Category Archives: Politics

The Team Player 

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Being a team player means placing greater value on a team’s success than on individual achievement.

In sports it might mean passing up a chance to hit a home run when a sacrifice bunt is necessary.  In business it might mean supporting the competitor who got the job you wanted because the company is more important than one job, more important than one individual.

Sometimes being a team player means figure out what your team is.

The issue came up recently when Congresswoman Ann Wagner, who represents a district in eastern Missouri, announced she would support Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan, who had the backing of former President Trump, for Speaker of the House just days after she said she would “absolutely not” support him.  She complained that when Jordan lost the original caucus vote to Congressman Steve Scalise, “He gave the most disgraceful, ungracious—I can’t call it a concession speech—of all time.”

Talk about a turnaround!

She justified her change by saying it is because she is a team player.

In baseball terms, she tore off her Cardinals uniform and put on one for the Cubs. Instantly.

More and more, though, it appears we don’t have teams in Washington.  We have tribes.  At least four of them: the extreme right tribe, the center right tribe, the center left tribe, and the extreme left tribe.

Jordan, whose record of getting bills passed is so thin it is, well, non-existent,* got the Republican conference’s majority vote as its candidate for Speaker—-but with substantial opposition, casting doubt on whether he could get the 217 Republican votes he needed to take the gavel. He came out of the conference caucus 65 votes short of what he needed in a floor vote. He and his supporters spent the days getting people like Wagner to turn around. But 65 votes was a whole lot of turning. And Jordan couldn’t do it.

Some of his opponents had the temerity to suggest that the Republican minority within the Republican majority might align with Democrats to pick a Speaker, an impracticality at the time because a Democrat in charge of a chaotic Republican House would be unable to bring sanity to the large room that seemingly needs to add padding to its walls and to rewrite its recently-rewritten dress code to include canvas blazers with long sleeves that tie in the back.

But give credit to those who have had the courage to suggest that the other side is not the enemy; they’re just friends who have different ideas.  And if they can find areas of agreement and move forward, it sure beats focusing on differences that stand in the way of service.

We do not mean to target Wagner in this entry because there are others who have misunderstood the concept of team when they proclaim in word and deed that they, too, are team players, an observation that applies to both of our political parties.  She just happened to use the phrase.

Minority Democrats, who have seemingly been inessential to the slim-majority Republicans and therefore beneath respect by them, have had the luxury of sitting back and watching the GOP House fall into a state of extreme disarray without addressing the possibly troublesome fringe of their own party and the mischief it might cause if Democrats regain control of the House—which a lot of pundits think the Republicans are proving should be the case.

It appears the only teams that matter in that climate are Republican and Democrat.  Anyone who has spent a lot of time inside the political system at the national or state level can understand how consuming that world becomes, so consuming that the real team is forgotten.

As we said earlier, there are four tribes in the House, not two teams.

Who IS the team?

Look in your mirrors.

Somebody in Washington or Jefferson City wants to be a team player?  The first step is to get rid of tribes. The second step is remembering who the team really is.

WE are the team.

Reaching across the aisle in a way that benefits the team more than it benefits any one tribe isn’t a crucifiable offense.

Was Jim Jordan interested in taking one for the team?  No, he was in it for Jim Jordan (and his big booster at the time).  And he lost three times, each time with fewer members of his own party supporting him.

So what is the team’s responsibility for straightening out the whole mess? Simple. Pay attention to what our congressional delegation is saying and doing and make sure that whomever we send to Washington next November is more loyal to country than to tribe and certainly more loyal to country than to a disgraceful former leader.

*The New Republic, an unabashedly liberal publication, said in its October 17 webpage entry,  “Jordan stands out among his predecessors and colleagues because he is not a real lawmaker… The Center for Effective Lawmaking, a project by Vanderbilt University and the University of Virginia, rates House members based on their legislative performance. In the 117th Congress, Jordan was tied for fourth place among the least effective lawmakers.

Jordan sponsored only a single bill in the last Congress—on social media censorship, a perennial issue among some conservatives—and it did not advance out of committee. He has never successfully drafted a bill that became law…Meredith Lee Hill, who covers all agriculture-related goings-on on Capitol Hill for Politico, reported that Jordan’s supporters pitched his speakership to agriculture-minded Republicans as the “best way to get the huge [Farm] bill to the floor” in what remains of this Congress’s term. As Hill noted, Jordan has never himself voted for a farm bill at any time in his career.”

