Category Archives: legislature

Why Let Others Decide? 

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The latest effort to let other people decide what’s best for the rest of us is at large in the Missouri Capitol.

It is bill designed to take away some more of our voting rights. I say “some more” because of two obvious incidents from our past, within the last thirty years or so, in which we as voters gave away our right to vote.

First was term limits.  In 1992, voters statewide decided you and I could not vote to retain our state representative or our state senator, no matter how well they had represented us, beyond a certain number of years. We, as a people, forfeited our right to vote for a third term for a senator we trusted or our right to vote for a fifth term of a representative who had responsibly served us.

(Hypocritically, in the same election, voters elected many incumbents to terms beyond the limits they also approved).

Later, voters statewide decided to ban any city from imposing an earnings tax other than the cities of St. Louis and Kansas City—and voters there would have to approve continuation of those taxes every five years.  No other cities were seriously considering such a tax at the time, but that decision precluded any city from asking voters to think about one.  Again, othrers have decided you and I can never have a chance to vote on this issue in our towns.

Now a movement is afoot to make it harder to change our constitution. And this one is even more dangerous because it could declare a majority vote doesn’t count.

The Senate already has passed this bill that says the constitution would not be amended, even if the proposal carries by a majority statewide, unless it has a majority in more than half of the state’s congressional districts.  That means it must be approved by voters in five of our eight congressional districts we now have and will fail even if the statewide results show majority approval.

If you vote on the prevailing side, your vote is worthless if the issue gets a statewide majority but gets a a majority in only four of our congressional districts.

So much for one-person, one-vote. My vote and your vote might not carry the same weight as the vote of someone in a more reluctant congressional district.  Our votes will not be equal.  We might win the majority but the majority will not rule.

If it is such a good idea, why are elections for legislators run on the same principle?  Why shouldn’t someone have to carry a majority of the precincts in their district, not just get the most votes overall, to get elected?

The proposed constitutional change is a Republican idea and Republicans don’t want voters in the Democratic congressional districts in our metro areas and, probably, the more liberal district that includes Columbia, to post majorities that more than offset votes in conservative areas of Missouri.

Can anyone name any other election law that says voters in some places don’t count even if they are in the overall majority?

Doesn’t sound very “American.”

Fortunately, this idea will require a simple majority to defeat it when it does on the statewide ballot, assuming voters realize that they are once again being asked to give away a right to decide issues on the basis of all votes being equal.

Our constitution already has too many things in it that should be state laws subject to updating as needed as our society changes.  Many of those things have been put in the constitution because the legislature refused to enact them as statutes.  We might have a chance to make that same mistake with a sports wagering proposition because the legislature annually fails to pass a more responsible sports wagering law.

There are ways to make it harder to turn legislative failures into constitutional amendments that reduce the opportunities our elected representatives and senators have to enact public policy.  This proposal is not an appropriate way to do that.

The bill is Senate Joint Resolution 74. It will soon be on the House floor for debate.  We will serve ourselves well if we tell our Representatives that our vote should be equal to the votes of others on proposed constitutional changes.

Sauces for geese and ganders should be equal.  So should votes for legislators and for constitutional amendments.

BONUS:  SCOTUS SAYS TRUMP CAN STAY; MISSOURI PRECEDENT

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We interrupt today’s regular entry to bring you this perspective on the big news of the morning, so far:

The United States Supreme Court today unanimously ruled that Colorado cannot keep Donald Trump off its presidential primary ballot. All nine judges wrote separate opinions explaining why states cannot determine who will run in national elections based on Section three of the Fourteenth Amendment, which Colorado and some other states had cited to kick Trump off the ballot for taking part in an insurrection.

The Supreme Court says the authority to enforce that section that bars those involved in insurrections from holding office rests with Congress, not the states.

Would Congress do that?  Some of those disappointed in today’s ruling say a Congress that works the way a Congress is supposed to work would be far more likely to do it than today’s dysfunctional bunch.

Today’s ruling has a Missouri precedent, sort of.

In the early 1990s, when Missouri and 22 other states made the mistake of enacting term limits on members of their legislatures, an effort also was made to limit the amount of time members of Congress could serve. The Arkansas Supreme Court threw out the law in that state and U. S. Term Limits took the case to the Supremes, where justices voted 5-4 in 1995 that the requirements for service in the United States House and the United States Senate are established in the U. S. Constitution which trumps state laws or state constitutions.

The advice  

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It seems so pure.  But its truth, spoken 250 years ago, is an ideal too seldom sought and even less seldom in today’s politics, achieved.

The great British statesman Edmund Burke spoke to the electors of Bristol on November 3, 1774 of the responsibilities of those in elective positions who represent a people. In his remarks, he dismisses those who say only that they represent the will of the voters of their district. But he also is dismissive of those who become renegades within the system who focus only one their wishes and interests.

The language is more Shakesearean than contemporary political rhetoric, of course.  But the message is clear and one part of this speech is especially meaningful. C0onsider it advice to those who serve us:

I am sorry I cannot conclude without saying a word on a topic touched upon by my worthy colleague. I wish that topic had been passed by at a time when I have so little leisure to discuss it. But since he has thought proper to throw it out, I owe you a clear explanation of my poor sentiments on that subject.

He tells you that “the topic of instructions has occasioned much altercation and uneasiness in this city;” and he expresses himself (if I understand him rightly) in favour of the coercive authority of such instructions.

Certainly, gentlemen, it ought to be the happiness and glory of a representative to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with his constituents. Their wishes ought to have great weight with him; their opinion, high respect; their business, unremitted attention. It is his duty to sacrifice his repose, his pleasures, his satisfactions, to theirs; and above all, ever, and in all cases, to prefer their interest to his own. But his unbiassed opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of men living. These he does not derive from your pleasure; no, nor from the law and the constitution. They are a trust from Providence, for the abuse of which he is deeply answerable. Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.

My worthy colleague says, his will ought to be subservient to yours. If that be all, the thing is innocent. If government were a matter of will upon any side, yours, without question, ought to be superior. But government and legislation are matters of reason and judgment, and not of inclination; and what sort of reason is that, in which the determination precedes the discussion; in which one set of men deliberate, and another decide; and where those who form the conclusion are perhaps three hundred miles distant from those who hear the arguments?

