Category Archives: legislature

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.

Dr. Crane: Today I will…

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Dr. Frank Crane, former Presbyterian minister turned widely-printed newspaper columnist in the 19-teens and twenties, wrote this piece in 1921.

Later this week our state lawmakers return to the capitol for almost five months of high-pressure work writing laws for themselves and more than six-million Missourians—and those who visit our state. We, as the lawmakers, learned early in our Capitol reporting career that legislative sessions quickly become all-consuming events that impose psychological blinders that narrow the view of life as the calendar days are crossed off. This column from almost a century ago by former Presbyterian minister-turned newspaper columnist Dr. Frank Crane extolls the value of spending a few minutes before leaving for the Capitol each morning to set some one-day personal goals. Maybe each of our lawmakers and others who will shape the laws and policies of our future should keep this column close by and read it out loud each day before going to do the public’s work.

JUST FOR TODAY

Here are ten resolutions to make when you awake in the morning.

They are Just for One Day. Think of them not as a life task but as a day’s work.

These things will give you pleasure. Yet they require will power. You don’t need resolutions to do what is easy.

  1. Just for Today, I will try to live through this day only, and not tackle my whole life-problem at once. I can do some things for twelve hours that would appall me if I felt I had to keep them up for a lifetime.
  2. Just for Today, I will be Happy. This assumes that what Abraham Lincoln said is true, that “most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.” Happiness is from Within; it is not a matter of Externals.
  3. Just for Today, I will adjust myself to what is, and not try to adjust everything to my own desires. I will take my family, my business, and my luck as they come, and fit myself to them.
  4. Just for Today, I will take care of my Body. I will exercise it, care for it, and nourish it, and not abuse it nor neglect it; so that it will be a perfect machine for my will.
  5. Just for Today, I will try to strengthen my mind, I will study. I will learn something useful, I will not be a mental loafer all day. I will read something that requires effort, thought and concentration.
  6. Just for Today, I will exercise my Soul. In three ways, to wit:

(a) I will do somebody a good turn and not get found out. If anybody knows of it, it will not count.

(b) I will do at least two things I don’t want to do, as William James suggests just for exercise.

(c) I will not show any one that my feelings are hurt. They may be hurt, but Today I will not show it.

  1. Just for To-day, I will be agreeable. I will look as well as I can, dress as becomingly as possible,  talk low,  act courteously, be liberal with flattery, criticize not one bit  nor find fault with anything, and not try to regulate nor improve anybody.
  2. Just for Today, I will have a Programme. I will write down just what I expect to do every hour. I may not follow it exactly, but I’ll have it. It will save me from the two pests Hurry and Indecision.
  3. Just for Today, I will have a quiet half hour, all by myself, and relax. During this half hour, some time, I will think of God, so as to get a little more perspective to my life.
  4. Just for Today, I will be unafraid. Especially I will not be afraid to be happy, to enjoy what is beautiful, to love and to believe that those I love love me.

Who is insulted more? The animal or the person?

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For some, it’s an honor. To others, it’s an insult when an animal is named for them.

For Prince Charles, the word that a tree frog had been named for him (Hyloscirtus princecharlesi) was an honor (or as he might say “honour.”). He has worked to protect tropical rainforest habitat.

As far as we know, President Trump has not found it tweet-worthy since his name was attached to a creature by a British company interested in environmental issues. The company paid $25,000 in an auction for the rights to name a legless, blind, tiny burrowing amphibian from Panama “Dermohis donaldtrump.”

If you think we are going to offer some clever comment about that, think again.

But apart from scientific names involving famous people, we don’t often hear of regular animals being named for people in the news or historical characters very much. At one time it was a pretty proper thing to do. In fact, Lucy Wales, who ran Columbia’s first school for women, used to take her students to the county fair and have them discuss the famous people whose names were carried by the livestock on display.

A fellow named Ed. H. Smith, the former publisher of a newspaper in the small Livingston County town of Chula, once suggested that Missouri needed a law restricting the right of Missourians to name animals for prominent people. He wrote to the Chillicothe Tribune in 1909:

 I don’t know how to frame a bill, but I am going to try to tell you in my weak way what I want and give you a few reasons why a law of this kind ought to be passed. Now, you will notice at this time of the year the papers in small towns and even in cities like Chillicothe are full of advertisements of breeding stock. Fine horses—Belgians and Percherons—and big mealy-nosed jacks, Herefords, etc. These are all noble animal, and I know full well what these splendid new breeds are doing for old Missouri. That’s all right. What I object to is the names they give these animals. It don’t look quite right to name a jack after a senator without his consent. At any rate it don’t hurt the jack or the senator, but there is something unpretty about it.