Nullifying a Nullification 

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The Supreme Court has once again had to rule that Missouri is part of the United States.

A lower court had ruled as unconstitutional the legislature’s latest effort to say Missouri did not have to obey federal laws.  In this case it was a 2021 law that prohibited local and state police officers from enforcing certain federal firearms restrictions.

It was a slam dunk by the court. Only former Missouri assistant attorney general Clarence Thomas thought the state had a great idea.

That great idea, given the haughty name of the Second Amendment Preservation Act gave citizens the right to sue local and state governments, agencies and agents that enforce federal gun laws that impose registration requirements, fees, and taxes, for as much as $50,000 for allegedly infringing on Second Amendment rights.

The Washington Post reported Friday that the Biden administration took the state to court. Our Attorney General, Andrew Bailey, suggested the federal government had no business suing the state because lawsuits could only be filed against state and local agencies. And he maintained, as backers of the law proclaimed in 2021 that the state has no responsibility to enforce federal law. He called the federal government arguments “aggressive and novel,” and railed against federal second-guessing state policies.

United States Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar asserted that the law hampered enforcement of federal laws, “including its ability to apprehend dangerous criminals.”

She also argued—as opponents argued when the law was passed—that the U. S. Constitution prohibits states from invalidating federal laws.  Furthermore, she said, Missouri’s law says any federal employees who enforce the federal law in Missouri could never work for the state of Missouri after they leave federal employment.

Last March, a federal judge blocked enforcement of the law but damage already had been done.

The Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has had a task force made up of federal, state and local authorities. But several of those state and local agencies quit feeding date into a national program that helps link evidence of crimes in Missouri with crimes elsewhere in the country.

The U. S. Marshalls Service said a lot of state and local officers stopped helping catch fugitives.

States have been trying to nullify federal laws since 1832.  It hasn’t worked but the Missouri General Assembly is a low learner.

The issue originally arose with the passage of a strong tariff law in 1828. Southern states thought it put an unfair tax burden on their agricultural economy because the south lacked industry and had to import most of its manufactured goods. When the federal government under President Andrew Jackson did nothing to relieve that distress, radcals in the South Carolina argued that a state could declare any federal law it believed to be unconstitutional null and void and in 1832 adopted An Ordinance of Nullification that declared the 1828 tariff and a later one passed in 1832 were unenforceable in the state.

South Carolina prepared a military force to oppose any federal soldiers  sent to enforce the tariffs. Congress passed the Force Bill in March of 1833 authorizing President Jackson to use military force against South Carolina. At the same time, Congress passed a new tariff that was a compromise South Carolina could accept.

A petulant South Carolina repealed its Nullification Ordinance.

Then it passed a measure nullifying the federal Force Bill, just to have the last word.

The issue of states’ rights, however, has never gone away.  And the 2021 Second Amendment Preservation Act was the latest flareup of the issue in Missouri—at least that got legislative approval.

But don’t be surprised if somebody proposes something for the 2024 General Assembly that asserts this state can live apart from the United States Constitution if it disagrees with something in it.

(You can check out the “Blood Right” entry we posted on May 10 this year for another example of the legislature to ignore the Constitution of the United States.  It was a gun issue, too.)

Crock

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Republicans in the U. S. House of Representatives have had the night to twist arms, make promises or threats, or do other things to cajole their own caucus to vote for a Speaker who has been in the House since 2006, has introduced only thirty bills in all that time, and has gotten none of them passed.  They’ll try again today.

Jim Jordan not only didn’t get the votes to become Speaker of the House on the first ballot yesterday, he got outvoted by Democrats.  All 212 Democrats voted for their leader, Hakeem Jeffries. Jordan had only 200 votes after twenty of his fellow Republicans voted against him.

The Republicans, who can’t get their own ducks in a row, are blaming Democrats for their failure to use their majority to pick a new Republican  Speaker to replace the ousted Kevin McCarthy.

Whose fault is this historic and ugly deadlock?

McCarthy maintains the House would not be stalemated if “every single Democrat didn’t vote with eight Republicans to shut this place down.”

That, my friends, is a crock. And it’s full to the brim.

The Democrats have no obligation to Republicans who have let four percent of their caucus run their conference.  Democrats are not in charge of putting the Republican House in order.

