Category Archives: people

The Mysterious 4

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We’re making our traditional May trip east this week, a trip we’ve made almost every year since 1954.   Thirty-three people who were a long ways from being born then will be racing to see who wins the 100th Indianapolis 500.

If you’re looking for some of the usual political analysis that usually occupies this space, forget it today.  If you don’t care about humankind’s eternal quest to be faster than someone else, move along.  As Lt. Frank Drebin of Police Squad fame used to say, “There’s nothing to see here.” There’s more to life than politics.  One of those things is racin’.

We’re always looking for Missouri story angles when we cover the 500 for the Missourinet.  This is the story of a Missouri angle and a Speedway mystery.

The Indianapolis Motor Speedway is America’s oldest track built for the racing of automobiles.  People were racing cars a decade or more before the first race track in the world to be called a Speedway held its first races in 1909.  But those races were held on roads and streets or on tracks originally intended for racing horses.

The first Indianapolis 500 was in 1911, a time when Ray Harroun’s Marmon Wasp was considered the height of high-tech racing because he installed a rear-view mirror so he wouldn’t have to carry the weight of a riding mechanic who would tell him who was behind him, and because it had a tapered aerodynamic tail with a little fin on the back.

Races weren’t held in 1918 and 1942-45 because of wars.  Otherwise, a 500-mile race has been part of Memorial Day for generations of Americans.

One of the cars in the Speedway museum is Jim Rathmann’s winning Ken-Paul Special from 1960.  At least that’s what the sign in front of it says.

IMGP8717 (2)

It’s a design referred to as a roadster, a car with an engine that’s offset with the driveline running alongside the driver on the left side, not beneath him.  It let the cars corner better and have a lower center of gravity than the designs of 1911 that extended into the early 1950s. It was built by A. J. Watson, one of the wizards of race-car construction in that era.   It carries the number 4.

But is this really the car that won what has been called “the greatest two-man duel in 500 history?”

The 1960 race saw the lead change 29 times, mostly in the second half of the 200-lap race.  That record stood until modern aerodynamics and uniform chassis design led to 34 lead changes in 2012, and  broken in 2013 when there were 68.

Rodger Ward, the 1959 winner, led twenty of the first 95 laps. Rathmann led 33.  Pole-winner Eddie Sachs, 1952 champion Troy Ruttman, and Johnny Thompson split the other 42.  But from the time Rathmann moved back into the lead on the 96th lap, it was just him and Ward.

Rathmann and Ward swapped the lead fifteen times before Ward had to slow down with three laps left because he saw that he had worn his tires down to the cord.  He finished second, about thirteen seconds back. Ward won the race a second time in 1962 and remains one of three drivers in 500 history who finished in the top three six races in a row.

That was an era when the saying, “There are old race drivers and there are bold race drivers but there are no old, bold race drivers” as all too true.  Before that year was out, Johnny Thompson, Jimmy Bryan, and Al Herman—all starters in the race—were killed in racing crashes.  Tony Bettenhausen died in a practice crash at the Speedway not quite a year later.  Shorty Templeman was killed in 1962.  Don Branson was killed in 1966. And Eddie Sachs was killed with rookie Dave McDonald in the horrendous first-lap crash of 1964.

And 1964 brings us to the second part of the story.

St. Louis was celebrating its bicentennial that year and one of the cars in the race was Wally Weir’s Mobilgas Special driven to eighth place by Bob Harkey.

Harkey 1964

The car is now owned by race car collector Bob McConnell of Urbana, Ohio, who has restored it to its 1964 appearance, complete with the “St. Louis Bicentennial 1764-1964” logo on the right side of the engine cover.

He claims this is the car Jim Rathmann drove to victory in that epic duel with Rodger Ward.  Rathman drove the same car in 1961 and practiced with an inverted airfoil mounted over the cockpit in an early experiment to increase downforce.

Rathmann wing 1961

But the wing proved impractical and was discarded for the race. Rathmann also had it in the 1962 race.  Webster Groves (Mo.) driver Paul Russo couldn’t get it up to speed in 1963.  Harkey’s drive in it in 1964 was the last year it made the 500.

By then the roadster era was fading away as rear-engine cars took over.  Many of the roadsters were heavily modified to race as supermodified cars in the northeast at places like Sandusky, Ohio and Oswego, New York.   Eventually those designs became outmoded and many of the old roadsters were junked.  Several, however, have been put back together and restored.  And that’s the case with the Watson roadster that McConnell had at the Speedway last year.   He says the Speedway museum knows about his car and his claim of its lineage.

He was looking for Harkey to drop by to visit the car when we dropped by first.

A couple of things to note:  The tires on this car are not the kind of tires used in the races in the 1960s.  Those tires had little or no tread and they changed a great deal from this car’s first race in 1960 until its last race in 1964.

It might seem extremely dangerous to have the fuel filler cap so close to the exhaust pipe on the left side.  It was and that’s why one of the duties of a member of the pit crew as to slide an insulated cover over the exhaust pipe before the fuel hose was plugged in.  This car ran on methanol, a fuel that burns invisibly, so that insulated cover over the exhaust pipe was critical to safety.

The 1964 race is remembered as the last race in which gasoline-powered cars competed.  That was the year that McDonald’s gasoline-powered car crashed coming out of the fourth turn on the first lap and caught fire.  It bounced into the path of Eddie Sachs’ gasoline-fueled car and the collision caused a second, larger explosion.  Both drivers were killed. The race was stopped for the first time in its history.  Several other cars were damaged beyond repair and some of the other drivers suffered burns as they drove through the wreck site.  Parnelli Jones, who had won the race in 1963, bailed out of his methanol-fueled car later on pit road after a pit stop because it had caught fire. Methanol became the fuel of choice for this kind of racing after that tragic 500.  Racers now run on pure ethanol.

