Category Archives: people

King Lear and the Convicted Felon

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A Shakespearian tragedy, some are calling the Trump conviction, not noting the irony of associating someone such as our former president with the talents of a great author about whom he likely has never read, at least with any understanding or appreciation.

One definition of a literary tragedy is a work in which the main character has “a tragic flaw, moral weakness, or inability to cope with unfavorable circumstances.”

That pretty well matches the main character of the drama we are witnessing.   Unfortunately, it also describes many of his acolytes who by their support of him are becoming characters like him.

Which of Shakespeare’s 17th Century tragic characters most resemble the convicted felon/tar baby that many political hopefuls are eager to get stuck to with increased firmness—an old man who rewards those most loyal to him and in doing so is taught the hard way that rewarding loyalty has its penalties?

King Lear is the story of a old man who wants to pass on his estate to the one of his three daughters who loves him best. Two daughters tolerate him at best but flatter him to win his favor. The third daughter, the one he actually loves the most, thinks he knows the feeling is mutual and therefore doesn’t butter him up as her two sisters do.  He vainly falls for the adulation of the two, cuts out the one he loves the most, and gives his estate to the manipulative sisters. He alternates staying with the two winners who treat him badly. As he grows more addled, he is left a vagrant.  Too late he realizes his mistake in favoring the two manipulative sisters but he cannot correct it because his beloved youngest daughter dies.

One of those who stays loyal to Lear is the Earl of Gloucester, who muses in a late section of the play, “’Tis the times’ plague when mad men lead the blind.”

Writer Lawrence Noel interprets the line this way:

The time’s plague refers to it being a problem of the time or era. Referring to it as a plague suggests that it spreads widely and quickly. We might even think of it as being contagious.

Blind people relied on others for guidance, especially in unfamiliar territory. Madmen are insane and cannot distinguish between reality and fantasy.

Putting those elements together suggests that the audience is being told that one of the problems of the time is that those who must trust others to provide them with safe passage in the world are being led by those who do not see the world clearly or in its own state of reality, even for themselves.

As an excerpt, it reflects an attitude about the nature of politics that resonates with modern readers and playgoers in that faith in the clarity of our political leaders’ vision of the world has suffered some setbacks of late. They may assure the common people that we are blind to the realities which only they can see and so we must accept their leadership if we want to go anywhere new. If the leader’s visions are distorted or unhealthy, we are likely to suffer for them.

“When mad men lead the blind.”  The line is sometimes misquoted but that’s what Shakespeare wrote.

Writer and playwright Charlotte Ahlin, who was raised by two Shakespearean actors, has written, “His plays are surprisingly (and sometimes upsettingly) still relevant to our daily lives.” Some of the reactions to the hush money verdict verify her contention.

Many of our political leaders or political leader-wannabes are (in some cases) disappointing us in accusing the Biden justice system of persecuting our former president strictly for partisan political purposes and encouraging the public to ignore that the supposedly weaponized Justice Department is prosecuting two members of Biden’s party—Senator Bob Menendez and Congressman Henry Cuellar, AND that a holdover Trump appointee in the Justice Department is prosecuting Presidential Son Hunter Biden.

The hypocrisy—-

The depth of the betrayal of their integrity—

Their lack of political courage—-

Their disregard for the title of “public servant” that they have sacrificed in pursuit of power—

are appalling.

The damage they are doing to public confidence in one of the most important institutions that define the United States as an example of a republican democracy—a trial by a jury of one’s peers—seems to mean nothing to them.  They are willing to become hostages to the political whims of a man of a kind they likely would not want their daughters to marry. They kowtow to a king who demands to be flattered.

They are gladly capitalizing on leading the blind—the people who don’t know and don’t want to think—in a concerted effort to let our former president hold on to power regardless of the damage he has openly announced he will do.

Listen again to what many of them said about him after January 6.

Listen again to what many of them said about him in their presidential primary campaigns, brief though they were.

Listen to what he has said about them or about members of their families.

Look at the list of those who he promised in 2016 to hire (only “the best people”) for his administration and count the number who have faced criminal charges/financial ruin or jail sentences for their loyalty—or who have written books exposing his machinations.

No president in all of American history has had so many books by his once-closest associates written about his personal and politica l failings.

And wonder why those who are now attacking our legal system as weaponized and corrupt feel they have to read from the script (look for words such as “witch hunt” or “banana republic”) he peddles on social media or during obsequious interviews.

And then, ask yourself this:

Have you ever served on a jury or do you know anyone who has?

This bunch is suggesting the people such as you and your friends, who assumed the responsibility as jurors in his recent trial, somehow connived with the Justice Department to politically persecute this man who has openly claimed to be above the law. Anyone who has been on a jury, or who has been called for consideration to be on a jury, should be insulted by what these bed partners of the now-convicted felon are saying.

If Donald Trump was treated unfairly in his trial, it was the fault of his attorneys and, perhaps himself; there are a lot of people who say the lawyers crafted their defense of him at least partly because of his demands.

He had his chance to claim in court what he loves to claim outside of the court. As he has in the past, he said at the start of the trial that he would love to testify.  But in the end, he chickened out. Again.  He could have told his side of the story but, as he has done in the past, he did not.

—-Because he would have had to take an oath to tell the truth and he is incapable of doing so.

His lawyers helped pick the jury. To refresh your memory, here’s the kind of people they were, thanks to a compilation by NBC News.

Juror 1: A man who lives in West Harlem and works in sales. He is married, likes to do “anything outdoorsy,” and gets news from The New York Times, Fox News and MSNBC.

Juror 2: A man who works in investment banking, follows Twitter as well as Truth Social posts from Trump and said, “I don’t have any beliefs that might prevent me from being fair or impartial.”

Juror 3: A young man who has lived in Chelsea for five years, works as an attorney in corporate law, and likes to hike and run. He gets news from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and Google.

