Category Archives: Places

Twentieth Century American Gothic  11/6/24)

Posted on by
Reply

While the nation is still trying to wrap up the most trying political campaign in our lifetime, we are going to look at something or somebody else. It will be something that we hope takes your minds off of what we’ve been through and what lies ahead.

Do you know these folks?

They look kind of familiar.  Where do I know them from?

You and I know them pretty well.  Or maybe not at all.

They are us.

Buzzfeed ran an article on November 4 in which it reported the results after asking Artificial Intelligence to create images of the way typical residents of each state would look. Nancy and I found this piece fascinating as we looked at the images for all of the states.

The same two people provided the faces.  A man and a woman who appear to be in their early 40s, perhaps (?).  The article says the results “reveal the biases and stereotypes that currently exist within AI models.”  Maybe, if we dwell on this deeply enough, we might find they exist with each of us.  Buzzfeed cautioned these people “are not meant to be seen as accurate or full depictions of human experience.”

They look pretty real to us.  But, then, that’s one of the scary things about AI.

It appears AI used a lot of demographic and cultural information to give these folks their special looks. What does it tell us about ourselves?

Nancy and I tried to “read” this Missouri couple. Here’s what we decided.  Both are intelligent with at least some higher education, maybe more than a little. He’s serious and pretty well set in his opinions. He’ll argue with you about them and probably won’t retreat. He’s sure he’s right. She’s her own person, one of substance, curious and considerate of your opinion. She might agree with you eventually, or partly or at least continue the conversation. He’s intense. She’s curious. You might walk away from a conversation with him convinced he thinks of himself as slightly superior.  You might walk away from a conversation with her with something to think about, and she might walk away thinking the same thing.

Who’s the Republican?  Who’s the Democrat?  Either? Both? Is one of them an independent?

What does it take to make them laugh or at least to smile?

If you are from St. Louis, what high school would they have attended?

What’s their favorite television show?

Do they go to church?

On a vacation, does he want to fish and hunt while she wants to hike?

Are they a couple?  Could be. If they are, they probably have some interesting discussions. Do they drink wine?  Yeah, but I think he’s the one more likely to order a beer at dinner. They could be Tiger fans and might even tailgate on Saturdays. They enjoy the company of others.  They don’t join organizations, or very many organizations.  They’re middle-income folks, educated.  If they are a couple, they would have a couple of children probably pre-teens with all of the challenges that comes with them.

Their professions?   Not teachers.  Not lawyers.  Maybe she’s a social worker. Maybe he’s a fireman.  Maybe he runs an auto parts store and she has a fabric store.  Or maybe he sells boats and she’s the administrative assistant to a college dean.

He drives a pickup truck, maybe a Dodge Ram.  She drives a Prius.

What do YOU think? Who are they?  Who are we?  How would we look and dress to show what typical Missourians look like?

If you want to see what this couple looks like in other states, go to:

I Asked AI What The Typical Person From Each State Looks Like, And Here’s What It Came Up With (msn.com)

We found some surprises. We found some that (in our personal stereotypes) were dead on.  We were interested in how they are placed in the pictures of some states’ representatives. Sometimes she’s in front or more by his side..

We love Iowa’s couple and consider them a 21st Century American Gothic, an updated version of Grant Wood’s famous painting.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You know what we think would be fun?  Have some folks over and show them the pictures representing each of our states and let the group discuss the things Nancy and I have discussed.

Thirty years ago, Robert Fulgham was a best-selling author of self-understanding books. One of them was Well, What is it You Do? He said, “I—and you—we are infinite, rich, largely contradictory, living, breathing human beings, children of God and the everlasting universe. That’s what we do.”

Maybe that’s a good place to start when you “read” these Missourians.

Spend some time with them and if you would like, tell us in the comments box how YOU read them—and what they say about our state.

The Gun, The School, The Town , The Times

Posted on by
Reply

I took a gun to school once.

In a more innocent time.

A long, long time ago.

It was a revolver that held seven .22-short bullets.

It wasn’t loaded.

Here is the gun:

Well, not really THE gun. Our house burned down three weeks before Christmas when I was a high school freshman.  I lost my coin collection that included a mis-strike nickel that had two heads, several plastic model airplanes, a baseball card collection that probably included a Mantle rookie card, a few Red Man Chewing Tobacco cards, and assorted other baseball cards that would have put both of our children through college had the collection survived, a collection of Lone Ranger novels (since re-accumulated through the years), my old maid aunt Gertrude’s National Geographic collection that began in 1907 (I had looked through only a few as I sought out the ones that had stories about African natives whose lack of above-the-waist attire was very interesting to a boy my age), and the gun.

Today I would be rushed to the principal’s office; my parents would be called; I would be home-schooled for a while, to say the least.

My great-grandfather played the fife for the 126th Illinois Infantry that served under General Sherman at Vicksburg and then was instrumental in gaining control of northern Arkansas, including the capture of Little Rock.  He enlisted in another town in Moultrie County and after the war lived in what we called a big city in those days—Decatur—for sixty more years where he once owned an ice cream store.

His pistol was the first Smith & Wesson pistol.   Not THE first, but—well, you get the idea.

I think I took it to school because we were studying the Civil War in an elementary school class and it was no big deal.

I don’t remember the duck-and-cover drills some children of that vintage practiced, thinking that hiding under a school desk would save them from an Atom Bomb.   We had fire drills, though.  A couple of times a year.  Outside we’d go. Never in rain or snow but I do remember some cold days standing on the sidewalk while the teachers checked every room to make sure one of my classmates hadn’t decided to hide out.

I grew up in two towns in which Abraham Lincoln, then a circuit-riding lawyer, occasionally visited to take part in trials.  I have been told that the one in which I spent the most time had a Sundown Ordinance—no Negroes allowed in town after dark.  (I use the word because that’s the word that was used then.) Many years later I considered the irony of a town where Lincoln was a sometime-lawyer that told black people they were not welcome after sundown.  But then, as I have learned, Lincoln’s own attitudes toward black people were pretty undeveloped then.

My class was the first to graduate from the new high school that I could watch being constructed when I was in my Junior English class in the old high school—which was torn down a few months ago. Some black men from Decatur were part of the construction crew and one day one of my classmates told me he had heard that they planned to move their families to our town after the new school was built and “if they do, there’s going to be trouble.”

I couldn’t understand why he felt that way. I was young, innocent of worldly things.  I did not meet my first black people until the second semester of my freshman college year when the Residential Assistant for my dormitory floor brought a couple of black guys around to every room and introduced them.  To me they were just guys.  Years later, I figured out that the university was integrating the dormitories (I watched the first black football and basketball players perform for the school).  By the time I left, America had undergone a painful change. I had changed, too, picketing a segregated bowling alley one evening with my church group, and came to work in a segregated city with an HBCU that would taste violence during the Civil Rights struggle.

My little town surrounded by the rich land of the Illinois prairie still has high school sports teams unapologetically called Redskins. It’s about fifty miles from the University teams are called the Fighting Illini. My class ring, safely in a bank deposit box, features the abstract image of a Native American Chief.  Or at least the profile of a Native American in an ornate headdress.

Not commenting. Just saying.

One of our World War II heroes was a B-25 pilot who wasn’t satisfied to just fly over his hometown. He buzzed it.  Stood that plane on its wing and flew around the courthouse dome.  That was before we moved there.  By the time we moved there he was our school principal.  Col. Loren Jenne’s Army Air Corps uniform is in the county historical museum.  It’s a really, really good recently-built museum constructed with the help of an advisor for the Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield.  Visiting it for a reunion a couple of years ago made me realize how lacking we are in Jefferson City for a good local historical museum.

The town library’s board room holds part of local resident’s collection of 700 hood ornaments and the former Illinois Masonic Home has one of the largest collections of sea shells in the country.

I had a laid-back high school history teacher who once told me he became a teacher because “it was better than working for a living.”  Everybody had to do a report on some historical event for his class. Mine was on the Battle of Gettysburg. It took as long as the battle took—three days. Even then I could write long.

