Category: Missouri

It wasn’t me, it was my evil twin brother:

Twin brothers Raymon and Richard Miller are the father and uncle to a 3-year-old little girl. The problem is, they don’t know which is which. Or who is who. The identical Missouri twins say they were unknowingly having sex with the same woman. And according to the woman’s testimony, she had sex with each man on the same day. Within hours of each other.

Double ew.

A Missouri appellate court has ruled that blight isn’t a magic word:

An appellate court ruled this morning that Centene Plaza Redevelopment Corp. should be barred from using condemnation to acquire properties in the heart of Clayton for its $210-million twin towers, office and retail complex.

In an unsigned opinion, Judges Clifford H. Ahrens, Mary K. Hoff and Nannette Baker of the Missouri Court of Appeals stopped short of pulling the economic plug on the project and overruling a lower court decision authorizing condemnation.

Instead, the appeals judges sent the matter to the Missouri Supreme Court “because of the general interest and importance of the issues in this case.”

. . . .

The appellate court concluded, however, that a study by a planning firm, PGAV, suggesting the area was blighted was insufficient evidence for city aldermen to make the blighting determination. [Emphasis Added]

This case will make it to the Missouri Supreme Court, so the matter isn’t yet settled, but it’s good to see that someone in the system doesn’t think blight is a big bucket of paint with which you can coat anything.

Missouri school districts going to court for more state money:

In a massive case that could put hundreds of millions of state tax dollars on the line, about half of the state’s 524 school districts will go to court this week demanding more state education money.

The school districts will attempt to establish that the more than $2.7 billion Missouri spends on its public schools is inadequate to give children a chance at a decent education.

You know, I briefly considered getting an education degree. I’m sure that turning to English and Philosophy instead has left me with inadequate steeping in the esoteric knowledge that transmutes squandering the people’s tax money on suing to get more of the people’s tax money into a positive value.

But fortunately, I have unelected bureaucrats with more knowledge than me to squander my tax money trying to get more tax money. Heck, I play the lottery; why shouldn’t my betters in the government?

Town cracks down on rowdy Mizzou parties:

Tired of off-campus parties that are anything but fun for nearby homeowners, officials in this university community have unanimously approved a new crackdown on rowdy party hosts — and the hosts’ landlords.

The ordinances were approved Monday. They include tougher punishments for loud or rowdy social gatherings of 10 or more people and define 16 different nuisance activities, from drug dealing and prostitution to littering and blocking traffic.

Violations can result in fines ranging from $500 to $4,000. In the case of repeated nuisance parties, the city could close the property for up to one year, the Columbia Missourian reported today.

100,000+ tends to rate as a city, unless you’re an AP headline writer confronting a location in the Midwest. No doubt, this bucolic little community has indoor plumbing, mostly, too.

New charges filed in father’s shooting of 6-year-old:

New criminal charges have been filed against the father of a 6-year-old eastern Missouri boy who was shot in the head inside his rural Cadet home a week ago, the Washington County prosecutor said Wednesday.

Prosecutor John Rupp said he charged Ricky Lee Rulo Jr., 29, late Tuesday with one count each of endangering the welfare of a child and possessing a firearm while intoxicated.

Wow, is that true? Apparently so:

571.030. 1. A person commits the crime of unlawful use of weapons if he or she knowingly:

(1) Carries concealed upon or about his or her person a knife, a firearm, a blackjack or any other weapon readily capable of lethal use; or

(2) Sets a spring gun; or

(3) Discharges or shoots a firearm into a dwelling house, a railroad train, boat, aircraft, or motor vehicle as defined in section 302.010, RSMo, or any building or structure used for the assembling of people; or

(4) Exhibits, in the presence of one or more persons, any weapon readily capable of lethal use in an angry or threatening manner; or

(5) Possesses or discharges a firearm or projectile weapon while intoxicated;

Perhaps somewhere else in the byzantine labyrinths (if they had labyrinths in Byzantium, I guess), it explains that possession means you’ve got it on your person, but we’re only taking it on faith that it’s elsewhere and that your prosecutor’s not going to try to expand the law by throwing you in the pokey if you’ve got your old man’s 45-70 on the wall and blow a .8 at your backyard barbecue.

No voter identification here:

Missouri voters won’t need to show a photo ID at the polls after all, after the state Supreme Court today struck down the new requirement.