Juror 4: A man who’s a security engineer and likes woodworking and metalworking.

Juror 5: A young woman who is a Harlem resident and works as a teacher. She lives with her boyfriend, loves writing, theater and traveling. She gets news from Google and TikTok and listens to podcasts on relationships and pop culture.

Juror 6: A young woman who lives in Chelsea and works as a software engineer. She gets news from The New York Times, Google, Facebook and TikTok.

Juror 7: A man who lives on the Upper East Side and works as attorney as a civil litigator. He enjoys spending time in the outdoors and gets his news from The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post and the Washington Post.

Juror 8: A man who’s retired but worked for a major wealth manager. He said he enjoys skiing, fly fishing and yoga.

Juror 9: A woman who is a speech therapist, gets news from CNN and likes reality TV podcasts.

Juror 10: A man who works in commerce, reads The New York Times and listens to podcasts on behavioral psychology.

Juror 11: A woman who works as a product development manager and watches late-night news and reads Google, business and fashion news.

Juror 12: A woman who is a physical therapist who likes running and tennis and listening to podcasts on sports and faith.

Alternate 1: A woman who works as an asset manager and likes to run, hang out with her friends and eat.

Pretty formidable list of persecutors who are tools of the Justice Department, don’t you think, especially since this trial was in a state court not a federal court where the Justice Department has a role?

The fact that it took this varied group only about eleven hours to unanimously convict our former president on every one of the THIRTY-FOUR charges speaks volumes for the strength of the case against him, the presentation of the evidence that supported all of those charges, and the inability of Trump and his lawyers to induce even one of the twelve to hang the jury.

There was nothing wrong with the justice system that day.

How strange it is that those sycophants, including several of our Missouri statewide candidates who also have swallowed gallons of the Trump Kool-Aid, to now expect a flawed justice system weaponized to get him and him alone to later exonerate a  president who tried during his own term to weaponize the Department of Justice.

Mad men. And some women leading “the blind,” people who don’t want to know but will blindly accept what they are told.  And the mad men are happy to lead them, happy to tell them.  And why?  Because they want power and lack the integrity to win it on their own standards.

They have, instead, attached themselves to arguably the least honest man in the country who spouts lies and lies and lies. And too many of our political leaders or leader wannabes are disgracing themselves in joining him in trying to disgrace those responsible citizens who fulfilled a sacred role in our society during his trial.

They have become dangerous in their service to an old king who thinks one-way loyalty is his privilege. They are the mad men.  We must not be blind to them.

Those who refuse to be blind can make sure they pay a price for their hypocrisy, their lack of integrity, honesty, and of courage when we vote in August and November.

 

All 34

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My God!

The enormity of a jury’s verdicts in a New York courtroom yesterday is difficult to grasp whether one is strongly anti-Trump or whether one is violently pro-Trump.  Years from now, generations unborn today will read in their history books of yesterday’s verdict as cold fact with no way to understand the depth of the national emotions triggered by a jury ruling that a former President of the United States is guilty of 34 felonies.

Thirty-four.

The number will never be the same, just as 9-11 was transformed into something beyond  a numerical value, just as 1-6 is a waymark in American history.

Some hoped the jury would issue 34 NOT guily verdicts; many—perhaps most—thought at least SOME guilty verdicts would come.   But all 34?

It is stunning.  And although there will be appeals, it seems impossible that all 34 convictions will be reversed.

Donald Trump can and will—already has—repeated his attacks on the judge, the prosecutor, the jury.

But twelve people, chosen in the historically-honored system of picking a jury of fellow citizens, have convincted him of 34 crimes.

What must it be like away from his normal public bluster when this  77-year old man realizes  that for the first time in his life, he has not been able to control or to ignore the responsibility for his actions?  In the privacy of his own rooms and with his own thoughts, what must this overwhelming rebuke of the way he has run his life be doing to him?  He may rage in public and in private but surely he knows, deep down, many of those he has bent to his will are now realizing his blood is in the water and they must transform themselves into sharks for their own self-preservation.

The bus is waiting.  How many of those he thought he controlled will decide it’s time he is the one thrown under it?

Much is made that he is the first president to face criminal charges and now the first to be convicted, a statement though often repeated has no practical effect.  Once just a frequently-spoken statement, now it is a statement of national tragedy.

And what shall be done with him, this man who has flouted decency, honor, and the law throughout his life of self-seeking power?

If the convictions are upheld he should go to prison, whatever form prison takes.

Prison for Donald Trump could mean being cut off from public participation in events, to being relegated to a world without spotlight, a world of tightly-scheduled activities from waking up to eating a common menu, to being isolated from public exposure, restricted perhas to a couple of rooms at Mar-a-Lago where visitors are allowed only at certain times and certain days.  His greatest punishment could be imposed insignificance in contemporary times.

Yesterday was a day that instantly became history and we knew it the second we heard of the verdicts.  For both those who hoped for a different result as well as those who hoped for the result that came, yesterday was a “My God!” day.

Today we will try to grasp what has just happened, what we have experienced. Maybe for some of us as well as for him, it might take more than just today.

 

Some Things Are Harder Than Others

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This has been a long and tiring week with a lot of travel and not enough time to meet some domestic responsibilities or compose some elegant verbiage, so we’re going to just pass along this piece of philosophy—a poster my friend Karen Burns (she and her husband Rick Gevers are my hosts on racing weekends in Indianapolis) keeps at her home office desk.

In these turbulent times, some things are harder than others.

Brian Andreas is an Iowa native author and artist.  If you want to know more about him, check Wikipedia.

And if you’re in Indianapolis, drop by the Zoo. It’s a really nice, though small, place that’s doing some interesting things. That’s where Karen works. It’s a great small zoo where I have had close encounters with a sloth, some kangaroos, some free-flying exotic birds, and where there’s a great Orangutan facility.