I missed one of the biggest events in town history because I was in college.  Richard Nixon dropped in on this little town of about 3600 during his 1960 campaign. Town leaders had invited him and challenger John Kennedy to hold an old-fashioned debate at the annual buffalo barbecue.  Kennedy didn’t show but Nixon ate half a sandwich and then spoke to about 17,000 people who gathered in a park where I had learned to love playing baseball.  A Boy Scout who helped provide security at Nixon’s table picked up the remainder of his buffalo sandwich and took it home.  His mother put the remnant in a pickle jar and froze it.  Sixty years later, he published a book, The Sandwich That Changed My Life, recounting how the sandwich is still in that jar but occasionally had been on public display including the day he took it to Los Angeles for an appearance on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.  Carson gave him one of his half-eaten sandwiches, which led people such as Tiny Tim and Steve Martin to make additional contributions.

Nixon wasn’t the first presidential aspirant to visit my little town.  When Lincoln and Stephen A. Douglas were holding their famous debates throughout the state—Lincoln was challenging Douglas for a seat in the U. S. Senate—Lincoln paused to give a speech in a little grove of trees that is now the site of the civic center. Douglas wasn’t there. However, a riot between Lincoln and Douglas supporters broke out on the town square during the 1858 campaign.

We had a Brown Shoe factory, as did many small towns, for decades. It was near the now-gone elementary school I entered late in my fourth grade year.  I hit a softball through one of its windows one day during a noon hour game on the vacant lot between the school and the factory. Foreign competition shut it down. The building is still there, re-purposed several times. .

I went away from that little town to study journalism at the University of Missouri.  In those first few days, new college students ask and are asked many times, “Where are you from?”  There were nods of the head when the answers were St. Louis, or Kirksville, or Joplin, or Polo, or Hannibal (my roommate), or other Missouri towns.  But when I said, “Sullivan, Illinois,” there was the second question:

“Where’s that?”

And I would reach into my back pocket and pull out an official Illinois State Highway Map, William G. Stratton, Governor, and I would unfold it and show them.  Today I would say, “It’s about 40 minutes north of Effingham” and everybody would know because Effingham, then a bowling alley and a gas station-small town on Highway 40, is a major stop on straight and boring I-70 between St. Louis and Terre Haute.  I’m sure some of my new classmates walked away thinking, “He’s too weird.”

In a few days, I’m headed back to Sullivan for my (mumble-mumble) class reunion. I cherish these get-togethers, especially as our numbers dwindle.  I have a nice red polo shirt, although I wish I could find an appropriate red and black sweatshirt or jacket to wear while I ride in one of the 1959 convertibles a classmate has arranged for classmates to ride in during the homecoming parade. It shouldn’t be as hard as it was the other day to find the right thing in Jay and Chiefs country.

But the other day I bought a new car that’s red with black trim and I hope that is appropriate.

A few years ago I came to the conclusion that the last time we met as a class was the night we graduated.  Now, we are the Community of ’59.  Then, were a homogenous group raised in the same county, for the most part, part of the same culture for the first 18 years of our life, no more acutely aware of the greater world beyond us than teenagers today probably are plugged into life outside their schools.  But since then, life has changed us, has filled us with our own unique experiences and we come together as diverse individuals shaped by the decades that have passed.

Yet, when I think of them, it is easy to see them in my mind as perpetually young. And when we meet, we don’t spend a lot of time reminiscing. Instead we talk as contemporary people who have been friends for a long, long time who have nothing to prove to each other or no reason to try to impress one another.  We are special friends bound together by long-ago experiences who can talk about present issues, even those on which we not unexpectedly differ, and then go back to our homes and our separate futures cherishing this one more chance to be with each other.

I’ve lived in Missouri (except for three summers while I was in college) for almost eighty percent of my life. Each year I travel from Jefferson City to Indianapolis for a couple of races.  I usually stop for lunch in Effingham.  And each time, I feel a little tug to turn north.

All of our towns and each of us have stories such as these. Someday, descendants I will never know, might read these stories.

Think about writing yours.

For them.

I went to school with a gun one day in a time my grandchildren probably would not understand, when the only drill we had to worry about was the fire drill.

That was a long, long time ago. But if nobody every tells about those times, how can anybody else ever hope that there ever can be that kind of safe era again?

-0-

 All Dressed Up and No Place to Go 

Posted on by
Reply

Doggone it!  I have lost a lot of weight so my tuxedo fits well again, including my red vest and my red already-tied bowtie.  I look dashing—tuxes have a tendency to do that to some people and I am one of them if I say so myself.

It’s been probably fifteen years since I wore it.  The shoulders have a fine cover of closet dust. But I was all set to send it to the cleaners so I would really look spiffy and sharp. I had searched for and found the studs for my pleated shirt and French cuffs.  The patent leather shoes were still in their soft cotton protective bags and still fit when I found them under a bunch of stuff in the far corner of my closet.

And then they cancelled it.

I hadn’t bought my ticket yet but I was seriously considering using the event to break out the new, thin, distinguished ME and mingle with some of the most important people in the country. That’s how they were promoted. And it was for such a worthy cause.

I really wanted to get that signed #1 music chart plaque. I don’t remember hearing the song played on the radio, the National Anthem sung by twenty peaceful tourists jailed after visiting the National Capitol on January 6, 2021 while their greatest supporter and benefactor intones the Pledge of Allegiance over their voices. It’s not something that plays very often on Top-40 stations or whatever they call that format now, or on NPR or Country-Western stations.

Billboard reported in March last year that, “Donald J. Trump and J6 Prison Choir’s “Justice for All” enters Billboard’s Digital Song Sales chart (dated March 25) at No. 1. The recording sold 33,000 downloads March 10-16, according to Luminate.”  It also drew 442,000 “official U. S. Streams,” whatever those are.

That’s pretty impressive, I guess.  The magazine has several charts of hit songs, one of which is the top 50 Streaming Songs that listed its number one as Morgan Wallen’s “Last Night,” with 38.9 million streams.  The Top 50 Radio Songs survey was listing Miley Cyrus’ “Flowers,” with an airplay audience of 106.7 million. But number one is number one and even it is a relatively small number one it is still number one and all I had to do to qualify as a possible recipient of a plaque commemorating this achievement was to buy a $1500 general admission ticket.

I’ve listened to the recording a time or two. While it’s a long ways from the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, I can understand why some people might find a little charm in it.

But the general admission probably wouldn’t have let me get really close to the distinguished guests, one of whom is a co-founder of the sponsoring organization, Sarah McAbee.   The New York Times says she has a vested interest in it because her husband, a former sheriff in Tennessee, is one of the peaceful tourists of January 6, 2021 who has had the misfortune of being sentenced to five years in prison for being involved in the “prolonged multi-assistant attack on police officers.”

For an extra thousand dollars I could have gotten my picture taken the speakers. That probably was the best I could do.  Certainly it would have been exciting to have one of the speakers at my table but I couldn’t afford $50,000 for that and I don’t know eleven other people who have sacrificed so much to get into their tuxedos as I had sacrificed.

Mr. Trump was listed by the non-profit group planning the event—The Stand in the Gap Foundation—as an invited speaker but his campaign circulated word about ten days before the event that he wouldn’t be able to be there.  But that’s okay.  There were a dozen speakers confirmed and ninety minute or two hours of Mr. Trump after all of the other folks spoke would have taken me well beyond my bedtime anyway.

But some of the other folks would have been interesting although I’ve never heard of about nine of them. But there were three I either knew about or looked up—Rudi Giuliani, Peter Navarro, and Anthony Raimondi, identified by others as a “MAGA influencer.”  A fourth was an actor whose name didn’t ring any bells, so I looked him up.

Actor Nick Searcy has appeared in 40 movies playing such memorable characters as Highway Patrol Officer, Man at Party, FBI man, Construction Worker, Stan, Repairman, Mr. Miller, County Sheriff, The Farmer, Herb, The Captain, and Head of FBI Field office. I’m not impressed but then again, he’s been in forty movies (and a lot of TV shows) and I haven’t, so there’s that.

I’m sure they comped Rudi’s ticket.  That poor man has vigorously ridden the Trump bus—although I’m not sure whether he has a seat inside it or is hanging onto the frame under it—from fame to disgrace with all the dignity he can muster and so far has fended off lawsuit winners’ efforts to take everything but tomorrow’s underwear from him to pay judgements.

I imagine Peter Navarro could buy his own ticket. I’d like to sit as his table and hear him tell about the fun of the four months he spent in prison for contempt of Congress because he refused to turn over documents to the House January 6th Committee and also to learn how much he looks forward to going back on a Contempt of Court charge for refusing to turn over 200-250 documents to the National Archives.

