Category Archives: Politics

The Greatest Accomplishment

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We suppose our former governors have, from time to time, been asked about their greatest accomplishments during their terms. Lately, it has become part of the regular business of wrapping up their time in office to publish a glossy, colorful booklet praising themselves.  But apart from the self-serving publications, what do past governors really think is the best thing they did.

About twenty years ago or so, Big Muddy: A Journal of the Mississippi River Valley, published at Southeast Missouri State University, printed a letter from then-former Governor Arthur M. Hyde about “some problem of statewide interest which occurred during my administration.”  The letter was to Dr. Joseph A. Serena, the then-President of then-Southeast Missouri State Teachers College (since 1973 it has been Southeast Missouri State University).

Hyde, a Republican, had been elected in what was seen as one of the great upsets in Missouri elections history in 1920. He immediately cleaned house in then-patronage dominated state government by throwing out Democrats given jobs by previous administrations.

The demand for a modern highway system led to the creation of a State Highway Commission during his term. Public education needs led to the assessment of real estate at its true value, “thereby writing a taxable foundation under the public schools upon which good schools could be built.” He listed the purchase of state parks and putting state charitable institutions under non-partisan control as important accomplishments.

“To my mind, however, the matter of greatest public import was the ‘cleanup’ of the Republican party,” he wrote. What he next wrote about the Republican Party of his time is applicable to either of our major political parties today.

“Á political party justifies its existence only when it offers itself to the people as an instrument or a tool which the people may use to bring about necessary reform, or to accomplish political results.  All political problems are reflected in party action. All matters of governmental action are political matters.  A carpenter cannot use a dull or an “unset” saw to do fine work.  The people cannot use a corrupt or a selfish party to achieve needed political changes. That the realignment within the Republican party was used by the people to accomplish great results is proved by the recitals of the early part of this letter. That realignment is forcing changes within the opposing party.  What a happy day for Missouri when the people have two effective instruments with which to work, when party campaigns are contests as to which party has best served the State, and which offers the most constructive program for the future.”

We offer Hyde’s words less as a commentary on present situations and concerns than as an observation that both of our major political parties are required to do significant soul-searching from time to time if they are to be “effective instruments” to best serve the state or nation and offer “the most constructive program for the future.”

What a happy day it will be, indeed, if we ever reach Hyde’s ideal that the appeal for power must be based on two instruments offering the most constructive service to the people.

(photo credit: 1921 Official Manual of the State of Missouri)

 

Let’s take a breath

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—and count to ten before we blurt out a heated response to something someone has said.

I have a friend who says he hasn’t paid attention to the news for several years.  He seems at peace with himself.  Uninformed, but at peace.

Unfortunately, uninformed people who are at peace with themselves are the kind of people despots take advantage of.

Responsible engagement is a friend of freedom.

But responsible engagement should require thought, not reflex.

Unfortunately, we are living in a time of reflex, encouraged by those who want to take advantage of unthinking reaction for their own political benefit. Mischaracterization too often goes unchallenged on both sides of the spectrum.

God gave us a brain to think with.  God gave us a stomach to digest things with. Too many folks, from our lofty standpoint, have forgotten what is between our ears and seem to believe the thing that fills our bowels with waste is the thinking apparatus.

Case in point (and we’re going to get crucified by some of you for doing this): Mitch McConnell’s statement last week, “If you look at the statistics, African American voters are voting in just as high a percentage as Americans.”  The comment, in answering a reporter’s question about Republican opposition to the Voting Rights Act, became Twitter cannon fodder within minutes.

There is no doubt that throughout our land, a lot of nerves are on the outside of people’s bodies. McConnell, a lightning rod for those who think his party leadership would be better for the country if he focused more on service than on power, hit those nerves hard.

From the beginning, we wondered if he would be pilloried for what could have been a clumsy use of the English language. While understanding many would take his comments as racist and an expected attitude toward someone whose party is perceived as favoring limits Black voting, we also wondered if the intent of his remark was that African-American voters are as involved in elections as much as everybody else.

McConnell, instead of apologizing for making his point awkwardly, has given a gut response. He calls the criticism of his comment “outrageous.” He accused some of his critics of spouting “total nonsense.”

