Category Archives: Politics

Us vs. It—part IX, prayer and politics.

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Last Sunday was Ascension Sunday in our faith tradition. Our minister remarked that he had seen a joke circulating on Facebook that when Jesus ascended into Heaven, he became the first person to work from home.

President Trump, just before the holiday weekend, ordered churches to open “right now” for face-to-face worship. As he has done in the past, he claimed exclusive power to override local and state orders for worship-in-place limits. The president who has proclaimed that it’s up to states and their governors to fight the Coronavirus, with his administration only as a backup, seemed to think on the issue of opening churches that governors and states (and mayors and cities) have no business standing in his way when it comes to letting congregations, uh, congregate.

As is often the case with this president, he was claiming a power he does not have and the motive behind a statement, a bluster, a tweet, a fabrication, a rant—whatever—is a matter of what benefits him.

It isn’t all that hard to see who President Trump really tried to please with his sudden “order.” Politico reported his bolt-from-the-blue announcement Friday was the result of “a sudden shift in support…among religious conservatives is triggering alarm bells inside his reelection campaign.” A couple of reputable religious polling organizations show a “staggering decline in the president’s favorability among white evangelicals and white Catholics.” Both groups strongly supported Trump in 2016. The Public Religion Research Institute last month showed double-digit drops in favorability among mainline Protestants (down 18%), white Catholics (down 12%) and white evangelicals (down 11%).

Once again, it appears the president responded to his advisors who said, “You’ve got to do something!”

The PRRI cited above is run by Dr. Robert P. Jones, who has Baptist roots, a Master of Divinity degree from Southwest Baptist University in Bolivar and who once was an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Missouri State University in Springfield. His 2016 book, The End of White Christian America is a thoughtful study of cultural changes underway in our country, the fears of some that are motivating some political considerations and actions, and an analysis of how the white Christian culture that has dominated the course of this nation can maintain significance in the face of ongoing and inevitable cultural change.

The President last Friday didn’t answer any questions that inevitably would have been asked about his ongoing claim that he has absolute power over such things as this.

One indisputable thing he did say in his Friday announcement is, “In America, we need more prayer, not less.” He’s correct, of course, although he might not like many of the prayers that are being offered. Plus, prayers don’t have to be said inside a religious building to be heard. This observer has heard prayers on street corners. In fact, he and his wife were once stopped on a street in Philadelphia—near the cemetery where Benjamin Franklin is buried—but a great big fella who grabbed my right hand and her left and offered up a mighty prayer for our well-being. Scared the living bejeezus out of us for a second or two. But on reflection, it was kind of nice.

We know the President will be deeply disappointed and maybe angry that our church is ignoring his pronouncement. We don’t plan to gather in our sanctuary at First Christian in Jefferson City until June 7. We hope he doesn’t become upset that Governor Parson did not force us to gather there last Sunday.

It often has been observed that a church is not a building. When a pastor says, “Good morning, church,” the pastor is not talking to a structure but to a flock.

Someone, we tuned in too late to hear who it was on the radio Sunday morning, suggested the President probably hasn’t read the Bible very much, particularly the sixth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew in which Jesus suggests (as we in these times might interpret it) that it is not necessary to gather in groups under a roof to pray. In fact, it seemed to suggest just the opposite:

“Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven…And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you..

Baptist minister Rod Kennedy, who is doing an interim ministry at the First Baptist Church in Ottawa, Kansas, responded to the President’s demand that churches open “right now” on his Facebook page:

President Trump,

On behalf of my Baptist congregation, I want to thank you for your concern for houses of worship. We respectfully decline your suggestion that we reopen. The Frist Amendment, religious freedom, separation of church and state,—all that constitutes our right to ignore you.

I’m not drinking bleach, taking suspected drugs, or buying your demagoguery. We will let you know when our church decides to reopen. After all, we are a free, independent Baptist congregation and government interference iirritates our Baptist gumption.

When churches do re-open we would be happy to see you in church every Sunday. It might help you find some divine wisdom.

If you want to help, wear a mask, stop being divisive, make sure voting will be easy in November, and stop mocking, threatening, and demeaning others. It’s not a religious practice.

Kennedy, who describes himself as a “Catholic Baptist,” retired after twelve years at the First Baptist Church of Dayton, Ohio. He has no trouble pointing out the differences he has with the more fundamentalist members of the diverse denomination. He posted a couple of longer additional messages to the President and the responses illustrate the wide differences among Baptists—and among those of other denominations who call themselves Christian. See https://baptistnews.com/article/self-described-catholic-baptist-leaves-ohio-church-embarks-on-writing-career/#.Xsrq8mhKiUk if you want to know more about him and if you’re a Facebooker, you can go to his page or if you want to hear what he sounds like in the pulpit, go to the First Baptist Church webpage in Ottawa, Kansas.

Last Sunday morning, we went to the presidential webpage to check on President Trump’s schedule for Sunday, May 24:

President Donald Trump has no public events on his schedule today and is expected to remain in the White House with the first family. With the ongoing coronavirus outbreak and current recovery efforts, the president is likely to meet with national leaders and public officials regarding the needs of the coming week.

