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Archive for category Local Politics

Kirkwood Aesthetics

Mar 3

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Local Politics | No Comments

The Post finally ran my letter to the editor on the Kirkwood City Council shootings. I’m assuming that you know about them, but I’ll just mention that I’m third generation Kirkwood, even if I don’t currently live there. A lot of the coverage now focuses on “the racial divide” in Kirkwood.

I keep hearing about this racial divide in Kirkwood and how Charles Thornton was treated differently because he was black. But can anyone point to actual evidence of this unfair treatment? Can they point to white business owners who have been allowed to park their heavy equipment on residential streets or dump their waste on vacant lots? For instance, I notice that Ray’s Tree Service stores their equipment on a parking lot, not on the city streets.

My father, Kirkwood High class of 1942.5, was the executor of an estate in Kirkwood about 25 years ago. After his second citation for letting the grass grow too high, he started to mow the lawn one evening after work. He was then cited for disturbing the peace despite his whiteness.

I can believe that Mr. Thornton never adjusted to the change from the unfettered days before Meacham Park became part of Kirkwood, but after the protracted fight over a parking lot for the Baptists or the latest brouhaha over the tearing down of an old house to put up a new one that sparked the bumper crop of red “Protect Historic Kirkwood” yard signs, anyone who seriously believes that race counts for more than aesthetics in Kirkwood doesn’t know Kirkwood.

As usual it was edited, but this time I think they went a little far. I understand they edit the letters. I can understand why they edit them. It’s just that I’m not always happy with the edits. They removed “Can they point to white business owners who have been allowed to park their heavy equipment on residential streets or dump their waste on vacant lots? ” which I think is pretty important.

I think it’s important because I prefer to move away from the nebulous to the specific. No doubt people in Meachem Park, like almost anywhere else, can point to events and claim they are not treated fairly. I might even agree with them (amazingly enough, I too was once stopped for Driving while Black despite the fact that I, and all the car’s occupants, were white). But a lot of the continuing response seeks to bridge a racial divide. I wish them all the best but I don’t think the problem is racist in nature. It’s not entirely classist, either And that’s why it’s important to find out the exact complaints, and not be satisfied with generic ones – because reality can hide in that nebulous cloud. But if the reality is flushed out into the open, then and only then can it be examined and addressed.

There is nothing wrong with the dialogue and probably something oddly thereputic in all the hand holding and avowals of love and solidarity, but at the end of all that you’ll still have the majority in Kirkwood imposing its aesthetic values on the rest of the population.

Kirkwood is suffering from a clash of aesthetics and has for a long time. All the big fights for the last 30 years (or more, I can only speak personally to 30 years) have all been over aesthetics. Usually its couched in terms of the effect on neighborhoods and property values but the majority of Kirkwood wants to keep the city a place of high end residential properties (nothing wrong with that) and if that limits what you do with your property, so be it. And that’s when the fighting begins – when you do something with your property that goes against the Kirkwood aesthetic. Tear down an old house to put up a new house – fine if the old house is one of the many old small ones and the new one fits in with the look and feel of Kirkwood. Tear down a charmer to put up a McMansion – Kirkwood explodes in red yard signs “Protect Historic Kirkwood”. Tear down a house to put in a parking lot – don’t even think about it Baptists.

Meachem Park has been thoroughly reconstructed since it’s annexation from Kirkwood. Law and order, and all that that entails, has been provided. And if the order that is imposed doesn’t conform to the locals desires, it does to the wider Kirkwood aesthetic. And no amount of jawboning about race, no amount of representation on the city council will change that.

2006 Missouri Ballot Measures

Nov 6

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Local Politics | 1 Comment

Cable news over the weekend focused on Missouri. Apparently, we’re the United States in miniature here. One of the fun things about the Missouri constitution is that it can be amended by simple majority vote, so every year that goes by it less and less resembles a constitution – a statement of how government works — and more and more it’s just another part of the state legal code.

So here are the complete set of amendments and propositions for the entire state.

Amendment 2:
This is an excercise in public relations. It’s being sold as a measure that would (1) ensure access to stem stell cures, and (2) outlaw cloning. What it really does is (and why Jack Danforth is so involved) ensure researchers at Washington University will be able to engage in embryonic stem cell research without any restrictions by the state of Missouri.

Any cures will be years down the road. Adult stem cells, which noboby has an objection to, already have cures. Now much is made of the potential of embryonic stem cells, but I’m old enough to remember how interferon was going to be a cure all, and even more recently how cancer was licked. So the idea that Missouri needs access to such cures right now is pure bushwa.

