Convening the session

Almost 200 men and women you and I have chosen to represent us in writing the laws that govern our lives begin their work today at the Capitol.  Some are rookies with high ideals and others are weather-beaten veterans facing the last of their eight or sixteen years making those decisions.

Governor John S. Phelps speaking to the General Assembly on February 8, 1877, said: “I trust we are assembled, not as partisans, but as patriots, with a sincere determination to support the right and to condemn the wrong. We are assembled not to carry out our own wishes, but to respect and speak the voice of the people, restrained within constitutional limits. For a time the destinies of the people of this State have been confided in us, and it is to be hoped our deliberations will be characterized by wisdom, patriotism and justice.”

It would be interesting for this year’s rookies to write down their goals and ambitions, their ethical standards that they hope to carry into their service, and their thoughts about who they represent and seal them into an envelope that will not be opened for, say, twenty years.

Then, as they start their final year in the capitol—whether it be their eighth or their sixteenth—they write their accomplishments, the ethical standards they have at the end and the challengers to them they have faced and the alterations in them they are brave enough to acknowledge, and who they really represented in the end.  Those statements should be sealed in an envelope and not opened until they open the first envelope, enough time having passed that they have a perspective on their years in office that they might have lacked when they closed that second envelope.

We have a lot of documents at the State Historical Society of Missouri.  It would be interesting for future generations of Missourians wanting to study Missouri’s political system to read the contents of those two envelopes.

A year ago a young State Representative facing his last year in the House and with no plans to try to move to the Senate did something like that and what he wrote, published in his constituent newsletter is worth saving. And it’s worth reading every two years by rookies.

Ten years ago, a former State Senator who was seen as a rising star in his party wrote of how his political ambition cost him a career.

We offer these two reflections for consideration by those who begin the 100th session of the General Assembly of the state of Missouri.

Representative Jay Barnes of Jefferson City will be most remembered as the chairman of the committee that investigated the machinations of Governor Eric Greitens and his earlier investigation of the Mamtech scandal in Moberly.  In his newsletter of January 5, 2018, he wrote, in part:

There have been great moments of satisfaction from feeling of a job well done – and moments of gloom from failure. Such is life. Sometimes when I think of the things I’ve learned over these eight years, I think of Bob Seger – “wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then.”

As I reflect on my eight years, I noticed something on the House website that puts things in perspective – this week we are beginning the second regular session of the 99th General Assembly. It is the 198th time in our state’s history that this has happened. For those nearly 200 years, our statehouse has been filled with men and women of goodwill – and also a fair share of opportunists, con men, and people whose ambition you could see through a brick wall.

 …Governments are inherently prone to corruption — both the criminal kind and the softer corruption that settles in over time. Soft corruption happens when a legislator sponsors a piece of legislation just because a lobbyist asked, without knowing anything about the subject or asking any questions. It happens when a legislator grows lazy and makes decisions about votes without reading the actual bill or considering what it does, but just asking who’s for it and against it.  

It also happens when their heart or head tells them a vote is wrong, but they do it anyway because of pressure, inertia, an unwillingness to stick their neck out, or for some favor to be traded later. Instead of doing what is right, the path of convenience and personal advantage is taken instead.  Of course, it’s human nature to avoid confrontation and to have ambition. The question is not whether it will happen, but how often and whether it will happen on votes that have serious impact on the lives of people beyond the Capitol’s marble halls.  

A colleague once explained the “favor to be named later” idea to me when he tried to flip my vote on a bill. “I disagree with your no vote, but even you can’t say this is a huge deal,” he said. “And, you know, you may have a bill that comes along where someone else might be on the fence, and you’re gonna need their vote. Why don’t you just throw a vote here, and then when your bill comes up, the favor will get returned?”

This is legislative utilitarianism: the idea that good ends justify bad means to get there. It may help clear a legislator’s conscience if they don’t think too hard about it, but it’s just as flawed as utilitarianism anywhere else. Doing something you believe to be wrong (even if it’s just a little wrong) under the belief that it will have a good result on an unrelated issue can justify nearly anything so long as you are an optimist about that potential good result in the future. And it’s addictive. Once you do it once, it’s all the more difficult to resist the logic the next time around.  I feel that I have resisted the temptation more than most, but I speak from experience: these trades are not worth it. Not even the little ones. They whittle away at your soul, and, as Jesus said in Mark 8:36, “For what shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul?”

There’s no legislative cure for human nature. So, what is to be done? I think the answer for the individual legislator is no different from the answer in the real world: when delusions of grandeur tempt, where ambition or fear of political consequences threaten, it’s time to take a step back and consider the larger picture. Individually, we are insignificant. Legislators do not have legacies. (Nor do governors for that matter.) As a general rule, people do not remember politicians other than the president. The realization of one’s own insignificance and the humility that emanates is a better antidote to corruption than any law ever passed. Instead of serving oneself and ambition, better to serve the Lord, our families, and our communities.

In my eight years, I’ve seen the worst and the best aspects of human nature: greed, pride, vanity, laziness, and vindictiveness are here every day. And so are diligence, humility, sacrifice, charity, and compassion. The Missouri state legislature, is a place where, in spite of our human weaknesses, when things go right — paraphrasing Gov. Nixon —people of goodwill can work together in service to make great differences in the lives of people who will never meet, who will never know our name, and who will never know we ever did anything to help them.

The second document is from another young lawmaker who entered office with high ideals but who found his career far shorter than he thought it would be—-because he failed his own principles. The Post-Dispatch ran an op-ed piece on September 8, 2009 from former State Senator Jeff Smith under the headline “I was stupid and wrong.”   It complements Jay Barnes’ reflection. And it’s from someone who buckled to political utilitarianism.

I once held a position of public trust. I write today as a felon, having broken that trust, and I don’t want anyone to make the terrible mistakes I made.

I thought I could get away with it. If anyone learned of what happened, it would be my word and the word of my friends and staffers against that of a loner with a shady past.

It was easy to think this way. I had arrived on the political scene.

When I decided to run for Congress in 2004, I was a nobody. It was a familiar role. As a boy I was the smallest kid on the court, scrappy and hypercompetitive, and I tried to overcome my political weaknesses with the same drive. Eventually I went from a non-entity to a contender.

As Election Day drew near, I authorized a close friend and two aides to help an outside consultant send out a mailer about my opponent but without disclosing my campaign’s connection.

Fiercely competitive, I was seeking any advantage I could get. I knew that hiding my campaign’s involvement was against the law. I was raised better than that, but I thought the ends justified the means. I was stupid and wrong.

When my opponent filed a Federal Election Commission complaint against me, I wanted to preserve my political future and concealed the misconduct. Instead of taking the hit, I stonewalled, assuming the FEC would not connect the dots.

I was elected to the Missouri Senate in 2006 and was honored to serve my constituents. My dream was fulfilled, and I had a platform to effect social change and fight for the city I love.

