Category Archives: Politics

Support your local bureaucrat

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Governor Parson last week recommended a pretty healthy pay increase for state employees.  It’s a much-needed step for a much-underappreciated group of people.

Bureaucrats.   You know, those shiftless people who wrap everything in red tape when they’re not standing outside the front door of a state building, smoking.

Truth be told:  I’m married to a former bureaucrat.  She doesn’t smoke. She never took a state paycheck while frustrating taxpayers with poor service.  She never had anything to do with red tape. She was one of thousands of people who spent their days in cubicles performing everything from mundane tasks to examining situations that would be dangerous to public health and well-being.  She shuffled a lot of paper.  She created a lot of paperwork.  She was a necessary small cog in a very big wheel of a system designed to serve a public too easily bamboozled by opportunistic power-seekers who believe their best road to importance is attacking people such as her.

She left her cubicle behind several years ago to manage a bigger but far less lucrative project: Me.

We hope the legislature acts quickly on the governor’s recommendation of an 8.7 percent cost of living increase.  But his generous gesture constitutes a problem for some in our political world who cavalierly rattle on about shrinking government.  It also presents a problem for those who are eager to cut taxes so they have something to brag about in their 2024 campaigns.

The estimated cost of these salary increases is $151.2 million and that’s only the start.  The number will grow as time passes and more people find state salaries attractive enough to replenish a diminished state workforce—particularly in fields such as prison guards and mental health workers and social services workers, three fields—among many—that require courage and compassion many would find difficult to summon in those professional circumstances. The number also will grow as other increases are approved.

As welcome and as necessary as this expenditure is, it also should temper the enthusiasm of some to reduce the state’s ability to finance it today and properly to augment it tomorrow, lest it lead to layoffs in poorer economic times that will lessen or cancel the progress they create.

These proposed raises fly in the face of those who base their popularity on the time-worn concept of “shrinking government.”  Doing nothing has produced pretty good results for them, although it might be difficult to explain when constituents want to know why they can’t get services government should be providing but can’t get because of too many empty cubicles.

The Missouri Budget Project says the lack of more decent pay has resulted in the decline of state government jobs by 13.2 percent between February 2020 and June 2022. Governor Parson says there are 7,000 unfilled positions in state government and employee turnover is unacceptably high.

Those are numbers of which the “shrinkers” might take pride.  And now, here comes their conservative state leader trying to undo much of the hard-won results of their successful efforts to starve the beast. His common-sense proposal is a challenge to those who think effective and efficient government is possible only if fewer people run it and they’re content with being under-rewarded.  They’re just bureaucrats, you know.  Twenty-first century Bob Cratchits.

One of the goals of the suggested pay increases is to improve recruitment and retention of workers. Oh, Lord, that must mean he supports Big Government!!!

No, he doesn’t. He’s pushing for effective government and we can’t have effective government if we don’t have enough people to do the jobs that effective government requires.  And we can’t get—and keep—enough people if we (us taxpayers) aren’t responsible enough through our representatives and senators to pay them a more-worthy salary.

So, legislators, support your local bureaucrats.  And don’t follow up with something rash that will later set back whatever progress is attained through the governor’s recommendations

When the children’s poet roamed the Capitol

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Of all of the reporters who have covered the State Capitol, only one rose to such significance that a portrait of him is part of the great art in the building. One of the four famous Missourians whose portraits decorate the governor’s office is Eugene Field.  A plaque on the side of a building about three blocks away marks the place where he had his office as a correspondent for the St. Louis Journal.

If you are not familiar with the name, you undoubtedly at some point in your childhood heard the poem beginning:

“Wynken, Blyken, and Nod one night                                                                                            Sailed off in a wooden shoe….”

Or maybe:

The gingham dog and the calico cat
Side by side on the table sat…”

Or perhaps:

“I ain’t afraid uv snakes or toads, or bugs or worms or mice,                                                       An’ things ‘at girls are skeered uf I think are awful nice!”