Democrats have scored some points by saying they’ll work with moderate Republicans to end the chaos.  But McCarthy and Jim Jordan and their supporters who have shown no interest in bipartisanship otherwise think Democrats should ride to their rescue.

Hypocrisy flows in buckets with their whining.

Perhaps the Republicans, especially those who have aligned themselves with the political evangelicals should have a discussion group about the meaning of Luke 4:23—“Physician, heal thyself.”

And to remember another old adage:  If you point a finger at someone remember that there are three fingers pointing back at you.

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Has it Really Been 25 Years? 

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For those who do not read our Tuesday entries on sports, please bear with us today because we’re going to talk about integrity today.  But we have to set up the discussion with some sports talk.

A few days ago I picked up a book by ESPN commentator Mike Greenberg and his associate Paul Hembekides, Got Your Number; the Greatest Sports Legends and the Numbers They Own.  It’s one of thoe “list” books—such as a thousand this or that’s to do before you die stuff.  This one lists 100 people and events in sports that are the greatest moments in the broad world of athletic competition.

Number 98 references the year 1998.  Those old enough need to think back 25 years to the dominating sports story of that year.  Let’s pause while you close your eyes and look for an answer, which I will give you after the (pause) but don’t peek.

(PAUSE)

The year 1998 was the year two men dominated baseball—Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa.  The fact that they played for the Cardinals and the Cubs—two long-time baseball antagoinists—made the competition even more significant.  Throughout that long season, these two men battled to see who would set a new major league home run record.

There was McGwire, who was under incredible pressure from the beginning. It was expected he would break Roger Maris’ record of 61 homers.  McGwire had come to the Cardinals year earlier after starting the season with the Oakland Athletics.  He hit 34 home runs for the A’s and 24 more when he reached St.Louis.  58, and from the first day of the 1998 season the  Post-Dispatch headlined each home run he hit.

In Chicago there was Sosa, a power-hitter for the Cubs who had hit 33-40 home runs a year since 1993. But there was no reason to exepect what would happen in 1998.  In fact, the biggest challenge to McGwire was expected to come from Ken Griffey Jr., who had 56 home runs in ’97.

Griffey had his second-straight 56-homer year.  Sosa briefly held the record at 66 before McGwire swept past him on the way to a 70-home run season.

Many say that those two years, particularly 1998, restored the faith of baseball fans who had been resentful of the 1994-95 player’s strike and owners’ lockout.  Greenburg isn’t buying any of that, writing, “That magical season turned out to be an illusion, unworthy of being celebrated though steadfastly impossible to forget. I have heard it said that the best way to gauge whether or not a player belongs in the Hall of Fame is by asking the question: Can you tell the story of the history of the sport without him?”

Neither McGwire nor Sosa is in the Hall of Fame at Cooperstown. The reason the two are outside is because, as Greenburg puts it, “McGwire and Sosa dishonored the game.”  But, he says, what they did is unforgettable.  He finds it “a tad insulting” when people say these two “saved” baseball.  He argues that such statements preclude the idea that nobody else could have saved the game because baseball is so much part of the American spirit to have gone unrescued by somebody. These two men, he says, “were in the right place at the right time.”

McGwire and Sosa, and Roger Clemens—the most dominant pitcher of his time—and Barry Bonds, who holds the career and single-season home run records—have joined Shoeless Joe Jackson and Pete Rose in the mist of fame/infamy that keeps them from having plaques in Cooperstown because their greatness cannot overcome their violations of the integrity of the game, the first three because they are suspected of using, or have admitted using, performance-enhancing drugs, the fourth because of gambling on the sport.

The integrity of the game.

Whatever the game might be.

For many years I have been invited to speak to the incoming freshman class of the House of Representatives, who gather at the capitol a few days after their elections to begin learning how to be state representatives.  I usually tell them near the end of my remarks, “Never lie to a reporter because the first time to you lie to me is the last time I believe anything you say.  Never lie to your colleagues because your integrity is really the only thing you have going for you here.”

This is a time when we must measure those in the game of politics for their integrity for if we dismiss it as the primary qualification for public office we are dismissing it for ourselves. Our public integrity must not be sold to those who would mislead us in their search for power.

There are plenty of those who dishonor that great game of politics. Integrity to them is meaningless as they place power over us ahead of service to us.  It is up to us to exercise our integrity to save ourselves and our country from those who, as Greenburg would put it, “dishonor” the game.

We must never lie to ourselves.