In 2007, the FEC cleared my campaign of wrongdoing. It was the worst thing that could’ve happened to me.

Because the lesson I took wasn’t that “I got lucky. What I did was reckless, illegal, and wrong. I won’t break the law again.” My takeaway was, “Whew. I’m home free.”

Wrong again.

In 2009, the FBI obtained new information indicating a cover-up of the original misconduct. They approached me, and I stuck with my earlier account. It was easier for me to lie than to face the scrutiny and embarrassment that would come with accepting responsibility.

I was terrified of admitting anything. My nightmare was for all this to come out: my betrayal of what I thought I stood for and wanted to achieve; my betrayal of supporters and constituents; my parents’ embarrassment reading about my actions in the newspaper, and their shame as friends and neighbors searched for what to say to them and how to say it.

Well, it all came out, and it is worse than I had feared.

I’ve lost what I loved most: serving my district and teaching political science. I have lost the respect of others I cherished and my self-respect — even the ability to look strangers in the eye. And I haven’t even been sentenced yet.

I apologize to my constituents, my Senate colleagues, my family and friends and to anyone who has lost faith in government because of my actions. Telling the truth is the basis of public trust: the minimum I owed my constituents, my family and myself. I am a reminder of the obligation to always be truthful, particularly for those honored to serve the public.

(Jeff Smith resigned from the Missouri Senate effective August 25, 2009 and was sentenced to one year and a day of prison. He also was fined $50,000. Smith was sent to the federal prison in Manchester, Kentucky. He was released early in November, 2010.

Since his release, he’s written a couple of books, lectured at the New School for Social Research in New York, and co-founded Confluence Academies, an organization of charter schools in the St. Louis area.  And he’s done a lot of other stuff.

Jay Barnes has been promoted to private citizenship (as Harry Truman once said after his presidency) and is a lawyer in Jefferson City.  He said in last weekend’s Jefferson City newspaper that he has no interest in returning to politics.

It might be useful every now and then for those who will sit behind the century-old desks the lawmakers first sat behind in January, 1919 to re-read these two reflections, especially toward the session’s end when the challenges are greatest—and think about how the four-and-a-half months they are starting today will have changed them.

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Christmas: Just another working day

Merry Christmas from the Missouri Capitol.
Governor Mike Parson’s office is fully involved in the Christmas season. We don’t recall anything like this in all the years we have covered the capitol. Don’t expect to see him at his desk on Christmas day, however, although there were many times when a lot of people were at their capitol desks at Christmas.
The governor’s office often has been on display during this Christmas season because of something else Governor Parson has done that we’ve never seen done before. The double doors between the capitol hallway and the big oval office are open often with a glass barrier that people can walk up to and look into the office. The doors are closed when he’s doing governor business but at other times they’ve been opened so the visiting public can see the office and its Christmas decorations.
We’ve often thought it’s a shame that capitol visitors don’t get to see that magnificent room.
History tells us that Christmas has been through a lot of changes through the decades. For decades, it was just another day. Not until Victorian times did it begin to assume the secular commercial bonanza it is.
When the state legislature moved from its temporary home in St. Charles to the City of Jefferson, the fourth session of the General Assembly convened on Monday, November 20. Christmas day was just another regular business day, as was New Year’s Day. A reading of the House Journal for December 25, 1826 sounds similar to the House Journals today. It is—as it is now—pretty dry stuff.

MONDAY MORING, DECEMBER 25, 1826
The house met pursuant to adjournment.
Mr. Speaker appointed Messrs., O’Bryan, Grant, Thornton, Jewell, Canole, Bollinger, Nash, Johnson, Bruer, Brinker and Brock as a select committee on an engrossed bill from the senate, entitled an act supplementary to an act to organize, govern and, discipline the militia, approved 11th Feb. l825.
Mr. Grant of the committee of ways and means introduced bill appropriating money for defraying the expenses of government, which was read a first time and ordered to a second reading. On motion of Mr. Watkins, the rules of this house requiring a bill to be read three several times [sic] on-three different days was dispensed with, two thirds of the members present concurring therein, and said bill was read a second time on to-day.
On motion, said bill was committed to a committee of the whole house. Mr. Harris of the select committee to whom was referred the petition of sundry inhabitants of the counties of Chariton and Ralls, praying for the formation of a new county, reported a bill to establish the new county of Marion which was read a first time and ordered to a second reading.
On motion of Mr. Burckhartt, the rules of this house requiring bills to be read three several times on three different days was dispensed with, two thirds of the members present concurring therein, and said bill was read a second time on jo-day,
On motion of Mr. Cook, said bill was committed to a committee of the whole house.

The journal continues for several more paragraphs of routine business before the House adjourned until the next day. Representative Jewell, by the way as Dr. William Jewell of Boone County, a founder of Columbia for whom William Jewell College was named. Bollinger was George F. Bollinger, who represented Cape Girardeau in the territorial and state legislatures from 1812 until 1840. When a new county was formed of Cape Girardeau County, it was named for him.
Working on Christmas was not all that unusual in those times. It was seventeen years yet before Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol was published or that Sir Henry Cole, an Englishman, printed a couple thousand Christmas cards that sold for a shilling each. Christmas would not be declared a federal holiday for forty-four more years.
In 1828, the second general assembly to meet in Jefferson City took December 25 off but was back at work the next day. The practice was common for several years. In 1840, the House took the day off but the Senate did meet on Christmas day, a Friday, and on Saturday the 26th but adjourned both days because it could not achieve a quorum. Business as usual resumed in both chambers on Tuesday the 29th.
The House met on Saturday, December 21, 1844 and transacted business before adjourning until Monday the 23rd. But not enough people showed up to make a quorum again until the afternoon of December 30. The Senate met on Christmas day but only five members answered the roll call. It tried to meet each day after that but didn’t get enough members in the chamber to do official business until the 30th.
Then we get to this entry:

JOURNAL OF THE SENATE OF THE STATE OF MISSOURI, At the First Session of the Fifteenth General Assembly, begun and held at the City of Jefferson, on Monday, the Twenty-Fifth day of December, in the year of Our Lord one thousand eight hundred and forty-eight.
The Senate was called to order by the Hon. JAMES YOUNG, Lieutenant Governor and President of the Senate, and FALKLAND H. Martin, Esq., acted as Secretary pro tem.

That’s right. The 1848 legislative session began on Christmas Day. And it happened again just six years later:

JOURNAL OF THE SENATE OF THE STATE OF MISSOURI, AT THE FIRST SESSION, BEING THE REGULAR SESSION, OF THE EIGHTEENTH GENERAI ASSEMBLY, BEGUN AND HELD AT THE CITY OF JEFFERSON, ON MONDAY THE 25TH DAY OF DECEMBER, IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD ONE THOUSAND EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND FIFTY-FOUR, THAT BEING THE DAY FIXED BY LAW FOR THE MEETING OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF MISSOURI.