One of these days we’ll go to the State Historical Society in Columbia and dig out the articles he wrote from Jefferson City but for now we’ll share with you a recollection by one of his contemporaries, Chicago newspaperman Slason Thompson, who write a book about Field in 1901:

Although Eugene Field made his first essay in journalism as a reporter, there is not the shadow of tradition that he made any more progress along the line of news-gathering and descriptive writing than he did as a student at Williams.  He had too many grotesque fancies dancing through his whimsical brain to make account or “copy” of the plain ordinary facts that for the most part make up the sum of the news of the average reporter’s day.  What he wrote for the St. Louis Journal or Times-Journal, therefore, had little relation to the happening he was sent out to report, but from the outset it possessed the quality that attracted readers.  The peculiarities and not the conventions of life appealed to him and he devoted himself to them with an assiduity that lasted while he lived.  Thus when he was sent by the Journal to Jefferson City to report the proceedings of the Missouri state Legislature, what his paper got was not an edifying summary of that unending grist of mostly irrelevant and immaterial legislation through the General Assembly hopper, but a running fire of pungent comment on the idiosyncrasies of its officers and members.  He would attach himself to the legislators whose personal qualities afforded most profitable ammunition for sport in print.  He shunned the sessions of Senate and House and held all night sessions of story and song with the choice spirits to be found on the floors and in the lobbies of every western legislature.  I wonder why I wrote “western” when the species is as ubiquitous in Maine as in Colorado?  From such sources Field gleaned the infinite fund of anecdote and of character-study which eventually made him the most sought-for boon companion that ever crossed the lobby of a legislature or of a state capital hotel in Missouri, Colorado, or Illinois. He was a looker-on in the legislative halls and right merrily he lampooned everything he saw. Nothing was too trivial for his notice, nothing so serious as to escape his ridicule or satire. 

Sounds as if Eugene Field would have loved some of the things we have today—blogs, Twitter, Facebook—-all of the social media stuff.  But Thompson says that at the time Field was part of the capitol press corps, “There was little about his work…that gave promise of anything beyond the spicy facility of a quick-witted, light-hearted western paragrapher.”

Thompson told of Field’s merry spirit when Fields was assigned the job of (as Thompson put it) “misreporting Carl Schurz when that peripatetic statesman stumped Missouri in 1874 as a candidate for re-election to the United States Senate.”

Field in later years paid unstinted tribute to the logic, eloquence, and patriotic force of Mr. Schurz’s futile appeals to rural voters of Missouri.  But during the trip his reports were in no wise conducive to the success of the Republican an Independent candidate.  Mr. Schurz’s only remonstrances were, “Field, why will you lie so outrageously?”  It was only by the exercise of careful watchfulness that Mr. Schurz’s party was saved from serious compromise through the practical jokes and snares which Field laid for the grave, but not revered Senator.  On one occasion when a party of German serenaders appeared at the hotel where the party was stopping, before Mr. Schurz had completed a necessary change of toilet. Field stepped out on the veranda, and waving the vociferous cornet and trombone to silence, proceeded to address the crowd in broken English.  As he went on the cheering soon subsided into amazed silence at the heterodox doctrines he uttered, until the bogus candidate was pushed unceremoniously aside by the real one.  Mr. Schurz had great difficulty in saving Field from the just wrath of the crowd, which had resented his broken English more than his political heresies.

On another occasion when there was a momentary delay on the part of the gentleman who was to introduce Mr. Schurz, Field stepped to the front and with a strong German accent addressed the gathering as follows:

“Ladies and Shentlemen:  I haf such a pad colt dot et vas not bossible for me to make you a speedg tonight, but I have die bleasure to introduce you to my prilliant chournalistic friend Euchene Fielt, who will spoke to you in my blace.” 

It was all done so quickly and so seriously that the joke was complete before Mr. Schurz could push himself into the centre of the stage. Annoyance and mirth mingled in the explanation that followed.  A love of music was the only thing that made Field tolerable to his serious-minded elder.

A July 3, 1924 story in the Jefferson City Daily Capital News gives us more stories about Fields’ days as a member of the Capitol press corps.  E. W. Stephens, the chairman of the State Capitol Commission that oversaw construction of the building, related:

“When Field was acting as a reporter in Jefferson City he sometimes tied his young son to a post while he went into the Capitol to get a story.  I remember that he organized a band of serenaders here that was known as the Van Amburgh Show. One man impersonated a monkey, one a lion, another a monkey, and so on.  It was a real circus especially when the lion roared.  Field took the men and drilled them and then serenaded the governor and other dignitaries. 

“Field was very fond of singing and one of his most popular songs was ‘I am captain of the Armyee.’  It goes like this:

I am Captain Jinks of the Horse marines,                                                                I feed my horse on corn and beans,                                                                        I court young ladies in their teen                                                                              I am a captain of the armyee.