The third face promoted on the invitation was completely unfamiliar. So I looked him up on the internet—and now I wonder what I should think about the other people I might meet there because if the Anthony Raimondi on the flyer is the Anthony Raimondi on the internet—-

Well, get this:

It’s Anthony LUCIANO Raimondi, who claims the notorious mobster Lucky Luciano is his uncle and says he was an enforcer for the Colombo mafia family in New York.  A New York Post article in 2019 says Raimondi claims he went to Rome in 1978 and helped to poison Pope John Paul I with cyanide, that he was among those recruited to do the deed by his cousin, Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, then the head of the Vatican Bank who wanted to keep the Pope from exposing a massive stock fraud “run by Vatican insiders.”  He also claims he was recruited to kill Pope John Paul II until the Pope, fearful for his life, decided not to continue the investigation.

Another website says Raimondi claims to have killed 300 people as a teenaged sniper in Vietnam, winding up there in a plea deal that let hm escape a New York murder charge at age 16 if he joined the Army. .

If that’s the guy invited to be a speaker at this event, I’m not sure I want to cross paths with him.  He does have his critics who accuse him of being a huge liar and a major conspiracy theorist. I don’t think I could have a casual conversation with while nibbling on bacon-wrapped pineapple slices or toothpicked wienies dipped in barbecue sauce because I would worry that cement would damage my patent leather shoes.  Just my luck, he’d be the speaker at my table though, if I could afford to sit at one of the big bucks tables.*

I would have been interested, just from general curiosity, how much of this money actually reaches any of the families of the peaceful tourists.  I’m sure that the costs of the event at Mr. Trump’s New Jersey golf club will be quite high and some might find its way into his own legal fund or campaign fund, something that seems proper given that it is HIS club.

But the whole thing is moot now (I have a friend who refers to things as being a “moo issue—not even the cows care about it.”). It’s been cancelled without explanation on the website. One organizer has told a reporter it’s because of “scheduling conflicts of invited guest speakers.”

One of the conflicts is that U. S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan will be deciding that day how to go forward with the election subversion case against Mr. Trump in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling on immunity from prosecution for presidential acts.

Well, truth be told, my invitation must have gotten lost in the mail, but I’m sure they would have taken my money if I wanted to buy a ticket anyway.  If they do reschedule this event for some time when Mr. Trump isn’t in court or creating his own conspiracy theories on the stump, I might think about the event again.  I’ll need to know about it far enough in advance to get a haircut.

And I hope it is on a day that is not the one where I give my pet fish his weekly shampoo. That’s something I never miss.

*I have entertained myself, if no one else, by writing about this event and the “distinguished” list of speakers but this Raimondi guy deserves some additional observation and it’s serious, assuming he’s the person mentioned in numerous internet entries and videos.  First of all, I cannot for the life of me understand why any presidential candidate or any group of his supporters would want to associate with a proclaimed mob enforcer and Pope-killer.  Second, Raimondi has critics who claim he is a complete fraud.  Third, an internet search turns up several reports that I find more credible than his claims about his sniper work in Vietnam including a 2023 article on Historynet (originally in Vietnam magazine) about Staff Sgt. Adelbert F. Waldron III being the highest-scoring sniper in Vietnam with 109 confirmed kills, for which he earned two Distinguished Service Crosses, a Silver Star, and three Bronze Star Medals. A directory listing all winners of these three awards during the Vietnam War does not list Raimondi receiving any of them. I will leave it to you to judge what kind of presidential candidate would allow himself to be pictured prominently with someone like this.

Who Will be Next?

Posted on by
Reply

The fish are in the barrel.

The kids are back in school.

—and in Winder, Georgia a few days ago, a 14-year old boy with a gun went fish hunting.  He killed four.

It’s the 45th school shooting this year, the 385th mass shooting in the United States.

Newsweek has counted 2,034 school shootings in this country since 2004. California has had the most, 169. Texas has had 141, to rank second. In today’s culture, these numbers should not be unexpected; they’re our two most populous states.

A few days ago—September 7—the Associated Press reported the Georgia incident was the 30th mass shooting of 2024, producing 131 deaths. Four or more people have to die to be considered a “mass shooting” as compiled by the AP and USA Today, working in conjunction with Northeastern University. Last year was one of the deadliest on record, 42 incidents, 217 deaths..

It might surprise some people to hear someone such as Jennifer Briemann say it’s time to take school security seriously. Briemann is the Deputy Director of the NRA Institute for Legislative Action. But she also tells Newsweek “The reality is that the proposals put forth by those who wish to disarm law-abiding citizens would not have prevented this senseless tragedy in Georgia.”

The rhetoric remains unchanged. So do the school shootings. There is a place for reasonable, pragmatic discussions—but they can’t happen as long as the political parties talk at each other instead of to each other.

A six-year-old video has re-emerged in the wake of the latest killings. It is an example of ongoing political unwillingness to confront this issue, the tendency to divert attention away from it, and the tendency to hide behind an illogical argument.

On March 24, 2018, Colorado Congresswoman Lauren Boebert, whose critics consider her one of the nuttier members of Congress, decided to drive to Carbondale, Colorado where students were taking part in the national March for Our Lives in the wake of the 17-death school shooting in Parkland Florida. She apparently Facebooked as she drove and she said:

“So, I am on my way to Carbondale Colorado. There’s supposedly an organized march. The March for Our Lives is going to take place and I’m really interested to see if people know what they’re marching for.  I guess this is supposed to be the beginning of people speaking out to take away our Second Amendment Rights, and I’m not happy about it.  If this is really a March for Our Lives, let’s march against abortion, because I was looking at statistics and there are nearly one million abortions per year in America. One million!  Do you know how many gun violence deaths there are, gun related deaths there are in America, per year?  15,000. Hmmm.  A drop in a bucket, I’d say.  So, I left Rifle, Colorado; I’m not going into Shooters right now. I’m going to Carbondale and I’m going to see what these people really believe, if they know what they’re marching for. If they know that they are marching against their rights.  They’re marching, saying, “Hey, I have a right that I don’t want. Take it away from me. Get rid of this. (she is smiling as she makes these comments, by the way.) I want the people around me to not be able to protect themselves, to not be able to defend me.” I’m not—you know, I’m driving here, I think it’s kind of similar to talking on speaker phone so I guess I’m safe. But, I was thinking, my government requires me to wear this (shows her seat belt). I have to wear them to protect myself. And I can’t have my 9 millimeter to protect myself?  I don’t think so. I don’t think so, not today, no. (laughs).

She apparently though herself humorous for talking about the town of Rifle (a nice place on I-70 in the Rockies) and Shooters, the sports bar, in her soliloquy in which she ignored any of the humanity behind the demonstrations, showed no awareness of any of the pathos so many felt and were feeling, and offered nothing of comfort to the affected or a cure for the problems that compound the school shootings other than seemingly suggest that everybody should have a 9 mm pistol.

She was driving and glancing at her cell phone during the presentation, unaware that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimated almost 44,000 people died in traffic crashes last year.

They’re just bigger drops in the bucket. The agency thinks more than 13,500 of those fatalities were alcohol-related.  Eh.  If it’s not an aborted baby, these deaths seem to be insignificant to her.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates at least 3,000 of the 44,000 people who die in traffic crashes each year die because of distracted driving. Maybe they’re just mist in the bucket to her.

If those are just drops, how would she rate the World Health Organization’s estimate that eight-million people a year die because of tobacco-related issues.  The CDC says more than 480,000 deaths a year result from cigarette smoking—almost sixty years after the first warnings appeared on cigarette packages by federal mandate. More drops.

The National Center for Health Statistics estimated 49,476 people committed suicide in the United States in 2022.  Of those, 27,032 used firearms.

Drip, drip, drip.

Every one of those deaths, whether by traffic crash, smoking, or suicide is a tragedy to somebody. As is an abortion. But she seems to be saying that abortion is her only concern.

For one thing, her “15,000” gun related deaths are pretty low. But looking for ways to minimize those deaths is too insignificant for her to worry about.

As for the seat belt—It’s a government mandate that reduces the chance of death or injury, not just for her but for others riding with her or in the other vehicle.

Comparing a seatbelt to a gun is over the top. Seat belts protect those who should not be driving as well as those who have no restrictions. There are few mandates that affect people who should not have guns. Instead, her argument seems to be that if everybody had a 9-millimeter gun, they’d be safe.