After lashing out at critics, he said he meant was that “African American voters are voting in just as high a percentage as (all) Americans.”

He cited his record in civil rights issues including the Martin Luther King march on Washington in 1963, his mentoring of Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron, who is black, and that he has “had African American speechwriters, schedulers, [and] office managers” throughout his political career.

In a time when such defenses would be seen as condescending, he might have chosen to verbalize his defense better.

Kentucky U. S. Senate candidate Charles Booker, who is Black, accused McConnell of thinking “it’s fine for him to block Voting Rights because he has black friends.”

Two points:   First, in earlier times, this instant prairie fire might have burned itself out. But today, social media is a mighty wind that increases the flames.

Second, there were times in our reporting days when someone we were interviewing said something that didn’t seem right the immediate follow up question became, “Are you saying—-?” which either gave the person a chance to dig a deeper hole or a chance to be more clear. Somebody should have asked the question when the original remark was made.

In a time when an inarticulate comment can become a social media hand grenade, it would do all of us well if our public figures allowed a second or two of silence after a question before they say what they mean to be heard. We are so awash in intentionally harmful speech that it is essential that people in McConnell’s position as a political symbol as well as a political leader be more careful in what they say.

It also is more important for those listening to ask, “Did you mean—?” if they can. And it is important for the health of our Republic for those who are quick to condemn to ask if what was said is what was truly meant.

Blurting is not a national virtue.

However, taking a breath is what keeps us healthy.

The Casinos in Our Pockets

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We lived in an “appointment” world in 1993, when the first Missouri laws governing casino gambling were written.  Voters had approved riverboat gambling, as it was called then, in 1992. The first casinos on boats would open in the spring of 1994.

Many of us still got our national news with the 5:30 network newscasts on television and our local news at 6 and 10 p.m. when those laws were written.

If we wanted to buy new clothes, we went to a clothing store during the hours it was open.  We went to grocery stores during their open hours to get our food.

We knew when each day we could go to the mailbox to get letters from friends and relatives.

And by the end of the year we knew that if we wanted to gamble we would have to go to the riverboat at a certain time to be admitted.

The Station Casino-St. Charles and the President Casino on the moored Admiral riverboat opened May 27, 1994. Gamblers could board the boat in St. Charles from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. for a two-hour cruise (for which they paid three to five dollars, depending on the day). If they missed the cruise time, they had to wait for the boat to come back so we could pay to get aboard for the next trip.

The President never cruised. It was permanently moored near the Gateway Arch because the old aluminum Admiral had no engines. Gamblers would pay two dollars during the week and five dollars on weekends and could board every two hours from 10 a.m. to midnight.

But the world was changing and the change accelerated each year. “Appointment living” was beginning to diminish although many of us did not realize it at the time.

There were some hints, however.

The Pew Research Center reported in 1994 that the percentage of Americans getting news from the internet at least once a week had more than tripled since 1991, going from 11-million to 36-million news users.

The number of hosts on the internet tripled from January, 1994 to January, 1996, the year something called a “browser” was created—Netscape, the same year that the island nation of Antigua and Barbuda passed a Free Trade and Processing Act allowing licenses to be given to companies wanting to allow internet users to gamble. By the end of the year there were fifteen gambling websites. The next year there were 200 and by 1998, a study was published showing online gaming revenues had topped $830-million. Modern online gambling in this country dates from November 22, 2010 when the New Jersey Senate passed a bill allowing certain forms of online gambling.

It was about that time that the casino industry was starting to see an erosion in patronage. In Missouri, casino admissions reached almost 54.3-million in FY 2005 then declined for three years before climbing back to almost equal 2005’s number. Admissions began annual declines after FY 2011.  In FY 2019 (the last full year before the pandemic crippled casino business), casino admissions had declined by 49%.

Various reasons for the decline can be suggested but the end result seems to be the same—people just don’t go to where casinos are.

So the casinos have to go where the people are.

The situation is not unique to the casino industry. It is part of our changing lifestyles and those changes have become more obvious with the COVID-19 Pandemic that has forced casino closures for in-person business and quarantines for many who would patronize them.

