Category Archives: Politics

What were they thinking? Part Two

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Some folks at the Capitol who have checked the Benton Mural say they can’t see any damaged caused by the thoughtless use of it for a couple of people to write information on the backs of some business cards a few days ago.   But those thoughtless actions appear likely to change some access to that room.

The House Lounge has become a popular place for groups to hold rallies or press conferences such as the rally to override the Right to Work bill veto last week where this incident took place.

But because of this, it appears likely the House will put some limits on activities in the Lounge and will require a House or Capitol staff member to be present for all of those events just to make sure that someone else doesn’t pull a stunt like that one.

That’s not bad.  The great fear after something like this is that over-reaction will severely limit public access to that incredible piece of art.  While the policy has not been fully implemented yet, it appears to be falling short of the more severe policies that could have been employed.

The lady in the picture has apologized.  The schnook with her who also was writing on a business card hasn’t had the guts to step forward and do the same.  He continues to display bad manners and lack of character, to say the least.

What were they thinking?

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The answer is: They weren’t.  And it leaves thousands of people wondering if there is any limit to stupidity.  Or ignorance.  Or bad manners.  Or lack of consideration.  Or…….

Sometimes you just can’t find the words.

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We’ve been contacted by a number of people during the last few days asking if we’ve seen this picture.  Yes, we have, several times now. Your faithful scribe does not do Facebook or Linked In and twitters, twits, tweets—whatever the heck it is—only for limited professional reasons because I have better things to do with my time.  I do not disparage those who do spend considerable time each day being involved with a large network of people they do and don’t know. Call me a curmudgeon.  I wear the hat proudly.

Anyway, yes, I’ve seen it.  Somebody asked for my reaction.  It was instant.

This is inexcusable behavior by someone I otherwise would have assumed to have a certain level of intelligence and common sense.  These people are displaying behavior that one might expect from an ignorant third-grader and are endangering one of the greatest works of one of America’s foremost 20th century artists and showing disrespect for the greatest work of art in our Capitol.  They might also be placing themselves in some legal jeopardy, depending on whether there is any damage to public property.  There are tables in the House Lounge where they could have done their writing. Thoughtlessness is not in itself a punishable offense.  But these two people should at the very least publicly apologize for their unthinking behavior. 

Bob Priddy, author of ONLY THREE RIVERS ARE PEACEFUL:THE MISSOURI MURAL OF THOMAS HART BENTON and THE ART OF THE MISSOURI CAPITOL: HISTORY IN BRONZE, CANVAS, AND STONE.

Dave Marner, the Owensville newspaper publisher who took the picture, called me during the weekend and we talked at some length about this incident.  His photograph has gone viral and has generated worldwide scorn.  We know who the woman is: Valinda Freed of Randolph County, the vice chairwoman of the Missouri Republican Party, who was in the House Lounge for a rally urging the legislature to overturn Governor Nixon’s Right to Work bill veto.  As another friend of mine has written, “I don’t know the jackass joining in alongside her.”

Another friend who has worked in and around the capitol for a long, long time, sent me a note that said, “It also made me think of the definition of a word you don’t hear much anymore, “philistine”

The incident and the photographic record of it have stirred up a fecal hurricane.  Ms. Freed, after a couple of days in the eye of the hurricane, issued an apology to the Kansas City Star.  “I offer my sincere apologies for my completely unplanned and thoughtless act.  The Thomas Hart Benton mural, and all the magnificent artwork in the Capitol are state and national treasures,” she wrote.  She didn’t elaborate and as far as we know hasn’t done any interviews.

The “jackass” next to her in the picture hasn’t revealed himself or issued any statement regretting his action.  In addition to being a “philistine,” he does not appear to be much of a gentleman because he continues to let Ms. Freed take the fall.

It is also worth noting that this incident is not nearly so sad as the ongoing neglect of the other “state and national treasures” in our capitol.  No other state capitol can match the quantity and the quality of art that we find in Missouri’s Capitol.  Decades of deterioration of the structure and its art are far more egregious than what Ms. Freed and her friend have done. The state is spending forty-million dollars to fix a major foundation leakage problem under the main stairway on the south front of the building, a project so big that it might have an impact on the staging of the inauguration of new state officials in January, 2017.  Those who love the Capitol hope governors-to be and legislatures yet to come will find as much enthusiasm about investing in the capitol as they seem to find in granting favors to interests of economic capital.

It is also fair to note that they were not writing on the painting. They were leaning against it, putting their hands on it, writing on business cards or something.  Their “thoughtless act” did have a positive element to it.

It triggered an outrage on behalf of art and culture.  We are living in a political time when there appears to be little room for appreciation of the arts and the values they bring to society.  The loud insistence from many that their definition of “family values” be the rigid foundation of society seems to leave little room for the liberal freedoms that the arts should communicate.

We do not think, as we view Ms. Freed’s actions, that they are symbolic of that attitude.  We do not believe that she intended her thoughtless action to be a commentary on the arts, certainly not Thomas Hart Benton’s use of the arts to celebrate the efforts of independent citizens to build a diverse, serious, sometimes corrupt but always dynamic state.

While her apology strikes some as inadequate, this viewer wonders what more she could say.  Clearly the photograph has been a gigantic embarrassment to her and for some time to come she will be known to some folks as “that woman who….”   So let’s let her statement stand.  She need not immolate herself on the town square to express her remorse. We do, however, wish that her friend showed at least some class and also apologized instead of letting her get the full load from the hurricane.

Those in Missouri as well as outside the state who have generated that hurricane would do well to retain their indignation and use it to evaluate people, parties, and causes to whom art and culture are on the periphery—at best—of their vision

I have a religious objection

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….to religious objections.