To deliver an opinion, is the right of all men; that of constituents is a weighty and respectable opinion, which a representative ought always to rejoice to hear; and which he ought always most seriously to consider. But authoritative instructions; mandates issued, which the member is bound blindly and implicitly to obey, to vote, and to argue for, though contrary to the clearest conviction of his judgment and conscience,–these are things utterly unknown to the laws of this land, and which arise from a fundamental mistake of the whole order and tenor of our constitution.

Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests; which interests each must maintain, as an agent and advocate, against other agents and advocates; but parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole; where, not local purposes, not local prejudices, ought to guide, but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole. You choose a member indeed; but when you have chosen him, he is not member of Bristol, but he is a member of parliament. If the local constituent should have an interest, or should form an hasty opinion, evidently opposite to the real good of the rest of the community, the member for that place ought to be as far, as any other, from any endeavour to give it effect. I beg pardon for saying so much on this subject. I have been unwillingly drawn into it; but I shall ever use a respectful frankness of communication with you. Your faithful friend, your devoted servant, I shall be to the end of my life: a flatterer you do not wish for.

You choose a member indeed; but when you have chosen him, he is not member of Bristol, but he is a member of parliament. If the local constituent should have an interest, or should form an hasty opinion, evidently opposite to the real good of the rest of the community, the member for that place ought to be as far, as any other, from any endeavour to give it effect. I beg pardon for saying so much on this subject. I have been unwillingly drawn into it; but I shall ever use a respectful frankness of communication with you. Your faithful friend, your devoted servant, I shall be to the end of my life: a flatterer you do not wish for.

Substitute “legislature” or “congress” for “parliament,” and it seems from here that this advice is timeless and needs to be understood and heeded by those we send to represent us. But we also should acknowledge that we have a responsibilies, too, as Burke pointed out. There is no escaping our responsibility to send the best people to represent our best interests.

And if they fail us, it is our responsibility to replace them with those won’t.  That, of course, requires us to pay attention to what they do and requires them to report to us with “a respectful frankness.”  The times demand more of us than we have been giving. If we are to expect for from them we must expect more from ourselves.

(Photo credit: American Enterprise Institute)

Rape Theology

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The Missouri Senate went after the legislature’s favorite annual punching bag the other day—Planned Parenthood.  It argued about a bill that would keep the organization from collecting Medicaid reimbursements for dispensing family planning and other women’s health services including cancer screenings.

Planned Parenthood hasn’t provided abortions for a couple of years in Missouri.  But that’s not enough for the PP-haters who don’t want the folks working for the organization to even say the word. And suggesting someone who has thought through the issue and still wants an abortion to places in other states, well, that is calamitous.

One Senator wants to make it a crime for a woman to seek an abortion—although she’d have to leave the state to have it.  He also would have rapists castrated or shot.

Apparently the Senator is not familiar with Article 1, section 8, Clause 3 of the United States Constitution that gives Congress exclusive power over trade among the states. It also limits state powers to limit interstate commerce. And abortions ARE interstate commerce. But ignoring the U. S. Constitution has not been a problem in the legislature on the hot issue du jour for some time.

Another Senator says rapists should get the death penalty and suggested forcing the victim to carry the fetus to term created by the rapist who should be executed “may even be the greatest healing agent you need in which to recover from such an atrocity.”

Still another suggested that rape might be “mentally taxing…(but) it doesn’t justify an abortion.”

Missouri Independent reports she continued, “God does not make mistakes. And for some reason he allows that to happen. Bad things happen. I’m not gonna be able to support the amendment because I am very pro-life.”

I have often remarked that nothing screws up faith more than religion, or as one of my favorite cartoonists expressed it a few years ago:

To describe rape as “mentally taxing” is completely inappropriate.  So is the idea that executing the rapist would be a great healing agent. An African-American member of the senate attributed her existence to the rape of her great-grandmother, a slave, who by her white master.  The event was “mentally taxing” enough that the victim killed herself.

Several years ago, a similar argument against putting rape and incest exemptions into the abortion was pushed by a woman state representative who argued that it is God’s will that  something beautiful (the birth of a child) could result from something so bad as rape or incest.

I wrote in the old Missourinet Blog that, that kind of reasoning argues against rape being a crime. If God intended something beautiful, a baby, to result from something so ugly as a rape or incest, then God must have intended for the rape and incest to happen—especially since God is perfect.  And if that’s the case, rape should be considered an Act of God, not a crime.  After all, God does not make mistakes.

This is why we have, presumably, a separation of church and state.  Religious Dogma should not replace a law of humanity.  But it does and there are many who want to erase that separating line entirely. To do so would thus make one religion more free than others. And that would mess up the idea that this is a nation that practices religious freedom.

My theocracy is better than your theocracy. My God is better than your God. That’s what it all boils down to.

The major flaw in the “God does not make mistakes” argument is that God created people who make mistakes because God gave people free will.

So we live in an imperfect world and reconciling the imperfections in a way that makes living more humane is a never-ending argument. Killing others in the name of God has only produced never-ending wars.

Killing the rapist raises questions about the entire right to life philosophy. Would it be a “healing agent” to kill the rapist of a pregnant ten-year old girl who will likely not understand why she is left to bear what some consider God’s Gift? And if the product of a rape is a gift from God, how can killing the bearer of that gift be considered correct policy?

It is not our intention here to argue whether there should be abortions. But there are two innocent lives involved, not one.  And to try to make rape a theological issue is a political Gordian knot.

If we accept that God is perfect then we must accept that it was God’s will that we mortals are imperfect. And as imperfect creatures we make imperfect decisions. The challenge is in determining the fairness of the way we deal with those imperfections.

Maybe some issues are beyond the law and ongoing gyrations trying to make them fit within a law that carries equal rights and compassion for everyone the law touches is beyond human capabilities.  In those instances, the decision should rest with the individual, their doctor, and God.

Turn to faith, not religion, for the ultimate guidance.

Failures 

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It is hard to look at what remains of the Missouri Senate and not be ashamed of how far governance has fallen there.  The Senate, once proud of its role as a bipartisan deliberative body—it used to be said, “The House passes the bills; the Senate writes the laws.”—is in total disarray because a few members will go to no ends to get their ways although it is abundantly clear their only support is themselves. We remember when the Rs and the Ds could argue as if it was Gabriel versus Satan on the floor but with respect and civility.

