the quest for it should be never-ending if we really want to create, “the land that never has been yet—and yet must be.”

It not a matter of “again.”  It’s a matter of “yet.”

Whose Money Is It?

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—OR, how a $2 fee is having a multi-million dollar negative economic impact in Missouri.

This entry will be lengthy because we have to use a lot of numbers to make our point.

A number of bills changing Missouri’s gambling laws have been filed for this year’s legislature. But we wonder if any of them should be considered until a significant problem with one of our existing laws is corrected because it has turned into a growing economic drain on our state.

Regular consumers of these pages know that the author has been advocating a fee increase for the casino industry to pay for the creation of a National Steamboat Museum.

As we’ve researched that issue we have come across a lot of interesting other issues and concerns. We passed some of them along to the House Interim Committee on Gaming that met this fall. In some cases we think we have some answers but here’s one where we don’t. Maybe some of our lawmakers will try to provide some. Or maybe somebody will ask the court system to do look into things. Our voice, however, is puny compared to the politically influential voices of a large, wealthy, and politically persuasive industry.

First, the scenario.

In 1993, the legislature required the casinos to pay the state two dollars for each admission on their proposed riverboats. Our first two casinos opened for business in the spring of ’94 and they paid the two dollars, no problem.

Our casinos have paid the two dollars in each fiscal year since. They are obeying the law.

But there’s this thing called inflation.

In the second fiscal year of casino gambling in Missouri, the inflated value of two dollars was $2.05 and the purchasing power of two dollars dropped to $1.95. In the fiscal year after that the equivalent value of two 1993 dollars was $2.11; purchasing power was down to $1.90. (Our numbers come from the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.)

We get into some higher mathematics now. Our casinos paid the state in fiscal 1994-95 a total of $25,216,862, a very healthy increase in state general revenue. But if they had paid the state the inflated value of the two dollars, they would have paid the state an additional $702,172.

Whose money was the $702,172? The 1993 law does not say anything about casinos being able to keep what we refer to as “windfall profits.”   In fairness, the law does not prohibit casinos from keeping that money, either.

We were around then, covering the legislature, and don’t recall any concerns that the day would come when two dollars wouldn’t be worth two dollars. Trying to determine legislative intent at this great distance could be difficult although there are a lot of people still around who were serving in 1993 and voted on that bill who might recall what it was.

Fast forward to fiscal year 2018-19 that ended last June 30. Our thirteen casinos paid the state $75,000,634. But the inflationary value of the 1993 two dollars had risen to $3.48 (and it’s $3.53 for this fiscal year). Had the casinos paid the state in contemporary equivalent dollars, they would have paid the state about $55.6 million more than they did. Instead, they kept the money. The total windfall profits after twenty-six years of unadjusted two-dollar payments had reached $888.5 million as of June 30.

Whose money is it?   And whose money SHOULD it be?

Neither side seems to be protected by that 1993 law.

Compounding this question is the continued decline in purchasing power of the two dollars our casinos pay the state. It was down to $1.15 in the most recent fiscal year. The total loss of purchasing power since our casinos opened had reached $944.2 million.

The combined total of dollars the casino industry has kept because of windfall profits and the loss of purchasing power of the two dollars the industry did pay represented an economic deficit to the state during those twenty-six years since the two-dollar fee was established of almost $1.833 Billion as of June 30.

Now the question becomes even more acute: Once again, Whose. Money. Is. It?

There are some other questions, too. Why wasn’t anybody paying attention, either at the gaming commission or in the legislature? The casino industry probably was because it was reaping the benefits but should the industry have stepped forward and said, “Hey, legislature, this two-dollar fee thing is making us a lot richer while the programs intended to be funded by the two dollars are getting poorer and poorer?”

It was under no legal obligation to do so.

Now, with the accumulated negative economic impact after more than a quarter-century of casino gambling nearing Two Billion Dollars, shouldn’t somebody start trying to determine whose money this really is?   Should these windfall funds have been set aside in some kind of an escrow account until somebody decided who is entitled to them? Nothing in the law requires that.

