Category Archives: Politics

Showing His Stripes

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Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft wants to be the second son of a former Missouri Governor to also achieve that office.*  Ashcroft seems to have been aloof from the three-ring show at the Attorney General’s office that has involved lawsuits against China, meddling in the elections of other states and, now, joining an abortion lawsuit in Texas—all of which by some twisted logic seem to involve protecting or advocating MISSOURI’s laws.

But with the passing of the 2022 elections, Ashcroft has left his moderate self at home and has started to show his stripes.

His declaration a few months ago that he alone can withhold state aid to public libraries unless they agree with his personal standards on what’s fit for your children and my children to read is scary.  He seems to be most worried about the corruptive influences of anything other than stories about married heterosexual adults sleeping in separate beds (the Rob and Laura Petrie model of marital bliss).  His proposed policy is worrisome enough on its own but in pondering the example it sets for his successors, we are gravely concerned.  Suppose our next Secretary of State denies the existence of the holocaust, regardless of the reader’s age.  Suppose our next Secretary of State is one who thinks the history of black people is not material to our well-being.  Suppose our next Secretary of State reveals himself to be fond of Karl Marx and will take money away from libraries that have any capitalist literature.

His announcement of his availability to lead our state is aggressive, antagonistic, and—as it turns out—ill-timed.  He says Missouri is at a “crossroads,” which is certainly true.  We are known as the Center State, with as many states to the north of us as to the south and as many states to the east as to the west.  But he’s not talking geography here. He’s talking about his own party’s failure to make Missouri a one-party state.

And it would not be surprising if some of his fellow Republicans didn’t feel like he’d gut-punched them when he said, “Red states like Florida, Texas, Tennessee, even Indiana and Arkansas have become examples of conservative leadership while Missouri Republicans, who control every statewide office and have supermajorities in both chambers of the legislature have failed to deliver.”

As we recall, Ashcroft wasn’t satisfied last year that Missouri still has two Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives and wanted new congressional district maps redrawn to reduce that to one by eliminating a district in Kansas City served by Missouri’s current longest-serving African-American congressman.

As for the legislative supermajorities failing to deliver, legislators of the red school might rightfully take umbrage.  They’ve delivered a lot although some of what they’ve delivered has been ruled unconstitutional by courts.

He complains about career politicians who “talk a lot but don’t do a lot.”

The career politician is a frequent target of fervent successor wannabes who have not given us a definition.  Perhaps he’s referring to a career politician such as:

State auditor 1973-1975

State Attorney General 1977-1985

Govenror 1985-1993

  1. S. Senator 1995-2001
  2. S. Attorney General 2001-2005

Yep, Jay Ashcroft knows all about the dangerous career politicians.

He’s also critical of “politicians and lobbyists in Jefferson City [who] slap each other on the back while they give our tax dollars to global corporations, sell out farmland to China, and raise gas taxes on hardworking Missourians.”

Right. Before the recent ten-cent hike (spread over several years) in the gas tax, the latest “big” gas tax hike was a six-center spread through four years (a 55% increase in the then-11-cent per gallon tax) that was proclaimed as “the great economic development tool of the decade” by the then-governor, the career politician described above.

Wonder what dad thinks of the swipe in his son’s candidacy comment.

Give our tax dollars to global corporations?  Several years ago the state cut a big tax deal with a company called Ford to keep it building trucks here. Ford’s pretty global. There are no doubt other examples that don’t jump immediately to mind of such irresponsible use of our tax dollars.

Selling our farmland to China? How about leasing it?  Bad idea, too?

Don’t be too critical with your mouth full. Smithfield Foods, owned by a company in Hong Kong—that’s in China, you know—owns eleven of Missouri’s biggest concentrated animal feeding operations and hires hundreds of Missourians to work those operations or process the meat they produce.

His announcement reiterates a commonly-heard GOP claim that, “It is the very rare occasion if ever, that the state spends its money better than families that it’s taken that money from.”  There’s a lot of validity in that claim if you think social services, criminal justice, education, and our infrastructure can be financed with car washes and cookie sales while taxpayers keep their money and buy a new big-screen teevee.

His comment that Missouri Republicans have failed to make Missouri more like red states of Florida, Texas, TENNESSEE, Indiana, and Arkansas could not have been more poorly timed, coming about the same time the Republicans in the Tennessee legislature expelled two black Democrats who had joined a protest that interrupted a house session, while keeping a white representative (by one vote) who was part of the protest, too.

If Florida is going to be an example, does this mean Jay Ashcroft will take over Worlds of Fun if it disagrees with his political philosophy?

This critical examination of the words used in announcing his political intentions leaves this observer of the passing scene uncomfortable after reading his idealistic words reported by Missouri Independent in its story on his announcement:

“It helps that I was raised with the understanding that people being involved in politics is normal, that elected officials aren’t special. I was raised to understand that it’s about public service, that it’s everyday human beings that are willing to give up their life to serve other people and to make a difference in the lives of current generations and future generations.”

That is an honorable statement. I’ve heard his career politician father say the same sort of thing. But I am left wondering how to reconcile this kind of idealism with his angry, aggressive, antagonistic, and unsettling statement of candidacy.