Today there are 24 Rs and only 10 Ds.  Actually, there appears to be 19 Rs, 10Ds, and 5 soreheads who want to run the place and throw tantrums if they cannot get their way. The number of soreheads might be seven but five are the biggest problem so for today’s contemplations, let’s say fice, for consistency.They have adopted the name of a similar bunch of miscreants in the U. S. House of Representatives.

The Freedom Caucus.

At the start of the session, caucus chairman, Rick Brattin warned, ““Peace is no option…In terms of advancing policy, this will be a show-no-prisoner type approach.”

Such is the level of adulthood within this caucus.

There is nothing free about taking hostages and that is what happened recently in OUR State Senate.  25 hostages to start. There have been deserved consequences and it was about time. But they let these five to claim they are victims of a failed system.  They have it wrong.  It is they who are the failures.

It is time for some basic lessons in Government for People Who Don’t Care About Government But Better Learn Something Instead of Thinking Everybody is a Crook or a Liar, Etc.

They aren’t, as a large general rule. A few, however, are the products of these times, thinking disrespect for the system is respectable and minority bullying that stops orderly public service is acceptable.

One of the Senate’s roles is to confirm or reject governor’s appointments to state boards and commissions.  The Five Senate Soreheads and two others who voted with them stopped any business from being transacted for 11 hours on January 18th by keeping 25 Missourians from being confirmed to positions on various state boards and commissions, most of the positions being voluntary and unpaid personal public service commitments.

The 5SS wanted to invoke an almost-never used rule to start immediate debate on a plan to make it harder for citizens to file petitions to create or change laws without an opportunity for citizens  to be heard in committee hearings. They lost 25-7 and had a hissy fit about it. They decided to keep the Senate from considering the appointments until they got their way, not a prudent move by supposedly intelligent prople who several times in recent years had pulled the same kind of stunt.

The leader of the remaining 19 Rs and 10 Ds, President Pro Tem Caleb Rowden, called the behavior, “..unequivocally, without a doubt, the worst show of bad faith, or the biggest show of bad faith, I have ever seen in my life.” The floor leader who has the traditional role of setting the debate schedule, Cindy O’Laughlin, salled the caucus “terrorists.”

There is something to be said for filibusters as a tool to force negotiation and compromise, but the caucus is interested in neither, as Brattin has noted. The egregious disregard of senatorial courtesy and procedure is coupled with a disrespect of the process of government.  As Rowden observed last week, the caucus had held the floor for 16 hours and 45 minutes of the 17 hours and 52 minutes the Senate had been in session so far.

Minority Leader John Rizzo, whose Ds quietly have watched the Republicans’ ability to govern disintegrate into a worsenig  rolling internal mud fight, called the latest implosion “the civil war within the Republican Party that is showing its face and that has come from outside of the smoke-filled back rooms and is now front and center. This has been going on for years now. The only difference is that now the public is seeing it.”  He says the Senate reflects the national fight by Trumpian MAGA true believers trying to control the U. S. House of Representatives:

“They’re…sick and tired of having to take orders from someone else and they are pushing towards an authoritarian government, as we’ve been saying forever.”

Last Monday, Rowden showed had had more than enough.  He took away committee chairmanships from caucus members Brattin, Bill Eigel, Andrew Koenig, and Denny Hoskins. Senator Mike Moon did not have a chairmanship, having lost that distinction in 2022 for wearing bib overalls on the Senate floor, a violation of the dress code, and refusing to apologize.

This might seem to an outsider to be quibbling.  But within the political bubble, this can be a pretty stiff penalty.  Committee chairs have enormous power to determine whether important legislation ever gets debated and ever has a chance to become law.  They also have influence in getting things done for constituents or for favored interest groups. Loss of that power can take away important self-serving talking points during campaigns for higher office and become fodder for political opponents who want to raise issues related to public trust.

Moon is the only one of the five not seeking statewide office this year. It is hoped that voters select their more adult opponents of whatever party they choose.

The caucus, called “the chaos caucus” and “swamp creatures” by Rowden who probably should not have lowered himself to name-calling, has indicated it is not fazed. Hoskins called Rowden, “the worst President pro Tem in the history of the Missouri Senate,” the kind of exclamatory dialogue to which observers have become accustomed from this caucus.

Hoskins is a CPA much more than he is a Senate historian.  Perhaps someone should ask him to name who else is on his bottom five list of pro Tems.

Regrettably, O’Laughlin let her frustrations get the best of her in a news conference earlier Thursday when she said remarked, “Two years ago I said, ‘You know, with 23 votes you can throw somebody out of here. I would do it today. I absolutely would.” That would mean cutting a deal with Democrats to get enough votes and Republicans seemingly would ask to be injected with cholera first. But the statement illustrates how far beyond reason the leadership thinks the 5SS have gone.

The intemperate observation, which mentioned Eigel by name, led Eigel to go wildly ballistic with a screaming fit aimed at O’Laughlin, a continuation of behavior that raises questions about whether one who has shown a propensity to be ungoverned in his present office should be considered fit to govern others. Eigel thinks he would be an excellent governor.

It was, to be blunt, disgraceful, and a total display of disresprect for the tradition of courtesy that has made the Missouri Senate effective.  To the credit of O’Laughlin, Rowden and others on their side, they have resisted the shouting, rude interruptions, and arm waving of the 5SS.  If someone is to make a spectacle of themselves, it is unlikely to be them.

There still has been no confirmation votes. The number of appointments awaiting confirmation has risen to 42. Governor Parson, also an R, said last week, “They’re not doing anything wrong, nobody has anything against them, yet they’re in the crossfire of what’s going on here politically, internally, and that’s not right. It’s simply not right.”

Innocent people who are willing to serve on tne boards and commissions that oversee programs and services from which all of us benefit are in danger of losing the opportunity to serve and the caucus does not care.

The behavior of caucus members past and present goes beyond disrespect for the other 29 members of the Senate.  It also has affected all 163 members of the House who work hard for four months to get bills into position for final passage only to see all of that work go up in smoke in the Senate because nothing is more important than what the caucus cannot convince a majority of their own party to buy.

To put it directly, the 5SS have lowered work by a revered part of our state government to a depth beyond the worst nightmares of all of those who have served in it for more than two centuries and it is incomprehensible that their demagoguery should be tolerated much less supported by some county party committees. But some do.