The Senators were called to order at 11 o’clock, A. M., by the Hon. Wilson Brown, Lieutenant Governor, and President of the Senate.

Lt. Governor Brown was one of about thirty people killed in the Gasconade bridge disaster on Nov. 1, 1855, the day the first passenger train was to have arrived from St. Louis.


In this building, long ago, Christmas was just another day for many years. There were times, though, when it appears some members of the general assembly left town for a few days, leaving the House and Senate without enough members to transact business although a few members who lived too far from home in those pre-highway, pre-bridge, pre-railroad days when the rivers were too icy to travel by boat stayed in Jefferson City, a town of no paved streets, few amenities, and fewer than three-thousand people before 1860.
The new Missouri Constitution adopted in 1865 established the January start date for the legislature, ending the winter sessions. Although the observance of Christmas had been slowly building, it was not until the Reconstruction years that December became the biggest month of the year for retail sales.
In a couple of weeks, today’s legislators will start a new session in today’s capitol. By then the Christmas decorations will be gone and the present capitol will feel, as the old one undoubtedly felt, the quickening pulse within it. Christmas and the old year are gone. A new year and new careers soon will begin to take shape. And so will the new journals that somebody else might read 170 years hence.

The value of a vote

Newly-elected members of the Missouri legislature have been going to “legislator school” for a few days, trying to absorb what all those departments, divisions, and institutions look like and are all about;  how to make a speech; how to cast a vote; what cubbyhole office they’ll get (especially on the House side); where the bathrooms are, and so forth.  

 This is only a brief brush with the real world they wanted to join.  The pressure-cooker that is a legislative session will become all too real early next month. We imagine that most of these newbies think they are starting a career.  They are, indeed, doing that.  But they also are starting to create their legacy.  And what will that legacy be after the next two to sixteen years? 

We have come across an old poem that makes that point.

Back on September 13, 1856, the Hannibal Tri-Weekly Messenger printed an unsigned poem in the weeks leading to that year’s general election.  Those who are in legislator school might want to read it in the context of their life to-be:

They knew that I was poor,

And they thought that I was base.

They thought I would endure

To be covered with disgrace—

They thought me of their tribe

Who in filthy lucre dote.

So they offered me a bribe

For my vote, boys, for my vote.

O, shame upon my betters

Who would my conscience buy!

But I’ll not wear their fetters

Not I, indeed, not I!

My vote!  It is not mine

To do with what I will;

To cast like pearl to swine

To these wallows in ill.

It is my country’s due,

And I’ll give it while I can,

To the honest and the true,

Like a man!  Like a man!

O, shame upon my betters

Who would my conscience buy,

But I’ll not wear their fetters,

Not I, indeed, not I!

No, no, I’ll hold my vote

As a treasure and a trust.

My dishonor none shall quote

When I’m mingled with dust;

And my children when I’m gone

Shall be strengthened by the thought

That their father was not one

To be bought! To be bought!

O, Shame upon my betters

Who would my conscience buy.

But I will not wear their fetters. Not I, indeed, not I!

The language is old but the sentiment remains current. Thenewbies will wrap up legislator school later this week.  The real world will await them less thanthree weeks later.   It’s always interesting to watch what happens to them.    

Grasping to retain power, regardless

We’re watching with interest efforts in Wisconsin by Republicans to limit the power of a newly-elected Democratic governor who will replace Scott Walker.                The New York Times reported yesterday:

“The long list of proposals Republicans want to consider also includes wide efforts to shore up their strength before Tony Evers, the Democrat who beat Gov. Scott Walker last month, takes office: new limits on early voting, a shift in the timing of the 2020 presidential primary in Wisconsin, and new authority for lawmakers on state litigation. The Republican plan would also slash the power of the incoming attorney general, who is also a Democrat…In recent years, single parties have come to dominate state legislatures, allowing lawmakers to make significant policy changes in states even as Washington wrestled with gridlock. But in states like Wisconsin and Michigan, where Democrats regained governor’s offices in capitals that Republicans fully controlled for years, Republicans are making last-minute efforts to weaken their powers…It is a model pioneered in North Carolina, where Republican lawmakers in 2016 tried to restrict the power of the governor after a Democrat was narrowly elected to the post. That set off a bitter court battle that continues to this day.”

There is nothing new in this.  In fact one of the most egregious examples happened here in Missouri. Only then it was Democrats who had controlled the state government including the legislature during the depression in a way that could make today’s two-thirds Republican legislature jealous. The state constitution then in effect required the Speaker of the House to make the official announcement of the election results at the start of the next legislative session so the winners could be inaugurated a few days later.

Governor Lloyd Stark, who had broken with the political boss in Kansas City, Tom Pendergast, could not succeed himself but in the process of what happened after the election he became the longest-serving single-term governor in Missouri history. With the demise of the statewide Pendergast machine, the organization run by St. Louis Mayor Bernard Dickmann became the dominant machine power within the Democratic Party.

Forrest c. Donnell (whose name was pronounced as if it was “Donald” without the “d”) campaigned heavily against Democrat machine politics and beat Lawrence McDaniel, his former Sunday School pupil, by 3,613 votes, the second-closest margin in state history. Democrats retained the other statewide offices.

Two weeks later, Democratic State Committee chairman C. Marion Hulen of Mexico proclaimed there was “an imposing array of reports, evidence of illegal use of large sums of money and of vote buying, of irregular voting and of alleged frauds.”  Another committee member claimed there was enough evidence to show McDaniel had won by 7,500 votes.

When the House convened on January 8, 1941, it passed a resolution barring Speaker Morris Osburn from announcing the results until a ten-member committee (of which six were Democrats) examined the ballots. Attorney General Roy McKittrick, one of those re-elected in November, held such an action was legal.

The committee recommended that Osburn certify the re-election of all of the Democratic candidates but it said Donnell should not be certified because of mistakes and fraudulent voting in the governor’s race.  The Republican committee members called the report a fraud and noted nobody had presented the committee with any evidence of fraud.

Inauguration day was January 13.  But there was no parade, no big event in the rotunda (inaugurations were indoors then), no inaugural ball.  Secretary of State Dwight Brown, Auditor Forrest Smith, and Attorney General McKittrick were sworn in for their third terms at the Supreme Court.  Lieutenant Governor Frank Harris, also a third-termer, took his oath in the state senate chamber because he constitutionally was the President of the Senate. Wilson Bell was sworn in as treasurer for his first term.

Donnell could have been sworn in by a Justice of the Peace (an office later replaced by magistrate judges who were even later replaced by associate circuit judges on the government charts) or some other qualified officer but he rejected the suggestion, saying he wanted to avoid further chaos.  Instead, he went to Jefferson City and asked the Supreme Court to order Osburn to announce him as the winner.