She gave me a t-shirt a few years ago, when the new facility opened, that proclaims humans are genetically 96.4% Orangutans.

National Geographic told me a few years ago that I also am 1.5% Neanderthal.

Such information suggests you and I should be a little less arrogant about our self-assured Homo Sapien-ness.

Sometimes it’s awfully hard to love the world we superior beings wake up to every morning. But let’s try.

This Was a Just a Farm Once. This is About What Grew There 

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

This was farmland once.  Flat. Open. Three hundred-twenty acres owned by a family named Pressley. The city was five miles, a few hours’ buggy ride, to the east and south.  But then a guy named Carl Fisher showed up—this was late in 1908—and with three partners bought the place for $72,000.

In time, the railroad would bring passenger cars loaded with people to this place. In time, automobiles would navigate the muddy roads to the countryside. Eventually there would be paved streets and Pressley farm and the agricultural land around it would turn into a small town and people would build hundreds of homes and businesses and schools on farmland around the farmland where Fischer and partners James Allison, Arthur Newby and Frank Wheeler had invested an additional quarter-million pre-World War I dollars into their new business venture.

Four years after buying the Pressley farm, the four partners laid out a planned residential/industrial community that would not rely on horses and instead would emphasize the automobile.  Many of the residents would work at a chemical company and an engine manufacturing company.

They named their town for their business venture.  Speedway. It’s now a town of about 14,000 people entirely surrounded by Indianapolis, just across Indianapolis’ Sixteenth Street from the first race track in the world to bear the word “speedway” in its name.

The race track these four men built covers 253 acres, not counting the areas around the track that cover hundreds of acres more and are used for parking, camping, tail gaiting,  partying, concession stands and 14 holes of a golf course (the other four holes are on the infield).

And every May, this former farm field becomes a shrine.

Various comparisons have been made to show how massive the development of the site by Fisher and friends has become.  It’s big enough, it is said, to hold SEVENTEEN Yankee Stadiums.  It’s big enough to hold all fourteen Big Ten Football stadiums.  Put another way, says the IndyCar Series, it could hold EIGHT nationally and internationally-famous sites;

Trains no longer bring thousands of spectators to the “Greatest Spectacle in Racing.”  There are wide, multi-laned streets and nearby intestate highways and on a few days each year those streets and roads become huge traffic funnels pouring tens of thousands of vehicles ranging from beater cars to multi-million dollar luxury motorhomes to this 253 acres.

A crowd about forty or fifty-thousand people larger than the entire population of St. Louis descended overnight on this area, drivers and passengers often stalled in enormous traffic jams for three or four hours, the smart ones turning off their vehicle’s engines because they weren’t going to move a vehicle’s length for several long minutes.

Only a few could park inside the track.  The front yards of residential areas with their two-lane streets around the track became private rental parking areas for race fans. Huge open fields turned into parking areas by today’s Speedway owners were packed.

Knowing they would face all of this, they came.

Knowing very bad weather was moving in from the west, they came.

Knowing they might not see a race because of another storm system was behind the first one, still they came. A hundred thousand.  Then two.  Then three.  And then as many as fifty thousand more.

And then came the lightning. And the rain.

The grandstands were ordered cleared with tens of thousand of people taking refuge under the concrete floors of the giant infield front-stretch grandstands and in the tunnels under the track and other safe places.

All those people. In those crowded spaces. Many of them brought coolers full of food and drink because the race was going to be underway at lunch time.

Hungry people.

Thirsty people.

Wet people

People knowing the weather might mean no race at all that day.

And you know something?

We saw no fights.  Nobody got stabbed or shot (at least nobody that we’ve heard about in these two days after all of this).

345,000 people, one out of every one-thousand people in this entire United States, jammed into 253 acres of damp disappointment.

And nothing happened while nothing was happening.

Then it quit raining.  And the track-drying machines came out, marvelous pieces of engineering designed only to transform two and a half miles of wet asphalt into dry asphalt.

It is in situations such as this that people-watchers have a field day.

The fans looked for ways to entertain themselves before the race could start—including appropriately-attired folks rooting for children in a footrace near the souvenir stands, including a volunteer flag man at the finish line.

(The track is nicknamed “The Brickyard” because the pavement for the race for many years was millions of bricks.  Today the finish line is a yard of bricks.)

(Incidentally, the real flag man for the race, known as the Chief Starter, is Aaron Likens and he has just brought out a book called Playing in Traffic, My Journey From Autism Diagnosis to the Indy 500 Flagstand.)

Patriotism is always big at automobile races.

And coveralls with the Speedway logo accessorized with “gold” chains, again with the famous winged wheel logo that has in one form or another represented the great old track from its earliest days.

After years of personal experience people watching at the Speedway, we can note that you have seen only the most moderate of outfits typical of the events. (We’ll do a commentary on going-to-the-car-races clothing in a later entry.)

Driver Pato O’Ward, one of the young guns and one of the favorites, entertained fans by signing hats and shirts dropped from the grandstands into the garage area.

Or chatting with fans—

But the intense work paid off on the track.  The asphalt turned a lighter gray and it was time to go racing, time for 32 men and one woman to hurtle at 230 miles an hour into a near-flat left turn, the first of 800 left turns they would make before the finish, fighting to get through each of those turns ahead of the other cars.

The skies remained grey; although the weather outlook brightened; maybe the entire race could be run before the next storm.  Time to roll out the cars In the end, only one car would complete the challenge of making those 800 left turns ahead of all others in one of the most dramatic races in the 108-year history of the Indianapolis 500.

Time on the grid for a few moments with family—Josef Newgarden showed his two-year old son, Kota, the “office” where he would spend the next three hours or so defending his championship of the 500.