We talked to Speedway Historian Donald Davidson about the 4s—McConnell’s St. Louis Bicentennial car and the Speedway Museum’s Ken-Paul Special.  It’s a difficult issue, he told us, without coming down on either side.   It’s been a half-century since this Speedway devotee watched Jim Rathmann and Bob Harkey drive Watson roadsters with the number 4 on their noses.   A lot can happen to cars in those years.

The provenance of restored racing cars is not always easy to track.  By the time they’re available for restoration, they’ve been wrecked, modified, stuck on tops of buildings as advertising, left to gather dust in a shed—you name it.  They are basket cases sometimes—and the basket is missing a lot of parts, as Bob McConnell explained in his interview. Restoration sometimes means fabricating new pieces or finding parts from other wrecks that once were on a car like the one you’re restoring.   Both claims to the Rathmann car might have some legitimacy. And we join Donald not taking sides.

It’s good to be able to go into the museum and see so many of the cars we remember when they were the hottest, fastest things flashing past us with great roars, driven by legends and heroes.   But it’s also kind of melancholy because of those memories and the quietness of race cars on display. Not to get overly-dramatic about it, but it’s kind of the difference between seeing a living lion and standing next to a stuffed one.

Then there are people like Bob McConnell who not only restore racers such as Harkey’s St. Louis Bicentennial car, but run them.  Part of the celebration of the Speedway’s centennial era has been its invitation to people like McConnell to bring their restored racers back to the track, not only to display them, but to fire them up and get them back on the oval—and perhaps running in triple digits again—as you heard, he doesn’t know how fast they go because there’s no speedometer, but they don’t just cruise around.  They’re back for 2016. Unfortunately, Harkey won’t be.  He died last January.

We understand the Speedway is going to fire up the Marmon Wasp for the 100th race and have it bellow its way around the track again.  Neither it nor any of those old cars will ever push the limits of mechanical operation and human mortality as they once did.  But to see them, to hear them on the race track within hours of when today’s cars do push the limits does quicken the heart.

Wasp (ims)

Ray Harroun’s Marmon Wasp averaged about 74.6 miles an hour in 1911.  Look at some pictures of the cars people drove on the streets in 1911 and with a straight face say you’d be glad to drive one of those down a road at 75 mph today for even a couple of minutes, let alone for almost seven hours at an AVERAGE of 75.  On 1911 tires.

In 1954, when these eyes watched cars at Indianapolis for the first time, they beheld the first official lap run at 140 miles an hour on pole day.  One lap on the two-and-a-half-mile track by Jack McGrath at 141.033 (we remember things like that). Bill Vukovich won the race that year at 130.840.    Three years ago these same eyes, with bifocals now, watched Tony Kanaan go 500 miles at 187.433, the current record.   Whatever you might think about automobile racing, what the men and women on that track in this era are doing is astonishing, as astonishing as what their predecessors did.

Each era is filled with those astonishing performances.  We’re going back this week to savor the history and the history that will be made.

This year’s car with the number 4 is driven by Buddy Lazier who won the race twenty years ago.  His 1996 car is in the museum, too.

It will take about as long to travel from Jefferson City to Indianapolis as it took Ray Harroun to win the first 500.   And then on race day, somebody will cover the distance between a western suburb of Kansas City to Indianapolis is less than three hours.

Astonishing.

(photo credits: Bob Priddy; Indianapolis Motor Speedway; thisdayinmotorsportshistory.blogspot.com; Indianapolis Motor Speedway)

Tramping to oblivion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Far off I hear the rolling, roaring cheers.

They come to me from many yesterdays,

From record deeds that cross the fading years,

And light the landscape with their brilliant plays,

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

I hear them tramping to oblivion.

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

 

Immigration

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It is with profound regret that we inform those who are most strongly opposed to helping immigrants in any way that the time will come when this era is regarded in the same way we regard the eras when women and black people were not allowed to vote.  Time has a way of turning such issues into quaint although passionate history.

Horrific as it has been to some, this country has elected a black President.  Twice.  Horrific as it might be to some, this country could be electing a woman as President.

Someday, this increasingly diverse nation will elect someone to the presidency who was not born in this country and not born as an American citizen.  And one of those, perhaps someone targeted by this generation’s loudest political voices speaking against the evils of immigration, will become that President.

A few years ago, your friendly observer bought a book called America’s Unwritten Constitution to read while the Senate bored its way through a filibuster.  The author, Akhil Reed Amar, is a law and political science professor at Yale and sometimes is a visiting professor at Harvard, Pepperdine, and Columbia Universities.  The book blurb says he is “often cited by the Supreme Court and is a frequent expert witness in Congressional hearings.”

This probably is not a book that will be enjoyed by those who think the solution to all of our nation’s problems is to just read the U. S. Constitution and do what it says because Amar, among other things, looks not only at what it says, but also what the system of laws DOES that have evolved out of what it does NOT say but leaves open to developments in the years after the document was written.  It’s a big book but it’s about a big subject.  It emphasizes that our Constitution is a far more complicated document than those seeking simple answers in it are often willing to acknowledge.

But anyone thinking of getting into politics, as well as those now involved, should read it.  Here’s a warning, though:  It’s a thinkers’ book.  And not everybody in our political system today wants to think.

His last chapter carries the subtitle, “America’s Unfinished Constitution.”

“What should our future Constitution contain?” he asks. “If political and legal power in America today is in certain respects unfairly distributed, could the individuals and institutions currently benefiting from this unfair status quo ever be induced to support justice-seeking reforms?  Is it truly realistic to think that the future will overcome the iniquities of the present?”

He cautions against changes that would “radically reverse the trajectory of our constitutional story thus far, whereas others would fulfill the existing Constitution’s spirit.”  What is that spirit?

From the founding to the present, America’s written Constitution has traced a clear and remarkable trajectory, visible at every moment of enactment and amendment along the way.  With the ill-fated exception of Prohibition, none of its amendments has aimed to diminish liberty or reduce equality.  On the contrary, most amendments have expanded freedom and egalitarianism.