Mmmmm-hmm. Churches are essential but not so essential that he would do what he urged millions of Americans, particularly his faithful followers (read that any way you would prefer) to do—go to church even “with the ongoing coronavirus outbreak and current recovery efforts.” Wonder why he didn’t tell Melania and Baron Sunday morning, “We’re going to church—right now!”  Instead he went out and he worshipped the putter and the driver.

Sometime when the man gets all worked up like this, we wish somebody would say, “Oh, go take a pill!” But—– hasn’t he already been doing that?

Us vs It—Part VI, This better work

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This is the third day that Missouri is open for business and our lives haven’t changed here on our quiet street. The people at our house haven’t been tested yet and we don’t know anyone who has been. Our two hospitals offer testing. Maybe we’ll go see one of them soon. Columbia has five locations. Osage Beach has one. We mention those places because a lot of Jefferson City people work in Columbia, or will when the University reopens. And a lot of Columbia people work in Jefferson City now that state government is getting back to the new abnormal. A lot of these folks never quit working, of course. They just haven’t been in their offices. But we’ll be watching case numbers in Boone and Cole Counties, in particular, because of the numbers of people who pass each other going in opposite directions twice every day on Highway 63. And we’ll be watching case numbers in Camden County and Osage Beach because the reopening means tourism season has begun.

Governor Parson, the state health director, and various other state and private entities have assured us in the daily briefings that Missouri’s most critical numbers have been declining for the last two weeks, one of the main measurements needed to reopen. We’ve been assured the state is ready to quickly respond to hot spots such as meat packing plants in California and St. Joseph (St. Joseph had only one testing station when we checked the list last Sunday and California has none) and Marshall (which has one).

We have welcomed the Governor’s daily briefings. They have been examples of the kinds of Coronavirus briefings adults should conduct and we appreciate the recent change that allows reporters to be present instead of submitting questions. That’s important because answers often lead to other questions and the old system didn’t provide that opportunity very well.

We understand the growing pressure on states to reopen for business but the lack of a vaccine and the admission that the virus has not and will not go away leaves us nervous. The YMCA reopened on Monday with a lot of precautionary policies put into place to keep us safe. We haven’t resumed our three-times-a-week morning workouts yet although we miss our friends a great deal. We’ll go back soon, just not right now.

Our church isn’t going to go back to in-person worship services until the first Sunday in June. I don’t know that we’ll go to a restaurant or to a movie theatre anytime soon. We both plan to wear our masks for awhile any time we go someplace where a lot of people are visiting or shopping.

We are going to tiptoe into the world, not dash into it.

We want things to be okay. We want to be able to be with friends. We want our working friends to get their jobs back.

Your faithful observer has kept a journal since March 28th and it is unlikely that journal will stop anytime soon. Our wish is that there be little to add to it but we’re keeping it going into autumn, into the next flu season and, if the scientists are correct, into the second wave of this virus.

To be candid, we suspect reopening the state and the nation is as much a political decision as it is anything else. But reopening has to occur, or had to occur, sooner or later and most of the people in positions to decide when reopening is appropriate and safe (enough) recognize the responsibility they are assuming by giving the go-ahead. It seems to us from having watched the daily briefings from our capitol that the reopening order has not been hastily or easily given.

We do hope there are thresholds in place that will determine when stay-at-home orders will be put back in place.

If you’ve read these entries this year you know we spent a lot of time looking at what happened with the last great pandemic, the Spanish Flu of 1918-19, and while our abilities to fight a pandemic are better than they were, the shortcomings in response that we have seen leave us nervous.

We don’t think our governor would unlock the doors if he didn’t think it was safe to go out and responsibly conduct ourselves and our business.

But this is bad stuff and more Americans died from it in April than died in the entire Vietnam War and it is still on the loose.

This reopening better work.

 

Us vs. It—part III, Re-opening Day

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This is the third or fourth version of this entry from your faithful observer as he has struggled to keep up with our President and his ping-pong positions on the pandemic.

We started with the anticipation that President Trump would be convening a task force to look at when he can proclaim the country re-opened for business. He called it the biggest decision of his life. Within seventy-two hours he had amplified his position, asserting that he and he alone could order the lifting of social distancing and other policies put in place by the nation’s governors.

Now, after several governors have suggested rather clearly that he didn’t know what he was talking about, he has decided he’s going to “authorize” each governor to reopen states as the governors see fit. This is a big CYA effort (or if you prefer a more elevated phrase, a face-saving effort) and governors are likely to maintain that they don’t need his “authorization” either.

The way things are going, this entry could be out of date before sundown. But we’re going ahead anyway.

The President is under a lot of pressure to get the economy moving again. Some of that pressure is coming from Wall Street, which is highly-important to him personally as well as politically.

The Washington Post reported a few days ago that the Trump Organization had laid off 1,500 people and closed seventeen of its twenty-four properties in various parts of the world because of the virus. Based on previous Trump financial disclosures, says the newspaper, the closed properties generate about $650,000 a day. The organization’s payments on leases and property taxes are coming due or are past-due.