The race lasted one minute and eleven seconds short of three hours  and featured 49 lead changes among 18 drivers, more than half of the starting field, the last lead change coming time when Kota’s dad broke O’Ward’s heart by passing him on the outside of the next-to last turn and holding on to the finish.

It’s Newgarden’s second straight 500 win, both coming with a last lap pass—his victim last year was the 2022 winner, Marcus Ericsson—who had held off a last lap charge from O’Ward that year.

O’Ward remained slumped in his car for a time after the finish, his helmet still on, admitting later, “It was wet in there.”

Newgarden is the sixth driver to win two of these races in a row.  He will try in 2025 to become the first to do a threepeat.

Helio Castroneves almost did it after winning the race in his first two years and finishing second in 2003.  Al Unser Senior also finished second after winning in 1970-71.

Bill Vukovich came with eight laps of winning in 1952 before a part of his steering failed, returned to win in ’52 and ’53 and died while leading on the 57th lap of the 1955 race.

Wilbur Shaw came close to winning not three but FIVE straight.  He won in 1937, was second in 1938, won the next two years and crashed while leading with 48 laps to go in 1941. That was the year a fire roared through the garage area.  It is believed some of the water used to fight the fire washed chalked words “use last’ from an out-of-balance wheel that collapsed, causing his wreck.

But we’ll have to wait a year to see how that pans out.

Thousands of fans remained in the stands as evening clouds thickened and the light grew dimmer while Newgarden and his wife took the traditional victory lap in the pace car then kissed the bricks and went on to celebrate until the late hours.

Newgarden’s victory was worth almost $4.3 million of the nearly $18.5 million in prize money. O’Ward got more than one million for being second.

Thousands of the fans were deadlocked for hours in their parking lots as traffic oozed  back to the nearby interstates or moved through downtown Indianapolis.  This reporter’s car didn’t turn a wheel for more than three hours in the parking lot and was another hour, at least, before getting to his overnight accommodations—with a stop at a gas station because he was down to his last thirty miles of reserve fuel and would have run out had he not shut off his engine for at least 45 minutes of the three hours it took to get to his parking space in the morning and never firing it up again until seeing other cars start to move.

By Monday evening the former farm field was quiet and empty, except for volunteers earning money for their groups by picking up tons and tons of trash left behind by the one-out-of-one-thousand Americans who found themselves packed into those 253 acres where one of the nation’s greatest holidays was celebrated.

(NASCAR)—NASCAR star Kyle Larson left Indianapolis as the race’s Rookie of the Year but disappointed with his 18th place finish.  Larson was among the five fastest qualifiers in his first IndyCar ride, and was running sixth when he drove too fast into the pits with seventy laps left. He had to do a drive-through penalty that set him too far back too late in the race to recover all the positions he had lost.

Still, he was only 9.4846 seconds behind Newgarden at the end of the 500 miles and averaged 167.6 mph. Newgarden averaged 167.8.

Larson had planned to run the 500 and then jet to Charlotte for NASCAR’s 600-mile traditional Memorial Day race. But bad weather, including rain and lightning, caused NASCAR to decide to end the race after 249 of 400 scheduled laps with Christopher Bell declared the winner.  Brad Keselowski racked up another second-place finish, his third runner-up finish of the year.  Larson had arrived at the Charlotte Speedway in  uniform and helmet on just as the race was stopped because of rain.  NASCAR determined restarting the race would make it end at about 3 a.m., Monday, at best and decided to call it a night. Larson never got to turn a lap for the second half of his “double.”

But there is next year.  The deal between Hendrick Motorsports and McLaren racing in IndyCar us a two-year contract.

0-0-0

After the Charlotte race, former NASCAR champion Tony Stewart and his partner, Gene Haas, announced they would be shutting down their team at the end of the year.  Stewart-Haas fields four cars in the series this year but will sell all four of its franchises for several million dollars.  The team has two championships and 69 victories. Stewart is driving a full National Hot Rod Association schedule (His wife is an NHRA competitor) and Haas wants more time to spend with his Formula 1 team.

(FORMULA 1)—The Grand Prix of Monaco is the third major race held on America’s Memorial Day Weekend.  Ferrari’s Charles LeClerc became the first Monaco native to win there.

Now the stick and ball sports that usually lead these entries;

(MIZ)—The Missouri Women’s softball team lost the last game of the super regional tournament to Duke Sunday. Duke goes to the world series. The Tigers come home with a 48-14 season record. (ZOU)

(BASEBALL)—The Cardinals are heating up as the warmer weather settles in.  They won 8 of their last ten after Sunday’s weekend wrap up and had moved in top third place and were only one game under .500.  Sonny Gray is up to 7-2 now.

The Royals continue to be the prime candidate for comeback team of the year and were 13 games above .500 before last night’s game against the Twins. The Royals didn’t get their 34th win last year until August.

The Royals had not had an American League Player of the Week since Vinnie Pasquantino in August, two years ago.  Bobby Witt broke that dry spell last week when he went 10 for 26 in six games with four homers and 11 RBIs. One of those homers was his longest ever, 468 feet.

(HAWKS)—The St. Louis Battlehawks  dropped to 6-3 last weekend as the Arlington Renegades turned three interceptions and two fumbles into a 36-22 victory.  The ‘Hawks are still in the running for the top playoff spot in the XFL Division, though.

Quarterback A. J. McCarron missed his second game because of a bum ankle. He’s considered day-to-day.

(Photo Credits: Bob Priddy, Rick Gevers)

A “Day” in the Life of the Senate

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This Senate Journal for Monday, May 13, 2024 also is the journal for Tuesday and Wednesday because of a record filibuster, led by Democrats demanding so-called “ballot candy” be removed from a resolution saying no constitutional amendment could be adopted unless it carried in a majority of the state’s eight congressional districts, even if the overall vote was favorable. Democrats, already opposed to the resolution, objected to language added by the House duplicating existing law but making the proposal more appealing to the public—the “ballot candy” opponents wanted removed.