A lower judge ruled last month that the ID requirement was an unconstitutional infringement on the fundamental right to vote. The Supreme Court agreed in a 6-1 unsigned opinion.

The law required voters to present a photo identification card issued by Missouri or the federal government to cast a ballot starting with the November election.

Opponents argued people impersonating others when voting is rare, and that the ID requirement would especially harm the poor, elderly and disabled who may be less likely to have a driver’s license.

The Democrat Party is thrilled with the result, as are the expected Democrat voters recently enfranchised by ACORN.

Ballot proposals rejected by Carnahan:

The November ballot in Missouri won’t be quite as crowded after Secretary of State Robin Carnahan announced Thursday that two proposals can’t go before voters because of faulty petitions.

Carnahan tossed out proposed state constitutional amendments to limit the use of eminent domain and to restrict state spending. She cited technical problems with the petitions, each signed by about 200,000 registered voters, and an inaccurate financial summary attached to the eminent domain petitions.

Never fear, gentle reader, the spokespeople are out to assuage your fears:

Carnahan spokeswoman Stacie Temple said the decision to toss out the petitions was based solely on law, not Carnahan’s personal or political views.

How convenient that Carnahan tossed out government-limiting ballot initiatives that would cap state spending and limit eminent domain, but that the following ballot measures–sometimes whose petitions were circulated by the same people as the aforementioned rejected petitions–are still on the ballot:

• Stem cell research.
• Tobacco tax increase.
• Minimum wage increase.
• Medicaid Reform, by which we mean adding 90,000 people removed from the Medicaid roles back onto the public dole.

I’m sure that the two conservative ballot items were removed for valid legal reasons. I also think we have too many technicalities and byzantine legalities from which a determined public servant can pick and choose to advance his or her own agendum within the nebulous framework afforded by an inattentive constituency.

Missouri: State Spies on Drivers Through Cell Phones:

The Missouri Department of Transportation will spend $3 million annually on a program to monitor the movements of individuals on highways via their cell phones — without their knowledge or consent.

Delcan NET, a Canadian company, developed the system which triangulates the location of each driver by monitoring the signal sent from the cell phone as it is handed off from one cell tower to the next. Each phone is uniquely identified and the information is compared with a highway map to record on what road each motorist is traveling at any given time. The system also records the speed of each vehicle, opening up another potential ticketing technology.

I don’t know how trustworthy of a source this is, but apparently Radley Balko believes it. Even if this story isn’t true, it’s only a matter of time.

Makes the picture below more appropriate, no?

Schools spend big on recreation centers:

Bob Lyons remembers – not fondly – the old gym at the University of Missouri at Columbia: It was cramped, had the odor of smelly socks and could get so hot in summer that “you just wanted to die,” said Lyons, a recent graduate.

Contrast that with the new $50 million, jungle-themed recreation center that is nearly twice the size and virtually finished.

“It’s just awe-inspiring,” said Lyons, who helps oversee the center’s 42-foot climbing tower.

Eleven large plasma screens line the wall of the “jungle gym.” The gym features about 100 pieces of cardio equipment, some of which have individual DVD players.

In the “tiger grotto,” there is a swirling vortex, lazy river with waterfall, whirlpool and dry sauna. Towering above it all is a jumbo, Vegas-style display board that blasts music videos on “ZouTv,” an internal station that plays music selections based on weekly Internet polls.

I would dare Mizzou to find a single freaking student that chose the University of Missouri of Columbia over another college because of its swank recreational facilities, but someone at Mizzou could probably trot out some stooge as though a single student or small cadre would justify spending fifty million dollars on such an endeavor.

It’s one thing if an alumnus donates a pile of cash for the privilige of diverting students from their studies, but students, and that’s all students, not just the “health-conscious” students who want “a gathering place to see and be seen,” will have to cough up $150 a year to subsidize a meat market for college students who don’t suffer from a dearth of gathering places to find the next one night stand or starter marriage.

No, friends, this is what happens when our localish government agencies become high school cliques, and when expenditures are driven by the all-the-cool-people-have-them mentality. Suddenly, we’re shelling out money for bike trails, rec plexes, and whatnot because all the other schools/counties/municipalities/states have them.

Not because they’re necessary government services, but because they’re cool.