And that brings us to part 2, which is the so called ban on cloning. What supporters don’t tell you is that reproductive cloning is baned, but somatic cell nuclear transfer cloning is constitutionally protected by the amendment. That runs counter to my desires – as I have said before, I’m fine with reproductive cloning, but I’m against creating embryos just so they can be destroyed. I don’t appreciate the way the ads in support just come out and lie about this, and it’s not like this is some oversight, but this is the real agenda of the amendment and the full text is quite careful to make sure that SCNT cloning is not outlawed – just reproductive cloning.

While I don’t think this amendment will make much difference one way or another, I’m voting against it because (1) it is deliberately misleading, and (2) it doesn’t belong in the constitution.

Amendment 3:
This is a tax on tobacco. I don’t have a problem with raising taxes on tobacco, but why does it have to be a constitutional amendment, and why are we setting up the Healthy Future Fund? I’m voting against because it’s legislation, and therefore doesn’t belong in the constitution. Put it to me as a proposition, make it a straight tax to raise revenue, and you’ve got my vote. I’m getting tired of all the deception.

Amendment 6:
This amendment will create a tax exemption for real and personal property that is used or held for nonprofit purposes or activities of veterans’ organizations. I’m going to vote yes on this one.

Amendment 7:
This amendment is supposed to stop state pensions for statewide officeholding felons and change the rules about legislator compensation. OK, I’m voting for this one too. I’m all for not paying felons, and let’s face it, the legislature is going to figure out a way to get more money one way or another, so I might as well just get it over with now.

Proposition B:
I’m against the whole minimum wage mentality that somehow it represents anything other than the rate of completely unskilled labor and should be set by anything other than market forces. I realize this is a popular measure, but I’d rather see improvements to Earned Income Credits and other forms of poverty relief that provide good incentives than intervention into the labor market, especially one like this that happens every year. In other words, I’m voting no.

Michael J Fox, Missouri, and Amendment 2

Oct 27

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Local Politics | No Comments

I didn’t have a lot of reaction to Michael J Fox’s ad for embryonic stem cell research and Claire McCaskill when I first saw it. Surprise, surprise, surprise, a political ad that doesn’t tell the whole truth. Personally, I found it much more interesting that he pronounced Missouri as Missoura – the pronunciation used in the rural part of the state which means the ad was aimed more at conservative democratic voters and not the urban and suburban voters.

I don’t get a lot of the complaints – Mr. Fox is entitled to his opinion, he’s entitled to express it, and he’s entitled to endorse politicians as he sees fit. If a politician or political group thought putting my mug on a TV ad would help persuade people to their position, you’d be seeing my mug on TV ads.

As far as playing up his disease, Parkinson’s is a terrible disease. And for those of us (yes, me included) who are opposed to embryonic stem cell research, I think we owe it to sufferers to hear them out, to see how it affects them, and then to tell them the honest truth of our thoughts and they should hear us out. If you want my sympathy Michael, you already have it. But that doesn’t mean that your suffering, or my suffering, outweighs all else.

Nobody is against adult stem cell research. Lot’s of people are against embryonic stem cell research because they think as I do that you are destroying human life in the process, or something close enough that it’s protection outweighs possible cures – especially when adult stem cells show much greater promise for real life cures. Why is it that supporters of embryonic stem cells won’t come out and make that distinction? Given that is the reason that most of us who oppose ESCR actually oppose it, why make an emotional play that has nothing to do with our opposition? Is it because fundamentally you don’t understand the opposition?

Last night I saw the other ad, this time with a mix of local and national celebrities, this time with a couple of St. Louis celebrities, Kurt Warner and Jeff Suppan. Was it wrong for them to speak out? While I think the Fox ad did a better job of presenting it’s case, the rebuttal ad did a better job of addressing the actual Amendment 2.

The Michael J. Fox Ad


The Rebuttal Ad

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The Politics Of Roads

Apr 19

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Local Politics | No Comments

The Missouri Department of Transportation is working on I-270 in West St. Louis County. They have ground off the top layer of concrete in the two lanes that still have concrete surfaces from Highway 40 (yes, I know it’s officially I-64) to I-70. Normally I’m not one to complain about road work, but this time I am. To my untrained eye, there was nothing wrong with road surface on that stretch of I-270. I’m assuming (since there is nothing about the work on their website) that they will then resurface the whole highway, even though there are much worse stretches of pavement – like I-270 between I-70 and I-370, which they did a “micro” resurfacing to a few years back and which is in terrible shape.