This might be dry reading to those who are not as immersed in state government as your obedient servant has been for most of his life.  We are doing this to place these events in a better record than the Senate Journal provides.

The journal for the “day” that turned into the “fifty-hour filibuster” led by the ten Democrats in the 34-member Senate is covered on pages 1059-1061 of the daily journal (the daily journals are compiled at the end of the session into one large volume, thus these page numbers pick up with the journal page number of the preceding day).  The rest of “Monday’s” journal is made up of messages from the House telling the Senate it has approved its own bills, has changed Senate bills and needs Senate approval of the changes, requests for conference committees to work out differences between the two chambers on various bills, and other routine legislative business.

Because the House of Representatives’ rules limit debate time, filibusters do not occur there.  But the Senate has no such restrictions and a parliamentary procedure called “moving the previous question,” which—if approved—immediately ends debate and calls for a vote, is seldom used.

Because the journal is a record of actions, not a by-word recording of the debates, the only indication that a filibuster occurred is the listings of the names of those who presided over the chamber at various times. The number of names is an indication of the extensive length of the filibuster.  The fact that there are no journals for Tuesday and Wednesday is another indication.

Legislative “days” are not calendar or clock-determined.  A legislative day ends with adjournment. In this case, a “Monday” lasted until Wednesday on the calendar while, for journal purposes, the legislative day was still Monday.  Adjournment in this case did not occur until some Republicans crossed party lines to join the Democrats in sending the bill back to the House with a request for a conference.  The House on Thursday rejected the Senate’s request, telling the Senate to pass the House Committee Substitute.   Senate leadership knew that the minority Democrats would resume their filibuster if the bill was returned to the floor unchanged and would run out the clock at 6 p.m. on calendar Friday.  Because there was no use spending the last day of the session in a filibuster, the Senate adjourned after a ten-minute session Friday.

We have consulted the Senate archived recording of this long “Monday” to ascertain the exact amount of time the filibuster consumed.  We have done this because this event was unprecedented in Missouri legislative history and smashed a previous unprecedented 41-hour filibuster a few days earlier by the right-wing Senate Freedom Caucus.

Monday, May 13, 2024:   Sponsor Mary Elizabeth Coleman moved that the Senate adopt House Committee Substitute for Senate Substitute Number 4 for Senate Committee Substitute for Senate Joint Resolutions 74, 48, 59, 61, and 83.  That sounds complicated but it represents the path the bill had taken to that point.

There were five similar resolutions on this issue filed in the Senate.  A Senate Committee combined those resolutions into one but not before the entire Senate had debated the bill and three substitute versions were voted down, leaving the fourth that gained enough voter for passage.

The amended and combined Senate resolution went to the House where a House Committee substituted its version. The House passed the revised bill.  The changes had to be approved by the Senate before the proposition could be put on a statewide ballot.

Monday, May 13 was the first day of the last week of the 2024 legislative session. Democrats, outnumbered more than 2-1, knew the clock was their greatest friend when it came to getting this proposition changed or killed.  They launched a filibuster that blocked a vote that surely would have sent the issue to the November ballot.

Our legislature records its debates and archives them.  We went to the May 10 audio journal and tracked how much time was spent on this bill in each day.  The Senate archive recording resets to 0:00 at the end of each 24 hours.

Day One, Monday, May 13.

0:00:00—The Senate begins its “day” with a prayer from Reverend Stephen George.

0:04:52—Senator Mary Elizabeth Coleman moves Senate approval of  HCS/SS4/SCS/SJR 74, 48, 59, 61 and 83.

0:06:15—Senate Minority Leader John Rizzo makes substitute motion to send the bill back to the House and to ask for a conference committee to work out the differences between the House version, which had “ballot candy” added to it, and the Sente version.  This is the beginning of the filibuster.

“Monday” part one (Monday-Tuesday on the traditional calendar): 24 hours, of which 23 hours, 53 minutes and 45 seconds were spent filibustering the resolution. Running filibuster time: 23:53:45.

“Monday” part two (Tuesday-Wednesday on the traditional calendar): all 24 hours were involved in the filibuster. Running filibuster time: 47:53:45

“Monday” part three (Wednesday on the traditional calendar); 02:15:36  Roll call vote begins.  Roll call results announced: 02:18:06. The motion to send bill back to the House passed 18-13, with eight Republicans crossing party lines. The filibuster is official ended.

02:24:41: The Senate adjourns until Thursday morning.  “Monday,” the longest known “day” in Missouri Senate history, has finally come to an end.

Total filibuster time: 50:11:51

Total time of “Monday, May 10, 2024” in the Missouri Senate: 50:24:41.

Miserable, Just Miserable

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The Missouri Constitution establishes a definite date each year for adjournment of the Missouri General Assembly.  This was one of those years when adjournment couldn’t happen soon enough.

This miserable session will be remembered as the session that a handful of Republican senators calling themselves the Freedom Caucus ran into the ground because a majority of their party didn’t buy their demands.  They accused the majority of their majority party of being RINOS, a nickname our former president likes to apply to any Republican who does not love him. There is considerable reason to consider far-out clusters such as this as the real Republicans in Name Only.

This will be remembered as the Session of the Filibuster.  The Freedom Caucus kicked off the session with a lengthy discussion of Senate procedure, filibustered for eleven hours trying to force colleagues to act quickly on bills making it harder for citizens to create laws through initiative petition. That led President Pro Team Caleb Rowden to strip four members of the Freedom Caucus of their committee chairmanships and (this seemed to be the most terrible punishment to some of them) took away their parking spaces in the Capitol basement.  Senators Bill Eigel, the ringleader of the caucus, Rick Brattin, Denny Hoskins and Andrew Koenig lost their prestigious positions, after which Eigel stopped action in the Senate for four more hours so he could question several Senators who seemed to support Rowden’s action.

