Category Archives: legislature

See Spot(s) Run

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Your faithful observer is starting to see spots before his eyes.

“Spots” is broadcast-ese for “commercials.”  Political commercials.  Most particularly, Republican candidates for governor.  Three of them were almost cheek-to-jowl in one of the late night shows the other night.

The timing of two of the commercials was—uh—awkward, shall we say?

Only about forty-eight hours after the Orlando incident, Eric Greitens was blowing up something with (what appears to these eyes unfamiliar with weapons) a military-style assault rifle.  His solution to politics-as-usual is to fire about 13 shots in two seconds until something he is shooting at explodes.  Some folks we have talked think it was poor manners to continue running these spots in the immediate wake of the Orlando tragedy.

Catherine Hanaway uses a shotgun to also blast “career politicians” while touting the mom, home, and apple pie virtues and claiming that she “passed” a law expanding gun rights (to be honest, SHE didn’t pass it, the legislature did). And the question arises with her commercial too—whether it was poor taste to brag about expanding gun rights in the wake of Orlando. It might seem odd to some that she criticizes career politicians after a career that began as a manager of Senator Bond’s campaign in northeast Missouri in 1993, election to the Missouri House in ’98, her extensive work recruiting candidates and donors to help Republicans gain control of the House, her term as Speaker, her losing candidacy for Secretary of State in 2004 and her subsequent political appointment as federal prosecutor in eastern Missouri under the George W. Busch administration.

Compared to those two is John Brunner, who so far has advertised nothing more than his promise to create more jobs and an emphasis that he’s so rich he “can’t be bought.” We’ll wait to see if he shows anything indicating he has something else to offer or any specifics about how he can create more jobs in a state where the unemployment rate is just above four percent, a figure that fits several definitions of “full employment.”

We didn’t see a Peter Kinder spot while Greitens, Hanaway, and Brunner were hoping late night viewers would find something significant in guns and generalities.  But he had been on the air earlier attacking the unmitigated evils of the Left, which is nothing new for him.

Perhaps the candidates will tell us in spots to come what they’ll do to solve Missouri’s problems—poor school funding, poor transportation funding, medical care and mental health services, whether they think significantly higher sales taxes are preferable to a graduated income tax, stuff like that requiring more than platitudes, diatribes, and firearms.

The campaigns by Hanaway, Brunner, and Greitens blasting career politicians certainly seem targeted at Kinder, who has been in office either as a Senator or Lieutenant Governor since 1993, the year that Hanaway became a campaign worker for Senator Bond.

Another spot thrown into the mix during that late night show regurgitates attack ads from Brunner’s 2012 Senate race, accusing him of not paying some taxes on time, setting up offshore tax-avoiding accounts, and refusing to make his tax returns public. The spot is backed by one of those character-assassinating super-PACS that lacks the courage to be honest about who is giving it money.   In this case, it’s something called LG-PAC.

Brunner admitted four years ago he and his company missed some payment deadlines.

And for an outfit that won’t reveal the source of its funding for this kind of advertising smears to criticize someone for considering his personal tax returns a private matter—and would YOU want your tax return made public?—is, to say the least, blatant hypocrisy.

LG is an organization that does have to tell the Internal Revenue Service who its donors are.  But Joe Mannies with St. Louis Public Radio, one of the state’s top and long-time political reporters, says the report apparently doesn’t have to be filed until after the August primary.  And don’t bet that LG will be willing to reveal what IT files with the IRS.

So what is LG-PAC?  Several reporters have tried to find out.  It’s registered with the Federal Elections Commission, not the Missouri Ethics Commission, although it is spending money on a state race.  It’s run by Kansas Citian Hank Monsees.

A check of its website indicates it has Brunner, Hanaway, and Grietens in its sights.  But it also has a picture of a smiling Kinder and a link to a newspaper article about one of Kinder’s positions.  Kinder disavows any knowledge of LG’s leanings although the webpage seems to tilt his way.

Scott Faughn at the Missouri Times has reported the outfit’s bank is located in Virginia and has no branches in Missouri.

LG isn’t alone is this swamp.  Mannies also notes American Bridges, which admits its largest contributor is financier George Soros, is most likely to support Democrats and liberal policies.  It’s targeting Senator Blunt.  Blunt, on the other hand, has Karl Rove’s One Nation Super PAC, which already has announced big spending on his behalf. Not connected to the Blunt campaign, of course, but it is unlikely to say anything nice about Blunt’s challenger, Secretary of State Jason Kander.

Another one is called Missouri Rising, an arm of America Rising. It already has done some anti-Chris Koster stuff.

The Missouri legislature and the United States Congress could expose who’s too gutless to openly admit supporting this kind of campaigning that only further weakens public confidence in the election and governmental process.

But gutless birds of a feather flock together. And neither the legislature nor the Congress wants to disturb gutless geese that lay golden eggs.

Tearing up the Senate

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Work crews have started tearing seats out of the place where visitors to the state Senate have watched floor activities since 1919 so the Senate can get those pesky reporters farther away from being able to see and hear what is going on. Or not.

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Seats installed during the restoration of the chamber in 2001 were stacked along a fourth floor hallway wall when we dropped by the other day.  We haven’t heard what will be done with them although it seems the most sensible thing would be to store them somewhere safe so they could be put back in place when a less-vindictive mood runs the place.  We won’t rehash what that’s all about here.  We’ve flailed at that subject in earlier entries that you can find in the archives.