Which is the real Jay Ashcroft? Which one should I believe in?

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*John Sappington Marmaduke (1885-died in office 1887) was the son of Meredith Miles Marmaduke, who served the last ninet months of Thomas Reynolds’ term after he committed suicide February 9, 1844.

Disintegration

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We’ve heard it several times in recent days and heard it again this past weekend when a talking head on one of the talking head shows said we are watching “the disintegration of the Republican Party” with the indictment of ex-president Trump and the early support he’s getting from his ardent supporters including two former Missouri Attorneys General.

Senator Josh Hawley calls the charge “an assault on our democracy, pure and simple,” interesting words coming from a man who encouraged that huge crowd of “tourists” to “tour” the U. S. Capitol in a memorable way two years ago.

His successor, Eric Schmitt, calls it “a purely partisan case.”  Schmitt is remembered because he decided to meddle in the 2020 election in four states in what surely was a non-partisan defense of popular democracy. Schmitt, as we recall, was 0-for-4.

And newly-minted Congressman Mark Alford from Raymore, who thinks prosecutor Alvin Bragg  “will clearly dig up old parking tickets if that means Donald Trump cannot run for President,” and says the charges are “nothing short of political persecution.”  Alford was one of Trump’s endorsement successes in the elections last year.

Politico reports, by the way, that Trump went 10-11 in his congressional endorsements last year, eight of those victories coming in districts that already leaned Republican, including Alford’s district.

It is important to remember that Trump is by far not the first federal public official to be indicted. Kentucky Congressman Matthew Lyon was found guilty of violating the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798. He was re-elected while he spent four months in jail.

Until now, the highest federal official indicted was Vice-President Spiro agenew, who pleaded no contest to income tax evasion in 1973.

Much is made of Donald Trump being the first PRESIDENT indicted.  It’s worth noting historically but it has no meaning otherwise.  Lyon was the first member of the House to be indicted. Joseph R. Burton, in 1904, was the first sitting senator to be indicted—by a federal grand jury in St. Louis. He was convicted of taking a bribe, fined $2,500 and ordered to serve six months in jail in Ironton, Missouri. He resigned after losing two appeals to the Supreme Court.

The point is: Somebody has to be first.  Trump is the first ex-president to be indicted.

Point noted. He joins a firsts list of  Lyon, Burton, and Agnew.

Now, get on with it.

The headlines have gone to those who have thundered their support of Trump.  Slight notice has been paid to those who have been more judicious in their comments, if they have commented at all.

The silent ones will be the ones who count when it comes to a post-Trump GOP.

It seems obvious that inter-party support for Trump is declining and the ratcheting-up of the noise on his behalf is a strident indication that the remaining Trumpists know their grasp on the short hairs is weakening.

The Republican Party is not “disintegrating” as those who speak more broadly than discretion should suggest are suggesting.  Indictment by indictment, more and more Republicans will be willing to do unto Trump what he has done unto so many others—throw him under the bus (The phrase, by the way, is believed to have started in British politics in the late 1970s).

Here’s the difference between the Trump era of the Republican Party and the post-Trump era—it is the difference between a fish and a tree.

An old political saying, from an unknown origin is, “A fish rots from the head down.”  It generally means that when the leader of a movement dies, the movement will, through time, die too.

But a political party is not a fish.  A political party is more like a tree, which grows from its roots.  Its tip might die but when the dead part if lopped off, the lower part regrows.

So it will be for the Republican Party.  The focus today is on a diseased top branch.  When removed, whether by a windstorm of justice or by intentional cutting and pruning by those who are tired of dealing with it, the roots and the trunk will remain and they will sprout new branches and new, clean leaves.

The focus today is on an element of the national party.  But the roots and the trunk of the party are at the state level and they will remain, and not just in Missouri. The windstorm or the cutting and pruning might make the tree less attractive for a while or reduce its output of political fruit, but it will survive.

Many years ago, our last family vacation before children left for college and ultimately for the real world, we went to Yellowstone National Park.  It was the year after the great fires had blackened so much of the land.  But already we were seeing small green leaves emerge amidst the charred stumps and scorched grass.

The Republican Party will not disintegrate despite gloomy forecasts from talking heads, although the rotten top branch might be transformed in the political fireplace into an “ash heap of history” a phrase attributed to Ronald Reagan, whose party Trump usurped.

If You Think Congress Is A Mess Now—-

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You’d better hope some Republicans in the U.S. House fail in their efforts to take away your rights to make it better.

Several of these birds are trying to whip up support for a change in the United States Constitution to limit the number of times you and I can vote to send someone to represent us.

They say they want to confront the “corruption” of career politicians.

House Joint Resolution 11 would limit House members to six years and Senators to twelve years.

That’s worse than Missouri’s term limits and Missouri’s term limits, take the word of one who has watched the impact from the front row, are a disaster.

Congressman Ralph Norman of South Carolina finished Congressman Mick Mulvaney’s term with a special election win in 2017. He has since been elected in 2018, 2020 and 2022.