Because our integrity is all that we have if we are to have, or save, our state and our nation.

(Photo credit: ESPN)

 

Now, Wait A Minute!!

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We are intrigued by the Trumpists who think our former president was correct when he said now-retired Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley should be executed for treason because he called his Chinese counterpart in the crazy post-January 6 days of the Trump administration to assure him that the United States was not planning an attack on China.

Trump called the conversation “treason,” writing on his (un)Truth Social page, “This guy turned out to be a woke train wreck who, if the Fake News reporting is correct, was actually dealing with China to give them a heads up on the thinking of the Prsident of the United States. This is an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH. A war between China and the United States could have been the result of this treasonous act.”

The statement is remarkable because Trump seems to give credence to reporting by those he considers “fake news media.” But such self-contradictions within his constant self-aggrandizing verbal disgorgements are always expected.

Many observers warn that this typical Trump rant is another call for violence by his supporters and is an example of why his re-election would be perilous for our Democratic Republic. While reporters who interviewed several Trumpists in Iowa, where he recently campaigned found some willing to cut Milley some slack, one seemed to voice the common temper of the larger MAGA cult: “Why was he not in there before a firing squad within a month?”

As long as the Trumpists are asking THAT question—

There’s another question that nobody we have heard of has asked Trump. And if anybody does, we know the answer will be a doozy.

The question is this:

If it was treason for Milley to assure the Chinese that there were no plans for an attack—-

WERE THERE PLANS FOR AN ATTACK?

Well, Donny?

Squirming

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One of the biggest jobs of any reporter is to hold public officials accountable for their remarks or their actions.  Sometimes the official cannot prove a point he wants to sell to the public.

You know they’re in trouble—and they know they’re in trouble—when they refuse repeatedly to answer a straight question with a straight answer.  And all that does is make a good reporter bore in.

It should make voters ask questions themselves, chiefly, “Why is he dodging, ducking, and bobbing and weaving?” and next, “Can I trust what he’s saying.”

In our long experience of challenging the veracity of political rhetoric (and I absolutely loved doing it), I made sure our listeners heard the verbal dance of the politician who didn’t know what he (or she) was talking about or who was tripped up by issues of truth.

Governor Joe Teasdale once told me, “I’ll never lie to you but there will be times when I won’t tell you the truth.”

???

The public, as well as the reporter should always have their antennae up for such moments.  Such as a news conference in Washington—– when one of our Congressmen became a prime example last week.  Southeast Missouri Congressman Jason Smith, the Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, held a press conference to announce that he had 700 pages of evidence that President Biden had been involved in son Hunter’s business dealings overseas and that involvement merited impeachment.

The only problem, as pointed out by NBC reporter Ryan Nobles, is that the supposedly damning evidence was about events that supposedly happened three years before Biden was President or even a candidate for President.

Watch Smith squirm:

It is not uncommon for the person being pressed for a straight answer to cast an aspersion on the questioner or to simply refuse to take any more questions.  That, my friends, is usually a clear reason to doubt the validity of the statements.

The public should watch or listen to these kinds of events—and should wonder why this public official cannot give the public a straight answere or in some cases no answer at all. It is so frequent in our political system today that I fear the public has become inured to it.

Does Smith have legitimate information? The first hearing, which lasted six hours, has been roundly criticized from both sides as a nothingburger, to use an old phrase Ted Cruz once used to describe questions about some actions by then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions. FOX News Channel’s Neil Cauvoto agreed: “None of the expert witnesses today presented any proof for impeachment.”  Under questioning, the Republican’s own witnesses said there wasn’t enough evidence in the huge pile of “evidence” Smith was pushing to impeach President Biden.

Smith’s conduct in that press conference did little to build confidence in his “evidence.” And six hours of rhetoric from both sides and from chosen witnesses didn’t either.

Is his pile of paper big enough to hide a bombshell?  Not based on the other evidence—-against his evidence, apparently.

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Today’s Adlai 

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Last week we introduced you Adlai Stevenson, grandson of as United States Vice President, two-time presidential candidate, and historic UN representative for our country.  And we said we’d ponder some of the things he says before more of the modest number of readers of these columns were born.  His intelligence and his eloquence are, in some cases (perhaps too many) accurate for our times.  Such is the case of these remarks delivered in 1948, seventy-five years ago, in Springfield, Illinois, when he was the governor of the state:

Ours is a sad, disillusioned world.  Too many people on this blood-soaked, battered globe live in constant fear and dread; fear of hunger and want, dread of oppression and slavery.  Poverty, starvation, disease and repression stalk the world, and over us all hangs the mence of war like a gloomy shroud. But everywhere people cling to their hope and their faith in freedom and justice and peace—though fear, anguish, even death are their daily lot.

