Category Archives: legislature

Running government as a business, or—-

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It’s an easy suggestion to make: Government should be run like a business. We first heard this piece of oratory so long ago we have forgotten when and we’re sure it wasn’t original then.  So let’s test the validity of that idea. We’ll test it by reversing it. Suppose you ran your business the way Missouri government is run.

The first thing you would do because it would be popular with your customers is cut prices.  Customers like free stuff and if it can’t be free, it should be priced as lowly as possible.  People will like your store a lot because they will pay as little as possible for the merchandise. The best way to keep your prices low is to pay your employees as little as possible. Many won’t stay very long but that’s okay.  There are always more where they came from.

Of course, your merchandise won’t be of the quality of some of your competitors because you’re holding down the prices and you couldn’t afford better merchandise anyway. Your customers won’t complain about the inferiority of the product until it falls apart on them when they need it the most.  And their complaints will be easy to ignore because most of the others are satisfied with inferiority or mediocrity.

You won’t be able to pay for the new roof your store needs.  The parking lot will develop cracks and potholes you can’t afford to fix.  The place might not be as clean because there’s not enough money for a cleaning crew.  A lot of your business equipment is outdated because you can’t afford new stuff that will speed up payment processes or handle orders. You don’t have the money to train employees to use the new equipment anyway.  Your customers won’t mind the inefficiencies as long as you’re cheap enough.

You think about all of this for a while and you realize you’ll make the money you need to fix all of these problems if you just lower your prices some more, which will produce more customers who will in the long run spend more money.  You also can get by with fewer employees. That will help you become more prosperous and shoppers won’t mind if there are fewer people to wait on them or fewer people who can help them find something or order something.

Yep.  That’s the answer.  Keep prices low. Don’t worry about quality. Don’t bother with retaining employees. People will love you because they don’t have to pay much. Of course, they won’t get much.

Run your business the way government is run. Watch government be run the way you run your business.

Prosperity is just around the corner!

CRT

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A legislative committee has started holding hearings on Critical Race Theory, a 50-year old academic and legal-studies concept that has been weaponized for political advantage in the last few years.  Among the strongest criticism is that it rewrites history, changing the narrative from a nation founded on Christian values to a narrative that makes white people ashamed of their race (even, some critics say, brainwashing kindergartners into being ashamed of being white).

CRT has become so pervasive in our civic discussion that my Sunday School class talked about it a Sunday or two ago.  More accurately, I talked about it to the Sunday School class.

Faith is a personal thing and while I was comfortable discussing it with that class, I am not one who is comfortable publicly waving it about. But I often find myself in these divisive times turning to Paul’s letter to the Galatians (people living in modern Turkey) that admonishes, “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” There are slight differences in the wording depending on the version of the Bible you prefer but the sentiment is the same.

Unfortunately, we live in a world where even many professing Christians of all races still seem to miss Paul’s point. Among its virtues, Critical Race Theory points to the many times when the concept of “you are all one” has been violently meaningless.

As for re-writing history: history needs some rewriting so that it is more history than myth.

To pretend that race has not been a major force in the history of the United States is deception, a willingness to accept myth rather than recognize a historical record that should compel us to be better than we are—regardless of our race. To suggest that it does not still influence attitudes and standards is to disrespect those who have walked a different path than yours for generations.

We should not fear raising the issue of ongoing racism in America.  Although I wish it were not true, it is hard for me to dismiss accusations that there remains a current of it in our country—especially after my experience in discussing removal of Jefferson City’s “Confederate Rock” and listening to an African-American woman who favored its removal read an unsigned letter she received that referred to her thirteen time as a “Nigger” and suggest that she is the kind of woman the Ku Klux Klan was created for.

There, I’ve used the word. I refuse to remove its ugliness by turning it into the linguistic pablum that is “N-word.”  We do no service to ourselves as a people by avoiding the issues behind it and barely beneath society’s surface.

I live in a part of Missouri sometimes referred to as “Little Dixie” because of the high percentage of enslaved people before the Civil War—the 1860 census showing almost ten percent of Missouri’s population in 1860 was enslaved.  Cole County, where I live, was at 10.3% and, perhaps because of the heavy anti-slavery German population, was one of the lowest counties in this region.  Across the river, the census showed almost 26% of the population of Boone County was slaves. Callaway County was at 25. A little ways upstream, 37% of the population of Howard County was slaves. One-third of the population of Saline County was enslaved.  More than one-in-five residents of Cooper County were slaves.