He suggests efforts to make flag-burning a crime or to “restrict the equality rights of same-sex couples” should be viewed skeptically.  But, he says, an amendment allowing certain immigrant Americans to seek the presidency “should be viewed more favorably, precisely because it would be a far better fitting next chapter to our unfolding constitutional saga.”

There is no doubt Americans could amend the constitution to criminalize flag-burning, “and thus repudiate the basic constitutional principle that sovereign, self-governing citizens have a robust right to mock basic symbols of government authority.”  Yes, American could amend the constitution to ban gay marriages, “and thereby constrict the scope of the grand idea that government should not demean a person because of his or her birth-status—because she was born out of wedlock or he was born black or she was born female or he was born gay.”

Amar testified at a Senate committee hearing in 2004 on a proposed constitutional amendment letting “long-standing naturalized citizens to run for President.”   Amar is the son of an immigrant and married to an immigrant.  He writes,

“Although the proposed amendment would surely change the existing rules, it would do so in a pro-immigrant direction—just as the Founders themselves changed older English rules in pro-immigrant ways. Indeed, I went a step further: Given that the reasons the eighteenth-century Founders themselves barred certain naturalized citizens from running for president no longer apply in the twenty-first century, modern Americans would best vindicate the spirit of the Constitution by formally amending it. I pointed out that the Founders’ Constitution was, by the standards of the day, hugely pro-immigrant.”

That might be news to some of today’s advocates of solving the nation’s problems by just reading the Constitution.   Amar points out that the writers of the Constitution had a background that included the English Act of Settlement that prohibited any naturalized citizen of England from serving in the Parliament or on the Privy Council, or in many other government positions.  But our Constitution “repudiated this tradition across the board.”  Reading the Founders’ Constitution shows no bars to immigrants serving in either house of Congress, in the cabinet, or anywhere in the federal judiciary.  In fact, seven of the 39 men who signed the Constitution were born in another country.  Eight of the first 81 members of Congress were immigrants.  Three of the first ten Supreme Court Justices were foreign-born.  Two thirds of the first six Secretaries of the Treasury and one of the first three Secretaries of War were immigrants.

Apart from Amar’s compilation, we might observe that none of the 39 men who signed the document began their lives as American citizens.  And this nation did not, in fact, have a President who was born in the United States until Martin Van Buren (1837-1841).  The first seven had been born British citizens.

Amar argues that the Founders did exclude immigrants from the Presidency “because some at the time feared that a scheming foreign earl or duke might cross the Atlantic with a huge retinue of loyalists and a boatload of European gold, and then try to bully or bribe his way into the presidency…In a young America…when a fledgling New World democracy was struggling to establish itself alongside an Old World dominated by monarchy and aristocracy, this ban on future foreign-born presidents made far more sense than it does in the twenty-first century.”

Thus, he argues, making more people eligible for the presidency vindicates the Founders’ immigration principles.  “by treating naturalized citizens as the full equals of natural-born citizens, and by allowing a person of obvious merit to overcome a legal impediment created merely because he or she was born in the wrong place at the wrong time or to the wrong parents, the proposed amendment would widen and deepen the grand principle of birth equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment.  By making a new class of Americans eligible to be president, the proposed amendment would also echo and extend the spirit of the Fifteenth and Nineteenth Amendments, which entitled blacks and women not merely to vote on equal terms on Election Day but also to be voted for on equal terms and to vote and veto equally in matters of governance.’

He concludes, “I continue to believe today, that what the suffragist movement did for women, America should now do for naturalized citizens.  This country should be more than a land where everyone can grow up to be—governor.”

The sponsor of the proposed Amendment was Orrin Hatch, a conservative Republican from Utah.  Although the Amendment has not been sent to the states for ratification, Amar thinks its time is coming because the political parties “will find it politically advantageous to compete for the allegiance of immigrants and their allies, just as there were many past moments when both parties found it in their interest to demonstrate their liberality toward women and blacks.”

We are living in a hinge-point era of our nation’s history.  Just reading the Constitution is not enough as we see the face of America changing.  Understanding the Constitution is critical in these times of demands that we “diminish liberty and reduce equality.”

(America’s Unwritten Constitution: The Precedents and Principles We Live By; New York, Basic Books, 2012.)

The shoe is on the other foot

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The chairman of the Special Senate Committee to Generate Headlines for a Senator Running for Attorney General is feeling some of the discomfort that comes from putting the right shoe on the left foot and the left shoe on the right foot, a circumstance that was made possible early in the nineteenth century when Philadelphia cobbler William Young perfected a way to make different shoes for the right and the left feet.

The advance in shoe-making became an American idiom a half-century later when shoe and boot-making progressed enough that different shoes for different feet were more common and an expression was born based on the what happens when situations are reversed.

So it is that Chairman Kurt Schaefer, a State Senator from Columbia with ambitions for greater glory, finds himself in the position of those he has spent months targeting—facing someone who considers him guilty unless he proves himself innocent.

Schaefer, whose SSGHSRAG has battered Planned Parenthood for months with allegations of selling aborted baby parts for research even to the point of threatening to jail the organization’s leader if she didn’t produce extensive records the organization considers protected by law, is now being accused of using his chairmanship to accede to corruption.  Now it is Schaefer, the hunter, who has become the hunted.  Now it is Schaefer who is calling allegations “ridiculous.”

The man Schaefer wants to succeed, Attorney General and governorship-hopeful Chris Koster, investigated the Planned Parenthood allegations months ago and found no evidence any Missouri affiliate of the organization had done any such parts-peddling, a finding Schaefer dismissed by accusing Koster of not looking hard enough.  He has maintained that position despite other investigations in more than a dozen states that also have found no wrongdoing and further, that undermine the credibility of the source of the reports.  Two people involved in producing the original accusatory video on which Schaefer and his committee began their lengthy proceedings have been indicted by a Texas grand jury.