The remarks were three years after the end of a worldwide war when Europe was still putting its civilization back together after the scourge of Naziism presumably had been wiped out and only two years after Winston Churchill had warned in Fulton, Missouri that a new war, a Cold War, was underway as the Soviet Union expanded its borders.

Japan was a two-time nuclear victim and the idea that other nations would develop an A-bomb cast a frightening shadow on our futures.  The next year, on August 29, 1949, The Soviet Union conducted its first successful test of a bomb—based on the design of our “Fat Man” A-bomb.

In many ways, we still live in the world of 1948 and 1949.  Millions still live in constant fear; millions seek relief from “fear of hunger and want, dread of oppression and slavery.”

Our world has gotten smaller.  No longer are those living with these fears confined to their faraway continents.

And we have people in this country who seek to stoke fear within all of us of THEM, the people the Greatest Generation wanted to help at home and abroad when Stevenson made his speech.

In another speech we’ll refer to at another time, Stevenson spoke of the need for Christian humility.

Christian humility.

Where is it in our country today?

And why isn’t it more in evidence among those who expect us to let them lead us?

 

 

 

Eggheads, Unite! You Have Nothing to Lose but Your Yolks!”  

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I recently came into possession of a little book from 1965 called A Stevenson Sampler, 1945 to 1965,  a compilation of quotations from Adlai E. Stevenson II, the former Governor of Illinois who had the misfortune of running twice as the Democratic Party nominee for President against Dwight D. Eisenhower.  When John F. Kennedy was elected in 1960, he made Stevenson the United States Ambassador to the United Nations, where he played a historic public role and a largely unrecognized backroom role in the Cuban Missile Crisis. There are things to be learned from that time.

Stevenson was an unrepentant intellectual, one of several eggheads chosen by Kennedy for key posts in his administration.  When the Cuban Missile Crisis exploded in our headlines, Stevenson was the one who delivered this country’s response in the United Nations to Russia’s installation of guided missiles that could easily reach the United States in Cuba.

Many in my generation felt that we were staring down the deep black barrel of an atomic cannon.  Those days are a couple of generations past and we think it’s time for the young folks to learn about how close we came to a nuclear war, and why it didn’t happen at a time when many of us woke up each day and turned on the radio to see if we had a future.

Stevenson played a major role in keeping the crisis from becoming the war we (as we recall those days) were scared to death would happen.  But his role often is overlooked although it was Stevenson who proposed the ultimate solution.  Peter Kornbluh, writing for Foreign Policy magazine a year ago, says much of the reason for the lack of recognition dates from a Saturday Evening Post article in late 1962 by Stewart Alsop and Charles Bartlett that claimed Kennedy and his associates came up with the solution to the dangerous deadlock. They also claimed that Stevenson was the only one around the strategy table who “preferred political negotiations to the alternative of military action,” as Kornbluh put it.

The article, to use a current phrase, threw Stevenson under the bus when, actually, he was driving it.

A major question for most of the crisis was whether Russia really did have ICBMs in Cuba.

It all became clear on the tenth day when Stevenson, far tougher than he had been credit for being until then, confronted Soviet delegate Valerian Zorin at a meeting of the United Nations Security Council.  It is one of the most dramatic moments in UN history. Here is a long version of that confrontation and a short version of it.  The longer version is good for the background leading up to the event. The shorter one is the denouement only.

Long version of the session and challenge:  (30) Adlai Stevenson and Valerian Zorin on Soviet Missiles in Cuba (1962) – YouTube  (Audio quality varies)

Short version: TWE Remembers: Adlai Stevenson Dresses Down the Soviet Ambassador to the UN (Cuban Missile Crisis, Day Ten) | Council on Foreign Relations (cfr.org)

If you want to follow along, here is a transcript of the confrontation in which Stevenson accused the Soviet Union of being less than honest about its missiles in Cuba:

 I want to say to you, Mr Zorin, that I do not have your talent for obfuscation, for distortion, for confusing language, and for doubletalk. And I must confess to you that I am glad that I do not. But if I understood what you said, you said that my position had changed, that today I was defensive because we did not have the evidence to prove our assertions, that your government had installed long-range missiles in Cuba.