Within my lifetime, I remember the day a black couple moved into an upper-middle class white neighborhood in Columbia and in the newsroom where I worked, we listened to the police monitors for any signs of trouble. There was none.

I was ten feet away from Jefferson City’s leading realtor the night he urged the city council to defeat an ordinance saying people of color could live anywhere in town they could afford to live because of what it would mean for property values.

I have seen history and I have read historical myth—-do any of you remember from your elementary or even high school history lessons when slavery was ever discussed except in the context of the Civil War?

Here’s an interesting little piece of information that underlines the history-as-myth proposition:

Massachusetts—where the righteous Pilgrims and Puritans supposedly founded a nation based on Christian values and religious freedom (a myth of its own)—became the first British colony to legalize slavery, in 1641. Did anybody ever hear that in the Pilgrim stories we were taught as children?  Or even the stories we relate each Thanksgiving as adults?

Missouri law has long held that it is a crime “to take any woman unlawfully against her will and by force, menace or duress, compel her to…be defiled.”  Our present statutes use different language but that’s the way the law was in 1855 when a Callaway County slave named Celia, purchased by farmer Robert Newsom at age 14 was raped by Newsom on the way to his home. She had three children, at least one by Newsom, When she was 19 or 20, she killed Newsom in self-defense when he tried to rape her again.  She was hanged because the law against defilement of an unwilling woman did not apply to slaves.

Along the way we might have heard something about the Dred Scott Case but we’ve forgotten that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in that case that slaves—as well as free persons of color—could never be U.S. citizens.

Is it useful to know that the Missouri House of Representatives was completely white for a century before Walthall Moore of St. Louis became the first African-American member of our legislature?  Or that, in 1939, the University of Missouri—under a Missouri Supreme Court order to admit Lloyd Gaines, an African-American, to its law school in Columbia used an “out” in the order to establish the Lincoln University law school in St. Louis for black students?

Is it useful to know that no black person served as the foreman of a Missouri jury until 1945? Or that we didn’t have a state Human Rights Commission until 1957 (and, unfortunately, still have to have it today)? Or that we did not have a black member of the Missouri Senate until 1960? Or that there were no black Highway Patrol troopers until 1965?  That we didn’t send an African-American to Congress until 1968?  Or we didn’t have any person of color on our State Supreme Court until 1995?

Or that Missouri did not elect a black woman to Congress until LAST YEAR?

And that, to this day, outstate Missouri is generally not a place where a person of color stands much of a chance of serving in the Missouri General Assembly?

There is absolutely nothing wrong with recognizing these seldom-mentioned parts of our past or of our contemporary lives. There is absolutely nothing wrong with learning, at whatever age, what our society has been and, knowing that, understanding what our society still can be.

And, to the discomfort of many who are comfortable with the status quo, what it eventually WILL be.

Critical Race Theory makes a lot of people uncomfortable because it challenges us to understand that we live in a complex human society of colliding political, legal, and social interests that are affected by long-standing and often subtle social and institutional norms.

History, not myth, recognizes that we have painfully slowly grown more equal despite ongoing reluctance to do so and demographics and other studies of our evolving society that indicate the trend will continue. Some feel threatened by that slow growth and have taken to flame-throwing attacks that CRT (as former Vice-President Pence put it recently) is “a state-sanctioned racism, pure and simple.”

“America is not a racist country. America is the most just, noble and inclusive nation ever to exist on the face of the earth,” he said.

He needs to read more history and believe less myth.

What is happening here?  This largely academic concept has been around for decades. Why is it suddenly “state sanctioned racism?”

The answer is obvious.  Donald Trump discovered that this largely-academic topic has become something he can exploit for his personal political purposes and there are those who think their political futures or their grasp on political power can be enhanced by agreeing with his ongoing mendacity and his fear-stoking rhetoric.

How deep is racism in our country today?  I can’t quantify it but I know from watching and listening that we have some distance to go before we are the “most just, noble and inclusive nation” that Pence prematurely proclaims. I do not fear CRT’s reminders that we can be better than we are.

I also lack the perspective of being part of another culture—black, brown, yellow, or red—and comparing my culture’s history to my perceptions of the dominant culture.  I do not descend from slaves and sharecroppers, migrant field hands, people imprisoned during wartime because of their national origin, or people living on reservations—but I have been to those places and I have spoken with those only a generation or two or three removed from the times people were herded into camps because of their Asian heritage or whose not-distant ancestors were taken from their Native families to be “Americanized” at schools..