I just wonder if it isn’t just a way to spend money and maintain visibility in a part of the state that has a lot of affluent voters. And it only makes me dislike amendment 3 even more. MODOT tried a couple of times to get tax hikes for roads but they were voted down. So they hit on a different approach – they would ask the voters to stop the “diversion” of gas and license tax revenue to non-road related spending. MODOT told us we could get better roads “for free”. I voted against it for the simple reason that it would mean cuts in other places that would be determined later and this time I agreed with the Sierra Club. In fact, Archpundit said that the amendment would turn victory in the governor’s race into the booby prize because whoever became governor would be forced to make big cuts in spending.

So after some very unpopular cuts in state spending for which Gov. Blunt has taken a lot of heat, MODOT is spending money for no apparent reason. To all my fellow Missourians who voted yes on amendment 3, I hope you’re satisfied.

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Gerrymandering

Mar 8

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Local Politics, National Politics | No Comments

Or how I learned to stop worrying and love the gerrymander.

Gerrymandering is universally unpopular with voters and popular with politicians. And Stuart Taylor puts the case against gerrymandering quite well:

“The one-person, one-vote decisions of the early 1960s have had the unintended consequence of enabling politicians to choose their voters rather than the other way around”.

I don’t know which is worse, when one party gerrymanders at the expense of the other, or when incumbents of both parties combine to gerrymander at the expense of challengers of the other party.

One of the complaints is that as we have more and more safe districts, we have highly polarized politics. But what about the other extreme? If we drew districts to maximize competitiveness, would we be happy if a party that had 48% of the electorate managed to win 100% of the seats — which might happen in a smaller state with every district highly competitive. Would politics become focused even more on appearance, on sound bite, on the immediate tactical advantage on election day to the exclusion of good governance? So is the choice between polarized politics or representation that isn’t representative?

The other alternative is to take gerrymandering to the other limit, so that districts would be all equally safe which would mean that the representation in the legislature would most closely reflect the party makeup of the electorate. That would achieve the global result of accurate representation of the electorate, but people would feel even less connected to the political process. Heck, we could avoid all the expense and controversy associated with general elections and just hold primaries.

And if you think that most people vote for the person and not the party (you of course never do that, free thinker that you are), then gerrymandering wouldn’t work. What makes gerrymandering break down isn’t our rugged individualism, but that over time we move around and thus change the relationship between party and location, and that there are slow shifts in the electorate between the parties.

I don’t buy the theory that safer districts have led to more political strife. I think what we are seeing is a return to normal (although unpleasant) levels of political strife and incivility that after an abnormal period of consensus that was due to the experiences and outlook of my fathers generation – the one’s who grew up during the depression, fought WWII, and came home with the ability and desire to get along to get things done — and this change happens to correlate with more effective gerrymandering.

We could just select districts based on compactness and carve them up by computer without regard to their competitiveness, but then who knows what you’ll get — which is why politicians will never agree to such an approach. Would we be happy if such a scheme meant the dilution of minority votes, or inadvertantly made uncompetative districts that didn’t represent the relative strengths of the parties? Would we then have to step in with some sort of neutral commision to adjust the boundaries so that the districts conformed to notions of fairness, as if that isn’t a political judgement in itself?

Is there even a good answer on how to draw legislative districts in a two party system?

And don’t even get me started on the problems with one man, one vote.

A Start But In the Wrong Direction

Nov 4

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Local Politics | No Comments

I admit I was shocked to read this article in my paper today: only about 20 percent of Missouri’s school districts spend 65% or more of their money on student instruction. Wow. And none in St. Louis County. Missouri spends 60.97 percent on student instruction, the national average is 61.34 percent.

I have to agree with the comments made in this article:

Rep. Ed Robb, R-Columbia, said with all the funding disparities examined by the Special Committee on Education Funding last year, the wide range between what districts spend in the classroom was eye opening.”When you think that more than one-third out of every dollar is going to overhead, I don’t think you could run a business that way, and I don’t think you can run a school that way,” he said.

Of course, that isn’t the end all and be all of educational reform. I’d prefer to use vouchers to create a market in education which would mean you wouldn’t need that kind of state mandate. All this demand for uniformity and micro-management would be out the window, although I assume we’d still have the never ending funding disputes.