With those actions, Lloyd Stark could not leave office. He was to serve until his successor had been elected and qualified to take over. He was, to put it politely, urinarily agitated.

In what was to have been his final State of the State speech he announced he had vetoed the joint resolution seeking an investigation and said he would not approve spending any money for any such thing. He called for Donnell to be seated as governor and for any dispute about the results to “proceed in a legal and proper manner.”

His fellow democrats, not happy with his position, started an “absolutely bipartisan” recount anyway.  In mid-February the Supreme Court ordered the legislature to declare Donnell governor.  Osborn read the official document on February 20 declaring Donnell the winner.  The Senate majority leader immediately announced that McDaniel would file a declaration contesting the results.

Newspaper editorial writers from both sides of the aisle flayed the Democrats, the Joplin Globe saying “thousands of Democrats” had been “nauseated from the stench from the original office-stealing effort.”

Donnell finally was sworn in on February 26, in the rotunda. Stark, who said he had been “living in a suitcase since January thirteenth,” quickly headed back to St. Louis and his private law practice.

McDaniel’s 226-page election contest petition claimed that a complete recount would show him the winner by 30,000 votes.  State Republican Chairman Charles Ferguson laughed, particularly at the claim that hundreds of non-residents had voted for Donnell in Newton County in southwest Missouri: “It stands to reason that five or six hundred strangers could not show up to vote in a town as small as Neosho and get away with it.”  Neosho’s population that year was 5,318.

Donnell’s response was fifty-thousand words long and accused Democrats of the things they had said his campaign did.

The chairman of the recount committee, Senator Phil M. Donnelly of Lebanon, said the recount would not start until mid-April.   When it did, it was a disaster for McDaniel and the Democrats. By late May reports indicated recounts in eighty-one counties and St. Louis City had ADDED four-thousand votes to Donnell’s total. McDaniel met with Donnelly and agreed to file a letter withdrawing his request for a recount.  He did so without consulting party leaders who had pushed him to demand the recount and who had cooked up the claims of massive Republican vote fraud. McDaniel’s statement later seemed to be a slap at Hulen and his party allies when McDaniel said he had been “misled” by those who claimed he should be declared the winner.

The House and Senate met in joint session and in ten minutes declared the recount over with Donnell the winner.  Because the recount was never completed, his official victory margin remains 3,613 votes.

Democrats paid a heavy price for this escapade.  Several saw the writing on the wall and did not run again in 1942.  Several who did run lost their primary elections and many of those who got through the primaries were whipped in November as Republicans regained control of the House and pulled into a tie in the Senate.

Donnell was succeeded by Senator Donnelly, the senator who led the aborted recount effort. Donnelly later became the first governor to serve two full terms although he had to serve them separately because he was barred from succeeding himself but not prohibited from being governor again.

While Donnell was governor, a constitutional convention was called.  The new constitution, approved after he left office, prevents another effort to “steal” the governor’s election.  It says the Secretary of State, not the Speaker of the House, will certify the winners.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Appointment King

Governor Parson is making a new place in Missouri history for himself with each appointment of someone to an otherwise elective office at the top level of state government.   By the time he appoints a new state treasurer, he will have appointed three of the remaining top five state government officials and four of the top six jobs will be filled with people who were  not chosen by a public vote to fill those offices: governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, treasurer.

But this is not the first time most top state offices have been filled by people not elected to those positions. But the only other time involved war/

As Missouri was being sucked into the Civil War, pro-South Governor Claiborne F. Jackson called a convention of 99 men to decide if Missouri should join the confederacy.  He was shocked to find that not a single secessionist was elected.  When he fled the capitol in the face of advancing Union troops in June, 1861, twenty members of the convention went with him.

The executive committee of the Convention of 99 met in Jefferson City in late July and called for remaining members of the convention to reassemble.  On July 30 the remaining convention members declared all existing state offices vacant.  It then installed former Missouri Supreme Court Judge Hamilton Gamble as the provisional governor and appointed other Union loyalists to other state offices.  All seats in the legislature were declared vacant and the convention members became the acting government.  The constitutional propriety of all of these actions has been a matter of speculation from that time to this but as historian Duane Meyer, the author of the standard Missouri history book used for decades has noted, when the U. S. Army is present to make sure the actions of the governing group are carried out, the niceties of the law or the constitution are secondary. Meyer wrote that the state convention

obviously …had no authority to take such actions (as vacating offices), since Governor Jackson was the popularly-elected chief of state. However, in the time of war, legality is frequently supplanted by expediency, and in so acting, these Missouri politicians established an illegal provisional government to fill the breach left by the secessionist exiles…In retrospect, we must admit that the actions of the state convention were unprecedented, brash, and illegal. However, since federal troops in Missouri upheld the actions of the convention, no one could argue.

Former Congressman Willard P. Hall of St. Joseph was appointed Lt. Governor and succeeded Gamble when he died at the end of 1864.  The office, incidentally, remained vacant until Lt. Governor George Smith was elected in the election of 1865.  Former Congressman Mordecai Oliver of Richmond became Secretary of State until ‘65’s elections.  When Treasurer Alfred W. Morrison refused to take a loyalty oath after being caught by federal troops while he was fleeing with thousands of state dollars in his pockets, he was replaced by artist George Caleb Bingham.  When Attorney General J. Proctor Knott refused to take the loyalty oath he was replaced by Aikman Welch of Johnson County.

William S. Moseley of New Madrid County took the loyalty oath and remained as state auditor.

So during the Civil War when the remains of the Convention of 99 replaced the legislature, FIVE  of  our six state officers were not elected by the people to their positions.

We’re waiting for the Missouri Supreme Court to rule on whether Mike Kehoe can continue to occupy the Lt. Governor’s office and Eric Schmitt won’t be the new Attorney General until January.  But it appears Governor Parson will be remembered as the governor who appointed three top state leaders and this will be a time when four state leaders are serving in offices they were not elected to fill.

The nice thing about the current situation is that it hasn’t taken a war to create it.

“Two roads diverged—”

“In a yellow wood,” wrote Robert Frost

“And sorry I could not travel both and be one traveler, long I stood and looked down one as far as I could to where it bent in the undergrowth.”

Two years ago, Missourians elected a charismatic young man who promised to make his state office something special, something different, something clean.

Two years ago, Missourians elected another charismatic young man who promised to make his state office something special, something different, something clean.

One of those young men took a road that has led him downhill into the darkness of the undergrowth, out of sight, and probably away from his dream of much bigger things—although there have been reports of some sounds coming out of that darkness that he’d like to come back for another trip.

The second young man last Tuesday took a road that is leading him up, to a sunny future, and perhaps an opportunity to reach the destination the first man thought he was going toward.

Poetry can take some interesting political turns.