Do you sense a whiff of hypocrisy here?

Do you suppose he will voluntarily step aside after this term?

His bill has 44 cosponsors.

His term limits idea would work the same way our term limit amendment worked when it was adopted 31 years ago.  The clock would be reset so a member could only run for three MORE terms after the amendment would go into effect.  Past terms would not count.

So let’s assume his idea is passed by the Congress (fat chance, at least in this term) and then is ratified before the 2024 election. He could still run in ’24, ’26 and ’28. So, the sponsor of this three-term limit could serve six terms and part of a seventh.

And if voters in his state react the same way Missourians reacted, he would.

His argument is the same debunked argument we heard in 1992. He told Fox News Digital last week, “It’s inappropriate for our elected leaders to make long-term careers off the backs of the American taxpayers. We’ve seen the corruption it can led to. While there is value in experience, it’s easy to become disconnected from those you serve after too many years in Washington. Most American support term limits, but the problem is convincing politicians they ought to serve for a period of time and then go home and live under the laws they enacted.”

Only one of the 44 co-sponsors is a Democrat, Rep. Jared Golden of Maine. He says the House of Representatives was “never intended at its inception to be a place where someone served for 30 years.”

His argument harkens to the Articles of Confederation, which set limits for members of Congress at six years.  But when the Constitution was written after delegates learned the Articles just didn’t work, the delegates opted for a system of checks and balances, the bittest check and balance being the voters.

James Madison, considered the Father of the Constitution, wrote in Federalist Paper 53 that “[A] few of the members of Congress will possess superior talents; will by frequent re-elections, become members of long standing; will be thoroughly masters of the public business, and perhaps not unwilling to avail themselves of those advantages. The greater the proportion of new members of Congress, and the less the information of the bulk of the members, the more apt they be to fall into the snares that may be laid before them.”

Madison’s allies felt the better check on corruption was regular elections than short turnovers in office.

They placed their confidence in the citizens, in the voters. Not so for this bunch.

Golden is serving his third term right now.  Let’s see if he files for re-election next year.

Among those fervently in support are Matt Gaetz of Florida, a prime example of the kind of person who would bring dignity to the office. He is serving his fourth term. Want to bet he will voluntarily decide he has been around more than long enough next year?

Another bandwagon rider is James Comer of Kentucky, also a four-termer.

Representative Don Bacon, another four-termer, thinks this idea is just ducky, too.

Gaetz thinks term limits would help lead to a “more effective legislature.”

If one calls the process by which Speaker McCarthy was elected earlier this year “effective,” I guess he has a point.  Drawing a name out of a hat would have been more effective.

Comer says his constituents are “excited” about the idea. Does that mean they would be “excited” to see him leave after this term?  They can prove how excited they are about term limits by kicking him to the galleries in 2024.

Bacon, who doubts this thing will fly in the U.S. Senate, thinks it’s a “good thing.”  We’ll see just how “good” he really thinks it is at filing time next year.

The tragic thing about this kind of gut-thinking rhetoric is that those who spout it aren’t honest about the “corruption” they claim they want to fight.

We wonder what a close look at their campaign finance reports will show.  Who has their hooks in them?  What is their voting record on issue their big-money donors are interested in?

What do the budget hawks among them think should be slashed or eliminated?  Things on which average folks rely?  Or might it be things the wealthy use to get wealthier—you know, all those things that the big-money folks receive with the questionable contention that the benefits will trickle down to the little people such as you and me or those below us on the economic scale?

Let’s put it this way:

If you are not scared out of your shoes that this entire notion, from its national security and national defense implications and that the national economy would be left in the hands of Matt Gaetz (four terms), Marjorie Taylor-Greene (second term), or Lorena Boebert (second term)—or even relatively responsible people—who would have only four years experience heading into their last terms forever, you should be.

And let’s not even think about talking about George Santos and whether his colleagues from the majority party should have term limited him after three DAYS.

Consider our current House of Representative members:

Cori Bush  second term

Ann Wagner  tenth term

Blaine Leutkemeyer  eighth term

Mark Alford  first term

Emanuel Cleaver  tenth term

Sam Graves  twelfth term

Eric Burlison first term

Jason Smith sixth term

If you favor term limits in Congress and if you voted for five of these people in the last election, you’re an undeniable hypocrite. Bush, Alford, and Burlison are still using training wheels.

But the other five are, in the eyes of Norman and his deluded disciples, corrupt, serving “on the backs of taxpayers,” “disconnected,” and—God help us—career politicians.

Forget that the voters decide every two years if their careers should end. .

The Hell with the voters.  They don’t know what they’re doing when they send their representatives and their senators back for another term. The crew behind House Resolution 11 is clearly the moral superiors of the voters and they know that you and I have no business making the decision more than three times on who will represent us although your critical observer has no trouble suggesting there are some people who should be limited to one term—and even that is too long in a few cases.

The responsibility for the good or bad in our government remains with the voters. There are problems with manipulative media and the influence of secret and unlimited money. Perhaps if Norman and his friends focused their considerable intellectual efforts on those issues, they would do more good than they will by limiting the choices you and I can make on election day.