We have preserved a historic moment in this process—the last time (for now, we hope) that members of the Capitol press corps were allowed to sit at what has been the press table since the earliest days of the building.

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That’s Bob Watson of the Jefferson City News Tribune, the senior Senate reporter, in the blue suit on the right.  Summer Ballentine of the Associated Press is on the other side of the table, in the orange jacket.   Most of the others are Senate staff members except for the fellow next to Summer.

That’s Senate President Pro Tem Ron Richard, who decided earlier this year that people such as Bob and Summer are so undeserving to cover the Senate from that table anymore that the Senate will spend $12,000 for each of the ten positions around the table to move them and their colleagues to the gallery on the other side of the chamber.

Senator Richard lectured his colleagues during the session about honoring Senate traditions and rules.

One of the Senate rules is that Senators will not sit at the press table when the Senate is in session.  We think it was in session when this picture was taken.  Majority Floor Leader Mike Kehoe was in the Chair.

Will the Senate behave any better or any worse now that the scourge of the Press is removed from its sight?   Will the reporting of the actions of the Senate be better or worse because reporters now will occupy space where spectators have been able to sit for 97 years?

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The first test will come during the September veto session.  It would be good, however, for the Senate to remember that the Press might now be out of sight—-but it shouldn’t be out of mind.

 

 

A religious experience, not a crime

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We’re going to wade into the murky waters of religion and politics today in search of reason and logic.

We’ve had some time to mentally chew on Representative Tila Hubrecht’s thought in the waning days of the legislative session that a pregnancy resulting from a rape is a “silver lining” from God. All kinds of liberal thinkers and organizations have jumped all over her assertion made during House debate on the bill saying a woman’s egg is a person just a soon as a man’s sperm hits it even if the circumstances leading to the presence of the sperm are violent. The bill passed the House but didn’t have enough time to cause trouble in the Senate before adjournment.

The personhood bill did not contain the usual exemptions that allow abortions in cases of rape, incest, or to protect the life of the woman. “It’s not up to us to say, ‘No, just because there was a rape, they cannot exist,’” Rep. Hubrecht said, the “they” referring to a person created by the sperm and egg. “Sometimes bad things happen—and they’re horrible things, but sometimes God can give us a silver lining through the birth of a child.” And she added, “When God gives life, he does so because there’s a reason, no matter what. I’ve met and talked with the different people who have been conceived by rape. There is a reason for their life.” We were not there when she said those things so we don’t know if she gave examples of the reasons for those lives.

She apparently is not alone in her feelings in the Missouri legislature and elsewhere. The Charleston Gazette in West Virginia reported about the same time that Delegate (that’s what they call Representatives in West Virginia) Brian Kurcaba said during a committee hearing, “Obviously rape is awful. What is beautiful is the child that could come from this.”

In Indiana, U. S. Senate candidate Richard Mourdock said in 2012, “I think that even when life begins in the horrible situation of rape, that is something that God intended to happen.” Mourdock lost his race.

All three of these folks might be surprised to consider what they are really saying. If God intended pregnancy to occur, GOD IS INVOLVED IN FAMILY PLANNING! And we pretty well know what these folks think of organizations and individuals offering family planning advice.

Of course, all of this discussion is pointless because Congressman Todd Akin assured us during his Senate bid four years ago that a woman’s body can “shut the whole thing down” in cases of “legitimate rape.” He argued, as Rep. Hubrecht has argued, that the punishment should be of the rapist, not of the fetus. The Akin theory, however, seems to indicate pregnancy can only occur during illegitimate rape, whatever that is.

Not long after Hubrecht’s comments, Octavio Chorino and Peter Greenspan offered an op-ed piece in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch agreeing with Hubrecht and the others that “violence against women is unacceptable.” But they found the “notion that good may come of such a violation to be dangerous at best…and any suggestion that there is a bright side to sexual violence is an offense to all survivors.”

They noted other consequences of rape including transmission of sexually transmitted diseases as well as extensive physical and psychological injuries that can affect a woman for the rest of her life. “These consequences are very real and they should not be diminished by the claim that any rape has a silver lining,” they wrote. Unlike Hubrecht, Kurcaba, Mourdock, and Akin, these professionals have had real-world experience with rape and incest victims. “Exposing sexual assault victims to the risks inherent in pregnancy and childbirth is effectively punishing her for her own assault. This is unacceptable,” they said.

Chorino is the president of the Missouri Section Advisory Committee of the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Greenspan, also a doctor, is the group’s legislative chair. But what do they know? They didn’t even address the issue of God’s will and Rep. Hubrecht’s inclusion of that issue takes the debate beyond the practical issues on which Chorino and Greenspan based their article.

Their experiences and their observations are not likely to concern the “silver lining” believers anyway.   We have seen no indication that those who want Missouri to have the strongest anti-abortion standards in the nation care much about the second life involved—that of the rape or incest victim.   They certainly didn’t show it during debate on the personhood bill in this election session of the legislature.