Rowden calculated in late January that the Senate had been in floor session for 17 hours and 52 minutes in 2024. He said the Freedom Caucus had filibustered “things of no consequence whatsoever relative to a piece of policy” for 16 hours and 45 minutes of that time.

And it only got worse. But in the end, the filibuster bit the Freedom Caucus—uh—in the end.

As the session reached May and the crucial last couple of weeks, including the week in which the state budget had to be approved, the caucus stopped things cold for 41 hours—believed to be the longest filibuster in Missouri legislative history—because its priorities were not THE priority of Senate leadership.

But that filibuster record was to be broken in the final week when Democrats and some Republicans fed up with the Freedom Caucus’s behavior got in the way of final approval of the resolution changing the way the state constitution can be changed. Those who had lived by the filibuster died by the filibuster.

The final filibuster lasted FIFTY hours and change. It succeeded where the Freedom Caucus belligerency failed. The Freedom Caucus’ bull-in-a-china shop philosophy of government was repudiated by a Senate that seemed to, in this case at least, rediscovered bipartisanship. But the damage done by this group could not be reversed.

The 2024 legislative session was the least productive in modern memory—or even ancient memory, for that matter.  Only 28 non-budget bills were passed.

That beats the record of 31 in the 2020 session.  But remember, that was the Pandemic Session when the legislature did not meet for several days then operated on a limited basis for several other days.

Eigel disavowed responsibility for that miserable record.  “A lot of bad things that didn’t happen this session didn’t happen because of the people standing behind me,” he said in a post-session Freedom Caucus press conference. His words probably didn’t carry any water with Senators and Representatives who had worked hard and conscientiously on bills that would have done GOOD things only to see them disappear into the ongoing mud fight in the Senate led by Eigel and his band.

Eigel has dreams of becoming Governor.  Denny Hoskins thinks he’d be a peachy Secretary of State. Andrew Koenig thinks being State Treasurer would be wonderful. Rick Brattin just hopes to get elected to another term in the Senate.

There are some folks who have watched them this year who hope they still don’t have parking places in Jefferson City in 2025.

The 50-hour filibuster deserves a closer look. We’ve taken that look to establish the exact length of it so that future observers will know when they have witnessed an even more regrettable example.

Incidentally, it is believed the longest filibuster by one person in Missouri history was Senator Matt Bartle’s futile effort to block some gubernatorial appointments in 2007. He held the floor for seventeen hours.

Creating News Deserts 

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A Facebook comment from Moberly noted last week: “The Moberly Monitor-Index (once a daily, now a weekly) made a brief reference to the situation on its Facebook account today as well, but I didn’t see anything on its website. Aside from any TV coverage from Columbia, that’s going to be the only local news outlet henceforth.”

The comment was about Alpha Media’s layoffs of all on-air employees at radio stations in Moberly, turning the station into just another satellite-provided bunch of programs with no local relevance.

The comment points to another alarming trend—the death of the local newspaper.

Small and medium-market newspapers have been swallowed up by Gatehouse (or as a friend of mine from one of those newspapers calls it, “Guthouse”) Media, including the Gannett chain.  Gatehouse now uses that name—Gannett, and other newspaper conglomerates.

The practice has been to buy small or medium market newspapers, hollow out the staffs, turn dailies into weeklies and weeklies into digital products as much as possible, again to the detriment of the local markets but to the great financial benefit of the corporation.

With gutted local newspapers and gutted local radio stations, we are seeing more and more news deserts being created.

At a time when we as a nation and we as a state desperately need more eyes on newsmakers and more diverse voices in our social dialogue—and more attention to local issues—we are getting less and what we are getting shows no industrial responsibility to giving consumers diverse viewpoints.

The corporate monopolization of our mass media is one of the greatest threats our country faces but one that gets little public attention.

More than a century ago this nation was crippled by the power of trusts, whether it was steel or petroleum or transportation trusts (even baking powder, which triggered Missouri’s biggest political scandal early in the last century) that limited competition  and put acquisition of corporate wealth above public interest, convenience, and necessity in so many parts of American life.

We are there again and media control is one of the most dangerous of all of those trusts.  Dwindling sources of information and increasing control of the remaining sources increases our national weakness.

An ignorant nation cannot be a free nation. And Alpha and Gannett/Gatehouse and their ilk are among the corporations that are controlling more and more of our information sources and reducing local service, replacing it with national voices that probably could not point to a map and show you where Festus, Moberly, Farmington, Lebanon or Bethany Missouri are.

Some degree of re-regulation of broadcasting is warranted requiring meeting a certain level of local responsibility. Some degree of trust-busting to provide an opportunity for more independence of opinion in our media is increasingly necessary.

While government can play a role—a carefully modulated role—in these ares is not beyond consideration, the ultimate responsibility for demanding greater diversity in media voces lies with the listeners, readers, and viewers of our electronic communications.

Letters to the FCC and to congressional delegations from places like these communities can carry some weight in Washington.  Boycotts from local advertisers, many of whom already rely on direct-mail or independent internet messaging, can carry weight with corporate broadcasting owners.

Newspaper corporations have one important thing that broadcasters do not have—the First Amendment. Government control of newspapers, as the FCC exerts licensing control over broadcasters, cannot exist and should not exist.

How anti-trust laws could be applied to newspaper conglomerates will be a difficult conversation, even more difficult than the conversations about internet abuses, although similar when the First Amendment enters the discussion.

Nonetheless, all of us are victims of those who control increasing percentages of our media outlets and see no responsibility for diversity of thought and opinion or of local involvement. We are victims only so long as we allow ourselves to be victims, only so long as we refuse to seek out challenges to our own ideas.