Should any of them be expelled?  No. People in seven Senate districts deserve representation even if is from senators more interested in their political futures than in respecting the functions of government. They still can do constituent services while contaminating the lawmaking process. They have to face opponents on the ballot who are being given ammunition against them every minute they continue to abuse the process of OUR system of government.

They say they are fighting for their causes. Perhaps they might be better off WORKING for their causes.  Working has a tendency to engender respect and that can produce progress.  When work, respect, and progress give way to bullying, shouting, and minority dictatorship, representative government fails the broad interests of the people.

As long as they carry on, the legislative branch of our state government is failing us.

And these are the failures behind the failure.

Notes From a Quiet Street (Injured Curmudgeon Edition)

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(being an irregular voyage through some mental flotsam and jetsam that isn’t worth full blogness)

There is so much to writr about these days but unfortunately your constant observer has become a one-fingr typist because was not observant when he went to the mailbox Thursday night and tripped over a little sidewalk wall and found himself in aencounter with a garage door.  The door is fine but the left shoulder of your observer became removed from its socket, said left arm now tightly strapped down.

But I do want anyone in the area to know that on tuesda morning thru Wednesday afternoon I have attanged evhibits from the Steamboat Arabia Museum in KC and National TransportationMuseum in Kirkwood to be in the capitol rotunda to promote legislation to help veterans, provide financial aid to struggling local historical museums, krrp the Arabia in Missouri and help the NMOT achieve its dreams for expansion and protection for and restoration of its collection.

Now onto the original great observations about our times—-

Anybody else getting tired of emails or telephone calls from people wanting to know if your experience with your doctor, your mechanic, your financial advisor, your car salesman, your—-you name it—was a pleasant one?

Feedback Mania has taken hold.

It seems as if every time I go someplace I get an email request almost before I’m out the door wondering if I had a pleasant experience, if the office staff was friendly, or if I would recommend this to others.

Did you enjoy your colonoscopy?  Was the admissions staff chipper enough?  How was the taste of the gallon of stuff you drank?  Was your experience with the drug administered before insertion pleasant?

I’m thinking of saving all of these surveys until I can fill them out while I’m on hold after an impersonal, recorded voice tells me that my call is important.

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I had a dream the other night that I opened my closet door and the only things inside were hangers with t-shirts proclaiming that I had saved a shivering dog or an elephant, that I had helped a school kid get a meal, another kid get healed from a disease (I slept under about three adorable blankets during the night)—you know.

I had bankrupted myself at the rate of $19.95 a month for so many different wonderful causes. In my dream, I decided to go on TV and promise viewers that I would give them a t-shirt that said, “I saved Bob” if they just sent me $19.95 a month.  The t-shirt would cost me 75 cents from the sweatshop in China. I needed the money because I placed a telephone call to see if a Medicare plan was available for me in my zip code and I needed to enroll.

Then I woke up and felt badly because each of these charities is only trying to do good in its small part of the human experience.  All except for the Medicare guy.

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Speaking of insurance:  Can you imagine if Flo and Doug had a child?

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Here is something that is spooky as all get-out:

A few days ago my friend Steve Mays, who was our webmaster at the Missourinet for many years and did great and creative things while some of us sluggards refused to quit living in our  internet caves, was explaining ChatGPT to me.  As I understand it, it’s an artificial intelligence program that lets people feed some information in and the program spits out a theme, a letter, an article, or whatever in whatever format or language or length the user wants.  People talk to it on their cell phones.

Later that day he asked Chat GPT:

Do you have any information about reporting by a man named Bob Priddy?

ChatGPT

Bob Priddy, a renowned journalist in Missouri, retired after a notable 40-year career. He was known for his dedication to government transparency and his critical view on the state of statehouse reporting, especially concerning the decline in media presence and the increasing influence of lobbyists. Priddy also played a significant role in advocating for open government, such as pushing for cameras in judicial chambers. However, he expressed concerns about the worsening state of government transparency in Missouri. His career has been a testament to committed journalism, focusing on impactful stories and the importance of government accountability​​.

As complimentary as it was, I was, and am, a little bit chilled that some lights and wires in a box can churn out something like this about me.

I looked up ChatGPT on Wikipedia.  I wonder who—or what—wrote the article.

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Saw a discussion a few days ago about whether Iowa Hawkeyes’ greatest basketball player should go pro or stay in college. One of the questions is whether Caitlin Clark would take a financial cut if she did.  One sports site, Firstsportz, estimates her net worth already is three-million dollars because of the endorsements of various products and services while in college.

At least Clark has stayed at one school throughout her career instead of being a jock gypsy, as so many athletes have become.

Are we alone in thinking there’s something basically wrong with college sports today?  I doubt it.

When you tax something—-

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It’s a cliché.  “When you tax something, you get less of it.”

That’s shorthand for a Ronald Reaganism: “If you want more of something, subsidize it; if you want less of something, tax it.”

Would that economics could be so simple.

A bill in the legislature this year would excuse residents of St. Charles and Jefferson Counties from paying the St. Louis City one-percent earnings tax.  That’s a tax that St. Louis collects from people who come to the city to work and then leave it to go home in those two counties.

One of the supporters of the bill has trotted out the old cliché to justify it.

The trouble with cliches is that they are so easily punctured.

Those who think earnings taxes are appropriate note that daily job emigrants are served by St. Louis police and other St. Louis first responders, among others, that they drive on the city’s streets, contribute to the city’s trash burden, that they go to city hospitals or doctor’s offices if they get sick or hurt during working hours or recreational tie at the ballpark, and on top of it all, they have jobs in St. Louis that they don’t have at home.

St. Louis and Kansas City have earnings taxes.  Many years ago, when financier Rex Sinquefield, long an opponent of earnings taxes spearheaded a drive that got law passed requiring the two cities to re-approve their earnings taxes every five years. The Post-Dispatch reported a few days ago that Sinquefield had donated $25,000 to the campaign of the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Phil Christofanelli, a candidate for the state senate.  In the process of requiring the five-year re-enactment of the tax in the cities, voters also approved a statewide ban on any other city ever considering such a tax.  Voters thus gave up their right to decide what is bests for their town on this issue.

