By Scott Faughn, Missouri Times publisher
Imagine a state split into three regions.
Now imagine two of the three have huge cities that dominate the state, while the third doesn’t.
Now imagine the third region is the poorest of the three.
Now imagine a state court who touts diversity as something it is proud of.
Now imagine that third region is home to some of the most vulnerable populations in the state.
Now imagine a system to pick judges to sit on that court that over a 30 year period only named one person to a seven-person board from that poorest most vulnerable region.
Now imagine walking out of the Missouri Senate chamber with me. Go down two flights of stairs and past the metal detectors and rent-a-cops and 12-years-olds waiting 32 deep in a line to get wanded by a 20-year-old in a Ralph Lauren shirt.
When you walk out the main doors, look straight ahead and slightly to the right and you won’t have to imagine such an awfully segregated court anymore, you will see the Missouri Supreme Court,
You see, Missouri’s court system is split into three groups the western district which has Kansas City Missouri, the eastern district which has St. Louis Missouri, and the southern district which includes southern Missourah.
While Judge Powell or Mr. Lipman may make for good chcoices there is no logical reason seeing a court with not one member from the southern district, that they passed over imminently qualified judges such Judge Gaston and Judge Goodman.
Either would have made excellent choices and would would have provided some diversity to an already shamefully unbalanced court. Further the brilliant Rep. Jay Barnes while from the western district, as is five of the six current judges, has seen views from all over the state while serving in the house and no Missourian could look the commission in the eye and complain about his selection.
The same elitist strain that Donald Trump so skillfully defeated in November is the same strain of elitism that thinks you aren’t smart enough to be on the court if you’re not from the St. Louis and Kansas City districts. The message is clear southern Missourians need not apply.
Now I happen to think the court plan serves the state pretty well, but you cannot deny that the current system denies representation to a third of the state. A third of the state that includes the Speaker of the Missourah House and the President of the Missourah Senate.
Keep a close eye on people who cry out for diversity… don’t ever let them fool you they only care about “certain types” of diversity… which in reality isn’t diversity at all.
I have to confess something I haven’t let many folks in on, I’m not really the state’s only German-American psychic.
Many of you were astonished when I boldly predicted that the Blue Ribbon Commission on Mizzou would conclude that the state should give them more money and stay out of Mizzou’s business?
And then alakazam!! just as I predicted the Mizzou Commission’s finding was that the state should give them more money and stay out of their business…
I’m gonna come clean, its not just that I am clairvoyant. Ill tell just a few friends here how I do it. One night while I was down in Jeff County at a bowling alley near Crystal City, and after too many Natty Lights it seemed like a good idea to swipe the bowling ball. Well later I came to find out a that bowling ball could see into the future, I call it my Crystal City Ball.
Well, you can trust the state’s foremost hillbilly columnist when he looks into his Crystal City ball and makes a prediction, and I broke it out this week and asked what will come of the Governor’s Blue Ribbon Commission on Raising Taxes.
Well its the damnedest thing, when I look into my Crystal City Ball, I see a blue ribbon commission ran by a New York bureaucrat and flanked by city slickers and…
….and then they are gonna report that the gubment needs more money and the state needs to raise taxes to make it happen. Likely so they can spend more on Medicaid like they did this year.
They will raise taxes by cutting some of the tax credit programs that have been so helpful to economic development in rural Missourah, and long despised by the urban bureaucrats and liberal republicans.
For a quick history lesson, Missouri’s tax credit programs are mirrored after President Reagan’s federal economic incentives and signed into law in our state by Governor Ashcroft. They do cut into the money the gubment gets but thank God something does. They actually produce jobs and economic development for the state and when they are done there are properties left that communities are proud to have.
My Crystal City ball, and common sense, says that this report is already two-thirds written. We all know the hearings won’t matter in any way and will be a waste of money in a state running a budget deficit. The politicians both retired and still on the public dole are mere props who will have no input and probably laughed at by the staff behind their back for agreeing to be such tools in the first place.
No serious Missourian can disagree that the New York City chairman, his urban accomplices, and maybe a rural traitor or two are out to gut the Reagan/Ashcroft economic development programs and twist the knife especially hard in the back of rural Missourah, you just trust my ol’ Crystal City ball.
Since Senators Koenig and Kraus are from the big cities they will be fine to stab rural Missourah, but the ones in real tough spots on this committee are Speaker Pro Tem Haahr and Representative Rehder.
Those two still have elections to run, and most feel bright futures, but how can you have a bright future in the Republican Party, a party based in rural Missourah mind you, if you sign a report by New York City, Kansas City, and St. Louis folks that seven years from now will result in the biggest tax increase in the history of the state?
They must truly love the state for taking on this assignment, and no one reading this will ever be able to understand how much pressure the New York City, St. Louis, and Kansas City, Missouri urban liberals will put on them to gut Missourah. Missouri always fights hardest when fighting to keep Missourah down.
I’d like to say I think they will have the fortitude to tell them ‘hell no’ and not sign the report, but my Crystal City Fortune Telling Ball, is still a little murky on this one. I’ll ask it again a little later, maybe after the first hearing where they will pretend this sham doesn’t have a foregone conclusion.
However, the Crystal City Ball does tell me that its sure this big fancy blue ribbon commission report will make for a hell of a Facebook video, but the only thing this state needs less than another epic Facebook video is an epic tax increase.
Scott Faughn is the publisher of The Missouri Times, owner of the Clayton Times in Clayton; SEMO Times in Poplar Bluff; and host of the only statewide political television show, This Week in Missouri Politics.