The comments, “When God gives life, he does so because there’s a reason, no matter what” and “sometimes God can give us a silver lining through the birth of a child” began to percolate in our head on a recent trip. You know how the mind sometimes looks for something to wonder about other than the many miles yet to go. In this case the mind decided to test the validity of an idea by taking it on a logical line and then asked a simple question:

“If God has a reason for causing a pregnancy through a man’s sexual act with an unwilling woman because ‘when God gives life there’s a reason no matter what,’ why should the man face a criminal charge for what logically is an act of God?”

Then the mind went on. “When does God decide a pregnancy should result from the rape or incest? While the act is in progress? Or does God decide immediately after the event that this is an opportunity to create a life? Or—-

“If God has a reason for a rape or incest-caused pregnancy, does it not follow that God had a reason for the rape or incest?

“If God gives life, and does so because there’s a reason, no matter what, what is that reason? Is it punishment for something the woman or the young girl did that was wrong in God’s eyes? Or, conversely, is it some kind of reward for doing something good such as allowing oneself to be a rape or incest victim, or is it a reward for the rapist or the person committing the incest?

“How can a God-blessed result occur except through a God-inspired act?”

The driver, not being a Biblical scholar, could not cite any examples from the Bible of a God-inspired result that did not begin with a God-inspired or directed act so he did not reply.

“But,” said the mind, “Don’t supporters of the position need to provide a definitive logical answer that does not limit an omnipotent God? If God has the power to create physical life, does not God have to ordain the circumstances under which that life is physically created?

“And doesn’t God have to ordain the circumstances under which the life is physically created because the life would not be created without that violent act?

“And if that is the case, isn’t the argument severely weakened that the perpetrator of the act should be punished rather than the life created being ‘punished’ because, as she said, ‘There is a reason for their life?’ Are not the perpetrator and the new life equal partners in this process and therefore equally blameless?

“In a climate that argues that religious freedom needs more protection, how can it be logically argued that an act, even a violent one, that is motivated by God’s decision to begin a new life no matter what should not be recognized as a religious act, not a criminal act?

“Is rape or incest that creates a life, for which God has a reason no matter what, therefore an act of God?

“And further, should not the woman logically forgive her rapist or her incestuous relative because her STD and her physical and psychological injuries were necessary to create the pregnancy God had a reason to create under these circumstances no matter what?”

And the driver finally responded to his mind out loud, “Your arguments are interesting. But they are flawed because you use the word, ‘logically.’ And logic seems to be the farthest thing from the thinking of those who support the ‘silver lining’ concept.”

And the driver tuned the radio to the old-time radio channel that was re-broadcasting a 1951 Jack Benny show and both of them drove on.

 

Orthodontic thoughts on ethics

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Well, the legislature passed four ethics bills this year, didn’t it? 

So what? 

Missouri went into this legislative session as the only state that did not limit lobbyist gifts to lawmakers, had no cooling-off period before legislators could return to the halls to lobby former colleagues, and no limits on campaign contributions. 

One out of three ain’t bad, as somebody who got a “D” in elementary school English might have said.  But while the legislature deserves a little credit for passing four ethics bills this year, they were all singles. Lawmakers hardly swung for the fences.   They didn’t strike out, certainly, but they didn’t hit much more than bloop singles.  We still don’t have limits on lobbyist gifts and the last thing in the world the powers that be in the legislature wanted to do this election year was address campaign contribution limits.  

But they can campaign on how they cleaned up government.  They won’t campaign on the idea that they only used a whisk broom, however.

The bills passed this year say legislators have to wait six months from the end of their terms before they can become lobbyists.  That means they can’t represent you and me at the capitol during the next legislative session (assuming you and I are the ones who would hire them; there are plenty of others who might).  But by the time the veto session rolls around in September, 2017, those whose terms run out in January can be renewing old acquaintances or augmenting the lobbyist corps putting on the pressure for veto overrides, or laying the groundwork for the 2018 session. And it’s likely that a majority of those with whom they served will still be around, particularly those who will be leaders by then.  

Lawmakers also decided they should not be allowed to hire fellow lawmakers as paid political consultants, a bill triggered by one incident a couple of years ago.  It’s okay legislation but this is hardly a political cancer cure.

Another bill requires candidate campaign finance reports to be filed electronically with the state ethics commission.  Some candidates have utilized a provision in existing law to escape filing with the state by filing with local election authorities.  This bill closes the least shortcoming in the current campaign finance law that eliminated all campaign donation limits.  When that bill was passed, the sponsor said eliminating limits was just fine as long as there was proper reporting of donations.  But the legislature ignored the T. Rex in the room this year when it did not require non-profit political action committees, the Super PACs, to report to the ethics commission who was providing them with money that is often used to bludgeon candidates targeted by big donors who don’t want anybody to know they are behind the so-called dark money in politics today. And they didn’t reinstate any limits on direct donations to candidates or to parties. 

The fourth one says former office-holders can’t invest leftover campaign funds and must dissolve their campaign committees before they can become lobbyists six months after leaving office.  An office-holder who has a large pot of leftover campaign money cannot invest it and use the return on the investment to fund other candidates, for example. 

Bloop singles that fall between the shortstop and the left fielder.   Why aren’t they at least line drives? 

Read the bills: HB1983, HB1979, HB2203, and HB1474.   Look for any penalty provisions. 

We’ll save you the drudgery. Folks, there are no penalties in any of these bills. They seem to be toothless.