Well, let me say something to you, Mr.  Ambassador: we do have the evidence. We have it, and it is clear and it is incontrovertible. And let me say something else: those weapons must be taken out of Cuba.

Next, let me say to you that, if I understood you, with a trespass on credibility that excels your best, you said that our position had changed since I spoke here the other day because of the pressures of world opinion and the majority of the United Nations. Well, let me say to you, sir, you are wrong again. We have had no pressure from anyone whatsoever. We came in here today to indicate our willingness to discuss Mr U Thant’s proposals, and that is the only change that has taken place.

But let me also say to you, sir, that there has been a change. You, the Soviet Union has sent these weapons to Cuba. You, the Soviet Union has upset the balance of power in the world. You, the Soviet Union has created this new danger, not the United States.

And you ask with a fine show of indignation why the President did not tell Mr Gromyko on last Thursday about our evidence, at the very time that Mr Gromyko was blandly denying to the President that the USSR was placing such weapons on sites in the new world.

Well, I will tell you why: because we were assembling the evidence, and perhaps it would be instructive to the world to see how far a Soviet official would go in perfidy. Perhaps we wanted to know if this country faced another example of nuclear deceit like that one a year ago when in stealth, the Soviet Union broke the nuclear test moratorium…

Finally, the other day Mr. Zorin I remind you that you did not deny the existence of these weapons. Instead, we heard that they had suddenly become defensive weapons. But today again if I heard you correctly, you now say that they do not exist, or that we haven’t proved they exist, with another fine flood of rhetorical scorn.

All right, sir, let me ask you one simple question: Do you, Ambassador Zorin, deny that the USSR has placed and is placing medium and intermediate range missiles and sites in Cuba? Yes or no. Don’t wait for the translation, yes or no?

[Zorin] This is not a court of law, I do not need to provide a yes or no answer…

[Stevenson] You can answer yes or no. You have denied they exist. I want to know if I understood you correctly. I am prepared to wait for my answer until hell freezes over, if that’s your decision. And I am also prepared to present the evidence in this room.

And he did. Stevenson’s show and tell exposed the Soviet duplicity to the world.  By then, Kennedy had offered to take obsolete United States nuclear missiles out of Turkey bases in exchange for Russia’s withdrawal of its missiles in Cuba. Most tellings of the story do not mention who originated that strategy.  That was Adlai Stevenson.

The possible nuclear war was averted not by threats of attacks on sites in Cuba and deadly confrontations at sea but by Premier Nickolai Khruschev’s acceptance of the base-swapping plan.

Today we have a Russian leader threatening nuclear war and there are those who are suggesting strong military action against Russia.  Kornbluh suggests the not well-known story of how diplomacy, not military confrontation, disarmed a possible Armageddon in 1962, is forgotten by those dealing with events in Ukraine and threats of atomic conflagration.

Kornbluh wrote last year, “Iit would seem prudent to revisit the story of how and why Kennedy sacrificed both Stevenson and the truth about the resolution of the missile crisis and what lessons that history really holds. Documents and transcripts now accessible to the world from government archives allow us to tell the story more fully and accurately than ever before.”

Today, as a Russian leader threatens the use of nuclear weapons in a war of his own making, we edge close to the events we dodged in 1962—-but we are yet a distance from those tense hours before the Soviet ships turned around. You and I are not privy to secret diplomatic discussions while more threatening words are flung into the air evoking frightening possibilities.

Talking is always better than shooting, as Adlai Stevenson and John Kennedy knew.

Some suggest we have no business being involved with Ukraine and the conflict.  Adlai Stevenson, the defender of eggheads that included himself, had an answer for them in a 1954 speech at Harvard:

There was a time, and it was only yesterday, when the United States could and did stand aloof.  In the days of our national youth, Washington warned against “entangling alliances,” John Adams spoke of that “system of neutrality and impartiality” which was to serve us long and well, and Jefferson enumerated among our blessings that we were “kindly separated by nature and a wide ocean from the exterminating havoc of one quarter of the globe.”  But those days are gone forever.”

Unfortunately, almost ninety years after Stevenson’s remarks, far too many reject their reality and want to believe the United States is not separate from the rest of the world and its troubles, challenges, and opportunities.