The problem with the cliché is that the word “it” needs to be defined.  Does this bill mean the elimination of the tax will bring thousands of new workers to St. Louis?  Where will they come from—St. Charles and Jefferson Counties?  Will they leave their jobs in those counties where they don’t pay an earnings tax now to flock to St. Louis just because employees won’t pay it there any more?

Will elimination of the tax result in lower prices for goods and services? It’s hard to visualize why it would.  Will it make funding public services more difficult?

The cliché has a big problem; the definition of “it.”

A look at Missouri’s loosened marijuana laws tends to indicate high taxes are no barrier at all to the weed businesses.  Maybe if we jacked up the tax even higher there would be less marijuana sales. Or maybe not.  I recall when cigarettes were two dollars a carton (ten packages). Big price increases did not seem to be the factor in reducing smoking many years later. Smoking laws were a much bigger factor.

Property. If you tax it,  you get less of it?  It’s true that increasing taxes might force someone to move into a less-expensive home.  But the old property is still there—for someone else to inhabit.  People go away but property doesn’t.

Yes, there is less in the pocket but there is more for “it,” and by “it” we talk about the institutions and services that are necessary to protect us, to heal us, to educate us, to make it possible for us to go from one place to the next—taxes are the only way there can be more of “it.”

So the cliché is just that, and cliché’s sound good but they are just surface words that substitute too often for careful thought.

(It’s kind of like a former colleague who once remarked, “Stereotypes are so handy because they save so much time.”)

It’s a campaign year, though, and tax cuts always are cheap and easy things to promise and they do seem to persuade some voters who fail to realize the consequences of the cuts, especially when the economy drips and the programs those services finance aren’t available when they are needed the most.

Maybe in a campaign year, we should levy a wordage tax on politicians.  There’s a lot of “it” that, under this philosophy, would go away.

Maybe the tax should be a pretty big, now that you mention……….

How Our Major League Sports Teams Are Plotting A Massive Rip-off Of The State 

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

Most of our patrons do not read the Tuesday entries that focus on sports. We ask that you carefully read this one, however, at least the first part.

(SPORTS WAGERING PETITION)—-Our six major league sports teams have crawled into bed with an industry whose sole characteristic is greed and the people of Missouri could become their abused children.

The teams, fed up that the legislature has failed to legalize sports betting, have launched a petition campaign highly favorable to the casino industry and detrimental to the public to put the issue on the ballot.

It’s a rip-off of major league proportions.  The Cardinals, Royals, Chiefs, Blues, and Missouri’s two major league soccer teams are collecting petition signatures to ask voters to let them and our thirteen casinos pocket millions of dollars with a sweetheart tax package that will take millions away from Missouri schools, veterans, and even the host cities of the casinos.

Hidden in the deal is a big tax cut for the casino industry that is made bigger with provisions that lower the amount of money to be taxed.

The petition campaign constitutes nothing less than a mugging of the state of Missouri.

Let’s begin with a simple question.  Would you knowingly bet eleven dollars, knowing that the most you ever could win would be TEN dollars?

That is what the teams and the casinos are going to do to Missourians.  The state is guaranteed to be a loser with the very first bet.  Here is how it will work if voters fall for this scheme:

Missouri’s casinos pay a twenty-one percent tax on revenues remaining after they have paid off winners of bets.  So much money is bet in Missouri that the casinos have approached revenues of two-billion dollars in each of the last two years and are on track to equal last year’s record or set a new revenue record for a third straight year.

Simple elementary school mathematics shows how the teams’ casino allies will grow immensely wealthy with this scam while the things that are supposed to be financed with the gambling tax are massively short-changed.

The proposed tax rate on sports betting is only ten percent, eleven percentage points below the rate charged for the last thirty years of casino gambling on table games and slot machines. Thus, the state would give up eleven of the present twenty-one percentage points to get ten

The American Gaming Association’s latest annual report says Missouri would be the twelfth state with a tax of ten percent or less.  Fourteen states have tax rates above ten percent or that top out above ten percent, including three states that charge fifty and fifty-one percent. Only five states on the AGA’s chart show rates of less than ten percent.

But there is something dark behind the petition’s demand that the rate be ten percent here.

Ten percent and twenty-one percent produce an average of 15.5 percent, an effective twenty-five percent tax cut for all Missouri casino gambling.

While the teams’ sophisticated advertising campaign will tell voters the proposal wll generate millions of dollars more for the state education fund and for their host cities, the truth is that it will produce less.

Financial analysts who advise the Missouri General Assembly forecast taxable revenes from casino gambing will jump from almost two billion dollars to $2.4 billion within four years.  A twenty-one percent tax of that amount would produce $504 million with ninety percent going into funding for elementary and secondary public schools. The other ten percent would be distributed to the thirteen cities that have casinos in them and to one county that shares revenues with the casino city.  An average tax of 15.5% would produce $372 million, again with the 90-10 split, $132 million less than if the twenty-one percent tax is maintained.

While $372 million dollars on the low end might seem to be an impressive sum, here is something else the casinos and the sports teams will never tell you in their promotions and advertising:

The Missouri Gaming Commission reports that casinos in the last fiscal year paid gambling taxes of $403.3 million dollars on revenues from slot machines and table games alone.

Approving sports wagering as proposed in the petition will take more than thirty million dollars away from the state, not add revenue.

Our metropolitan areas will feel the difference most acutely.  Host communities in the St. Louis metro area, which has four casinos, will lose $5.6 million in the first four years of sports wagering under the petition plan.  We wonder if Cardinals President Bill DeWitt III, who has been the spokesman for the teams during legislative committee hearings, has ever thought of what this plan will cost his main ticket-buying community.

Host communities in the Kansas City metro area, also with four casinos, will lose $3.65 million, something we bet the Chiefs and the Royals haven’t considered. .

Our figures are based on projections made by legislative fiscal analysts.

Legislative fiscal analysts forecast the ten percent tax will cost the thirteen host cities more than eleven million dollars, total, in the first four years of wagering, money they would receive if sports wagering were taxed at the same rate as slots and table games.  Amazingly, the association that represents those cities doesn’t seem to care. It has endorsed whatever the casinos have asked for from the legislature. One wonders if the city councils or the citizens of those communities has ever heard how much they have lost in the past thirty years because the two-dollar admission never having adjusted for inflation and how much they will lose if the petition passes.