If Representative Furd’s term ends with the swearing-in of his successor and now-former Representative Furd shows up in the hallway an hour later lobbying on behalf of the Missouri Association of Left-handed Trombonists while still having $43.92 in his campaign account, what will happen?  Will legislators refuse to let him buy them dinners (the bill limiting lobbyist gifts failed this year, you recall)?  Will Thelonious Furd—friends will now call him “Thel” instead of “The gentleman from Melvin County”—be shunned and find himself standing alone in a third floor alcove?  Will former colleagues block his text messages on the cell phones they might check while debating whether music stores should be able to refuse to sell mouthpieces to gay musicians because of a sincerely held belief?   Will somebody be able to get a court order that says he has to stand in the Capitol yard?   

Was the Missouri Ethics Commission given any authority to write rules dealing with the return of Thel?   Not in this bill. 

If Thel decides he wants to be a campaign consultant for a sitting representative with dreams of glory as Melvin County Administrator, is there a penalty for either him or his former colleague?   We didn’t see one. 

And if he files a report with his county clerk showing that he still has $43.92 instead of filing it with the ethics commission, what severe penalty does he face?   Ah!  There he might be in some trouble because the ethics commission can fine people for not filing proper campaign finance reports and THIS new law appears to put him under that jurisdiction.  

All of this speculation comes from a common citizen living on a quiet street in Jefferson City who used to be able to walk over to the sponsors of these bills and check the teeth in any such propositions. There might be some provisions in other sections of the statutes that would be the teeth for these bills but, from this lofty perch it seem the best we can we can say to most of this year’s ethics legislation is, “Nice gums.” 

Statistics

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The end of a legislative session gives us, the voters, a chance to evaluate what we hath wrought for ourselves through those we have chosen to represent us.   Sometimes what we hath wrought is writ in numbers that are Practical (as opposed to theoretical) Political Science 101.  Lend ear and eye to today’s lesson that begins with statistics.

The Senate Information Office gives out a summary of the legislative session minutes after adjournment each May, a series of numbers that probably wouldn’t mean much to Mr. or Mrs. Joe Missouri if they got these numbers in their mailboxes.  However, let’s spend some time thinking about those numbers and what they might tell us.  The numbers are only part of the story of about seventy days of a legislative session, of course.

What passed and what didn’t pass is the real measure of a session and the motivations of its participants.  Senator Emory Melton once told your observer that passing legislation is only part of the job.  Defeating legislation is as important. Capitol Press Corps members exhaust themselves each year telling that part of the story.  They have to believe that readers, listeners, and viewers care enough to pay attention to their stories. There are times when fatigue is so heavy that only that belief keeps them going.

Two-thousand-forty bills were introduced this year (1,457 of them in the House).  The Senate passed 113 of its 583 bills.  Twenty-five of them were consent bills, non-controversial measures.  That leaves 88 bills that faced confrontational debate, that faced efforts to amend them, and passed with recorded votes of the Senators.  Those 88 bills represent only fifteen percent of all bill introduced in the Senate. Of those eighty-eight, only 57 were approved by the House and sent to the Governor for signature or veto.

The Senate received 254 of the 1,457 House bills.  Of that 254, sixteen were appropriations bills.  Passing a state budget is one of only two responsibilities the legislature has each year.  Actually, its responsibility is even less than that.  It is charged with paying the state’s debts and setting aside money for public schools.  But the legislature could have gone home after providing the money to keep state services flowing to Missourians.  Eighty-one of the 254 surviving House bills were approved by the Senate and sent to the Governor.

Of the 2,040 bills introduced, only 138 made it all the way through the session.  That’s only 6.8 percent.

But there’s more.

Twenty-eight proposed constitutional amendments were introduced in the Senate, 59 more in the House.  Of those 87 proposed changes to the state constitution, only one got final approval.

So, as we interpret the Senate Information Office scoresheet, 139 of 2,127 measures introduced were able to get majority votes in both chambers, 6.5%.

The raw figures are a little deceiving because (a) several bills were identical and (b) several bills passed were combinations of several different bills.  But still, the number of issues that got overall legislative approval is quite small.

Some will look at that final number and think the legislature has wasted a lot of time and money.  While there might be a certain amount of truth in that suggestion (why the House and the Senate each have their own information offices AND partisan information staffs for each party always struck us as an extravagance), the numbers speak of the legislative process.

Sometimes the title of a final version of a bill is an indication of the difficult path legislation follows.  Here’s a pretty extreme example:  CCR#2 SS/SCS/HS/HCS/HBs 3021, 2979, and 3054 with SA1, SA2, SA5, SA6.

Theoretical House Bill 3021 went through a committee hearing.  Other bills had identical wording and also were heard. Several amendments were offered, leading the committee to combine the amendments and the identical bills into a new House Committee Substitute for 3021 and the other two proposals.  During floor debate, several more amendments were added so the sponsor introduced a new substitute on the House floor incorporating all of the amendments to make the bill a cleaner proposal for the Senate to consider.  A similar process happened in the Senate, where a committee combined several committee amendments into a Senate Committee substitute bill that picked up more amendments during debate, leading the floor handler to incorporate the changes into a single clean Senate Substitute that was approved with even more amendments, at least four of the six (actually there had been eight) that were offered being adopted.