So I do not resent nor do I fear Critical Race Theory because it demands examination of parts of our history that have been glossed over in the story of our nation as a “shining city on a hill,” as President Reagan called us in misquoting Puritan minister John Winthrop. His 1630 sermon aboard the Arbella before it landed at Massachusetts Bay, although delivered in a different time and for a different purpose, gives us a recipe for national greatness that starkly differs fromfrom what is sometimes heard in criticism of CRT:

“…The only way to…provide for our posterity, is to follow the counsel of Micah, to do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God. For this end, we must be knit together, in this work, as one man. We must entertain each other in brotherly affection. We must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of others’ necessities. We must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality. We must delight in each other; make others’ conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the same body. So shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. The Lord will be our God, and delight to dwell among us, as His own people, and will command a blessing upon us in all our ways, so that we shall see much more of His wisdom, power, goodness and truth, than formerly we have been acquainted with…For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world.”

If we want to be the “city on a hill,” it is clear that divisiveness perpetuated by self-serving narrow attitudes and political rhetoric, is not the face we claim is an example to the world.  Winthrop’s sermon delivered 391 years ago tells us what we yet need to be.

If we are honest, we must not fear confronting our past and dealing with the lamentable vestiges of it that remain. CRT should not be seen as a sudden contemporary push to “shame” the white race.  To the contrary, it should be seen seen as a fifty-year-old challenge to be a better people—of all races—than we have been.

Much of the focus on CRT is on white-black relationships. But be aware that it is much more than that. There are branches to examine structural discrimination against Latinos, Jews, women, the disabled, Native Americans, and white immigrants.

There is no limit to the study of our inequalities, for knowing our inequalities gives us the understanding we need to end them. To paraphrase Franklin D. Roosevelt in his 1933 inaugural address, “The only thing we have to fear is ourselves.”   What he said after the actual phrase, however, is valid on this issue—his definition of fear as “nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance,” after which he noted, “In every dark hour of our national life, a leadership of frankness and of vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. And I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.”

That’s a hope that will stand us in good stead in a time when some see currying distrust and division as the key to their success, whatever the price might be to the nation.

It is better to remember:

We must delight in each other; make others’ conditions our own; rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the same body. So shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.

Or as the Gospel tells us: “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

Given a choice of following the words of Paul or believing the words of Pence, I shall always take Paul.

 

Our contentious era

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(Twenty years ago or more, when party control of the Missouri legislature changed, one of the leaders of the new minority theorized that his party could reclaim its former position if it just made the new majority look bad enough.  Pretty obviously, that was a wrong-headed idea.  But it pervades the thinking of our state and national politics today worse than ever and a public tired of the many who would rather fight than to work for the people’s best interests might utter, as Shakespeare’s Mercutio did, “A plague on both your houses.”   Dr. Frank Crane could have been speaking of our contentious times a century ago when he wrote about—-)

THE ETHICS OF CONTROVERSY

Everything is disputable. I am willing to entertain arguments in support of any proposition whatsoever.

If you want to defend theft, mayhem, adultery, or murder, state your case, bring on your reasons; for in endeavoring to prove an indefensible thing you discover for yourself how foolish is your thesis.

But it is essential to any controversy, if it is to be of any use, first, that the issue be clearly understood by both sides.

Most contentions amount merely to a difference of definition. Agree, therefore, exactly upon what it is you are discussing. If possible, set down your statements in writing.

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Most argument is a wandering from the subject, a confusion of the question, an increasing divergence from the point. Stick to the matter in hand.

When your adversary brings in subjects not relevant, do not attempt to answer them. Ignore them, lest you both go astray and drift into empty vituperation.

For instance, President Wilson, in the “Lusitania” incident, called Germany’s attention to the fact that her submarines had destroyed a merchant ship upon the high seas, the whole point being that this had been done without challenge or search and without giving non-combatant citizens of a neutral country a chance for their lives. Germany’s reply discussed points that had no bearing upon this issue, such as various acts of England. Mr. Wilson, in his reply, wisely refused to discuss these irrelevant 128things, an example of intelligent controversy.

Keep cool. The worse your case, the louder your voice.

Be courteous. Avoid epithets. Do not use language calculated to anger or offend your opponent. Such terms weaken the strength of your position.

A controversy is a conflict of reasons, not of passions. The more heat the less sense.

Keep down your ego. Do not boast. Do not emphasize what you think, what you believe, and what you feel; but try to put forth such statements as will induce your opponent to think, believe, and feel rationally.