Why should we fear that?  Why should we let others tell us what to think and regard those who think differently as enemies?

The trusts were broken when they became so oppressive that the public forced governments to act.

We have reached that point now in our information industry. And we should not accept it.

Guillotines for Fun and Profit

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Alpha Media owns more than 200 radio stations across the country.  Its recruiting web page is loaded with corporate-speak buzzwords about “having a passion for great radio” and a “highly-functioning, best-of-class team on all levels” that goes about “building strong relationships in our local communities.”

“If you are looking for an environment where management has a passion for our business; in working hard to provide the best possible live and local radio in the industry; and in having fun, then Alpha Media is for you,” it says.

You will excuse a lot of people in Moberly, Festus, Lebanon and the Farmington/Park Hills areas if they gag on those words. They’ve been stabbed in the back by the owner of their legacy radio stations.

Alpha Media assassinated local radio in those communities last week, laid off—with no notice—entire on-air staffs including some folks who had been everybody’s neighbors for decades.

In place of the voices who talked about local things including local sports, weather, and events, listeners of radio stations in those markets will be hearing syndicated programs from Alpha. Unfortunately, this kind of thing is not new.

Local radio has been dying by self-inflicted corporate wounds for a long time.

Your loyal observer, who believed throughout his professional career and continues to believe in the value of local radio, is astonished by the total hypocrisy of Alpha Media claiming it is “working hard to provide the best possible live and local radio in the industry and having fun.”

That’s precisely what these stations have been providing for decades.

Having fun?

If you think running a guillotine is lots of yucks, you’d probably be in total agreement with Alpha’s actions in these three communities. .

These radio stations were once owned by a man named Jerrell Shepherd, a small market radio entrepreneur who believed radio stations should not just be IN communities, they should be OF communities. The idea that grandpa or grandma might hear their grandchildren’s names mentioned during broadcasts of local high school sports events; the idea that the new president of the Lions Club would talk about an upcoming peanut sale fund-raising event; the county fair livestock auction; the hospital auxiliary ice cream social; Sunday morning church services; what the city council or school board did last night; that people might instantly go to their local radio station when bad weather approaches or has arrived—street closings, lunches at the schools or the senior center, obituaries—-are immaterial.  But those were and are part of being a locally responsible corporate citizen, especially in markets this size.

But that was then; this is now. The Hell with being a locally responsible corporate citizen.

The big-growth media companies, more interested in bottom lines than community responsibility and identity, only want to make money. And that’s why the familiar voices went to work one day last week and were told they would no longer have a job at the end of their shifts.

The “best possible live and local radio in the industry” became a lie that day in those towns.  And the definition of “having fun” became gallows humor.

Reporters from various central Missouri media who contacted Alpha to get an explanation have received nothing back.  A full-page ad in the local newspapers explaining, without the corporate doublespeak, why ditching true local radio is justified would be a courteous thing for Alpha to do. But don’t count on it.

There is no doubt that local newspapers and local radio stations have faced some struggles as more business is done through the internet.  And the issue with some businesses is not that they don’t make a profit—they just don’t make a big enough profit.

Employees reduce profits in all kinds of businesses which is why all kinds of businesses are finding ways to dump workers (Notice how few people at McDonald’s take orders at the cash registers lately?).  It would be nice if Alpha explained that to the people in these towns who no longer have a radio station they cared about because it cared about them.

Satellites and the internet allow for cutting the overhead of a radio station by allowing layoffs of as many of those dollar-consuming staff members as possible, replaced by voices of strangers from who-knows-where and who are unlikely to ever set foot in places like Moberly, Festus, Lebanon, or Farmington.

Broadcasting used to be regulated by the Federal Communications Commission which required broadcasters to operate “in the public interest, convenience, and necessity.”  But the industry back de-regulation in the Reagan years and got it.

I was part of a national professional organization that supported de-regulation because we thought some regulations stifled public discussion of important issues more than it promoted it.

We supported it because it required stations to meet certain standards of public service that really were hollow standards.  We believed that serving the public did not mean government dictating, in some instances, what had to be said before a counter argument could be aired.

We were wrong.

We never anticipated the homogenization of broadcasting that comes with owning hundreds of stations, with the death of local programming thanks to satellite-delivered syndicated shows—Rush Limbaugh being the first of the great influencers, a man who is considered the savior of AM Radio.

But now, we are faced with asking, “Saved from what?”

Radio began to lose its soul when communities became markets; when stations became properties, and when staffs became overhead expenses.

Part of the answer to “saved from what?” was delivered last week in Moberly, Farmington, Lebanon, and Festus.

Alpha Media is advertising for new employees at the Missouri stations it has hollowed out. The openings listed on the company web page say something about how it will provide “the best possible live and local radio in the industry.”  The company wants a business office part-timer and a part-time board operator/production assistant and a business office/sales assistance person. They want an Integrated Marketing Consultant (Sales) for their stations in Bethany and Moberly and on-air programmer/board operators in Farmington and Festus.

Local news people? Local sports people?  Local talk show hosts?  Those are the people who are “live and local.” The company isn’t looking for any of them.  Board operators are the ones who throw a switch in the studio to bring in a syndicated show off the satellite or internet.  Production assistant?  Well somebody has to record or produce commercials—if sponsors want to buy them now.

What has happened in these markets and is happening in broadcasting generally also is happening in the newspaper industry. We’ll look at that on Wednesday.

If Our History Were Written West to East 

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Ignorance of history is helping fuel the controversial White Christian Nationalism movement. There are plenty of people in our political world who prefer to keep things that way.

To base our understanding of our nation’s history on Jamestown, Plymouth, Pilgrims and Puritans and interpretations of their reasons for coming here—and the reasons behind more than a century of explorations before they arrived—is a grave mistake. It shortchanges our future as a nation and as a nation’s people.