Two roads.  One paved, one gravel.  One that would have been important to maintaining and bringing jobs.  One that is paved now but facing reduction to gravel in the future. Missourians have chosen the gravel road into uncertainty’s undergrowth with their rejection of the latest gas tax increase.  Our state legislators and other state leaders who have made economic development a constant theme of their work have failed to convince voters that a tax increase would result in the good roads necessary to encourage economic growth.

They have sewn the wind by preaching the evils of taxes and the blessings of tax cuts and tax breaks, particularly for businesses that presumably will create more jobs.  But industry wants good roads to ship in manufacturing materials and equipment and good roads to ship products out.

“The people know better how to spend their money than government does,” we have heard them say repeatedly.  Again, the people have decided to keep their money and spend it for things better than building roads and bridges and interchanges to companies that might have provided jobs to those same people and their relatives and friends.

The people have decided they want a higher minimum wage, meaning many of those who might benefit from better roads and the better jobs they could help create will have more money for themselves.

Two roads.  Two men.  Two political philosophies.  But we travel with them and we are the ones who often decide which road they, and we, take—a road rising to the future or a gravel road descending into the dark undergrowth.

“And that has made all the difference.”

—or will, perhaps.

The loyal opposition

The makeup of our congressional and legislative representation was defined yesterday.  Come January, a new political chemistry will be brewed in Washington and in Jefferson City because of the decisions made in thousands of ballot boxes.

Your respectful observer wants to talk about a loser today and what that loser said many years ago about the role of the losing side.

Lynne Olson’s book, Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America’s Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941 triggered this interest that was increased by a Kansas City Star editorial found while researching the 1940 election in Missouri.

The loser was Wendell Willkie, a name that rings only faint bells is the minds of most political observers today other than those who know he lost the presidency to Franklin D. Roosevelt, who won his third term.

A week after the election, Willke went on the radio for a nationwide address. In his speech he borrowed from a phrase created in Britain in 1826—the loyal opposition—and defined it for Americans.

That speech is worth considering in these times because of what opposition has become.

Willkie’s grandson, Wendell Willkie II, wrote of his grandfather in The Atlantic earlier this year that some people have compared his grandfather’s Republican nomination for president to Donald Trump’s nomination in 2016. Both had been Democrats. Both were/are prominent business executives. Neither had held public office. “Each substantially challenged and redefined then-prevailing Republican Party doctrine,” he wrote.  But after that, the two men have profoundly different worldviews:

Willkie is remembered for his optimistic, inspiring vision of America. A thoughtful student of history and economics, he powerfully articulated classically liberal ideals of political and economic freedom.  For all of our nation’s faults, he passionately believed in American exceptionalism. He took on unpopular causes, and battled discrimination and intolerance. But he also believed the world would be a far more dangerous place without American leadership.

Willke was a Republican who fought the New Deal while favoring America’s active support of Britain against Germany—at a time when American isolationism, with Charles Lindbergh as its most prominent advocate and presidential contenders Thomas Dewey and Robert Taft speaking for it, was powerful.

His position in the Republican Party rose when Germany invaded France and other countries and isolationism began to lose public favor. He was nominated on the sixth ballot of the GOP convention.

Republicans were split on intervention in Europe with the America First movement strongly involved with the party.  As Willkie’s grandson put it, “Today, many politicians insist they put country over party, but do little to prove their ultimate loyalties. Willkie was different.”

Britain was in desperate condition and Roosevelt faced stern public opposition to sending military aid to the island and laws forbidding sending military vessels built for Britain’s defense. But this country had some old destroyers not built for that reason that could be transferred.

The plan gained public support but Roosevelt knew it could become a problem for him in the campaign. So he asked Willkie to do something extraordinary.

Olson recounts that Roosevelt sent emissaries to ask Willkie to forego making the destroyer deal a part of his campaign. Willke said he could not make a public statement of support that would deepen splits within his own party but he promised he would not attack the deal after Roosevelt announced it.  “It was astonishing thing to ask of an opponent—to turn his back on a controversial issue that almost certainly would help him politically,” says Olson.

But that’s not all.  The nation was divided despite the obviously growing threat of war on whether the draft should be re-instituted. If Willkie opposed it, isolationist Democrats would join Republicans to block it.   But in August, 1940, Willke announced support for “some form of selective service.”   He later said he would continue to support the draft even if it cost him the election.

Roosevelt won with 27.3 million votes. Willkie had 22.3 million. The Electoral College numbers made the race look like a runaway.  Sam Pryor, Willkie’s Eastern campaign manager, told him afterward, “You could have been president if you had worked with the party organization.”

The Kansas City Star said a day after his Armistice Day radio address a week after the election that it  contained “no bitterness…no narrow partisanship…The main principle that Mr. Willkie desired to impress upon his audience was the high function of a loyal opposition in the American system…It showed…the quality of constructive criticism that the President, as a patriotic American, would do well to take into account in meeting the difficult problems that confront the nation.”

The Star characterized the speech as “an appeal to reason, not to emotion.” We offer his speech to you in these much different times with little hope that recalling it will change the daily rhetorical tragedies that now befall our system, but with some hope that it might mean something useful to somebody, a sad observation of how far our leaders have sunk.

Cooperation but Loyal Opposition

DISCORD AND DISUNITY WILL ARISE IF OPPOSITION IS SUPPRESSED

By WENDELL L. WILLKIE, Presidential nominee of the Republican Party in 1940

Delivered over the radio, November 11, 1940

Vital Speeches of the Day, Vol VII, pp. 103-106

PEOPLE of America: Twenty-two years ago today a great conflict raging on the battlefields of Europe came to an end. The guns were silent. A new era of peace began and for that era the people of our Western World—our democratic world—held the highest hopes.

Those hopes have not been fulfilled. The democratic way of life did not become stronger—it became weaker. The spirit of constitutional government flickered like a dying lamp. And within the last year or so the light from that lamp has disappeared entirely upon the Continent of Europe.

We in America watched darkness fall upon Europe. And as we watched there approached an important time for us—the national election of 1940.

In that election, and in our attitudes after that election, the rest of the world would see an example of democracy in action, an example of a great people faithful to their Constitution and to their elected representatives.

The campaign preceding this election stirred us deeply. Millions upon millions of us who had never been active in politics took part in it. The people flocked to the polling places in greater numbers than ever before in history.

Nearly fifty million people exercised on November 5 the right of the franchise—the precious right which we inherited from our forefathers, and which we must cherish and pass on to future generations.

Thus it came about that although constitutional government had been blotted out elsewhere, here in America men and women kept it triumphantly alive.

No matter which side you were on, on that day, remember that this great, free expression of our faith in the free system of government must have given hope to millions upon millions of others—on the heroic island of Britain—in the ruined cities of France and Belgium—yes, perhaps even to people in Germany and Italy. It has given hope wherever man hopes to be free.

In the campaign preceding this election serious issues were at stake. People became bitter. Many things were said which, in calmer moments, might have been left unsaid or might have been worded more thoughtfully.