Now Schaefer is feeling the same kind of accusatory pressure from the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust that has asked a county prosecutor to consider a criminal charge against Schaefer.  FACT claims Schaefer used his position as Senate Appropriations Chairman to pressure the University of Missouri into keeping law professor Josh Hawley from running against him for Attorney General.

Schaefer claims the accusation has no basis in fact although former MU System President Tim Wolfe has written that Schaefer pressured him to cancel Hawley’s right to take a leave of absence from the faculty to challenge Schaefer’s candidacy.  The Kansas City Star has reported Schaefer says he talked to Wolfe because he wants to save taxpayers’ money, apparently a reference to Hawley’s salary. Some folks think Schaefer put out a lot of effort for something that is such a minuscule part of the University of Missouri budget.

The head of the organization filing the complaint is a former U. S. Attorney for the southern district of Iowa.  The organization also has other materials beyond Wolfe’s letter to support its accusation.  The Missouri Ethics Commission says the claim is beyond its authority to consider, putting the issue in the hands of local prosecutors.

The complaint also refers to the SSGHSRAG’s investigation of the University’s relationship in Columbia to Planned Parenthood.

Schaefer also is getting heat from a second not-for-profit group that has spent more than $100,000 in ads targeting Schaefer in Columbia and in Springfield, raising questions about Schaefer’s involvement in the Hawley leave issue.  The Public Integrity Alliance and FACT are organizations that do not have to reveal the source of their funding. Both deny any connection with Hawley and his campaign.  The PIA says its ads focus on Schaefer’s ethics.  Hawley disavows any connection to either organization.

The accusations from FACT have provoked great glee among people who have found Schaefer’s committee (actually it’s called the Sanctity of Life Committee) pummeling of Planned Parenthood excessive, to say the least.  Their social media sites exploded late last week when Schaefer moved a meet-and-greet session with supporters at a Columbia watering-hole to another place because the gathering also had become a gathering of anti-Schaeferites who followed him to the quickly-arranged second location.

But now he’s feeling some of the same heat he’s been dispensing.  And he proclaims it is unfair, as Planned Parenthood has complained his committee’s activities have been unfair.  Shoe.  Other foot.  Etc.  He can give it out but can he take it?

The FACT allegations also come at a bad time in his campaign and it would not be surprising if some of those involved weren’t hearing some echoes from 1992 when Attorney General bill Webster, running for Governor, found himself facing charges that he had abused his office by using state staff and equipment for campaign purposes.  He constantly denied any wrongdoing.

Webster won his primary election anyway, defeating outgoing Secretary of State Roy Blunt by 20,000 votes and outgoing State Treasurer Wendell Baily by 120,000.  But he lost in November to Mel Carnahan and later, after months of proclaiming his innocence, pleaded guilty to federal felony charges.

It is not proper to try to draw too many parallels between then and now, at least not at this point.  But suddenly finding the shoe is on the other foot surely is not something Schaefer anticipated and is likely to add an uncomfortable factor to his campaign against Hawley.

Notes from a quiet street—IV

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A fourth in a series of 2016 observations on the passing scene from one who has time now to observe the passing scene without going full bloggal.)

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George, who lives down this quiet street, down the hill and around the corner, says he has been inspired by the legislature to open his own fast-food business.  He thinks he’ll call it “Colonel George’s Missouri-Fried Turkey.”  He’s a little presumptuous about calling himself “Colonel,” because he flunked out of auctioneer school before he earned the title but he figures nobody will care once his marketing department (his wife) goes into full operations.

George was talking about the choices his customers will have.

“May I have a couple of legs, some breast meat, and a wing?”

“Ma’am, we only sell the entire turkey.  But our prices for the entire bird are less than you’d pay at the grocery store deli counter for those two legs, some breast meat, and a wing.”

“Really!!   Well, I guess I’ll have the whole turkey then.”

“Excellent.  How would you like it, over easy, sunny side up, or over hard?”

“I don’t understand….”

“Well, ma’am, it’s simple.  The Missouri legislature has been talking about changing the constitution so that fertilized eggs are considered to be the whole thing.  So we use only the finest, Missouri-made fertilized turkey eggs because once they’re fertilized, they would have full turkeyhood. So you get both legs, all of the breast meat, both wings, even the neck and all the giblets for one low price.  And if you want to take some, or even all of it, home, you won’t take up all of your space in the freezer or the refrigerator.”

George thinks his restaurant will be a big hit.  He’s trying to talk us into investing in the project with him but we’ve told him we want to think about it.  Our banker and the AARP have told us that as people living on fixed incomes we need to be careful how we invest our meager savings.  So we’re being real careful about this.

George is even talking about expanding his business once the MFT concept takes off and hundreds of franchise restaurants are opened.  He’s thinking about going into the barbecue business.  Once Beauregard and Bossy have their barnyard frolic, George figures he can start serving almost-instant barbecued veal, something you don’t find in your usual barbecue joints.  And he probably won’t charge much more than he charges for the turkey—just enough to cover the cost of the recovery of the animal because cows don’t lay eggs; you have to go get them, which is a little more labor intensive and long rubber gloves will add additional expense.

He’s also considering the same thing with barbecued pork.  For an extra fifty cents he’ll even give you an apple because it won’t fit into the mouth of the pig

George has been asking about space at the big outlet mall at the Lake of the Ozarks. He figures he could make a lot of money by selling his turkey, beef, and pork at near-retail so the customers think they’re getting a bargain while he doesn’t have to sell his products at wholesale rates as he will have to do with his franchisees.

He’s a little puzzled about how his business plan would work with fish because fish eggs can command pretty good prices on their own, probably better than he could charge for serving one sunny side up, over easy, or over hard.  But George is a thinker. He might figure something out.

George thinks the idea of bestowing “hood” on fertilized eggs holds great promise not only for him but for the entire state because it becomes, in his mind at least, an economic development measure that will create new jobs and generate more taxes that legislators then can cut and make themselves look good to voters.  To show his support for the concept, he has joined the Chamber of Commerce.

