Category Archives: people

GWOT Failure and its Coattails

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(NOTE—This material originally was posted for August 1, the day before the primary election. It was posted  in unreadable form so we are re-posting it today.  Although the entry refers to candidates in the primary election, the issues remain for the general election so we are re-posting the entry to discuss those issues because they remain valid for the primary survivors who will make them issues in their new campaigns.)

 

One would think, to view some Missouri candidates’ commercials that our state is being overrun by fentanyl-fueled escaped mental patients, prison escapees, murderers, rapists, robbers—-and probably some shoplifters and car thieves just to be inclusive—from south of the border. .

Several of these candidates for statewide office have promised to “fix” the illegal immigrant problem (aka “unregistered immigrant” problem), a national issue that has been made only worse by a couple of governors who have “fixed” their problems by shipping immigrants—legally here or not—to other states. The Missouri candidates have not told us how they are going to solve a national problem.

There have been promises of mobilizing all of the law enforcement agencies in the state and even calling out the National Guard to end this overwhelming threat, which sounds like a good time to achieve your dream of driving 150 mph on I-70 because there sure won’t be any deputies or troopers left to catch you because they are out hauling in people generally of Central American origin.

One candidate has stated he personally will drive the buses stuffed with these folks back to the border—to Texas, which has one of the governors shipping immigrants to other states. He could call it “Operation Return to Sender.”

That’s great public policy—getting into an immigrant-shipping war with another state.

Sheesh! What a bunch of nonsense all of this is.

But a lot of our candidates for statewide office have spent campaign funds to go to Texas so they can produce a commercial showing them bravely standing in front of the Great Wall of Trump and most sincerely telling us they will solve the illegal immigrant problem.  The whole darned thing.

And there’s a point they hope voters won’t think about—that Biden’s “failed immigration policies” are to a significant degree the failure of the GWOT to do the job our former president promised it would do.  Perhaps his “beautiful wall” hasn’t saved us after all.

And by the way, in the eight years since he told us the GWOT would stop the flow of these dangerous men, women, and children—and Mexico would pay for it—we’re still waiting to see the first check signed by the President of our southern neighbor.

If the GWOT was working as well as its advocates said back in 2016 that it would, we wouldn’t have these problems and our candidates could be focused instead on what they will do with the REAL problems Missourians face, including—

—a chronically unfunded mental health system

—domestic homelessness (I haven’t seen any immigrants, legal or illegal, on the streets of Missouri’s Capital City.)

—underfunded payments to nursing homes

—Loss of Medicaid coverage for thousands of Missouri’s children and delays in providing medical care for them.

—Straightening out the state’s troubled foster care program

—Continued weak state compensation to counties for housing state prisoners

—Uncertain future for road and bridge funding

—weak support for veterans hospitals

—-advisability of state funding for stadiums in KC and St. Louis.

—-inadequate health and reproductive care for women (The privately-funded Commonwealth Fund, which focuses on health care issues, recently ranked Missouri 40th out of 51 states and DC in this category.)

We could go on and on but the only thing the candidates seem to want to go on and on about is the immigrant problem.  You’d think we’re being overrun by illegal immigrants from south of the border—all of whom, to hear the candidates tell it, are threats to our society and our safety.

They are quite willing to play fast and loose with the facts when they blame unregistered immigrants for high crime problems.

The Brennan Center, founded at the New York University School of law by former clerks of Supreme Court Justice William Brennan, Jr., reported in late May:

In the past few months, politicians and certain media outlets have latched on to a narrative that recent immigrants, especially undocumented ones, are causing spikes in crime. Instead of gathering data and examining the issue empirically, they are making this broad assertion based on highly publicized individual incidents of crime by undocumented immigrants. All acts of violence must be taken seriously. But policymakers should not attribute blame to entire classes of people when individuals commit crimes.

The research does not support the view that immigrants commit crime or are incarcerated at higher rates than native-born Americans. In fact, immigrants might have less law enforcement contact compared to nonimmigrants. Focusing on the facts is imperative, especially given that immigration has become a top issue for voters ahead of the election.

Substantial research has assessed the relationship between immigration and crime. Numerous studies show that immigration is not linked to higher levels of crime, but rather the opposite. Studies have also examined the impact of the concentration of immigrants in a community on crime patterns, finding that immigration is associated with lower crime rates and an increase in structural factors — such as social connection and economic opportunity — that are linked to neighborhood safety.

When looking specifically at the relationship between undocumented immigrants and crime, researchers come to similar conclusions. Numerous studies show that undocumented immigration does not increase violent crime; research examining crime rates in so-called sanctuary cities also found no discernable difference when compared to similarly situated cities without sanctuary policies. One study that focused on drug crimes and driving under the influence found that unauthorized immigration status was associated with reductions in arrests for those offenses.

The research also shows that overall, immigrants have a similar or even lower likelihood of incarceration compared to native-born Americans, a trend that holds for immigrants from various source countries. For example, one study found that undocumented immigrants are 33 percent less likely to be incarcerated than people born in the United States. Indications of a negative relationship between immigration and crime also emerge when looking at conviction rates.

In a Texas study, undocumented immigrants were found to be 47 percent less likely to be convicted of a crime in 2017 than native-born Americans. More recently, a study looked at census data over a 150-year period; since 1870, incarceration rates of immigrants are actually slightly lower than U.S.-born people and that gap widens in recent years with immigrants 60 percent less likely to be incarcerated than U.S.-born citizens.

Despite claims from conservative media and campaign rhetoric pointing to immigration as the cause of crime increases, there is no evidence that immigration — and in particular the recent influx of immigrants to Democratic-run cities — is causing a “crime wave.”

The Pew Research Center reported in 2017 that, nationally, 45% of our foreign-born population were naturalized citizens. Another 27% were lawful permanent residents. Another six percent were temporary lawful residents.  Only 34% were unauthorized immigrants—some 10.5 million people spread throughout our 50 states.

World Population Review noted in 2020, at the end of the Trump term, that this country “has the highest immigration population in the world at 50.6 million” people, about 15% of our total population. And we welcomed people from more than 200 countries and territories. The Review noted that in 2020, Mexico had the most immigrants to this country (hardly a surprise) at more than 100,000, more than the number of immigrants from India (47,000) and China (41,000) combined. Here’s a compilation of our top ten contributors of immigrants.

Here’s the compilation of our top ten immigrant-contributing countries as of 2020:

Mexico  100,325

India  46,363

China  41,483

Dominican Republic  30,005

Vietnam  29,995

Philippines  25,491

El Salvador, 17,907

Brazil  16,746

Cuba  16,367

South Korea, 16,244

Honestly, do we REALLY have an immigration problem in Missouri? We certainly do not have one that merits the scare language we are hearing from some of our political candidates.

We turn to the American Immigration Council that says only four percent of Missouri’s population are immigrants while another four percent of us are native-born but have at least one immigrant parent. That works out to 122,742 women, 111,553 men, and 24,095 children.

Eighty-six percent of Missouri’s emigrants speak English “well” or “very well.”

Seventeen percent of our immigrants have less than a high school diploma. That’s about double the percent of native-born Missourians. Thirty-one percent of our native-born Missourians have not progressed beyond high school, almost twice the percentage of the immigrant population (18%).

But College education?  Sixty-five percent of immigrant Missourians have some college or a college degree or more.  That’s five percentage points more than the natives. And when it comes to degrees, 44% of our immigrants have one but only 29% of the natives do.

Now we get to the exportables.

The Pew Trust says we have about 60,000 undocumented immigrants in Missouri.  That is only about ONE ONE-HUNDREDTH OF ONE PERCENT (0.01) of our population.

These candidates expect us get all frothy about 1/100th of 1% percent of the population of Missouri—and they want to expend huge amounts of resources to run them out of the state while refusing to indicate any sort of leadership on more broadly-significant needs for the remaining 99.99% of us.

No matter what you might think of undocumented immigrants, consider the family disruptions that will happen with the great immigrant roundup—More than 34,500 United States citizens live with at least one undocumented family member, according to American Progress.org, which also says two percent of Missouri’s children live with at least one undocumented family member.

The numbers also include 3,010 “dreamers,” young people covered under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Another 37-hundred people have been granted legal status under the program.

Five percent of Missouri’s labor force are immigrant workers—more than 164,000 people.  About 31,400 of those people work in manufacturing, 24,600 are in health care and social assistance. Nineteen thousand more are in accommodation and food services, 19,000 are in educational services  and more than 15,500 are in professional. Scientific, and technical services.

Taxes don’t care if someone is legal or illegal. If they get a paycheck, they pay taxes and newamericaneconomy.org says immigrants paid almost two-Billion dollars in federal taxes and more than 790 million dollars in state and local taxes in 2018.  UNDOCUMENTED immigrants paid an estimated 107-million dollars in federal taxes and more than 62-million in state and local taxes that same year.