Wait. Give your adversary all the time he wants to vent his views. Let him talk himself out. Wait your turn, and begin only when he is through.

Agree with him as far as you can. Give 129due weight, and a little more, to his opinions. It was the art of Socrates, the greatest of controversialists, to let a man run the length of his rope, that is, to talk until he had himself seen the absurdity of his contention.

Most men argue simply to air their convictions. Give them room. Often when they have fully exhausted their notions they will come gently back to where you want them. They are best convinced when they convince themselves.

Avoid tricks, catches, and the like. Do not take advantage of your opponent’s slip of the tongue. Let him have the impression that you are treating him fairly.

Do not get into any discussion unless you can make it a sincere effort to discover the truth, and not to overcome, out-talk, or humiliate your opponent.

Do not discuss at all with one who has his 130mind made up beforehand. It is usually profitless to argue upon religion, because as a rule men’s opinions here are reached not by reason but by feeling or by custom. Nothing is more interesting and profitable, however, than to discuss religion with an open-minded person, yet such a one is a very rare bird.

If you meet a man full of egotism or prejudices, do not argue with him. Let him have his say, agree with him as you can, and for the rest—smile.

Controversy may be made a most friendly and helpful exercise, if it be undertaken by two well-tempered and courteous minds.

Vain contention, on the contrary, is of no use except to deepen enmity.

Controversy is a game for strong minds; contention is a game for the weak and undisciplined.

 

To a friend thinking of public office;

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It’s been a while since we’ve talked about this topic with you.  Or perhaps we never have. This note is addressed to no one in particular in this season of domino-candidacies triggered by the pending retirement of Senator Roy Blunt.

You’ve thought about running for public office someday.  Your business has been successful enough that you can step away from the fulltime obligations. You are motivated to help other people.  You see problems that you think you can help solve.  You’ve been discussed by people in the political party with which you seem to be identified.

Your member of Congress has decided not to seek re-election next year, perhaps to run for Blunt’s seat in the U.S. Senate. Perhaps your state representative or state senator has decided to run for Congress. This is the perfect time to become a member of the U. S. House of Representatives and you have the name recognition and would have party identification on your side to compete, too.  And once you’re in the House, there might be doors to greater opportunities.

If you don’t go now, you’ll have to challenge the new incumbent or wait several years for that person to step aside.

You will be courted, cajoled, urged, and begged to get into a race.  But it won’t be because of what you might bring to the House; it’s because you’re well-known, can attract campaign donations, can pass the litmus test(s) of the party.  Your ideas are secondary.

Be wary of becoming a figurehead, and an empty one, because your party thinks your name is all it needs in its search for power.  Consider if the party’s quest for power is more important than your desire for service.  If service is secondary, have the integrity to say, “No.”

And what are your ideas?  Are they yours or are they ideas—-and you are intelligent enough to know the ones that are flawed and sometimes dishonest ideas—advocated by a figure who seems to have—or claims to have—life or death power over potential candidates?

Do you really know the issues you will face or are you just willing to go with the party flow?

Frankly, we don’t need people like you if that’s the kind of candidate and Congress-person you will be.

What we need in these troubled times is candidates who know themselves, who trust themselves, and who have the courage to BE themselves in working through the problems of our state and nation.  Cookie-cutter candidates incapable of seeing beyond party orthodoxy, dictates, and dogma cannot be servants to the public—the general public rather than the narrower public that you hope will cast the most votes for you.

Are you ready to think your own thoughts? Have you studied issues from a variety of viewpoints so you understand that answers to major problems are seldom simple because problems affect people and people come in more varieties than you can count?  Will you have backbone enough to reject the narrow, the prejudicial, the inhumane solutions you will be asked by party and well-oiled interests to support.

Remember you are not alone if you undertake this candidacy.  Remember your family because your family comes with you, spiritually if not in person.  Remember that anything you stand for, anything you say, anything you do can bring questions to your school-age children from classmates, or comments to your spouse from some stranger standing in line at a check-out counter.

What makes you think you can go from private citizen to Congress is one big leap?  Or from private citizen to the state legislature in one smaller leap?

What do you know about representing large numbers of people, each person with his or her own morals, ethics, social and economic needs, hopes, dreams, and fears?  What do you know about high-stakes discussions with others that result in policies you and all of those other people will have to follow?  How can you interact with them, take their pulse, act in their best interests if you’ve never held a public position of any kind?

