Category Archives: Politics

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.

 

 

But What About Jenae?

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The recent traffic crash in St. Louis that has cost a 17-year old volleyball player her legs has triggered outrage focused on St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner—who has been something of a political lightning rod throughout her career.

The Missouri Senate is considering a remonstrance—a word describing a severe grievance or protest against a person or institution, usually demanding corrective action—against Gardner, who is accused of letting the driver of the car remain on the streets despite having a revoked driver’s license and having violated his bond in a robbery case at least fifty times.

The remonstrance is signed by every Republican in the Senate.  Gardner is a black Democrat and her defenders say the remonstrance and the Attorney General’s ouster petition filed against her are politically partisan and racist.

We will leave that fight to be waged in the political arena. We hope, however, that those who are and who will be focused on Gardner do no harm to Jenae Edmondson, the young volleyball player from Tennessee, for it can be too easy for them to use her as an instrument of their political rage at a time when she might desperately need support and hope.

What will they say to her?   What should they say to her?  What should you and I, most of us along in years with legs that carry us in the halls of power, on the playing fields and hiking and biking trails, and even on walks with our grandchildren?

Legs are part of our identity, particularly when we’re young. They’re part of running through life, part of our future, part of our social involvement—we dance with them; we jump to our feet when our team scores in a close game; we begin to drive a car with them.

If you and I—and the senators and the Attorney General—were to send her a letter, what would we tell a 17-year old girl who is dealing with the terrible question double-amputee Drake McHugh asks in King’s Row, “Where’s the rest of me?”

She is not the first person to suffer such a tragedy. But she’s the first person in her own body and in her own mind to go through it. And those who become immersed in the political fallout of this disaster should remember that and not victimize her additionally.

There are others, too, who intimately share her tragedy.  Her parents are doubly affected because they must deal with her injuries and with sustaining her character while they deal with suddenly becoming parents of a disabled teenager and the costs of her care now and in the future.

They are getting help from the Middle Tennessee Volleyball Club that has set up a GoFundMe account that is about halfway to meeting its one-million dollar goal to help pay medical and other bills.

There are many who can give her hope, who can inspire her at the right time to live through this, who can teach by their examples that there will be bikes to ride, trails to hike, games to be played, life to be lived.  Thousands of those who returned alive but damaged from Afghanistan are the ones we hope she will focus on.  At some point, Paralympians can provide inspiration. At some point, the remarkable U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois can become an inspiration—a woman who lost her legs in a military helicopter crash and who told Vogue magazine that when he sees her artificial legs, painted to match her skin tones, she sees “loss.”  But when she sees her steel and titanium prosthesis, “I see strength.”

But that is in the future.  Jenae and her family are living very much in the present with its present challenges.  We hope she does not become a pawn in a developing political battle.

She and her family have more important things to do.

 

 

Now Here’s a Match Made in—– 

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Marjorie Taylor Greene and George Santos.  What a pair.

They’re attacking our schools for “sexualizing” our children with school library books. They want to remove “sexually explicit material” from schools. They’re co-sponsoring a bill with Rep. Cory Mills of Florida, who wants to “end the sexualization of children in schools.”  News of the proposal was first reported by LGBTQ Nation.

Well, sure.  The last thing we need are some eight-year olds thinking about sex AND READING about it in Alex Comfort’s latest edition of The Joy of Sex that is on the shelf next to Green Eggs and Ham in the elementary school library.

As long as we’re advocating a federal law that regulates what children of whatever age can read, perhaps someone can refer us adults to a list of peer-reviewed research that proves schools are sexualization Petrie dishes.

A Congressional website says the bill wants to “prohibit a publishing house from knowingly furnishing sexually explicit material to a school or an educational agency, to prohibit Federal funds from being provided to a school that obtains or an educational agency that distributes sexually explicit material, and for other purposes.”

Well, there goes the Bible:

You are my private garden, my treasure, my bride, a secluded spring, a hidden fountain. Your thighs shelter a paradise of pomegranates with rare spices. (Song of Solomon 4:12-13)

“Mom, I know what thighs are but what do they have to do with a pomegranate?”