Yeah. Right.  The students and the teachers in Georgia or in Parkland, Florida in 2018 or at any of the other mass-shooting sites in the last few decades would have had the presence of mind and the time to draw their Glocks from their holsters, backpacks, or desk drawers when someone walked into their rooms and immediately started shooting that the shootings would not have happened?

The students and others who were marching in Colorado, D.C., and other places that day were not saying they wanted to eliminate a right—the Second Amendment.  They were saying THEY have a right, too.  And if Boebert and other pro-life, pro-gun zealots don’t see the hypocrisy of the overlaps of the two issues and quit bloviating about the exclusivity of both, more fish in more barrels will be shot.

The right to life and the right to live are separate issues.  Policy makers who strain to put them together solve nothing and avoid arriving at responsible difficult answers.  There is shame in the repetition of that pattern.

And that is why more children will become fishes in barrels this year.

The school year is still young. Who will be the next fish in the next barrel while nothing is done by those who know a 9 millimeter pistol is not the real answer?

Medal

Posted on by
2

I am really, really angry about our former President’s comments that the Presidential Medal of Freedom is better than the Medal of Honor.

Most of you have watched or listened to what he said a few days ago, speaking of the Medal of Freedom:

That’s the highest award you can get as a civilian. It’s the equivalent of the Congressional Medal of Honor, but civilian version. It’s actually much better because everyone gets the Congressional Medal of Honor, they’re soldiers. They’re either in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets or they are dead. She gets it and she’s a healthy, beautiful woman. And they’re rated equal, but she got the Presidential Medal of Freedom.”  

She is the equal of soldiers who are “hit so many times by bullets or they are dead?”

What is it with this guy who shows no respect for honor, courage, or sacrifice, whose vacuousness regularly produces such instantly cringeworthy observations as his discussion of the Battle of Gettysburg?—

“What an unbelievable battle that was. The Battle of Gettysburg. What an unbelievable—I mean, it was so much and so interesting, and so vicious and horrible and so beautiful in so many different ways.  Gettysburg, Wow. I go to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, to look and to watch. And the statement of Robert E. Lee—who’s no longer in favor, did you ever notice that? No longer in favor—‘Never fight uphill me boys, never fight uphill.’  They were fighting uphill. He said, “Wow, that was a big mistake.” He lost his great general, and they were fighting. ‘Never fight uphill, me boys,’  But it was too late”

Civil War historians have never found any verification that a native Virginian ever sounded like a native of Ireland in encouraging his soldiers to fight.  Uphill, downhill, or on flat land. Or that he said anything such as that or—

According to Trump, Lee said, “Wow, that was a big mistake.”

Wow?  Here is part of Lee’s report of the battle:

“The highest praise is due to both officers and men for their conduct during the campaign. The privations and hardships of the march and camp were cheerfully encountered, and borne with a fortitude unsurpassed by our ancestors in their struggle for independence, while their courage in battle entitles them to rank with the soldiers of any army and of any time.”

Lee lost. He did not say wow.  But he did honor his troops, living and dead, in the full report.

Sixty-four Union soldiers received the Medal of Honor for actions at Gettysburg.

Or his extensive knowledge of the American Revolution, shared in a July 4th speech in 2019 when he educated his audience this way:

“The Continental Army suffered a bitter winter of Valley Forge, found glory across the waters of the Delaware, and seized victory from Cornwallis of Yorktown. Our army manned the air, it rammed the ramparts, it took over the airports, it did everything it had to do. And at Fort McHenry, under the rockets’ red glare, it had nothing but victory. And when dawn came, their Star Spangled Banner waved defiant.”

Fort McHenry and the Francis Scott Key’s poem about the flag are from the War of 1812, not the revolution.  And—what is his definition of “rampart.”  And seizing the airports????!!!

(There was no Medal of Honor in the American Revolution. George Washington established a Badge of Military Merit, the first medal applying to private soldiers, in 1782. The medal today is awarded for reasons Washington did not mention and is known since its formal establishment 150 years later as the Purple Heart.)

I’m getting too worked up as I go back over the uncounted instances of disrespect for those who have worn our country’s uniforms and the historical and scientific gibberish that he thinks is clever and smart and that far too many people who must be a whole lot smarter than him accept anyway. Let me get back to what I started to write.

I am not a veteran.  But I cannot describe the depth of gratitude that I have for veterans, whether they came under enemy fire or whether they were a clerk at a stateside base. I was honored to be asked to work with a dedicated group made up of veterans and Gold Star Family members (Gold Star families are those who have lost loved ones in wartime) to build a Gold Star Family Memorial Monument near the Capitol a few years ago. I provided the words carved into the memorial’s stones.

The Chairman of that group was my State Representative, Dave Griffith, a Special Forces veteran who has spent most of his life in positions of service to the public. We differ on some political issues—some—but that has not affected our friendship and our working on some legislation for next year that will restore millions of dollars in funding for our state veterans homes and for other causes.  It is an honor to associate with people such as him.  And it is that kind of respect that leaves me so angry when someone such as our 45th President diminishes the Medal of Honor and disrespects those who have received it as well as those who have served honorably whether on the front lines or in the back offices.

There seems to be nothing this candidate cannot cheapen with his words and his actions. He awarded 24 Presidential Medals of Freedom, fourteen of them to sports figures. He interrupted one of his State of the Union speeches to give one to Rush Limbaugh. The quotation at the start of this entry refers to the award to Miriam Adelson, a doctor known for her humanitarian work and donations to Jewish organizations.  But probably more important to him is that she and her late husband donated $20 million to his 2016 campaign and another five-million dollars to his inauguration fund, then a half-million more to a legal fund for Trump aides, another $100 million that went to conservative groups and Republican candidates in 2018. Open Secrets, which watches political donations, says the Adelson’s total giving to these causes and to a pro-Trump political action committee is close to $220 million dollars in 2019 and 2020. She’s also “a healthy and beautiful woman,” which most of us would not consider a qualification for a presidential medal.

Here’s an important difference between those who get the Medal of Freedom and those who receive the Medal of Honor:

Military members are encouraged to salute a Medal of Honor recipient who is wearing the medal, even if that person is wearing civilian clothes. The military custom is for junior offices to salute senior officers.  But the Medal of Honor recipient is entitled to receive a salute from anyone, regardless of rank.

No Medal of Freedom winner is entitled to that show of respect. The former President is correct that many recipients of the Medal of Honor are dead or have dealt with serious wounds.  To say that they are entitled to less respect from the President of the United States than someone who hits a baseball, shoots a basketball, hits a golf ball, or carries a football is unforgiveable—or gives a lot of money to his campaign and also is a good-looking woman—is beyond forgivable.

It is best to stop here rather than go on with the altercation at Arlington that was as much about honoring soldiers killed in the Afghanistan withdrawal (that he planned while in office) as staging a photo op at a D.C. church was about sincerely-held faith.

NO, ON SECOND THOUGHT IT IS NOT BEST TO STOP.

The above material was written last Wednesday.  On Thursday, he blamed the Arlington controversy on “very bad people” and suggested that the Gold Star families he was with made the video of the event public, not members of his campaign staff who have been accused of pushing a cemetery staffer out of the way when she tried to enforce the no-politicking rule for the area out of the way.

“This all comes out of Washington, just like all these prosecutors come out of Washington. These are bad people we’re dealing with,” he told an interviewer in Michigan. “They ask me to have a picture, and they say I was campaigning. The one thing I get is plenty of publicity… I don’t need the publicity.”

If he didn’t need the publicity, why did he have a video crew with him?

The Army has confirmed that the shoving incident happened when the staffer tried to keep a Trump campaign aide out of the area that has strict rules about media presence. The area is for recently-buried service members and regulations published by the Army and Arlington National Cemetery prohibit political activity there. The Washington Post reported that “ahead of the visit, Arlington National Cemetery officials had warned Trump’s team that he could visit the grave sites, but not as part of a campaign event. The cemetery made clear that while media could accompany Trump to a wreath laying at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, they could not accompany him into Section 60.”

Officials have told The New York Times the woman refused to press chages because “she feared Mr. Trump’s supporters pursuing retaliation.”  Trump Campaign Press Secretary Steven Cheung says she is “suffering from a mental health issue,” and senior adviser Chris LaCivita has called her a “despicable individual.

Trump’s campaign social media site shortly afterwards posted several pictures and videos that were taken during the visit, including a recording of him blaming President Biden for the deaths of American soldiers in the final hours of our occupation of Afghanistan.