—-

Ran into somebody the other day who recalled the saying, “Authority makes some people grow—others just swell.” She didn’t recall who originally said it and it appears nobody really knows but a lot of people have repeated it. Various sources cite various people. One says the saying had been around in Washington for at least a hundred years.

She remembered that this has been a time in past legislative sessions where various organizations started thinking about rating the lawmakers. Many years ago, one periodical put together a list of “white hats” and “black hats.”   The St. Louis Globe-Democrat used to issue a list of outstanding legislators.

Her suggestion: Somebody who has been immersed in the Capitol Climate assemble a list of those who have grown and those who have just swelled this year. Who has grown as a leader? Who has just gotten puffed up with their self-importance? Who has taken stands that show leadership?   Who is on the list of mere panderers?

—-

The comments reminded us that many years ago in the irreverent years of our reportorial youth, some of us in the House Press Gallery would bestow unofficial awards to those we had been watching in the chamber below us. We don’t remember all of the awards but there was the Cockroach Award that went to the lawmaker who had to get up and chew on other people’s bills every chance they got. Cockroaches, you see, like to eat paper. Another award was the “Furniture Award,” to the legislator who seemed to be about as useful as his desk. Never said anything. Almost never sponsored a bill. Just sat there. On the last day of the session one year your observer asked Representative Winne Weber, one of the great characters of her generation in the Hosue, if she would ask this representative for his opinion on a bill. Any bill. He might have been the only member of the entire 163-member of the House whose voice we had not recorded that year—because he never said anything. So late in the evening (we still adjourned at midnight then) she asked the speaker if she could inquire of the “Gentleman from (wherever he was from),” and the Speaker called his name.   The Furniture Representative didn’t even know he was being summoned for inquiry until his colleagues rousted him from his intense preoccupation with his pipe (they still allowed smoking in the chamber then). He looked up, looked around, wasn’t sure what to do, did not appear to know he needed to go to the closest microphone so he could answer a question.   Winnie by then was laughing so hard that she asked the speaker to withdraw her request and the Speaker told the Furniture Representative he was no longer needed. He sat back down at his desk, appearing to be completely unsure what had just happened, and went back to the comfort of his pipe.

I think we retired the “Furniture Award” after that. He served about twenty years in the House and retired undefeated in that award category.

If you think this session is dragging on and on—

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Went to visit Anne Rottman’s legislative library at the Capitol last week, trying to dot some eyes and cross some tees in the capitol book manuscript and started prowling through legislative journals to track down some minor details.  Most of that stuff is pretty dry but sometimes you trip over something that wakes you up.   We offer you two discoveries today.

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Legislators, lobbyists, reporters—heck, anybody involved in a legislative session–starts to feel at this point that there has to be some way out of this misery.  Three weeks can’t go by fast enough.

We were reading the journals of the 1945 legislative session.  And we realized there’s never been a session like it. And nobody in the Capitol today would ever wish it on anybody.  Almost nobody knows about it.

The session began January 3, 1945.   The final floor action took place on the TWO-HUNDRED-TWENTY-SECOND DAY, July 8, nineteen-forty-SIX!  There was no air conditioning. They were paid $125 a month plus ten cents a mile to go to and from their homes—one time per session.   In 1945, the average Missourian would earn about $200 a month. A new house averaged $4,600 and gas was fifteen cents a gallon.   The amount they were paid in 1945 is the equivalent of about $1100 a month today, $13,260 a year, give or take, a little more than one-third as much as we pay our lawmakers now.

For whatever value it might have, we should note the legislature did not meet every year back then. It was every other year until voters approved annual sessions in 1970.  Except for 1945-46.   But, then¸ they had to come back only six months after adjournment for the regular 1947 session.  And it lasted another 150 legislative days.

Why did they meet so long?  Because voters in 1944 adopted a new state constitution (the same one today’s lawmakers love to fiddle with) and these folks had to pass hundreds of laws to make state statutes comply with the new constitution.   Members of the House introduced 1,039 bills and the Senate introduced 498.  That was a lot then, not so much now.

Here’s another incredible thing about that session.  The House and Senate journals, plus the indexes and the appendices which were mostly reports of various boards, commissions, institutions, and agencies totaled—get this now:

12,442 pages.

So, hang in there folks.  It will only SEEM like this session has lasted 222 days three weeks from now.  Imagine if you were serving in 1945, though.  Instead of adjourning in mid-May, you’d still have another thirteen months ahead of you.  And you’d be paid about one-third what you’re getting now. With no per diem.  And no mileage for trips to and from home except for once in that whole session.

But at least, today, you have air conditioning.

—–

Another thing we found was an essay published in the 1951 House Journal.  It apparently was the winning essay in a contest about “What the Bill of Rights Means to Me.”   It was written by Miss Jerry Lynn Rainwater, a student at Springfield’s Greenwood High School.  It was so refreshing to read, given what’s been going on lately, that we’re going to pass it along.

Right now, I am in a class room, in an average school, located in an average American city.  On the wall hangs an American Flag surrounded by a great many flags of other nations.  The class is studying the problems that face America today, both foreign and within her jurisdiction.  Our teacher is not a government official.  She has never pledged loyalty to any political party.  She enjoys her personal opinions and beliefs but presents the facts to us in an unbiased manner, leaving us free to form our own opinions.  Our text is published by an independent concern without government censorship; our reference materials cover all types of newspapers, magazines and other sources of information.  To me this is what the Bill of Rights offers.

Yesterday in class we viewed a historical movie, revealing uncensored facts produced by an independent company. Today we listened to a news commentator over the radio. He disagreed with our government’s policies, but he exercised his right to broadcast his views.

By my own choice, I am attending this school and this class. Neither was compulsory.  Seated next to me is a Jew.  The chair next to him is vacant. The usual occupant is absent because, according to his Catholic religion, it is a holy day.  No questions were asked, no demands were made.  I visited his church once, though I am a protestant. No one tried to prohibit my actions.  That is what the Bill of Rights means to me.