One of the best cases for understanding our history differently is in a letter written by our great poet Walt Whitman after he had been invited to compose a poem to celebrate the 333rd anniversary of the settlement of Santa Fe, New Mexico.  It is dated July 20, 1883. It is critical of those who think our history began on the rocky shores of Massachusetts and Virginia.  The invitation to deliver the poem arrived too late, he wrote, so he had to decline. “But I will say a few words off-hand.”

We Americans have yet to really learn our own antecedents, and sort them, to unify them. They will be found ampler than has been supposed and in widely different sources. Thus far, impressed by New England writers and schoolmasters, we tacitly abandon ourselves to the notion that our United States have been fashioned from the British Islands only, and essentially form a second England only—which is a great mistake. Many leading traits for our future national personality, and some of the best ones, will certainly prove to have originated from other than British stock. As it is, the British and German, valuable as they are in the concrete, already threaten excess. Or rather, I should say, they have certainly reach’d​ that excess. To-day, something outside of them, and to counterbalance them, is seriously needed.

Thus seething materialistic and business vortices of the United States, in their present devouring relations, controlling and belittling everything else, are, in my opinion, but a vast and indispensable stage in the new world’s development, and are certainly to be follow’d​ by something entirely different—at least by immense modifications. Character, literature, a society worthy the name, are yet to be establish’d​ , through a nationality of noblest spiritual, heroic and democratic attributes—not one of which at present definitely exists—entirely different from the past, though unerringly founded on it, and to justify it.

To that composite American identity of the future, Spanish character will supply some of the most needed parts. No stock shows a grander historic retrospect—grander in religiousness and loyalty, or for patriotism, courage, decorum, gravity and honor. (It is time to dismiss utterly the illusion-compound, half raw-head-and-bloody-bones and half Mysteries-of-Udolpho, inherited from the English writers of the past 200 years. It is time to realize—for it is certainly true—that there will not be found any more cruelty, tryanny, superstition, &c., in the résumé of past Spanish history than in the corresponding résumé of Anglo-Norman history. Nay, I think there will not be found so much.)

Then another point, relating to American ethnology, past and to come, I will here touch upon at a venture. As to our aboriginal or Indian population—the Aztec in the South, and many a tribe in the North and West—I know it seems to be agreed that they must gradually dwindle as time rolls on, and in a few generations more leave only a reminiscence, a blank. But I am not at all clear about that. As America, from its many far-back sources and current supplies, develops, adapts, entwines, faithfully identifies its own—are we to see it cheerfully accepting and using all the contributions of foreign lands from the whole outside globe—and then rejecting the only ones distinctively its own—the autochthonic ones?

As to the Spanish stock of our Southwest, it is certain to me that we do not begin to appreciate the splendor and sterling value of its race element. Who knows but that element, like the course of some subterranean river, dipping invisibly for a hundred or two years, is now to emerge in broadest flow and permanent action?

If I might assume to do so, I would like to send you the most cordial, heart-felt congratulations of your American fellow-countrymen here. You have more friends in the Northern and Atlantic regions than you suppose, and they are deeply interested in development of the great Southwestern interior, and in what your festival would arouse to public attention.

Very respectfully &c.,Walt Whitman

Here we are, 141 years after Whitman’s letter, being encouraged by the “seething, materialistic and business vortices of the United States, in their present devouring relations, controlling and belittling everything else.”   Whitman’s letter still calls on all of us to realize history written west to east is a valid subject and that the more comprehensive history will bring about “character, literature, a society worthy the name…through a nationality of noblest spiritual, heroic, and democratic attributes.”

It is a national shame that so many prefer “devouring relations, controlling and belittling everything else” to understanding the reverse geographical truths of our history that will allow us to achieve “the broadest flow” of the representative democracy we only partially understand, and in only partially understanding it continue to further disadvantage our country.

(Photo Credit: PBS “The American Experience”)

 

How to be a Leftist With One Word

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The word is “Democracy.”

The denigrating reference to one of the most honored words in our American existence was stunning when I read it.

“Democracy” seems to have become a bad word for some people.

The Jefferson City newspaper had an article yesterday about whether our city council elections should become partisan political elections again.  The City Charter adopted three or four decades ago made council elections non-partisan.  But in last month’s city elections, the county Republican committee sent out postcards endorsing candidates.

All of them lost.

A new political action committee established to oppose a Republican-oriented committee that killed a library tax levy increase last year had its own slate last month. All of the non-GOP candidates won, which prompted a leading member of the GOP-oriented group to comment in the paper that the new PAC, as the paper put it, “used leftist buzzwords like ‘transparency’ and ‘Democracy’ on their website.”

Friends, when things have gone so far out of whack that “Democracy” is nothing more than a “leftist buzzword,” our political system is in extremely perilous condition.   And if the same side considers “transparency” to be something that is politically repugnant, it appears that a substantial portion of our political system has abandoned one of the greatest principles of our national philosophy—-that government of the people, for the people, and by the people should not hide what it does from its citizens.

City councils are the closest governments to the people.  Elections of members of city councils should focus on the issues that most directly affect residents of wards and cities, not on whether candidates can pass party litmus tests or mouth meaningless partisan rhetoric.

The Jefferson City newspaper spent weeks publishing articles giving candidates’ opinions on the issues that confront citizens living on the quiet (and some noisy) streets of the city. Voters had ample opportunities to evaluate candidates on THEIR positions, not whether they were an R or a D.

Bluntly put, the county Republican committee did not respect the non-partisan system that has served our city well for these many decades.  And to have one of its leading characters dismiss words such as “transparency” and—especially—“Democracy” as “leftist buzzwords” is, I regret to say, a disgrace.