Category Archives: Politics

The Wesboro Amendment

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Anger and disgust can provoke competing and counterproductive emotions.

One leaves an observer of events rendered speechless.   The other leaves the observer spewing heated words that tumble over themselves and become so tangled that their value is lost.

So it is with the accounts of last week’s Missouri Senate passage of a proposed constitutional amendment under the guise of protecting religious freedom.  Perhaps through the discipline of writing and editing, thoughts will have some order.

Thank God, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act was not discovered in, say, 1953, before Brown v. the Board of Education and the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  Millions of Americans and thousands of Missourians might today still be denied equal access to housing, education, jobs, bathrooms, and drinking fountains if RFRA allowed them to be targeted for exclusion from equality under law by those who claimed to be motivated by a “sincere religious belief.”  Unfortunately, sexual orientation was not a high enough profile issue fifty or sixty years ago when civil rights, public accommodations, and fair housing laws were enacted with protections for various citizen groups that had suffered discrimination for decades, which is why bigotry in the guise of religious freedom is today able to attack a segment of our citizenry that was far less visible in 1964.

Only a few hours after Senate leader Ron Richard threatened reprisals against fellow senators who did not respect the traditions of the Senate, he was one of 21 Republican senators who signed a Previous Question motion that immediately stopped the Democrat’s filibuster against Senate Joint Resolution 39. So much for the Senate tradition of respecting the right of the minority to try to keep the majority from steamrolling legislation opponents think detrimental to the general population. We have observed the Republicans being quite reluctant to move the PQ when a filibuster is led by their own members.

Two, and sometimes three, Republicans voted with the Democrats who wanted the official record of the proceedings to reflect some of the things that happened during that filibuster.  Three Republican Senators, Bob Dixon, Ryan Silvey, and Rob Schaaf, voted with the Democrats against the move to stop the debate.

But Dixon and Silvey voted for the bill.

Schaaf was the only Republican to split with his party and join all of the Democrats who voted “no” on final approval of the proposed constitutional amendment.

Dixon and Silvey supported Democrats’ unsuccessful effort to amend the official record of the filibuster to show that the sponsor of the bill, Bob Onder, had suggested summoning the Highway Patrol to get two absent senators back into the chamber.

Dixon was furious when his fellow Republicans refused to let the amendments to the record be adopted.  The normally soft-spoken Dixon was uncharacteristically loud in his attack: “I am a senator, and I am disgusted at the slope and the speed with which this body is descending. When one member is disrespected, when any member has their rights disregarded in such a dastardly way, every Senator loses.  And not only that, our constituents are disrespected, the people are disrespected!”

But Dixon, who was concerned about disrespect for his constituents and for “the people” generally, voted for the bill.

Silvey also was angry about the rejection of the wording explaining what had happened during the debate.  “To say this did not happen is ridiculous,” he told his colleagues on the senate floor. And he continued, “What happened yesterday at the end of the debate was disturbing at best.  The fact we had members seeking recognition and ignored regardless of party should offend everyone in this room…What this debate is about is the soul of the Senate.”

But Silvey voted for the bill.

Senator Rob Schaaf, who has been part of Republican-led filibusters that were not stopped with PQs was the only one who continued to stand with Democrats.  “The beauty of the Senate design is destroyed…by not following our rules,” he said.  He called his party’s treatment of filibustering Democrats “disrespectful.”

Schaaf would have voted for the bill.

But he did not because he thought his party’s forced shutdown of debate raised “the stink of tyranny.”

This bill—which might be on our ballots later this year, thus presenting voters with the opportunity to further define Missouri’s narrowness or reject it (both, we suspect, in the name of religion)—and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act seem to spring from those who want to enforce the idea that this always-pluralistic country has always been some kind of “Christian nation.”

They want to be the ones who define “Christian.”

And that should strike a chord of fear in all of us.

You know who probably is cheering for our legislature as it works on SJR39?  The folks at the Wesboro Baptist Church in Topeka. This is their kind of religion.  The kind of people who show up at military funerals with signs reading “God Hates Fags,” whose web site says it stands against “the fag lifestyle of soul-damning nation-destroying filth,” love the kind of politics behind this kind of legislation.

So let’s just call this bill “The Wesboro Amendment.”

Interestingly, the Wesboro Baptist Church hasn’t needed RFRA to protect its religious freedoms.  It has the First Amendment, as we all do. Is the Missouri legislature so craven in its desire to appeal to the voting bloc known as “Evangelicals” that it advocates making the theology of the Wesboro Baptist Church part of our state constitution?  The actions last week are an answer to the prayers of the Wesboro faithful.

In Christian worship centers for the hundreds of denominations and non-denominational believers, a faith that advocates love for others is preached.  We wonder how many of those who voted for this bill have opened their hymnals on Sunday mornings and have sung Peter Scholtes hymn:

We are one in the spirit; we are one in the Lord, and we pray that all unity may one day be restored.

We will walk with each other; we will walk hand-in-hand, and together we’ll spread the news that God is in our land.

All praise to the Father from whom all things come and all praise to the spirit who makes us one.

(chorus):  And they’ll know we are Christians by our love, by our love. Yes, they’ll know we are Christians by our love.