Our immigrants spent $6.8-Billion in Missouri in 2018.

And almost 15,000 of them owned businesses that, in 2018 generated about $400-million in business income.

There undoubtedly are newer statistics but they likely are different only by a few degrees.

About those illegals—

The Migration Policy Institute figures Missouri has 54,000 unauthorized immigrants. About two-thirds are from Mexico and Central America. Two-thirds have been in this state for ten or fewer years.

Four-thousand of them are younger than 16. More than half are 25-55. Eight thousand are married to a United States citizen. Three-thousand more are married to a legal permanent resident.

Twenty-nine percent of the immigrants are not in the work force—many being children and/or stay-at-home parents.

One statistic that is missing from all of these studies is a statistic often cited but does not exist.:

—how many jobs terrible people have “taken” from Missourians. Let’s see some statistics on the “replacement” contention that show a genuine effort to replace American workers with unregistered foreigners.

There is no immigrant Mafia walking into businesses, pointing guns at owners’ heads, and telling them to give a job to an immigrant or to fire a native Missourian so an immigrant can have a particular position.  Have you ever seen any help-wanted ads that say, “Native-born Missourians not wanted?” Immigrants are not replacing anybody.

Immigrants are the political whipping boys and girls of too many of our candidates who apparently have nothing significant to offer in terms of initiatives and programs that will help all ends of all boats to rise.

If the GWOT had done its job, these candidates might have nothing to talk about except more important issues that have a direct impact on all of us—-and Heaven forbid that they might ever do that.

The Pot Calling the Kettle—-

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Black? Indian?

It has taken no time for Donald Trump to make ethnicity an attack point in the presidential race.  There is no reason for having done it but few, at least on the Left, will accuse Trump of being reasonable anyway.  His track record of denigration of others is well-recognized but applauded by many who find his politically judgmental attitudes and actions fit their views of others who do not look, worship, or otherwise fit their guidelines for respect as fellow citizens.

A part of our political system seems unable to survive without finding others who do not deserve to be belittled or even hated, tomust be belittle and hate.

My generation remembers the pronouncements that John Kennedy would take orders from the Vatican if he became President. More recently, we were battered by those who made false claims about Barrack Obama’s birth as well as his ethnic history, including those who pointed to his middle name, Hussein, as an indication he might have had ties to Muslim terrorism.

Now, Donald Trump—-himself a mix of ancestral roots—is raising false insinuations about Kamala Harris with her emergence as a tangible threat to his dreams of absolute power. His attack made before an audience of Black journalists, no less, has underlined and bold-faced one word his critics have used many times to describe him:  Racist:

“I’ve known her a long time, indirectly, not directly very much, and she was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage. I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black, and now she wants to be known as Black. So I don’t know, is she Indian, or is she Black? I respect either one, but she obviously doesn’t. Because she was Indian all the way, and then all of a sudden, she made a turn, and she went – she became a Black person. And I think somebody should look into that, too.”

Several people DID look into it and quickly considered the comment one of Trumps most blatant lies and a clear injection of racism into the campaign.

Here’s one fact check:

Harris Has Always Identified as Indian American and Black – FactCheck.org

Trump is hardly one to question the ethnicity of others—–because he has made questionable claims about his own. In fact, he has lied about it. In print.

Natasha Frost of the New York Times has written:

Trump’s international origins make him relatively unusual among American presidents. Of the last 10 presidents, only two—Trump and Barack Obama—have had a parent born outside of the United States. Trump’s own immediate family has been similarly international: Two of his three wives were naturalized American citizens, originally from the Czech Republic and Slovenia. Only one of his five children, Tiffany, is the child of two American-born citizens, while his daughter, Ivanka, is the first Jewish member of the First Family in American history. But so far as his biographers have been able to tell, none of his international roots extends to Sweden.

A-ha.  Sweden.  Frost, who has looked at Trump’s familial roots, reports Grandpa Friedrich Trump gave up his career as a 16-year old barber in GERMANY and came here in 1885 to escape three years of required service in the German military.  But Trump denied the truth of his circumstances, maintaining for years, even in his co-written The Art of the Deal, that Friedrich came here from Scandinavia.  A family historian told the newspaper the lie was started by Trump’s father, Fred, who did not want to alienate Jewish clients and friends by acknowledging the family’s German background.

“Trump is the son, and grandson, of immigrants: German on his father’s side, and Scottish on his mother’s. None of his grandparents, and only one of his parents, was born in the United States or spoke English as their mother tongue (His mother’s parents, from the remote Scottish Outer Hebrides, lived in a majority Gaelic-speaking community.),” Frost wrote.

Donald is the grandson of Friedrich, who was not Swedish, Norwegian, or Finnish. He was one of more than about one million Germans to immigrate to the USA in 1885—seeking the same things that immigrants look for today. Their “wall” was the Atlantic Ocean.

But Trump’s family overcame that wall.  We will leave it to you to consider any irony in his story.

“Trump” as a Swede? Only if his real name was “Trumpsson.”

As for Friedrich, it is not on the list of 100 top names for Swedish boys. The top ten, by the way, are Noah, Hugo, William, Liam, Nils, Elias, Oliver, Adam. August, and Sam

The attack on Kamala Harris was uncalled for.  But what else is new when it comes from Donald Trump? And after all, wouldn’t you want to deny your German heritage if you had a running made that once wrote his college roommate, “I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical a**hole like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he’s America’s Hitler. How’s that for discouraging?”

Four years ago, reporter Ella Lee of USA TODAY reviewed 28 Trump comments deemed racist. Her conclusion: “Of the 28 listed comments, Trump said 12 of them as plainly stated. Two he said but lack context. Four comments are disputed, eight are paraphrased from similar statements and two he did not say.”

Fact check: 12 of 28 Trump comments deemed racist are direct speech (usatoday.com)

Adequate time has passed and millions of words have been spoken since then that an update is merited, including an evaluation of his claim that he is the best President that black people have had since Abraham Lincoln with no exceptions for Harry Truman’s integration of the military and Lyndon Johnson’s pushing for and signing the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts in the 1960s.

We are supposed to have some debates in September, depending on how Mr. Trump feels when he takes to Truth Social on any particular day.  We will wait to see if he can do more than call people names by then or wallow in more language that is, in the least, insensitive.

The Swede vs. the Indian.  What a match that could be.

(NOTE:  We have posted a second entry today—-a re-post of a column originally dated August 1 but was unreadable thanks to a huge blunder by your editor, We hope we do not overburden you by this double post.)

The Young and the Old 

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Tomorrow is—–well, you know.

(I thought that we deserve some nicer things in this space today than the intense reviews of the campaigns and campaigners that we have been posting.  I’ve been saving this one for just such a day and suddenly in this year in which age has become such a headline, this seems kind of appropriate.)

One of my former reporters, Drew Vogel, who was on the Missourinet staff in the 1970s, has gone on to a thirty-year-plus career as a well-respected Ohio nursing home administrator. He wrote this in his blog on July 6, 2019:

Ramblin’ on a Saturday morning –Youngest and Oldest of us

I recently read a story out of Kansas City about a seven-year-old who dresses up like a policeman and visits nursing homes.  He cheers up residents by giving hugs and writing them tickets for being “too cute.”

There’s an eleven-year-old girl in Arkansas who is CEO of an organization that raises money to grant simple wishes to nursing home residents – things like a Happy Meal or a pair of slippers.  She’s raised over a quarter of a million dollars.

Too often the most significant thing missing from an older person’s life is not a spouse or friends who have passed away, not lack of money or even reduced creative or intellectual stimulation.

No, it’s the disappearance of children from their lives.

I witnessed it myself.

When we moved to Florida in 1980, my son Bobby was seven or eight years old.  We didn’t have a boat, but we went fishing a lot.  Pier fishing.

In those days you didn’t even need a license to fish off the pier.   After I left Florida 30 years ago the state changed that.  For the greater good, you now have to buy a salt water fishing license to pier-fish.

Fish tend to bite when the tides are running. Coming in or going out.  Doesn’t seem to matter.

Between the tides – it’s called a slack tide – the fish take a siesta.

We were fishing from the pier at Ft. Desoto State Park near St. Petersburg.  Bobby was the only youngster on the pier.  I was the only working-age adult.  There were maybe eight retired gentlemen.

When the tide stopped, Bobby noticed several of the men were still catching fish.  He went to see how they were doing it.

“Dad,” he said running back to me a few minutes later, “give me some money.”  He needed to buy squid for bait and a few little tiny hooks.