Some of this is increasingly political. He needs a big economic turnaround before the Republican National Convention opens in Charlotte, North Carolina on August 27. He needs the virus to be gone and a major economic resurgence to talk about at the convention and in the weeks before the election. He can continue deflecting criticism of his handling of the epidemic to someone else—as he already has in pointing a finger at China, Congress, Democrats, the Obama Administration, governors, and the World Health Organization. But by late August, he’ll have a hard time generating enough other boogeymen to deflect enough blame away from an administration that had taken exclusive credit for the growing economy and now wants no criticism for its sharp decline.

While he now seems willing to let governors decide what is best for their states, we’ll be watching to see if this new attitude also includes better assistance to the states in the recovery. As we have heard, he has blamed governors for their lack of protective equipment for healthcare workers.

Actually, we were looking forward to a possible legal donnybrook between the governors and the President if he had maintained his position that he has the exclusive power to reopen state economies. We do wonder if his new position still includes part of his previous statement that if he disagrees with a governor’s actions or lack of them, “I would overrule a governor, and I have a right to do it.”

We all know what could happen if he tries to overrule a governor, don’t we? What will the President do if a governor refuses to be overruled? Will he withhold federal disaster aid? That won’t win many friends or votes. Will he sue the states or the governors? Will the states and their governors sue him?

Our Governor Parson, asked on Monday about the President’s remarks about exclusive powers, said the President “well-knows the authority of the states.”  He said he’s not worried.” We might have to go back to the early days of World War II to find a governor who suddenly has so many things on his plate.

The President still hopes something good for him can happen on May 1. He seems to be one of the few who thinks that date is realistic.

Here’s an outlook for Missouri is concerned:

Leaders of the Missouri legislature hope to re-convene the General Assembly on April 27. Governor Parson said yesterday that would be okay with him as long as they maintain social distancing—as they did last week when they passed the supplemental budget bill. Some projections underline the governor’s cautionary note.

The University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, which has been cited in several White House Coronavirus briefings, a few days ago lowered the anticipated death toll from the virus at 61,545, quite a drop from a possible 240,000 suggested earlier. It says social distancing is the key to the lower number. But while the 61,545 was the hard number we read about and heard about, the institute admitted it was only an estimate, somewhere between 26,487 and 155,311 in its modeling.

We checked the projection graphs a few hours before posting this entry. The institute has increased its projected death total to 68,841 with the 68,841st death coming on June 28. The hard number falls in a bracket of 30,188 and 175,961.

The forecast estimated that on May 1, the nation’s hospitals will need 49,891 beds, 10,937 in intensive care, and 8,953 invasive ventilators. It suggests 976 people will die that day.

Not a good day to reopen the country. We expect the modeling will changes from day to day as new statistics are fed into the system.

The IHME’s latest forecast is for Missouri’s peak day is April 29, just one day before May 1, two days after the legislature convenes. The good news is that no bed shortages or ICU space shortages are forecast. But we will need 313 ventilators. The institute forecasts that we’ll be averaging 50 deaths per day by then, part of an anticipated total of 1,712 with the 1,712th death coming on June 16. That’s the hard number forecast so far. The institute model says that’s within a range of 420 and 5,557.

Governor Parson has said more than once that he’s making decisions about re-starting the economy based on Missouri-specific data. He needs a lot more of it. Our testing numbers, although growing, are not impressive and Missouri as well as other states are going to have to have large improvements in testing to make a safe determination of when stay-at-home orders should be lifted and social distancing standards should be eased.

The President realizes that the opposition gains more ammunition each day the virus creates a new hot spot, each day that first responders are overwhelmed, every day that doctors and nurses are exposed to the virus because they lack the personal protective equipment they need. He knows, or should know, that declaring the company open is a great risk if the virus is still killing significant numbers of people each day.

Governors also must be aware that easing the protective steps they have ordered could backfire on them, many of them facing re-election this year. The autumn flu season will have started by the election in November. The autumn sports seasons will draw thousands of people to distances far less than six feet, elevating the danger of a new virus surge. The last thing the President or the governors need is a flare-up of COVID-19 ten days or fewer before the election.

A popular song during World War I proclaimed, “We won’t come back ‘till it’s over, over there.” The lyric can change to fit our times: “We won’t come back ‘till it’s over, over here,” with a new definition of “come back” and another new definition for “it.”

 

 

Us vs. It—part II, Waist deep

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At the height of the Vietnam War one of the nation’s greatest folk singers began performing an allegorical song called “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy.”

When Pete Seeger performed it on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour more than fifty years ago, the song became part of a national controversy because many people, apparently including the CBS censors, thought that the next-to-last verse criticized President Johnson’s increasing investment of American lives in what some already thought was an unwinnable war.

It didn’t help that Seeger was among those blacklisted during the McCarthy Era (he was part of The Weavers, the group that brought folk singing to early popularity. But the group was too liberal for McCarthyites) and he was still considered somewhat “leftist,” therefore, “subversive.”