But I’m rooting for Kim Davis, the Rowan, Kentucky County Clerk who spent five days in jail for contempt of court for refusing to issue same-sex marriage licenses that the United States Supreme Court says are legal under the Constitution.  She’s out now and still has her job.  She remains “religiously opposed” to issuing same sex marriage licenses but is under a federal district judge’s order not to keep her employees from issuing the licenses she opposes.  If she does, she could be on the wrong side of the bars again.

Her lawyer says, “She loves God, she loves people, she loves her work, and she will not betray any of those three,” a statement that seems from this distance to advocate an interesting dance.

She does not want her name on any same-sex marriage license. Her attorneys say the licenses issued by her deputies while she’s been away are not valid because they don’t bear her signature.   However Kentucky law says any act she is entitled by law to do can be legally done by a “lawful deputy.”

Of course, some political candidates are quick to hitch their campaigns to Davis, who has become a symbol to an important voting segment of our population. Ted Cruz and Mike Huckabee have gone to Kentucky to sand by Davis. Other Republican hopefuls are keeping some distance.  One of our Missouri Attorney General candidates already has claimed that, if elected, he will have the power to issue an opinion that will protect those who have sincerely held religious objections to state and federal laws.  Apparently this candidate for Attorney General does not realize that an attorney General’s opinion does not have any force of law and is, as a judge said many years ago, is just another lawyer’s opinion.   Interestingly, none of the other candidates for Missouri Attorney General have claimed they also could be a savior.

Kim Davis is the darling of the Religious Right today and, should she wish, could make a lot of money on the speaking circuit.   Her release was a disappointment to many people, not because they believe she is wrong in her position but because her case could set up a court test of the Religious freedom Restoration Act movement.   But she and her supporters are fighting the same-sex marriage issue on more than one front, so her case is likely to get to the United States Supreme Court one way or another.

Some see this case that was, to be blunt, inevitable when RFRA started gaining popularity in increasingly conservative legislatures.  It has been framed as a question of whether government can force someone to violate their personal religious beliefs. The mirror image of the question is whether one person can impose their religious freedom as a way to limit the religious freedom or the secular civil rights of fellow citizens in a nation that has a history of trying to keep church and state apart.

We saw a cartoon the other day portraying the chaos that can result if RFRA is fully sanctioned in society.  A person in a supermarket checkout lane wants to buy some condoms but the checkout clerk says she cannot ring up that sale because it would violate the clerk’s sincerely-held religious beliefs.  “You have to go to register ten,” the clerk says.   So the customer takes the groceries to register ten and has no problem buying the condoms but is told, “I can’t ring up that ham because my sincerely-held religious beliefs do not allow me to sell ham.   You’ll have to go to register eight.”

There is another story that might provide some guidance.  Might.

The ancient historian Josephus, a Pharisee, has written that followers of that movement were supported by the common Jewish people in the time of Jesus.  They claimed to be guided by the law of Moses in their interpretations of Jewish law.  If your correspondent’s understanding of Jewish history is correct, the Pharisees claim to be the founders of today’s Rabbinic Judaism.   Josephus contrasts them to the Sadducees, an upper class whose authority came from the high priest in the times of Solomon.  We fear we have over-simplified the difference, but over-simplification of religion and government is so common today that we hope our indiscretion has not been a serious one.

Three of the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, record the day that some Pharisees hoped to trip up a young rabbi with a challenging question.  Matthew and Mark say they were Pharisees.  Luke says they were “spies pretending to be sincere.”   Luke says they were trying to set up Jesus so he would say something that would make him vulnerable to prosecution by the Roman governor.

They first flattered him: “Teacher, we know that you are true and teach the way of God truthfully, and you do not care about anyone’s opinion, for you are not swayed by appearances.”  Then came the zinger: “Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?”  The Jews objected to paying those taxes, of course.   Matthew says they asked the question maliciously.  Mark says they asked it hypocritically.

Jesus, who was born at night but not last night, recognized immediately what was afoot.  And he got a little testy because, as Luke says, he saw through their craftiness.  “Why put me to the test, you hypocrites,” he said in Matthew’s version.

“Show me a coin,” he demanded.  And when they gave him a denarius, He asked them, “Whose face  and inscription are on this coin?”  The scriptures don’t say if there was any hemming and hawing although there might have been at least some of the Pharisees who might have immediately seen where their strategy was about to go out of the wagon tracks.   “Caesar’s,” they answered.

We wonder if Jesus paused for dramatic effect or if he flipped the denarius back to the person who gave it to him as he said, “Therefore, render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”   The Pharisees, the scriptures say, were stuck silent and after a while got up and walked away.   They still didn’t like this guy.  But they couldn’t argue with him that day.

The Pharisees, common people like Kim Davis today, had a strong religious objection to the edicts of their government.  And they didn’t want to obey that government.   And some perhaps curried favorable public opinion by opposing them.

We’re not scholars of the Bible in our house.  But we are unaware of any similar statement in the Old Testament, which was the foundation for the Pharisees’ positions in those times.

What Jesus did that day was define the line between church and state.

Many of those who side with Kim Davis argue that she should not be persecuted in this Christian Nation for standing up for her Christian beliefs.   Others say it might not hurt for the Christian Nation to remember the day Jesus Christ defined the line between church and state.   And perhaps the Kim Davis case, if it works its way through the legal system, might determine how much the definition in the First Century of the Common Era remains the same these twenty centuries later.

 

Too bad you’re not a bigger number.

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Your faithful observer once owned a business. It was a little tobacco shop on Jefferson City’s main street that opened with real Cuban cigars for sale. My partner and I opened the place at a time when a thaw seemed likely in American-Cuban relations and distributors who’d bee hoarding Cuban cigars for many years let loose of a few boxes here and there and we got some. It was good for the opening of the business.