I wish our leaders would grow up.

Nixon questions use of traffic photographs:

Some Missouri cities soon might use traffic cameras to ticket unlawful drivers. But the state attorney general doesn’t think the photographs will hold up in court.

The city of Arnold recently decided to install traffic cameras that will photograph license plates of vehicles running red lights. Creve Coeur is considering a similar program.

But Attorney General Jay Nixon says the photographs won’t provide enough proof to ticket motorists.

“I think it’s pretty clear these pictures can’t be the sole or only evidence to cite drivers for violating state traffic laws,” Nixon said in a telephone interview. “I have deep concern whether taking someone’s picture rolling through a stop light is adequate evidence in and of itself to uphold a state traffic law.”

Bill would forbid ‘harassing’ requests for documents:

A bill introduced last month in the Missouri House would, if approved, allow government officials to reject so-called harassing requests for public documents.

But a loose definition of the bill’s wording by government officials who process the requests could hurt even well-intentioned residents, some say.

House Bill 391, the proposed change to Missouri’s Sunshine Law, would allow a public governmental body to refuse any “vexatious” request for documents.

The bill defines a vexatious request as “any request for documents which is frivolous, repetitive or unreasonable and made for the primary purpose of harassing a public governmental body or any member of a governmental body.”

In other words, any requests by citizens who oppose the goings on on the government.

The bill’s sponsor, Shannon Cooper, R-Clinton, did not return repeated phone calls from the Journal for this story.

Of course not. The whole point is that the plebes cannot understand the subtleties of ruling them, so why confuse them with information or argument?

Some people have called Missouri’s new governor Matt Blunt “pro-business.” At least one legislator is ready to test that: Senator wants to show exit to Missouri’s adult businesses:

A Show-Me State lawmaker wants a sin tax — on those who show too much.

First, Missouri banished sexy billboards and young strip dancers. Now, Sen. Matt Bartle, R-Kansas City, wants to force adult entertainment businesses out of the state by stripping them of their profits.

Legislation pending in the Senate would impose a 20 percent tax on revenue of all “sexually oriented businesses,” charge a $5 fee for each person entering their doors and prohibit them from staying open late at night.

“The goal of the bill is to make Missouri inhospitable for these businesses,” said Bartle.

If this sort of idiocy passes the legislature, which it might since Republicans frequently feel that some businesses are more equal than others, Governor Blunt should veto it. He probably wouldn’t, since he may be pro-business, but he’s more pro-politics (demonstrated by his career choice).

Bartle would like to drive this sort of business out of Missouri so that people who like to see boobies can do it untaxed on the Internet or in Illinois. Once the thousand or so adult entertainment businesses are closed, he can then cover the budgetary shortfall by taxing other sins–such as eating, drinking, driving, reading, ad absurdum.

Blunt wants tough curbs on cold pills used in meth:

Missouri may soon be stepping up its war on methamphetamine. Gov. Matt Blunt announced Friday that he wants the state to join Oklahoma and Oregon in enacting tough restrictions on the sale of the most popular over-the-counter cold remedies.

Under Blunt’s plan, consumers who want to buy cold pills containing pseudoephedrine could get them only at pharmacies, and purchasers would have agree to have their identities recorded in a police database.

Decongestant pills containing pseudoephedrine can be a cold sufferer’s dream or a narcotics investigator’s nightmare. The medications, which are available everywhere from service stations to hotel vending machines, are easy to convert to meth and in recent years have fueled an explosion in illegal drug manufacturing.

This twisted logic represents the same ill thinking demonstrated by people who favor gun control. You see, if we make it harder to legally acquire something used by criminals, we’ll make fewer criminals. In this case, it’s Sudafed. Next, to defeat child pornography, people will have to register their digital cameras. Why not? What have you got to hide?

Of course, making it harder for criminals to get the legally-ownable things they need will not prevent the criminals from getting their Sudafed. It will mean that criminals will have to get their meth ingredients by illegal means, such as burglary, armed theft, and hijacking Walgreens trucks. Ergo, Governor Blunt is in favor of more violence in the war on drugs.

At the very least, the nonviolent meth cookers in Missouri will cross state borders to buy their gross cases of cold remedies, which means those other states will get the sales tax.