A complicating factor is that the customers of casinos do not pay the fee. It comes out of casino revenues, the money casinos win from the customers. When the law was passed in 1993, it was still assumed there would be boats on the rivers making two hour cruises for which customers paid two dollars. They would get off the boat at the end of two hours and a new group would get aboard (and those wishing for another two hours on the boat would get back on board), each paying two dollars. But when the present system of boats in moats ended any thoughts of customers paying to enter the casino, the decision was made for casinos to pay the state two dollars per person with a new count being made every two hours. That’s how casinos wound up with 37.5 million admissions last year in a state of only six million people, most of whom don’t go to casinos. No customer pays anything.

That means the two dollars is not a pass-through from customers to the state, in effect a user fee. It is now a fee charged to the casinos and it is paid out of their money. (Their adjusted gross receipts in the last fiscal year were more than $1.735 Billion.)

If it is the casino industry’s money, is it the industry’s responsibility to make sure the two dollars going to the state are worth two dollars to the programs and entities that the fee was intended to pay for? If the two dollars are worth only $1.15 to the receiving entity, are they really the “two dollars” promised them by the statute?

The law says two dollars. Period. No inflationary adjustments are mentioned. And the casinos have done what most of us would have done (and what we might have done in certain circumstances)—if there’s money left on the table and nobody else claims it and if it’s MY table, it’s my money.

It is time to answer the questions. Here are the main reasons why.

The two dollar admission fee is split with one of the dollars going to the host city of the casino and the other dollar going to the state gaming commission which takes its budget out of those funds and then divides the remainder among a handful of worthy causes. The biggest worthy cause is the Missouri Veterans Commission Capital Improvements Trust Fund that provides money for nursing homes and cemeteries for our veterans.

Last fiscal year, each of those dollars had the purchasing power of 57.5 cents. The value is down another penny this year. Five years ago, the figure was 61 cents. At this rate, it won’t be long before the casinos are making more money from the two-dollar admission fee that was intended to offset the additional costs to host cities of a casino’s presence and to fund the gaming commission and its worthy causes benefiting veterans, college students, and programs for people who get in trouble because they gamble.

Nothing in the law says they can’t.

Nothing in the law says they can.

Whose. Money. Is. it? And—

Whose. Money. SHOULD. It. Be?

Who can answer the question? The state auditor? The attorney general? The legislature?

No matter what happens with our steamboat museum idea, isn’t it time to find an answer for our veterans, our college students getting scholarships under a program funded by admission fees, problem gamblers looking for help from a program financed by these fees, and our casino host cities?

Here are some additional figures that seem to bold-face the need to address this situation. It has been a long time since our high school bookkeeping class so we hope there is not a flaw in this reasoning. But here it is.

The state received $75,000,634 in admission fees in the last fiscal year. But because of the lack of inflationary adjustment in the two-dollar fee, it did NOT receive $55,600,438 more. That was the windfall profits that the casinos kept. The inflation-caused loss of buying power meant the $75 million the state did get was worth only $42,375,358, a loss of $32,625,276. Here is what it all adds up to:

If we add the amount of money that the casinos kept to the amount of lost purchasing power in the money the state got, the total is $88,225,744.

That means the state of Missouri and the home dock communities in the last fiscal year saw an economic DEFICIT of $13,225,110. Our analysis shows the unadjusted admission fees have produced annual economic losses to the state for the past five years totaling almost forty-eight million dollars.

That economic deficit is on track to almost DOUBLE in the current fiscal year.

In the first six months of this fiscal year (July-December) the economic loss was $$12,201,732—almost as much as all of last fiscal year. Why? Although admissions are down four percent from last year, the value of the two-dollars in contemporary money is more and the purchasing power of the money the state has received is less. The windfall profit so far this year is $28,285,835. The purchasing power loss for those six months is $20,890,844, a combined total of $49,176,680. The two-dollar fee has produced a payment of only $36,974,948.

At least, that’s how it appears from our calculator. And that’s why it is time for the General Assembly to take corrective action, despite this being a campaign year in which the well-financed casino industry can exert great pressure to keep millions flowing into its accounts while the programs the admission fee was created to pay for are victims of a rapidly rising negative economic impact. As long as that $2 fee is not adjusted, the casinos get richer and the programs and entities the fee was intended to finance get poorer.

The casinos want the legislature to let them take bets on sporting events, a new type of wagering that some expert testimony in last autumn’s committee hearings say could increase their revenues by hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Why should it be unrealistic to think the admission fee problem should be solved before these thirteen businesses are allowed to haul in even more dollars through sports wagering?