I’m not saying, ‘Stay out of it.”  But I am saying, “Know what your responsibilities will be and know to whom you REALLY are responsible and respect them.  There will be dozens, maybe hundreds of people between you and your constituents if you are elected.  How prepared are you to deal with those in-between people while keeping in mind the people at home?”

What do you really know about the Constitution?  If you think reading it and doing what it says is the answer to the nation’s problems, you are woefully ignorant.  If you think the Bill of Rights is absolute, you don’t know your own rights.

Study. Study. Study.  Read and talk to people outside your partisan circle.  You are allowed to agree with them.  Not on everything, but it’s not a sin (despite the apparent political climate) to understand the other side and see that sometimes it has a better ideas.

Know history.  Not just the cleansed history this or that segment finds most beneficial to itself.  Understand that our history has warts.  Recognize them but do not tolerate them no matter how they are disguised. Think of George Santayana’s comment, “We respect the past; it was all that was humanly possible.” But that past might not be “humanly possible” or “humanly human” today. You will not erase the past by correcting its flaws that remain with us. Your public service must be focused on a future that abandons those flaws.

Congress?   The Missouri General Assembly?  The U. S. Senate?  Give serious thought to whether it’s right for you, your neighbors, and your family to go from zero to 100 mph all at once.

Maybe at your age you don’t think you can afford to wait. But there is virtue in patience and in learning.  There is a reason many of those in the offices being dangled in front of you started as members of a city council, a school board, a county commission.  They learned whether they liked to campaign.  They learned how to relate to constituents not just during the campaign but later while service those constituents in elective office.  They learned how to support and oppose ideas on their merits, how to argue with an opponent today who they need as an ally tomorrow, how to support something that is for a greater good rather than carry out the wishes of their particular constituency.  They felt the pressures of those who expected favorable votes, sometimes on unfavorable issues. They learned that personal community visibility has nothing to do with the gritty business of establishing broad community policy.

For some, the city council is satisfaction enough. For others, it just whets their desire to greater service—because they have learned how a system can work and how to make it work well.

If you have a young family, think of local office before you think of something higher.  You’ll learn politics and public service and you’ll spend you nights with your family in your own home. As you grow in understanding how things work, your family will grow in understanding them too, and will grow in understanding how your public service affects their daily lives.

Jump into the shark tank if you wish. Just don’t kid yourself or let others flatter you into thinking the jump is easy or can be painless.

Perhaps you might refresh your memory with the first eight verses of the Bible’s book of Ecclesiastes, one of the Old Testament’s “Wisdom Books,” which it says, in part:

For everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven… 6 a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; 7 a time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak…

Be wise in making your decision.  Better yet, should you win, be wise in your actions—

—-for wisdom, now so profoundly lacking in our national dialogue, is critical to our future.

 

The Forty-Something State, Again, Still

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Let’s have a show of hands.

How many of you, when you think of people who have had the most influence on your lives put at least one teacher in your top ten?   I have at least three.

A lot of people in a lot of roles in our society do not deserve our praise; they deserve our awe.  As schools begin classes in whatever form, teachers join first responders of all stripes and health and mental health workers of all kinds, public safety employees, and men and women in uniform who “provide for the common defense” on the platform of heroes.

When it comes to recognizing all of these folks at the most basic level, however, we talk a good game but we don’t play a good game. We saw a recent survey by Business Insider that should bother all of us.  A lot.

Since then we’ve seen a report from the state auditor that buttresses what BI told us.

Business Insider is a German-owned website that focuses on business and economic issues.

The folks at BI have looked at figures from the U. S. Department of Education and the census bureau for the school year 2018-19, the most recent year for which data is available. It finds the average Missouri teacher was paid $50,064 that year.

The national average was $61,730.

Missouri ranked 44th.  The lowest-ranking went to Mississippi, which paid its teachers $45,574. West Virginia is 49th at $47,681.

The only thing that keeps Missouri from being West Virginia in the rankings is that our average teacher salary is a whole $46 a week more than the teachers there.

$46.

What’s worse is that when our average teacher salary is measured against inflation, our teachers have lost more than six percent of their purchasing power because of inflation in the last twenty years.

This isn’t news to our much-praised but barely-raised teachers.   But it should be disturbing to those who expect so much of them.

Spare me the excuse that you can’t solve a problem by throwing money at it.  The problem is the money. We need to throw $11,000 a year at our teachers just to get them to the national average.

This is a matter of recognizing the important role people play in building or maintaining our society. And in times like these when we are asking—and when some are DEMANDING—that these good people face the possibility that they are stepping into harm’s way every day they open their classroom door, recognizing how far below the national average they are in pay and doing nothing about it is demeaning.