Or the words from the thirteenth chapter of the New Testament book of Paul’s letter to the Christians at Corinth that are familiar and often used in marriage ceremonies—of all kinds– perhaps some of the ceremonies involving some of those who voted for the Wesboro Amendment:

If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.  If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing.  If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it, but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing…”

Three things last forever—faith, hope, and love.  But the greatest of these is love. 

In a matter of hours last week, the State Senate and its leaders demonstrated that talk of respect for tradition is cynical babbling in the face of partisan narrowness and they demonstrated how religion used for political purposes ignores the basic tenant of the teachings of the its founders.

Some of us, in observing recent events in the Senate, have heard the noisy gongs and the clanging cymbals.  And the noise and the clanging played a tune called “riffra” as the Wesboro Amendment moved closer to a ballot in Missouri this year.

The ABT factor

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Not that the presidential candidates have noticed very much  , but Missouri’s presidential primary is Tuesday.  Missouri tried to move its primary to an earlier date four years ago so it would be more relevant but the Republican party threatened to take away half of our delegates to the nominating convention if we did so the legislature decided it is best to be irrelevant in the Spring instead of being less relevant in the summer. 

This observer is not the only observer to observe that Republicans are becoming increasingly concerned that Donald Trump will have the nomination locked up before the summer presidential nominating convention.  And Trump loyalists are saying that if he goes to the convention with 1100 or so delegates (he needs 1237) and the “Republican establishment” denies him the nomination, there will be hell to pay, or something like that. 

More sophisticated analysts than those living outside the political cauldron are pointing out who supports him and who doesn’t and what he wins within the voting bloc and what he loses.  But what we have noticed is something more basic. 

Voters seem to favor ANYBODY BUT Donald Trump even in primaries (through last Tuesday) that he has won.  Here’s the “Anybody But” results through Super Tuesday:

Iowa   76% Anybody But Trump

New Hampshire  65

South Carolina  67

Nevada  54

Alabama  57

Alaska  66

Arkansas  67

Georgia  61

Massachusetts  50 (although in the total vote, he lost by about 20,000 out of 631,413 cast)

Minnesota  79

Oklahoma  72

Tennessee  61

Texas  73

Vermont  67

Virginia  65

Kansas  77

Kentucky  64

Louisiana  59

Maine  67

Hawaii  58

Idaho  72

Michigan  64

Mississippi  53

At that point, Trump had 458 delegates.  But “Anybody But” had 564. 

But he hasn’t cracked 40% support in 17 of the 23 states even as the number of competitors has narrowed. The candidate who has yet to get half of the votes cast in any primary has to get about 54% of all of the remaining delegates to be chosen to have enough delegates for a first-ballot nomination. 

Despite what seems to many observers as a steep uphill climb, his supporters believe Trump could go to the convention with a delegate count that deserves nomination.  But if he’s short, merriment will ensue after the first ballot and the convention will have to decide if he can win the presidency with base support of only about one-third of the party faithful.  Some Trumpians, ignoring the two-thirds for “Anybody But,” already are talking tough about what will happen if the mainline party leaders “take away” the nomination from their guy.

Delegate selection for conventions differs from place to place.  Some primaries/caucuses are winner-take-all.  Most are proportional.  As long as there are three other people running, voters will be able to vote for “Anybody But.”  Trump would prefer voters not have three other people giving voters an ABT alternative, of course. But all three of the ABT contenders have given voters in different primaries different people to use to express their ABT sentiments. They’re useful to the process.

Unfortunately, “Anybody But” is unlikely to work on the November ballot.  Watching the rest of the primaries is going to be more fun than usual. Watching the Republican National Convention holds even greater promise for entertainment this year than in many years past.  It also will be interesting to see if disappointed Trumpians will stay at home and sulk on election day (assuming he doesn’t launch a third-party effort) or if the party will be able to convince them that “Anybody But” Hillary Clinton is enough to rally them from their funk .    

One thing we’ve never understood is how opponents in primary campaigns can say the vilest things about one another and then get real palsy-walsy afterwards.  We’ve never understood why the public should consider such behavior the least bit credible. We’ll be among the many who will be watching for the obligatory unity moment after somebody, Trump or ABT, gets the nomination and wondering why yesterday’s leper can become tomorrow’s savior.    

One of the most fun moments in our career as a political reporter was the day we went after some losers in a post-election unity news conference.   We might tell that story some other day.

Correction

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Your correspondent was awakened far too early this morning with the thought that he had made a grievous error in criticizing the leader of the Missouri Senate in yesterday’s entry for his effort to kick former colleagues in the press corps out of the historic press table on the Senate floor.  

We regret that error.

In these pre-dawn hours, as we type this, we realize there are TEN chairs at the press table, not eight as we said.  That lowers the cost of the move from the $16,000 per chair that we mentioned yesterday to only $12,700 per chair.  

And it follows that we would commend the Senate leaders for delaying the move to avoid overtime costs that would have made the price for each chair $17,100 instead of the $20,000 that we mentioned. 

And in all honesty, our mention of the Pentagon’s $700 toilet seat in the 1980s also was an unfair comparison.  We checked with the Federal Reserve System and the Fed calculates $700 in 1980 is equivalent to $2010.44 today, so the toilet seat-to-press corps chair cost is not as excessive as we portrayed yesterday. 