We no longer live in an “appointment” world.  We can buy clothing at any time of the day off the internet.  We can use the internet to get our groceries delivered.  We can order deliveries to our homes from our favorite restaurants.  The same with our pharmaceuticals. Telemedicine is eliminating some office and hospital trips.

Casino betting can happen 24 hours a day because, as one source has observed, “everyone has a casino in their pocket.”  Casinos are looking for new products that can be offered through the ubiquity of the internet that we call up on our ubiquitous cell phones.  First is sports wagering. But later, Missouri legislators are likely to be asked to let table game betting to take place remotely.

Those who find gambling a reprehensible sin will find nothing redeeming about gambling on the internet.  But thousands of other Missourians will welcome the opportunities—as they welcome opportunities to grocery shop from home.

In a world where less and less of life is lived by appointment, the gaming industry knows it must change. And it is, as it should.

Missouri’s casino gambling laws must change, too.  Laws written and fees created in the days of physical customer presence in casinos need to be changed to account for virtual presence.  State services relying on gambling fees and taxes will be increasingly diminished as appointment gambling diminishes.  Casinos, profiting from laws of the 1990s appointment culture, resist modernization of the law. It is understandable that they do.

What is not understandable is why the Missouri General Assembly would not want to protect the state’s interests by bringing our laws from the appointment era into the virtual, but very real, era.

 

The parable of the caretakers’ wealthy friends

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And the professor came among them as they convened to determine the welfare of the people.

And the professor said unto them, “Do not foolishly assume that following an unchanging law benefits the great mass of people who have chosen you to make wise decisions on their behalf.  Nor should you find it adequate to proclaim that enriching a few by adhering strictly to the law is good.”

And he said, “Suppose you, as caretakers of the common good, approve a generous spending plan of $32 billion for the benefit of those who have chosen you. And suppose you determine that $32 billion is adequate for the future and ignore the undeserving who believe your good stewardship of financial resources has become inadequate.

“But inevitably the system generates $33 billion in the next year, and $35 billion in the second.  By following the law, friends and supporters of those who established the “adequate” amount can divide the excess totaling $4.5-billion.

“But in the fullness of time,” said the professor, “those who are limited might rise up and say to those they assume to be their caretakers, ‘This is unfair for inflation has reduced the buying power of $32 billion to only $26 billion and those who rely on actually having $32 billion are becoming impoverished and the people who elect the caretakers are suffering.’”

“’You have established by the growth in wealth of your friends and supporters, year after year, the true value of the $32 billion. Yet you have refused to adjust the law to be fair to the greater number of those you serve while bowing to the wishes of supporters who offer benefits to you for being with them.’”

“’But we are only following the law.  We are meeting all of our obligations,’” you respond. “We are blameless.”

And the professor cast disdainful eyes upon them and said, “Your professions are hollow and self-serving! Those you proclaim are well-served are instead growing thin, yea, their ribs are beginning to show.  In the interests of fairness and justice, it is time—yea, it is PAST time—to adjust the law so that they shall be fulfilled.”

“But,” the caretakers said to the professor, “we do not understand why we should be forced to give our excess back to those who fall under the law.”

The professor rose and he said with passion, “Wisdom without honor has become greed.  You have impoverished those you claimed to help and it is time for those remaining with honor to show the courage to recognize what you have done and to correct it to the benefit of the greater public welfare.”

But the friends and supporters did not care about those who were being impoverished as they grew wealthier.  “You cannot change the law,” they said.  “Giving the impoverished dollars that are worth dollars would be punishment for our success.  Have pity on us for we are your friends.”

And the professor stood nearby hoping the caretakers of the public good would see the hollowness, self-serving, and greed of the supporters who demanded protection from those who trusted the caretakers to be just.

 

Truth as a Defense 

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(The Missouri General Assembly is back in session and it, the governor, and assorted denizens of the hallways will be generating ample material for observation for the next four months or so.  We are giving Dr. Frank Crane a bit of a vacation until the end of the session so we might increase the number of appropriate observations pertinent to the times. While they might be of questionable value to you, they are good therapy for your obedient observer. We begin with a story of early United States history and how it might play out in our time.)

Journalists sometimes have to decide whether to break a law by publishing information beneficial to the public or whether to withhold the information and therefore do a disservice to the public.