“Another song he was fond of singing was, ‘If I was as young as I used to be.’  I remember one evening when Field was attending a party at the home of Judge Warren Woodson.  The evening was warm, and couples strolled to a nearby well occasionally, after water.  Someone came in and reported that a certain young man had been seen at the well kissing a young woman.  Field immediately paraphrased a song which he was in the habit of singing and when the couple returned sang the following version of ‘The Old Man.’

When I was young and in my prime,                                                                      I was drinking cold water most of my time.                                                                If any girl here will go to the well with me,                                                                I’ll show her I’m as young as I used to be.”

We have come across a letter Field wrote from Jefferson City to his wife, Julia, whom he had married in October, 1873, about two months before her seventeenth birthday.  She had remained in St. Joseph.  Most of the letter is the kind of usual chit-chat but toward the end, we learn a little about how bored he was in Jefferson City.  It was sent on January 12, 1874.

My dear wife.  I was delayed somewhat in making up my report tonight and am therefore compelled to sit up and wait for the down train so as to mail my letter to the Journal.  I have been feeling much better today and am more in condition to work.  Edgar’s letter received this morning. You will be very much disappointed about the wedding, will you now, Julia?  I am indeed sorry that I am so situated as to be unable to go.  Mr. Selby wants me to ask you whether you think it safe to let me stay in Jefferson this winter, without your presence to keep me within the proper limits. I tell him that it is your choice to be in St. Joseph and I want you to stay there as long as you feel that you want to.  This has been a cold, raw day and yet I have been on the go most of the time.  The session has not got fairly to running.  When it does, I expect we shall have very lively times.  I went to call on Miss Ella Woodson night before last.  She is looking about as usual, perhaps not quite so delicate.  I will write often to you, darling. Don’t forget that I love you dearly.  I send many kisses. Yours ever, Field.  

Eugene Field must have been one of those people who left his more conventional colleagues in the capitol press corps with a combination of amusement and embarrassment and maybe a little envy. But most of his fellow reporters then as well as his reportorial descendants now could or can identify with an observation he wrote in the Journal on August 3, 1878:

“A great many newspaper men lie awake night after night mentally debating whether they will leave their property to some charitable institution or spend it the next day for something with a little lemon in it.”

We’ve Seen This Before 

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It’s called the tyranny of the minority.

Watching Congressman Kevin McCarthy trying to appease an unwilling minority in his party so he could realize his dream of becoming Speaker of the House was agonizing last week.  But for those of us who follow Missouri politics it as not an unfamiliar experience.

Remember the 2021 legislative session when an ultra-conservative segment of Senate Republicans held the entire chamber hostage when they couldn’t get their way on a congressional redistricting map?  Day after day they refused to let any other business be done until they could get their way. On a few occasions the remaining Republicans got some support from minority Democrats to move something—a relationship that really steamed the tyrannical minority.

In Washington last week we watched Kevin McCarthy come about as close to making the Speakership a figurehead position in his effort to get enough of his hard right party members to let him have the job.

As the process wore on, we wondered if it occurred to McCarthy that he had to protect the Speakership, not just his own personal ambitions. Neutering the Speakership sews the seeds of anarchy in the House.

We saw in the Missouri Senate last year the dangers of deadlock caused by those who replaced public service with political power.  To see the same scenario played out on a national scale is disastrous for those who have some faith in our system.

McCarthy was finally picked on the 15th ballot when Congressman Matt Gaetz, who had proclaimed himself a never-Kevin vote switched to “present.”

So now the House of Representative can get down to business.  But the narrowness of the Republican majority and the divisions within the party are likely to prove hazardous to McCarthy’s House leadership.

And don’t forget that a favorite punching bag of the Republicans, President Biden, holds a veto pen and there appears to be zero chance that the House can get a two-thirds vote to override a presidential veto, assuming it can get its legislation through the Senate and to the president’s desk..

The spectacle has not ended with McCarthy’s selection as Speaker.

Politics is an imperfect science but we never have seen such a time as when good will seems so unachievable.  Did any of us elect any of them to think that there is nothing more important than who sits in what office in one building in Washington, D.C.?

Today we mourn the (temporary, we hope) passing of the ideal of majority rule. A tyrannical minority can be put in its place if the two major factions would recognize they must create the majority—and in the creation of a bipartisan majority, return sanity to our system.

We still have the hope that somebody will be unafraid to scale the wall separating the parties and produce enough unity to overcome the tail that thinks it can wag the congressional dog.

The Speakership is more important than any individual that aspires for it. If protecting the office and its responsibility and its power means reaching across the partisan wall, let the reaching begin.  We need to know that the tyrannical minority is not in charge.