The proposition is lose/lose/lose/lose. The cold sufferer loses because it’s harder to get legal remedies. The public, particularly pharmacies, loses as criminals resort to more violent means than commerce to acquire that which they will acquire anyway. Tax spenders, that is, the legislature loses the revenue of legitimate commerce. Finally, the taxpayers lose as they have to fund a new apparatus to support the initiative.

On the other hand, some do win from the proposition. A database provider will make some money. The governor will look tough. Small town pharmacies in border towns outside Missouri might prosper. There’s your half full paragraph for the evening.

Gov. Blunt proposes making absentee voting easier:

JEFFERSON CITY – Gov. Matt Blunt has a plan that he says would make it easier for people to vote early without costing taxpayers a bundle. Blunt wants the Legislature to authorize “no-excuse absentee voting.” As the term implies, voters could request absentee ballots without giving a reason.

Under current law, people must state under oath that they will be unable to go to the polls on Election Day due to absence from the area or another eligible reason. Sometimes, people may fib about their excuses because election authorities don’t check.

Blunt would open up the process so that all registered voters could cast absentee ballots up to six weeks before the election, either at the election office or by mail. He would do away with the requirement that absentee ballots be notarized.

Ever overheard a conversation when two people whom you don’t really like gossiped about you? That’s what I think of when I read this piece in Slate: Swingers: A guide to the swing states: Missouri.

Like all Midwesterners, Missourians believe they reside in the most authentically American of places. I grew up in Kansas, just a few miles across the Missouri state line, and I’m guilty of this Midwestern indulgence—I’m fond of telling my wife, who’s lived in New York, Texas, New Orleans, and Washington, D.C., that she has yet to reside in the United States. What distinguishes Missourians, though, is that they stake their claim to genuine, right-thinking Americanness on more than mere geographical middlingness or plainness of speech. Show-Me Staters marshal reams of scientific data to back up their assertion of pure red-bloodedness.

Texas brags that it’s a “whole other country,” but Missouri proudly declares that it is the whole country. Talk to a Missourian about the state’s politics for more than a few minutes, and the words “microcosm” or “representativeness” are likely to surface.

Not if you talked to me, you coastal pipsqueak. I don’t think Missouri is a microcosm or representative of the whole country any more than New York City, Washington, D.C., or Boston are. I do think that we in the Midwest understand better the regionalism of the country, that is, the properly federal nature of the United States. Becuase we know ourselves and because the media continually run as contrast a loop of the coastal, self-important mindset–which excludes the views of residents from elsewhere because it doesn’t recognize they exist, or because it thinks that its postmodern intelligence and relativistic morality supercede the rubes, we recognize and understand the difference. But I digress. And I’m not smart enough to summarize the mindset of millions of people based on a three-day swing through the state.

I got chips like dandruff, brother, and coastal commentators brush them off rather glibly.

Is it just me, or is Slate becoming as unreadable as Salon these days? I admit freely, at the possible expense of the mounds of junk mail the Republican Party sends me, that I read Salon daily in the late 1990s. I found its writing edgy, hip, and concerned with culture, the arts, and affording me a different perspective. Heck’s pecs, I even bought stock in Salon, for crying out loud–stock I hold to this day because I would spend more on broker’s fees to sell it than I would get for it. But somewhere a little before it started requiring commercials, it became a one bongo drummer, thumping an uncompelling political beat.

Slate’s about one bad day from losing my daily traffic, too. Cosmo types psychoanalyzing the quaint states that comprise the majority of the union and desecrating the dead rather repel me.

And Slate hasn’t yet dissed Wisconsin yet.

The Sophorist links to a person who links to a story about Missouri state government offering taxpayers the opportunities to add money to their taxes for common programs:

If passed, this fund would allow ordinary citizens and every special interest in the state to contribute additional tax dollars to their favorite cause, program, or policy. It would afford the average hard working taxpayers the luxury of avoiding to pay higher taxes in these difficult times, but permit all those people and interests who believe state government should be bigger and should allocate more resources to contribute generously.

On the whole, I think it’s a good idea, but I would hate to think of how much “Give Us Money” advertising the programs would spend the extra money on.

Were the programs to receive enough funding through the opt-in tax payment plan, I suspect that the state government would start reallocating that percentage of the program’s original funding to other, newer, and more profligate programs.