It might seem odd that someone who never smoked owned a tobacco store. But a lot of people have gotten rich by catering to other people’s vices. Not us. My partner moved to another town. The fellow we hired to run the store took off to sell insurance and by the time we found someone competent to work in the store, the customer base had weakened. We dipped into our own pockets for several months to make the payroll before I had the regrettable duty of telling our employee that we were closing. The next mortgage we took out on our home was several thousand dollars larger than the cost of the house because the extra money helped pay off the store’s debts.

The experience comes to mind because the legislature will be back at the Capitol in a few weeks to consider whether to override some more vetoes by Governor Nixon. The legislature has discovered that overriding Nixon vetoes is great sport. Nixon has become the most overridden governor in Missouri history. Some lawmakers already are showing confidence that they’ll override Nixon’s veto of a bill that puts some of the toughest limits in the country on unemployment benefits.

Right now, Missourians who lose their jobs and who qualify for benefits can get as much as twenty weeks of payments. That’s already one of the least-supportive standards in the United States. The bill in question would cut that to only thirteen weeks if the state employment rate stays below six percent. A person who has lost his or her job could only get twenty weeks of coverage if the employment rate hits nine percent or more—levels we saw during the recession and, thankfully, recessions are not frequent.

Your observer spent his working life as a salaried employee. Being half-owner of a one-employee tobacco store the size of a moderate walk-in closet hardly qualifies one as a corporate mogul althoughit was enough to get us into the Jefferson City Chamber of Commerce which is mostly non-moguls. So the view from this side of the table is that of a worker, an employee, the person likely to be laid off while the managers get bonuses for holding down costs, often by laying off people.

So the view here is from the standpoint of the future person who loses his job, whether with the closing of a little tobacco shop or when a huge business downsizes. Unless the economy is in the tank, he or she will only qualify for thirteen weeks of unemployment benefits under the bill facing a veto override. But if the economy IS in the tank, the person might get twenty weeks. If the jobless person is one of the, say, 5.8% of the workforce considered unemployed (the latest Missouri rate), that person better find a job in thirteen weeks. But if the person is one of the 9.1% unemployed, there might be twenty weeks of coverage.

Everybody I’ve ever known who has lost a job wants to get a new one right away. But finding one isn’t always easy. Sure, you can point to the classified ads as indications that there are jobs out there. But that’s a pretty simplistic response that seems to imply that any job will do if you’re looking for work.

Unemployment hurts. Does it hurt less if you are one of the 5.8% than if you’re one of the 9.1%?   Is it easier to get a job when unemployment is low than it is to get a job when unemployment is high?   On the one hand, you’re looking for work when jobs are filled. On the other hand, you’re looking for a job when there are no jobs.

So if this bill becomes law despite the governor’s veto, a jobless Missourian isn’t as important when times are good as that Missourian is when times are bad. If you’re one of the small number, that’s tough cookies. You should have waited to lose your job until the unemployment rate is much higher. You should have waited for the next recession. Your failure to do so means we will penalize you seven weeks of unemployment insurance. Conditions will be better for business if you aren’t expecting the state to write you checks for seven more weeks.

You know how it is, don’t you?   And the people with your mortgage and the members of your family will be completely understanding and supportive because you’re only a 5.8 instead of a 9.1 and we all know that losing your job is less painful when you’re just a small number.

The party

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She sits alone at the table in a quiet corner of the smoke-filled room, the cigarette in her ashtray untouched, slowly burning itself to the end.  She remains attractive in an aging sort of way, her makeup showing cracks over the lines it is supposed to conceal.  A younger man at the bar who spies her staring vacantly into her own future obscured somewhere in the table amuses himself by thinking, “Nice blonde hair.  Wonder why she died the roots brown?”   She is no longer the bright, active young woman in her 20s who delighted friends at the bar with her vivacity, no longer the maturing, thoughtful woman of her 30s who beguiled men with her eyes and soft, low voice.  The best years of her 40s are behind her.  The beguiling eyes have a bit too much eye shadow now.  Behind the unfocused stare at the nothingness of the table top, her mind can hear her own torchy voice made slightly more husky by too many cigarettes, too much bourbon, and too many nights talking loudly to be heard above the crowd of her past, softly, sadly, singing.

The party’s over.

It’s time to call it day.

They’ve burst your pretty balloon

And taken the moon away.

It’s time to wind up

The masquerade.

Just make your mind up ,

The piper must be paid.

The party’s over .

The candles flicker and dim.

You danced and dreamed

Through the night.

It seemed to be right,

Just being with him .

Now you must wake up .

All your dreams must end.

Take off your makeup .

The party’s over.

It’s all over, my friend.  

She continues to sit alone at the table wondering about a future and wondering about her future in this smoky bar where she once was part of the fun before her crowd drifted away one at a time answering different calls that come in life, until she began to spend evenings at the lonely table hoping somebody, anybody, would invite her to join them. She would be an interesting person to talk to if they did. But they never seem to want to do that anymore.  Her glass is empty, just another addition to her running tab at the bar.  She stubs out the last of her mostly-unsmoked cigarette and walks into the evening, the bartender the only one who says “good night.”

Former capitol press corps colleague Summer Ballantine of the Associated Press has been looking at the latest campaign finance reports filed with the state ethics commission by the Missouri Republican and Democratic Parties.   You might have seen the piece she wrote a few days ago about them.

The political parties that once were accumulating big amounts of money a year before a big election are barely keeping the lights on now.  Summer reports they’re in debt “and must essentially start from scratch in terms of fund raising” only twelve months before the statewide primary a year from now.

Once, not so long ago, political parties were, well, meaningful, and campaigns were Lucifer versus Gabriel and political conventions were important.  But that spirit doesn’t seem to live on this quiet street anymore.

Presidential primary after preference caucus after primary after primary have taken the drama out of conventions that are nothing more than infomercial coronations.