The CBS censors cut the song out of the show but when Seeger performed it on a later program—one of the last in the show’s brief run—it was allowed to stay in, perhaps because of the public reaction to its deletion the first time.

We keep hearing President Trump talk about the need to re-open the country or to get big-time sports going again even as he also says we’re headed for the deadliest part of the Coronavirus assault. The shutdown of a part of the economy—the hospitality industry—is a big blow to his personal interests and reopening the country, as he likes to put it, would certainly be to his benefit. We make the observation without implying that he is driven only by his personal economic concerns but his insistence that reopening business in the wake of the ongoing pandemic brings Pete Seeger’s song from another era to mind. It was the next-to-last verse that got Seeger and the Smothers Brothers in trouble then and it might get this observer in trouble today, at least with some people. Have at it in the comment area at the end if you wish—either way. Just remember our civility guidelines.

Waist Deep in the Big Muddy

It was back in nineteen forty-two,
I was a member of a good platoon.
We were on maneuvers in-a Louisiana,
One night by the light of the moon.
The captain told us to ford a river,
That’s how it all begun.
We were — knee deep in the Big Muddy,
But the big fool said to push on.

 

The Sergeant said, “Sir, are you sure,
This is the best way back to the base?”
“Sergeant, go on! I forded this river
‘Bout a mile above this place.
It’ll be a little soggy but just keep slogging.
We’ll soon be on dry ground.”
We were, waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool said to push on.

 

The Sergeant said, “Sir, with all this equipment
No man will be able to swim.”
“Sergeant, don’t be a Nervous Nellie, ”
The Captain said to him.
“All we need is a little determination;
Men, follow me, I’ll lead on.”
We were, neck deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool said to push on.

 

All at once, the moon clouded over,
We heard a gurgling cry.
A few seconds later, the captain’s helmet
Was all that floated by.
The Sergeant said, “Turn around men!
I’m in charge from now on.”
And we just made it out of the Big Muddy
With the captain dead and gone.

 

We stripped and dived and found his body
Stuck in the old quicksand.
I guess he didn’t know that the water was deeper
Than the place he’d once before been.
Another stream had joined the Big Muddy
‘Bout a half mile from where we’d gone.
We were lucky to escape from the Big Muddy
When the big fool said to push on.

 

Well, I’m not going to point any moral,
I’ll leave that for yourself
Maybe you’re still walking, you’re still talking
You’d like to keep your health.
But every time I read the papers
That old feeling comes on;

We’re, waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool says to push on.

Waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool says to push on.
Waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool says to push on.


Waist deep! Neck deep! Soon even a
Tall man’ll be over his head, we’re
Waist deep in the Big Muddy!
And the big fool says to push on!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXnJVkEX8O4

We are not implying in this entry that President Trump is “the big fool” of today’s “war.” That would be name-calling and we do not believe name-calling either solves problems or ennobles the person who has nothing of intrinsic value to otherwise add to a conversation.

A blogger, Chimesfreedom*, has a nice piece about Seeger’s performance of the song on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. Tom and Dick Smothers were constantly at war with the CBS censors and Seeger’s performance of the song on their season-opening show in 1967 led to a loud public fight about censorship.

http://www.chimesfreedom.com/2014/01/28/the-censored-pete-seeger-performance-on-the-smothers-brothers-comedy-hour/

The brothers’ constant fight with CBS about the content of their show led the network to abruptly cancel it, despite good ratings, after just two years. It was replaced by Hee-Haw.

Chimesfreedom is a blog with an unnamed “editor-in-chief” who describes himself as “a writer and professor in New York.”

Us vs. It

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Finger- pointing is not going to solve the health problems we are facing or will be facing in the next few months as the pandemic sweeps from both coasts into the midlands. And it won’t do any good after the Coronavirus runs its course. We have serious problems and we can’t afford to waste time blaming this person or that country if we’re going to overcome those problems. So enough of the name-calling and blame-shifting already.

Things aren’t happening to other people They’re happening to us. And that’s what’s so unsettling. The Coronavirus isn’t something happening only in some distant countries. It might be next door. It might even be in our house and we don’t know it.

It’s not a tsunami at some remote Pacific Island, a tornado in another town, a flood in another state, or even a fire down the block.

It’s……somewhere. Close. Everywhere, maybe. It’s even making the stock market sick.

My friend Joe, a retired homicide cop, lamented at the YMCA before it closed indefinitely that back in the day he could see who might shoot at him and he could do something about it. But this Coronavirus, well, this is something impossible to relate to because we’ve never experienced anything like it. It is forcing us to become patient in a short-attention-span world.

Joe and I and several other friends at the Y all fall into the demographic group that this virus likes to hit. We like to think that our regular activities on the machines and with the weights and on the walking track make us a LITTLE more bulletproof.

But who knows?

The YMCA and the church are the main social outlets for several of us retired folks. Our church is doing worship services on its Facebook page instead of in the sanctuary now. The only activity still going on is our food pantry distributions. When we all left the Y for the last time before it closed, we didn’t know when we’d see each other again. This virus is shrinking our world, generally and personally. One good thing is that the weather is warm enough that we can at least go outside and walk about the block or something and at least breathe outside air—when it’s not raining.