That ethical dilemma for the journalist who decides to publish then can become a legal issue that is uncomfortable for prosecutors, among others, to consider. When First Amendment protections of the press enter the mix, the situation offers only awkward choices.

Case in point:  Governor Parson is confident the Cole County Prosecutor will file a charge against a St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter who discovered a flaw in a computer program that endangered the security of personal information of thousands of Missouri educators. The governor believes he breached state law on computer information accessibility.

The newspaper did not publish the findings until the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education had fixed the problem.  Clearly, from this observer’s standpoint, the public was better served.  But also clearly from the governor’s standpoint, a law was broken. And as a former sheriff, he took umbrage with what he perceived as law-breaking.

Former Missourian Ulysses Grant, on being sworn in as President of the United States on March 4, 1869, proclaimed, “Laws are to govern all alike—those opposed as well as those who favor them.  I know no method to secure the repeal of bad or obnoxious laws so effective as their stringent execution.”

The sentiment often is credited erroneously to Abraham Lincoln, perhaps based on an 1838 Lyceum speech in Springfield, Illinois.

Throughout our country’s history, the rigidity of law has been challenged by those who push against that rigidity. We could regard the Declaration of Independence as our country’s greatest challenge to existing law, for example.  Or the Civil Rights movement in more recent decades.

But more than fifty years before the Declaration of Independence, an important and surprising legal decision was made that seems to be important to the disagreement about the propriety of the report on education department computer security.

John Peter Zenger, the publisher of The New York Weekly Journal, was accused of libel by Royal Governor William S. Cosby in 1733 after Zenger accused him of various corruptions including rigging elections.  Under the laws of the time, any publication of information critical of government was considered libelous.

Zenger lawyer Andrew Hamilton, the most famous colonial attorney of his time, did not deny the accusations had been printed. But he demanded the prosecutor to prove they were false. The judge told the jury it had to convict Zenger if it found he had, indeed, printed the stories. But the jury stunned the judge, the governor, and many others when it returned after only about ten minutes of deliberation and found Zenger NOT guilty.

The finding was the first time in this country that truth was considered an absolute defense against the governor’s complaint that the law prohibited publication of information critical of government.

That ruling is considered by some historians as critical to the circulation of ideas that led to the Declaration, the American Revolution, and the development of our Constitution and Bill of Rights—and the First Amendment that includes press freedom.

Can the “truth is an absolute defense” be used in the case of the Post-Dispatch story?  We’ll see.  It is unlikely this series of events will rise to the historical significance of the Zenger case. But free public knowledge of truth must have value in a free society and a chance to emphasize that value in this time of the Big Lie should not be missed.

The principle established in a courtroom 288 years ago casts a light on the governor’s belief that a law must be strictly enforced despite the exposure of truth and the prosecutor’s decision about how to best address the issue of public benefit versus strict obedience.

The Center

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Jefferson City likes to think of itself as the center of the state and it is certainly the POLITICAL center of the state.

But, really, it IS the center of the state according to the census bureau and the post office.

If we could cut Missouri out of the United States (and 161 years ago that was tried unsuccessfully) and balance it on the point of a large pin with all of our people living where they live now and weighing the same, the state would balance on a point just south of Jefferson City.

After the folks at the Census Bureau get done counting national noses they start having fun with the numbers.  Missouri wins twice when they do.

A few weeks ago, the census geeks figured that the national population center is near Hartville, population 594, in southwest Missouri’s Wright County.  Now they’ve figured the population center of each state and Missouri’s balance point is near a bend in the Osage River east of Brazito, an unincorporated community about 12 or 13 miles from Jefferson City.

Brazito is served by the post office in Jefferson City and its street addresses have the Jefferson City zip code of 65109.

So Jefferson City IS the center of the state!  Wink, wink.

The designation as the state’s population center is one of two historical events connected with Brazito. The first is that it was named for a Christmas Day, 1846 battle in the Mexican War by members of the First Regiment Missouri Mounted Volunteers under Alexander Doniphan.