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Claire Is In

Aug 30

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Local Politics | 1 Comment

The big political news here in Missouri is that Claire McCaskill is running for the Senate against Jim Talent. Needless to say, there are different viewpoints on the matter: pro and con. I have to admit that I like both Talent and McCaskill, but I expect I’ll be voting for Jim come election time. Hopefully Claire won’t try to connect with rural voters by blazing away with a shotgun like Jean Carnahan – forcing Jim to tout how he likes to fish which then led to fishing-licence-gate one of the stupider so called scandals in Missouri. And hopefully Claire will pick a better color scheme than the one she used against Blunt. I find McCaskill a much stronger candidate than Jean Carnahan, but I don’t know if my fellow Missourians agree with me. We did elect Matt Blunt, after all.

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All’s Not Well

Aug 19

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Local Politics | No Comments

The smoking ban for St. Louis county failed this week when a council member changed her mind apparently because she thought the ban wasn’t strict enough (I had a hard time digesting her remarks as reported in the paper). I am somewhat unhappy about the defeat. I guess I’ll just have to start visiting fine scarfing establishments in Ballwin, which does have a public smoking ban.

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No Smoking Please

Aug 11

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Local Politics | 1 Comment

Kurt Odenwald, who happens to be my rep on the St. Louis County Council, is pushing an ordinance to ban smoking in a lot of public places. Needless to say, not everybody’s happy about it. I have somewhat mixed emotions about the ban, as I’m a limited government guy but a non-smoker who really can’t stand tobacco smoke. So I keep asking myself would I be violating my principles by supporting such a ban. 

My one bit of original reporting is that almost a year ago, while forced to sit in a smoking section to get a table in a restaurant, the owner apologized and said he wished the county would ban smoking in restaurants so that it would take the hassle out of it for him (he didn’t seem too worried about people traveling outside the county to eat and smoke). So not all business owners are opposed.

On the one hand, I don’t like the government telling the business owners what to do, although after all the hoops they already have to jump through, one more can’t be that bad. Nor do I like government telling people when and where they can do things. On the other, smoke pretty much ruins my enjoyment of whatever I’m doing, whether that’s eating, listening to a band outdoors, or watching fireworks. And as I’m confronted with less and less smoke as the years go by, the more sensitive I become to it, so much so that someone smoking several blankets away from me on a no breeze July evening waiting for the fireworks to starts is quite noticeable and causes me to breath shallowly. And smoke lingers – in clothes, in furnishings, in breath. I don’t think I’m alone in this, so there is a clash between smokers and non-smokers with businesses and public events caught in the middle.

I know the ordinance is pitched at the claim that the workers need protection from all that second hand smoke, but if so why are there any exceptions? Am I morally lacking that I discount that claim and focus in on the public – smokers and non-smokers? Can I in good conscience ask the government to restrict people from doing what they enjoy to increase my enjoyment? If, as my libertarian friends assure me, the right to swing my fist around ends at the start of someone’s nose, does someone’s right to spread their smoke around end at the start of my nose as well?

I suppose in a more perfect world, we could all just get along and figure out how smokers and non-smokers could share the air without resorting to laws. Part of the problem is that while a non-smoking section next to a smoking section my be smoker free, it’s not smoke free. I understand that government can’t smooth out every bump, can’t make my life nuisance (or worse) free, but I’m tired of tobacco smoke. Maybe I should put up with the occasional dose of tobacco smoke so that others can enjoy their smoke, but I’m tired of not being able to breath freely and enjoy a meal because somebody else has an addiction. So if you want to light up, go right ahead – on your own property. You can even leave the curtains open.

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My Civic Duty

Nov 2

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Local Politics | No Comments

I voted this morning. I took the day off to have some brake work done, paint the kitchen, and go to the doctors. I managed to squeeze in voting this morning. All this talk of record turnout, of people parking on 141 in Fenton, and I just waltzed right in and punched my little card without delay. Only one vote came down to the wire for me – Blunt vs. McCaskill. Claire gave a great interview on local radio a while back, and I have to admit I was leaning towards voting for her. My wife warned me that while she might be good for the state now, she would probably win a race for senator in eight years and then all that talk about social issues not mattering would be out the window. Still, tomorrow is another day, and I’m worried about right now. But then, last night, Rudi Guilliani called me. Yep, the mayor of New York himself called me to ask for my vote for Matt Blunt, and he told me how important it was. Who am I to refuse Rudi? Sorry Claire, but I’m thinking you’ll go on to victory even without my vote.