Then when their school district doesn’t have enough money to provide their classrooms with enough basic things such as paper and pencils, we expect them to guy their own.

Now we have a virus threatening their well-being and the well-being of their students that has led to terrible cuts in state funding for education in this fiscal year. Legislation is being introduced in the General Assembly this year that will undermine state support for our schools and our teachers even more.

What is an appropriate salary for our teachers?  Don’t look to this otherwise all-knowing oracle for an answer.  We had two children in our house for about eighteen years. We can’t imagine having twenty or thirty children in one room for six or eight hours every day of the week—children who bring multitudinous health and personal issues with them from home.

We pat our hometown public servants on the head and tell them they’re doing good.  But we don’t appreciate them enough to pay them salaries that at least keeps up with inflation.

Such is the lot for anyone who sees public service—teachers, police and firemen, healthcare workers, sewage plant operators, government employees—you name it.  “What’s in it for them?” you might ask.  If you have to ask you’ll never understand the answer.

Sometimes being a low-tax state is nothing to brag about.

If you want to see how the states stack up in the teacher salary study, go to:

https://www.businessinsider.com/teacher-salary-in-every-state-2018-4#38-indiana-14

A month or so ago, State Auditor Nicole Galloway announced a study by her staff confirmed Missouri’s abysmal standing in education funding. She confirms Missouri ranks 49th in state support of elementary and secondary education. The report comes just two years after the auditor’s staff found more than two-thirds of local school districts have put increased financial burdens on local taxpayers in the last decade because the state (i.e., the governors and legislatures) budget for education has not kept pace with education’s costs.

We’ve cited before one of the favorite jokes of long-dead comedian Myron Cohen about the man who found a naked man in his wife’s closet one day and asked him, “What are you doing in there?’  And the man said, “Well, everybody has to be somewhere.”

Missouri is somewhere when it comes to funding for education, one of the things that is often spoken of as a key to the state’s economic health.  But Misouri’s “somewhere” in this case, as in so many others, is nothing to be proud of.

Tell the truth, pay a fine

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We never say, “Well, I’ve seen it all now” because there’s always somebody in the wings just waiting with something more outrageous than what we’ve seen.

And one of the latest in an increasingly growing number of outrageous characters in our political system is this bird:

Michigan State Representative Matt Maddock has introduced a bill requiring all of those who check politicians’ statements for truthfulness to register with the state and file proof of a $1,000,000 fidelity bond.  The Detroit News reports fact checkers who don’t register could be fined $1,000 per day they are not registered. The bill also says an “affected person” could file a civil action claiming the bond for “any wrongful conduct that is a violation of the laws of the state.”  Maddock says a judge could order the bond forfeited “for demonstrable harm” stemming from something the fact-checker wrote and said.

The Washington Post says Maddock, a Republican, is married to the co-chair of the Michigan Republican Party.

Maddock was one of those last year who tried to impeach Governor Gretchen Whitmer because of her restrictions intended to control the coronavirus.  He joined a federal lawsuit in December challenging President Biden’s election.

Even more outlandish is that he has eight co-sponsors.

Maddock seems to resent people such as CNN’s Daniel Dale and organizations such as Politifact, Factcheck.org, Snopes, NPR Fact-Check, and the Washington Post and its famed system of awarding Pinocchios to those telling who have a problem with the truth.

Dale told colleagues Brianna Keilar and John Berman that Maddock is “scoring points with the conservative base by going after the media.”   He said it also shows “the growing disrespect for the principle of a free press, for the First Amendment, throughout certain segments of the Republican party, not just the base but elected officials.”

We note that fact-checkers have pounced on some of the things President Biden has said although his record for mendacity is miniscule compared to that of his predecessor.

The scary thing about Maddock is that there is a segment of the population that is cheering him on.  Truth be damned.  The public has no right to know when someone in government lies.

While Maddock wants to target people such as Dale and others, his legislation could apply to every reporter for every news organization because it’s the job of every reporter to challenge lies and misstatements.  People such as Maddock don’t want their “alternate facts” exposed for what they are.

Thank God for the First Amendment.  Maddock and his ilk prefer to ignore it; we won’t hazard a guess whether they’d like to cancel it.

In times like these, when truth is so blatantly ignored by those who seek power and control over our freedoms, when those who speak the truth are punished by their own political party that seems afraid to challenge its greatest liar, fact-checkers are ever more crucial.