When asked by NBC if his campaign should have published the images, Trump gave his familiar excuse: he knew “nothing about” that.  And when the reporter bored in with another question, he suggested parents of the dead servicemen distributed the images.

On HIS social media??????.

“I don’t know what the rules and regulations are. I don’t know who did it, It could have been them – it could have been the parents.”  When pressed even more, he said, “I really don’t know anything about it.”

The family that invited Trump was contacted by Trump nemesis Maggie Haberman, a New York Times reporter. She posted on X:

“Contacted by NYT, Michele Marckesano issued a statement from the family saying they support the families searching for accountability around the Abbey Gate bombing. However, she said, their conversations with Arlington officials indicated Trump staff didn’t adhere to rules.”

The Gold Star families are the “very bad people????”

There is a terrible irony to this deplorable incident at Arlington:

A 1998 law allows Trump, if he wishes, to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery—-

—-the burial place of more than 400 recipients of the Medal of Honor.

Surely, he wouldn’t——

would he?

(This entry was changed on September 2, 2024 to include Maggie Haberman’s post on X)

Just the Facts. Part Two 

Posted on by
Reply

The Democrats wrapped up last week the most creative and glitzy convention we can recall—by far. It was a convention in which the delegates seemed genuinely to be having fun that transcended the usual partisan enjoyment of a convention.

Monday, we relied on CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale and his staff, who evaluated the presidential debate in July, to point out the untruths that were spoken each night of the Republican National Convention.

Today we look at the work done by Dale and his staff in evaluating the Democratic National Convention. This entry will be shorter than Monday’s entry, not because there were no untruths of various degrees spoken at the DNC—-because there were—-but because there were fewer of them during the DNC, in good part because the Democrats have no match for the one-person nonstop generator of nonstop lies that the Republicans had.

But we are posting these evaluations because the personal discussions we have with others in the 70 days or so before the election are likely to rely on what was said during the political conventions.

Again, we offer these entries because words are cheap on both sides, because political commercials are more manipulative than they are honest, and because we hope this can be a reference for you in stating our own statements honestly and questioning honestly the statements of others.

And once again we remind you that The Washington Post and FactCheck.org (which is based at the Annenberg School for Communication Trust at the University of Pennsylvania), Politifact (part of the Poynter Institute which has a truth-o-meter than goes from zero to “Pants on Fire”), The Associated Press which has a webpage at Fact Check: Political & News Fact  Check, are among other fact checkers not only for politics but in some cases for other issues.

DEMOCRATS, FIRST NIGHT:

Democratic state and federal officeholders, including President Joe Biden, delivered some false, misleading or lacking-key-context claims on the first night of the Democratic National Convention on Monday.

Biden repeated misleading claims he has made in previous speeches about billionaires’ tax rates and foreign trade. He also overstated the extent to which his efforts to fight climate change are expected to reduce US carbon emissions in the next decade. He made an outdated claim about the number of Americans with health insurance. And he omitted key context about his administration’s infrastructure-building efforts, framing distant goals as if they were already achievements.

Speaking earlier in the night, Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois denounced former President Donald Trump for having presided over a loss of jobs without mentioning the critical context that the losses occurred because of the Covid-19 pandemic that caused a global economic crash. A video played at the convention similarly left out important context on the respective job-related records of the Trump and Biden-Harris administrations.

Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow falsely claimed that the Supreme Court has made Trump “completely immune from prosecution,” significantly overstating the court’s recent ruling.

And Rep. Robert Garcia of California misleadingly described Trump’s widely criticized 2020 comments about the possibility of scientists studying the use of injected disinfectant as a Covid-19 treatment, wrongly saying Trump had instructed Americans to inject bleach.

Here is a CNN fact check of these claims and some other remarks made on Monday.

Biden on taxing billionaires

During his speech, Biden asked the audience if they knew what the average billionaire in the United States pays in taxes.

“We have a thousand billionaires in America. You know what the average tax rate they pay? 8.2%,” Biden said.

Facts First: Biden used this figure in a way that was misleading. As in previous remarks, including his State of the Union address in March, Biden didn’t explain that the figure is the product of an alternative calculation, from economists in his own administration, that factors in unrealized capital gains that are not treated as taxable income under federal law.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with the alternative calculation itself; the administration economists who came up with it explained it in detail on the White House website in 2021. Biden, however, has tended to cite the figure without any context about what it is and isn’t, leaving open the impression that he was talking about what these billionaires pay under current law.

So, what do billionaires actually pay under current law? The answer is not publicly known, but experts say it’s clearly more than 8%.

“Biden’s numbers are way too low,” Howard Gleckman, senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center at the Urban Institute think tank, told CNN in 2023. Gleckman said that in 2019, University of California, Berkeley, economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman “estimated the top 400 households paid an average effective tax rate of about 23% in 2018. They got a lot of attention at the time because that rate was lower than the average rate of 24% for the bottom half of the income distribution. But it still was way more than 2 or 3,” numbers Biden has used in some previous speeches, “or even 8%.”

In February 2024, Gleckman provided additional calculations from the Tax Policy Center. The center found that the top 0.1% of households paid an average effective federal tax rate of about 30.3% in 2020, including an average income tax rate of 24.3%.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Biden on carbon emissions

Speaking about his achievements on climate, Biden said his agenda made possible “cutting carbon emissions in half by 2030.”

Facts First: Independent analysis shows the US is off-track to meet an ambitious goal Biden set early in his administration of slashing US carbon emissions in half by 2030 – even with his climate law.

Biden’s climate target of cutting emissions 50-52% below 2005 levels (2005 was the historical peak for US carbon emissions) by 2030 was always going to be a tough goal to achieve. When the Inflation Reduction Act passed in 2022, analysis suggested it would get the US most of the way toward its goal – about a 40% reduction in carbon emissions. The thinking was that regulations from agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency would help make up the rest of the goal.

But a recent analysis from the nonpartisan Rhodium Group found that the US isn’t on track to hit Biden’s goal of slashing US emissions in half by 2030. Rhodium estimates the US is currently on track to reduce emissions anywhere from 32-43% by that date. However, the report says the US could surpass Biden’s goal by 2035 if there are no major changes to current policies, finding that the US would likely pick up the pace of decarbonizing its transportation, power and heavy industry sectors in the 2030s compared to the 2020s.

One big impediment to Biden’s goal is the fact that the EPA’s marquee climate rules regulating emissions from vehicles and power plants are facing an onslaught of legal challenges and a skeptical US Supreme Court. And an even bigger question mark is the 2024 election and whether Biden will be replaced by another Democrat with similar climate ambitions or former President Donald Trump – who has vowed to reverse much of Biden’s climate agenda.

From CNN’s Ella Nilsen

Biden’s claim about removing lead pipes from schools and homes

Biden, speaking about his bipartisan infrastructure law, said: “We’re removing every lead pipe from schools and homes, so every child can drink clean water.”

Facts First: This claim needs context. While the administration is spending $15 billion and working on federal regulations to remove all lead pipes from public drinking water systems over a decade, they may not be able to replace all pipes and service lines on private properties.

Lead drinking pipes can be found all over the country; some national estimates say the total number of lead service lines is around 9.2 million. Lead in drinking water is a major health concern for babies and young children, and Biden has made eradicating it a major priority. The Biden EPA proposed a major rule that, if finalized, would compel water utilities to gradually get rid of 100% of their lead pipes and service lines over 10 years.

The EPA estimates this effort will cost utilities $20 billion to $30 billion over that decade; $15 billion of that could be covered by the bipartisan infrastructure law, and there is an additional $11.7 billion available through the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund that could be used for lead removal as well. Cities with lead pipes, including New Orleans, are currently trying to locate all of their lead pipes.

Besides funding, the other issue is the EPA rule as currently proposed doesn’t cover lead pipes or service lines on private property. Replacing these smaller pipes on private property that go into homes could present an even more complex and costly challenge. Though the Biden initiative will make a major dent in replacing the country’s lead pipes, it’s unlikely to be able to replace every single one on both private and public property.

From CNN’s Ella Nilsen

Biden’s claim about trade ignores widening deficit under his presidency

In his speech, Biden said, “We used to import products and export jobs. Now we export American products and create American jobs right here in America.”

Fact First: This claim is misleading. So far this year, the United States has imported more goods than it has exported, leading to a seasonally adjusted trade deficit of more than $567 billion, according to figures from the US Census Bureau. 