By our calculations, using the Bureau of Labor Statistics annual inflation calculator, the state already has lost almost $1.1 Billion in admission fees because casinos are paying the same fee they paid when the first two of them opened thirty years ago this year.

In the most recent fiscal year, the state received $57.9 million in admission fees. Had the fees been adjusted annally for inflation, it would have received $113.5 million. But inflation works both ways.  The $57.9 million the state did receive had a purchasing power of only $29.5 millon because of the loss of purchasing power of the two 1993 dollars. Remember, half of the two-dollar admission fee goes to the host cities.  But their association doesn’t seem to care.

And it’s worse.

Buried within the petition are six deductions not allowed in today’s law that will reduce taxable income by several millions of dollars. The deductions encourage casino bookeepers to try to show their casino produced a monthly loss on paper.  If they can, the schools, home dock cities and other state entities listed as beneficiaries of this new form of gambling will receive zero revenues that month.

But it’s far worse than that.

If a casino can show that it had a paper loss for a month, the amount it claims as loss will carry over to the next month and be used to calculate that month’s profit or loss, again reducing the casino’s tax payments. Can anyone name any other business or industry in Missouri that is allowed to calculate their taxes this way?

Two states provide scary examples of the dangers of the carryovers for Missourians to consider.  In November, 2022, Louisiana casinos reported a statewide loss of $25.6 milllion because some of the casinos took bets made by a Texas furniture store owner that the Texas Rangers would win the World Series, which they did. In the same month, Maryland casinos reported a statewide loss of $33.6 million after they spent more than $60 million in promotional credits as part of the state’s launch of mobile betting.

But it’s far worse than that.

Let’s go back to the admission fee. Casinos also pay the state a two-dollar admission fee for each person who goes through the turnstiles to the gambling floors. If the gamblers stay longer than two hours, the casino pays another two dollars—a policy that began on the first day that casinos opened thirty years ago this year when they actually were boats and river cruises actually were possible.

A prediction was made at the East Coast Gaming Conference in 2019, a few months after sports betting was legalized by the U. S. Supreme Court, that within five to ten years, ninety percent of sports wagers would be placed online. Just two years later, gambling analyst Larry Henry reported on Casino.org that more than eighty percent of sports bets already were being placed online and New Jersey, the first state to legalize sports betting after the court ruling, 92 percent of sports wagers had been placed online in 2021.

If Missouri follows national trends, ninety percent of sports bets soon will be online and not made by people who go through the turnstiles of our casinos.  Under the petition, those online bets will produce zero revenue for programs and services whose budgets have suffered greatly because turnstile admissions have declined by about forty-seven percent in the last twelve years.

Who is suffering the most? The Veterans Commission Capital Trust Fund, which provides money for veterans nursing homes. Admission fee funding of care for our veterans has dropped by 63 percent in the last decade.  Nothing in the petition does anything to reverse that trend.

The Missouri Gaming Commission’s budget has declined by more than twenty percent in the last decade. It has twenty-three fewer employees than it had then. And it is facing a major increase in enforcement responsibility if the petition passes. The commission will collect some licensing fees but the petition also requires it to use some of its new money to pay for a problem gambler’s assistance fund.

Numerous studies have indicated gambling addiction will at least triple with the introduction of sports wagering and remote betting.  The money to be set aside for “compulsive gambing prevention” comes out of the commission’s pocket. It comes out of the taxes benefitting schools and home dock cities and fees going to the gaming commission. Nothing in the petition requires the casinos or the teams to contribute directly to a fund to counter the problems their new form of gambling will create.

And two more things before we go.

The casino industry has spent a lot of time and resources trying to convince your legislators and mine that sports wagering is a stand-alone issue that need special care and feeding.  It is not.  Their own bills just add “sports wagering” to the list of games of skill in our state laws.  In the now-seven years that sports wagering bills have been introduced, not one has said anything that defines sports wagering as differing from poker, blackjack, craps, or any other table game or slot machine.  A bet is a bet is a bet.  And if you bet long enough the casino will have all of your money whether you bet on the spin of a wheel, the fall of a card, the roll of a die, or the pull of a lever.

The committee backing the petition campaign says sports wagering will provide new good-paying jobs.

Will it generate enough new jobs to replace the 5,600 people laid off in the host cities during the last fifteen years?  Will it replace the $100 million-plus in payrolls lost each year by the host cities in that same period?

Everybody loses except the teams and the casinos in this petition campaign. People going into casinos know they’re playing on tables tilted against them. That’s fine.  But before Missourians support this blatant deception against our state by the casinos and our sports teams, they should look at how much they will lose regardless of whether they gamble.

The casinos have never dealt the top card on the deck to the legislature while trying to convince it to approve sports wagering.  Now they, with their sports team bedmates, are doing the same with the general public.

The legislature could fix all of this during this session. But don’t expect it to. There are 197 state representatives and senators in our General Assembly.  The Associated Press has reported that casinos, sports teams, online sports betting companies, and video gaming terminal inerests have hired about eighty lobbyists to pressure the people we presume represent us into representing those interests instead. That’s one lobbyist for ever 2.5 members of our legislature. It is hard to grow a backbone and do what is right on this issue when  you are surrounded by lobbyists backed by interests with bottomless checking accounts and a willingness to support re-election bids or to support opponents for those with the courage to reject the ongoing mugging of Missouri.

The only recourse Missourians will have if this petition gets enough signatures to be on the ballot later this year is to vote it down.  If they fail to do so, their state will be a big loser.

(All of the statistics used in this entry are drawn from the annual reports of the Missouri Gaming Commission, the American Gaming Association, legislative staff fiscal notes for pro-casino legislation, and the U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. We never have seen the homework the casinos to justify the claims they have made in the past or the present).

Now, we take a look at the history behind a cold football game, a cold-shooting basketball team, and the latest from baseball’s hot stove league)

(CHIEFS)—The regular season wasn’t pretty for the Kansas City Chiefs but they looked almost as solid as the frozen field at Arrowhead Stadium Saturday night with their dominating 26-7 wild card playoff win over the Miami Dolphins, a team that hasn’t won in forever  in cold weather.

The game goes into the record books as the fourth-coldest game in NFL history.  Here’s where it fits in:

December 31, 1967  Lambeau Field, Green Bay comes from behind to beat Dallas 21-17 on the famous Bart Starr quarterback sneak behind center Ken Bowman and Right Guard Jerry Kramer who pushed Defensive Tackle Jethro Pugh aside just enough for Starr to cross the line.  Temperatur at the start of the game: -13. Wind Chill  -48. The game was dubbed “The Ice Bowl.”  Green Bay went on to defeat the Oakland Raiders 33-10 in Super Bowl II.