It has been thirty-one years since any convention opened without that party’s nominee decided by primary elections.  Walter Mondale went to the 1984 Democratic convention still forty votes short.  But challenger Gary Hart already put out the white flag by starting to lobby for the VP nomination, so the forty votes moved to Mondale and he won easily on the first ballot.

The last Republican convention to start without a candidate having the nomination locked up was in Missouri—the 1976 Kansas City convention.  Ronald Reagan was pressing incumbent Gerald Ford, but Ford rounded up enough delegates for a first-ballot nomination.  However, the drama of the event did draw a lot of interest.  That was the convention where Missouri’s young governor, Christopher Bond, was on Ford’s list of potential VP candidates.

Long, long gone are the days of bare-knuckle closed-door smoke-filled room dealings that produced a nominee—such as the 1912 Democratic convention when House Speaker Champ Clark of Missouri was the leading candidate but short of the two-thirds support needed.  He led the voting through TWENTY-NINE ballots before Woodrow Wilson moved ahead of him.  Wilson was nominated after the FORTY-SIXTH ballot.

But we’ve never had a convention like the 1924 Democratic convention that took 103 ballots to pick the general election loser, John W. Davis, beaten in November by Republican Calvin Coolidge.

The last time a brokered convention—the kind we had in 1912 and in 1924—picked a winning presidential candidate was 1936 when Democrats re-nominated Franklin D. Roosevelt.  Brokered conventions in 1952 (when Democrats nominated Adlai Stevenson for the first time) and 1948 (when Republicans picked Thomas Dewey) were the last time brokered conventions picked losers.

So the single biggest political party events that fired up the general public in election years have become dim and flickering candles.

As recently as 2004, as Summer recounts in her article, the Missouri GOP raised more than eight million dollars.  Last year it raised less than $1.4 million and through the first six months of this year it had raised just 122-THOUSAND.

She notes the D’s, who raised $12.8 million in the 2004 election cycle, raised ten million dollars less than that for last year’s elections.  And the Missouri Democratic Party reported only $179,000 raised in the first half of this year.

The two parties combined are more than $350,000 in debt.

Deeper thinkers than your faithful observer are analyzing the situation.  But from this distance it appears there might be a couple of factors.

One is that the words “Democrat” and “Republican” have been watered down by divisive definitions that are shouted at us each day on talk radio and on political analysis shows that are necessary to fill the time on the 24-hour cable news channels.  “Conservative” and “Liberal,” once words of honor, are now part of the poisonous rhetoric and name-calling that assaults us each day.  With partisans increasingly trying to paint ugly portraits of the other side with those words, the phrases “Republican Party” and “Democratic Party” are pushed to the margins and the descriptions we used to hear of “conservative Republicans” and “liberal Democrats” are lost in the broad-brush simplifications of our political system by those who profit from encouraging broad-brush political antagonism.

Another factor that readily comes to mind, and is mentioned in Summer’s report, is the action taken by the Missouri legislature in 2008 to allow unlimited campaign donations.  We watched that debate from the Senate press table and remember supporters saying the change would be okay as long as there was strong campaign reporting requirements so voters would know who is the money behind the candidates.

But we do not recall any serious discussion about what this would mean to political parties or how the no-limits donation law could be contravened.

The result is independent committees that don’t report the source of the piles of money they use to campaign for, or more often viciously against, candidates.  The result is that major donors give directly to the candidates they want to influence in the event they are elected, rather than giving to the parties.   Why give money to a party that can use it to help all of its general election candidates when you can give money to the individuals you want to have in the system who will be so grateful to you for making them winners that they are more likely to carry your water when they’re in office?

Oh, we know that the standard response from the candidate is that the big givers don’t buy their votes; they just get better access.   But guess what greater access can get you.

One analyst in Summer’s article suggested the change also has had another deleterious effect on our elections and therefore on our legislative bodies.  Unlimited donations to individuals mean more candidates with no experience in politics can get the backing to go directly to the House or the Senate in Jefferson City without any public service experience they would gain by working their way up through local offices.  And so they show up with agendas but not the expertise that will guide them toward their goals, which leads to disruptions in the system that are not beneficial.

And a few days ago, Senator McCaskill told a group at a book-signing in Jefferson City that every presidential candidate is “looking for a billionaire” in today’s campaign climate.  And she talked about how few people have contributed a lion’s share of campaign money raised so far by those candidates.  It’s happening at the lower levels, too.  Right here.

Missouri is the only state in the country without campaign donation limits and with a flawed reporting system.  She says Missouri needs both.  But, observers were left to ask, who–including political party leaders–will have the courage to become the leaders necessary to do something significant, not just something that plays around the edges and doesn’t really change anything?

Our political parties are not quite yet like the wilted blonde at the quiet corner table.  But they, like her, are facing the music.

Now you must wake up.

All your dreams must end.

Take off your makeup .

The party’s over .

It’s all over, my friend.  

We hope not.  We might never go back to the brawling brokered conventions of years gone by.  But there has to be more to our political parties than an empty-eyed lonely lady waiting for that cigarette in the ashtray to burn itself out.  Our nation can’t afford to have the blonde walk out into an uncertain night.

(“The Party’s Over” lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green with music by Julie Styne is from the 1956 Broadway Musical, Bells are Ringing.)

 

 

Apples and oranges

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Kansas City’s council has voted to require an increase in the minimum wage paid to hourly employees working within its city limits and some members of the legislature, believing the sky will fall as a result, are threatening to punish the city.  Because Kansas City wants to give some people a bigger bite of the apple, the legislature wants to take away an orange. .