Like the finest apple tree in the orchard is my lover among other young men. I sit in his delightful shade and taste his delicious fruit.” (Song of Solomon 2:3)

“Hey, Dad, where’s your apple?”

And then there’s the family sleep-over:

After Sodom was destroyed, Lot took his two daughters to live with them in a cave. One day, his older daughter said to the younger: “Our father is old, and there is no man around here to give us children — as is the custom all over the earth. Let’s get our father to drink wine and then sleep with him and preserve our family line through our father… So they got their father to drink wine that night also, and the younger daughter went in and slept with him. Again he was not aware of it when she lay down or when she got up. So both of Lot’s daughters became pregnant by their father. (Genesis 19:35)

As far as “sexually explicit material,” that’s right up there.  And then we have this rather explicit advice from First Corinthians:

The husband should fulfill his wife’s sexual needs, and the wife should fulfill her husband’s needs. The wife gives authority over her body to her husband, and the husband gives authority over his body to his wife. Do not deprive each other of sexual relations unless you both agree to refrain from sexual intimacy for a limited time so you can give yourselves more completely to prayer. Afterward, you should come together again so that Satan won’t be able to tempt you because of your lack of self-control.

Critics of proposals such as the one addressed by these two—dare we describe them in Shakespearian terms as “strange bedfellows”—suggest “sexually explicit material” is code for the LGBTQ community, a favorite flogging target of the far right. And, bearing in mind some descriptions of the sexuality of Santos, should we wonder if his sponsorship of such an act is self-flagellation? He is, after all, one of ten LGBTQ members of Congress and the only one who identifies as a Republican and further, is the only member of Congress who reportedly competed in a drag queen contest.

Will the new rule keep children from reading about his performance?

While much of the focus is on the “sexually explicit” language, the concluding words, “and for other purposes,” also is troubling.  Those words seem to open the door for some serious mischief dealing with various kinds of intellectual freedom.

Cultivating a fear of others who are different from us is a hot ticket for some in the political game and we should not become tolerant of it.

Perhaps we should not be reluctant to remind those who want to make their morality your law and mine that Mark has reminded us that “adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly…come from inside and defile a person.” Personally, your scriptural interpreter emphasizes “malice, deceit…(and) arrogance” in thinking of these two political giants.

We wonder if any of these folks have read Paul’s letter to the Christians at Ephesus: “Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.”

The bill, it is nice to hear, does not have a large number of sponsors, nor does it have a lot of support and faces many speed bumps in its road. We hope the eventual result is four flat tires.

Gambling Addiction? Don’t Blame Us

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The big push is underway in the legislature to let Missourians bet on sports.  A House committee has held a perfunctory hearing on two bills that have a tax structure in which the state will LOSE money.  An industry that profits from tilting the tables against its customers is about to tilt the tables against the state. And it’s likely the legislature will let them get away with it.

An article last week in The Hill, a D.C. publication that reports on government, says gambling addiction is going to be “the next opioid crisis.”

And the casino industry does not seem to care. At least not in Missouri.

Nationwide legal sports wagering will be five years old this year.  The Supreme Court threw out the national ban on it in 2018.  The growth of this betting has been nothing short of explosive. Missouri legislative fiscal experts say profits from sports wagering will exceed profits from all table games in all of our thirteen casinos in just three years.

The gambling industry has spent, and is spending, huge amounts of money wooing state legislatures. Last year The New York Times investigation detailed how it was done in Kansas. The newspaper also had a reporter in Missouri but when the issue died in a completely dysfunctional Senate, the investigation focused elsewhere.

It’s coming to Missouri—on the gaming industry’s terms.  A bill in the House that would allow sports wagering on the state’s terms will get a hearing this year but will go nowhere. That’s the official word.

The industry-backed bills set aside up to one-half million dollars for dealing with people who are affected by gambling addictions. If you think the casinos are being noble and responsible in doing this, you are wrong. They want nothing to do with that funding.