The changed bill went back to the House where the sponsor wasn’t sure of the acceptability of the Senate changes so he asked for the formation of a conference committee made up of four members of the House and four members of the Senate to consider the changes and recommend a final version it thought would be acceptable to both chambers. In this case, the first conference committee report faced enough uncertainty that it was sent back for another review and a second report indicated the amended Senate substitute was, indeed, acceptable.  Since the bill originated in the House, it had to be approved there first before the final version was approved by the Senate and sent to the Governor for his consideration.

Not all bills go through that gauntlet but creating the laws that will govern six-plus million people in Missouri every second of every day can be a painstaking process.  Yes, there are times when even more pains need to be taken to get it right, but most of the time the process works.  And yes, sometimes the process works better for some Missourians than for others and, yes, more could be done if less time was spent on fighting over issues that pander to one voting bloc or another.   But it is all part of a process that gives elected humanity equal opportunities to display its worst nature as well as its best. And in the end, voters have a chance to display their worst and best natures and their decisions are reflected in the way the process functions.

In a competition of ideas, ideals, agendas, and ideologies, the gauntlet bills must run is exacting and highly competitive.  We’ve commented from time to time that it is a miracle that anything is accomplished.

Watching that process or being part of that process is an absorbing thing that draws you in and won’t let you go.  And then the gavel falls at 6 p.m. on a Friday evening and the numbers are added up and the pressure goes away and the process has more or less worked again.

When you don’t have to be quiet

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Spent some time at the University of Missouri-Columbia the other day and picked up the school year’s last edition of the student newspaper, The Maneater. A special part of the paper was devoted to the turbulent year on the Columbia campus.  The staff ranked events in various categories including the Top Five Worst of the year.

The Biggest Embarrassment was the Missouri Students Association.  The Biggest Letdown was the performance of the football and basketball teams.  Among the other “worsts” was Biggest Frustration.

It was the Missouri legislature.  The school administration for understandable political reasons can’t say things that students can. This has been a turbulent year for the young men and women on the Columbia campus.  Only a few were involved in the campus disturbances last fall but all of them have to live with the results of what the few did and the political fallout from those weeks.  We thought Maneater staff writer Amos Chen’s appraisal of the Missouri legislature was worth passing along because it comes from one of the thousands of students who were swept up in the politics of the year.  Here’s what he wrote:

Ronald Reagan once said, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” 

Through their frustrating actions over the past year, the Missouri legislature has more than proven Reagan’s famous words true.

In August, former Chancellor R. Bowen Loftin was called to testify before the Senate by Sen. Kurt Schaefer, R-Columbia, about the relationship between University Hospital and Planned Parenthood.  All this, despite the Missouri Attorney General’s Office later finding no evidence of wrongdoing.

Schaefer was back at it again in January when an email from former UM System President Tim Wolfe surfaced where he claimed Schaefer pressured him to deny then-MU associate professor Josh Hawley’s request for a leave of absence to run for Attorney General.  In a revelation that surprised absolutely nobody, Schaefer also happens to be running for that position.

That’s before getting to the “piece de resistance” of the entire affair—Missouri lawmakers response to the Concerned Student 1950 protests against racial discrimination, and former assistant communications professor Melissa Click’s call for “muscle” making national headlines. 

In March, the House Budget Committee became the latest to jump on the “let’s screw over MU” bandwagon, passing a budget slashing $1 million in funds for MU.  The budgetary hearing produced gems such as an amendment by Rep. Rocky Miller, R-Lake Ozark, reducing state funding for MU from $169,305,944 to $1 (not a typo).  The amendment was later withdrawn, not because Miller thought it wouldn’t pass, but because he was afraid it would.  I would write a joke about this but nothing I think of could possibly match the absurdity of this piece of political theater.

The Senate later came to its senses and restored the cuts, but it retained a $1 million decrease to administration to make sure the university knew who the real boss around these parts is. The final draft cut the UM System budget by $3.8 million.

From dubiously motivated witch hunts to politically influenced legislation, the actions of the Missouri legislature over the past year rightfully earns these legislators the title of Biggest Frustration.

We offer this with no endorsement or comment.  Sometimes the voice of someone who didn’t start a fight but whose life is affected by it says something.

Sometimes we wonder at the end of elections and at the end of legislative sessions whether the candidates or the lawmakers gave any thought to how their actions did anything to improve the public attitude toward government.  Amos seems to have given an answer.

A solution in search of a problem

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Or: Whatever happened to early voting?

The legislature has decided to ask voters if they want to make it harder for them to vote.  If voters decide, probably in November, that they want to go through some additional procedures before they’re allowed to cast their ballots, the change will be felt in the 2018 election cycle.

Today, voters show up at the polling places and present their locally-issued voter registration card, sign a document, and get a ballot.  If the change is approved later this year by voters who think they also should prove they are the person listed on their registration card, they’ll have to show some additional identification that satisfies the judges at the polling places they are who they say they are.  Opponents finally got the previously stiff-backed sponsors to build a little flexibility into the proposal. But the basic issue is whether Missourians will support a solution without a problem.

The Secretary of State, the top elections official in Missouri, had estimated the original plan kicked around the General Assembly for the last few years, would disenfranchise as many as 220,000 Missourians.  He, being a Democrat, carried no weight with the legislative majority, being Republican.  Opponents claim the plan will hurt voters who traditionally lean toward Democrats.  Republicans claim the idea is a matter of making our ballots less susceptible to voter fraud.  And they pooh-pooh the Secretary of State’s estimate.