But frankly, we’re not sure it won’t be.

Do you know how to tell—

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—if a politician is lying?

His lips are moving.

This old and cynical joke that cavalierly diminishes all of those who seek to serve honorably has found new circulation thanks to a New York congressional candidate who told lie after lie during his campaign, got elected, has grudgingly admitted to some of his lies, but is unrepentant and as of the writing of this entry plans to take the oath of office.

George Santos is a Republican and (so far) the leadership of his party has been pretty silent about his admissions and the additional lies uncovered by reporters. About the only thing that seems to be true about him is that he’s a Republican. For now, anyway.  If his clay feet, which have crumbled at least ankle-high, continue to crumble, he might be most appropriationly listed as (P-NY), for “Pariah” from New York.

“I am not a criminal,” he told The New York Post. “This will not deter me from having good legislative success. I will be effective. I will be good.”

Whether he is not a criminal is open to some question. Did his claims constitute fraud?  Did he lie to obtain campaign donations, thus defrauding donors?  Did his lies result in financial gain?  Did he lie on his campaign financial disclosure forms, a potential criminal act? And those are starter questions..

He claimed to be the grandchild of Ukrainian natives who escaped the holocaust by going to Belgium and then to Brazil. Investigators say he is not.  He’s a native Brazilian and there are shadows over his life there.

He claimed to be Jewish. He released a position paper during his campaign saying he was “a proud American Jew.”  That was then. Now he says he never claimed to be a Jew and that he’s Catholic who is “Jew-ish,” a comment that the word “outlandish” is inadequate to describe. He says his grandmother told him stories about being Jewish before she converted to Catholicism. His grandparents were born in Brazil.  The Democrat he beat in November says Santos’ lies about his Jewish background are more than offensive—“It’s sick and obscene,” he says.

In the campaign he claimed that he had been openly gay for more than a decade and is married to another man.  But another news organization has learned he was married to a woman that he divorced in 2019 and has found no record of his marriage to the man Santos says is his husband.

He claimed to have worked with two of the biggest names in the financial industry—Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, neither of which says his name ever appeared on their employee rolls. He says he probably could have used “a better choice of words” in making that claim.

He claimed to have attended New York University and to have graduated from Baruch College. Now he confesses, “I didn’t graduate from any institution of higher learning.” He says he is “embarrassed and sorry for having embellished my resume.” But he excused himself by commenting, “A lot of people overstate in their resumes or twist a little bit.”

Embellished his resume?  And it’s okay because “a lot of people” do it “a little bit?”

What he has done is more than “a little bit.”  He lied and now he’s lying about lying. In fact, he has created a waterfall of lies including how much property he does or does now own, and how many dogs his nonprofit dog rescue group rescued.

The silence of his party’s leadership, particularly his future colleagues in the United States House of Representatives is tragic in this time when distrust of those who seek public service or those who win positions of public service is so strong.  Santos tars all of them with his irresponsible campaign and his petulant responses to those who have exposed him for what he is—a man who was incapable of truth during his campaign and seems incapable of admitting the depth of his lies after his election.

Unfortunately, the public doesn’t see him as the exception to the rule. Unfortunately, the public has come to believe his kind IS the rule.

But I know from years of front-row coverage of politics and politicians that people of his kind are the rotten apple that spoils the barrel.

The Santoses of the political world damn the saints of the political world. It is up to those who will take office for the first time in 2023 to be the kind of people who eventually leave public life having uplifted public opinion about those who go from being “one of us” on election day to being “one of them.”  It will be a heavy lift.  Honor is a great weight.

Failure of his party, particularly those who will be leaders of his party colleagues in Washington, to censure—even expel—him will deepen mistrust in all of those in either party, further damaging our republic and furthering the aims of those who seek to capitalize on distrust in it to strengthen their hopes for control.

“Disgrace” is spelled S-A-N-T-O-S.

The People, Yes

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Carl Sandburg was a great American poet from my home state of Illinois.  His multi-volume biography of Abraham Lincoln remains one of the great works about the Sixteenth President.