The money, instead, will come from the fund underwritten by fees the casinos pay for each person who enters the gambling area—fees that have been rendered woefully inadequate because of inflation since they were put in place n 1993.  The industry has fought, successfully, every attempt to bring the two dollars up to contemporary values.

One result of that resistance is that funding for our veterans homes is about one-third what it was a decade ago and it’s going to get worse.  Even the host cities of our casinos have seen their casino payments decline by about half, a circumstance their association doesn’t seem to think is worth discussing.

The bills in the House that set aside that half million dollars take it from the programs that draw support from that admission fee fund, meaning taking funding away from the veterans homes, the host cities, a state college scholarship program and a National Guard funeral escort program.

The industry doesn’t care. It accepts no financial responsibility for those who develop problems by over-participation in its offerings.

The Hill article says, “Most Americans ignored the opioid crisis, a staggering increase in overdose deaths in the 1990s and 2000s, until the government and news media processed the data and tendered a response.”  Timothy Fong, a clinical professor of psychiatry at UCLA, told the publication, “We have a movement toward expanding what was once considered a sin, what was once considered a vice, and embedding it at every level of American culture, down to kindergarten.”

“You have exactly the same players you had with opioids. You have government. You have industry. You have civilians, a lot of whom will benefit from this. And then you have a population who will develop an addiction, let’s say one [to] one-point-five percent of the population.  It’s a hidden addiction. You can’t see it, you can’t smell it, you can’t taste it.”

We’ve looked at a lot of studies in this country and others of gambling addiction.  All of them point to gambling addiction at least tripling with the advent of sports wagering.

Lia Nower, the director of the Center for Gambling Studies at Rutgers University, told The Hill, “Gambling is a very different addition from drugs or alcohol. If I’m drunk or high, at some point my family is going to figure it out. With gambling, I can be sitting with my kids, watching cartoons, and gambling away my house, my car, everything I own, on my mobile phone. How would you know?”

Nower says New Jersey, the first state to have newly-legal sports wagering studied the issue of problem gambling BEFORE it allowed sports wagering. But she says most states “are just legalizing this stuff without any idea of the effects.” Missouri seems to be in that category.

We have yet to hear anybody outside of those with special interests in the topic, even so much as mention this coming potential public health crisis. Passing a bill with a pick-a-number amount set aside—subject to appropriation by the legislature—is not addressing the problem.  And having the industry that causes the problem directly take responsibility for it seems to be out of the question.

The Missouri Gaming Association once proclaimed, “As good corporate citizens, casinos do more than a fair share for military veterans…We honor and support our military veterans and will continue to do so…”

Just don’t trouble us to adjust outdated admission fees to stop the financial bleeding of Missouri’s nursing homes for veterans. And certainly don’t expect us to have any financial responsibility for veterans or anyone else who become the victims of our enterprise.

Just remember, we’re good corporate citizens. And we expect the people you elected to represent you and to protect your citizens’ interests to do what we want.

“I do think there are watershed moments in all public health crises. Unfortunately, it usually takes some kind of crisis or tragedy to turn the tide,” says Nower.

The “next opioid crisis” and accompanying tragedies is developing at the state capitol. Does your legislator care?

 

“The Casinos Will Never Buy That”

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My Representative, Dave Griffith, has filed a third bill in the House that allows sports wagering.  But this bill is different because it gives the legislature an important choice—it can vote for casino industry legislation that does nothing for the state or it can vote for Rep. Griffith’s bill that says sports wagering will be permitted, but only on the state’s terms.

It’s House Bill 953 if you want to look it up on the House web page.

It says sports wagering is no different from any other kind of casino gambling, despite the industry claiming that it is some kind of special system with low returns (it’s not) and will be taxed at the same rate, 21% of adjusted revenues (what’s left after all bets are paid) instead of the 10% the casinos want.  Based on the fiscal note for the industry’s bill that passed the House but died in the Senate, the industry bill would let casinos keep more than $30 million in tax breaks while paying the state less than $13 million.  And that’s just the first of the problematic parts of the bill.