Just how big is the problem this proposal seeks to solve?

How much fraud has there been at polling places in Missouri?

Get out your microscope, folks. It is smaller than the naked eye can perceive.

We’ve consulted the Secretary of State’s election results web page for all state primary and general elections from the 2008 August primary through the November 2014 general election.   We looked at the races in which the greatest number of votes were cast (Total votes decline as one goes down the ballot).  Those races include State Auditor, President, U. S. Senator, and Governor, depending on the year.

Total number of precincts used 2008-2014:  27,931

Total votes cast in highest-drawing races: 11,898,467

Total number of precincts where voter fraud has occurred: 1

Number of Missourians prosecuted for voter fraud: 2

Number of votes in the election in which fraud was prosecuted: 1,342

In a 2010 primary election for a seat in the House of Representatives from Kansas City, two relatives of John Rizzo used fake addresses so they could vote for him.  He won by a single vote. A third candidate got fifteen votes.  His relatives were fined $250 each and were banned from voting in Missouri for the rest of their lives. Rizzo was elected to two more terms in the House and announced last year he would forego his fourth and final House term to run for the Senate.

Two votes out of almost twelve-million have been prosecuted as fraudulent. It takes a lot of zeroes after the decimal point.

But the legislature has taken hours and hours and hours for several sessions trying to get this proposal passed.

And that surely raises questions about motivation.  Doesn’t it?

Those pushing this idea also point to a Heritage Foundation report of seventeen Missouri voter fraud convictions in the last decade (2005-15).  But all seventeen of those convictions stemmed from fraudulent REGISTRATION, not from fraudulent actions at polling places. But true believers in photo-ID don’t want to hear that argument.  Don’t confuse them with facts.

So here’s a new fact that gets to the amount of voter REGISTRATION fraud:

We’ve checked the Secretary of State’s voter registration numbers for 2004-2012 and census numbers for 2014.  The total is 23,929,575 registrations.  Someone who faked a registration in ’04 might logically be prosecuted in 2005 and someone who faked it in 2014 likely would be prosecuted in ’15, so the numbers pretty well parallel the Heritage Foundation study.

Seventeen convictions out of 24-million registrations.

Add up the number of opportunities for voter fraud either at registration or at the polling place and we get eighteen prosecutions about of almost 36,000,000 opportunities.

Our online calculator says that is .000049999999999999996%

We’ll save you the counting time.  Four zeros, a four, fifteen nines and a six.   In those ten years there has been an average of one fraudulent registration or vote out of every 2,000,000 registrations or votes cast.  NOAA, the national weather service, says an average person who lives to be eighty years old has one chance in 12-THOUSAND of getting hit by lightning.

Although the final versions that passed this year began as House bills sponsored by Representatives Justin Alferman and Tony Dugger, the leading voice on this issue in past sessions has been Senator Will Kraus of Lee’s Summit.  And guess what Senator Kraus is running for this year?

Missouri’s top elections position, Secretary of State.

His primary election opponent, Jay Ashcroft, also is a true believer in voter photo ID.

One does not need a very long memory to recall when Secretary of State Matt Blunt, a Republican, and Secretary of State Robin Carnahan, a Democrat, were urging the legislature to pass laws making it easier to vote.  Their early voting proposals did not require people to give a reason for wanting to vote early as is the case now when the voter has to claim he or she will be outside their voting area on election day to cast an absentee ballot.  Early voting eliminated lying and allowed people who might not want to leave their workplace on election day to cast their ballots on some other day.

But easier voting, even with bipartisan support from the state’s highest election officers, was ignored.  The effort, instead, has been on making it harder to vote.

Supporters justify making it harder to vote by saying it takes identification to write checks, get on airplanes, and other things.   They conveniently ignore one important difference.   Voting is a constitutional right.  Writing checks and flying are not.   Many of those who are quick to say that a reading of the U. S. Constitution is all that is needed to set American on the right path again are quite ready in this case to compare a constitutional right to getting an airline ticket.  Do we really think that our Founding Fathers—these advocates also like to cite them—thought voting and (in their times) getting a ticket for a seat in a coach had the same level of importance in the American system of government they were creating?

This issue is going to be on the ballot later this year.  Has anybody else noticed that the last time we might get to vote for President, Governor, U. S. Senator and many other offices without providing more documentation about who we are is the election in which we might vote to forfeit that part of our voting privilege?

And the best the backers of this proposition can do is point to two votes cast out of almost 12-MILLION votes in the last eight state primary and general elections and seventeen cases of REGISTRATION fraud (which is not mentioned in these pieces of legislation) out of about 24-MILLION registrations.

Is our system of a democratic-republic form of government more at risk because of those two votes and seventeen registrations or because of those who claim they want to protect us?

 

Tramping to oblivion

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Here it is at last, the final day of the legislative session.  Before the sun goes down, the roads out of Jefferson City will be filled with cars fleeing the Capitol for the sanity of home and freedom.  By sundown, the record will be writ, partisan appraisals will be offered, and the real campaign season will begin.  For some.

We’ll be interested in the session evaluations, knowing they will be sharply different according to party.  We’ll be interested to see the list of significant bills passed so we can evaluate whether they were for the welfare of all of the people of Missouri or whether this session, in the end, produced a basket of ideology with the main purpose being the retention of power.