But that’s too hard.  Helping to educate a public with an increasingly short attention span when it comes to politics takes far more effort than telling them, “We’ve fixed it so you only have to endure these crooks for six years. And then you can elect another one.”  Encouraging citizen irresponsibility is easier.  And it sounds better.  And it might get them elected to a fourth term.  Or more.

Term limits is an unending train wreck.

I’m not buying a ticket on that train and I sure hope you don’t either.

 

 

Who Are We?   

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The Missouri Senate left early for spring break, hung up on the latest proposal that is part of the constant process of trying to determine who we are.

Senators had been locked in a two-day filibuster on a bill banning gender-affirming care for transgender minors.

It’s never easy to classify people and people’s rights as we learn that human beings are more varied and more complicated than we think. The issue has been summed up by Catholics for Choice:

The Catholic hierarchy teaches that God created a binary system of male and female bodies that are supposed to complement each other. They believe that women and men are equal in worth and dignity, yet their physical and anatomical differences are evidence that God intends different roles and purposes for them in church, society and the family. This system not only reinforces women’s suffering but oversimplifies the complexity of gender identity, erasing whole communities of people made in God’s image.

Men are always awarded power, authority and dominance, women are relegated to the roles of service, nurturing and adoration, and non-binary or gender non-conforming people are not even recognized.

Catholics for Choice believes that God’s creation is far more complex. We do not accept that an individual’s purpose is bound by biology or anatomy, and the notion that sex is a binary of male and female is scientifically inaccurate. We work towards a world that treats all people equally regardless of sex, gender identity, or gender expression.

 It’s not just the Catholic Church that is divided by this issue philosophically. Several Protestant fath organizations divided on the issue of slavery. Another split on the issue of instrumental music in worship. Today’s divisions, philosophically as well as structurally, seem to be on issues of gay marriage or other gay rights.

This is not new to our nation. What’s happening is that we again are at a point where we are re-defining human beings. We have never been able to see each other—as Catholics for Choice put it—as a whole community of people made in God’s image.

African Americans got the 14th Amendment in 1868 saying they were equal citizens under law.  The Nineteenth Amendment, ratified in 1920, gave women the right to vote. Native Americans were declared American citizens in 1924. In 1954, the Supreme Court ruled black and white children could go to school together. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 banned discrimination in hiring because of religion. Inter-racial marriage became legal in 1967. The Fair Housing Act of 1968 eliminated race-based real estate covenants. Gay marriage became legal in 2015.

Now we are wrestling with how to recognize a different kind of identity, the non-binary individual.  Once again, some of the arguments are based on religion and doctrine versus science, society, and self-identity.

We are more complicated as a species than we sometimes want to admit.  Always have been.  As a society we’ve always had problems dealing with those who are different and reconciling ourselves that even different people have unalienable rights, too.

A generation from now, maybe two, some of our descendants will look at our times and ask, “What were they thinking?” in the same way we look at our previous generations and wonder about the race and gender issues that bedeviled them.

Will they still be fighting about what rights people have who are in some way different from the majority of them?

Utopia will always be far away as long as we find ways to define ourselves by our differences

INNOCENT

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Your correspondent is not sure whether it is harder to acknowledge that Donald Trump is innocent or harder to admit he’s guilty. The answer lies on which side of Trump you see.

He claims he will be arrested tomorrow on an indictment stemming from the Stormy Daniels hush money case. If it happens, it’s likely to be the first of a series of indictments.

For now, he is innocent of everything that dominates the speculation that flows from the mouths of the talking heads on left and right alike. The reported imminence of indictments has both sides showing signs of froth at the corners of their mouths.

But until a prosecutor makes the case without a shadow of doubt, Donald Trump is innocent and free to go wherever he wants to go.

If he is indicted, however, there is one way for him to be fitted for a one-piece, orange suit. Immediately.

It can happen if Trump continues to be Trump.

If he takes to Truth Social or at his tasteless planned rally in Waco, Texas on the thirtieth anniversary of the David Koresh compound tragedy, and goes full Trump against any judge that might by then be involved in any case that might by then be filed, said judge should waste no time finding him in contempt and sending him to jail.

It would not be surprising if he expands his attacks on prosecutors and former associates to include a judge.  He is a man with no respect for authority who quickly could get a change of address if his lawyers can’t make him behave.

And if his arrest should materialize and his calls for protests trigger violence, again, it might be a good while before he sees his golf course again.

But regardless of the bombast and the disrespect we might get from this man, let us remember this simple fact:

He is innocent until he is proven guilty of whatever charge or charges he will face.

Even if he does not respect our system of government, the governed should respect it.  Even those who cannot describe the depths of their disrespect for him must respect the system that will determine if he has exceeded the bounds of the law as much as he often seems to exceed the bounds of decency.

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The Quote Behind the Quote

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A few days ago, Kansas City District Federal Judge Brian Rimes threw out the so-called Second Amendment Preservation Act, passed by the General Assembly in 2021. The act allowed gun owners to sue local police and sheriff’s officers for as much as $50,000 if those officers enforced federal gun laws perceived as conflicting with Second Amendment Rights.