And legislation such as that proposed by Maddock should be seen as a threat to the freedoms of all of us. His kind cannot prevail.

 

Legacy

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It’s all down to these last three days.

The human business of writing laws is about done for this year, at least in a regular legislative session.  Four months ago these ladies and gentlemen (at least in the house) and senators (in the senate everybody is a senator, as the ages-old saying goes; there are no ladies and gentlemen),  trouped to chilly, gray Jefferson City, many of them fresh off their first election to the most important office they’d ever been chosen to hold and some back for the second half of a term of the highest office they had ever held. Or ever would.

Now, probably tired and long-shorn of the freshness of January, they look at 6 p.m. Friday, some with wishes they could have done more and some glad that the legislature did not do more.  The record of this session by and large has been compiled.

A key question that should occur to all who have sat at their desks in those great chambers as they look back on what the record of this General Assembly will be is, “Did we defend and improve the welfare of the people of Missouri?”  For that is the main job of government.

There will be lists of bills compiled and circulated, the wording coldly descriptive.  But behind the unemotional language, how are the people better off for all the words spoken, all the words written and all the words re-written?

Each lawmaker will have his or her answer to the question that best suits their purpose and their self-image.

One of the shortcomings of our Capitol is that it has large composite photographs of members of the House and Senate for each legislative session.  But there are no accompanying signs that tell passersby what issues those people discussed, fought over, passed and rejected. Each session has a legacy but anyone pausing to look at the forgotten faces of past sessions will never know it.

In some cases, it’s best that those pictures are without written context.  Would the results of any session be different if lawmakers knew there would be a sign next to their pictures for generations to come detailing what they did—or didn’t do—or refused to do—for the people?

Even without a sign, what has happened this year that these folks will be proud to tell their grandchildren about?  Or proud to have mentioned in the last newspaper article that will ever be written about them?

The final words of the legacy of the 2021 session will be written in these last three days.

 

 

An Untenable Position

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Missouri Gaming Commission Chairman Mike Leara was no doubt relieved by last week’s Missouri Senate defeat of an omnibus gambling expansion bill.

The bill would have saddled the cash-poor commission with even more things to regulate.

Senator Denny Hoskins’ bill would have allowed slot machines at truck stops and veterans and fraternal organizations (there is a big disagreement whether video lottery terminals are slot machines that we are not going to get into). It also would have legalized betting on sports in casinos.

The gaming commission is largely funded by admission fees paid by casinos.  One-half of the admission fees go to the commission and the other half stays with the thirteen host, or home-dock, cities. The bill did not address the problems caused by our long-outdated admission fee law.

The gaming commission had to cut more than two-dozen employees last year because the pandemic forced closure of our casinos for several weeks and admissions understandably lagged for the remaining months of the fiscal year.  The commission also reduced funding for the Access Missouri scholarship program administered by the commission by twenty percent.

The commission’s position has been further weakened by an almost decade-long thirty percent decline in   casino attendance, a drop from 54.3 million admissions in fiscal 2010-11 to 37.5-million in FY 2018-19, the last non-pandemic year. The pandemic year that ended last June 30 saw another drop of about ten million admissions, leading to the commission layoffs and reduction in the scholarship program. Admissions so far this year indicate another weak year for commission and home dock city income from casino patronage.

Pardon us while we get into some mathematics here:

The admission fee was set at two-dollars per person in 1993.

The commission, therefore, has been dealing for some time not only with declining income because of declining attendance but with declining value of the money it has collected in admission fees. Almost thirty years of inflation have reduced the purchasing power of fee income by about forty-five percent.

Those circumstances left the Missouri Gaming Commission with significantly reduced resources to regulate the casino industry, producing layoffs and taving Chairman Leara justifiably concerned about how well the commisison could regulate an entirely new form of gambling as well as regulate a large number of slot machines in veterans and fraternal organizations throughout the state.

The bill defeated by the Senate provided no protection against continued funding declines.

While the bill might have been seen by Leara as three lemons, it might be viewed somewhat differently by Missouri’s educators.

Other sports wagering bills in the last three years sought to tax sports wagering adjusted gross receipts at six to nine percent, far less than 21% rate on all other forms of gambling.  The effect of those proposals would have been to lower the state’s commitment of gambling funds to public education by tens of millions of dollars yearly. None of the amendments proposed during floor debate sought to change the Hoskins bill’s provision taxing sports wagering proceeds in the same way all other forms of gaming are taxed, a good first step in making sure next year’s sports wagering legislation protects other state interests as well rather than undermining them.