But our early-morning conscience, which forced the publication of this correction, wonders what kind of new chairs our former colleagues will get for $12,700.  For that price, one might expect a leather upholstered recliner with cupholders, a warming system, and maybe a therapeutic massage feature.   

We apologize to the Senate leadership for our miscalculation. 

  

 

Needed words and $16,000 chairs

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(This post is rated “R” because of language)

Senate Leader Ron Richard gave his colleagues a dressing-down last week.  He has had his fill of fellow senators ignoring rules of common courtesy and respect for one another and for the position of Senator.  

It’s about time somebody said what he said.   

The Senate has written rules on decorum. But the UNwritten rules are as important, maybe more important, because they’re the kind of rules of common courtesy and respectful language that our parents tried to drum into us.   Good manners are not laughing matters. 

We’re not going to get into a discussion of rudeness and crudeness in campaigns.  That’s not what Richard was talking about and that’s not what we’re going to talk about here. 

Not long after Jefferson City became the state capital in 1826, a newly-elected member of the House of Representatives went to the Governor’s House—that’s what it was called then at a time when the first government building in Jefferson City housed the legislature and a two-room apartment for the governor—and went to the second floor to present his credentials.  Sorry, he was told, this is the Senate.  You should be downstairs in the House.  The new state rep supposedly observed that he had passed through the House on his way upstairs and thought it was a grog shop, what we today would call a rather raucous bar.  

The Senate likes to maintain the idea that the House is a noisy, unruly joint while the Senate is the place of dignity and cool reflection on potential law.  In recent years, we have observed, too many Senators seem to think the Senate is little more than a smaller House. 

Some former House members have sometimes addressed the Senate’s presiding officer as “Mr. Speaker” two years after becoming Senators, and in debate have sometimes referred to each other as “gentleman,” or “lady,” which are House terms.  Everybody in the Senate is a Senator and the presiding officer is “Mr. President,” or “Madame President.”  Slovenly discipline is such a small thing as this used to not happen.

There are Senate rules about where members can walk, which aisles they can use to get to their seats—and above all, they are not to walk between two debating Senators.  But it has happened all too often, and the reaction has too often been treated as some kind of a joke.

It has been considered extremely rude for one senator to ask another senator on the floor why a vote was cast the way it was.  Not so much anymore.  Senators are free to give their opinions on legislation during debate but they are not accountable to one another for their final votes on a bill.  They should be accountable to their constituents, and ultimately are, although being accountable to donors and influence-peddlers in the halls can’t be overlooked.

And language.  Your chronicler of events remembers the day a Senator slipped and referred to being “pissed off,” and was so embarrassed by his comment that he started to apologize even before the gavel came down to admonish him.  That seems such an innocent time.  A few days before Richard spoke on a point of personal privilege, one senator had referred to an issue as “bullshit.”  Richard told the senate that profanity has no place in the chamber and will not be tolerated hereafter. 

He can’t do anything about “the f-word” aimed at the governor by at least one senator some time ago on Twitter.   So we’ll say it: Senators are senators even when not in the chamber and such language demeans that body.  There are, as Senator Richard indicated, some things that can be said in the privacy of one’s office that should not be said in a public forum because it lowers the esteem of the chamber.  And twitter is about as public a forum as there is today.

And just plain common courtesy.  It has not been uncommon (but not real common, either) for a senator to interrupt debate to speak on a point of personal privilege about an unrelated issue.  It’s another example of the discourtesy that has crept into the chamber in recent years. Richard set an proper example by waiting until debate had been finished on an issue and the vote had been taken before he asked to make his personal remarks. 

So Senator Richard has served notice there will be penalties for people who use bad language, who violate rules of courtesy by asking why someone voted as they did, and who deliver personally-critical comments about a colleague, or use barnyard language.  We listened to his remarks archived by the Secretary of State and didn’t hear him mention walking between debating senators or violating other movement rules, or other courtesies that used to maintain collegiality outside the capitol.  But his desire to regain lost decorum in a chamber where decorum has only become a word in too many ways for too many years is a good thing.  Now we’ll see if he can make it stick. 

Although Richard did not say what the penalties would be for violations there have been, frankly, times when about half of the members of the chamber could have been banished to the visitors’ galleries.   Their violations of decorum have been much worse and far more frequent than anything any reporter at the press table has done.  But Richard has sentenced the press corps to the gallery.    

Probably because he can.   Whether he can inflict any meaningful or equally onerous punishment on his fellow Senators is something we’ll wait to see.   And we’ll be watching our former colleagues in the press corps to hear if Richard’s fellow Senators are capable of shaping up because of his lecture.  

——————-

Just as we were about to post these comments, we learned that the Senate leaders had decided to delay punting the press corps off the Senate floor into the visitors’ gallery until after the session.  That leads us to a slight diversion in this conversation but we’ll get back to Senator Richard and his PPP eventually because it ties in to this story, too.

Some of us are old enough to remember when the Project on Government Oversight reported during the Reagan administration that the Pentagon had paid $435 for a hammer, $600 for a toilet seat, and $7,000 for a coffee pot.  The story about the delay in kicking the reporters off the Senate floor is the story of eight $16,000 seats.  