The map is from the book J. T. Hughes wrote about the exploits of the unit, Doniphan’s Expedition, published in 1847, shortly after the group returned from opening central Mexico to American military occupation after the later Battle of Chihuahua. It’s an epic story if you want to learn more about the march from Fort Leavenworth to Santa Fe, the Mexican capital taken without a shot being fired, and then south through the arid country side to the battle site near El Paso and then on to Chihuahua.

The other historical moment happened on August 9, 1974, about 39,000 feet over Brazito when Air Force One pilot, Col. Ralph Albertazzie, radioed Kansas City ground control from his blue and white Boeing 707, “This was Air Force One. Will you change our call sign to Sierra Alpha Mike 27-thousand?”  (That’s military language to make sure the receiving person knows it refers to the letters SAM.)

“Roger, Sierra Alpha Mike 27-thousand. Good luck to the President.”

“Roger.  27-thousand.”

It was three minutes, 25 seconds past noon.  Someone reached down and locked the box containing the secret military codes.

And the Boeing 707 was no longer Air Force One, the designation given to any Air Force plane carrying the President of the United States. It became another Air Force plane, tail number 27000.

The Airline Owners and Pilots Association says SAM27000 has the distinction of making 1,440 takeoffs as Air Force One, but it landed with that designation only 1,439 times.  This was that odd flight—on which Richard Nixon, heading back to California after his resignation in disgrace, officially left the office of President—

—over Brazito, Missouri when word came that Gerald Ford had been inaugurated as Nixon’s successor.

SAM27000 carried more presidents to more countries for more meetings and on more missions than any Air Force One.  Seven presidents beginning with John F. Kennedy, 445 missions. And, says the AOPA, “no luggage was ever lost.”

The airplane remains the property of the Air Force but it is on permanent loan to the Reagan Presidential Library. Should you find yourself there, you can go through the airplane where history was made over Missouri’s new population center 48 years ago.

(photo credit: AOPA)

 

 

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Racial Centennial

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Lost in this year’s numerous Missouri BIcentennial observance is a CENtennial event that hints at the idea that there is a cultural problem in the telling of our history.  We cannot let this year slip away without observing that—-

A significant event from 1921 has been overlooked.

Republicans gained control of the Missouri House for the first time since the post-Civil War Reconstruction period in 1921. There was something special about that crop of Republicans.

The flavor of the historic moment, and of the times, was captured in the Jefferson CityMissouri State Journal in January of ’21:

The Fifty-first General Assembly of Missouri was about to convene. The majestic corridors of Missouri’s new capitol with their classic lines were filled with people approaching the chambers of the two houses…The hall of the House of Representatives, with its imperial columns and lofty galleries, was he center of attraction…It was the Missouri of Thomas Hart Benton, Francis Preston Blair, William Joel Stone, Francis Marion Cockrell, George Graham Vest, Sterling Price, “Jo” Shelby, and a thousand figures of great renown…

Down the middle aisle filled with Missouri’s chosen, came a negro waiter from the City of St. Louis, fresh from the pots and pans of the City Club’s kitchen. He walked with the assurance of the state’s exalted. He strode with the confidence of one invested with new authority, and his black countenance shown with the pleasure of his new role, his eyes sparkled with delight. Passing beyond the lesser lights, he took his seat near the Speaker’s dais, and claimed his own.  Alone, of all the desks in the hall, his was piled mountain high with floral tributes from his race. Others were bare of decoration, but his was conspicuous for the profuseness of its splendor.

He was the representative-elect from the Sixth District of the state’s FIRST CITY—the wealthiest, most highly cultured constituency in the state. He was the first negro to be elected to the Missouri legislature. Albeit he had neglected to meet the constitutional qualifications of paying taxes, he had  been provided by the St. Louis machine which had selected him, with what is known as a “politician’s lot” a space of ground scarcely large enough to accommodate a good-sized box, with taxes of the princely rate of $1 a year. He had won at the polls, and he held his seat. Walther Hall Moore had become a full-fledged Missouri representative.

The formalities prescribed by the Constitution—fossilized relic of the white man’s rule—were complied with, and the House adjourned.  He stood at his place, with the broad smile, so natural with men of his race, and divided his roses among a congratulating group of Republican members and their wives, who surrounded him in their eager desire to grasp his hand. They bore forth his flowers proudly, while a little group of blacks in the galleries cheered and the Lieutenant Governor of the state—like himself, a St. Louis Republican—welcomed him to his new duties.