In 1936, Sandburg published his epic poem, The People, Yes. It’s a powerful work that captures the American people in their contradictory, dynamic nature.  It’s a great read.  Sometimes when I’m explaining the Benton mural at the Capitol, I quote it when I emphasize to students and—a few days ago—to newly-elected legislators that politicians come and go but the people are forever and the greatness of a state rests with the people and their hopes and efforts and thoughts:

The people will live on.
The learning and blundering people will live on.
They will be tricked and sold and again sold
And go back to the nourishing earth for rootholds,
The people so peculiar in renewal and comeback,
You can’t laugh off their capacity to take it…

In the darkness with a great bundle of grief
the people march.
In the night, and overhead a shovel of stars for
keeps, the people march:
“Where to? what next?”

Sandburg also wrote in the poem about Lincoln.  What he wrote about Lincoln has some resonance today:

Lincoln?

He was a mystery in smoke and flags

Saying yes to the smoke, yes to the flags,

Yes to the paradoxes of democracy,

Yes to the hopes of government

Of the people by the people for the people,

No to debauchery of the public mind,

No to personal malice nursed and fed,

Yes to the Constitution when a help,

No to the Constitution when a hindrance

Yes to man as a struggler amid illusions,

Each man fated to answer for himself:

Which of the faiths and illusions of mankind

Must I choose for my own sustaining light

To bring me beyond the present wilderness?

Lincoln? Was he a poet?

And did he write verses?

“I have not willingly planted a thorn

in any man’s bosom.”

I shall do nothing through malice: what

I deal with is too vast for malice.”

What will we look for in the elections of 2024—candidates of malice or candidates who think, “What I deal with is too vast for malice?”

Let us not be so cynical as to believe there are no candidates in the latter category. We might need to persuade some to jump into the arena where they ae badly needed.  We must not tolerate an atmosphere so toxic that those to whom malice is beneath them will lack the support to lead a people who still dare ask, “Where to, what next?”

 

Thirty years ago—–

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I remember a young Attorney General who could envision an almost limitless political future for himself.  The governorship was within his grasp. And after that, there would be Washington, the U.S. Senate.  And from there?   I don’t know how much he dreamed of things beyond the Senate but he had followers who did.

He had won a bruising primary election for governor, outrunning the Secretary of State and the State Treasurer.

But then he lost the general election for governor.  And a few months after that, he lost a lot more.

Bill Webster, son of a state senator once considered one of the most powerful men—some thought he was THE most powerful man—in state government had withstood months of intense news coverage and weeks of campaign commercials linking him to major political scandal.

In June, 1993, Bill Webster, facing two federal felony charges of conspiracy and embezzlement pleaded guilty to one charge of using his office staff, equipment and supplies for his campaign.   He was sentenced to two years in prison.

Webster lost his political future and his law license. The last we heard, however, he has done well as a Vice-President of Bartlett and Company, a major agri-marketing firm in Kansas City.

We started thinking about Bill Webster when we learned of a court ruling involving another now-former attorney general who has visions of greatness.   Last week, Jefferson City Circuit Judge Tom Beetem ruled that Josh Hawley’s taxpayer-financed office staff used private email accounts and equipment to “knowingly and purposefully” conceal public records of communications with political consultants involved in Hawley’s campaign for the U.S. Senate.

Josh Hancock, writing last week for Missouri Independent, reported, “The emails, text messages and other documents at the center of the lawsuit show that early in his tenure as attorney general, Hawley’s campaign consultants gave direct guidance and tasks to his taxpayer-funded staff and led meetings during work hours in the state Supreme Court building, where the attorney general’s official office is located.”

A spokesman for Hawley’s campaign, Kyle Plotkin, has maintained that investigations have found no wrongdoing. One such investigation, he claimed, was done by “a Democratic state auditor.”

He apparently has not read a state auditor’s report suggesting that Hawley and his staff might have misused state resources but their use of private email and text messaging made a definite determination impossible.

Webster went to prison for misuse of state resources.  Hawley has gone to Washington

Ya Got Trouble Right Here in River City

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“Gotta figure out a way to keep the young ones moral after school,” the professor told the citizens of River City, Iowa.

Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft thinks he has a way to do that.  He proposes taking away state funding for local libraries that don’t adopt written policies that allow any parent or guardian of a minor “to determine what materials and access will be available to a minor,” particularly any materials that might appeal to that minor’s prurient interests.

The ultimate moral policeman would be the Secretary of State, whoever it is now and whoever it might be in the future.

Librarians throughout the state are not reacting kindly to his idea.  And local library boards, who are better cross-sections of community standards than one person at the state capital, by and large resent his meddling.

If you want to read the proposed rule, go to: https://www.sos.mo.gov/CMSImages/AdRules/main/images/15_CSR_30_200_015.pdf

We are now within a thirty-day public comment period before the legislature’s Joint Committee on Administrative Rules decides whether this overreach should become state policy.