In fact, the goods trade deficit has widened since Biden took office. In 2020, the nation’s goods trade deficit was $901 billion. After Biden’s first year in office, it increased to over $1 trillion and has stayed above that threshold every subsequent year.

The dollar’s strength has played a role in widening the goods trade deficit, making it more expensive for other countries to buy US-produced goods, and at the same time, cheaper for Americans to buy goods abroad.

From CNN’s Elisabeth Buchwald 

Biden on building electric vehicle charging stations

Speaking about his administration’s goal to create more clean energy jobs, Biden said IBEW workers were at work “installing 500,000 charging stations all across America” to power electric vehicles.

Facts First: This is more of a promise than a fact, but even so, it needs context. For a few reasons, it’s questionable whether the Biden administration will be able to meet its goal of installing 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations on US roads.

Installing 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations has long been one of Biden’s goals. The president initially proposed Congress spend $15 billion to make it a reality, but just half of that – $7.5 billion – passed as part of the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law. The latest data from the Department of Energy shows the United States is still a long way from that goal; there are currently more than 180,000 EV charging ports operating at over 66,000 station locations around the US.

Though the administration has said that could be backfilled by private investment, that change in funding could hinder the administration’s ability to meet the goal. The federal government has spent the last few years sending money to states; states can now unlock more than $900 million in funding for fiscal years 2022 and 2023, which the administration estimated will “help build” chargers across approximately 53,000 miles of US highways.

Over the next five years, the full $5 billion will be spent to build out a network of EV chargers on major highways. Another pot of $2.5 billion in grant funding is also available for states to apply to; in January, $623 million in grant funding went out the door to help counties, cities and tribes around the nation install new charging stations for electric vehicles and long-haul freight trucks.

But it’s been slow going. States are still in the process of selecting companies to actually build the charging stations, meaning it could still take months or even years to fully see the impact of the money around the nation.

There is also a wide range in how much different types of chargers cost, and individual states have a lot of leeway in deciding what kinds of chargers will go on their roads. DC fast chargers can charge a car to mostly full in 20 minutes to an hour and are meant to go on major highways and roads. Another kind of charger known as an L2 charger can take hours to charge a car to full. But DC fast chargers are much more expensive, costing around $100,000 compared to around $6,000 for an L2, Ellen Hughes-Cromwick, a senior resident fellow at the think tank Third Way, has told CNN.

From CNN’s Ella Nilsen 

Biden on number of people with health insurance

Biden touted his achievements in expanding health insurance coverage to more Americans.

“More Americans have health insurance today than ever before in American history,” he said at the Democratic National Convention.

Facts First: Biden’s claim is outdated. While it’s true that health insurance coverage hit a record high last year, fewer people were insured in the first quarter of this year than in the spring of last year – in large part because a federal law that prevented states from winnowing their Medicaid rolls lapsed last year.

Some 130 million Americans had public health insurance coverage, such as Medicare or Medicaid, in the first quarter of this year, but that’s down from nearly 138 million people in the second quarter of last year, according to the latest National Health Interview Survey. The loss outpaces the gain of just under 3 million people in private health insurance plans. (A small number of people have both types of coverage.)

At the same time, the number of uninsured Americans rose to 27.1 million in the first quarter of this year, up from 23.7 million people in the spring of 2023. That pushed the uninsured rate up to 8.2%, from 7.2%, over that time period.

One main reason why health insurance coverage hit a record high last year was because of a Covid-19 pandemic relief provision that barred states from involuntarily disenrolling residents whom they deemed no longer qualify in exchange for enhanced federal funding. That prohibition was lifted in April 2023.

Only 81.7 million people were enrolled in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program this past April, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. That compares to 93.9 million people in March 2023, before the provision lapsed.

From CNN’s Tami Luhby

Biden claims Trump will do “everything to ban abortion nationwide”

Biden said Monday that “Trump will do everything to ban abortion nationwide. Oh, he will.”

Facts First: Biden is making a prediction that we cannot definitively fact check, but the claim does not reflect Trump’s most recent comments on abortion and needs context.

While Trump regularly boasts that he played a key role in getting the US Supreme Court to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that guaranteed abortion rights across the country, Trump says it should be up to the states to decide how and when to restrict abortion. Polls show that the majority of Americans are against a federal abortion ban.

Throughout this most recent campaign, Donald Trump has repeatedly ducked direct questions about his support for a federal ban on abortions, but he said in April that he would not sign a national abortion ban if elected to the White House again. That statement reversed what he said in 2016 when he was first running for the presidency and was the opposite of statements he made throughout his time in office.

Some scholars are concerned that conservative advisers to Trump have encouraged him to ban abortions by enforcing the 1873 Comstock Act, a method that could essentially create a federal ban without Trump needing to sign any legislation to do it.

The Victorian-era anti-vice law that is still on the books is not currently enforced. The law bans the mailing of “obscene” materials used to produce an abortion. Some scholars believe Trump could use the Justice Department to enforce a ban that would not just restrict people from sending the medication currently used in the majority of abortions through the mail, but would ban any kind of materials used to produce any kind of abortion.

Trump has not officially endorsed the enforcement of the Comstock Act, but it is a strategy some of his advisers have outlined as an option for Trump to restrict abortions nationwide.

From CNN’s Jen Christensen

California congressman’s misleading claim about Trump’s comments about Covid-19 and disinfectant

Garcia claimed, among other things, that Trump “told us to inject bleach into our bodies,” while criticizing Trump’s handling of the Covid-19 crisis.

Facts First: Garcia’s claim is misleading. Trump never portrayed his ill-informed 2020 musings about the possibility of using disinfectant to treat Covid-19 as actual advice to Americans. Rather, Trump was talking about the possibility of scientists testing the possibility of using disinfectant as a treatment.

During a press briefing in April 2020, Trump expressed interest in scientists exploring the possibility of whether Covid-19 could be treated using disinfectants inside people’s bodies, “by injection inside or almost a cleaning,” or by deploying powerful light “inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way.” Trump’s comments were slammed by medical experts as highly dangerous, and they prompted urgent warnings from public health authorities and companies that sell household disinfectants. But he never actually said he was suggesting citizens go and use such products.

Trump made the ill-informed remarks after Bill Bryan, the acting undersecretary of science and technology for the Department of Homeland Security, outlined tests in which he said sunlight or disinfectants like bleach and isopropyl alcohol quickly killed the coronavirus on surfaces and in saliva.

When Trump jumped shortly afterward to the dangerous idea of injecting disinfectants inside people’s bodies, he was talking about experts somehow testing that idea. He said: “And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning, because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it’d be interesting to check that, so that you’re going to have to use medical doctors with, but it sounds interesting to me. So we’ll see.”

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

Durbin’s missing context on Trump’s jobs record

Durbin of Illinois, the Senate Majority Whip, claimed of Trump: “He lost millions of jobs in America.” Durbin said shortly after that, “He is one of only two presidents in the history of the United States to leave office with fewer Americans working than when he started.”

Facts First: Durbin’s statistics are correct, but he left out some critical context about them. While there was a net loss of about 2.7 million jobs from the beginning of Trump’s four-year term to the end, there was a net gain of about 6.7 million jobs under Trump until the Covid-19 pandemic hit the country about three years into his term.  

Nearly 22 million jobs were lost under Trump in March 2020 and April 2020 when the global economy cratered on account of the pandemic. The US then started regaining jobs immediately, adding more than 12 million from May 2020 through December 2020, but not enough to make up for the massive early-pandemic losses.

From CNN’s Daniel Dale 

Beatty’s claim about the Biden administration’s expansion of the child tax credit

Ohio Rep. Joyce Beatty praised the Biden administration’s efforts to provide larger tax credits for families and lift more children out of poverty.

“Joe and Kamala have been expanding the child tax credit, and let me just tell you … cutting the poverty rate for our children,” she said.

Facts First: Beatty’s claim needs context. It’s true that the expanded child tax credit passed early in the Biden administration slashed the child poverty rate in 2021, but the benefit only lasted for the one year the temporary enhancement was in effect. Child poverty increased in 2022 to a rate roughly comparable to where it was in 2019.

The American Rescue Plan Act, which Democrats pushed through Congress in March 2021, increased the size of the child tax credit to up to $3,600 – from $2,000 – for eligible families, enabled many more low-income parents to claim it and distributed half of it on a monthly basis.

