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Build that wall!

Throughout time, from Nehemiah to St. Louis City Hall, building a wall has been a common sense move to either keep people in or keep them out. Even our President got elected promising to build a wall on the Mexican border as a way to keep those wanting to illegally immigrate to the United States from doing so, or I guess to keep Americans wanting to illegally immigrate to Mexico from doing so.

Since I have no plans to illegally immigrate to Mexico, it makes little difference to me, but now we in Missourah finds ourselves with a problem of a similar nature. We are being overrun with bureaucrats from the east coast. Bunches of ’em with some fancy Ivy League degrees flocking to the Show-Me State to get on the gub’ment dole – most all of ’em without sense enough to come in out of the rain.

One more arrogant than the next and most of ’em act like they are on some kind of a Peace Corps mission to straighten out our backwater of a state.

They obviously view things differently in the Central West End, but if I wanted to live in New York, or Boston, or Atlanta, I would go live there. I like Missourah and live here for a reason, because it’s better – a hell of a lot better.

We are faced with the very urgent need to keep the east coasters out, it makes sense that we oughta follow the lead of our President and build a wall of our own on the western bank of the Mississippi to keep the east coast bureaucrats out. If Illinois wasn’t so broke, we maybe could get them to pay for it.


Kudos to Governor Eric Greitens for following the lead of Lt. Governor Mike Parson and taking steps to clean up the mess at the veterans home. It’s something our state should get right, and it looks like the Governor is going to be directly involved and get things on the right track.

Speaking of the veterans home, the Post-Dispatch’s Tony Messenger is still red hot. The Post’s leading columnist should be as happy as I am eating cake, or Eric Greitens getting a call from a 202 area code with his recent ability to move the needle.

His reporting brought many of the issues at the veterans home to light. Following the Governor taking his direct lead on gutting rural Missourah LIHTC funds, he has led on this issue as well. You ought to read Messenger’s column, it’s clear that the Governor does.


It’s getting darker and darker for the Sunshine Law in Missouri. It’s clear that to the newly elected outsider political class with the Washington boys’ funded views, those annoying constituents asking for access to records they paid for under their Sunshine Law are petty annoyances who clearly didn’t give enough to the dark money fund.

A lot has been made of Attorney General Josh Hawley’s comment that he was gonna quit enforcing the Sunshine Law. Well, I think folks ought to take a breath and give Hawley a little time to make a good decision here. He may have a point that there is a bit of a conflict for him as a bureaucrat himself defending the bureaucracy against the public to also turn around and represent that same public demanding access to their records from that same bureaucracy he is a part of.

Look, maybe the worst case scenario is happening and Hawley may in fact be saying that a farmer in Scott County, or a gun store owner in Cass County, who is forced to pay the taxes that pay the bureaucrats’ salary, including Hawley’s very generous salary, ain’t got no business getting a copy of those records their taxes paid for.

If he is actually saying that, then, of course, he doesn’t belong in the U.S. Senate. It would be a real shame to put someone who thinks so lowly of Missourians, and so highly of the bureaucracy in the Senate representing a state once represented by Senators Symington, Hart-Benton, Truman, and Bond.

I’m just saying before pouncing on him, give him a chance to think about this and come up with a policy. He might even come up with something that is better than what we have now. Up until to now, I’d say most folks feel that he has done a fine job, so maybe folks oughta give him a couple weeks to come up with a plan. If he does decide that gub’ment in darkness is the best gub’ment, then his frequent claims that he isn’t like Greitens obviously doesn’t ring true.

What should be obvious to all is that the Sunshine Law needs rebooting. The Sunshine Law has become an analog law in a digital age. Or maybe more accurately a MySpace law in a Confide age. I’m just a simple hillbilly, but by God, if a bureaucrat does something on the public dole, the public who pays for their livelihood is entitled to any and every record they produce. It’s the Show-Me State, and that should go for everybody including the bureaucrats who work in domed buildings too.

Hillbilly Briefs

Kudos to committed Royals fan Senator Ryan Silvey for taking a pass on rubbing salt in the wounds of St. Louis when they were passed over by Mike Stanton. Some things are above teasing and that was one.

Speaking of Mike Stanton, kudos to Tom Ackerman with KMOX who did a great job of bringing heat at the Jack Buck Awards. He is right, we didn’t need him – all hail Ozuna.

New heights of passive aggressiveness were reached at the State Board of Education meeting. With the four board members who have been confirmed by the Senate wanting to allow 6 – 8 weeks for people to apply for the Education Commissioner while the unconfirmed majority wanting to get someone hired before the Senate votes on their confirmation.

There ended up being lots of comedy as they decided on a 3-week hurry-up process to have people apply. If I didn’t know any better, it’s almost like the Governor has already decided on who he wants to hire. They have 6 million of the greatest salt of the earth folks here in Missouri to pick one, and I’m sure they will do a good job, but we may need that wall constructed by the 8th of next month.

I ran across a really neat piece of Missouri history this week when seeing the first constitution of the state, and noticing a descendant of southeast Missourian Ross McFerron’s family’s name on the original document. You know those corrupt insiders who founded our state didn’t do too bad.

Finally, I’ll leave you with an excerpt from a Riverfront Times piece on a developing story back home in Butler County:

“Hell, it’s Poplar Bluff, people have guns all the time,” attorney Daniel Moore tells the Riverfront Times. “Jacking a pump shotgun is not equal to displaying it in a threatening manner.”

Located about two and half hours south of St. Louis, Poplar Bluff is known as “the Gateway to the Ozarks.” It has a population of about 17,200 people.

Kearbey is still employed by the city, but he can’t work because a court order forbids him from stepping foot on city property. He took over the superintendent’s job in 2016 when his old boss was arrested and charged with shooting a woman. That case is still pending.

Moore says his client never pointed the gun or threatened anyone at the office. He says he will know more when prosecutors turn over their evidence as part of discovery process, but he is skeptical of the probable cause statement, because he says such accounts are often “full of hearsay and all sorts of bullshit.”