The Missouri Gaming Commission, faced with the likely return of this legislation in the next session in some form, would do well to evaluate its present financial situation that is significantly worsened by outdated gaming laws and suggest ways the legislature can protect the ability of the commission to do its job by bringing laws adopted in the last decade of the Twentieth Century into the third decade of the Twenty-first. Sports wagering legislation would be a solid vehicle to accomplish that.

See you Thursday night?

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Our political divisions have not always been as bad as they are.  They will be better again.

The Missouri Humanities Council will be holding a webinar at 7 p.m. Thursday called Show Me Statesmanship. The council invited me a few months ago to be part of it. If  you want to watch, sign up at the council’s web page.

Clearly, today’s political dialogue is more noted for its antagonism than for its comity. While many observers focus on the ugliness of our dialogue, this program focuses on times when opponents were not enemies, when differences need not to have been destructive, when personal differences did not preclude personal interaction.

The council asked some former Senators to be part of the program too: former President Pro Tem Charlie Shields, Jeff Smith, Scott Rupp, Jolie Justus, and Rita Heard Days. Several other senators were part of the discussion although they didn’t have speaking roles: Bob Dixon, Kevin Engler, and the late Wayne Goode and John T. Russell.

Statesmanship is not easy to achieve as an individual nor is consensus easy to achieve within groups. This program focuses on those times when seeming political opposites did join together to enact good public policy on significant issues. It concludes that those things could happen again, no matter how toxic we might consider our political environment to be today.

It was good to hear and tell those stories and I think all of us who took part in this program look forward to a time when these things can happen again more frequently.

The thought-provoking video runs about 35 minutes.  The producers have asked me to field questions and comments for the rest of the hour.  It’s a nice compliment although I am a little nervous about being some kind of Oracle.

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If It Ain’t Broke—the other view

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As we noted in last Wednesday’s entry, there is a “comments” box at the end of each one that for those who agree or differ with what is said. This is the first time we have published comments as a stand-alone entry.  But the issue of elections and voting is so central to our system of government that when the sponsor of the bill we questioned called last week with concerns about some of the things we had written, we decided that the comment, or response, should get more than space in the “comment” box that, having been entered after the original piece was published, would not get the attention the issue deserves to have.

Representative Peggy McGaugh’s background on election issues is considerable. She worked for 32 years in the Carroll County Clerk’s office, almost 24 of those years (six four-year terms) as the County Clerk.  She is a past-president of the Missouri Association of Counties and a former member of the Secretary of State’s Voter Integrity Task Force.

In response to your “If it ain’t broke” blog, find below a few answers from my view as one of the sponsors of the consolidated election bill going through the General Assembly this year.

This bill is a culmination of bills passed out of the House Elections committee with the involvement of the Mo Secretary of State’s office and the Missouri Association of County Clerk’s/ Election Authorities (MACCEA)  who do Resolutions each year for proposed changes to improve the law and better the process for Missourians.

*limiting changes to six months before an election would prevent nefarious or bad actors from pushing a specific narrative to change the outcome of an election.

 

*the ability to select election judges and poll watchers from outside of the boundaries of a jurisdiction was a request from MACCEA who have difficulty filling the positions in areas where one party dominates another when following Chapter 115 of equal representation of parties at the precinct.

 

*the direct recording electronic devices (DREs) are the electronic equipment being phased out in the bill.  The three counties that currently use them will move to a system that will include some type of paper ballot hand marked by the voter and counted by an electronic tabulator as you described.

 

*absentee voting by mail or in person will still occur six weeks out from any election using the same excuses as in the past.  This bill allows a registered voter to appear in the election authority’s office three weeks out from any election, apply for and receive their ballot without using an excuse and then thread the ballot through tabulator. This assures them that their ballot was received and counted without having to fib to get the convenience. 

 

*ballots will be considered cast when received in the election authority office if postmarked on or before election day and the drop boxes will be swept and gathered for counting up until the close of the polls on election day.

Thank you for bringing the merits of this election bill to your readers.

Keeping Missouri as a model of free, fair and transparent elections is our goal in the General Assembly.

I look forward to answering any other questions you might have.

Representative Peggy McGaugh

Proudly representing Ray, Carroll and Chariton Counties   

    

We appreciate Rep. McGaugh’s thoughts. Her page on the House of Representatives website contains contact information should anyone want to send her an email.  If you do, please follow the same guidelines you follow them when writing to us—be kind, be courteous, be respectful.

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