The Associated Press reported the delay is a money issue.  The move already was going to cost the senate $127,000 to renovate the gallery and move all of the necessary wiring to the new facilities in part of the gallery that has been reserved for visitors since 1919.  But doing it this month would have cost an extra $44,000, raising the total cost of moving eight reporters from the table to the gallery to more than twenty-thousand dollars per press table seat.   

Twenty-thousand dollars per seat.  The Senate already was going to spend about $16,000 per seat before the overtime issue was raised.  And that, apparently, is enough.   

We’re kind of moving away from the original topic here, but we just can’t help it.  One Senator two years ago got his nose out of joint because he said something to another senator within earshot of the press table and one reporter summarized the conversation in a tweet and another reporter re-tweeted that tweet.  It is useful to question whether the tweeting was proper but if the senate is concerned about such things it has only itself to blame—and this will start to move us back to Richard’s point of personal privilege.

The unwritten rules of the Senate have said for generations that the press table is off-limits to senators and that interviews are not allowed to be done in the chamber while the senate is in session.  But time after time through the years, senators have strolled over to the press table, sat down on the couch behind some of the reporters and have engaged members of the press in conversations while debate continued on the floor, often making on-the-record comments about an issue or responding to questions from those at the press table.  I recall one day when a senator who couldn’t get to his seat because he would have had to go between two debating senators sat at one of the press table chairs—until I reminded him that he wasn’t allowed to sit there.  Members of the senate created that climate.  And now senators are bound and determined to spend at least $127,000 so they won’t be tempted to do what many of them have done so often in the past in violation of the chamber’s rules.  

It might be good to note that the Virginia Senate Majority leader, Tommy Norment, announced in late January that he would allow reporters back on the floor of the Virginia Senate.  They had been banned from the Virginia Senate floor a few weeks earlier.  We don’t know why but Norment seems to have decided his ban was not a good thing.  We don’t know if cost of alternate space was a factor in Virginia but it sure is an issue in Missouri.  

Sixteen-thousand dollars per press table seat. A senate that voted to cut benefits to people without jobs is willing to spend $16,000 on new chairs for eight people.  Think about that.   

Too bad Senator Richard didn’t make his comments two years ago about respecting the unwritten rules as well as the written rules of decorum and courtesy in the chamber.  Maybe the tweeting wouldn’t have happened if a certain conversation was taken off the floor, as Richard said some conversations should be.  He was dead-center right in saying what he said last week that senators should behave more like senators in word and deed.   It’s easy for this scribe to say so now that this scribe is no longer scribing at the senate press table. 

But this scribe is not ever going to think the senate spending $16,000 dollars per seat to move reporters out of eight chairs so senators are not led into the continued temptation to violate the chamber’s own rules is a sensible expenditure of taxpayer money.   After all, that’s $16,000 per seat that could better be left in taxpayers’ pockets because, as the legislature keeps telling us, taxpayers know how to spend their money better than government does.

Oh, well—-the press corps at least still will have a ringside seat through the end of the session to see if Richards’ necessary words turn out to mean anything to members of the senate.  One can only hope.    

Despite partisan differences

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The legislative session ended on February 20th.

In New Mexico.

We were in Albuquerque when the session ended about an hour away by highway where speed limits seem to be optional despite the signs.

Albuquerque Journal Capitol reporter Dan Boyd told readers, “New Mexico lawmakers passed more bills during the just completed 30-day legislative session than they had in a short session since 2010, reaching deals on state spending, criminal penalties and driver’s licenses despite partisan differences.”

The Senate Democratic leader talked about the session having “a more civil tone” than the 2015 session.  The House Republican Floor Leader said, “bipartisanship is alive and well in Santa Fe.”  (For those who have forgotten their fourth-grade civics lessons where we had to memorize all of the state capitals, Santa Fe is the capital of New Mexico, not Albuquerque.  In fact, Santa Fe is the oldest capital city in the United States).

Boyd said New Mexico lawmakers approved 101 bills plus a proposed constitutional amendment reforming the state’s bail system.

Comparing New Mexico’s legislature to Missouri’s legislature is comparing a peach to a raspberry.  But let’s make a little fruit salad today anyway.

New Mexico’s legislature meets for sixty days in the odd-numbered years and thirty days in the even-numbered, or election, years.  This year all 112 members of the legislature are up for election—all 72 Representatives and all 42 Senators.   Democrats control both chambers, 38-32 in the House and 27-15 in the Senate.

Bipartisanship is much easier when the political balance is more in balance.

There are no term limits so that means there are some experienced hands to teach the newcomers how to respect the system and how to respect each other to whatever degree respect can be given in these bile-filled political times.

Missouri has 197 members of the legislature (34 in the Senate, 163 in the House for those not fully civically literate), with two-thirds majorities on the Republican side in each chamber.  All of the House seats are up for election this year and one-half of the Senate seats.  Missouri has term limits, meaning experienced hands are lacking when it comes to teaching the newcomers how to respect the system and how to respect each other, etc.   The bile level appears to be higher in Missouri than in New Mexico.

Our legislature met for 72 days last year and will do about the same this year.  Monday, February 29th, was the thirtieth day of this legislative session in Missouri.

The internet site, Legiscan, says 2005 bills have been introduced in Missouri this year. Nine have passed in the first thirty days.  Its figures show 145 of the 2135 bills introduced last year were passed in a session that lasted twenty percent longer than the 2015 session in New Mexico.