My Father is attending a political meeting of a party that is not in power. Views and ideas will be discussed openly and freely. It is not a secret meeting; the door is closed to no one, regardless of his or her belief.  Someday I shall attend similar meetings, for my right to do this is guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. 

During my life as an American citizen, I shall harbor no doubt that my home is free from intrusion by government officials, or their agents; they, as all others must respect my rights.  My property can not be confiscated by the government. Nor shall any member of my family be taken to prison without reason and proper proceedings.  Our life is ours to live, free and unmolested. Our liberty cannot be taken from us unless we abuse it.  Even then we have the guarantee, through the Bill of Rights, to a fair trial by an unbiased group of our equals.

As I got about my affairs, I do not live in fear for my life or liberty; for in America everyone is free to live according to the dictates of his own conscience.  This is what the Bill of Rights offers and guarantees to me and to every American, regardless of race, color, or creed.  It is a heritage worth protecting—even unto death.

We don’t know what has happened to Jerry Lynn Rainwater of Greenwood High School, 1951.  We hope she’s hale and hearty in her 80s with many wonderful grandchildren.  She wrote that essay while the entire world was at war.  And she wrote it with a clarity and a simplicity that is too easily lost in bluster, blather, and cynicism today.  In the darkness of the world’s worst war, Jerry Lynn Rainwater found light.

She reminds us that the world really isn’t as complicated as all of those folks in the Capitol who are sweating and frothing and grunting are trying to make it.

We hope they put her essay on their bulletin boards.  Reading it from time to time will be good for them.   It certainly was for us.

Postscript

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Who among those standing at a large window looking at a room filled with newborn children will wonder which of those children will become less entitled to God’s grace than their own child will be?  Or which of those standing at the large window looking at a room filled with newborn children wonder if their child will be the one later judged to be less entitled to God’s grace?

Which children among those inside that hospital room has anything but inborn faith that the world values their presence as much as the others with them?  Which of these children will grow to be taught that some of those with them at this moment, who also can only trust in the love of those outside the window, will someday be declared unworthy of that universal adoration they are now receiving just because they are alive?

Which of those standing at the window will someday look in the window of a business by now run by one of those small, blanketed miracles and decide God now no longer loves those inside the business as much as God still loves the ones who were looking through the hospital window today?

What hardens the hearts of those outside the window who now see only miracles before them?  What will harden the now-tiny hearts inside the room toward others who are united with them by this new thing called “life.”

There have been some who have disagreed with some written assessments of political events recently made in this space.

Some who disagree with concerns here and elsewhere have cited favored segments of the Scriptures to condemn those words and suggest the writer of them will be on the wrong side of eternity.

I shall not debate those with definitive scriptural definitions of who will burn in Hell for holding erroneous positions on social or political issues.  Their expressions of their erudition are guaranteed by the First Amendment and I am confident they feel sincerely driven by their religion as they encourage others to abandon perceived foolish ways.

I shall not pass judgment on those who judge me and my words.  It is not my place to judge whether they are so significantly saved that they can speak with assurance about those they see who clearly are not.  I do not believe the ultimate decision on who will achieve Heaven’s reward is ours to make, anyway.  It is something we can hope for and strive for but whether we do so according to one person’s choice to adhere to chosen parts of the Scriptures is our personal decision.  And ultimately, I believe, a much higher power than those who admonish us will make that decision.

Criticize me if you will.  Admonish me if you would like.  Damn me if you must. It is your right as a citizen to do so within the law.

Some people rely on the scriptures to define why many of us, perhaps most of us, are beyond redemption, seeking through those references to believe we are at our worst. I prefer to seek in the scriptures those words that encourage us to be our best and to hope and trust that most others seek the same thing.

It is not my place to judge where you and I will spend eternity. I acknowledge some feel a wisdom giving them the certainty of their statements. But I seek comfort and guidance from different chapters of the same book, looking to find from those words the strength to look up to people rather than to look down at them.

It is the difference between faith and religion.  Faith is what we are born with, original, pure and knowing no limits.  Religion is that artificial structure we create to define and confine faith. I live in faith.  Others live within religion.  Let them say what they will of me and what I write.  I believe a higher authority holds the judgment that will count and I have faith in that authority.

I have looked through that hospital window twice at the innocence in that room. I hope the two children who came home with us have grown up not fearing or despising the others who were with them there and have since become no danger to society merely by growing into whatever they have become.  They remain now as they were then, children of God.

As are we all.

 

The dangers of definition-III

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The final chapter.

Defining “sincere religious belief” is a potato too hot to touch.  That’s a fact of political life. The lack of definition is the phrase’s ultimate flaw at the same time it is its greatest strength.

By not defining the phrase, citizens are free to apply it however they wish.  But courts have held the arbitrary use of a law violates equal protection standards that are intended to apply to everybody.  That’s the dual nature of “sincere religious belief.”

There are those who think the Hobby Lobby ruling by the U. S. Supreme Court resolves the issue.  Actually it resolves only the specific issue raised by Hobby Lobby. There has been no broad blanket ruling covering all of the issues raised by religious freedom protection laws, which vary from state to state.

You and I might be able to write a definition of our personal sincere religious beliefs but trying to write them into law is pretty nearly impossible because it quickly becomes an issue of constitutional violation.  If the state adopts a definition of “sincere religious belief,” it is likely to face a lawsuit based on the Establishment and Exercise Clauses of the U. S. Constitution—a sentence that is often split for partisan purposes.

Congressman Fisher Ames of Massachusetts, a Federalist who defeated Sam Adams for a seat in the First United States Congress, wrote the Establishment Clause. He also wrote the Free Exercise Clause.

The Establishment Clause says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,”   The Free Exercise Clause comes after the comma, “or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”  Government will not show favoritism for one religion over another.  In addition, government will not prohibit people from exercising their religion.