That helped send child poverty – as measured by the Supplemental Poverty Measure – to a record low 5.2% in 2021, a drop of 46% from 2020, when the rate was 9.7% according to the US Census Bureau. The child tax credit lifted 2.9 million children out of poverty in 2021, with the temporary enhancement accounting for 2.1 million of those kids, according to the Census Bureau.

The Supplemental Poverty Measure, which began in 2009, takes into account certain non-cash government assistance, tax credits and needed expenses.

But in 2022, child poverty soared to 12.4%, roughly comparable to where it was prior to the pandemic in 2019. It was the largest jump in child poverty since the Supplemental Poverty Measure began.

Earlier this year, the House passed a tax bill that would again expand the child tax credit temporarily, though the boost would not be as generous as it was in 2021. Senate Republicans blocked it from advancing in their chamber earlier this month.

From CNN’s Tami Luhby

Harris campaign video showcasing Trump’s ‘lies’ on the economy misses context

In a prerecorded video from Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign team, a staffer shared claims Trump has made about the economy seeking to disprove them.

“Let’s take a look at his track record on jobs before Covid, as compared to the Biden-Harris administration. What do you know? Hardly the most successful ever,” the staffer said as a screen displayed average monthly job gains under Trump from January 2017 to February 2020 compared to average monthly gains during the entire Biden-Harris administration.

“And about his supposed manufacturing miracle, Trump talked a big game, but actually lost 178,000 manufacturing jobs. And just to be clear, it wasn’t just Covid here either. Manufacturing jobs were already on their way down before the pandemic.”

Facts First: The numbers the campaign staffer shared are correct, but they lack crucial context. It’s unfair to compare the average monthly job gains Trump achieved up until March 2020 to that of the Biden-Harris administration. That’s because the average monthly gains achieved under their administration were propped up by some of the gangbuster job reports that came just as the economy was recovering from the pandemic. For instance, in July 2021, 939,000 jobs were added in just one month.

And while it’s true 178,000 manufacturing jobs were lost when Trump was president, Covid-19 did in fact play a big role. In the immediate months before the pandemic, manufacturing jobs were declining very slightly. From November 2019 to February 2020, 36,000 manufacturing jobs were lost. That hardly compares to the roughly 1.4 million manufacturing jobs lost from February 2020 to April 2020. That so many of those job losses were able to be recouped by the time Trump left office is noteworthy.

From CNN’s Elisabeth Buchwald

Rodriguez’s claim on Trump wanting to terminate the Affordable Care Act

Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez on Monday accused Trump of still wanting to kill the Affordable Care Act.

“Now, Trump is promising to terminate the Affordable Care Act,” Rodriguez said at the DNC.

Facts First: Rodriguez’s claim does not reflect Trump’s recent comments on the Affordable Care Act. He did appear to express renewed support for terminating the law in one social media post late last year, but he has since said he wants to improve it, not terminate it.  Most recently, he has said he will keep the law unless he can come up with an unspecified “better” plan.

Repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act was one of Trump’s top priorities in his 2016 presidential campaign and first term. However, even though Republicans controlled Congress and the White House the following year, they failed to unite behind a plan to do so, ending any serious attempts to completely overhaul the landmark health reform law, popularly known as Obamacare.

The former president revived the debate over the law’s fate in November 2023, when he wrote on his Truth Social platform that he’s “seriously looking at alternatives” and that the failure to terminate it “was a low point for the Republican Party, but we should never give up!”

Trump quickly walked back his comments, posting a few days later that he doesn’t “want to terminate Obamacare, I want to REPLACE IT with MUCH BETTER HEALTHCARE. Obamacare Sucks!!!”

In April, Trump said in a video posted to Truth Social: “I’m not running to terminate the ACA as crooked Joe Biden says all over the place. We’re going to make the ACA much better than it is right now and much less expensive for you.”

And at a North Carolina rally last week, he said: “(Vice President Kamala Harris) goes around saying, ‘Oh, he’s going to get rid of the health.’ No, no, I’m going to keep it unless we can come up with something that’s better for you and less expensive for you. Otherwise, we’re not doing it.”

However, Trump has yet to release a proposal on how he would make the Affordable Care Act better and less expensive.

From CNN’s Tami Luhby

Michigan state senator makes false claim about Trump immunity

During a speech at the DNC about Project 2025, McMorrow said that the conservative blueprint for a second Trump term aimed to greatly expand the power of the presidency “like no president has ever had or should ever have.”

The Democratic lawmaker went on to say that if anyone wondered if those potential new powers were legal, “Thanks to Donald Trump’s hand-picked Supreme Court, he’s now completely immune from prosecution – even if he breaks the law.”

Facts First: McMorrow’s comment about the case Trump v. US is false. In their decision last month in the historic case, the six conservative justices granted Trump some immunity from prosecution, but not blanket immunity, as the former president had sought. The court said Trump could not be criminally pursued over “official acts,” but that he could face prosecution over alleged criminal actions involving “unofficial acts” taken while in office. 

“The President enjoys no immunity for his unofficial acts, and not everything the President does is official. The President is not above the law,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the conservative majority.

And while Trump appointed three of the justices who helped make up the six-justice majority, the other three, including Roberts, were appointed by previous Republican presidents.

The federal judge in Washington, DC, overseeing special counsel Jack Smith’s election subversion case against Trump must now examine the allegations against the former president to determine which ones are covered by the newly granted immunity.

From CNN’s Devan Cole 

DNC video leaves out context about Trump abortion comment from 2016

A video about abortion rights that was played at the DNC on Monday featured a short clip of former Trump agreeing, in a television interview, that women who get abortions should be punished.

Facts First: The video left out some important context: Trump made this comment more than eight years ago and retracted it hours after he made it. In an interview in April 2024, Trump declined to express an opinion on the idea of a state deciding to punish women for getting an abortion after it is banned, returning to his campaign refrain that abortion policy is now a matter for each state to decide.

Trump made the comment featured in the DNC video at an MSNBC town hall during the Republican presidential primary in 2016. Trump said that “there has to be some form of punishment” for abortion. When host Chris Matthews asked, “For the woman?” Trump responded, “Yeah, there has to be some form.” When Matthews pressed further, Trump said he didn’t know what the punishment should be.

Hours later, after facing widespread criticism, Trump issued a statement in which he said women should not be punished for getting abortions.

“If Congress were to pass legislation making abortion illegal and the federal courts upheld this legislation, or any state were permitted to ban abortion under state and federal law, the doctor or any other person performing this illegal act upon a woman would be held legally responsible, not the woman,” Trump said in the statement. “The woman is a victim in this case as is the life in her womb. My position has not changed – like Ronald Reagan, I am pro-life with exceptions.”

The next day on Fox News, Trump said, “It could be that I misspoke” during an abortion discussion he claimed was “convoluted.” He said that “if, in fact, abortion was outlawed, the person performing the abortion, the doctor, or whoever it may be that’s really doing the act is responsible for the act, not the woman, is responsible.”

In an April 2024 interview, Time magazine asked Trump if he is “comfortable if states decide to punish women who access abortions after the procedure is banned,” such as after a 15-week cutoff date. Trump said, “Again, that’s going to be – I don’t have to be comfortable or uncomfortable. The states are going to make that decision. The states are going to have to be comfortable or uncomfortable, not me.”

From CNN’s Daniel Dale

                                                           

 

Notes From a Quiet (and Boring) Road

Posted on by
Reply

Just got back yesterday afternoon from visits to relatives in New Mexico and Colorado, where the dry heat was wonderful and where you could almost hear your flesh sizzle if you stood out in that dry heat too long.

It was so wonderful to drive a couple thousand miles and see few billboards. If other states operated as Missouri does, the majestic windmills of Kansas and Colorado would have been obscured by junk roadside art and I use the word “art” advisedly.

Nancy has a new car. It has adaptive cruise control that keeps you a safe distance behind a car or truck in front of you. I thought I wouldn’t like it. I do.  I set the speed at 85 and let the control run the car with the traffic while it maintained appropriate intervals between our vehicle and the ones in front. It even threw on the brakes if somebody swerved into our lane.  An interesting experience.

I did turn off the feature than keeps the car between the lines. I don’t weave but it was still irritating.  We did not try to find out how many miles we could go on the interstate without touching the steering wheel.  Cars are close to that, but we don’t trust the system yet—plus this car demands you put hands back on the wheel in a short time.  It also keeps track of what you are looking at and if you aren’t eyes-forward, you get dinged.