The grandpas on the pier had showed him how to catch the angel fish that nibbled on the barnacles attached to the pilings.

Bobby caught a few, but every time one of the retired gentlemen snagged one they would yell for Bobby and put the fish in his bucket.

At one point I told Bobby to quit bothering people.  One of the guys said, “He’s not bothering anyone.  All our grandkids are up North.  We love having little boys out here on the pier.”

I never mentioned it again.

We took about two dozen fish home that day – all angel fish.  Bobby and I fileted them, put them in a pan with some butter and lemon and stuck it in the oven.

Dinner was on Bobby that night.  Boy, was he proud.  And it was all because of a connection between kids and seniors.

I was administrator of the Ohio Veterans Home in Georgetown, Ohio the year the H1N1 virus was going around – the Swine Flu.

I cancelled trick-or-treat in the facility that year because there was so much of the influenza in the county.

I nearly got lynched.

The residents, many of whom were big tough, old war veterans – guys who had fought in combat – cried foul.  They confronted me at a Resident Council meeting.

“We love it when the kids visit us,’ was the general context of their complaint.

“And I like it when you guys are breathing,” I said.

I won.  They begrudgingly admitted I was right.

I did dress up like the Swine Flu, complete with a pig head, at Halloween that year!

At another facility, the Activities Director had a baby.  Her husband worked out of town and was away four nights a week.  I allowed her to bring the baby to work while she was arraigning daycare.

That little girl had about ten doting babysitters anytime she was in the building.

The point is that there is a special bond between kids and our “seasoned citizens.”

I’m convinced it goes beyond grandparents getting a chance to “do it right this time around.”

It’s much deeper than that.  There’s a camaraderie between the newest and the oldest of our society – and I suspect of any society, anywhere in the world, anytime in history.

I’ve have always considered life to be a bell curve.  When a person is born we feed them, change their diapers and generally take care of them.

At the end of life ….. well, you see the similarity.

Shel Silverstein illustrated it best.  He’s the guy who wrote Johnny Cash’s big hit “A Boy Named Sue.”

But, Shel Silverstein was much more than the writer of novelty songs.
One of my favorites, Silverstein was an author, poet, cartoonist, songwriter and playwright – and a member of the Nashville Songwriter’s Hall of Fame.

One of his most poignant poems dealt with the relationship between kids and senior citizens.

The Little Boy and The Old Man – by Shel Silverstein

Said the little boy, ‘Sometimes I drop my spoon.’
Said the old man, ‘I do that too.’
The little boy whispered, ‘I wet my pants.’
‘I do that too,’ laughed the little old man.
Said the little boy, ‘I often cry.’
The old man nodded, ‘So do I.’
‘But worst of all,’ said the boy, ‘it seems
Grown-ups don’t pay attention to me.’
And he felt the warmth of a wrinkled old hand.
‘I know what you mean,’ said the little old man.

Thanks, Drew.

Be Thankful 

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—that we live in a state that is so safe, so protective of its citizens and their rights, so free from any legal issues linked to our laws, or any uncertainty about people we have put into public office whose behavior is not above the law—

—that we can have a fearless Attorney General who is so bored with the lack of action in his own jurisdiction that he can courageously tell other states what their responsibilities are.

What gives him the authority to stick his nose into other states’ businesses, you might ask?  We checked the Missouri Constitution, chapter 27.  He is, upon order of the governor, to help local prosecutors with cases, usually those of very serious and complicated natures that are beyond the capability of local prosecutors and their smaller staffs to handle. Local judges also can direct the Attorney General to sign indictments.

He is a legal advisor to the General Assembly who issues advisory opinions on issues before or possibly to be before the legislature. He also is a legal adviser on behalf of the state to Executive Branch officials, elected and appointed “upon any question of law relative to their respective offices or the discharge of their duties.”

The Attorney General defends the state in any appeals to the Missouri Supreme Court or the the State Courts of Appeals.

It is in Section 27.060 we find the words that let our Attorney General meddle in other states’ affairs:

 27.060.  To represent state in other cases. — The attorney general shall institute, in the name and on the behalf of the state, all civil suits and other proceedings at law or in equity requisite or necessary to protect the rights and interests of the state, and enforce any and all rights, interests or claims against any and all persons, firms or corporations in whatever court or jurisdiction such action may be necessary; and he may also appear and interplead, answer or defend, in any proceeding or tribunal in which the state’s interests are involved.

And that is why, Andrew Bailey—wanting to burnish his credentials as a loyal MAGA-ite—has a way to sue the State of New York, claiming that a jury of Donald Trump’s peers that convicted him of 34 criminal charges a few weeks ago was involved in “unconstitutional lawfare” that is a “direct attack on our democratic process.”

(“Lawfare” is a newly-created phrase designed to manipulate your gut instincts and to malign the honor of those who respect and have built, the American system of justice that has and will protect all of us.)

“It’s time to restore the rule of law,” he righteously proclaims, while using that phrase that is intended to undermine it.

It would be nice if people such as Bailey justified their Trumpist credentials with some original words instead of parroting, more or less, the bloated Trump rhetoric that his trial was “rigged and disgraceful.”

Bailey claims Trump is a victim of a “rogue prosecutor who is trying to take a presidential candidate off the campaign trail” in a way that “sabotages Missourians’ right to a free and fair election.”

One can hope that whatever document he files in this case focuses on the law and spares the judicial system another dose of MAGA hot air.

But if hot air is all he has to offer—-as we have seen in too many filings on behalf of the now-convicted felon—perhaps Missouri voters should consider whether he deserves four years as the state’s lawyer.

We have to recognize what is going on here.  What he is part of is a widespread, calculated, grinding attack designed to nationally undermine the legal system he has sworn to uphold, a legal system he might in his younger and more idealistic (and realistic) days have seen as an honorable field of service in a free country.

Does he ever wonder where that younger self has gone?  Would any of us ever have thought  that our state’s top legal officer now seeks favor from followers of one man whose insatiable hunger for power has proclaimed that he has been egregiously abused because his dreams of dominance and his tactics of intimidation could not sway a mere dozen citizens—people no different from you and me—from meeting their obligations under a two century-old world-respected system of verdicts delivered by the people, of the people, and for the people.

He chooses to hitch his wagon to someone who has no use for such a system unless he can manipulate it to serve himself.  The rationalization that is it is being done to preserve a “free and fair election” is a fiction, particularly for the state that has him as its highest legal officer.

To be fair, Bailey’s opponent in next weeks’ primary, Will Scharf, calls himself “Trump’s Attorney,” and has the distinction of having been policy director for the recent lamentable Governor Eric Greitens. He says it’s time for an outsider to be Missouri’s AG.  That’s the same thing Greitens proclaimed when he ran for and won the governorship and we remember how well that outsider’s policies went over.

Donald Trump carried Missouri in each of the last two elections and likely will carrying it again this year, despite what a jury in New York has said and despite what state and federal prosecutors  accuse him of doing in other places. Nobody has shown that Republicans cannot place Trump’s name on the Missouri ballot in November, so we are able to freely and fairly vote for or against him.

It would be nice if Andrew Bailey and Will Sharf proved they was watching out for our interests as they are watching out for Trump’s.

For instance:

Bailey is the chairman of the Governor’s Crime Commission. Has anybody heard about anything substantial that the commission has done or is doing under his leadership?  How is it working to reduce crime throughout Missouri.  We haven’t heard a peep about that commission’s work or its record.

He has divided his office into eight divisions: Litigation, Consumer Protection, Governmental Affairs, Environmental Protection, Criminal Appeals, Governmental and Financial Entities, Labor, and Public Safety.

How has he protected us consumers?  It had been a long time since we had heard anything about his supervision of the no-call list and prosecutions violators—until we got a pre-primary election brochure in our mail box the other day telling us what a splendid job his office was doing in consumer affairs.

Any companies being sued for shutting down without legally-required notifications of workers and providers?  Any polluters being located?

What has he done to protect our environment?

What has his Public Safety Division done to increase your safety and mine?

And Labor—-what does that division do?  Is it protecting those who labor?

All of us are left ignorant while Attorney General Bailey makes sure he remains an apple of the MAGA eye with self-aggrandizing huffing about the terrible things a dozen courageous and highly-responsible fellow citizens have done to underline the basic American belief that no one is above the law.

Isn’t it comforting to live in a state with so few problems that our Attorney General has time to meddle in the affairs of other states?

Why am I not therefore comfortable?

Why Speaker Johnson Wants a Fake Law

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House Speaker Mike Johnson admits he doesn’t KNOW that there is a problem with non-citizens voting but he wants a law banning them from doing it.  “We all know, intuitively, that a lot of illegals are voting in federal elections. But it’s not been something that is easily provable. We don’t have that number. This legislation will allow us to do exactly that — it will prevent that from happening. And if someone tries to do it, it will now be unlawful within the states,” he said.