But we Americans know that the bitterness is a distortion, not a true reflection, of what is in our hearts. I can truthfully say that there is no bitterness in mine. I hope there is none in yours.

We have elected Franklin Roosevelt President. He is your President. He is my President. We all of us owe him the respect due to his high office. We give him that respect. We will support him with our best efforts for our country. And we pray that God may guide his hand during the next four years in the supreme task of administering the affairs of the people.

It is a fundamental principle of the democratic system that the majority rules. The function of the minority, however, is equally fundamental. It is about the function of that minority—22,000,000 people, nearly half of our electorate— that I wish to talk to you tonight.

A vital element in the balanced operation of democracy is a strong, alert and watchful opposition. That is our task for the next four years. We must constitute ourselves a vigorous, loyal and public-spirited opposition party.

It has been suggested that in order to present a united front to a threatening world the minority should now surrender its convictions and join the majority. This would mean that in the United States of America there would be only one dominant party—only one economic philosophy—only one political philosophy of life. This is a totalitarian idea—it is a slave idea—it must be rejected utterly.

The British people are unified with a unity almost unexampled in history for its endurance and its valor. Yet that unity coexists with an unimpaired freedom of criticism and of suggestion.

In the continual debates of the House of Commons and the House of Lords all of the government’s policies, its taxation, its expenditures, its military and naval policies, its basic economic policies are brought under steady, friendly, loyal critical review. Britain survives free. Let us Americans choose no lesser freedom.

In Britain some opposition party leaders are members of the government and some say that a similar device should be adopted here. That is a false conception of our government. When a leader of the British Liberal party or a member of the British Labor party becomes a member of the Churchill Cabinet he becomes—from the British parliamentary point of view—an equal of Mr. Churchill’s.

This is because the British Cabinet is a committee of the House of Parliament. It is a committee of equals, wherein the Prime Minister is chairman, a lofty chairman indeed and yet but a chairman. The other members are his colleagues.

With us the situation, as you well know, is different. Our executive branch is not a committee of our legislative branch. Our President is independent of our Congress. The members of his Cabinet are not his colleagues. They are his administrative subordinates. They are subject to his orders.

An American President could fill his whole Cabinet with leaders of the opposition party and still our administration would not be a two-party administration. It would be an administration of a majority President giving orders to minority representatives of his own choosing. These representatives must concur in the President’s convictions. If they do not they have no alternative except to resign.

Clearly no such device as this can give us in this country any self-respecting agreement between majority and minority for concerted effort toward the national welfare. Such a plan for us would be but the shadow—not the substance—of unity.

Our American unity cannot be made with words or with gestures. It must be forged between the ideas of the opposition and the practices and policies of the Administration. Ours is a government of principles, and not one merely of men. Any member of the minority party, though willing to die for his country, still retains the right to criticize the policies of the government. This right is imbedded in our constitutional system.

We, who stand ready to serve our country behind our Commander-in-Chief, nevertheless retain the right, and I will say the duty, to debate the course of our government. Ours is a two-party system. Should we ever permit one party to dominate our lives entirely, democracy would collapse and we would have dictatorship.

Therefore, to you who have so sincerely given yourselves to this cause, which you chose me to lead, I say: “Your function during the next four years is that of the loyal opposition.” You believe deeply in the principles that we stood for in the recent election. And principles are not like foot-ball suits to be put on in order to play a game and then taken off when the game is over.

It is your Constitutional duty to debate the policies of this or any other administration and to express yourselves freely and openly to those who represent you in your State and national government.

Let me raise a single warning. Ours is a very powerful opposition. On November 5 we were a minority by only a few million votes. Let us not, therefore, fall into the partisan error of opposing things just for the sake of opposition. Ours must not be an opposition against—it must be an opposition for—an opposition for a strong America, a productive America. For only the productive can be strong and only the strong can be free.

Now let me however remind you of some of the principles for which we fought and which we hold as sincerely today as we did yesterday.

We do not believe in unlimited spending of borrowed money by the Federal government—the piling up of bureaucracy—the control of our electorate by political machines, however successful—the usurpation of powers reserved to Congress—the subjugation of the courts—the concentration of enormous authority in the hands of the Executive—the discouragement of enterprise—and the continuance of economic dependence for millions of our citizens upon government. Nor do we believe in verbal provocation to war.

On the other hand we stand for a free America—an America of opportunity created by the enterprise and imagination of its citizens. We believe that this is the only kind of an America in which democracy can in the long run exist. This is the only kind of an America that offers hope for our youth and expanding life for all our people.

Under our philosophy, the primary purpose of government is to serve its people and to keep them from hurting one another. For this reason our Federal Government has regulatory laws and commissions.

For this reason we must fight for the rights of labor, for assistance to the farmer, and for protection for the unemployed, the aged and the physically handicapped.

But while our government must thus regulate and protect us, it must not dominate our lives. We, the people, are the masters. We, the people, must build this country. And we, the people, must hold our elected representatives responsible to us for the care they take of our national credit, our democratic institutions and the fundamental laws of our land.

It is in the light of these principles, and not of petty partisan politics, that our opposition must be conducted. Itis in the light of these principles that we must join in debate, without selfishness and without fear.

Let me take as an example the danger that threatens us through our national debt.

Two days after the election, this Administration recommended that the national debt limit be increased from $49,000,000,000 to $65,000,000,000.

Immediately after that announcement, prices on the New York Stock Exchange and other exchanges jumped sharply upward. This was not a sign of health, but a sign of fever. Those who are familiar with these things agree unanimously that the announcement of the Treasury indicated a danger —sooner or later—of inflation.

Now you all know what inflation means. You have lately watched its poisonous course in Europe. It means a rapid decline in the purchasing power of money—a decline in what the dollar will buy. Stated the other way round, inflation means a rise in the price of everything—food, rent, clothing, amusements, automobiles—necessities and luxuries. Invariably these prices rise faster than wages, with the result that the workers suffer and the standard of living declines.

Nor no man is wise enough to say exactly how big the national debt can become, before causing serious inflation. But some sort of limit certainly exists, beyond which lies financial chaos. Such chaos would inevitably mean the loss of our social gains, the destruction of our savings, the ruin of every little property owner, and the creation of vast unemployment and hardships. It would mean, finally, the rise of dictatorship. Those have been the results of financial collapse in every country in the history of the world. The only way that we can avoid them is to remain sound and solvent.

It is not incumbent upon any American to remain silent concerning such a danger. I shall not be silent and I hope you will not be. This is one of your functions as a member of the minority. But in fulfilling our duties as an opposition party we must be careful to be constructive. We must help to show the way.

Thus, in order to counteract the threat of inflation and to correct some of our economic errors, I see five steps for our government to take immediately.

First, all Federal expenditures except those for national defense and necessary relief ought to be cut to the bone and below the bone. Work relief, obviously, has to be maintained, but every effort should be made to substitute for relief productive jobs.