Legiscan counted 138 measures on which work had been “competed” in New Mexico out of 1013 introduced for the thirty-day session this year and 232 out 1731 in the sixty-day session last year.  We haven’t waded too deep into the New Mexico process to determine why Boyd and Legiscan have different numbers but we suspect a slightly different definition of “measure” might be involved.

New Mexico has about 2.1-million people and Missouri has about 6.1 million.  Apparently, Missouri therefore needs forty percent more legislators and sixty percent more legislative days every two years to pass fewer bills while enjoying the benefits of much higher partisanship.

It surely can’t be because we have more people.

This is a possible reason for sessions that are short in New Mexico:  Members of New Mexico’s legislature are not paid salaries.  They get $165 a day per diem, adjustable according to the federal rate, a good reason to get business done expeditiously so legislators can get back home to real jobs in the real workplace with real people.

Missouri’s lawmakers, as we have noted previously, make about $36k a year plus per diem no matter how long they stick around the Missouri Capitol.

We do not offer an opinion of which system is best for the people of each state.  One seems clearly more advantageous to legislators and those who influence them.  We’ll let you decide which system better serves the people who live and work outside the Capitol.

We recall, however, that earlier this year one of Missouri’s legislative leaders opposed shortening sessions because it would leave the executive branch more in control of state government.  Some might find that a rather peculiar observation.

But we wonder if the shorter, lower-paid, legislative sessions in New Mexico are one reason the state is known as “The Land of Enchantment.”

Equal pay for equal work

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We were thumbing through a Reader’s Digest while waiting for a doctor’s appointment the other day and came across an article that might let Missouri Republicans and Missouri Democrats reach an agreement on one of the big issues that separates them—paying women the same salary as men for doing comparable work.

Studies year after year show women earn twenty to thirty percent less than men for doing the same kind of thing.   The Onion published a story about a year ago showing how one company has resolved the issue without being forced to do so by activist judges or over-reaching federal bureaucrats.

The story reported that Northstar Solutions of Seattle had begun paying men and women 78% of what they should be earning.  The article describes Northstar as “a progressive company” and quotes CEO Jack Stargell saying, “We’ve always believed that employees who contribute the same level of hard work for the same duties should earn the same meager fraction of a reasonable wage, regardless of whether they are men or women.”  The company reviews the salaries annually to make sure they don’t get out of whack.  Stargell says, “Sex is simply not a determining factor in how we view our workers; they’re all disposable quantities that deserve an identical amount of disrespect and lack of recognition.”

Yes, yes, yes, we know The Onion is a satirical weekly paper, not a real newspaper.  But it might be onto something that could draw together the great minds and the differing philosophies of government that divide the Missouri legislature now.

The legislature could pass equal pay for equal work, which the few surviving liberals want, and it could mandate that companies pay men the same wages that women earn for doing their same jobs, which could satisfy demands from the business interests that pour money into conservative coffers.**

Let’s face it, if businesses had government approval to pay men 22% less than they’re paying them now, the profitability of Missouri companies would jump and Missouri could truly become the magnet attracting new businesses that conservatives want it to be.  And we all know, because the business interests have convinced conservatives that this is true, that the businesses would take those large windfalls and use them to create MORE 78% jobs.  And that would be incredible news to jobless Missourians whose unemployment benefits have been significantly reduced by those same legislators.

AND things could get even better if the next proposed income tax cut is approved.  Lower taxes on lower wages mean even less money for state services, programs, and infrastructure, advancing the drive to “right size” government.  Observers who have been critical of Missouri’s politics would be hard-pressed to deny after all of this that Missouri is not a progressive state.

A lot of people make the mistake of dismissing The Onion as just a satirical publication.  Maybe Missouri legislators should look to it as kind of a guidebook to state prosperity and political harmony.

There’s one more thing to note about this issue.  Missouri already has a law that mandates equal pay for men and women performing equal work.  But it applies to only a select few.

21.140. Each senator and representative shall receive from the treasury an annual salary of eighteen thousand seventy-eight dollars plus any salary adjustment provided pursuant to section 105.005.

The most recent figure we’ve seen puts the basic equal adjusted salary for each man and woman in the General Assembly at $35,915 a year plus a per diem, mileage, and full state health benefits.  Men and women in this select group also can equally qualify for a pension after working six years.

The 78% plan of Northstar Solutions is not necessary in their case.

**The law probably should exclude CEOs from its provisions so that they can receive multi-million dollar bonuses for improving the company’s bottom line.  Female CEOs also could get bonuses but only 78% as much as the male CEOs.

To a candidate

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Congratulations.  You have put your name on the line and paid your fee and you are now a political candidate.

For some of you and the others who will add their names to ballots in the next few days, this is your first venture into a world that will test your integrity in ways you cannot now imagine (although some of you might already have flunked, based on whose money you already have taken or will get).  This might be your first step but you are bringing your family with you and while you envision the ads that show you and your family smiling confidently about your future and the future of your state, it is important that your family recognize they will share the lows as well as the highs in the months ahead.  And in fact, they might feel these things even more than you do.

How you run your campaign and how you respond to the campaigns others will run against you will test their character as well as yours.  And maybe it will be a sterner test for them than for you, believe it or not.