Our fortunes are becoming unfortunate, something that didn’t happen in the Spanish Influenza era when retirement plans, health savings accounts, and insurance were not so much a part of life.

There is a choice to be made—people or the economy.   We can always rebuild the economy, though it might take more time that we wish. But we can’t rebuild the people we will lose if our leaders who think the economy is the key to their continued employment choose to make people more vulnerable and less valuable than the numbers on the stock market. The health of my body is more important than the health of someone’s portfolio.

We already are past the finger-pointing stage. It matters not where this outbreak began. What matter is how it is ended. Blaming others for the start of a crisis that we must help end is not an excuse for disarray in combatting it.

When this ends, as it will, there will be much room for a national soul-searching with the understanding that talk is cheap and the protections, treatments, and cures will require financial commitment based on our responsibility to be our brother’s and sister’s keeper.

Will this change us? It better change us. It already has, in fact.

 

Dr. Crane on truth

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(We normally reserve any political observations for our Wednesday posting but an event a few days ago has led us to bend that standard for this Monday. Last week, President Trump held a conference call with the nation’s governors to discuss the pandemic. When some governors questioned the federal help their states could get from Washington, the President said Washington was serving only as a “backup” to their efforts. That prompted Washington’s governor to respond that the nation doesn’t need a backup, it needs a Tom Brady—a reference to the great quarterback of the New England Patriots. At a news conference, the President seemed to miss the point entirely when he told reporters, “They think Tom Brady should be leading the effort. That’s only fake news, and I like Tom Brady, spoke to him the other day, he’s a great guy.” Our strong personal attitude on the President’s accusations that the mainstream media is nothing but liars aside, there is nothing fake about the news of the COVID-10 pandemic as it envelops our world ever more tragically. Truth, consistent truth, is badly needed in these circumstances. So we turn to Dr. Frank Crane and his thoughts just after the Great War on—

THE UPROAR

Violence is the gesture of Impotence.

Brutality is the outward sign of inward Cowardice.

The persecutor is not quite sure of himself. It’s the half-doubt lights the fagot.

When the boy passes the graveyard at night he whistles, because he is afgraid of being afraid. It’s the same with all who vociferate.

Only those who believe with their whole hearts can keep still.

The screaming reformers do not believe their cause—wholly.

If the Germans had been sure of the superiority of their Kultur they would have left it alone, to conquer the world by its inherent excellence. Because they were not sure, they went to war.

“Defenders of the Faith!” Ludicrous title! For real faith needs no defense. It is a defense.

You don’t need to stand up for the Truth, and to fight for it, and to preserve it against the enemy. When you talk that way it shows you don’t understand the quality of Truth.

Truth is the one indestructible, ever-green, eternally persistent thing on earth.

All we have to do is to see it, to believe in it, to adjust our lives, thought, and speech to it, and wait. By and by, it always wins.

Hence genuine believers in the Truth do not “strive nor cry, neither is their voice heard in the street.” They are quiet, calm, glad. They have hold of the one thing that cannot fail.

They lean against the pillars of the universe.

The Infinite flows through them, and they smile at the contortions of the Finite.

Whoever is sure is undisturbed.

All fret, worry, apprehension, and morbidity arise from uncertainty. Those who fight are not quite sure.

Only those who are sure can afford to turn the other cheek.

Only the sure can afford to forgive their enemies.

Few reach the dizzy height of Jesus, who saw the Truth so clearly, and believed so utterly inits triumph, that He refused to struggle for it.

The most amazing thing about Him was His leisureliness.

So true it is that “he that believeth shall not make haste.”

Most of us have only caught up with Joshua; we are miles from Jesus.

We juggle His texts, but have no idea of His vast, calm spirit.

Let us find the Truth, even if it be only the Truth about wood, or metal, or mathematics, just any little piece of the Truth, and believe it, and adjust ourselves to it, and be happy; for out of Truth flows peace.

 

Quixote

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I have a friend who thinks efforts to convince the legislature to make the casino industry financially support saving the irreplaceable treasure that is the Steamboat Arabia Museum is equivalent to Don Quixote tilting at windmills.

Maybe it is.

But if you never tilt at windmills, the windmills always win.

The Senate Appropriations Committee last week took a look at two of this year’s bills legalizing casino wagering on sports. After listening to the testimony on similar bills during the last two sessions, I decided it’s time to change the narrative.

—-Because the entire focus so far has been on what the casino industry wants. What it wants the legislature to do is to ignore the state’s promises to fund some important state and local services and programs with taxes the casinos don’t want to pay.

This is what I told the committee in the limited time given for individual testimony (this, by the way, is not a complaint about that. Committees try to shoehorn their meetings between other hearings and floor sessions and time is precious. So they try to make sure everybody gets to speak who wants to speak):

I am Bob Priddy, a resident of Jefferson City. A year ago when I was talking with most of you about a proposal to have casino admission fees increased by a dollar to finance construction of a National Steamboat Museum to house the artifacts from the steamboat Arabia when that museum closes in Kansas City in 2026, my research took me to a number of related issues. Sports wagering is one.