January 10, 1982  “The Freezer Bowl”  Riverfront Stadium, Cincinnati. Coach Forrest Gregg, who played in “The Ice Bowl” is now the coach of the Bengals, who beat the San Diego Chargers 27-7. San Diego’s only touchdown was scored by former Missouri Tiger Kellen Winslow.  Game time temperature: -9  Wind Chill -59.  Some of the players in this game, as in the Green Bay-Dallas game reported health problems for the rest of their lives because of the playing conditions.

January 10, 2016  TCF Bank Stadium, Minneapolis. Seattle beats the Vikings 10-9 when Bill Walsh’s field goal attempt goes wide left with 22 seconds on the clock. Minus-6 with a windchilll of minus-25.

January 13, 2024 Arrowhead Stadium,  Chiefs beat the Miami Dolphins in the southernmost NFL cold game on record, 26-7. Harrison Butker’s four field goals and two extra points outscore the Dolphins, who lost their eighth straight game played in below-freezing temperatures. Quarterback Tua Tagovailoa dropped to 0-5 in games played below 45 degrees.  Game time temperature: -4  Windchill -20. At the end it was -9 and -28. The extreme cold sent 69 people to aid tents run by the city fire department. About half were for hypothermia symptoms and fifteen people were taken to hospitals where seven were suffering from hypothermia, three for frostbite and five for various other reasons.

      The game broke the record for the coldest game at Arrowhead Stadium.  The Chiefs beat the Broncos 48-17 on December 18, 1993. Footall Reference reports the temperature at the start of the game was 0.5 degrees.

December 10, 1972  Metropolitan Stadium, Minneapolis Green Bay 23, Vikings 7. Temperature at game start 0. Wind Chill -18. Green Bay’s running backs, John Brockington and MacArthur Lane combine for more than 200 yards rushing, 99 by Lane, who had come over from the St. Louis Cardinals that year. Later, Lane was with the Kansas City Chiefs and in his last year in his career, 1978, rushed for 144 yards against  the Bills. He was 36 years and 199 days old and remains the oldest player to rush for more than 100 yards in an NFL game.

January 20, 2008  Lambeau Field  New York Giants 23 Packers 20 on a 47-yard field goal 12:25 into overtime by Lawrence Tynes. Temperature -4, Wind Chill -24.

December 26, 1993  Lambeau Field  Packers vs. the now-LA Raiders. Packers win 28-0. Game time temperature 0, Wind Chill -22.

January 15, 1994  Ralph Wilson Stadium, Buffalo, Coldest game played at Orchard Park in Buffalo. Game start temperature 0, Wind Chill -32. Bills come from behind in the fourth quarter with a fourth quarter touchdown pass from Jim Kelly to Bill Brooks to win 29-23.

December 3, 1972  Metropolitan Stadium, Minneapolis. -2 at the start with a windchilll of -26. Vikings kicker Fred Cox outscores the Bears with three field goals and two PATs in a 23-10 Minnesota victory.

Kansas City’s defense again was dominant, keeping the Dolphins out of the red zone all night long.  Miami’s only score was a 53-yard touchdown pass and run to former chiefs receiver Tyreek Hill who otherwise was not a factor in the game. The win against Miami moves the Chiefs into next week’s game against the Buffalo Bills, who beat the Pittsburgh Steelers last night in the game delayed for a day because of a typical Buffalo winter storm that dumped more snow into the stadium than an army of scoopers could remove on Sunday.

(miz)—The Missouri Tigers reached the halfway point of their regular season Saturday, losing their sixth game in their last seven outings and could drop below .500 tonight when they play league-leading Alabama on the Crimson Tide’s court.  Alabama is 11-5 overall with a five-game winning streak. Missouri is now 8-8. The Tigers join Arkansas and Vanderbilt in the SEC cellar with 0-3 records.

SB Nation’s Sam Snelling reports the Tigers have not defeated a high major opponent since losing Caleb Grill early in December with an injury to his non-shooting wrist. He had surgery  and might be back later this month.

Snelling suggests coach Dennis Gates is giving his veteran players a chance to right the ship, but it’s not working. Five of his guys have played more than 100 games in their college careers with Nick Honor accounting for 139. Noah Carter, John Tonje, Connor Vanover, and Sean East II all have more than 100 games. He wonders when Gates will realize his veterans aren’t getting the job done and when he will start building for tomorrow with his younger guys. (zou)

(BASEBALL)—No big new signings by the Royals and the Cardinals but the Redbirds have made an interesting front office move by hiring Chaim Bloom as an advisor. Bloom was with the Boston Red Sox until he was dumped by Fenway Sports Group despite being credited by some with cutting spending while rebuilding the team’s farm system.

He’ll be an advisor to Cardinals President of Baseball Operations John Mozeliak, who plans to step aside after the 2025 season, prompting questions about whether Mozeliak is grooming his successor. Mozeliak warns against jumping to conclusions. “where it leads to, we’ll see,” he says.

It’s the second major advisory step taken in the off-season by the Cardinals, who signed Yadiar Molina earlier as an advisor, prompting speculation about his role growing from advisor to manager.  Molina is managing in the Puerto Rico winer league and wants to manage in the bigs.  Present Cardinals manager Oli Marmol is in the last year of his contract. Mozeliak does not expect friction between the M’s.  Although he’s a supporter of Marmol, he also recognizes the Cardinals cannot have another year with problems on the field and in the locker room.

-0-

Passive 

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Maybe it’s a case of thinking the old days were better than today.  Maybe not.

The legislature has returned to the Capitol.  Most people have no idea how quickly things move when the session starts or how intense the work is—or how contentious is can become if a partisan renegade group decides it must prevail, their minority status be damned.

For the last three years the sessions’ last week or so have become mired in political mud and the sessions have been the least productive in long, long memory because of conflicts between the legalization of those Video Lottery Machines that are pimples in our convenience stores and sports wagering legislation that seeks to give our casino a significant tax break to the detriment of our education funds and even to the further detriment of their own host cities.

But that’s a diatribe for another time.