Intuition?

Wouldn’t you think that the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives would know this country has had a law since 1996 that bars non-citizens from voting in federal elections?

Johnson started talking about the potential law after a recent visit to Mar-a-Lago, whose resident golf course champion told Iowans heading to their caucuses in January that immigrants are Democratic political tools:

“That’s why they are allowing these people to come in — people that don’t speak our language — they are signing them up to vote.  And I believe that’s why you are having millions of people pour into our country and it could very well affect the next election. That’s why they are doing it.”

—-Which is a load of equine byproduct.

Rebecca Beitsch and Rafael Bernal, writing for The Hill political newsletter in Washington, talked to people who easily refute Speaker Johnson’s claim that “it’s not something that is easily provable. We don’t have the numbers.”  Johnson could have talked to the same people, but who needs facts when your politically-shaped intuition can be used to malign a big segment of our population and the opposing party as well?

The Hill reporters went to Senior Counsel Eliza Sweren-Becker with the Brennan Center for Justice’s Voting Rights & Elections Program. “We actually do have the numbers, and we know that noncitizens don’t vote illegally in detectable numbers, let alone in large numbers,” she told them.  The Center has data from 42 jurisdictions. The study showed only 30 SUSPECTED BUT NOT CONFIRMED noncitizen votes in the 2016 General Election. There were 23.5 million votes cast in those jurisdictions, 0.0001 (one ten-thousandth) of a percent of the votes cast.

There are those who will dismiss these findings because they come from a center named for Supreme Court Associate Justice William Brennan, considered part of the court’s liberal wing during his 34 years on the court.

So they asked one of the experts at the Libertarian Cato Institute, who called Johnson’s intuition one of the “most frequent and less serious criticisms” about migration.

President Janet Murguia of UnidosUS, the biggest Latino civil rights organization in the United States, says Johnson’s intuition “doesn’t count for anything—doesn’t mean a lick” because Johnson admittedly has no proof.

“Many of our organizations have scoured for any signs of voting that has been irregular or done by folks who are not qualified. There just hasn’t been any evidence. So he can have intuition all he wants, but that does not mean it’s true. It does not mean there is evidence, and it does not mean it’s factual.”  She challenged Johnson and his friends to produce specifics and data.

The Chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Nanette Diaz Barragan accuses Johnson of finding “another way…to appease the crazies on the right because he’s on the chopping block right now and he’s got to do something to feed them some red bait.”

Johnson’s proposed law would force voters to show they are citizens of the United States to get a ballot. One of the drafters of the questionably-necessary bill, Texas Congressman Chip Roy, maintains, “the most fundamental thing you can do to destroy the rule of law and to destroy our republic is to undermine faith in our elections.” He says a system to guarantee that only citizens vote in federal elections is needed despite the 1996 law doing exactly that.

Documents such as birth certificates, passports, or naturalization papers would fill that bill, but the Brennan Center has found 5-7% of Americans—millions of people—do not have what Sweren-Becker calls “the most common types of documents used to prove citizenship.”

Murguia says conservative organizations have been looking into this issue for sometime, especially voting by undocumented people, and, “they just can’t report any great number, if any at all.”

The conservative Heritage Foundation has numbers Johnson could have gathered if he wasn’t so busy listening to his intuition. The Foundation’s records dating back about forty years show only about fifty cases of voting by noncitizens, which includes visa holders or legal permanent residents, not just people here illegally.

Politifact, a political fact-checking site run by the Poynter Institute, a journalism research organization, got no response from the Trump campaign when it asked the campaign to justify his Iowa claim about Democrats loading the voter rolls with illegal immigrants.

But it, too, has numbers that Johnson doesn’t seem to think exist as well as some examples where authorities actually recruited noncitizens to register to vote. In Colorado, for instance, the Secretary of State before than 2022 midterm elections, sent postcards to about 30,000 drivers license holders encouraging them to register before learning they were non-citizens. He had to send an “oops” postcard to all of them and then worked with county clerks to make sure nobody in that group did try to register.

South Carolina federal prosecutors in 2020 charged 19 people with casting ballots they were not entitled to cast in the 2016 election.  Three cases were dismissed and sixteen people pleaded guilty.  Sixteen people out of more than 4.5 million who voted legally.

And in Georgia, one of the ex-president’s least-favorite people, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said two years ago that investigators had found all of 1,634 non-citizens had tried to register to vote during the last TWENTY-FIVE YEARS.

The Hill notes that then-Governor Rick Scott of Florida announced before the 2014 midterms that 180,000 foreign nationals were going to be purged from the voter rolls. That number was reduced to only 2,600. Then it was cut to 198.  Finally, only 85 names were eliminated. And how many prosecutions were there?   One.

One, out of the 180,000 that Scott claimed were problems. That person was Josef Sever, who faced as much as five years in prison for falsely claiming to be a citizen, or as much as one year if he cast a ballot. Convictions also can result in deportation and might preclude any later opportunities for citizenship. Sever got five months in prison, a light sentence because the judge knew Sever was going to be deported.

Forget facts.  Forget that there really are numbers that Johnson claims don’t exist. Forget that we’ve had a federal law on this subject for 38 years. Forget that we heard this one-note song from our former President and his cronies eight years ago when he claimed he would have won the popular vote were it not for three-million votes cast by illegal immigrants (not one of which apparently voted for him).

It was a bogus claim then. It’s a bogus piece of intuition now. But Johnson and other Trump sycophants are going to beat this dead horse as much as they can because our former president wants them to do it.

When Johnson and others start spouting about the need to protect voting integrity, an important question to ask is, “from whom?”

Fake Law, Part One of a Series

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(In this week before the primary election, we are reluctantly embarking on a series of daily observations of campaigns and campaign non-issues that do little to enhance public confidence in the process. We are sorry to be as pessimistic as we might seem. Perhaps the survivors of the primaries will be more responsible in their general election campaigns.

The situation seems to us be so dire that we will not have our regular Tuesday visit with the toy department of journalism—sports.)

FAKE LAW

It makes good headlines.

But it’s a fake issue.

It rallies the core.

But it’s a fake issue.

It paints a false portrait.

And it’s a fake issue.

It misleads voters.

Because it’s a fake issue.

It makes people think there’s a big problem.

But there isn’t.

It tries to capitalize on fear.

But it’s a lie.

And it’s one of the reasons Democrats in the Missouri Senate staged a record-setting filibuster in the last week of a legislative session that was characterized by filibusters from a small group of Republicans who have tried to run the chamber.

The legislation involved was a proposal making it harder to amend the state constitution. A bipartisan vote shut down debate and sent the bill to a committee that would work on compromises that might let it move forward in the last two days of the session.

The fact that Republicans and Democrats did something together put the Senate’s problem children into a tizzy.  Freedom Caucus ringleader Bill Eigel, who apparently thinks one has to disagree disagreeably to succeed in today’s politics, warned Senate colleagues that the caucus would object to any compromises that changes what the FC demands.

And what the FC demanded was passage of a bill that would become partly fake law.

If you’re keeping score, this is the proposal that says no change can be made in the state constitution, even if the statewide vote approves the change, unless voters in five of our eight congressional districts approve.  It’s a Republican effort to keep the heavy Democratic vote from the metro areas, and the Columbia area, from offsetting the conservative outstate votes.

It also contains “fake law” provisions prohibiting non-citizens from voting on constitutional amendments—-something already forbidden by Missouri and federal law.

But it sounds good in an election year.  Democrats kept the bill from going to a final Senate vote, complaining the language was included just to deceive voters. Eigel said those characterizations were “completely unfair” and the measure presented “a great opportunity” to keep non-citizens from voting.

—Except the ban already is on the books.

Democrats in the Senate, with Republican leaders refusing to take parliamentary action to shut down debate, chewed up three of the precious last five days of the session in a filibuster that lasted 51-plus hours.                    .

The demagoguery on this issue is going to be with us through November, regardless of any legislative action because MAGA Republicans, in particular, want to use it to beat Democrats—i.e. Joe Biden—over the head on immigration issues.

A few days ago in Washington, House Speaker Mike Johnson unveiled the proposed Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act. Don’t be surprised if a House committee decides to “investigate,” giving majority members of the committee opportunities to condemn the actions or inactions of the administration to keep illegal immigrants from voting.

Another new committee, in the Missouri House, is going to investigate crime by illegal immigrants, another opportunity to make sure the issue’s political value is not wasted before the election. It has been expanded to include crimes AGAINST immigrants, a fair thing to consider.

We’ve all watched this kind of political circus on other topics.

And that’s what this harping on immigrant voting is.  Political circus.