If you descend to the lower levels of campaigning, as is all too easy, you might find your family as well as some long-time friends questioning whether you are the person they have known and loved.  If you become the target of opponents or of the sewer rats who supposedly are completely independent of them, your friends and family might feel the attacks even more than you do.

We speak from experience of watching the process and of knowing winners and losers by the hundreds.  We know the state capitol or the national capitol can be places where ideals are sent to die.  We recall one office-holder from years ago who reflected on his re-election loss.  This person had been seen as a person with potential for greater things.  But the loss stopped that potential cold.   The candidate spoke of the double impact felt by a spouse.  Spouses, you see, not only share a candidate’s dreams of success and perhaps of higher office, but they have their own dreams that accompany that possibility.  When the candidate lost, the spouse saw the devastating effects on the candidate and also felt the death of their own vision.

If you win, do not think yourself more important than the family you take with you.  If you lose, be aware that you are not the only one dealing with the loss.

You might find the first of a series of new people who want to be your friends.  Do not kid yourself.  They are your friends only because they think you will do something for them, even if it is damaging to the general welfare.   They will want you be narrow, selfish, petty, and forgetful because it benefits them even to the disadvantage of many who will vote for you.   They will expect you to turn your back on your constituents, sometimes offering help in future elections so you can keep serving their interests.

You will be tempted to become something you are not today.  Of course, some of you have signed that candidacy statement because some of those interests already have invested in you and you already are theirs.  They prefer that you not develop a conscience during your candidacy or even your term of office.  And if you do, well, there’s no shortage of people who can be bought to replace you.

And finally, by signing the declaration of candidacy you have become something you might claim during your campaign that you are not.   You have become a politician.  If you win a few months from now, you will move from being a trusted friend at home to becoming a member of one of the most untrustworthy organizations there is—the government.

Congratulations on becoming a candidate for public office.  Surveys indicate the public has a low opinion of what you are becoming and the current crop seems to show little concern about their status or the damage they do to public confidence in the American system of government.  It takes courage to want to step into that arena.  If you have done so to satisfy a personal agenda or to carry the agenda of someone who has, in effect, bought you with a big donation, you will in the end deserve the scorn that the public feels for what you are becoming.

A question you should be prepared to answer—if only to yourself—is “What am I doing that will increase public regard for government and the people in it?”  We hope you hear that question often, even after you win.

ESPECIALLY if you win. We have seen, however, that you will be able to easily ignore it.  The concept of integrity, you will find, is fragile and is easily altered inside the walls of a capitol.

We’ll probably reflect on that after the election.

Find some other place to lie

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Sometimes when you feel that the world has gone too serious for you, pick up Gary Scharnhorst’s book of Mark Twain’s letters to the editor, Mark Twain on Potholes and Politics.  Scharnhorst is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English at the University of New Mexico whose collection of Twain’s letters has been published by the University of Missouri Press.

Twain’s letters to the editor are a delight.  He sent one to the St. Louis Sunday Republican that was published March 17, 1867 asking for public sympathy.  As a journalist, I was first caught by his proclamation, “I have been in the newspaper business a long time, and I have some little peculiarities natural to the profession, one or two propensities, in fact, which are pleasant to me but which I have a delicacy in indulging in without explanation when among strangers.”

Sometimes, he wrote, he sought “relief” in a secluded spot in St. Louis’ Lafayette Park but he kept seeing signs saying “Visitors are forbidden to walk or lie on the grass.” He set out to find someone to talk to about them and found a man he took to be a watchman he presumed was taking care of the grounds.  I can hear the voice of Hal Holbrook as Twain relates more of the story.

“When the sign says I cannot walk or lie on the grass, it is a plain intimation that I can walk or lie in the public roadways of the park, ain’t it?” 

He said, “Certainly, certainly—nobody ain’t going to interfere.” 

“Very well,” I said, “it is a great relief to me—just give me your arm.  You were going toward the other end of the grounds, I believe?  Just so.  Well, sir, I once had an uncle—got him yet for that matter—an uncle whose name was Isaac—Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—named after the whole tribe, you know, and—don’t interrupt me, please—this Isaac was rather stupid, stupid as an owl, sir, but a muscular man, and a man of prodigious appetite.  Why, as to his strength, nothing like it was ever seen in the world before—Samson was an infant to him—he carried off a church once, and you know it created dissatisfaction and considerable comment, and he went back after the congregation—DON’T interrupt me, if you please—and his plantation contained, well, say eighteen hundred acres of beautiful land, beautiful! But it was out of the way, some, and with no other implements, sir, than a wheelbarrow and a common shovel, he removed that entire plantation in a single night and deposited it in a most eligible position alongside the railroad.  It was a splendid idea, sir, splendid.  It increased the value of his plantation more than ten thousand percent.; but, as you perceive, sir, it utterly beggared the man whose plantation he covered up.  Strong?  Why, my friend, just the mere ballast of sin that that man carried around him would have crushed a common athlete to the earth; crush him?  It would annihilate him, sir!  My uncle, sir, could carry more sin on an even keel, and draw less water, and steer better than—please don’t interrupt me, sir—and he was a most remarkable man!  But at last, noble sir, that fell accident happened, which cast a blight over my life, and banished the roses from my cheek, alas! Never to return, watchman.  Heaven knows it was a sad day for me.  Well, that day my uncle had taken the oath, and several drinks, and a handful of spoons and various other articles and was feeling very well—he was always of a cheerful disposition—when all at once a sort of spontaneous combustion got started in his stomach, because, you see, he had been drinking a lot of uncommon bad whiskey, and trying to tell the truth all the while, and the truth and that sort of whiskey don’t really mix readily you know—but you understand these things.  This spontaneous combustion got started, and it extended upward and upward and upward, until at last it left go like an earthquake and blew the whole top of his head to the moon!—brains and all!—I pledge you my word of honor, there wasn’t the hundredth part of a teaspoonful of brains left in that idolized frame. It was awful.  Well, the whole top of his head was gone, you know, and so there was nothing for it but to put a tin roof on him—don’t interrupt me, can’t you?—no way but to put a tin roof on him, which disfigured him greatly, but was perfectly safe although it attracted heat of course, and might have caused brain fever, only, as I said before, the brains were all gone—but now comes the dickens of it, you know—what to do with him!—what the very nation to do with  him!  He couldn’t mould bricks, he couldn’t be a doctor, he couldn’t make more than a mere ordinary sort of a preacher—it didn’t really seem as if he were fitted for anything better than a kind of Mayor or City Councilman, or something of that description, and so, gifted sir, you can imaging the desolation that fell upon all our hearts and drove hope and happiness from our breasts—till at last, Heaven be praised, the people, the high and noble, the wisdom-inspired people, saw what Providence had intended him to be and they sent him to Congress, sir! They sent him to Congress…”