The Justice Department had filed suit a year ago saying the law violates the supremacy clause of the U. S. Constitution. That’s the one that says states cannot override federal statutes. The SAPA is only the latest incident in which the Missouri legislature has said it can pick and choose what parts of the Constitution are valid in this state.

A special agent in the Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives field office in Kansas City reported soon after the law went into effect that 12 of 53 local officers that had worked jointly with ATF had withdrawn their cooperation. He also reported that restrictions on federal access to state investigative resources had been put in place.

Judge Wimes agreed with some critics in 2021 who argued the law was an open effort to circumvent the federal government’s right to enforce federal laws. His 24-page ruling has ordered local and state law enforcement officers to “lawfully participate in joint federal task forces” and to share information with federal agents without being afraid of being sued.

Our new Attorney General, Andrew Bailey, says the state expects better luck on appeal.

And then he trotted out the old bromide, “The Second Amendment is what makes the rest of the amendments possible.”

One would think that someone who is an Attorney General would have a greater appreciation of the law and the courts and a better understanding of the fallacy of the bumper-sticker shorthand that he has cited.  He might think it sounds good to the Right Wing, but it actually sounds horribly Leftist.

Making a bumper stick out of this issue and ignoring its origin is misleading and potentially dangerous even if it is effective in cultivating a needed political base in the year before an election campaign.

Let’s look at the origin of the philosophy that guns, not courts, are the greatest defenses of all of our rights. A popular military leader many years ago put it clearly and then added important contextual details:

“All things grow out of the barrel of a gun. According to the Marxist theory, the army is the chief component of state power. Whoever wants to seize and retain state power must have a strong army. Some people ridicule us as advocates of the “omnipotence of war”. Yes, we are advocates of the omnipotence of revolutionary war; that is good, not bad, it is Marxist. The guns of the Russian Communist Party created socialism. We shall create a democratic republic… Experience in the class struggle in the era of imperialism teaches us that it is only by the power of the gun that the working class and the laboring masses can defeat the armed bourgeoisie and landlords; in this sense we may say that only with guns can the whole world be transformed. We are advocates of the abolition of war, we do not want war; but war can only be abolished through war, and in order to get rid of the gun it is necessary to take up the gun.”

Chairman Mao, in his Selected Works, V2, pp 224-225, suggesting that all other rights are achieved by those who have the unchallenged right to have guns.

An Army is needed to protect the nation’s rights from external attack.  But the courts are the preferred process for maintaining civil order internally.  The day that a domestic Army is in charge of protecting our rights is not something we should ever wish for.

Whether in the Declaration of Independence, the Gettysburg Address, or hundreds of documents before, during, and since those times, it has been repeated that government in this country derives from the people not from the barrel of the gun.

It is long past time to leave the simplistic bumper sticker politics on the back bumper where they belong and instead to have an intelligent discussion on the law rather than a brief and erroneous reiteration of a despot’s musing on a democracy that he never delivered to his nation.

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The VLT Problem

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One of the biggest hurdles that casino gambling has not been able to clear in Missouri as it tries to legitimize sports wagering is the VLT.

That’s not a sandwich. It’s one of those gambling machines that are proliferating throughout the convenience stores of Missouri.  Video Lottery Terminals. Are they slot machines or something else. Are they legal or illegal? Is there an age limit for using them?  Should they be hidden from general public view or should they be right next to the door, on the aisles next to the snacks.

Is Missouri starting to look like Las Vegas, at least in our convenience stores?

Your correspondent likes to say that he has been to Las Vegas about twenty times, which is about 19½ times more than he ever wanted to go.  If the gambling industry could figure out how to put slot machines on those accordion-like jetways between the terminal and the front hatch of the plane, they would.  But you can hear the slot machines in the gate areas almost as soon as ou get off the plane.

Several people have opined they will not buy gas at a convenience store that has these infernal machines.

The casino industry trying to get sports wagering approved by the legislature has found itself in the clutches of the video lottery terminal people. And vice-versa. A sports wagering bill hits the floor for debate and somebody tries to amend a VLT-licensing bill onto it.  It’s especially frustrating to the sports wagering folks in the Senate where an attempt to attach a VLT bill to a sports wagering bill can generate a filibuster at the drop of a chip—by a VLT Senator who wants it to be added or a sports wagering Senator who doesn’t want it be adopted.

Now there’s another question fogging the discussion.  Should the legislature be discussing legalizing VLTs while a class action lawsuit accuses the company that supplies many of those machines with violations of state consumer protection and federal racketeering laws (the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations, or RICO, Act).

Our former colleague in the press corps, Rudi Keller of Missouri Independent, reports the federal court lawsuit accuses Torch Electronics of putting hundreds of machines—the lawsuit says they’re illegal gambling devices—in locations all over the state. Critics of VLTs also say there are no protections that will keep children from using the machines, and to rid Missouri of machines that the suit says entice people who already have gambling problems to play them.

Torch, in previous criminal and civil cases has claimed the machines don’t violate state gambling laws.  And it claims they’re not gambling machines because players are offered a chance to know the outcome before they put in their money.