What it is NOT is an issue. We’ll tell you why in our next entry.

Clifton and Ambrose 

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Clifton Fadiman, an author, critic, editor, and radio and television personality, wrote an essay on Ambrose Bierce a long time ago.  I read it the other evening.  A forgotten literary critic writing about a forgotten social critic.

Bierce was a short story writer, a poet, a Civil War veteran best known for his short story, “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” and whose book The Devil’s Dictionary, is considered one of the greatest literary masterpieces in American history.

–“Politics: a strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.”

–“Conservative, n: A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from a Liberal who wishes to replace them with others.”  

–“Corporations: an ingenious device for obtaining profit without responsibility.”

—Ambrose Bierce

Clifton Fadiman, who died at the age of 95 in 1999, was the Chief Editor for the publishing house of Simon and Schuster. For eleven years he was the book editor of New Yorker magazine.  From 1938 into 1948 he hosted the radio program “Information Please.”  He was the host of several shows in the early days of television. For many years he was one of those who picked the selections for the Book of the Month Club.

–“When you reread a classic, you do not see more in the book than you did before, you see more in you than there was before.”

–“There are two kinds of writers; the great ones who can give you truths, and the lessor ones, who can only give you themselves.” 

–“My son is 7 years old. I am 54.  It has taken me a great many years to reach that age. I am more respected in the community. I am stronger, I am more intelligent and I think I am better than he is.  I don’t want to be a pal, I want to be a father.”

—Clifton Fadiman

Fadiman called Bierce, who disappeared in Mexico in 1913 when he was about 71 years old, a misanthrope (somebody who dislikes humankind and avoids human society, says one definition). He was a drummer boy at the start of the Civil War and was a Lieutenant, brevet (temporary) Major, at the end. He got into newspapering in San Francisco, spent a few years in London, and became known for what Fadiman calls “slashing journalism.”  Friends and critics alike sometimes referred to him as “Bitter Bierce.”

Fadiman’s essay on Bierce includes this appraisal of literature in our country:

The dominating tendency of American literature and social thought, from Benjamin Franklin to Sinclair Lewis, has been optimistic.  It has believed in man, it has believed in American man.  It has at times been satirical and even bitter—but not negative.  It gave the world the positive statements of the Declaration, the Constitution, the Gettysburg Address, Emerson, Whitman, William James, Henry George, John Dewey.  This has been the stronger current. But along with it there has coursed a narrower current, the shadowed stream of pessimism. Perhaps its obscure source lies in the southern philosophers of slavery or in the bleak hell-fire morality of early puritan divines like Michael Wigglesworth and Jonathan Edwards. It flows hesitantly in Hawthorne, with fury in Moby Dick and Pierre, with many a subtle meander in the dark symbolisms of Poe.  It may appear in part of a writer (the Mark Twain of “The mysterious Stranger” and “The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg.”) and not in the whole of him.  You may trace it in an out-of-the-main-stream philosopher such as Thorstein Veblen. You will find it in the thoughts of H. L. Mencken and the stories of Ring Lardner.  And you will see it plain, naked, naïve, and powerful in the strange fables of Ambrose Bierce.

Thorstein Veblen, by the way, taught at the University of Missouri-Columbia for a while.

We found ourselves wondering as we read Fadiman’s assessment of literature and his portrait of Bierce what both would think today about literature and the world.  Even in the middle of the last century when Fadiman wrote his essay, he felt Bierce would look at the tragedies and atrocities of that time and would have been “afforded…a satisfaction deeper and more bitter than that which he drew from the relatively paltry horrors of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries…The current scene would have filled him with so pure a pleasure.”

Some other thoughts from Bierce:

—History, n. an account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools.

—If you want to read a perfect book there is only one way: write it. 

—Patriotism deliberately and with folly aforethought subordinates the interests of a whole to the interests of a part. Worse still, the fraction so favored is determined by an accident of birth or residence.

And a few more from Fadiman:

—A cheese may disappoint. It may be dull. It may be naive. It may be oversophisticated, yet it remains cheese, milk’s leap toward immortality. 

—There is no reader so parochial as the one who reads none but this morning’s books. Books are not rolls, to be devoured only when they are hot and fresh. A good book retains its interior heat and will warm a generation yet unborn.

—If you want to feel at home, stay at home.

—We are all citizens of history. 

—There are two kinds of writers, the great ones who can give you truths, and the lessor ones who can only give you themselves.

And how would they have assessed today’s American optimism/pessimism and the events of our world?

—“War is God’s way of teaching Americans geography”

—Bierce

And Fadiman:

–“A good memory is one trained to forget the trivial.”

–“When you travel, remember that a foreign country is not designed to make you comfortable. It is designed to make its own people comfortable.”

We close with an observation from Bierce, wondering how much more acidic he would be with a certain device today:

–“Telephone, n: An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance.” 

Decision 

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(Originally this entry was called “Discussion” because it addressed—when written last week—that President Biden might decide to pull out of the presidential race.  I didn’t post it because I was going to be out of town through the weekend and didn’t want the comments outdated before they were posted.  We’ve done some editing to account for the decision yesterday that President Biden would withdraw from the race and endorse Vice President Harris to for President.

Rather quickly the public dialogue about the Democratic ticket for November seems to have reached an important stage.

The matter of President Biden’s mental and physical health has become secondary to the DISCUSSION about his mental and physical health.

We are pretty sure that some sophisticated polling is being done about whether TALK is robbing the Democratic Presidential Campaign of its ability to focus on issues.

Republicans are no doubt relishing the distraction because they are talking about their issues, their ticket clearly assembled and aggressively spreading the GOP word regardless of its truth.  Nothing internal is stopping the Trump bandwagon at this point, certainly not Democrats.

The Democrats are limited in talking about their issues because they have one issue right now and it’s a giant one and it is completely internal. The public, including THEIR public, has nowhere to go.

(Events have rendered the original paragraph’s speculation about whether the party would go with Vice-President Harris. That speculation has been fully answered as we revise this. Now back to the original narrative.)

Who should be her running mate?  She’s about 60, about average for a President.  But an aggressive running mate in the 40s would send an interesting message to many voters who have not been entertained by two geezers calling each other liars.

Plus a running mate in the 40s could dilute whatever advantage among young voters that the Republicans have by running someone who is 39 as their Veep.

(There was some historical stuff in the original post about presidents who had decided not to seek another term but we will hold those until later.)

As we drove home from Indianapolis last night and early this morning, we spent some of that time listening to the coverage on the satellite channels for CNN, MSNBC, and FOX News.  While CNN and MSNBC had their talking heads discussing possible Harris VP choices and understanding what’s next for the Democratic Part, FOX already was Full Doberman in attacking Harris.

And we thought in those long, dark miles (we got home at 2:30 this morning) about how the complexion of this contest has suddenly changed.

Now, the old man with questionable mental health is the Republican candidate.  The shoe is on the other foot and the GOP is stuck with it.

The outlook for Democrats has changed dramatically and all of the sudden they, and Kamala Harris, have control of the spotlight and they’re suddenly gifted with a convention that can have an impact far greater than they had expected.

The immigrant issue now has a new dimension because the presumptive Democrat nominee is from a state that has been dealing with Mexican immigrants for almost 400 years, since Juan Cabrillo led an expedition into the area in 1542.  AND Harris’ mother is an immigrant from India and her father is an immigrant from Jamaica.

She would be a formidable debate opponent for Donald Trump who has given her a derogatory nickname.  But he’ll need something more than a nickname for her when he meets her on a debate stage. You can be guaranteed that a Trump-Harris debate would not degenerate into a discussion of golf scores. One does not become a federal prosecutor and then the Attorney General of California without some sharp edges.  By now, he should have some appreciation for the skills of prosecutors.

President Biden’s decision within hours awoke the sleeping Democratic Giant and now it is Mr. Trump and the Republicans who should be nervous.

And finally, this occurred early this morning.

This race will offer widely contrasting issues of character—-and when all else fails for the undecideds who might make the fractional difference in the polls and at the polling places, character might be the deciding factor.

Contrast President Biden’s response to the attempted assassination of Mr. Trump.  He called Trump, referring to him in public remarks as “Donald,” not making any dismissive and derogatory comments but only expressing sympathy and respect.

Then consider Mr. Trump’s response to the Biden withdrawal: “Crooked Joe Biden was not fit to run for President and is certainly not fit to serve—And never was!”  And he ranted on from there, showing once again a distinct lack of character.

And white nationalists who have made Mr. Trump their totem have been presented with a real quandary—The daughter of a Hindu woman born in India and a Jamaican husband, and who is married to a Jew and attends a black Baptist Church in San Francisco now look at Mr. Trump’s chosen running mate, J. D. Vance and they have a fit about Vance’s wife, Usha, who was born in India. Podcaster Nick Fuentes asked, “Do we really expect that the guy who has an Indian wife and named their kid Vivek is going to support white identity?”