Second, the building of new plants and new machinery for the defense program should be accomplished as far as possible by private capital. There should be no nationalization under the guise of defense of any American industry with a consequent outlay of Federal funds.

Third, taxes should be levied so as to approach as nearly as possible the pay-as-you-go plan. Obviously, we cannot hope to pay for all the defense program as we go. But we must do our best. That is part of the sacrifice that we must make to defend this democracy.

Fourth—Taxes and government restrictions should be adjusted to take the brakes off private enterprise so as to give it freedom under wise regulation, to release new investments and new energies and thus to increase the national income. I do not believe we can hope to bear the debt and taxes arising out of this defense program with a national income of less than one hundred billion-dollars—our present national income is only $70,000,000,000—unless we lower the standard of living of every man and woman who works. But if we can increase our national income to $100,000,000,000 we can pay for this defense program out of the increase produced if we free private enterprise—not for profiteering but for natural development.

Fifth, and finally, our government must change its punitive attitude toward both little and big businessmen. Regulations there must be—we of the opposition have consistently recommended that. But the day of witch hunting must be over.

If this administration has the unity of America really at heart it must consider without prejudice and with an open mind such recommendations of the opposition.

National unity can only be achieved by recognizing and giving serious weight to the viewpoint of the opposition. Such a policy can come only from the administration itself. It will be from the suppression of the opposition that discord and disunity will arise. The administration has the ultimate power to force us apart or to bind us together.

And now a word about the most important immediate task that confronts this nation. On this, all Americans are of one purpose. There is no disagreement among us about the defense of America. We stand united behind the defense program. But here particularly, as a minority party, our role is an important one. It is to be constantly watchful to see that America is effectively safeguarded and that the vast expenditure of funds which we have voted for that purpose is not wasted.

And in so far as I have the privilege to speak to you, I express once more the hope that we help to maintain the rim of freedom in Britain and elsewhere by supplying those defenders with materials and equipment. This should be done to the limit of our ability but with due regard to our own defense.

On this point, I think I can say without boast, that never in the history of American Presidential campaigns has a candidate gone further than I did in attempting to create a united front.

However, I believe that our aid should be given by constitutional methods and with the approval, accord and ratification of Congress. Only thus can the people determine from time to time the course they wish to take and the hazards they wish to run.

Mr. Roosevelt and I both promised the people in the course of the campaign that if we were elected we would keep this country out of war unless attacked. Mr. Roosevelt was re-elected and this solemn pledge for him I know will be fulfilled, and I know the American people desire him to keep it sacred.

Since November 5 I have received thousands and thousands of letters—tens of thousands of them. I have personally read a great portion of these communications. I am profoundly touched. They come from all parts of our country and from all kinds of people. They come from Catholics and Protestants, Jews and Christians, colored people and white people. They come from workers and farmers and clerks and businessmen—men and women of all the occupations that make up our American life.

All of these letters and telegrams, almost without exception, urge that the cause that we have been fighting for be carried on.

In your enthusiasm for our cause you founded thousands of organizations. They are your own organizations, financed by you and directed by you. It is appropriate for you to continue them if you feel so inclined. I hope you do continue them. It is not, however, appropriate to continue these organizations in my name. I do not want this great cause to be weakened by even a semblance of any personal advantage to any individual. I feel too deeply about it for that; 1944 will take care of itself. It is of the very essence of my belief that democracy is fruitful of leadership.

I want to see all of us dedicate ourselves to the principles for which we fought. My fight for those principles has just begun. I shall advocate them in the future as ardently and as confidently as I have in the past. As Woodrow Wilson once said: “I would rather lose in a cause that I know someday will triumph than to triumph in a cause that I know some day will fail.”

Whatever I may undertake in the coming years, I shall be working shoulder to shoulder with you for the defense of our free way of life, for the better understanding of our economic system and for the development of that new America whose vision lies within every one of us.

Meanwhile, let us be proud, let us be happy in the fight that we have made. We have brought our cause to the attention of the world. Millions have welcomed it. As time goes on millions more will find in it the hope that they are looking for. We can go on from here with the words of Abraham Lincoln in our hearts:

“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds. . . . to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

Good night. And God bless and keep every one of you.

(Photo credit: TheAtlantic.com)

                       

Notes from a quiet street—elections issue

A week from today is elections day.  We look forward to elections days for the wrong reasons.  Instead of being excited about taking part in the voting process we are excited because it’s the end of that interminable period when our intelligence is assaulted 30 seconds at a time—all the time, it seems, on the television.

—and when our mailboxes are stuffed with mailers of questionable veracity usually provided by people without the courtesy or the courage to admit they paid for the appropriately-named junk mail.

Interestingly, at the end of the day, a lot of people will transfer from being the kind of people they campaigned against to being those people. And what will they do to correct the impressions their voters have about government?

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We have been interested in some of the reasons various groups don’t want us to vote for a new system of drawing legislative districts after the 2020 census.  One side says it would be a mistake to let the state demographer (a person who spends his or her life analyzing population and population trends) draw new districts because they’ll just use statistics and will come up with districts that are more gerrymandered that some districts from the last go-around.  Others worry that letting the demographer draw the districts will weaken the political power of this or that group.   We must have been mistaken all these years because we thought reapportionment dealt with representation rather than power. Silly us.

Could it be that the state demographer won’t care if two legislative incumbents wind up in the same district instead of benefitting from a process that is suspected of protecting incumbents or at least their party majorities?  As far as the demographer coming up with screwball districts, surely that person couldn’t do worse than the creation of the present Fifth Congressional District that I dubbed the “dead lizard” district after the last congressional redistricting (it looks like a dead lizard lying on its back with its feet in the air) that has a former Mayor of Kansas City representing a rural area as far east as Marshall.

What the heck.  We can always change the constitution back to the present system if the legislative districts after the 2020 census are as bad as some interest groups forecast they will be, can’t we?

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Elections almost always have issues created by petition campaigns.  It’s an important freedom we have as citizens to propose laws or to ask for a statewide vote on something the legislature did that raises questions in the minds of enough people that they want citizens to have the final say.  But that freedom can carry with it unintended consequences because petitions don’t go through the refining process of legislative committee hearings, debates, votes, and compromises where possible.   Of course the legislature sometimes fumbles an issue and in both cases ballot issues can be issues financially backed by a special interest if not an individual.

Voters have an often-overlooked responsibility to get out the spy glass and read all the fine print in the election legal notices.  We haven’t talked to very many folks who have done that. So we get what we get and the courts often have to figure out what we got regardless of what we thought we were getting.