For a few dozen lawmakers, the drop of the gavel at 6 p.m. will render them ceremonial figures.  They’ll be back to open their mail every now and then and in September they’ll convene for a few hours for veto override ceremonies.  But their days of writing legislation and advocating or fighting issues are finished. Their time in the cauldron, in the arena, in the daily bath of adrenaline and argument is ended.

Good riddance for some.  A loss to the political system for others.  Term limits means many of these folks will never again be able to do something a lot of them have come to love. Their voters are forever forbidden to keep them in office no matter how exemplary they have been. In fact, many will never return to the Capitol after they clean out their offices later this year.  There won’t be anything for them to do and as time passes there will be nobody who remembers them enough to talk to.

We’ve wondered how often those who have served and who have fought each other or worked closely with each other ever pick up the phone in later years and call a former colleague just to say “hello.”  We’ve wondered if time brings a reflective warmth that even softens old antagonisms into friendships.

We’ve never heard of a legislative alumni gathering.  Maybe there are small ones at funerals.

The lights will be turned off in the House and the Senate tonight and next week the chambers will be dark, quiet, and cool and the Capitol will go to sleep.   Until January, when the building’s heart begins to beat again with new people in office rooms that have been home to those who will be important for their last time today.

It is days like this that remind us of the great sportswriter Grantland Rice who wrote many years ago of those whose day in the arena had passed:

Far off I hear the rolling, roaring cheers.

They come to me from many yesterdays,

From record deeds that cross the fading years,

And light the landscape with their brilliant plays,

Great stars that knew their days in fame’s bright sun.

I hear them tramping to oblivion.

And that’s what many will be doing as dusk falls on Missouri this evening.  Driving home.  Tramping to oblivion.

 

Capitol credits

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If politicians weren’t so self-contradictory, political reporters would have no fun at all.  Saying one thing and doing another, saying different things in different places, taking positions that seem opposite from similar positions provide fodder for those in the press or in the citizenry at large who hope for stability in the political system, particularly stability based on the highest ideals of service to all of the people.  That’s an awfully high bar and probably an unrealistic one but without expecting the highest levels of commitment and service, the alternative can too easily become  the lowest level of results.

The leader of the Missouri Senate, Senator Ron Richard, loves the Capitol.  Even before he became Speaker of the House in 2009, Richard was aware of the building’s deteriorating condition and was looking for a way to restore and maintain the state’s greatest symbol.  We talked during his time as Speaker of his hopes to establish an endowment program, an idea that was worthy but not likely to attract the kind of money that, instead, flows too easily to those who want to hold office in that building.

But what a wonderful thing that would be!   Imagine the endowment that could be established if, say, Rex Sinquefield and the Humphreys family—two entities that throw millions of dollars at candidates every election cycle—would make the same kind of commitment to the Capitol in just one off-year.  It’s not fair to single them out so imagine the endowment that could be created if all of the other special interests and individuals who underwrite campaigns wrote comparable checks to the Capitol endowment fund just once.

But that’s one of the contradictions of our political system.  Restoring and maintaining the building where policy is enacted is always going to be much less important than influencing the people who enact the policies and maintaining that influence.   What value is there in making sure the state’s most powerful symbol of democracy crumbles when money can be better invested in making sure democracy itself, as an institution for the benefit of all, crumbles in the face of protection for the few?

Senator Richard thinks he finally has found a lever that can move his idea for restoring and preserving the State Capitol.  A tax credit program.

About fifty million dollars is being spent fixing some horrible leaks under the south front Capitol stairs.  The water running into basement spaces is causing numerous problems for those who work or store things there.   The money is provided by a bond issue and is therefore limited and has to be paid back out of the general tax collections.  Richard’s plan would provide some ongoing funding without lowering the amount available to pay for state operations.

Richard proposes changes to the present Historic Preservation Tax Credit program that’s important in communities throughout the state.  Some of Richard’s conservative legislative colleagues have a low opinion of them regardless of the value they have to their home towns.  He suggests reducing the historic tax credits by ten million dollars and shifting twenty million dollars into a special fund that could be grown to restore, repair, and maintain the Capitol.

It’s kind of complicated but some of the proceeds from the program would be spent to solicit donations into the Capitol endowment fund.  He thinks his plan would encourage people and trusts and foundations to contribute to the fund, which also would support ongoing needs of the Executive Mansion, the Transportation Department building—which the legislature wants to take over as a Capitol office annex—and, maybe, the Supreme Court Building.

A Senate committee has held a hearing on Richard’s proposal to give it a first public airing.  Richard knows the idea won’t go anywhere this year but he’s gotten it on the table and hopes it can be passed next year.  Some fine-tuning is likely because it seems to raise some concerns in the local historic preservation movement.

But it’s a good start for a proposal to preserve a symbol of the best that Missouri can be.

It’s interesting that Senator Richard wants to raise millions of dollars to preserve and protect the Capitol at the same time he is insisting the Senate spend thousands and thousands of dollars to tear up one of the architectural treasures of the building—the Senate visitors’ gallery—so he can kick the press off of the floor of the Senate where they have sat at a table since the building was brand new, all because of a complaint that grows more petty with the passage of time.

Contradictions.  Reporters love them.  In this case, though, it appears that those who live by the contradiction will suffer by one of them.   Too bad the money earmarked for the effort against legislative reporters couldn’t be invested, instead, in Richard’s more praiseworthy effort to preserve and protect the building—including preserving the Senate visitor’s gallery.