Trump supporter and J6 veteran James Foxx, has complained, “JD Vance gets tapped as VP and immediately there’s a Hindu prayer at the RNC. Next we’ll see Sen. Mike Lee and JD Vance team up to convince Trump to let in 10 million Indian immigrants. Green cards on diplomas!”

A few days ago we had a competition between a couple of old coots who were about as exciting as a nursing home checkers game.  And all of the sudden, a new head nurse has roared into the parking lot in her Corvette.

Things are about to change.

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Hawley’s Christian Nation: Would You Want to Live in it?

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Our Senior Senator recently (July 11) proclaimed at the National Conservatism Conference that we live in a Christian nation:

Some will say now that I am calling America a Christian nation. And so I am. And some will say I am advocating Christian nationalism. And so I do. Is there any other kind worth having? …It has been our moral center and supplied our most cherished ideals. Just think: Those stern Puritans…gave us limited government and liberty of conscience and popular sovereignty.

Because of our Christian heritage, we protect the liberty of all to worship according to conscience. Because of our Christian tradition, we welcome people of all races and ethnic backgrounds to join a nation constituted by common loves.

Hawley claimed that Aurelius Augustinus Hipponensis, better known to us as St. Augustine, originated the idea of Christian Nationalism, “a nationalism driven not by conquest but by common love; a nation made not for the rich or for the strong, but for the ‘poor in spirit,’ the common man.”

He went on to proclaim this country was defined by Augustine’s vision—the dignity of the common man, as given to us in the Christian religion; a nation held together by the homely affections articulated in the Christian faith—love for God, love for family, love for neighbor, home, and country.”

Christian nationalism is not a threat to democracy, he claimed. In fact, it founded American democracy. “It is..the most just, the most free, the most humane and praiseworthy,” he said.

Hawley has called for the recovery of “the principles of our Christian political tradition…for the sake of our future.”

He charged “the modern left” with wanting to “destroy our common bonds and replace them with another faith, to dissolve the nation as we know it, and remake it in our image. This has been their project for 50 years and more.”

Let’s take a closer look at Hawley’s demagoguery—the appeal to, as one definition tells us, “the desires and prejudices of ordinary people rather than using rational argument.”

Note that he claimed our Christian heritage protects “the liberty of all to worship according to conscience” and leads us to “welcome people of all races and ethnic backgrounds to join our nation constituted by common loves.”

Is that the kind of Christian heritage that has motivated his close buddy, Donald Trump, to try to ban Muslims from this country and to threaten mass deportations of a scope never before seen?

Shame on “the modern left” for plotting to “dissolve the nation as we know it?”  Is he saying the “modern left” wants to make this a Muslim country?

Is Trump’s “beautiful wall” welcoming “people of all races and ethnic backgrounds” to come here?  Are his wildly untrue claims that all of the people crossing the Rio Grande are escaped mental patients, fentanyl smugglers, rapists and killers an example of “welcoming people of all races and ethnic backgrounds” to become Americans, a “nation constituted by common loves?”

Let’s take a somewhat long journey to see just how much Hawley or anybody else would like to live in the so-called Christian nation that he claims we were founded to be. He is, after all, correct in maintaining that we have drifted away from that era.

As well we should have.

History teaches us that the New Testament admonition that one should love one’s neighbor as one loves oneself was not a foundation of those pious founders.  Perhaps the most unloved people were—-

Baptists.

Professor Thomas Kidd from Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary says Baptists “were the most likely ‘well meaning’ Christians to be thrown in jail on the eve of the American Revolution.”

Our Pilgrim and Puritan founders believed in freedom of THEIR religion—and woe be unto anybody who did not embrace their interpretation of the Anglican faith such as Baptists who insisted immersion baptism was the biblical way to do it. But the Anglicans held that baptism was for  infants and, says Kidd, waiting until a person was old enough to understand the ordinance of baptism amounted to child abuse.

Baptists also refused to attend Anglican services. They refused to pay taxes to support churches.  Their preachers refused to get licenses from the government. And they wouldn’t stay put. They circulated their heretical beliefs and practices by having preachers traveling throughout the colonies performing baptisms in creeks, rivers, and lakes.

In Massachusetts, the cradle for the birth of our “Christian nation,” a law was passed in 1645 calling Baptists “the incendiaries of commonwealths” and accused them of being “the troublers of churches in all places.”

In 1651, one Obadiah Holmes was sentenced to receive thirty lashes for proselytizing among the Baptists. He told  the whipping officer, “I am now come to be baptized in affliction by your hands, that so I may have further fellowship with my Lord, and am not ashamed of his suffering, for by his stripes am I healed.” Afterward he smiled at his critics and said he had been struck “as with roses.”  Kidd’s telling of the story does not include the reaction of the Christians who ordered him whipped.

One reason James Madison wanted freedom of religion in the Constitution was because he had seen this oppression of Baptists firsthand. He wrote a friend in 1774 to complain of the “diabolical Hell conceived principle of persecution” that had landed “not less than 5 or 6 well meaning men in [jail] for publishing their religious sentiments.”  He urged his friend to “pray for liberty of conscience to revive among us.”

Quakers were enemies of the state, too.  Several missionaries were kicked out of the colony in the years after the Holmes whipping and told not to return.  Three did go back.  The Massachusetts Christians hanged them.

And THIS is the Christian heritage that Hawley says we should revere as one that protects “the liberty of all to worship according to conscience?”

The most famous exclusions from Massachusetts are Roger Williams and his wife Mary and Anne Hutchinson.  The Williamses were charged with sedition and heresy. In addition to circulating his public differences with the Church of England, Williams also publicly condemned the King’s charters for the Massachusetts colony and argued the Plymouth settlers had no right to take land from the Native Americans.

As for Anne Hutchinson—probably this country’s first “Uppity Woman”—she not only questioned the traditional Puritan teachings and sermons, but also held study groups of other women to discuss those differences at a time when women were to be silent and obedient to their husbands. AND her meetings became so popular that she began holding them for men, one of whom was the governor of the colony. In 1637, a provincial court convicted her—without saying specifically of what—and banished her.

The Williamses and Anne Hutchinson were among the founders of the Colony of Rhode Island and of Providence Plantation. Williams ruled the colony would not have any state religion and all who lived there would be free to practice their beliefs.

One of those Williams had corresponded with was William Penn, a Quaker who had been expelled from the Church of England and was later imprisoned in England for advocating religious pluralism, He protested against mistreatment of Quakers in Massachusetts and when King Charles II decided o pay off a debt to Penn’s father, Sir William Penn, by granting a charter to an area in the new World he called “Pennsylvania, Sir William’s son decided to create a “tolerance settlement” where persecuted Christians could take refuge. Although there was no established church, the colony’s 1776 Constitution required all government representatives to swear, “I do believe in one God, the creator and governor of the universe, the rewarder of the good and punisher of the wicked. And I do acknowledge the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be given by Divine inspiration.” .

Baptist historian and pastor Isaac Backus, who lived through some of those times, recalled that when Baptists in Sturbridge, Massachusetts refused to pay taxes to support the Congregationalist Church, they were imprisoned for tax evasion. One of them was Backus’s mother in 1752.  Four years before that, says contemporary Baptist historian William Lloyd Allen, “a Congregational minister convinced authorities to clear Baptist homes of cookware, tools, spinning wheels and even livestock used to make livings, among other valuable goods.”

When Backus went to the Massachusetts delegation to the 1775 Continental Congress—at a time when the phrase “no taxation without representation” was being shouted—his complaint that state church taxes on Baptists, none other than John Adams responded that Baptists “might as well expect a change in the solar system as to expect they would give up their establishment.”

In 1617, the Governor of the Virginia Colony decreed, “Every Person should go to church, Sundays and Holidays, or lye Neck and Heels that night, and be a Slave to the Colony the following Week; for the second Offence, he should be a Slave for a Month, and for the Third, a Year and a Day.”

More than thirty Baptist preachers were jailed in Virginia in the decade before Madison and Jefferson forged Virginia’s Bill for Establishing Religious Liberty in 1786 a few years before Madison’s religion clause was added to the Bill of Rights.

But state-supported religion hung around well after that. The 14th Amendment left any religious requirements for voting or holding office moot.  New Hampshire in 1875 and North Carolina in 1877 were the last states to actually remove such references from their state constitutions.