Rep. Griffith’s bill also would force the casinos to pay for the expected tripling of problem gambling that comes with sports wagering, instead of taking money away from programs and services the state committed long ago to finance with gambling revenue.

The bill also would increase the admission fee that casinos pay to the state, set in 1993 at two dollars and unchanged since.  The contemporary equivalent of two 1993 dollars is $4.10, meaning the casinos are keeping more than they are paying the state in contemporary dollars.

Fifty cents of the new admission fee will go to the casinos own host cities that have lost half of their admission fee funding as casino patronage has fallen to a decade. Fifty cents would go to the state gaming commission with the largest share of those proceeds going to alleviate some of the funding crunch at veterans nursing homes—which last year received about one-third as much as they did a decade ago.  The third fifty cents will provide funding to keep the Steamboat Arabia Museum from being bought by  Pennsylvania museum and moved to Pittsburgh.

The casinos can keep the remaining fifty cents.

The gaming commission will adjust the admission fees for inflation each year so that we don’t see the casinos getting richer and richer off of admission fees while host cities and counties and state programs grow poorer and poorer.

More times than I want to think of, members of the legislature have told me after discussing some of these ideas, “The casinos will never buy that.”

Indeed, they haven’t and we expect tooth-and-toenails opposition to the Griffith bill this year.

I wonder, however, if those lawmakers who have told me, “The casinos will never buy that” have ever considered how demeaning to the General Assembly that comment is, almost to the point of a self-indictment.

Who’s in charge here?   The legislature or the casinos?   The answer appears quite clear based on what legislation has been moved—although, thankfully, not finally passed.

What does that statement say about the integrity of the individual legislator or of the General Assembly as a whole?

And for those thinking of seeking higher office, what will sell better with the voters: letting them bet on tonight’s game, or standing with the state’s veterans, educators, and even the casinos’ host cities?

We think we know what the general public’s answers would be to these questions—and that answer does not bespeak confidence in those that public presumes will watch out for its interests. Why, then, are lawmakers who have said that willing to accept the premise?  What is it that they are lacking in making that statement?  And how are they fueling a political climate in which their constituents consider themselves victims of government instead of partners in it?

The casino industry has an incredible amount of influence in the capitol.  One representative told me in the first year of efforts to update casino laws and to protect the museum that the industry would be interested in what was being proposed. “I’ve already gotten two checks from them this year,” he told me.

But this year’s different.  The Griffith bill gives lawmakers a choice. Who’s more important: the people lawmakers know back home or the people who want something from them in the capitol hallways?

Is there a place for courage? Integrity?  Service in the name of the people?  Or will it be business as usual?

We’ll find out this year, maybe.   And maybe voters will remember the answer in the campaign year that comes next.

 

Notes from a Quiet Street (post-January celebration)

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We saw something a few days ago at the Capitol that I don’t think we’ve ever seen—generally bipartisan reaction to a governor’s State of the State message. Applause from both sides of the aisle and complimentary assessments from the minority party that exceeded such positive comments we’ve seen in the past regardless of who the governor has been.

We’ll watch in the next four months to see if the good feelings last.

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Our State Representative has filed a sports wagering bill that gives the legislature a choice for the first time in the five years the gambling industry has tried to push the legislature into passing what the industry is demanding.  The new bill also allows sports wagering, but says it will be done on the state’s terms, not the indutry’s terms.  Our lawmakers now have a choice of whether the people are at home are more important than the people in the hallways of the Capitol.

We’ll probably revisit that topic later.

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Both political parties are looking for viable national candidates or tickets for 2024.  We have one for the GOP that will be hard to beat.

Kinsinger and Cheney.

Or

Cheney and Kinsinger

The party is unlikely to nominate either one, let alone both.  But it would seem that both would be attractive to non-Trumpist GOPers and to independents alike and likely would even draw some interest from Democrats, especially if the Democrats nominate a ticket that has weaknesses—and as we write this, there are plenty of questions within the Democratic Party about whether a renomination of Joseph Biden would be the most solid choice, particularly if somebody not named Trump runs on the other side.