The statewide minimum wage is $7.65 an hour.  The Kansas City Council wants to increase it by eighty-five cents an hour this month with annual increases until the wage is thirteen-dollars an hour in 2020.  Critics contend the increases will cause businesses to provide fewer minimum-wage jobs.  Does that mean the people with corner offices will become the ones to re-stock the grocery shelves at night?  Or flip the burgers?  Somebody is still going to have to do that work.

Because Kansas City has mandated that its lowest-paid citizens get raises, some lawmakers want to end the earnings tax the city collects from all of the people who work in Kansas City, even those lowest-paid folks.  Maybe that’s the real problem.  Giving people raises means they’ll pay more taxes on their earnings and we know that tax increases are bad, bad, bad.  Even if the tax increase is less than eight-tenths of a cent an hour.

Let this long-time observer of legislative apples and oranges suggest an alternative to those legislators who think putting more money into people’s pockets is under this circumstance such a dreadful thing that it merits draconian retribution.  Normally the idea that people should have more money in their pockets (because they know how to spend it better than government does) is a concept the legislative majority likes to trumpet when it wants to cut taxes.  But here it’s some kind of municipal capital offense if those taxpayers earn that money.

So, in the spirit of being helpful, we offer an alternative that will improve the image of our lawmakers, particularly those who propose taking a guillotine to Kansas City’s municipal budget. And we can pretty much guarantee that this idea will produce bigger, more positive, headlines than the proposed orange penalty.

Instead of trying to punish Kansas City for having gone through a lengthy process to determine what the city council thinks is a fair phased-in step to take for the lowest-paid workers, the legislature should adopt a position of humility and comradeship.  It would be better for these lawmakers to say, “While we don’t believe lowest-paid workers in Kansas City deserve raises, we support them.  To show that we are in close sympathy with those workers who get the present statewide minimum wage, we are introducing legislation that calls for members of the General Assembly to receive the minimum wage, too.   In doing so, we will lead by example and in that way we will convince Kansas City to repeal its ordinance.”  It’s better to build a bridge than to build a bunker. Or in this case, it’s better to join together with workers at the apple barrel than to yank away a municipal orange that contains a lot of healthy fiscal vitamin C.

Just for grins, let’s calculate how much our lawmakers identified with those making $7.65 an hour.

Floor debate is often 4-6 p.m. on Mondays, 10 a.m. to, say, 6 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday and let’s say nine to noon on Thursday, which is roughly the schedule for a good part of a legislative session.  That’s twenty-one hours.  Some committees meet at 8 a.m. on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays.  Some meet for a couple of hours in the early afternoon. Let’s be charitable (501(c)4 so we don’t have to report who provides the money) and calculate the average legislator works twenty-five hours a week.   That’s $191.25 for a short work week.   The legislature is in session for three weeks in January, four in February, March, and April, and three more in May, generally.  That’s eighteen weeks.  That puts their earnings at $3,443.50 for the session.

Oops.  We forgot the veto session in September.  Two more days.  Let’s say these folks work eight hours each day.  That’s another $122.40.

Of course, they’re doing constituent things while they’re at home so they’re never really completely off-duty.   So let’s just multiply their weekly wages by fifty (including the September veto session) and that’s an annual salary of $9562.50.  We multiplied by fifty because they’d probably want two weeks off for a vacation or something and we know minimum wage people don’t get paid when they’re not working.

Zowee!!! At minimum wage our 197 House and Senate members would earn $1,883,812.50, total, for a calendar year.  The basic payroll for the members of the legislature is about $7.1 million a year under the present annual salary of $35,915.  That doesn’t count the $105 per diem that each member gets to pay for motel rooms, apartment rents, meals that lobbyists don’t buy for them, drinks at the local bar (ditto), and so forth.  And that doesn’t calculate the cost of state health insurance coverage they get.  By going to a minimum wage, our smaller government legislators could save about $5.2 million taxpayer dollars every year.  That’s another $5.2 million in business taxes that could be cut for all those companies flocking to Missouri and creating all those new jobs we keep hearing are being created because of an improved business climate.

The news just keeps getting better and better, doesn’t it?

Of course, most people earning $7.65 an hour don’t have health insurance provided for them.  Maybe the altruistic lawmakers would want to save the state millions of dollars more by not taking part in the state health insurance program, showing even greater support for minimum wage earners in Kansas City, and elsewhere, who don’t need to earn more while at the same time increasing opportunities for more tax breaks for those job-producing businesses.   Plus, most of our legislators moonlight with second jobs when they’re not in Jefferson City and they can use the money from those second jobs to buy health insurance, just like minimum wage workers do—don’t they?

See, folks, crippling our largest city financially because it has done something for low-paid workers is the wrong way to go.  It’s better to set a positive example by showing that those workers don’t need a higher hourly wage because legislators can get by on the same thing the minimum wage workers get now.

In a time when so many people have a negative impression of government, this would say the Missouri legislature truly is government OF the people.  The best way to change Kansas City’s mind is to show through personal leadership that a minimum wage increase is not needed.

It is only fair that we note that the legislature time and time again has rejected recommendations by a state commission that legislative salaries, already more than double the amount a minimum-wage worker could earn for fifty 40-hour weeks, be increased.  Imagine how much prouder their constituents  would feel if the lawmakers said, “We want nothing more than the hourly wage paid to Gladys who checks things out at our supermarket cash register or Phil, who works behind the counter at our convenience store, or the teenager who takes our money at the fast food place pay window.”

And what would make perfect sense would be a law that says any increase in the minimum wage paid to our legislators beyond increases provided by law would trigger the elimination of the state income, or earnings, tax.

Makes perfect sense.

Of course it does.

No thanks needed.  This proposal is just part of being a good, helpful, citizen who has had the good fortune for many years to hear our lawmakers praise themselves as citizen-legislators.

 

A great nation

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As we’ve watched, read, and listened to the verbal bombasts after a couple of recent U. S. Supreme Court decisions and hearing some inflammatory rhetoric from a fairly-recent presidential candidate, we are left with some unfortunate questions.