New York was “intolerantly Protestant,” as one source puts it. The Dutch Reformed Church was the established church in New Amsterdam until the English seized control in 1664. They continued the Dutch Reform policy. The 1683 New York Charter of Liberties and Privileges vowed to “guard against that spiritual oppression and intolerance wherewith the bigotry and ambition of weak and wicked priests and princes have sourced mankind,” a seeming reference to English opposition to the Catholic faith.

Maryland’s 1632 charter professed, “It is the duty of every man to worship God in such manner as he thinks most acceptable to him, and all persons professing the Christian religion, are equally entitled to protection of their religious liberty…” But the legislature had the power to “lay a general and equal tax for the support of the Christian religion.”

Mayland had begun as the only predominantly Catholic colony. Adelaide Mena wrote for the National Catholic Register that the first English Catholics fleeing persecution in England arrived in Maryland on March 25, 1684 and held the first Mass in the British colonies. Maryland passed a Toleration Act in 1649, she says, marking “the beginning of a framework of religious freedom.”

Delaware had no official religion in its 1637 Charter issued to the South Company of Sweden.

Connecticut’s1630 charter established the Congregational Church was the “onely and principall end of this plantation.”

South Carolina’s 1778 Constitution not only declared, “The Christian Protestant religion shall be deemed, and is hereby constituted and declared to be, the established religion of this State.” It also required any group wanting to form a church to meet five criteria:  That there is one eternal God, and a future state of rewards and punishments;  That God is publicly to be worshipped. That the Christian religion is the true religion; That the holy scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are of divine inspiration, and are the rule of faith and practice; That it is lawful and the duty of every man being thereunto called by those that govern, to bear witness to the truth.”

New Jersey, in its 1776 constitution, provided that ‘No Protestant inhabitant of this Colony shall be denied the enjoyment of any civil right, merely on account of his religious principles.”

Note that several of the charters specifically referred to the Protestant religion.

Catholics were a different matter.

The Georgia charter of 1732 simply banned Catholics from the colony, proclaiming, “There shall be a liberty of conscience allowed in the worship of God, to all persons inhabiting, or which shall inhabit or be resident within our said provinces and that all such persons, except papists, shall have a free exercise of their religion…”

The Georgia Historical Society says early Georgians, concerned that Spanish Florida bordered the colony, feared Catholic settlers would be Spanish sympathizers if Spain and Britain went to war.

Georgia Trustees also didn’t want Jews, but circumstances forced the issue. When summer heat and sicknesses that came with it left 60 of Savannah’s colonists in fear of their lives—with the town’s only doctor also sick—the arrival of a ship full of Jews that included Dr. Samuel Nunez, saved the day.  Nunez accepted no pay as he nursed all sixty ailing Georgians back to health. Colony founder James Oglethorpe saw that the colony’s charter allowing religious freedom for all non-Catholics meant the Jews, not being Catholics, could stay and more could settle. The nation’s third oldest Jewish congregation is in Georgia.

We have not even scratched the surface of our colonial history when we were a “Christian Nation,” as Hawley and his associates incorrectly maintain, hoping that public ignorance of our history—which these folks want to make national policy—will let them establish their theocracy.

We doubt that Hawley would want to live in the nation that he thinks we need to return to.  Of course, if he’s the Presbyterian Puritan Elder it would probably be okay with him.

Our “Christian” founders punished Baptists, Quakers, Jews, and Catholics.  They thought slavery was fine and saw fit to banish non-adherents to some other place—in their day, it was to Rhode Island.

And they also relied on the Doctrine of Discovery, which proclaimed the right of Christian nations to take possession of lands held by non-Christians. The doctrine was enacted in the 15th century, the last one after Columbus’s discoveries in the new world. Non-Christians were not considered legitimate possessors of the lands and the European discoverers were authorized to take them in order to Christianize the heathens and save their souls, thus clearing the way for Europeans to seize Native American lands, by force if necessary, a policy that produced what some call our Native American genocide.

Ironically, the doctrine used by our Christian forbears had been proclaimed by Popes whose later followers were not considered Christians by Hawley’s Christian founders.

Even today, there are those who still maintain that Catholics are not Christian—you can ask the person whose pickup truck I saw a few years ago that had “Catholics are not Christians” painted on the tailgate.  We will leave it to others to determine if there is any significance in the fact that it has been 64 years since the election of our first, and so far, only Catholic President, and the election of our first black President still has some on Hawley’s side of our politics still arguing he wasn’t (and I guess, therefore is still not) an American.

And good gracious, our southern border is a sieve that is allowing thousands of people from Catholic countries in central and South America to flood into our Christian nation where they are—as the Republican nominee for President has put it—“poisoning the blood of our country.”

We are reminded of a small orange card in the massive collections at the Smithsonian in Washington from an organization  that claimed about 1930 to be “a religious movement of American Brotherhood.”  It says it stands for “a dozen “tenents of  the Christian Religion.”

—The Upholding of the Constitution of the United States

—The Separation of Church and State

—Freedom of Speech and Press

—Closer Relationship of Pure Americanism.

—Much needed local reform.

—Closer Relationships between American Capital and American Labor

—Limitation on Foreign Immigration

—The Upholding of our States Rights

—Prevention of fires and Destruction of Property by Lawless Elements

—Preventing the Causes of Mob Violence and Lynchings

—Preventing Unwarranted Strikes  by Foreign Labor Agitators.

—Protection of Our Pure Womanhood

And the top tenant of the Christian Religion:

—White Supremacy.

The title on the card reads, “The Creed of the Ku Klux Klan.”

Christian Nationalism boiled down to a 3×5 orange card.

We must be careful whose definition of “Christian” we are told is best for us. We must be skeptical of those who twist history and religion to seek power over us.  We cannot protect our freedoms if we are comfortable being ignorant of our past—and there are those who ARE comfortable relying on that ignorance.  In fact, they are counting on it to achieve their goals.

The Bible teaches us that the greatest quality we can have is love of others as of ourselves. Those who proclaim that hate and fear of others while proclaiming to know the true definition of Christianity must be challenged.

Senator Hawley is only 400 years behind the times. Our country has been there and it wasn’t good enough to go back to. He can go ahead by himself. We’re going to stay behind, happy that our church is next to a Baptist Church and we got along fine.  We love our Catholic neighbor. And we fear Josh Hawley more than any of the Hispanic folks we meet on the street.

Sports:  Sophie’s Choices, All-Star Break, the Draft, and other stuff 

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

Guy sports are so…..oh, we don’t know…..routine…..just a bunch of statistics….Not glamorous.

Who cares about MLB when we have the WNBA ?

(XMIZ)—Former Missouri Lady Tiger Sophie Cunningham is turning out to be quite the glamour figure among WNBA players and quite a quotable source for sports broadcasters.

Cunnigham, who was taken by the Phoenix Mercury in the 2018 draft after an all-star career at Mizzou, got a good look at Indiana Fever star Caitlin Clark last Friday—-the Fever won the game 95-86 to go 10-14 in their last home game before the Olympic break against a team that has three Olympians on it—Brittney Griner, Diana Taurasi, and Kahleah Cooper. Phoenix is now 12-11.

Clark had 20 points including a crowd-standing jumper over Griner, 13 assists and a half-dozen rebounds.

Some observers of the WNBA suggest some veteran players are jealous of Clark, an observation Cunnigham thinks is wrong. She told WSLAM radio listeners, “You see a lot of people in the public eye on the men’s side kind of having Caitlin Clark’s back, too, which is kind of surprising just because they know how physical our game has always been. But when I tell you that the narrative that we’re all against Caitlin or the vets against the rookies that needs to be squashed because it’s not like that…I’ve had my jaw broken; I’ve broken a finger; I’ve broken my nose. Everyone has stories of how physical this league really is and I think that is the main jump that people don’t understand.”

“…I don’t think anyone’s being targeted. If anything, I think we need to give her a little bit of grace sometimes because she has a lot on her plate and a lot of eyes on her. But with that, I think this is gonna be really good for her. She’s gonna be great.”

Cunningham, who does some modeling, is getting attention for some of her pre-game attire choices—such as this glam-appearance before a game earlier this month against the Dallas Wings.

And earlier this year she showed up in a hockey jersey.

She has started all  31 games at guard for the Mercury this year and is averaging 11.3 points per game.

Okay, so much for the fashion runway (that seems to lead to the team locker room).

(BASEBALL)—-It’s the All-Star break and both of our major league teams are above .500, something that is a pleasant surprise given what the Royals were (not) doing a year ago and the discouraging start of the season by the Cardinals.

We normally think of the All-Star game as the halfway point of the season….but the schedule is well beyond that.  The Cardinals have played 96 games and the Royals have played 97.

(ROYALS)—The Royals go to the break at 52-45, third in their division and two games behind the Red Sox on the Wild Card list.