Twain reported the watchman at that point had had enough and left in a huff, which left Twain surprised and “grieved.”  After all, the watchman had told him he couldn’t lie or walk on the grass but could lie and walk on the walks as much as he wanted to, it seemed discourteous of him to leave. “Can I lie with any satisfaction without I have got somebody to lie to?  Why, certainly not.  Did that idiot suppose I wanted to march around that dismal park and lie all to myself?  It is absurd.”   He asked the editor to request the signs prohibiting lying or walking on the grass to be removed.  Their restrictions, he said, “amounts to heartless inhumanity.”

Your correspondent and his own “peculiarities natural to the profession” of journalism loves that letter.  The failure of mixing truth with too much bad whiskey. A tin-headed member of Congress.  The futility of a “march around that dismal park” lying only to himself.

It was a letter to the editor in 1867.  Is it a parable for the election year of 2016?

———-

(editor’s note:  We’ve seen Hal Holbrook and his “Mark Twain Tonight” show many times, spent a wonderful hour interviewing him once, and helped arrange for him to perform in Jefferson City on the last night of the 2014 legislative session.  Unfortunately, few members of the legislature stuck around to see him.

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After his two-hour performance, he spent quite a bit of time with some folks backstage and later had dinner with several of the concert folks.  Your correspondent, exhausted from the last week of the session, had to skip the dinner.  But the president of the concert association, Mark Comley, related that during dinner he told Holbrook one of the memorable routines he had seen Holbrook perform many years earlier was the story of the “Begum of Bengal,” the story of a pipsqueak boat captain challenging a great trading ship from the orient.  He said Holbrook grew quiet for a while and then, there at the table, performed the story!  Mark figured Holbrook had been going through his voluminous mental files of Twain stories during that quiet time.  If you’d like to see Holbrook/Twain tell the story, go to this link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V65G_xA5eKc&list=PL7fTLA1i5h4Bhnlv1nhFTtsvSBUFb5myF&index=10

The story of the “Begum of Bengal” starts about 4:20 in.

He’s 91 today, February 17, and as far as we know still does his show on stage.  He’s been Mark Twain longer than Samuel Clemens was Mark Twain. He is simply one of the greatest performers in the history of American theatre.  And that’s no lie.)

 

This might be TOO ethical

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A long-cherished political tradition is at risk at our state capitol but it might not be too much of a risk. 

St. Louis Representative Gina Mitten has introduced a bill banning candidates for statewide office from chairing House or Senate committees while they are seeking that statewide job.   She says the situation invites abuse because it links the influence committee chairpeople have over legislation at a time when donors might be influenced by the committee’s actions. 

Does that happen?  Surely not. 

Mitten says the situation does not “pass the smell test.”  She’s not proposing the candidate leave the committee.  She just wants the candidate out of the chair.  The candidate can still dominate the discussion and gain as many headlines as would be gained while in the middle seat.  But the candidate’s authority over the fate of the legislation presumably would be erased. 

Mitten isn’t messing around either.  Her bill would ban any chairperson who doesn’t step aside from running for statewide offices for two election cycles.  (Maybe they could become lobbyists.  Other bills moving in the General Assembly would force lawmakers wanting to become lobbyists to wait a whole year before darkening the halls of the capitol. One entire year. Is there any doubt that requirement would solve the problem of ex-legislators getting too close, too soon, to their former colleagues?)

Mitten counts four sitting committee chairpersons who are running for statewide office this year.

Her bill would end decades and decades of practice.  Both parties have done the thing she wants to stop.  It has not been unusual for somebody wanting to improve their visibility and have a chance to grab some headlines to talk to the Speaker of the House or the President pro Tem of the Senate about forming a high-profile committee they can chair, especially if it is about an issue that is important to the candidate’s or the party’s political base.  An interim committee is best because there’s less competition for headlines than there is during the regular session.  Plus, interim committees can hold hearings throughout the state, increasing that visibility among voters who otherwise wouldn’t be paying attention to a committee hearing in Jefferson City and therefore wouldn’t know or care who is leading the crusade.  