One local library trustee who is known for wordiness minces no words in his response:

I am a trustee of a local library board, a position I have held off and on for more than twenty years. I was a delegate to the most recent White House Conference on Libraries and Information.  I am a published author of five books with a sixth book under consideration by publishers.

I am a reader.

I believe in the First Amendment.

I do not believe in censorship.

I do not believe in government overreach.

I am not a card-carrying member of the American Civil Liberties Union, but I do carry a valid library card.

The proposed rule on “Library Certification Requirements for the Protection of Minors” is a terrible rule and should be rejected by the Joint Committee on Administrative Rules.

This rule potentially gives the Secretary of State, whoever it might be or whoever it might become, the power to determine whether a library shall receive state funds based on his interpretation of what, as the rule states, “appeals to the prurient interest of any minor.”

The Secretary has issued a statement saying, “When state dollars are involved, we want to bring back local control and parental involvement in determining what children are exposed to. Foremost, we want to protect our children.”

The intimation in this statement that local control of libraries has been lost is irresponsible. Public libraries are governed by boards made up of local citizens. There has been no loss of local control.  “Parental involvement in determining what children are exposed to” likewise seems to suggest parents have been restricted in considering whether a book that might be proper for someone else’s child to read is improper for their own child to have.

He also has said, “We want to make sure libraries have the resources and materials they need for their constituents, but we also want our children to be ‘children’ a little longer than a pervasive culture may often dictate.”

I am afraid that the statement only invites chaos. If libraries are to serve “their constituents,” they must have a wide range of materials available to a broad range of individuals at various levels of maturity. To expect librarians to determine the level of maturity of every nine-year old who walks into their buildings is unrealistic.

When I first heard about this rule, my first question was, “Who makes the ultimate decision?”  It appears the answer is the Secretary of State.  To place one person in a position of second-guessing professional community librarians is dangerous.

The proposed rule does not define this critical phrase which puts the Secretary of State, as the supervisor of the patronage position of State Librarian, in the position of making subjective judgments about the prurience of any single publication that is objectionable to “any material in any form not approved by the minor’s parent or guardian.”

“Prurience” is not defined nor is “age appropriate,” three words that open the door to onerous penalties based on an interpretation of one parent and/or one state official. And stoking fear of some kind of vague “pervasive culture” that the statement suggests has invaded our public libraries and motivates the professionals who manage them is completely uncalled for.

The rule creates the potential for the kind of decision referred to by Justice Potter Stewart who discussed the threshold test for defining obscenity in Jacobellis v. Ohio in 1964:

“I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description [“hard-core pornography”], and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it…”

By working backward from the parent to the Secretary of State, this rule indicates that a library could lose state funding if one parent of one child disagrees with a library’s policy on collection acquisitions by finding one book that the parent feels appeals to the child’s “prurient interest” and files the objection with the State Librarian and the librarian’s supervisor, the Secretary of State.

I do not believe our libraries and our librarians are  the “dance at the arm’ry” referred to by Professor Harold Hill in The Music Man:

“Libertine men and scarlet women, and ragtime, shameless musicThat’ll grab your son, your daughter with the arms of a jungle, animal instinctMass-stariaFriends, the idle brain is the devil’s playground.”

Libraries are not devil’s playgrounds. Librarians are not “libertine” or “scarlet” but are instead highly professional defenders of the right to read, the right to know, the right to think.  I believe they carefully evaluate additions to the collections, but they recognize that children as well as adults mature differently and determining “age appropriateness” is one of their most difficult tasks.

But if my children were still young readers, I should be the one to decide what they bring home. It is not my place to decide what should be available to another child of the same age but a higher maturity.

We refer to these institutions as free public libraries. I believe the word “free” means more than an institution that does not charge a membership fee that limits access to intellectual exploration and growth.

This is a bad rule that places one person in a position of denying funding to one of the most important institutions in any community because he or she agrees with one parent who finds one book objectionable.

Moral judgments are personal. The power to force others to bend to the moral judgment of any single political officer by cutting off funding to a library should never be allowed.

This rule is anti-freedom at several levels and has no business being part of state government. While I am concerned with our children remaining children, I am more concerned with what happens with a politician being a politician and what it can mean to the liberties of us all.

I urge the committee to reject this proposal.

Bob Priddy

Jefferson City

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Our Fiery Trial 

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Perhaps we as a nation have once again pulled back from the brink of the destruction of our Democracy.