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The best part of election day is that all of the junk mail campaign propaganda that goes straight to our waste baskets will be replaced by Christmas catalogues.  We prefer Christmas catalogs for several reasons.  They don’t forecast national or international catastrophes if we buy something offered by another catalog.  They usually are honest about their products (the pictures usually are more accurate than the pictures of the hamburgers at fast foot joints). We have never gotten an L. L. Bean catalogue that suggests the products in a Land’s End catalogue are dangerous to our well-being because of who wears them or because of who the wearers hang out with.

And they don’t proclaim exclusive knowledge of what our “values” are.  The Vermont Country Store is filled with traditional values—soap on a rope, Adams Clove chewing gum, old-fashioned popcorn makers or hand-cranked ice-cream makers, or dresses whose styles are timeless.  Coldwater Creek is for people whose values tend toward the stylish with a little “bling” thrown in.   We have yet to see the Vermont Country Store catalogue that says the Coldwater Creek catalogue is too liberal to be good for us.

In short, the catalogues have a lot more things that we will buy than most of the campaign junk mail that winds up in landfills instead of recycle bins.

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Jefferson City is building a new fire station, replacing an older one in the east end of town (the building will be for sale, by the way, in case you want a unique home, assuming you can get a zoning change).  News of the planned sale of the old fire house brings to mind our old friend Derry Brownfield, who used to occasionally remind us why fire engines are red:

“Because they have eight wheels and four people on them, and four plus eight is 12, and there are 12 inches in a foot, and one foot is a ruler, and Queen Elizabeth was a ruler, and Queen Elizabeth was also a ship, and the ship sailed the seas, and in the seas are fish, and fish have fins, and the Finns fought the Russians, and the Russians are red, and fire trucks are always ‘russian’ around.”

Uh-huh.

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Go vote next Tuesday.  Do yourself and your state a favor and spend the next seven days with your reading glass studying all that fine print.

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Notes from a quiet street—October, 2018

Get your speculation machines turned on.   Someone asked the other day, “If Josh Hawley is elected to the U. S. Senate in November, who do you think Governor Parson will appoint to finish Hawley’s term?”

Well…..?

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In a long life, a person is likely to make some interesting friends.  Well, all friends are interesting or they wouldn’t be friends, would they?  And if you’re lucky, you get to go to interesting places that broaden your perspective on the world and your place in it.  Some who read these entries might be scornful of those, such as your correspondent, who can see beyond the concrete, steel, and glass of the big cities and can cherish the big and the small worlds that surround us.

A friend in Indianapolis is the Executive Director of the Indianapolis Prize, the world’s leading prize for animal conservation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UARcO8jTVk0

This year’s prize went to Dr. Russell Mittemeier.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=207&v=OqeoeDg-CTo

Harrison Ford flew to Indianapolis to attend the awards dinner.  Nice guy, said those who met him.   Why are we surprised to learn that big-time people we admire from afar are nice?

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In my news director days I sometimes reminded myself and my reporters that it was not always necessary to do a story about an event if nothing was done or said worth reporting.  If a committee or a commission or a council met for three hours but did nothing newsworthy, there was no reason for any of us to waste our listeners’ time by saying a meeting was held and then trying to find something in our notes or on our recorders to write or let people hear that had no purpose other than to justify our presence at the meeting.  “It’s just three hours of your life that you’ll never get back,” I sometimes counseled the news staff.  “Don’t spend any more time trying to find something not worth the time to put on the air.”

Somebody else had the same philosophy a long time ago. From the Jefferson City Daily Capital News of May 10, 1945:

Gov. Phil M. Donnelly yesterday held his first press conference in four days but it was unproductive of printing news.

We were told by a reporter who covered him that Donnelly used to hold two news conferences a day. One in the morning was for reporters from afternoon newspapers.  The one in the afternoon was for reporters from morning papers. He had more news conferences in a month than some governors have in a year.  Or two.

We also had a lot more reporters covering the capitol.

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Some of the saddest places are baseball diamonds in city parks and baseball parks in the big cities when there’s no more baseball to be played. Especially by January. With a little snow. Even hope has left.

But we’ll find it in Arizona and Florida in February.

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A restaurant sign seen from across the room recently:

It raises a question.  Does the sign mean the place isn’t all that dangerous?  Or does it mean that people who eat there live longer?

I rolled the dice.  I had a big breakfast.  So far, so good.

What makes a city also makes a state

More than eight decades ago a study was done to determine what makes a city a worthwhile place for people to live.  It probably wasn’t the first study and it sure hasn’t been the last.

The same factors that make a city a good place to live make a state a good place to live.  In our political discussions, however, contemporary talk seems to focus on one element that diminishes the importance of other factors and, in fact, makes some other factors harder to achieve.  But the other factors often don’t manipulate political emotions as effectively as the one that year after year gets the greatest attention.

The Jefferson City Post-Tribune ran an editorial on December 17, 1937 about the survey on the qualities of good cities.  Then, as now, the politically popular supposed solution to all problems was not a factor in determining what makes a livable city.   Here’s the editorial that could be as applicable today as it was then.

More than three hundred cities of our United States recently were investigated by a group of researchers from an eastern college to learn the difference between a city where people live and where they merely exist or serve time until the job runs out.

They found among other things that the character of the cities’ inhabitants more than economic advantages make for civic goodness. 

In studying a given city, the university investigators asked questions like these:

What are the general and infant death rates?  How much money, per capita, is spent on libraries, on education, on recreation? How common is extreme poverty?  What percentage of the people own their own homes?  What percentage own automobiles? How many doctors, nurses, and teachers are there in proportion to the population?  What are the per capita expenditures for highways, for light, for sanitation, for police, fire and health departments?  What is the homicide rate?  How much unemployment was there in the census year 1930?  What is the average income of the citizens?

Answer all those questions—and a lot more along similar lines—and you get a pretty fair picture of a city.  Furthermore, you get a picture which is not necessarily the same as the one you would get simply by adding up the city’s tangible, visible assets—its transportation facilities, its industries, its natural resources and so on.

In other words the man who works for decent municipal playgrounds is doing as much for a city as the man who goes out and gets a factory. One is essential to the well-being of the community and the other to its prosperity in dollars and cents. A first rate mayor, chief of police or street commissioner can be a civic asset of incalculable value. And so, of course, can a first rate Chamber of Commerce, civic club, women’s organization, that has the general welfare at heart.

A city is a place to live as well as work and it is what we do to make the idle 16 hours pleasant and worthwhile that goes a long way to measuring the worth of the community.

We thought it interesting that the editorial’s list of questions asked “How much money, per capita, is spent on…?”   But our state policy makers so often find themselves saying, “There isn’t enough money for….” as they discuss the newest proposal to have even less.

A state is a place to live as well as to work and it is what we do to make the idle 16 hours pleasant and worthwhile that goes a long way to measuring the worth of a state. Unfortunately there aren’t many lobbyists or major campaign donors who have “the general welfare at heart.”

There is a difference between a state where people live and where they merely exist or serve until the job runs out.

Which way are we headed?