SJR39 exposes a tension between these two clauses.  On one hand, it can be interpreted as the state expressing a preference for one religious creed, principle or dogma over another.  Backers of the resolution will argue from the second point—government will not limit an individual’s exercise of their religion.

The arguments for this resolution have been presented as if there are no limits on either point when, in truth, courts repeatedly have found limits to all constitutional rights are necessary to maintain order in society.

That’s why the legislature is not defining “sincere religious belief.”  Doing so would clearly violate the establishment clause.  Instead, the majority is relying on the Exercise Clause while diminishing the importance of the first half of that sentence, the Establishment Clause.

What you wrote earlier defining your “sincere religious beliefs” undoubtedly differs from what other readers of this post wrote in at least some degree.  Are your “sincere religious beliefs” more valid than theirs, so much more valid that they should be in the Missouri Constitution?  Are they so valid that you should be able to exclude others from your social or business circle becaue of them?  Is your definition so valid that the second half of the sentence in the Bill of Rights should prevail over the first?  And what legal argument can you make that it should be?

Perhaps this exercise suggests religious beliefs should remain the province of the person, not the policies of government.  In the more perfect union dreamed of in the Preamble to the Constitution, perhaps that would be enough.  But in the imperfect union that is the real world, where religion has become a political issue—perhaps to the detriment of religion as the increasing “nones” might indicate—it is not.

And that is where other parts of the constitution enter the discussion and could tip that balance.  That is assuming, of course, that majority interests care to listen to that discussion.  So far, it appears they do not because doing so would not curry favor with an important political base of support that has decided the exercise clause is the only thing that counts in that sentence.

But would the different people and different organizations within that political base all have the same definitions of “sincere religious belief?”  Would the legislators supporting this proposal be alike in their heart of hearts? Does freedom of religion within religion argue against one faction of religion imposing its position through the law?

Sponsors who have referred to opponents as “radical activists who perceive their agenda of greater value than protecting the religious freedom of Missourians” might have a point. But it’s the wrong point because many opponents of this idea ARE protecting the religious freedom of Missourians.  ALL Missourians. 

We have found from years of experience covering politics that if you cannot intellectually defend your position from those who see flaws in it, you can always call your critics names—such as “radical activists.” We cannot count the number of times that “radical activists” have been blamed for all kinds of things—many of which ultimately expanded, not limited, the rights of the general population.

The issue deserves something more to justify it than a vague phrase and a bumper-sticker slogan from those pushing it and from those behind them. And the general public deserves something more from their lawmakers than a piece of campaign-year legislation that the courts will have to deal with later but which pleases for now an ideological base that the lawmakers want to please.

We began this series with a scripture from Fisher Ames.  We conclude it with a verse from U. S. Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun:

“When the government puts its imprimatur on a particular religion it conveys a message of exclusion to all those who do not adhere to the favored beliefs.  A government cannot be premised on the belief that all persons are created equal when it asserts that God prefers some.”

The dangers of definition–II

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Within the lifetimes of many who read these entries, government-sanctioned entities existed in this nation that judged the sincerity and validity of individual religious beliefs.  Thousands of people were summoned to appear before them.  These agencies consisting of fellow citizens in communities bored into the basis of the claimed beliefs and ultimately determined if the sincerely held beliefs were legitimate. They were called draft boards.

They might ask, “Do you pray every day,” or “Do you read the Bible every day?”  Or the Talmud or the Book of Mormon, the Quran, the Vedas, the Pali Canon, or other sacred books of the religion you claim?  “Do you read those words as inerrant sacred texts do you believe you are free to interpret them as you please?”

Is your “religion” built on ideas from non-Biblical writings such as those from Soren Kierkegaard or Martin Heidegger, Mortimer Adler, Yehoshua Bar-Hillel, Umberto Eco, Mahmoud Khatani, Reinhold Niebuhr, Black Elk, Paul Tillich, Mahatma Ghandi, Billy Graham, Joel Osteen or The Pope or the Ecumenical Patriarch?

Would YOU be comfortable having a government board decide if your religion justifies your actions or the sincerity of your claimed sincere religious beliefs? Thousands of people, comfortable or not, put themselves in that position years ago.

Actually, we do have something of that system still before us although we don’t think of it in the manners we are discussing here.  Our criminal justice system often has to deal with those who claim they were driven to their actions by the Devil or by the Voice of God.  But that is sufficiently different from our issue today that we will put it aside.

Let’s take this one more step.   Having now written your personal definition of “sincere religious belief,” (you HAVE written it, haven’t you?) would you be willing to stand in front of the leaders of your religion and read it, knowing that they would decide if your definition is good enough for you to remain a member of that religion?  This would not be a panel of your peers drawn from the diversity of a broader community.  This would be a panel of those whose religion you profess to share. Why not—if you think your definition should be behind a part of the state constitution?

There are some religious organizations that do have such test.  There are probably a lot more that members are very glad do not.  Freedom of religion within religion, however, is not at all uniform.

Freedom of religion within religion has been an issue in this country from our earliest days.  Your correspondent has been reading Eve LaPlante’s American Jezebel, the story of Anne Hutchinson, whom you might remember from school as one of founders, with Roger Williams, of the colony of Rhode Island. Beyond that, most of us don’t remember much about her.  It might be instructive to recall this story that should be uncomfortable to those who assert this country was founded as a “Christian nation” as well as those who are asserting that sincere religious belief is justification for considering some people less that complete citizens.

Anne Hutchinson was a midwife living in the Massachusetts Colony, expecting her sixteenth child when she was forty-six years old in 1637.  The colony was controlled by the Puritan clergy and was a society that severely limited women’s role in society.  Anne began to attract a following among women and eventually several men as she began discussing her own version of the Puritan religion and critiquing sermons she had heard.  Among those attracted to her discussions was the colony’s governor, Henry Vane.  She believed salvation was a matter of God’s grace and accused the colony’s ministers of preaching the misleading idea that salvation could be gained through works.