The name was WALTHALL, not Walther.  A few days after the condescending description of his entrance into the House chamber he introduced his first bill—making Lincoln Institute “into a State university for negroes” and providing a million-dollar appropriation for that purpose. One account said, “This is one of the things demanded from the Republicans by negroes during the last campaign, but the Republican platform convention refused to include it in the platform.”  Nonetheless, Moore got his bill passed.”

Moore’s district was three-quarters white.  He was not re-elected in 1922, but was elected in ’24, ’26, and ’28.  He was a postal clerk, not a waiter.  He was 34 years old when he first took his seat in the House. He was just short of 74 when he died in St. Louis in 1960.

The year he died, three African-Americans were elected to the House: Baptist minister William Wright, lawyer Hugh J. White, and retired postal worker Henry W. Wheeler. All were from St. Louis.

It took another forty years before the first black State Senator was elected (Theodore McNeal) and the state has yet to elect a person of color to any of its executive branch positions—a century after Walthall Moore walked down the center aisle of the House of Representative to take his seat.

Someday, though…….

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Alright alright alright

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—-As potential next Texas Governor Matthew McConaughey says.

Governor Parson is going to ask the legislature next year to give salaried state workers a 5.5% pay raise and pay hourly workers $15 an hour.

The governor proposes; the legislature disposes.  We’ve all heard that.  So proposing is one thing. Accomplishing something is something else.  But this is a good move.

The state minimum wage is now $11.15.   And salaries for our state workers consistently have been among the bottom five or six states.  Openpayrolls.com calculates the average state employee last year made $28,871, 56.2% below the national average for government employees.

The minimum wage boost would affect about 11,000 state workers.

A review of state employee salaries five years ago by the data-mining study organization, Stacker.com ranked Missouri 47th out of 51 with the highest and the lowest salaries in the same general field—education.  With the average monthly salary of state and local employees then, the average monthly pay for all state and local employees was $3,746. The highest paid industry was listed as “Education,” where the average higher education monthly pay was $6,796. The lowest monthly salary then was in elementary and secondary education: $2.394.

Myron Cohen, a comedian who was a frequent guest on Ed Sullivan’s “Toast of the Town” show, used to tell the story of a fellow who came home from work early and found a naked man in his bedroom closet.  “What are you doing in there?” he is asked.  “Well,” says the naked man, “w-well…..everybody has to be somewhere.”

Somebody has to be at the low end of everything, including state employees.  Missouri has been content to be that “somebody” in too many categories for far too long.  The governor’s proposal is not likely to raise Missouri’s state workers very many notches on the poorly-paid lists.  But a pay raise of about five percent for hourly workers and 5.5% for salaried employees will be a big jump for our friends and neighbors who don’t deserve the disdain they often feel when they disappear each day into the offices and cubicles where the business of a 6.1-million member corporation called Missouri is run.

Unfortunately, there are reports of legislatures in several states that are seeing all of the federal COVID relief and infrastructure funds pouring in and they have started thinking of cutting taxes instead of realizing the advantages that come from the one-time infusion while maintaining competent levels of service under current taxing levels.

We hope Missouri’s legislature will not adopt the same attitude—-although we know there are those who will continue the state’s tradition of taking steps that make it harder for the state to pay for the promises it has made to its citizens for services and programs.

Just this once, let the deserving folks in cubicles have a little financial elbow room.

 

 

A Decision

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I have pretty well made up my mind how I will vote in 2022.  I have decided because I remember.

—I remember November 22, 1963 when I had returned to my apartment house in Columbia after student-producing the noon newscast at KOMU-TV, during which we reported President Kennedy had gone to Texas to assure Texans he was not going to dump Lyndon Johnson from the ticket in 1963, and one of my housemates shouted down the stairs as I came through the door, “You better get up here. The President’s been shot.” I was drawing a paycheck from KFRU Radio as assistant news director under Eric Engberg (who went on to a long career as a CBS correspondent) and immediately went to the newsroom where we started gathering reaction stories to put on the air when ABC Radio broke for local coverage. It never did, not for three days.