If you want to know the difference between slot machines and VLTs (the casino people say they’re the same animal but dressed differently. The VLT people say they’re  more like lottery machines), you might to go to VLTs vs Slots (The Different between VLT and Slot Machine 2023) (slotsguy.com)

The casino industry sees them as competition for their slot machines, particularly because these machines are anywhere in the state and the casinos are restricted to just 13 locations on our two great rivers.

The casinos are under the Missouri Gaming Commission. The VLTs would be regulated by these state lottery.

We’ve already seen an early dustup on this issue in the Senate where Senator Denny Hoskins of Warrensburg, a longtime supporter of VLTs, saw his bill combining both issues killed in committee while a stand-alone sports wagering bill was voted out for debate. He locked down the senate for a couple of hours a week before spring break and he had friends helping him.

While that fight will continue at the capitol, another fight is shaping up in the courts.

Rudi recalls that Torch put its first machines in Missouri five years ago. Complaints led the Highway Patrol to investigate them and recommend to prosecutors about 200 cases complaining the VLTs violate state gaming laws.

But only one prosecutor has gone after VLTs.  Machines in a convenience store in Platte County were destroyed after a judge found they violated the law. Other prosecutors seem to think they have bigger fish to fry than prosecuting people who run convenience stores with these machines in them.

One interesting issue in the class action lawsuit claims that Torch and a co-defendant, Warrenton Oil have combined to make more than $955 thousand in political donations in the last five years.  We haven’t checked to see how much the casinos have made in political donations but they do stand to make hundreds of millions of dollars in sports wagering and they have invested a lot of time and manpower in the effort for about six years.

But so far all of the various pressure campaigns and campaign finance issues, neither sports wagering nor legal VLTs has passed the legislature.

The legislature returns from its spring break in a few days. The sports wagering legislation is waiting for debate in both the House and the Senate.  The discussions are likely to be lengthy, even in the House where there are rules against interminable talking by members.  But in the Senate there are no debate limits.

Another factor enters in.  Last year, the six major sports teams in Missouri started making noises about a petition campaign to put sports wagering on a 2024 ballot if the legislature did not enact it.  That has raised the stakes on the issue in the legislature this year.

Officials with the sports teams have testified this year that they are “agnostic” about VLTs, an indication the devices won’t be part of a ballot issue as far as they’re concerned.

The last time we ran some traps at the capitol, the sentiment was that sports wagering might not make it to the governor for his signature this year, again. But nothing is dead until the gavel drops at 6 p.m. May 12.

Wanna bet how this mess turns out?

 

The News is Broken

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Brooke Baldwin was a reporter and an anchor for CNN for thirteen years but left the network in 2021.  But she is still a journalist and she still cares about the news industry.

Earlier this week, she took to her Instagram page to express some concerns about the cable news business and the recently-revealed disclosures that indicate FOX News might be a bigger Trump mouthpiece than suspected.

In her frank video she not only expresses concern with what the broadcast news business has become (cable, over-the-air radio and television, etc.) but what the public has become. One fees the other, and she fears that is now healthy for democracy.

We’re publishing her posting that comes after she says, “I’ve thought so much about this and realize I really feel it’s my duty to say something.”  Her conclusion is a pretty strong statement about the news media AND about the public’s responsibility to itself and to our country.

I also realize I’m in this sort of rare position having spent more than a decade in the cable news machine and I will own it. It’s sometimes being part of the problem. But now I am out and I am a viewer just like you.

And I cannot stop thinking today…about this Peter Baker reporting in the New York Times, specifically the piece about FOX news and election night 2020. And so if you have not read the piece…the quick skinny is this:

So it’s election night 2020. It’s Biden versus Trump for the presidency.  FOX news was first. FOX News was right by the way something you really want to be as any news network in calling a state for one of these people running for president.

You know, they had their fancy multi-million dollar updated election projection system up and running.  They called the battleground state of Arizona for Joe Biden. And they did it before anyone.  And they were accurate in calling it.

But they had a problem because Team Trump was furious and also by calling it early, it sounds like they lost out on even more monster ratings by not stringing out the results by not telling the truth when they knew it. And they were mighty upset about that.

And what’s crazy is how do we know about this?  Because the New York Times in this Peter Baker piece, they got ahold of one of these post-election FOX Zoom calls where it included some of these news anchors like Martha McCallum and Brett Baier, folks that I admired over the years, who were upset at the hateful reactions they were getting not only from their own viewers but from the Trump Campaign and so there was a quote in the piece that I’m going to read it for you. This is from one of the FOX executives and this is what she said. “Listen, it’s one of the sad realities, if we hadn’t called Arizona, those three or four days following election day our ratings would have been bigger.  The mystery still would have been hanging out there.”

In addition to that, Tucker Carlson’s texts revealed that he was instructing others to sort of reel in the truth in favor of Trumpism because of FOX’s share price was tanking.

A clear choice of propagandist economics over truth. And Peter Baker, this New York Times reporter doing what any good journalist does also reached out to CNN to say, “Hey, CNN, Did you prolong your election night, any of the calls for ratings?” And their response from this PR person was, “No.”