The casino industry probably would prefer this boat not be rocked, this sleeping dog not be awakened, this pot not be stirred. Its reasons are understandable. But for the others, isn’t it time somebody rocked the boat, awakened the dog, and got busy stirring?

The beast

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Sometimes as we go through old newspapers, magazines, journals, etc., we come across things that remind us of what we were as a society. They’re painful to read in today’s world but they’re reminders of something that remains not far beneath the thin social crust on which we live, as recent events show. It was difficult to read the accounts we relate today, but we pass them along as a reminder of what we can become if we listen to the wrong people, believe the wrong words, and fail to recognize that all of us have a responsibility to each of us.

The Republican takeover of the governorship and the legislature in the 1908 elections immediately increased racial tensions of the time at the capitol. The Clinton Henry County Weekly Democrat commented, “The first fruit of Republican victory…was the distribution of patronage; and in this the black bullies from Kansas City and St. Louis were not overmodest in their demands.” Ten African-Americans were hired for jobs with the House doorkeeper and the House Chief Clerk. “Naturally their first thought was to swell up and strut around, shedding the perfume of their presence among white members,” said the newspaper.

The “negro question,” as it was called, turned ugly in the Missouri House when a white woman Senate stenographer told State Auditor John Gordon she had been approached by a black employee of the House bill clerk’s office as she walked home one night. She reported she had refused to respond when he tried to engage her in conversation, although he told her, “The women clerks in my department like me.” She was badly frightened.

Although the Senate had no black employees, some senators joined some House members in questioning bill room clerk Virgil Franklin. The inquisitors were angered by what they considered his “impertinence,” and were stopped by cooler heads from throwing Franklin over the capitol’s second floor railing to the tile floor a story below. Franklin was suspended from his job and quickly put on a train to safety in St. Louis.

The incident prompted an angry resolution in the House from Representative Jesse Duncan of Lincoln County complaining that “numerous negro employees of this House…have, by their constant use of toilet rooms and towels provided for the members of the General Assembly and white employes [sic] become such a nuisance” and recommending the firing of almost all black employees of the House. The resolution also demanded separate toilets and towels be provided for black employees remaining.

But Duncan would go only so far. When Representative William H. Wade of Greene County asked him if he would accept an amendment calling for firing all negro cooks and waiters at boarding houses, restaurants, and hotels where legislators boarded, Duncan responded, “Certainly not. That is a different thing.” Wade retorted, “I would as soon have a negro pass me a bill as handle my food.”

A second resolution, from Iron County Representative C. H. Polk went further, proclaiming, “This is a white man’s State, and the white man has ruled its official conduct in the past and will continue to do so as long as time lasts.” He complained, “The big negro bucks continue to loiter and lounge around the corridors and the ingress and egress of the Assembly hall,” forcing lawmakers and others entering the chamber “to push and edge their way through this motley crowd of unclean, common, stinking negroes or return to their homes or lodging places in the city.”

He also complained, “The toilet rooms, eating counters, benches and seats, drinking cups, wash basins and towels furnished at the expense of the State for the convenience and comfort of the members of the Assembly and their white employes [sic], and…This horde of colored men use indiscriminately and with impudence all the above named necessaries and comforts of life without authority or consent given them by this assembly.” He wanted to protect “the white girl…where she is compelled to come in contact with him in any way whatsoever, her very nature revolting against his presence and rebelling against his every touch or attention.”

His resolution continued in the same vein for another couple of paragraphs but we have run out of capacity to share more of it. In the end, Polk advocated firing all “colored” employees of the House except for those doing menial labor for the doorkeeper and told “to leave the hall at once.”

The resolutions were sent to a committee that recommended a compromise replacing two black employees in the House mail room with white men “who would not mind” working with the two remaining black clerks. The compromise was suggested when all Democrats in the House refused to go to the bill room as long as all of the clerks were black. The committee also recommended separate bathrooms for black employees and visitors, a move called by one correspondent, “the first Jim Crow order…in Missouri,” further observing, “For years such democrats as James M. Seibert, Sam B. Cook and the democratic governors down to the present time had used the same wash rooms as the janitors. But the first change was made by the Republicans in the report of the clerical force committee…” (Seibert had been the State Treasurer, 1885-1889, and Sam B. Cook had been Secretary of State 1901-1905.)