They went for pitchers in the MLB draft, starting with a two-way player with their first draft pick: University of Florida pitcher/first baseman Jac Caglianone. CBS sports called him “the most fascinating player in the class, a freak show talent.”  He hit 62 homers in the last two years and struck out only eight percent of the time. The rating suggests he’s most likely to be a reliever rather than a starter if he makes it to the bigs.

High school pitcher David Shields a 6-2 lefty with three pitches that he gets for strikes. Scouting director Brian Bridges says “The sky’s the limit for him.” He was Pennsylvania’s Baseball Player. He won’t be 18 until September.

They took Tennessee pitcher Drew Beam in the third round. Beam allowed only two runs in the two College World Series games he pitched as Tennessee won its first national championship. He has four pitches including an above average change up and a fastball in the 93-95 mph range.

Round 4’s pick was L. P. Langevin, a right-handed pitcher from Louisiana-Lafayette with a 92-95 mph fastball, a slider and a changeup. He was a reliever in college who racked up 106 K’s in 62 2/3 innings with 33 walks.

Another Tennessee pitcher was picked up in the fifth round, A. J. Causey, another right-hander. Side-armer who struck out 125 batters in 91 1/3 innings

More pitchers and a catcher came in succeeding rounds: Righty Tanner Jones, a righty from Texas A&M, likely a reliever; Dennis Colleran, another righty whose ERA is not impressive (7.97 with Northeastern but he allowed no runs in the last nine of his 15 appearances;  Duke righthander Nick Conte, who’s been taken for his potential. Got in just six innings in seven games this year after missing the 2023 season with an injury but he was highly thought-of in high school and in the New England collegiate Baseball League allowed just one run in 11 1/3 innings.

North Carolina A&T catcher Canyon Brown was the ninth round choice. In his three seasons he hit .288 and in the last two years in the summer leagues he’s had a .766 OPS.  He hit .310 ith a .906 OPS for his college team this year and threw out 27 attempted base stealers.

The Royals finally picked a southpaw when they took LSU pitcher Nate Ackenhausen in the tenth round. Mostly a reliever who played a big role in the Tigers’ national championship in 2023.

(CARDINALS)—The Cardinals only all-star selection has decided he’d rather have four days off than take part in the game. Reliever Ryan Helsley, who set a team record with 32 saves before the all-star break, says it will be better for him and for the team to give his arm a rest so he can continue to be effective down the stretch.

The Cardinals, nine games below break-even on Mother’s day (May 12), are now four above the line (50-46). They are in playoff contention—the second spot out of three—the Mets are a half-game back and the Diamondbacks a game and a half behind the Redbirds.  They’ve gone 35-22 since then and appear to have a slightly favorable schedule the rest of the way.

But things are still unsettled with some veterans not producing as expected, a pitching staff that doesn’t breed confidence (except for Helsley) some guys still uncertain because of injuries, and a one-time wunderkind who doesn’t seem to be making big improvements at Memphis—here he was expected to make big improvements.

The Cardinals have provided hours of speculation about trades since before the season started and that speculation has become more tiresome by the week.

Jordan Walker continues to get at-bats at Memphis but hasn’t earned a trip back to the show. Manager Oliver Marmol says he needs to be more consistent “in doing what he wants to do with the baseball from an offensive standpoint and missing the way he wants to miss,” a statement crying for some definition.

The draft:

West Virginia middle infielder J. J. Wetherholt, who had been a projected number one pick until hamstring injuries cut his year in half became the Cardinals top choice. CBS Sports said he has an “excellent command of the strike zone. He hit .332 in his shortened season with eight homers. Assistant GM Randy Flores says he “plays up the middle, is athletic, has good hands, speed and makes good contact. Bats left-handed.

The ’Birds didn’t have a second-round pick. But in Monday’s picks for rounds 3-10, this is who they got:

RHP Brian Holiday, Oklahoma State. He was 7-3 with a 2.95 ERA. Led the Big 12 in Ks with 128 in 113 innings. Fastball tops out at 95 and has a “baffling” slider.

Arizona State catcher Ryan Campos was taken in the fourth round.  A stubby 5-foot-8, 190 pounder was a three-year starter for Arizona State. Considerable stats as a hitter–.357 as a freshman, .388 as a sophomore. As a junior he ripped 22 homers, 25 doubles, drove in 56 runs. In his three years, he had 94 walks and only 66 strikeouts.

University of Oklahoma left-handed pitcher Braden Davis was a round five pick, a reliever for two years at Sam Houston State, a starter last year with Oklahoma where he went 9-4 with a 4.30 ERA in 92 innings with 117 Ks. Held opposing hitters to a .208 batting average. Probably a reliever.

Josh Kross was a switch-hitting catcher at the University of Cincinnati after a year at Eastern Michigan. Mid-America Conference player of the year as a .376 hitting freshman, All Big-12 in his one year at Cincinnati where he parlayed being hit by pitches a school-record 26 times into a .438 OBP. Also played some first base.

Vanderbilt righty Andrew Dutkanych IV was one of the top high school pitchers two years ago. Had Tommy John surgery earlier this year.  Had a 3.18 ERA with 20 strikeouts and 15 walks in his collegiate career. MLB says the Cardinals might be “gambling on the upside” with this choice.

Notre Dame left-handed pitcher Jack Findlay also is an up-sider for the Cardinals. He had Tommy John surgery in 2023 but before than he was 10-4 with a 2.90 ERA. Starter and reliever in college.  108 strikeouts and only 27 walks in his Notre Dame career.

The Cardinals took Texas Tech third baseman Cade McGee in the ninth round. He’s complimented more for his fielding than for his hitting. After his freshman year at Gonzaga, he played in the Cape Cod League, perhaps the top summer collegiate league.   He hit .185 in eighteen games. But he is seen as a potential “average to above average” hitter.

Oklahoma outfielder Bryce Madron became the tenth and final pick on the second day. He hit .318 from the left side of the plate his year, an all-conference second team selection. Scouts say he controls the strike zone and “doesn’t try to do too much.” He drew 106 walks this year in college and struck out only 64 times.

Now we turn to the speed sports.

(RACING)—Penske racing had a weekend sweep in Iowa and in Pennsylvania, with drivers Scott McLaughlin and Will Power winning both ends of the INDYCAR doubleheader at Iowa Speedway and Ryan Blaney taking the flag at Pocono in NASCAR.

(INDYCAR)—Scott McLaughlin finally picked up an oval victory in Saturday’s race on the high banks of the .087 mile Iowa short track.

McLaughlin had said that he wouldn’t consider himself an IndyCar driver until he had won on an oval. He led 164  of the 250 laps to finish half a second ahead of Pato O’Ward.  McLaughlin had battled pole-sitter Colton Herta until grabbing the lead coming out of the pits.

McLaughlin added to his success for the day by winning the pole position for Sunday’s race, setting a track record in qualifying.

Will Power won for the first time at the Iowa Speedway the next day. But for him, the wait has been much longer.  Power had raced 18 times at the rack and had won seven poles but had never won and had been in the top three only five times.

Power had finished 18th in Saturday’s race started 22nd Sunday and didn’t grab the lead until lap 209 of the 250, thanks to a pit stop that was nine-tenths of a second faster than the last stop by Alex Palou, who finished four-tenths of a second back. McLaughlin was third.

Power had not won a race on an oval since Pocono five years ago. It’s his 43rd IndyCar victory, breaking him out of a tie with Michael Andretti for most wins in his career. He ranks fourth on the all-time list.

The weekend at Iowa was a dominant one for Penske Racing with Power and McLaughlin leading 309 of the 500 laps in the two races.

About the time Power was crossing the finish line, a multi-car crash that turned into a dangerous scenario was happening on the track behind him.

Sting Ray Robb Goes Airborne in Wild Last-Lap Incident at Iowa (indycar.com)

The IndyCar windscreen was credited with protecting Sting Ray Rob and Kyle Kirkwood from serious injuries.  Rob was checked by IndyCar’s medical team and released from their care after a checkup.

The two races’ results leave Alex Palou in the points lead but his margin over Power has been cut to 35 points. Pato O’Ward holds third, 72 back.

(NASCAR)—-Ryan Blaney’s winning run at Pocono wrapped up the hat trick for Penske last weekend. Blaney picked up his second win of the season by holding off Denny Hamlin, who finished 1.3 seconds back.

Blaney had been consistently near the top for most of the race but didn’t lead for the first time until only 44 laps left. He held off the field through two more restarts. Alex Bowman, who one last week’s race, challenged until Halin passed him with seven laps left.

Only five races remain in NASCAR’s regular season before the 15-driver field is set for the 10-race playoff series.

(Photo credits:  Cunningham—Instagram: McLaughlin and Power—Bob Priddy)