Full disclosure, I wasn’t in any of those rooms among CNN brass on election night 2020 making those calls but there was zero evidence of CNN doing so.

There’s so much more to this piece. I encourage you to check it out. But my takeaway is this: that FOX wanted the ratings instead of the truth. In fact they tripped over themselves to choose ratings over truth. Honestly, they look like clowns. Not even like clowns masquerading as journalists, just clowns.

And this is all so freaking important because the race to 2024 is already underway and we the viewer deserve to know if we’re being strung along or given the truth about one of the biggest decisions that happens every few years in this country.

This is our democracy at stake and this is also personal for me. I love journalism…When I was growing up as a little girl my mom always told me I was fair and trustworthy. She was, like, “Brooke, you should go be a judge.” I said, “No, I’m going to be something very similar. I want to be a journalist.” I’ve agreed with the pioneers of CNN who once said, “The news should be the star.”

That said, the last couple of years I was hosting my show, how we covered news fundamentally changed. And part of that was because of the then newly-elected president in 2016 and his sudden complete disregard for civility and process and truth.

And part of it was the way we covered the last president.

Yes, how we covered the last president. It felt like a personal feud was playing out every day on our air, devouring what I thought was a disproportionate amount of airtime at the expense of other news.

And if you started pushing back, you got sidelined.

As for all the opinions and opinion overload, I was part of it. My colleagues at night especially were part of it and people who turned on CNN, you know, you come for the news but you perhaps stayed for the opinion. Same with any of the other cable news networks. You just go and flip the channel until you find the host who you most agree with and then you stay there in hopes of leanring about a scoop or further detail on any given story. But really, if you are not changing the channel to hear the counter view, then cable news has become a confirmation bias echo chamber.

Full stop.

Again, perspective that was then.  CNN is under new leadership now. I’m fully rooting for them. I really am. But I’m out so I can’t speak to the editorial decisions being made internally but my bottom line, why I’m sitting here today:

I am worried. On top of getting informed about the state of our democracy I’ve been reading about all these studies that are showing how we are all suffering mentally, physically, just from watching news.

And I’m going to share something I have yet to share publicly—my closest friends know this.  And by the way, I am so proud of my 20-year broadcast journalism career and so proud of these incredible warriors I got to work with through the years.

But today, unless there is a MAJOR breaking news story, I don’t turn on the TV anymore. How do I get my news?  People ask me this all the time.

I read. I read morning newsletters. I read a variety of newspapers, magazines. You know, we are craving the truth and we need it. But between now and next election we will become victims and perpetrators of an all-out information war.

There are some incredible organizations out there trying to do something about all of this and…we all need to do something about it because right now the truth is –

The news is broken.

She’s right.  I have said to several groups and to several individuals that the problem with radio, television, and cable information sources is there’s too much talking and not enough reporting, too much analyzing/speculating/manipulating by people who have become or think they are becoming media stars.

She also makes a valid point when she says, “If you are not changing the channel to hear the counter view, then cable news has become a confirmation bias echo chamber.”

We have a responsibility to ourselves and to our American system to be open to different ideas, opposing ideas, challenging ideas. We have to view different channels, read newspapers and magazines—-and even listen respectfully to other’s ideas.

If we become nothing more than cable-enabled idiots, we do ourselves and our country no good. We need a personal Declaration of Independence from unthinking opinion.

And it’s time we quit making stars out of people whose thoughts are no greater than  yours or mine just because they have a microphone and a camera.  Because, after all—

The news is the star.

 

Just About When You Think You’ve Heard It All—

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You know for sure you never will.

The St. Louis County Council got into a recent snit because some members wanted to go behind closed doors to discuss, brace yourself:

Missouri’s open meetings law.

The agenda also included rules for public comment at council meetings and learning more about the Sunshine Law itself.

Things bogged down when Council Chairwoman Shalonda Webb began to read from a handbook on the Sunshine Law published by the Attorney General’s office.  One council member accused her of filibustering.  Eventually enough council members walked out that there was no longer a quorum and the meeting could not continue.

The meeting represents the eternal conflict between a government of the people and a government in spite of the people.

Government, even in this great land of so many kinds of freedom, thinks it can operate best away from public view or later public scrutiny.  That’s speaking generally, of course.  But since Missouri’s Sunshine law was engaged fifty years ago, various individuals and groups have tried to carve out secrecy gaps for themselves.

Our campaign finance laws, for example, let us learn far less than an informed citizenry would find helpful in understanding who is buying what, or trying to buy what in our statutes and our bureaucracy.

Five years ago, voters changed the Missouri Constitution to require greater obedience of our sunshine law by the legislature.  But now the people you and I elected to represent our interest are pushing a bill that closes more records that reveal how our laws are shaped.