Does a great nation always have to have some citizens it can consider inferior, someone less qualified to seek the same life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness that most of us feel we automatically inherit as American citizens?

Does a great nation always have to have some citizens to disparage because they are different—in color, in gender attitude, in origin, in occupation, in intellectual or physical ability?

Does a great nation need to have so many people assuming God’s authority to decide which of us will be saved and which of us will be damned?

Does a great nation have to have some people profiting by peddling fear?

Does a great nation always have to be looking out the corners of its eyes at others, asking if they can be trusted?

Does a great nation need to curry a climate of suspicion within its populace?

Does a great nation need to portray entire segments of its population as unworthy because of the actions of a few?

Be careful how you answer these questions. Each of us is one of or descended from one of or knows one of those we asked about. And sometimes that makes it harder to proclaim greatness.

Overgrown is good

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We see that the Mayor of Florissant has asked Governor Nixon to call a special legislative session to increase the gas tax by two pennies so the state will not miss out on hundreds of millions of federal-collected matching-fund tax dollars coming back to Missouri for road and bridge work.

The legislature muffed the chance to do that in the recent session. Some lawmakers, to be frank, will oppose any tax increase for any purpose and will exert efforts to block approval of one. Based on his past record, Governor Nixon is unlikely to call a special session unless legislative leaders guarantee the bill will pass.   Once burned, twice shy, and Nixon got burned a few years ago.

The Missouri Department of Transportation needs some strongly visual reminders of how bad things are in our road system. The public and the legislators need to be reminded of how tight things are and what their continued wandering in the world of smaller government is costing.

We were driving along one of our highways a few days ago when we saw a department crew mowing the roadside and the median. We thought, “Why is MODOT spending money on mowing when it needs every penny it can get to keep more of our roads from turning back to gravel and more of our bridges from turning to rust?” We have noticed several medians and roadsides have not been mowed and on our recent trip across Kansas and into Colorado we saw a lot of tall grass in miles of rights of way.

MODOT needs to cut the cutting.

Let the grass and the weed and the flowers and the brush grow. Let the roadsides and the medians get absurdly shaggy. Let those areas represent the financial shabbiness of our state transportation program. And when the public complains, be truthful. “We can’t afford to mow our rights of way because we need that money to fix potholes and a few bridge decks. The legislature could ease that problem but it won’t. If you’ll give me the name of your senator or representative, I’ll look up his/her phone number. I’m sure they’d be glad to hear your concerns.”

A good friend, “Cutter” Short, who once was in the road-building and repair business, has cautioned against such a practice. He points to Federal Highway Administration guidelines for “vegetation control” that say the reasons to mow are:

  • Keeping signs visible to drivers.  (Hey! We’re talking about grass in this discussion, not tomato plants, grape vines, kudzu, etc.)
  • Keeping road users–vehicles, bicycles and pedestrians–visible to drivers. (We are not suggestion that the grass be allowed to grow tall ON the roads, just beside them or in the medians).
  • Improving visibility of livestock and wildlife near the road. (It’s nice of the FHWA to want cows and deer to be able to watch cars and trucks go by.)
  • Helping pedestrians and bicyclists see motor vehicles. (Yes, they’re at least as important as the cows. See also point 2 above)
  • Keeping sidewalks and pedestrian paths clear and free from overhanging vegetation. (Grass doesn’t “overhang.”
  • Removing trees close to the roadway which could result in a severe crash if hit. (Again, we’re talking grass here.  It’s okay to remove some dangerous trees. We don’t know what to suggest about the rocky bluffs, though)
  • Improving winter road maintenance in snow and ice areas. (Never can tell when one of those big salt trucks with dozer blades on the front might get entangled in the roadside or median grass, you know.)
  • Helping drainage systems function as designed. (They’re designed to handle grass clippings when rain moves in right after a mowing?)
  • Preserving pavements through daylighting and root system control. (A little extra height on the grass isn’t going to keep daylight from arriving when the sun does.  But we will concede that grass roots can be dangerous for our highways.  Not as dangerous as a lack of funding to pay for pothole repair, though)
  • Controlling noxious weeds in accordance with local laws and ordinances. (Let’s call on our courts to sentence people convicted of DWI to a week of Musk Thistle-pulling.)

We can add another couple of plusses to letting the grass grow.  It will hide those unsightly but necessary cables in the median that are designed to stop crossover crashes.  In fact, if the grass is thick enough it might help retard the momentum of the wayward vehicle.  And, for those who look for reasons to punish the Department of Conservation, there is the argument that taller grass will give deer, opossums, armadillos, and turtles more places to hide until they can jump out and attack unsuspecting motorists.

But it’s worth the risk to let the grass grow to emphasize the need for the legislature to overcome its horrible fear that Missourians might have to fork over a few pennies to pay for something like roads and bridges. The danger, of course, is that our lawmakers might not do anything to increase funding for mowing and for concrete and steel work. Instead they might declare roadway grass is a new official state symbol. They’re pretty good at that sort of thing.   Essentials, sometimes, not so much.

Time in a capsule

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An email arrived at the Missourinet from Arcola, Illinois a few weeks ago.

I wanted to get a message to Robert A. Priddy and tracked him down to this website. Today I found a message Bob left in a 1916 issue of the archived Arcola Record Herald newspaper. The message was written in 1961 when Bob was working there over the summer. The note said he was home for summer from University of Missouri. The message said, “The last person to gaze upon this page was I, on this day, July 13, 1961.” Just wanted to let him know I found it and left it there but added my own message for the next person to find.