Adlai E. Stevenson II (1900-1965) was the grandson of Grover Cleveland’s vice-president, and great-grandson of Jesse Fell, the campaign manager for Abraham Lincoln.  I think there will be some days when we offer another comment from A Stevenson Sampler, a collection of excerpts from a man dead for almost sixty years who still has something to say to us.

(Photo credit:  JFK Library)

 

Legal?  Illegal?

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The legality of VLTs, Video Lottery Terminals, remains up in the air with a recent court ruling and because of the uncertainty of their legality and a powerful influence group at the Capitol that opposes them in their present state, we can already see the 2024 session of the General Assembly degenerating into another mud fight in the closing day that winds up killing many bills on which legislators have worked hard to put into position for final passage.

The casinos say VLTs are slot machines and casinos are the only places in Missouri that can operate slot machines.  VLT supporters say they’re some kind of different animal and, as such, are not covered by state law or regulation.

Neither side wants to talk to the other. Forget about compromise. As the clock winds down on the legislative session, both sides get more angry and more desperate and a filibuster in each of the last two years on this and some other tender issues has set lawmakers home frustrated and disappointed.

Whether VLTs are illegal is disputed not only in legislative halls, but in county prosecutors’ offices throughout the state. Only Platte County has declared them illegal and has fined a VLT operator $7,500 for promoting gambling.

The machines are not regulated by either the State Gaming Commission that regulates casinos or the State Lottery Commission that regulates lotteries. The machines generate no income for state programs and services that draw financing from gambling.

Last week, a federal judge decided seven plaintiffs who claimed they are problem gamblers (some of whom have put themselves on the state casino exclusion list) had no standing to file a lawsuit accusing Torch Electronics, a VLT operator, of violating the federal Racketeer influence and Corrupt Organizations Act with its machines. The judge held they had not shown a “tangible injury to business or property.”  He also said losing money in the machines was a voluntary act by the player—who could avoid losing money in VLTs by not playing them. He says he dismissed the part of the case dealing with the RICO act and that any further challenges belong in state court.

Torch has a lawsuit in state court. It’s scheduled to be argued next month.  It, and Warrenton Oil, want an order banning the Highway Patrol from investigating Torch’s operations. Warrenton Oil operates 54 Fast Lane convenience stores with VLTs in them.

Some people have urged Attorney General Andrew Bailey to take action against the machines. He says the issue is “too complicated” for his office to get into.

The legislature seems unwilling to be the adult in the room, telling two feuding children to shut up and telling them, “This is how it’s going to be done.” Of course, it’s hard to take that initiative. when there are thousands of dollars in campaign donations from both sides floating around.

In an election year.

Somebody has to write a rule and the legislature needs to adopt it to keep the 2024 session from turning into the sessions of 2022 and 2023.  But it is our observation that our legislature has become passive, perhaps because of term limits—that legislators don’t propose alternatives to bills like these that put lawmakers, not casinos or VLT operators in a position of authority.

After watching this show for a couple of years and growing tired of it, this helpful citizen suggested a compromise late last year.  It was given to only a couple of people but is offered here for mass consideration.

First: On the effective date of this act, all VLTs will be illegal. The Missouri Lottery Commission is authorized to establish regulations that protect the interests of the state.  Upon approval of those regulations, VLTs can operate within the parameters of this act.

Second: The Missouri Gaming Commission is authorized to  VLT districts which shall consist of the home county of any casino and all surrounding counties. Revenue derived from VTLs in that district shall be distributed to the casinos on the basis of admission numbers. The casinos  (shall be responsible for paying all taxes and fees on VLT revenue established by state law.

In districts in which there are multiple casinos whose territories would overlap, a large district will be established that incudes home counties and surrounding counties (St. Louis, St. Louis County, and St. Charles County would comprise one such district.  Kansas City and St. Joseph casinos will be in a district together (they share Platte County) and their revenues also will be determined on an admission fee basis).

Third: The Lottery Commission will be free to establish additional districts as the constitution is amended to create new casinos.

Fourth: This policy will not be applied to any tribal casino unless it is included in a compact between the tribe and the state that is approved by both chamber of the Missouri General Assembly.

The plan protects the interests of casinos while leaving much of the state (the part not served by the present river-based casinos) open to independent VLT companies.

There’s no pride of authorship here. This is a result of being tired of the annual mud fight.