I do not oppose casinos, nor do I oppose sports wagering. I do not oppose the casinos making a lot of money. But I am concerned by the steps the industry takes to keep it. These bills are prime examples.

There is not one word in either of the sports wagering bills you have heard this morning that protects the state’s interests in casino gambling.

Taxes on adjusted gross receipts—21 percent—produce revenue for education.

Two-dollar admission fees paid to the state are split with one dollar going to home dock communities and the other dollar going to the Missouri Gaming Commission and a series of programs it administers for veterans homes and cemeteries, college scholarships, and help for those addicted to gambling.

The bills protect the interests of five corporations that operate thirteen businesses, to the detriment of services that are supposed to be supported by casino taxes.

During some House Interim Committee meetings looking at sports gambling and other casino issues last fall, witness Chris Krafcik of Eilers and Krejcik, a research and consulting firm in Irvine, California, suggested casino income from sports wagering would be 289-million dollars at maturity. The industry’s own numbers show that’s more revenue than was produced from ALL table games in the last fiscal year.

But these bills would tax those sizeable new revenues at less than one-half to less than one-third of the rate of tax on the table games. One of the tax rates would the lowest in the nation.

The result? A significantly lower contribution to education funding from this new form of gaming.

In other hearings the proponents have suggested lower taxes because the house advantage in sports wagering is “only” five percent. But a 2015 study from the University of Nevada-Las Vegas Center for Gaming Research indicates a house advantage of five percent is actually pretty high, not very low.

Proponents also have said sports wagering would bring more people to casinos although I have not heard any specific forecasts. Attendance at our casinos has been dropping since fiscal 2010-11 and it’s down another three percent so far this fiscal year. State admission fee income is at its lowest in more than two decades. It will take a whole lot of people drawn to casinos to bet on sports to offset those ongoing losses.

At a conference last year, industry analysts suggested that within five to ten years, 90 percent of sports wagering would be done remotely. Only ten percent would be done in person in casinos—and they did not suggest how much of that ten percent would be people already in the casino who visit the sports book.

Either way, having only ten percent of the sports bettors in the casinos won’t do much to improve on-site wagering.  

And it certainly won’t do much for the state’s income from admission fees.

Again, the bill seems to abundantly protect and enhance the interests of the casinos but do nothing or next to nothing for the state’s interests.

And I have not addressed how the two-dollar admission fee, established in 1993, is enriching the industry while producing a negative economic impact on state services the fee is supposed to support—and how within five years the casinos are likely to make more from admission fees than they pay to the state.

Point Two: This is not just a sports gambling bill.

It is the first major move to a 21st century gambling industry. But state law and regulations remain creations of the 20th century and their adequacy should be evaluated to protect the states’ interests.

This is the first proposal for remote gambling but more will come as casinos try to appeal to a new generation of people who don’t go to the casinos but will use the electronic devices they have grown up with to place bets. Casinos must attract that demographic to replace the older constituents who are dying off—and they’re not being replaced through the turnstiles by the television and internet generation.

The spread of remote wagering already is being planned by the industry that is developing new games that can be played remotely.  

These bills offer nothing to protect the state’s interests in these circumstances.  

In these two areas the legislation tilts the already-tilted table more in favor of casinos and farther away from the state’s interests in financing services with casino income.

As I understand these proposals—

Casinos want a new form of gambling that will produce big income gains but they don’t want sports wagering taxed the same way table games producing less revenue are taxed. The justifications for such lower tax rates in light of these numbers seems to make little sense, to me at least and I hope to you.

Whether this committee or the general assembly feels it appropriate to advance these proposals that have no protection for the state’s interest, or to put them aside until the economic scales can be brought more into balance is a decision for this committee. But I hope you will seriously consider these issues that have not been much, if any, part of the discussion until now.

I have prepared a lengthy memo that goes into greater detail—and includes citations for the statements I make—that I will send to the chairman later today after I have added a few tweaks based on this morning’s testimony. I know how busy legislators are at this stage of a session but I hope you will dig into that material for more details on what I’ve been saying and seriously consider whether these proposals are in the best interests of six million Missourians or just in the best interests of five corporations and thirteen businesses.

Will the committee take any of these words to heart in a campaign year when the interests pushing these bills have a lot of influence? Will the state’s interests be protected by those elected to serve in a building where the state motto is carved over the main entrance: “Let the Welfare of the People be the Supreme Law?”

Dr. Crane of truth and lying

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We thought we had posted this entry last week but we must have been more befuddled than usual.

(The cynical observation that “you can tell when a politician is lying; his lips move” is easy to make in these times but it also is unfair to the large majority of people we elect to serve us. After decades of watching our political processes, your observer likes to think good people are elected to work in a badly-flawed system where they find their principles challenged daily. Make no mistake: there are liars abroad which is why we have extensive fact-checking after each presidential debate or presidential rally, news availability, or statement. It is comforting to think, no matter how realistic such thoughts are, that the more honest person will emerge victorious. The real world doesn’t always work that way but we cannot abandon hope. Here’s Dr. Crane on

THE TRUTH IN ADVERTISING

Listen, young man! The cleverest man in the world is the man that tells the truth, and tells it all the time, not occasionally.