Bureau Chief Jason Hancock of Missouri Independent, a respected colleague in our active reporting days, whose agency is an important addition to a capitol press corps that has been greatly diminished in recent years, summed up Senator Andrew Koenig’s bill a few days ago: “Any record of a state lawmaker or their staff pertaining to ‘legislation or the legislative process’ would be closed off to public scrutiny, except for those offered during a public meeting or involving a lobbyist…The bill also closes records held by the government pertaining to a constituent, though lobbyists wouldn’t be covered under this provision. Koenig deended the proposal at a legislative hearing…arguing that sometimes lawmakers “need to be able to think out loud with your staff and before you get a finished product.” But to government transparency advocates, the push represents lawmakers trying to carve themselves out of a constitutional mandate imposed on them by the voters of Missouri.”

The concept of having secret time so candid policy discussions can be held is a constant excuse for closing doors. The idea is understandable on matters of national security.  But it is garbage most of the time.

Jason also quoted Litigation Director David Roland of the Freedom Center of Missouri, who said, ““The legislature really doesn’t like the fact that the people amended the Constitution to say that they had to provide a greater level of transparency than a lot of these legislators are comfortable with. But that’s what the people decided. And now legislators are trying to insulate themselves from oversight by the public.”

Some in government argue that extensive demands for records or copies of records that are supposed to be public constitute “abuse.”

Does anybody else think it is absurd that a citizen has a right to get supposedly public records without being hassled or without having to get a second mortgage to pay for cophing or—as has been proposed—the time spent REDACTING INFORMATION THE CITIZEN CAN’T KNOW?

Who’s the abuser here?

It is a mistake to think that the only people who care about this issue are members of the press. Yes, open meetings and open records laws are important for those who believe they work as trusees for the public. But “the public” needs to understand that there are all kinds of records about it and the public has a right to see those records.

That right is enshrined in one of the sacred documents of our nation—“Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

“The governed” should be wary of lawmakers who decide the people do not need to know or are incapable of understanding how their government is run or who really runs some of it.

Too many of those we entrust to govern us do not trust us to know what they do.

By, for, and of the people?

Let’s not kid ourselves to often.

 

 

Worlds Apart

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Most people remember singer Roger Miller for his wacky popular country-oriented songs in the 70s.  He died more than thirty years ago at only 56.

In the mid-1980s he was offered a chance to write a Broadway musical based on Huckleberry Finn.  The musical won seven Tony Awards, including “Best Score” for Miller. One of the numbers was sung by “Jim.”

I see the same stars through my window

That you see through yours

But we’re worlds apart, world’s apart.

And I see the same skies through brown eyes

That you see through blue.

But we’re worlds apart, world’s apart.

The song has been going through your correspondent’s mind since watching a couple of interviews a few days ago involving actor Bryan Cranston and Mike Wallace and Cranston and comedian/talk show host Bill Maher.

The focus was on our cultural divide and the phrases we use to divide us.

For some the words “liberal” and “woke” are interchangeable.  Not for Maher, who told Cranston, “To me there is a difference between liberalism and woke-ism. Liberalism is about lifting people up. Wokeism is just about self-loathing and hating yourself and scolding everybody and virtue signaling.  It doesn’t really help anybody.  Lifting people up who have gotten a bad shake in the country, who are for some reason downtrodden or have been cheated, absolutely, I’ve always been for that. But I don’t think that’s a lot of what’s been going on.

“People, especially immigrants, they don’t like this unrelenting negativism about this country. They’re like, ‘You should see the…river I swam through to get here. And I get here and all you people do is (criticize) your own country and tell me how horrible it is. You know what? I came from horrible. You want to know horrible, I’ll tell you…stories.”

In his interview with Chris Wallace, Cranston was asked, “When you look at the political discourse in our country today, and the role the media plays in it, what do you think?”

Cranston’s answer latched onto a politically popular (in some circles) “unrelenting attitude” that this is no longer a great country. He referred to his conversation with Maher:

“We were talking about Critical Race Theory and I think it’s imperative that its taught, that we look at our history much the same, I think, that Germany has looked at their history and involvement in the wars, one and two, and embrace it. Say, ‘This is where we went wrong. This is how it went wrong.’  When I see the Make America Great Again, my comment is, ““Do you accept that that can be construed as a racist remark? And most people, a lot of people, go, ‘How could that be racist? Make America Great Again?’ I say, ‘Just ask yourself, from an African-American experience, when was it ever great in America?’ … So, if you’re making it great again, it’s not including them.”

And the question goes to another major group in our nation’s history.  Ask yourself from the Native American experience. When was it ever great in America?  The answer, of course, is “before the Europeans came.”

Are they included in MAGA?

Doesn’t seem like it.

It’s time we quit running down our country. It’s time we are honest about our history. We did have slavery and what this country did to the people who met the Europeans when they got here is a long-standing blot on our national character.

Thomas Hart Benton, Missouri’s greatest 20th Century artist, told one of his critics who didn’t like the way our past was portrayed in one of his murals that if we’re going to be honest with ourselves, we have to accept our history “warts and all.”

Before we worry about doing something, maybe we should worry about finishing the first job. We have a long ways to go. We can’t become greater if all we do is call each other names, ignore our past, and refuse to see how we are more the same than we are different.

After all:

I see the same skies through brown eyes that you see through blue.