Thanks, Nancy Rairden, Arcola, IL

Nancy Rairden on April 17 had opened a little time capsule I didn’t realize that I had created a long time ago. The Arcola Record-Herald is a weekly newspaper in a small town south of Champaign and about half an hour from my small home town of Sullivan.  An graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism, Harry Stonecipher, was the owner of the paper then and as a member of the fabled “Missouri Mafia” had hired the college kid who walked into the office one day hoping to get some experience in a newspaper office before starting his journalism classes that fall at the University of Missouri.  One of my jobs was to compile the weekly historical column—you know, the 10, 25, 50 years ago thing.  I don’t recall why I was looking at only 45 years.  Maybe we didn’t do 50.

The note left in the 1916 bound volume had been long forgotten.  But since getting Nancy’s message, I seem to recall putting the note there and wondering when the next time would be that somebody would be reading the newspaper from so long ago.  Now I know. Fifty-four years.

All I had said was that I had been there.  Time capsules are kind of like that.  “We were here,” they say to the unknown figures who will open them decades later.  That’s the basic message in all of them.

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The big copper box installed in the state capitol cornerstone was removed the other day and will be opened before the centennial observance on July 3 of the cornerstone laying a century ago.

Organizers of the centennial event think they’ll draw a better crowd and the event will be better-staged if it’s held in conjunction with Independence Day activities in Jefferson City. The old things won’t be put into the new time capsule that will be placed somewhere in the Capitol, probably, not back in the cornerstone.

New stuff will be put in the new capsule and the old materials will be cared for by the state archives after being displayed for a while.  As this is written, we don’t know specifically what’s in that box. We do know there were some newspapers and a book of Missouri history and a copy of the bill authorizing the bonds for the new Capitol.  But the folks who lifted the box out of the cornerstone thought it weighed about sixty pounds, indicating there’s a lot more than those things in there.  It will be opened in a sterile state health lab in case any dangerous mold has grown inside it.

The actual cornerstone laying date was June 24, 1915, a huge event in Jefferson City. The centennial of the event is unlikely to attract the kind of crowd that gathered a century ago although it would be nice to see a good-sized gathering.

The state is asking Missourians to suggest what should go into the new time capsule, which gives rise to a discussion about why we have them. If you could put something into the new Capitol time capsule, to be found 100 years from now, what would you put in it?  If you could leave a message for your Missourian descendants to read in 2115, what would you tell them?

In one form or another, you would say to them, “I was here.  I was as alive as you are now.”  Even if it is only a note that says I was the last person to look at this page of this bound volume of old newspapers until you came along, that’s the basis for what we would put into a time capsule.

Sometimes families create their own.  A friend many years ago bought a couple of trunks, one for each of their children, and put things in them from the family’s past and the then-present future.  The trunks are to be opened in fifty or a hundred years by descendants these folks will not live to see.

Sometimes the time capsule is nothing more than a shoe box given by one generation to another to just hang onto because it has some things in it that the giver considered important to them.

Some people in Georgia in 1940 created the Crypt of Civilization.  If the wishes of the creators are carried out, it won’t be opened until 8113.  By someone.  Or some thing.  Pessimists and Optimists alike might wonder if it ever will be opened because by then mankind, or whatever mankind has become, will have fled the dead, contaminated, resource-depleted earth for a habitable planet light years away.  At the same time, the mere presence of the Crypt of Civilization makes one want to be there when it’s opened just to see what life is or what life is like in 5998 years.

What’s in it?  Microfilm.  About 800 books including several novels show everything from the way we amused ourselves to humankind’s historical record to descriptions of our industries, our medical procedures, patent documents, sound movies of great men and women, recordings (on record) of important speeches made on the radio (radio did a lot of that then—speeches, not just talk)—even what one source calls “an apparatus for teaching the English language.”  Who knows what people will be speaking in 8113?  Seeds of flowers and trees and vegetables and other plants are in there. All of this is in a room ten feet high, ten feet wide, and twenty feet long under Phoebe Hearst Hall at Ogelthorpe University in Brookhaven, Georgia.  (Phoebe Apperson Hearst was a Missouri girl who married a California miner and became one of the world’s wealthiest women.  She was a great philanthropist and the mother of newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst.)

Organizers of the crypt hope it survives six millennia.  It is lined with porcelain enamel plates embedded in pitch, is sitting on bedrock and has two feet of stone above it.  A big stainless steel door has been welded shut.

Amazing.   But will the beings that open the crypt in 8113 have the technology to play the records. Will they have 35 mm sound film projectors?  Will the microfilm survive or will it have turned to jelly?  We know from the ancient Egyptian tombs that seeds can survive thousands of years.  But will Hearst Hall?  Or Ogelthorpe University?  Or Georgia?   Or the earth?

Time capsules are best if not boastful of the generation they seek to preserve. Instead, it is best that they reach out to those who will come after, leaving a record of a moment in time and a presence.  We may be proud of what we are today but we know that what we consider modern will be antiquated by the year the capsule is opened and that’s okay. We have left a record that says, “We got this far in 2015.”

In 8113, someone or some thing might discover the Crypt of Civilization and will know that Twentieth Century Homo Sapiens reached out to them and tried to leave something more substantial behind (perhaps) than Mount Rushmore’s by-then weathered faces that said, “We were here.  And in our time we were thinking, creative creatures.”

And, oh, how we wish we could see your world in 8113 when the capsule is found. .