It seems to from our high position that the baneful effects of term limits, about which we were warned in 1992, have produced another regrettable trend.

A passive legislature.

The loss of institutional memory because of term limits cannot be overstated.

One of the bigget warnings before 1992 was that term imits would transfer power from the chambers to the hallways, where lobbyists roam, because no senior members would be around to advise newcomers on the role of the General Assembly in the process of lawmaking and in the process of shaping state fiscal policy.

The transfer became obvious several years ago when, during debate, the sponsor of a bill would ask of another lawmaker proposing an amendment, “Have you checked with so-and-so out in the hall?”

Later the issue became even more egregious as I watched lawmakers during debate checking their cell phones for text messages from the paid influencers outside the chamber. Lobbyists are banned from being on the House and Senate floors. Physically.  But their electronic presence is undeniable.

As we have watched for these many years, it seems that the legislature today is more likely to accept legislation without question and without hearing the voice of the public as much as it once did. Although we don’t cover committee meetings as much as we did in our reporting days, we have been in a large number of them on the issue of sports wagering, a special interest of ours for several reasons.

The caisno industry, now unfortunately aided and abetted by our major professional sports teams that need millons of dollars a year to try to keep pace with bigger-market moneybag teams, has always presented bills that are—to be frank—terrible fiscal policy for the state and its people and especially for schools, veterans, and the casino’s home cities.

Glaringly absent is any aggressive interrogation of the industry.  I can recall only two instances in which any semi-extensive questions were asked and only one when the questions were aggressively put (and the industry’s response was hardly direct).

In the old days—and I intensely dislike using that phrase—it seemed the legislature, while heavily influenced by lobbyists (who have a place in the system) and their checkbooks, looked more critically at legislation.  And it seems that lawmakers who were more likely to be presented a problem took an initiative, now missing, to fix the problem.

Many legislative hearings where held at night so members of the public could more easily be present without missing a full day of work. Night meetings are scarce today, leaving the field more and more to those who can affort to buy representation.  The voice of the citizen is muted in today’s system and the general assembly is more susceptible to being influenced by political action committee money.

In the first year of my lobbying career (working on getting the casinos to pay to keep the Steamboat Arabia Museum in Missouri), I took some findings of casino greed to a member of the House who told me, “Oh, the casinos will be interested in this. I’ve already gotten two checks form them this year.” He apparently was totally unaware of what a self-indictment his statement was.

Some legislator’s offices are festooned with plaques from organizations thanking them for their support.  When I was running the Missorinet newsroom we had a rule that we would accept no awards from any organization we covered.

We were not their friend. Nor were we their enemy.

We are one of those in the halls again this year, raising our pitiful voice against the steamroller called the casino industry, hoping again that we will trouble the consciences of those who sit quietly while the industry presents its plans for getting richer and richer while the services that serve the people of Missouri that rely on revenue from the industry get poorer and poorer, and poorer still under proposed sports wagering legislation.

Somebody has to ask the questions.  Too bad it isn’t the people who are presented with bills the industry wants passed.

Let’s See How This Plays Out 

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Your faithful observer is a Protestant who believes that a faith that is so much based on love, whether it is toward one’s enemies, or in following as much as I can Jesus’ comment record in John 13: “A new command I give youL Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” can in so many ways pas judgment on who can love who.

My congregation lost some members a few years ago when our minister announced that he was a pastor for the congregation but a minister to all of God’s people and that he would, therefore, perform same-sex marriages (he had been approached by a same-sex couple wanting a marriage ceremony several weeks earlier).

A few days ago, Pope Francis allowed priests to bless same-sex couples.  The declaration has been described by The New York Times as “his most definitive step yet to make the Roman Catholic Church more welcoming to L.G.B.T.Q Catholics and more reflective of his vision of a more pastoral, and less rigid, church.”

It seems to be a major step away from the church’s long-held doctrine that marriage is only between a man and a woman. It is not, however, a complete break from that doctrine because the new policy refers only to “blessing,” not sanctioning marriage, a sacrament, a ceremonial rite of the church. The new rule makes that clear.

The Vatican says the blessing should not be part of any formal service but instead should be done during a private meeting with a priest, during a pilgrimage, or during a visit to a shrine or during a prayer recited in a group.

Kansas city Bishop James Johnston says the declaration “recognizes that God desires the good for all persons, including those in objectively irregular same-sex or heterosexual relationships, and if one reaches out for God’s assistance, that should not be denied.”  But he emphasizes that it would be a mistake to say the Church is “now approving or validating same-sex unions or unions which are outside of marriage.” A blessing does not signify the approval of the union but “allows for ministers to bless people in these difficult situations that they may be assisted by God’s grace along the path of conversion and salvation.”

The St. Louis Archdiocese describes those who seek the blessings as sinners.   “When we seek out a blessing, we come as sinners to receive God’s grace and mercy inour lives,” says statement from the archdiocese. “Blessings serve to open one’s life to God, to ask for his help to live better and to invoke the Holy Spirit so that the values of the Gospel may be lived with greater faithfulness.”

The statement refers to the blessings as “an expression of the Church’s maternal heart…a reminder that we nurture and promote the Church’s closeness to people in every circumstance n which they might seek God’s help and grace.”

The statement is aimed at more than LGBTQ couples.  It also applies to people who have divorced and remarried without getting an annulment of the first marriage.

About the same time the Pope’s declaration was making news headlines, NBC was reporting, “Moe than 500 bills targeting LGBTQ people were introduced in state legisltures around the country in 2023.  Of those bills, 75 became law, including two in Missouri banning gender-affirming care and restricting participation in school athletics.”

One of the most potent moral forces in the Missouri Capitol for decades has been the Missouri Catholic Conference, the lobbying arm of the Catholic Church. I recall its opposition to legislation allowing the cessation of brain function to be a definition of death. And its opposition to abortion has never weakened.

Now the Vatican has softened its stance on LGBTQ issues. Will that action trigger any softening of conservative faith-based lobbyists on anti-LGBTQ legislation?

In matters of faith dictating law, will there be an emphasis more on pastoring than on rigid judging?

But then, how does rigid judging agree with loving one another?

And which should prevail in our lives and in our laws?

Let’s see how the Pope’s declaration carries out in our government halls and in the quiet rooms of our homes whether we be Catholic or Protestant.

Or even nothing at all.