Ding.  And there’s a message between the speedometer and the tachometer telling you to keep your eyes on the road.  And open.  No sleeping while driving this car.

Got home and found a message in my email (hadn’t checked it today) from Amazon wanting my opinion on something I had bought before the trip—a new lens for my camera.  Both of us find these messages irritating.  Everybody wants to know if we are joyful about our purchase. I’ve ignored many such solicitations, but Amazon was persistent wanting to know how I used the item and was I happy. So yesterday I told Amazon:

I used this lens to take pictures. 

I also am tired of every Tom, Dick, and Harry company I do business with asking if I’m a happy customer.  If I am, I will express it by buying something else later.  If not, my silence will be sufficient.  Quit wasting my time by begging for a compliment.  It’s as irritating as the restaurant bill that gives me choices for tips.

After all—what the heck does one do with a camera lens?  Swat flies?  Roll out a pie crust?  Punch cookies out of the cookie dough?  Make biscuits?  It might make an ashtray with the lens hood screwed on.

Okay, I was a little cranky.  We had driven through rain from Salina to past Kansas City after a long previous day of watching I-70 disappear under the hood of our car from the Denver area to Salina.

People think Kansas is boring.  We, from two families with Kansas roots, respectfully disagree.  INTERSTATE SEVENTY is boring.  But Kansas is a pretty interesting place—as are all places if we give ourselves the chance to travel some smaller roads.

Anyway, we finished the rest of our trip from Kansas City to Jefferson City on highways—particularly I-70—that are uglified by billboards.

Now, if billboards obscured views of the advertised adult entertainment stores that also highlight our Missouri roadways, we might soften our opinion of them.

The great American poet Ogden Nash once channeled Joyce Kilmer (who was a man, in case your schooling never mentioned that) when he wrote:

I think that I shall never see

A billboard lovely as a tree

Perhaps unless the billboards fall

I’ll never see a tree at all*

It has taken more time than usual to prepare this meditation.  Minnie the cat has been extremely glad to welcome us home and has insisted on several re-acquaintance lap times. Brother Max, the mellow one of the pair, is happy to sit in a box on the table next to the desk and be quietly close.

Pets make coming home even better.

*Another of Nash’s non-Nobel Prize works of literature is:

The only thing wrong with a kitten

Is that

Eventually,

It becomes a cat. 

(we do not share that opinion. Most of the time)

 

The Pot Calling the Kettle—-

Posted on by
Reply

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 

Posted on by
2

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.

Another Bogeyman—the Chinese Farmer

Posted on by
1

We don’t know what kind of nonsense folks in other parts of the state have been seeing and hearing in this campaign about the dangers of Chinese ownership of our farmland, but it’s been a central issue in the Third Congressional District television commercials for contenders for Blaine Luetkemeyer’s soon-to-be-vacated seat. It even has oozed into the governor’ race and the state auditor’s race.

China, like the illegal immigrant, is a campaign bogeyman this year. One congressional candidate, Bob Onder, has decided name-calling is a proper way to attack his main competitor, Kurt Schaefer—something that should not be unexpected given that Onder has the full support of Donald Trump, the nation’s leading advocate of character-assassination.

Onder has been sending out direct mail pieces charging “Shanghai Schaefer” with voting to let China have Missouri farmland.

Gubernatorial candidate Mike Kehoe faces the same criticism, without name-calling so far.  And incumbent Treasurer Vivek Malik has a commercial that assures us that no state funds are invested in anything Chinese.

Onder and Kehoe’s opponents aren’t shooting straight with the voters. But what else is new in today’s politics?   Or politics, ever, for that matter.

Here’s what really went on ten years ago, and more, on which these attack ads are based:

Missouri was among several Midwest states to pass laws in the 1970s that prohibited or restricted foreign land ownership amid concerns over Japanese investment. Missouri law completely banned foreign land ownership until 2013, when lawmakers passed a bill allowing as much as 1% of agricultural land to be sold to foreign entities. The move was an economic necessity to deal with a situation in rural north Missouri.

One of the biggest agricultural issues of the time was Corporate Agriculture, Big Ag, if you will, personified by an outfit called Premium Standard Farms that set up huge contract hog-raising and processing operations in north Missouri, a sparsely-settled part of our state that relied on agriculture for its economy.

Premium Standard revolutionized the pork industry. It had been founded in 1988 with the goal of producing premium pork and was the first pork producer in America to get into vertical integration—in other words, controlling the market from birth of the pig to the marketing of the pig’s parts after it grew up.  To accomplish that, PSF bought a lot of land and contracted with many farmers to raise pigs the company would process.  North Missouri went from being a region of independent farmers to being suppliers. But Premium Standard offered an economic stability the region had not previously had.

PSF was a huge concern in terms of environmental issues as well as generating concerns about gobbling up small family farms, an anachronistic phrase that had faded from reality many years earlier. It was the second-biggest pork producer and the sixth-biggest pork processor in the country.

In 1999, six people sued for damages, namely odors, coming from PSF’s hog farms.  The court ordered PSF to pay then $4.6 million.  In 2010, a Jackson County jury gave seven neighboring farmers $11 million in damages because of odors produced on PSF’s 43-hundred acre finishing farm—which processed about 200,000 hogs a year—near Berlin.

By then, Smithfield Foods had bought PSF for $800 million in cash, stock, and assumed debt.

At one time, Smithfield—headquartered in Princeton, Missouri with a processing plant in Milan—ran 132 company-owned farms and had 109 contract farms in Missouri. It also leased farms and eight feed mills.

When China’s biggest pork producer, Shunghui International, wanted to buy Smithfield about five years later, it ran into the state law prohibiting foreign ownership of farm land (several other Midwestern states had adopted similar laws).

As your faithful scribe recalls, the law threatened the purchase as well as the economy of a wide part of north Missouri.  So the legislature passed a new law allowing foreign interests to own one percent of Missouri farmland.  That cleared the way for Shanghai Holdings, as the United States entity for Shunghui International was known, to take over Smithfield—now known as the WH Group—and the approximately 40,000 acres Smithfield owned. At the time, few people suspected letting foreigners own one percent of Missouri’s farmland would be a major campaign issue or some kind of proclaimed major national security threat.

Senators Kurt Schaefer and Mike Kehoe voted for that bill, which passed the Senate unanimously. Governor Nixon vetoed it. The Republican-dominated legislature overrode the veto.

Schaefer later lost a Republican primary election for Attorney General to Eric Schmitt and has been a lobbyist and Columbia attorney since. Kehoe was appointed Lieutenant Governor by Governor Parson, who sponsored the farmland bill in 2013. Parson is a farmer in southwest Missouri.

The MOST Policy Initiative says Missouri ranks 9th in the nation in foreign-owned acreage—but the 324,658 acres held amounts to only 0.78% of all of our farmland, ranking us 35th in that category.

Nationally, we are not under any threat of a foreign government buying our country.  The USDA put out a list in 2021 showing how much various countries own of our land. Five countries own two percent of the total land in the United States.

Here’s  the top ten as compiled by Forbes:

  1. Canada (12,845,000 acres)
  2. Netherlands (4,875,000)
  3. Italy (2,703,000)
  4. United Kingdom (2,538,000)
  5. Germany (2,269,000)
  6. Portugal (1,483,000)
  7. France (1,316,000)
  8. Denmark (856,000)
  9. Luxembourg (802,000)
  10. Ireland (760,000)

China ranks 18th on that list with 0.3 million acres.

There is some sentiment today to either reimpose the total limit or cut it back to one-half of one percent. The Center for Strategic Studies has estimated the WH Group now owns more than 146,000 acres of farmland here. Earlier this year, Governor Parson issued an executive order banning companies antagonistic to national security from owning land within ten miles of staffed military sites. No antagonistic foreign entity owns any of that land now.

We don’t know about you, but we don’t plan to vote for candidates who rely on public ignorance of an issue or its history or its significance to level distorted charges against opponents.  We’re more likely to vote for a candidate that shoots straight, doesn’t overstate his or her capabilities or the capabilities of the office, who spends less time attacking an opponent and more time outlining a realistic program that benefits the people who will cast votes.

But aiming for the gut is far easier than appealing to the intellect, so don’t expect any break from the fertilizer distribution in the days ahead