 Suppose now, I was sent to the legislature and Jim Raney would name his bull calf Ed H. Smith and print a lot of bills with a picture of the calf and say (our) names under it. How would I like it? I tell you, Mr. Editor, about half the fine breeding animals in the country are named after celebrated people. There was a rooster at our poultry show named Herbert S. Hadley. A man up by Chula has a pig named Carrie Nation. I tell you where the greatest objection to this rural nomenclature comes in. And when I am done you will be of my opinion about this matter.

 Comes now a man to your print shop and wants a horse bill printed on manila cardboard. This bill contains a description of the splendid horse and his pedigree, which reads as follows: Jos. Cannon was sired by Grover Cleveland, dam Ida Tarbell, she by Hod Scruby, dam Mrs. Langtry.

Now, you print them bills with good job ink and this man tacks one on a telephone pole in front of Swetland’s drug store. Suppose now, the next day there is an eruption of Shalehill at Utica, and Chillicothe is buried five hundred feet deep with ashes and limestone and shale and lava, and sandstone and hell fire and brimstone. Two thousand years from now comes a band of geologists from some big university and they did down to find old Chillicothe. They strike the top of a telephone pole and follow it down. They find this bill tacked to it and quit work at once. You get. They have made a find. They have founds something that upsets all ancient history they have ever learned. All over the land the school children have been taught that the Scrubys were a fine old English family in no way related to Grover Cleveland and Ida Tarbell’s name in all histories is written Miss. School marms all over the country will say, “my goodness gracious,” or words to that effect. Millions of schoolbooks will have to be destroyed and new ones printed. family histories and biographies will be knocked galled west. You know it. So there you are. You see what I want. I can’t frame the bill but don’t you think Fred Hudson and Hod Scruby ought to take it up. They are more interested than I am.

I don’t think anyone will ever name a clay pigeon after me. It is altogether an unselfish motive which prompts me in this matter, and a bill like this preventing any one from naming their breeding animals after our great men, ought to pass with a whoop. I rest my case.

Joseph Cannon was an Illinois congressman who was the Speaker from 1903 until 1911, the longest-serving speaker until another Illinois congressman, Dennis Hastert, eclipsed him. Grover Cleveland is the only President to serve two non-consecutive terms. Ida Tarbell was one of the biggest names among muckraking journalists of that era. “Hod” Scruby was Horace P. Scruby, the state representative from Livingston County at the time. Mrs. Langtry was the famous actress Lilly Langtry. Fred Hudson was the state senator representing the county.

The issue Ed Smith raised so long ago isn’t something we confront much today. But animals often show up in our editorial cartoons, sometimes bearing names of our leaders, sometimes representing broader themes.

Wonder when President Trump will comment on the Panamanian amphibian.

 

Courage

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I find myself using the word “courage,” or at least thinking of the word, too often in observations about our political world at state and national levels. It takes courage on both sides to break from partisan ideology, to challenge entrenched and powerful private influences, and to take stands that benefit the benign many more than the influential few. We wonder if lack of courage by those entrusted with leadership translates into lack of trust by those who think courage to truly provide for the common good is needed.

A poem by Yevgeny Yevtushenko comes to mind often these days. Yevtushenko was a Russian (and Soviet) writer, poet, novelist, and film producer whose works questioning and challenging Soviet authority led to his expulsion from the Gorky Institute for Literature, and a ban on travel. (Both of his grandfathers had been declared by Stalin to be “enemies of the people” twenty years earlier.)

In 1961, he wrote a poem he called “Conversation with an American Writer.”

“You have courage,” they tell me.

It is not true.

I was never courageous.

I simply felt it unbecoming

To stoop to the cowardice of my colleagues.

 

I simply mocked at pretense and inflation.

I wrote articles, scribbled no denunciations,

And tried to speak all on my mind.

 

Yes, I defended men of talent,

branding the hacks, the would-be writers.

But this, in general, we should always do,

And yet, they keep stressing my courage.

 

Oh, our descendants will burn with bitter shame

To remember when punishing vile acts,

That most peculiar time

When plain honesty

Was labeled “courage.”