In a short time, the Puritan ministers grew alarmed that her growing following was weakening their control of the colony and hauled her before a court of forty male judges dominated by Puritan “works’ preachers.  LaPlante’s book delves heavily into the trial transcript to illustrate the charges and Anne’s defense that often confounded the judges.  In the end, though, the forty judges convicted her and banished her from the colony.  A few months later she was excommunicated from the church.

The reach of the Puritan religion was so extensive and oppressive in those times that the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations was safe for her and her followers for only a few years. When Massachusetts threatened to take over Rhode Island, she moved to the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam, settling in an area that is now The Bronx borough of New York City, where she and five of the children who had moved there with her were killed in an Indian attack in 1643.

As Anne Hutchinson’s husband and about a dozen other men prepared to leave Boston for Providence Plantation, they signed a compact that they would honor as the proprietors of Rhode Island.  The compact, in the wording of the day, pledged the new colony would follow Jesus Christ’s “most perfect and most absolute laws of His given in his Holy Word of Truth.” While that proclamation might be seen as a Seventeenth Century antecedent for supporters of today’s Senate resolution, it would be good for those quick to use it to remember one of the first written rules composed under that compact after the group arrived in Rhode Island: “No person within said colony, at any time hereafter, shall be in any wise molested, punished, disquieted or called into question on matter of religion—so long as he keeps the peace.”   Some see that rule as the beginning of the religious freedom statement in the First Amendment and the first statement in our country’s history that church and state are separate. No questions will be raised about a citizen’s religion UNLESS it disturbs the peace of the community. Believe what you wish but respect the secular interaction necessary for an orderly society.

Today, in the Capitol of the state from which she was banished for behavior “not comely for (her) sex,” Anne Hutchinson is memorialized as a “courageous exponent of civil liberty and religious toleration.” In a time when we speak often of the values of our Founding Fathers, it is time to remember that there was a Founding Mother, the co-founder of Rhode Island, and the persecution she suffered at the hands of the righteous who countenanced no difference from their religion.

Who decides if your “sincere religious belief” is sincere enough to justify something a proposed state amendment would let you do?  And what right does the target of your actions have to force you to defend that belief before some kind of panel of peers?  Or even a panel of ministers of your own denomination? How is anyone to know that your actions are just not arbitrary unless there is a mechanism to test their foundation?

These are hard questions in a time when surveys are showing that more and more people are finding religious creeds, dogmas, or standards unwelcome.  The percentage of Americans who respond “none” to census questions about their religion is growing.  Some analysts are theorizing that religious demands for public laws and policies that fit a narrow concept are actually harming organized religion, especially among millennials.   Whether one agrees with that analysis is a personal, often political, choice.

And in Missouri today, the phrase “sincere religious belief” presents public and personal policy challenges that raise the personal comfort levels of many to levels of discomfort and could further justify the feelings of “nones.” Banishment and excommunication from the social fabric of America, in whatever form, is still alive, though, as we are seeing proposed in Missouri.

Some critics say there is less sincerity than there is politics in this effort, that it is really less a protection of religion than it is an effort to get more conservative voters to the polls in November, which means discussing the issue at a spiritual level is useless.

Nonetheless, we’ll discuss what might be done and why it can’t be done, next.

 

The dangers of definition–I

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Our scripture for this series  is from Congressman Fisher Ames: “Popular reason does not always know how to act right, nor does it always act right when it knows.”

——

One of the trickier parts of writing a new law is defining who or what is the topic and who or what the target for relief or for limits is.  Our lawmakers have recognized from the beginning that specific language is necessary to avoid the infamous “unintended consequences.”   They—or, more appropriately these days, the legislative staff—recognize that danger and usually are able to tailor legislation to fit a specific circumstance.   When they are even a little off the mark, the consequences sometimes generate headlines that obscure the difficulty of making sure the application of a law is as narrow as required.

It’s a difficult job that the public seldom realizes is so much a part of developing the laws that govern our lives every second of every day. But the last thing participants in the process want to do is produce an adverse impact on those not intended to be the subject of the legislation.

Sometimes it is best for the supporters of legislation to leave some things vague. There are a lot of reasons for that.  One is that getting more specific weakens the intended broad effects of some  legislation.  Another reason is that lack of definition allows wider interpretations of the law, sometimes in the authority a law grants governmental subdivisions to enact their own policies within the law’s general framework—a latitude that sometimes exposes those subdivisions to criticism of government over-reach.

It’s a balancing act.  For those who believe in balance in the laws, it’s a tough act.

We have been seeing a phrase used increasingly in legislation in the last few years that cries for definition.  Defining it, however, is a minefield.

The phrase is “sincere religious belief,” now most prominently being the center of Senate Joint Resolution 39, the Wesboro Amendment or, for supporters, the Religious Freedom Amendment.

How do YOU define “sincere religious belief?”  Most properly, how do you define “sincere?” In fact, why don’t you stop reading and write your definitions, AND write what you consider your sincere religious belief, then come back.  Do not read ahead before you do this.

(PAUSE while you write)

Thank you for doing that.  Do you have the courage to put these statements before the public?   If you are a public official passing legislation making “sincere religious belief” part of the law for the general public, don’t you owe it to the general public to state your definition of the term and let the public whose behavior you seek to approve or disapprove and regulate know what your sincere religious beliefs are? You cannot dodge the issue by saying religion is a private matter—because you have made it a general-public issue.

Most people probably never define their belief.  “Whatever my church says is good enough for me,” many will think.  Do you really know what your church says as a condition of being a member?  And have you ever wondered if you really do believe its creed or its dogma or its principles?   Or have the lessons of life moved you in a different direction?  Have you become less religious in terms of what your church’s standards for religion are? And who is to judge the sufficiency within the law of your belief and the sincerity of it?   We’ll talk about that in our next entry.