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The Hill recently published a list of eight Republicans who could challenge Donald Trump in 2024.  You know Yogi’s old saying about deju vu.  One of the ways The Donald got the nomination in 2016 was because several candidates split the 65% of the primary vote he didn’t get primary after primary, enabling him to get all of the delegates at one-third the price.

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Some think he won’t be a factor by then—that his concern about a new four-year term should be replaced by concern about a 10-15 year term.

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Joe Biden will turn 82 a few weeks after the 2024 election.  Donald Trump will be that old when he finishes a second term, if——

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We are only about 17 or 18 months away from national conventions, a year away from the first primaries.  That’s a long time in politics.  Plenty of time for something good to happen.

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And Lord knows we need something good to happen in our politics.

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We are grateful it is February.  We have weathered the worst month of the year. Cold and snow do not seem so permanent after we have left January.  February is a short month and by the end of it men are playing baseball again and racing engines are running hot. And it stays daylight longer.  And soon there will be a little green haze in the trees.

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Update:  As of this writing, the Mediacom cable that the company laid across our street instead of re-burying it at the end of last September has been ripped out only twice by the snowplow. It quit working a third time, perhaps because regular traffic dislodged it from its attachment post in our neighbor’s yard. But a technician hustled right out and got it hooked back up.

But it’s only February. Plenty of time for snowplows to roam the streets again.

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Super Bowl is next weekend.  That will end the NFL Season and set the stage for the new XFL season that will carry us until the Canadian Football League starts, filling the gap until the next NFL season.

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And speaking of the NFL—It has found a way to make an irrelevant football game even more irrelevant.  The All-Star game was flag football. Made-for-TV entertainment.

Watch next year for one-hand below the waist games.

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An article in the local paper about this year’s efforts to get sports wagering approved mentioned Rep. Dave Griffith’s bill but missed an important point.  It’s the first time the legislature has been given a clear altenrative to the casino industry’s demands.  This is the first time the lawmakers will have a chance to decide if sports wagering should be done on the casino industry’s terms….or in the best interests of the people who sent those lawmakers here.

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The Ring-Tailed Painter Puts a Governor in his Place 

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One of the great untapped resources for great stories from Missouri’s earliest days is the county histories that were compiled in the 1870s and ‘80s.

A few days ago, our indefatigable researcher was prowling through one of those old histories to make sure a footnote in the next Capitol book is correct and I came across the story of how Wakenda County became Carroll County.  That led to digging out the 1881 history of Carroll County where I met a fascinating character.  The account concluded with his departure for Texas and that led to an exploration of the early history of Texas. And there was the same guy, with a different name, who was part of the discontented Missourians that lit the fuse for the Texas Revolution.

I’ve written him up for an episode of Across Our Wide Missouri that I’ll record some day for The Missourinet.  The story will be shortened for time constraints.  But I want you to meet one of the many fascinating people whose often-colorful ghosts live in those old books.

The first settler of Carroll County “combined the characters of trapper, Indian skirmisher, and politician….a singular man, eccentric in his habits, and fond of secluding himself in the wilderness beyond the haunts of civilization. He was rough in his manners, but brave, hospitable and daring…He was uneducated, unpolished, profane and pugilistic.”  An 1881 county history says Martin Palmer, at social gatherings “would invariably get half drunk and invariably have a rough and tumble fight.”

He called himself the Ring-Tailed Panther, or as he pronounced it, “the Ring-Tailed Painter” and said he fed his children “on rattlesnake hearts fried in painter’s grease.”  A county in Texas is named for this “half horse and half alligator” of a man.

Martin Palmer was the first state representative from Carroll County in a state legislature that was a mixture of the genteel gentlemen from the city and rough-cut members of the outstate settlements.  During the first legislative session, held in St. Charles, some of the members got into a free-for-all and when Governor Alexander McNair tried to break up what Palmer called “the prettiest kind of fight,” Palmer landed a punch that knocked our first governor to the ground.   He told McNair, as he put it, “upon this principle of democratic liberty and equality,” that “A governor is no more in a fight than any other man.”