A lot of pundits and other common observers take comfort that the Red Wave fueled by a leader seemingly capable of almost anything to regain power did not develop.  In the days since, the Republican Party has noticeably indicated it no longer fears Donald Trump as much as it once did.

He isn’t going away—although “going away” might assume a different focus if we start seeing post-election indictments. He and his core believers are still a force.  How the party reckons with him while reshaping itself will be difficult. But last week convinced many in the party that it cannot continue down the Trump rabbit hole.

Democrats should not see themselves as victors last week. They have only dodged a bullet.

Your faithful observer was born in a town in which Abraham Lincoln’s family lived briefly, and grew up in two small towns where Lincoln practiced law as a circuit-riding attorney.  Perhaps because Lincoln lies deep within him that he offers to you today Lincoln’s words on the need for a unified nation and the verdict that awaits if it fails in that effort.  He spoke to Congress on December 1, 1862 of his vision and he issued a warning.

Although the words were spoken in the Union’s dark early days of the Civil War, they remain meaningful today at a time when some are breathing suggestions we will have another civil war and others are involved in one within their political party.

Will not the good people respond to a united, and earnest appeal from us? Can we, can they, by any other means, so certainly, or so speedily, assure these vital objects? We can succeed only by concert. It is not “can any of us imagine better?” but, “can we all do better?”

The dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise—with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.

Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation.

“WE MUST DISENTHRALL OURSELVES, AND THEN WE SHALL SAVE OUR COUNTRY.”

In this time when it seems our leaders only see themselves in terms of the power they want to gain, perhaps they should pause to reflect on the long line of history that will be built after them and whether they will be lighted “in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation.” History likely will not consider the legacies of many of them kindly.

It is not their responsibility alone.

It is ours, for we choose them.

We can do better.

We have the chance to do better in just two years.  How will our grandchildren’s grandchildren look back at the choices we will make?

We will be the history they study?  Will they be proud of that history that we cannot escape?

We should be mindful of the history we are creating.

The Appointing-est Governor—and some other election history

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Governor Mike Parson is going to have to do it again.

He’s going to have to appoint a new State Treasurer and a new Attorney General.

This time he has to appoint a new Attorney General to replace an elected Treasurer that he appointed Attorney General who now is off to Washington to become the second straight Attorney General Parson will replace.   Let’s walk through our governor’s record of appointing more statewide elected officials than any other governor.

Mike Parson ascends to the governorship with the resignation in disgrace of Eric Greitens (by the way, does anybody know where he has landed after Missourians found him significantly unfit for the Senatorship?).  Attorney General Josh Hawley, who eschewed any ambitions for immediate higher office when he became AG and then did exactly that, becomes a U. S. Senator. Former State Senator Eric Schmitt is elected State Treasurer.  Not all of these things happened at once. They accumulated over time.

Governor Mike Parson appoints outgoing State Senator Mike Kehoe to the Lieutenant Governorship.

He appoints Treasurer Schmitt to the Attorney Generalship to replace Hawley when Hawley lights out for Washington.

He appoints former House Budget Chairman Scott Fitzpatrick as the Treasurer, replacing Schmitt.

Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft quietly watches what’s going on, preferring to wait until 2024 when he will decide where he wants to go.

Roy Blunt decides that being the second-oldest person to serve as a U. S. Senator from Missouri does not mean he should try to become the oldest coot in Missouri Senatorial history, and announces his retirement.*

Eric Schmitt, with nothing to lose because his term as AG doesn’t run out for two more years, sees a chance for greater glory, downs a big glass of Trump Kool-Aid, and wins a race to replace our truly senior senator.

Fitzpatrick, with nothing to lose because his term as Schmitt’s successor as Treasurer, claims the last Democratic statewide office by being elected State Auditor.

As of the morning after the election, Governor Mike Parson has to appoint a new Treasurer and a new Attorney General.  Several ambitious people, knowing that incumbency will have advantages if 2024, think they could give up whatever they are doing now to fill those vacancies.

Governor Parson has until January to decide who will be the latest to get single-digit license plates and a leg up in the 2024 campaign for statewide office.

Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft continues to quietly watch, knowing that one of his potential opponents in the Republican Governor’s primary in 2024 is now otherwise occupied.

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Eric Schmitt will be the fifth Missouri Attorney General to become a United States Senator. He’ll be the second in a row to move from AG to Senator.  Using the Attorney General’s office as a stepping stone to federal office is a fairly recent circumstance in politics.