Of course, this stands no chance.  He who offers it has no Political Action Committees with fat checkbooks that are essential to establishing public policy that protects the interests of the constituents of those who set that policy.

But somebody has to start a conversation if the protagonists of our ongoing drama refuse to be part of it. It might be time to an otherwise passive legislature to become active before more lawmakers see their four months of work fall into the annual mid-May mud hole.

 

NOTES FROM A QUIET, HOT, HUMID STREET

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This series of observations began a long, long, time ago as “Notes from a Battered Royal,” which were notes sent out to Missourinet affiliate stations about what we were planning and what they had done to help us.

With the coming of the computer, then the internet, and then the requirement that the Missourinet have a blog, it became “Notes From the Front Lines.”  But the author is no longer on the front lines. He lives on a quiet street.  And its getting quieter.  The folks who used to live in the house across the street now are in an assisted care place in Columbia.  One of the houses next to us hasn’t been occupied for more than a  year because the man living there also is in assisted living. Three nuns who lived in a house just across the street and up one driveway have moved out.

It’s been a while since we made some observations that don’t qualify for fully blogness.  Let us proceed.

Saw a letter to the editor in the local paper the other day that said Missouri’s state motto, Salus Populi Suprema Lex Esto means “The will of the people is the Supreme Law.”  That’s wrong. And it’s dangerous.  Maybe we’ll go into in more depth later but for now, the correct interpretation is, “The welfare of the people is the Supreme Law.”  For now, just think of how different our freedoms would be if the word “will” actually was the philosophy of our government.  The quote, by the way, is from Marcus Tullius Cicero, who we know by his last name, the author of “On the Law.”

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Is there a more pitiful figure in American politics today than Rudi Giuliani?  Of all the people whose lives and reputations have been destroyed by their association with and defense of Mr. Trump, the wreckage that is Rudi is the most pitiful.

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I have a friend who lives in Tucson, Arizona who comes north for a couple of months every summer to find cooler weather (even 10-15 degrees cooler is significant).  I call her a Sunbird.

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There are certain words that have become so politicized that all of the honor has been crushed out of them.  I recall when words such as “liberal” and “conservative” were not said with a sneer and were not spoken as if they were scarlet letters.

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The latest word that falls into this category is “evangelicals.”  The people I heard described as such while I was growing up—-and the people who had the word on their churches—were perceived as fervent believers in God and Jesus, more fervent than us Disciples, Methodists, Presbyterians and my grandmother’s Baptists.  But then came those who discovered evangelical techniques could be applied to achieving political power, making it a third word that is being abused in “the politics of personal destruction.”

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We were talking recently with some friends about the totally trivial things we remember for decades.  I remarked that I still remembered the Army service number of a high school friend who joined the service shortly after we graduated—RA18541439.

Now there’s a new number that I’d like to remember sixty years later—P01135809.  It has a certain rhythm to it, too.

And to think this person was once known only as 45.

We’ve seen the official portrait of PO-1135809.  We are sure that Fulton County, Georgia prosecutor Fani Willis is soooooooo intimidated.

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This is about the most enthusiastic your correspondent has been for the start of the football season in decades. Maybe it’s because this year, it will bring relief from the near-daily disappointments of baseball.

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Can’t help it.  Everytime I see a major sports team or league sign a deal with a sports-betting company, I start thinking its time to cast Cooperstown plaques for Shoeless Jackson and Pete Rose.

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The Capitol regains its heartbeat for a couple of days soon. The lawmakers will decide whether to override some of Governor Parson’s vetoes.  There’s a lot of money available to pay for the things he differs with the legislature about.

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But having a lot of money now means there’s a cushion for the bad days.

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Or we can forget about the bad days and just blow it all now.

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Or we can enact tax cuts so our tax base is even less able to deal with the eventual downturn.

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Anybody else have deer in the yard that just watch you come home and go in the house without ever getting up?  I think that in our case, they’re just resting while they digest  their latest serving of Hostas from Nancy’s garden a/k/a the deer buffet.

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A longtime friend of mine died a few days ago.  He didn’t want a memorial service.  He was a retired reporter who didn’t want his death reported in the newspaper.  Steve Forsythe, whose byline for United Press International read “A. Stevenson Forsythe” was a helluva reporter. Governor Teasdale blamed us, at least in part, for his failure to win a second term.

We could have thanked him for the compliment but we never did.