The Missouri Capitol time capsule will be a message from 2015 to the great-great-grandchildren of this generation.  It’s a lot easier to be confident there will be people here in 2115 than it is to imagine how the Crypt of Civilization will be opened or by whom. And what should we say to those to open our time capsule?  Maybe something like—

We who think we are advanced today nonetheless recognize that we live in an imperfect world, one that is too much divided, too often ridden with greed, fear, hate, and quests for power, We recognize that we as Americans and Missourians have retreated from an era in which nothing seemed impossible, even walking on and exploring the Moon, to an era where we look inward, guarding ourselves against the perceived evils of those who are different—as mankind has done for eons.  We live in a world where we have friends on the other side of the earth but do not know the names of our next-door neighbors.  But beneath it all, we have hope and in clinging to hope we make painfully slow progress in resolving the issues that divide and therefore limit us.   We hope that a century from now that wisdom and peace are more certain parts of life, that bigotry toward some is no longer masked as the protection of rights for others, that rediscovered and vigorously exercised voter responsibility has long ago replaced the deleterious effects of term limits on our political system, that you still value and protect the outdoors as a breathing place for the public lungs, a place  where the different species that give beauty and perspective to our own existence still flourish, and where the sights and sounds of running streams still calm a stressed spirit.  We hope that a century of medical and scientific developments have destroyed diseases that lessen and shorten life, and that society has found a way to make longer lives valuable and beneficial to those who live them. We hope children and families are no longer uncertain about their next meal, their opportunity for education, their chances for meaningful work and loving families, the safety of their streets and homes. We hope this great building remains the Temple of Democracy that its designers and builders intended for it to be, the symbol of the best that we can be to one another, a structure symbolizing the hope that all may share for fruitful lives.  Our generation has sometimes let the building fall into a disrepair that regretfully represents our state as a place of sometimes unmet needs, unfulfilled responsibilities, ignored conditions, and reduced hopes. We hope your generation honors and strives for the good that this building represents. We hope that you have learned the virtue of looking outside yourselves, and that Americans have again discovered the spirit that nothing seems impossible.

There would have to be a theme of optimism in our message, wouldn’t there?   If there isn’t, why would we want to send a message to the future?    And if we do send one, why can’t we begin to live it now?

 

Thoughts from the road about the road

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We left our quiet street for a few days in January and February to travel in a dozen states.  We went to southern Florida during a January Missouri cold snap and drove out of a snowstorm in February to spend most of two weeks in Arizona and New Mexico.  Gloating about being someplace where the daytime temperature is in the 70s and 80s and dolphins sometimes play in the surf or in places where every day is golf day in the winter Arizona desert is unseemly so we’re not going to do it. In fact there were some days when the temperature in Florida was only in the 60s and it was almost that nice here at home, at least in January.  It’s not like we were full-blown snowbirds who have abandoned our neighbors to escape all of winter.   They were nice times but we’re not going to force anybody to look out our pictures of the sunsets on the Gulf of Mexico and palm trees and people in bathing suits strolling on a white beach or a Greek Orthodox monastery where they grow oranges and lemons in Arizona.  Unless our friends force us to show them.

We have learned that some people in Georgia talk like people from Georgia. But not all of them. Same with people from Mississippi and Alabama. People from Minnesota sound like Minnesotans in Arizona.  Arizonans sound a lot like us.

We have learned that some state capitols are not open to visitors on weekends.  Ours is.  But the Missouri Capitol has something for people to see. The Florida Capitol is a 22-story office building.  The Louisiana Capitol is a 34-story office building.  The North Dakota Capitol is a 19-story building.  The Nebraska Capitol is a 15-story office building. (Louisiana, North Dakota, and Nebraska were not on this trip but we’ve been there on other voyages.) . We are never too excited about seeing an office building-capitol anyway. Florida’s Capitol was closed for the weekend when we went through Tallahassee.  Arizona’s capitol is a museum with an executive office attached to the rear and separate buildings for the House and the Senate.  The New Mexico Capitol is round, lovely, captures the culture and is known as “The Roundhouse” because of its shape

We learned that people who drive I-75 in Florida must consider the highway’s name some kind of minimum speed.  But it’s a terrific road.  We were told in Oklahoma during a winter storm that if we want clear roads we should go to Missouri “because they shovel the roads there.”

We drove on some beautiful interstate highways.  In fact, we thought that just about every state we were in has prettier—and generally, smoother and often at least two lanes wider– interstate highways than Missouri has. Driving on them was comfortable, especially in those areas of three or four lanes each way where trucks were restricted to the far-right lane except when passing and there were ample lanes for travelers going at different speeds.

There pretty clearly are several reasons for states having more beautiful interstates than Missouri has.  The most obvious reason is fuel taxes.  Missouri piddles along at 17 cents for gasoline, more for diesel.  The states we visited on our warm-weather break, collect two to nineteen cents a gallon more.   Of course they have better, prettier roads.  Missouri, on the other hand, has political leadership that has spent years cultivating the idea that things will be oh, so much better, if taxes are considered some kind of disfiguring disease and the best solution is legislative inoculation against it.

But the big reason other states have more beautiful highways is billboards.

We have decided in our long drives down those attractive roads in other states that the absolutely ugliest interstate highway in America has to be Interstate 70 between our two largest cities.  It is a disgrace.  In a time when law enforcement authorities bemoan the number of traffic crashes and fatalities caused by distracted drivers, we have an interstate that is crammed with distractions.  Billboards.   It was bad enough until Missourians voted on limits to billboards a few years ago and the billboard—pardon me, the outdoor advertising industry—rushed to throw up dozens more of the things before the limits were enacted.   Sadly, the proposal failed and we are left with Interstate 70 roadsides with the worst case of advertising acne that can be imagined.

Many of our other major roads are relatively free of these visual insults but the busiest road in the state, linking our biggest cities, should be renamed.  Isore70.

Sadly,  the situation with a highway that at times seems nose-to-tail trucks–with cars as the meat in the truck sandwich–between Kansas City and St. Louis appears unlikely to be better anytime soon.  Missourians don’t want higher gas taxes. Missourians have rejected a special sales tax for transportation. The political tide is running against making I-70 a toll road. Heaven only knows how the situation will turn around. The legislature remains idling on the shoulder.