Contempt

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Senator McCaskill’s office sent us a note a few weeks ago reminding us that she and Senator Rob Portman of Ohio would be asking the Senate to start civil contempt proceedings against the website Backpage because it has refused to provide information as part of a committee investigation of sex trafficking.   It has been almost two months since the Senate voted to hold the outfit in contempt and we have received no releases from McCaskill or anybody else indicating anything is being done since the headlines were made in March.

But that’s not where we’re headed with this entry today. Not exactly.

We were struck with the thought—you know how one word can trigger a thought different from the issue being discussed—that a system of government so many people are finding contemptible is, at two levels, showing contempt for the system of which it is a part and at the same time one  body is trying to hold someone else in contempt.  And the public is not blind to it.

The senate that has held the webpage in contempt is the same Senate whose leaders can be accused of showing contempt of the American system of government when it comes to President Obama’s new nominee for the United States Supreme Court.. Closer to home, we suppose, the same could be said of the Missouri Senate whose leadership said weeks ago that it will not consider confirmation of any appointments to the University of Missouri Board Of Curators by Governor Nixon.

In both cases, the Governor and the President have an obligation to make appointments.  One of the roles of the Senate at both the state and national levels is to give its advice and consent to the appointments.  In neither the state law nor federal constitutions is there anything that gives state and national senates power to—or permission to—refuse to consider for confirmation or rejection any nominee the Governor or the President makes until after an upcoming an election.

But there is a “however” factor.

Neither constitution sets any timetable for confirmation so the Senates can delay any hearings until after the appointing officer’s term runs out.  There have been refusals to confirm.  But both standards say the President and the Governor WILL make the appointments and those persons WILL serve—if the Senates consent.  But there is no ticking clock at either level.

In Missouri, we have a law that says a law goes into effect if the governor takes no action on it, either with a signature or a veto.  There is no similar law saying appointments become effective if the Senate takes no action. It might seem fair to some if the “no action” issue cut both ways but don’t expect the Missouri Senate to move toward that kind of balance of powers.

Article II, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution is clear:  “He shall…nominate and, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, judges of the Supreme Court…..”

Missouri law (172.030) is equally clear:  “The board of curators of the University of the State of Missouri shall hereafter consist of nine members, who shall be appointed by the governor, by and with the advice and consent of the senate….”

And 172.050, also referring to Curators: “All vacancies which may exist at or during the meeting of the biennial sessions of the general assembly, caused by death, resignation or removal, shall be filled in like manner as those created by the expiration of official terms…”

The President “shall” appoint justices.  The governor “shall” appoint curators. Nothing in the law, nothing in the Constitution, says a governor or a president is excused from that responsibility because they are x-number of months away from leaving office.

In the case of the Board of Curators, the law says the board “shall” consist of nine members.   Resignations have reduced that number to six.  The Missouri Senate’s refusal to consider confirming new members could be seen, we suppose, as violating state law which implies vacancies “shall” be filled. Again, the loophole is that there’s no defined time for the senate to act on curator nominations.

The refusal by state senators to keep the board at nine curators might seem to violate the oath of office they all raised their hands to take, part of which is: “I do solemnly swear, or affirm, that I will support the Constitution of the United States and of the state of Missouri, and faithfully perform the duties of my office…”

Faithfully performing the duties of office includes giving advice and consent to curators’ appointees.  Consent is not required.  “Advice and consent” IS required with rejection an option.  But lawyers probably could argue that the applicable sections of law do not support refusal to act.

Nothing gives the President, the Governor, or either Senate permission to delay making appointments or giving advice and consent until after an election. But it does not prohibit such things either.  One legal source we have looked at refers to the federal Administrative Procedure Act as requiring “courts to determine whether an agency action is ‘arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law.’”  While the senates are not agencies, they are nonetheless agents of a system of government that is based on a balance of powers.

For that matter, the state law does not prohibit the Senate from decreeing that it will not consider gubernatorial appointments during the entire four or eight years a governor is in office. That’s taking the current situation to an absurd extent.  But absurdity is not impossible in politics today, particularly this year.

There is this factor, though: Once appointments are made by Governor Nixon and President Obama, the advantage in a campaign year might shift to Nixon or Obama—or to their political parties that do not occupy the majority of seats in either state or federal legislative bodies. The issue could become how long delays by the senates can continue before the voting public becomes convinced the senates are playing political games instead of doing an assigned duty, and how damaging such a perception could become to incumbent lawmakers facing the voters.

It would not be surprising if a number of average citizen were caused to see the refusal of the senates to give timely, fair, consideration to gubernatorial or presidential nominations of people in critical government positions as a violation of the principle of balance and falling well within the definition of “arbitrary, capricious (and) an abuse of discretion” or violations of terms of office.

And that brings us back to contempt.

The Pew Research Center last year found that only nineteen percent of the American public “can trust the government always or most of the time.”  The same survey found that 55% of those surveyed felt “ordinary Americans” could do a better job than elected officials of solving national problems. We keep hearing various experts opine that’s why we have Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.

Is it any wonder that Americans (and Missourians, of course, are among them) have so much contempt for those in elective office when those officers show contempt for the system they have pledged to uphold?