Sometimes you can profit by a lie, but it is like dodging bullets; you never know when you are going to get hurt.

Lying is a game. Sometimes it is a very exciting game. But it is essentially gambling. And gambling, any sort of gambling, is not business.

The fundamental laws of business are just as accurate and as well established as the principles of geometry.

It is hard to see this, for our visual range is limited. Most us can see the crooked dollar coming today, but not the ten straight dollars it is going to lose us tomorrow.

Real business success is cumulative. It grows like a snowball. And the one thing that makes it keeps us growing, even while we sleep, is our persistent truthfulness and dependableness.

If you put an advertisement in the paper announcing goods worth five dollars for sale at two dollars, and if the people come and buy, and find out the stuff is not worth ten cents, you may make a one day’s gain, but you have alienated a lot of indignant customers and have started to saw away the posts that sustain your reputation.

If you have a store rented for a week only and propose to conduct a sacrifice sale of goods that will make everybody disgusted who buys then, then perhaps you may lie with a high hand and stretched-out arm.

But if you are in the town to stay, and want regular, returning, increasing, satisfied and friendly customers, it will pay you to stick to the old-fashioned truth.

Exaggeration is lying. It does not take long for the people in the community to get the habit of discounting twenty-five percent of all you say.

If you continually overstate and vociferate you must keep on getting louder, until you soon become incoherent.

But if you habitually state only what is soberly, honestly true, by and by everything you say will be away above par.

A man’s repute for truthfulness is as much a part of his capital as are his store and stock; so much so that he can raise money on it.

As civilization progresses, business becomes more and more an affair of credit, of trust. The very foundation of big business is trustworthiness. Therefore if you are ever going to get beyond the peanut-stand and push-cart stage of merchandise you must establish a basis of dependableness.

There is not one thing in this world, young man, that can be of as much value to you as building up a reputation such that men will say, “your word is as good as your bond.”

It is well to be clever and keen and Johnny-on-the-spot, it is well to look out for number one and to know a good bargain, but best of all is to have the world say of you:

“Whatever that man says can absolutely be relied upon.”

Worthless Tuesday

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Missouri was unworthy of playing presidential primary politics with the fourteen states and one territory that held primary elections yesterday. The big folks who run the national political parties have dismissed us from most important single day of the pre-convention process.

Missouri will have more delegates at the Democratic National Convention (78) than nine of the states in the primary. It will have more delegates at the Republican National Convention (54) than TEN of the Super Tuesday states.

But Missouri isn’t important is this process. The whole Super Tuesday thing leaves a bad taste in the mouths of a lot of people. It is, of course, better than having fifty different primaries with fifty different stages full of debate contestants and who knows how many town hall forums before each election. But Super Tuesdays can take a lot of the wind out of political balloons by establishing reasonably clear front runners and start undermining what little interest there is in the national conventions four or five months before they’re held.

The aggravating thing, however, is that we have three times more Democratic delegates than Arkansas, and Maine, almost five times more than Vermont, almost a dozen more than Colorado, three more than Minnesota, fourteen more than Tennessee. We more than double the number of Republican delegates from Maine, triple the number from Vermont, have a dozen-plus more than Arkansas, thirteen more than Massachusetts, fifteen more than Minnesota, eleven more than Oklahoma and 34 more than Utah. We even top Virginia by a half-dozen.

AMERICAN SAMOA with its six Democratic delegates was part of Super Tuesday!

We remember—it must have been 2012—when Missouri was kept out of Super Tuesday. We watched the Missouri Senate, in a state of great urinary agitation, rail against the idea, especially after being told that if our Republicans didn’t stay out of Super Tuesday, our delegates to the convention might as well stay at home because they wouldn’t be seated.

Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft has a great idea. The hell with it. Forget about a presidential primary in Missouri. It means nothing. Delegates are picked in party caucuses anyway. He’s been talking about this sing last summer, at least, if not longer. A few days ago he told the House Budget Committee his office can find something far better to spent $9.1 million dollars on than an election that brings no campaigning candidates to the state and isn’t binding.

Good idea.

We normally highly object to any move that takes votes away from people (term limits, for example). But the Missouri Presidential Primary began in 1988 when Missouri Congressman Richard Gephardt had dreams of greatness. He won the Iowa caucus, the Missouri Democratic Primary and the primary in South Dakota. He finished fifth in a field of six major candidates overall and was gone within weeks..

Does anybody remember how our presidential primary turned out in 2016?   Hillary beat Bernie by 0.24 of a percentage point. Donald Trump beat Ted Cruz by 0.21 of a percentage point.

Anybody remember any significant candidate appearances in Missouri during this election cycle? Out of Tuesday, out of mind.

It’s time to kill this useless exercise. Jay Ashcroft has it right. And he has a much better way to spend $9.1 million bucks.

It’s formally known as a presidential preference primary. Our primary preference is to quit wasting money on it.