The Keytesville Chariton Courier commented after the legislature had acted, “The only way that it is possible for the white race to get along with the negro is to make him know his place and then see that he stays in it.” Keytesville, in Chariton County, had been the home town of former governor and later Confederate General and former governor Sterling Price.

Before the end of the month, however, the first African-American lobbyist appeared in the legislative halls, Kansas City minister T.C. Unthank, who became the fortieth lobbyist to register for the session. The legislature had voted in 1905 to spend thirty-thousand dollars for a separate building for “incorrigible negro girls” at the Chillicothe Industrial School. But when the building was completed, so many white girls wanted to be in it that the building was made whites-only, leaving black girls to go to jails, work houses, or even worse to the state penitentiary. The sentencing in 1908 of a twelve-year old black girl to the state penitentiary added impetus to Unthank’s lobbying. He asked for a separate industrial school for girls—somewhere other than Chillicothe. His work paid off but the school did not open until 1916, largely because of trouble finding a community that would allow such a school. The Missouri Industrial home for Negro Girls opened in Tipton in 1916.

Eleven years after these events, Walthall M. Moore of St. Louis was elected the first African-American member of the Missouri House of Representatives. Forty more years passed before Theodore McNeal of St. Louis became the first black state senator.

Even after McNeal took his seat in the senate, no black member of the Missouri legislature could stay at a Jefferson City hotel. They either stayed in private homes or in dormitory rooms at Lincoln University. Not until fair housing laws came in the mid-1960s did that situation change.

Three years after Walthall Moore took his seat in the House, the Ku Klux Klan tried to hold its state convention in the House chamber. But it moved elsewhere when the governor ordered the chamber doors to be unlocked so anyone could enter.

Next year will mark 100 years since the election of the first African-American to the state legislature. Missouri has yet to elect a member of a minority race to a statewide office.

We debated with ourself whether to create this entry. But we recalled a few years ago when we were talking about newswriting to an Indiana college class and we let them listen to Edward R. Murrow’s powerful report from the German concentration camp at Buchenwald. We watched the impact it had on those young people, some of whom were near tears. Later, some of those students told me they had never been told about that part of history.

We do ourselves no favors by forgetting about or hiding from the painful words and deeds of the past in these times of anti-Semitic attacks on the streets of New York; of culturally-motivated mass murders in theatres, malls, churches and synagogues; of concerns about white nationalism shaping public policy; of toleration of cruel words and characterizations. The beast lurks beneath the thin social crust of our daily existence and we fail to recognize its nearness to each of us at our own peril.

Dive in!

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A heartbeat has returned to the Missouri Capitol. The legislature is back. It’s an election year. It’s a census year.

It’s leap year, meaning lawmakers have an extra day to accomplish something.

Because it’s an election year, members will want to burnish their records to improve their re-election chances. Sometimes election years leave incumbents vulnerable to interests that can threaten to cut off campaign donations or divert donations to challengers if the lawmaker doesn’t toe the line. That’s not a comfortable position for a legislator to be in but we’ve always thought some folks too easily let themselves be pushed around when their incumbency can be their greatest strength in the face of campaign intimidation.

By mid-May the idealistic rookies who were elected just two years ago will have had a taste of the real world. Some might have thought they could change things two years ago. Doesn’t look like they have. Yet. But maybe something is still burning within them that will produce positive change as they learn more about how to make the system work for them.

It’s always good to remember something the long-time Speaker of the California House, Jesse Unruh, said a long time ago, “Money is the mother’s milk of politics.” And there will be some who will chug it.

But others might remember Unruh’s comments about those who try to pressure (or bully) our legislators: “If you can’t take their money, drink their booze, eat their food, screw their women and vote against them, you don’t belong here.”

(We’re using the clean version because there might be ladies reading this entry)

Monday’s entry with Dr. Frank Crane suggested some things each lawmaker might say to himself or herself each day before going to the Capitol. In addition to those noble thoughts, it might be good for our lawmakers to recite the Unruh Gospel of Political Reality.

Swimming season resumes in the Missouri Capitol Shark Tank at noon today.