 

We suspect many people today would appreciate that kind of courage, seeing instead only bowing to power in the interest of personal security.

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The District

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What if Jefferson City had become like Washington, D. C.? What if it wasn’t the county seat of Cole County? What if the state capitol was not even in any county?

What if everything within a four-mile radius of the Missouri Capitol, south of the river, was the District of Jefferson?

On February 26, 1923, Representative Casper M. Edwards of Malden offered a proposed constitutional amendment to create such a district. If the legislature approved it, the matter would go to a statewide vote in November, 1924. His proposed four-mile line would have taken in almost all of the city, at the time a town of more than fifteen-thousand people (and growing fast; the population would be almost fifty percent bigger in 1930)

All laws governing the district would be decided by the General Assembly which also would appoint all local authorities.

The proposed district would have devastated Cole County’s tax base, of course, and would have required relocation of the county seat. But where would it go? The population in the farmland outside of Jefferson City at the time would have been pretty small. Russellville had 364 people in 1920; St. Thomas, probably not more than 150; Lohman had 120 in1920; St. Martins, Taos, and Wardsville had a few hundred each. Osage City was unincorporated.

We could have had one heckuva fight for the county seat! Or maybe later laws would have merged the remainder of Cole County with surrounding counties.

We haven’t found any records of what Edwards was thinking about or what prompted him to suggest the District of Jefferson. While some contemporary accounts contemplated the district as being like the District of Columbia, it’s likely Edwards did not intend his proposed district to be part of no state. Even then, Missouri had districts of various kinds.

We’re not sure how much square mileage his plan would have totaled, but today, Jefferson City sprawls over almost 37.6 square miles (about 26 square miles fewer than Columbia but six more than Joplin, eight more than Cape Girardeau, eight fewer than St. Joseph) so the city would have grown far outside his circle. The Jefferson City Country Club is 5.4 miles from the Capitol, for instance. Binder Park is 3.2 miles farther west. (And it’s pronounced BIN-der, not BINE-der. It’s named for a German fellow who was a powerful civic leader in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.)

And what a mess would things be if the General Assembly was the agency that appointed local officials?

Citizens might have been offended by losing their rights to vote for members of the city council, the mayor and the municipal judge. Instead of a local police department, would there be a state police department and would it be in charge of penitentiary security and capitol safety as well as making sure the city streets were safe?

Would the appointment of local officials mean no election of school board members? Who, then, would hire teachers and on what basis. Would state taxpayers be financing the local high school football team?

Would the city have been more prosperous if state funds made up its budget? What would it be like if the legislature-appointed mayor had to go before the appropriations committees each year to ask for money for everything the city has or does now?

Good Heavens!

Fortunately for the City of Jefferson (that’s what its real name is), Edwards’ resolution was assigned to the House Committee on Constitutional Amendments and was not heard from again.

Who was this guy Edwards anyway?

He was a Representative from Dunklin County for three terms, born in Farmington in 1870, a lawyer and a newspaper publisher. Robert Sidney Douglas, in his 1912 History of Southeast Missouri, wrote that the Malden Clipper moved to Kennett in 1886 and became the Dunklin County News, a weekly paper. Several years later Casper Edwards formed Edwards Publishing Company, and took over the News. He was described as “a brilliant and forceful writer.” He finally sold the paper to the Malden Printing Company. The newspaper continued until 1931 when it became the Twice A Week Dunklin Democrat until 1956 when it became the Daily Dunklin Democrat, which continues to publish in Kennett.

Edwards died of a head injury suffered when his car overturned down an embankment near Malden in August of 1936. He appeared not seriously injured by died five hours later of a cerebral hemorrhage. One newspaper report said the hemorrhage was brought on by “excitement over the accident.

Another account said he had practice law in Malden since 1900, had been an Assistant Attorney General under John Barker (1913-1917), and had published newspapers in Malden, Caruthersville, and Van Buren.

As we have noticed, from time to time, discovering a long-forgotten incident while prowling through old newspapers can lead to being involuntarily drawn down a path to other stories. This is one of those. It eventually leads to a poem saluting a legislative colleague who had died, the story of a disappearing rabbit, the discovery of a huge hoard of bat guano, and the early days of Missouri tourism.

It’s a long and winding road from the story of the Casper Edwards and the District of Jefferson and we’ll have to tell it some other time.