Tom Eagleton was the first former Attorney General to make the leap, but he did it from the Lieutenant Governor’s office where he served after being Attorney General.

John Danforth was the first to move directly from Attorney General to the Senate.  He was elected in 1976, defeating former Governor Warren Hearnes. Hearnes was chosen by a Democratic Caucus after Congressman Jerry Litton was killed on election night on his way from his Chillicothe home to a victory party in Kansas City. He had upset former Governor Hearnes and Congressman Jim Symington, who had been favored by many people to succeed his father, Senator Stuart Symington.

Some time after that, Danforth’s top lieutenant, Alex Netchvolodoff, told me that Danforth wasn’t sure he could have beaten Litton.  Danforth had voluntarily established campaign spending limits.  Litton had no qualms about spending as much as necessary and although I heard he had spent 96% of his liquidity to win the primary, he was a charismatic figure with eyes on the White House who was capable of raising huge sums of money.

John Ashcroft was the next AG to become a U.S. Senator, but he did it after serving eight years as governor.

Josh Hawley, who took office as Attorney General and said he had no plans to immediately seek higher office, did just that in 2020, as we noted earlier.

And now Eric Schmitt becomes only the fifth Missouri Attorney General in our two centuries of history to make the leap, only the third to do it directly.

*Roy Blunt will be 72 years, 11 months, and 24 days old when the new Congress begins with Eric Schmitt as his replacement.  Only Stuart Symington was older when he left the Senate. He was 75 years, six months and one day old when he departed.

He will become our seventh living former U.S. Senator. The others are John Danforth, Christopher Bond, John Ashcroft, Jean Carnahan, Jim Talent, and Claire McCaskill.

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When Eric Schmitt celebrated his victory last week he said, “We want our country back.”  Hmmm…..that’s the same thing a lot of voters thought they were doing when they reduced the Great Red Wave to a ripple.

Notes from a Quiet (Leafs in the Gutters) Street

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Tomorrow is election day. At least it is for the thousands of people who have not voted early.  We are two of those who have. Visited the courthouse last Wednesday.  We passed three people coming out when we arrived, and four people going in when we left.  Not sure what our numbers were but we were probably closed to numbers 1999 and 2000.

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We like early voting. No lying about being out of town.  There were times when you had to have an excuse, such as being out of town on election day, to vote absentee.  I was always tempted to vote absentee and then on election day drive outside the city limits and then come back in, thus fulfilling the statement that I would be out of town that day.  The language never says the WHOLE day.

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The first Christmas catalogues arrived before Halloween.  One of them has, among other things, t-shirts with humorous messages on them—at least humorous to some.

One of the t-shirts says, “If YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook merged, you would have Youtwitface.”

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Originalist thinking by some judges interpreting the Constitution seems to overlook a lot of things that have happened since 1791.  Upholding the purity of the Second Amendment is seen by some as allowing the use of large-capacity magazines in today’s weapons.  But the authors of the Bill of Rights lived in a time when guns fired only one bullet at a time and required several seconds to reload, prime, cock, aim, and fire again.

Where’s the National Musket Association when we need it?

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Inflation was portrayed during the recent campaign as an issue caused by one person and that can be cured by one party.  If it was that simple, we wouldn’t have inflation.

Or climate change (for those who believe in it). Or a drug problem.  Or a crime problem.

And for those who preach simple solutions—I have this rash…….

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Once again, we gave away no treats for Halloween.  We went to a movie instead.  It’s a matter of self-preservation.  We don’t want to be caught with all that chocolate left over.

We saw the latest Julia Roberts-George Clooney movie.  George was George. Julia was Julia. The popcorn was pretty good, too.

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We noticed a sign of what the movie theatre business is becoming.  The ticket booths were closed.  We bought our tickets at the concession stand.                                                    -0-

Had a doctor’s appointment earlier that day.  The nurse was dressed up as Lilo, as in Lilo and Stitch (a Disney animated sci-fi movie of a decade ago). Given what nurses deal with, we thought she should have been dressed as Stitch.

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With the end of the elections, the first round of legislative chaos is about to begin.  The offices of those defeated or who were term limited are now available for surviving incumbents to scramble to get. For the next few weeks the Capitol will look like a big used furniture emporium with furniture stacked in the hallways waiting to go to its new offices.

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Will the Missouri Tigers go bowling this year?  Sure.  The Columbia Mall has several lanes available.