—-I remember April 4, 1968 when a phone call to my apartment told me Martin Luther King had been shot, and another call later that he had died. I was in my first months as news director of a radio station that used to do news in Jefferson City. It was a daytime-only station and I had to wait until the next morning to report the story. And a few days later I was inside the Jefferson City News-Tribune building when Lincoln University students turned violent outside the newspaper’s doors when the editor refused to retract an editorial run a few days earlier critical of Dr. King.  A flying piece of glass came within inches of hitting me in the eye.

—-I remember June 5, 1968 when another call came to my apartment, early in the morning. “Kennedy’s been shot,” said the newstipper.  “Which one?” I asked because just a few days before handsome, young Ted Kennedy had strode into a room at the Holiday Inn to speak on behalf of his brother. “Robert,” said the caller.  The morning newspapers that had gone to press the night before were reporting that RFK, as he was being called, appeared to have won the California Democratic Primary. He was shot at 2:15 a.m., our time. Radio news people like me delivered the shocking news heard by those having breakfast that Kennedy was in critical condition.

—I remember June 6, 1968, when the phone rang again in the darkness.  “Kennedy has died,” said the caller.  He died at 3:44 a.m., our time.  The newspapers that morning reported he was still critical.  I joined other broadcasters breaking terrible news for a second straight morning to thousands of people again having breakfast.

—I remember September 22, 1975 when the national networks’ evening newscasts were interrupted by word that a woman had tried to assassinate President Ford in San Francisco. We later learned that the first of two shots she fired from only forty feet away had missed the president’s head by only five inches.

—I remember March 30, 1981. It was just before 1:30 in the afternoon in the newsroom of The Missourinet when the UPI wire machine bells began ringing with the bulletin that President Reagan had been shot and others had been wounded.  Throughout the afternoon, we were reporting reactions from our people in Congress as well as our state leaders, knowing no more than most other reporters how close we were to losing another president.

I remember these events vividly, maybe more vividly than many because, as a reporter, I was instantly and intensely involved in telling the stories to others.

I remember fears, especially in the 60s, of where our country was headed, fears that were rekindled in 1975 and in 1981.

They were nothing like the fears today.

Nothing, because the fear did not originate within the government.

Yesterday I watched the United States House of Representatives censure Republican Congressman Paul Gosar for his Twitter video showing an animated attack on Democratic Congressman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and an attack—with swords—on President Biden.  Majority Democrats forced the action after Republican leaders in the House refused to publicly say one critical word about Gosar’s action.  His “apology” during discussion of the censure resolution was no apology and was instead an attack on Biden administration immigration policy.

Only two Republicans voted for the censure resolution, which also takes away Gosar’s committee assignments: Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, who will leave the House at the end of this term, and Liz Cheney of Wyoming, whose courage in standing against the “Big Lie” has led the Wyoming Republican Party to say it no longer recognizes her as a Republican.  Kinzinger had argued that failure to hold Gosar accountable “will take us one step closer to this fantasized violence becoming real.”  It is difficult to disagree with that fear as we continue to watch the violent rhetoric that dominates one side of our political spectrum today.

Gosar reportedly told his caucus he doesn’t support political violence. He said he had not seen the Tweet and he pulled it from his account when he learned about it.

So far we have not heard any of the leaders of Gosar’s party express any misgivings about his video or disagreement with their former president’s comment that “it’s only natural” that some of those storming the capitol in January wanted to “hang Mike Pence.”

The failure of party leaders to show any spine in the face of intentional and ongoing stoking of barely-latent fires of violence and their groveling at the feet of a man who is a stranger to honesty, empathy, courtesy, respect, and other Christian values leaves me with no choice.

In normal elections my votes are scattered on both sides of the ballot. As of now, I will fill in the little box next to only one Republican’s name next year.

Only one.  Because I am so terribly disappointed in those for whom I might otherwise vote in their reluctance to stand for the values I thought they had.

I remember 1963.  And ’68 and ’75 and ’81. Never then was I so fearful for our freedoms as I am now. Never have I had so little faith in those I should trust to be servants of the people.

They cannot be servants of the people if they are slaves to one who demands their obedience and countenances every vulgarity that stems from his gross failures of character.