Wetmore’s Gazette, published in 1837, recorded that Palmer and his son loaded a small keel boat with salt as they headed for the second legislative session in St. Charles, planning to sell the much-valued mineral when they got there.  But the boat capsized in the dangerous Missouri River. The salt was lost and Palmer and his son survived by climbing on the upside-down boat and riding it until they landed at the now-gone town of Franklin. He remarked, “The river…is no respecter of persons; for, notwithstanding I am the people’s representative, I was cast away with as little ceremony as a stray dog would be turned out of a city church. “

He became a state senator in the third legislative session but left for Texas shortly after, in 1825, as one of the early Missouri residents to move to then-Mexican Texas.

A short time later he was accused of killing a man in an argument. He went to Louisiana and raised a force of men, returned and arrested all of the local Mexican government officials and took control of the area around Nacogdoches. He pronounced himself commander-in-chief of the local government in what became known as the Fredonian Rebellion and ordered all Americans to bear arms. He held “courts martial” for the local officials, convicted them, and sentenced them to death, then commuted the sentences on condition they leave Texas and never return.

Fellow Missourian Stephen F. Austin opposed the rebellion and wrote it was being led by “infatuated madmen.” It ended a month later when the Mexican Army arrived and Palmer went back to Louisiana. But some historians believe it became seed of the later Texas War for Independence.  Palmer later returned to become a key figure in the Texas Revolution.

He was elected a delegate to a convention at Washington-on-the-Brazos. When Sam Houston moved for adoption of the Texas Declaration of Independence, Palmer seconded the motion. He chaired the committee that wrote the Texas Constitution. But he knew it meant war with Mexico. He wrote his wife, “The declaration of our freedom, unless it is sealed with blood, is of no force.”

By now he had changed his last name from Palmer to Parmer. One contemporary observed, “He had a stubborn and determined will and showed impatience of delays…Hewas a unique character but with all he was a man with the best of impulses—honest, brave and heroic.” A fellow delegate called him “a wonderfully fascinating talker…a man absolutely without fear (who) held the Mexicans in contempt.”

After independence was won, Parmer served in the Texas congress and later was appointed Chief Justice of Jasper County, Texas.  He died there at the age of 71. He is buried thirty feet from the grave of Stephen F. Austin, “The Father of Texas,” in the Texas State Cemetery.

In 1876, the Texas Legislature honored a Parmer, “an eccentric Texan of the olden times,” by naming a panhandle county for him.

Missouri’s “Ring-tailed painter,” and fighting Texas pioneer Martin Parmer, born as Martin Palmer died, appropriately, on Texas Independence Day, March 2, 1850.

It’s Not the Silliest Thing I’ve Ever Heard 

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But it’s among ’em.

I’m sure there must have been things that were sillier.  But the push by some members of Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s caucus to expunge Donald Trump’s impeachments is moves the needle on our Outlandish Scale.

They want to say officially that the impeachments never happened.

The House and Senate never debated his impeachments—two of them—no matter what hundreds of pages of the Congressional Record show.  Or newspaper stories.  Or archived video and audio of hours of proceedings.  Or personal memories.

Major issues foreign and domestic loom over the Congress but there are people who think one of the most important things to do is say the House did not impeach Donald Trump.

If the House didn’t impeach him, what were those trials in the Senate all about then?

Here we fall back on some trite observations familiar to all of us:

You can’t un-ring a bell.

You can’t put toothpaste back in the tube.

Other perceptions come to mind:

You can close the barn door, but the horse is already gone.

You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.

What are they going to do if they pass their expungement resolution?  Come around to my door and tell me “Fuggedaboudit?”  What will they do if I don’t?

Donald Trump is the only president to be impeached twice. Period.

Whether he likes it or not, he’s past history. And the number of people who care what he likes is diminishing.

Don’t waste time on Trump when there’s Joe and Hunter Biden to maul.  Trump is outdated liverwurst. The Bidens are fresh meat.

And in your spare time, address the debt limit and the budget.  And clean up the daily accumulating mess represented by New York’s third district congresman.

But as far as erasing impeachment? Move on. Get over it.