Her bill might have a little bit better chance this year than it would have had in years past because the legislature is on a righteousness kick when it comes to lawmaker ethics.  But it probably won’t have much of a chance.  She’s a Democrat in a monocratic Republican legislature. 

She introduced House Bill 2398 on January 27.    As of February 9, the Speaker had not assigned it to a committee.  One might think it would go the House Ethics Committee, of course.  She’s the vice-chairman. 

A mell of a hess

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Your correspondent has paid a couple of visits to the University of Missouri’s Columbia campus within the last few days.  Believe it or not, all of the columns on Francis Quadrangle are still standing.  The lighted dome of Jesse Hall still shines brightly against the night sky.  White campus has not crumbled.  Red campus still stands.  Peace Park is still peaceful.  The lions at the journalism school arch that are supposed to roar when a virgin walks by remain silent.

One would think otherwise, of course, after reading the seemingly constant flow of headlines emanating from that campus.  The inspection trip to Columbia became necessary after a fellow UMC graduate sent a note saying, “This is depressing” after reading Tony Messenger’s recent column in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch headlined “Somebody needs to drive University of Missouri out of ditch. Now.”

Tony, who was a terrific reporter at the state capitol before being demoted to editorial page editor, has recounted the seeming continued deterioration of the university system.  We say “system” although most of the collapse is centered in Columbia. And since the university system is so Columbia-centric, the screaming and the shouting (“when in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout.”) seems to mean in the public mind that the whole darned thing is in one mell of a hess, as Grandpa Motes used to say.

Well, it is.  It is because the focus is on Columbia but the ripples include the campuses in Rolla, Kansas City, and St. Louis in several ways.  Columbia’s the one with the football recruiting class that is 53rd in the nation, with a basketball team at the bottom of the conference that is hoping its self-flagellation over a significant recruiting violation under a different coach and a different athletic director will spare it significant additional flagellation from the NCAA, and with an apparently previously well-accepted communications professor who made an egregious emotional mistake during last fall’s demonstrations becoming the poster-child in a heated disagreement involving academic freedom, constitutional rights, personal responsibility, and competing political agendas.   It is a system in which one-third of its governing board has quit for one reason or another (one curator leaving even before the Senate confirmed Governor Nixon’s nomination of her), where a former system president who was praised for his graceful forced exit last year has now attacked the system’s governance and management, where Standard and Poor’s has lowered the institutional bond rating because of financial uncertainty caused by decreased enrollment and political games at the capitol, where interim leaders are struggling for stability while the unenviable task of finding a new president is underway, where—as Tony says—“black students and faculty feel disenfranchised,” and where one of the town’s newspapers recently reported that foreign students—who have been aggressively recruited because their much-higher tuitions provide minor help in offsetting legislative parsimony in financial support for education (at all levels)—don’t know who to go to if they feel harassed or threatened.

And we’re sure we’ve left some things out.   Oh, yes—a governor who has convinced the university to freeze tuitions so he can recommend the aforementioned parsimonious legislature give it a sadly-inadequate increase in general funding because the whole goal of government is to convince Missourians they can get more of the services they need and demand if they pay less for them.  It’s the same government that seems to think the most important things in higher education today are making sure nobody who even knows where Columbia, Missouri is can perform an abortion there while making sure all students can carry guns.

And the leader of the Senate says the university’s governing board will stay crippled for at least a year—until a new governor takes office because the senate will not confirm any nominees by the sitting governor.  That’s real helpful, isn’t it?

So, politically, the University of Missouri has been driven into a ditch.  But a lot of hands have been on the wheel.   If we listen to the Missouri Department of Transportation, ditches might be the best-maintained part of our road system today.  So getting the University out of the ditch will still leave it on the same uncertain road full of political potholes that it’s been on for some time.

But friends, there is hope.  And it is not on the road of potholes.

It is in the classrooms.  And the view behind the headlines is markedly different.

While all of the people who THINK they are important are playing their games, the serious work of educating another generation is quietly being carried out in thousands of classrooms, laboratories, studios, clinics, and offices on the four campuses by people who ARE important.  Walk through the Columbia campus and you’ll be walking with the young people WE were, young people busy being in their teens and early 20s and going about the business of becoming.  They’re talking and laughing, not spitting and shouting epithets.  They’re thinking and working.  Their teachers are shaping, not threatening, them.  (Well, except that the threat of a poor grade still hangs over the head of every student.)

In dormitory rooms and apartment rooms, at the Heidelberg or at Shakespeare’s Pizza’s temporary location, or in the part of the Brady Commons that commemorates The Shack, the students are doing what WE did.  They’re studying or playing cards or sleeping or—-.  Fill in the blank from your own memories.  Most of them do not feel harmed by the oh-so-serious power struggles among the people who THINK they’re the important ones, although in various ways they are being harmed because the struggles for political power are limiting their opportunities.  The REAL important ones are the ones with backpacks over their shoulders and hope in their eyes as they and their teachers lay the groundwork for lives they hope will be well-lived.

They are the university.  Their headlines are in years to come.  Walk among them and be hopeful.