I am but one voter and I am easily dismissed.  But I doubt that I am just one.

I desperately hope that I am not just one.

 

 

Who should control sports wagering?

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Kurt Erickson’s article in last Friday’s Post-Dispatch should be a warning that the state’s control of casino gambling is in danger.

Erickson wrote that four of our professional sports teams are launching a petition campaign to legalize sports wagering, an issue the legislature has talked about for several years but has been unable to get out of its own way and approve.

The St. Louis Cardinals, the St. Louis Blues, the Kansas City Royals, and the St. Louis City soccer club have filed nine proposed petitions with the Secretary of State. One of them will become the focus of a campaign to amend the constitution to allow sports wagering. The proposals also establish various tax rates and earmark revenues from sports wagering.

Some of the proposals will lower the overall tax on casino gambling by creating a super-low rate on sports wagering revenues. The proposals also change the way funds from gambling taxes are allocated.

Both are issues of legislative concern—-and of concern to educators in particular.  Both are issues the legislature dealt with in the 1990s when casino gambling was first legalized. The earmarking of funds from casino gambling has been a legislative prerogative from the beginning. The legislature changed the earmarks once, moving portions of casino admission fees from support for early childhood education to support for nursing homes and cemetery development for Missouri veterans.

Legislative leaders need to protect the general assembly’s authority to determine the best interests of the people of Missouri—the people who send their representatives and senators to the capitol on their behalf.

The only way to do that is to approve sports wagering during the 2022 legislative session.

The BEST way to do that is to recognize that casino gambling laws enacted in the 1990s are no longer adequate thirty years later at a time when casino gambling as an industry and  public access to casino gambling are changing.

Additionally, it is time the legislature recognize that the two-dollar admission fee established in 1993 has become a multi-million dollar liability to the state and to the casinos’ own host communities.

Proposed legislation has been written, but not introduced, that addresses all of those topics.  One of the major provisions is increasing the admission fee to a contemporary amount that is the equivalent of 1993’s two dollars. The United States Bureau of Labor Statistics says the equivalent for this fiscal year is $3.67.  A new estimate will be released in February, during the legislative session.

The proposed legislation increases the admission fee to $3.50, leaving seventeen cents unclaimed.

The proposed legislation increases the admission fee to $3.50.  We know the casinos will vehemently oppose this provision because they like to keep a dollar-67 in 2021 dollars for every two 1993 dollars they give the state (which have a purchasing power of only a dollar and nine cents now). They’re happy getting richer and richer while the state gets poorer and poorer

The proposal leaves seventeen cents unclaimed. The filing of the possible petitions has prompted a suggestion for the remaining seventeen cents.

We know from past experience that the private owners of professional sports teams will expect the legislature to put up state taxpayer funds to help pay for a new stadium. The tub-thumping for a downtown Kansas City Royals stadium is well-underway, in fact. The state does not have the major funds the teams want it to commit without cutting funding for other state programs.  A provision not yet in the suggested gambling reform bill could direct the unclaimed seventeen cents into a state fund for construction and renovation of professional athletic facilities, alleviating the inevitable pressure on the state for help with new professional facilities.

With wagering being permitted on sports, it is only proper that part of the proceeds from that activity be directed in that direction.

One reason sports wagering legislation has struggled and foundered in past legislative sessions is the effort to bring so-called grey-market gambling machines in convenience stores under state regulation. Efforts to make the two issues run in tandem have been counterproductive.

There is no doubt that it is important the state regulate those machines. But the stakes have been increased enough on sports wagering with the proposed petition campaign that the two issues should be separated and sports wagering should be a higher priority.

Nothing in what has been written today should be considered as opposing either sports wagering or regulation of the grey market convenience store machines. The author does not oppose either but does believe our gambling laws are outdated and are costing the programs the state once promised would be funded by those taxes and fees tens of millions of dollars a year.

The governor and the legislature have many issues to consider as priorities in the 2022 session. One of them is changing the law to make it harder to circulate petitions. We hope that issue will not obscure the importance of the sports wagering effort.

The proposed petition campaign should make state authority to regulate gaming and to appropriate the proceeds from it one of the major issues as a stand-alone matter that will not be endangered by other issues.