 

It’s not the size of the dog in the fight—

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It’s the size of the fight in the dog.

Call it what you will: a saying. Or an axiom, or a truism, and maybe an adage or a precept or an aphorism. The thought comes to mind with the President of the United States, who is six-feet-three, disparaging his most commercially visible challenger, “Mini-Mike” (as he calls him) Bloomberg, who is five-foot-eight.

We will not indulge in stereotyping politicians by saying all of them would be smaller if they lost all their hot air. That’s not fair so we’re not going to go down that road.

We will note, however, that President Trump ranks only third on the physical stature list of presidents. He’s a half-inch shorter than Lyndon Johnson. We wonder if being only THIRD tallest irritates him.

The President’s comparison of his physical size to the physical stature of those who think he should be one-and-done has prompted us to look at the physical sizes of those who want or wanted to be chosen to oppose him later this year.

In recent memory (my “recent” might be more “past” than your “recent”) the tallest presidential candidate was Crystal City, Missouri native Bill Bradley, who was 6’5” tall when he ran in 2000. Bradley will be 77 later this year and probably has shrunk by an inch or two. One brief candidate in this election cycle equaled him—New York Mayor Bill DeBlasio, whose support came up way short and made him one of the first pretenders to the throne to drop out.

President Trump, however, does still have an opponent taller than he—more or less. Former Massachusetts Governor Bill Weld got nine percent of the vote in New Hampshire last week (obviously he didn’t import enough illegal aliens to vote for him—-oops, we apologize for that remark; it just slipped out). One unidentified person who also uses Twitter suggested that President Trump did not want to debate Weld in New Hampshire because Weld is an inch taller than the President. So, by the way, was Abraham Lincoln.

Two 6-4 Democrats got in and got out of the campaign: Beto O’Rourke and Wayne Messam. Cory Booker is 6’2” tall. Two six-footers remain: Biden and Sanders.

Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar, and Mike Bloomberg can stand nose-to-nose-to-nose (a picture of that would go viral in an eyeblink and would trigger tweeting like you wouldn’t believe) at five-eight.

The leader of the Yang Gang is 5-7. Kamala Harris is 5-2.

If Harris had stayed in the race and had she been elected, she would be the shortest President in American history at 5’2” tall.

Only nineteen of our Presidents have been taller than six feet. Our own Harry Truman was only one inch taller than “mini-Mike.” Among the political giants but physically small men to precede the proudly-tall President Trump are John Adams (5-7), the same size as William McKinley. Martin Van Buren and Benjamin Harrison were 5-6. And the shortest of our Presidents was James Madison, who is considered the “Father of the Constitution” and the Bill of Rights and the co-author of the Federalist Papers, all of which played a big part in the arguments for and against the removal of President Trump. Madison only five feet four inches tall. And what a debate opponent he would be in contemporary times!

We wonder if President Trump has a disparaging nickname for him.

It’s not the size of the dog, etc.

Speaking of dogs, particularly old dogs—-

Another bunch of information for your campaign trivia discussions is the age of the candidates when they were or will be sworn into office. A related discussion items is the importance of their selection of a running mate.

The youngest President of the United States was Theodore Roosevelt, who was sworn in at the age of 42 years, 322 days after William McKinley was assassinated. The youngest elected President was John F. Kennedy, who was 43 years, 236 days old in 1961.

President Trump is the oldest person ever to take the Presidential oath. He was 70 years, 220 days, older the Ronald Reagan at his first inauguration. Reagan as 69 years, 349 days. Four years later, some thought his age was a campaign issue. But in a debate four years later with challenger Walter Mondale, who was 16 years and 11 months younger than Reagan, the incumbent uttered the memorable, “I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience,” Reagan, of course, became the oldest president to leave office, another record President Trump could break if he wins in November.

One of the remaining Democrat candidates would break the records of Roosevelt and Kennedy by a significant margin if he wins in November. Mayor Pete would be 39 years and one day old.

On the other hand, FOUR Democrats would break the record as the oldest President if one of them wins. Elizabeth Warren would be the youngest of the bunch at 71-212. Joe Biden would be 78 years, 61 days old. Bloomberg would be 78-341 and Bernie would be 79-134.

Tom Steyer, by the way, would be a spritely 63 years, 207 days. Amy Klobuchar would be 60-240.

All of which points to an issue seldom discussed either in debates or among radio talkers or even around the table at the local coffee place: the vice-presidential candidate.

Michael Richard Pence will be 61 on June 7. Unless he inadvertently disagrees with the president about something, he’s going to be on the ticket again this year.

Among Democrats who have fallen by the campaign wayside: On inauguration day, 2021, Andrew Yang will be five months away from turning 47. Cory Booker will be eighty-eight days short of 52. Michael Bennett will be just past 56. Tulsi Gabbard will be 75 days short of 40. Beto O’Rourke will be about 47 ½.

Nothing prohibits a nominee from picking someone outside his field of opponents, as President Trump did, with Mike Pence.

And some voters, looking at the ages of the incumbent and of many of his challengers, might find the choice of vice-president a factor in what they do in November. Not many, maybe, but some.