Illustration by Daniel Elchert
During the very week that the most recent session of the Missouri General Assembly came to its merciful end this past May, those crazy radicals in the South Carolina Legislature gave our state something to cough about.
“We’re No. 51! We’re No. 51! We have the lowest tobacco taxes in America!”
Yes, thanks to an override of a veto issued by none other than its faithful Gov. Mark Sanford, tobacco-growing South Carolina’s tax now has shot up to 57 cents per pack, leaving Missouri’s 17-cents-per-pack tax rate barely half of the next-lowest state (tobacco-growing Virginia, at 30 cents). Missouri’s tobacco tax is now less than one-eighth of the national average of $1.42 per pack.
Again, that’s less than one-eighth of the national average tax on cigarettes.
Our own Gov. Jay Nixon, never one to shy from showing a little home-state pride, told The Kansas City Star, “I never lose sleep over having low taxes.”
In the case of low tobacco taxes, he—and the rest of us—will likely lose an extra friend or loved one to the joy of cigarette smoking. But hey, we’ve got to look out for the health of our casinos.
A bold economic-development plan to lure cancer hospitals to Missouri can’t be far behind.
Now, we’ve covered this topic before in this space, so it’s mentioned here merely to set the stage for still another screed about the need for Missouri to get over its God-fearing, gun-toting, hillbilly pride long enough to realize that state-government spending is not, in and of itself, the apple of Satan’s eye.
But let’s hold that thought for a moment.
For now, we must stop to admire some legislative nonachievements—even breathtaking ones, really—right up there with our embrace of the cigarette.
Let us begin with the legislators’ continued defense of the inalienable right to text while driving.
Mind you, Missouri isn’t the only state that’s failed to outlaw the obviously crazy-dangerous practice of typing away on a cellphone while operating a motor vehicle, although it is one of a handful of states to have virtually no restrictions on cellphone use behind the wheel.
But what’s special about Missouri is that it has officially adopted the position that texting while driving is actually a privilege, a right of passage, if you will. That’s why a measure to ban the practice for all drivers died this session (sort of like a victim of distracted driving) in a legislative committee.
Just last year, the same legislature outlawed texting while driving for those under 21. That seemed awfully strange at the time—did they really think “adults” are better at distracted driving?—but now that the legislators have had a second chance to pass this common-sense law and failed, this much can be safely said:
Collectively speaking, these people are as dumb as a box of rocks.
What’s next? Given that “adults” have the right to drink alcohol, and minors don’t, shall we create the crime of drinking while texting while driving, and make it apply only to those under 21?
How about defending a man’s right to shoot a gun while drinking while driving while texting while reading his Bible? Let’s cover it all while we’re on the subject of safety. (OK, sorry: Even children must not have unconstitutional restrictions of their right to bear and shoot arms, whether in a car, boat, or anywhere else.)
Sen. Brad Lager, R-Savannah, is against any form of government restriction on texting, even for minors, because that’s not “the role of government.” Says he: “I can make my own decisions.”
So can Rep. Mark Bruns, R–Jefferson City, chairman of the so-called “Public Safety” Committee that buried the measure this year. Bruns, also an opponent of the ban on texting while driving for minors, says texting is no different than operating one of those newfangled navigation systems or (if you’re one of them lady drivers) putting on makeup.
“Are we going to outlaw all of that?” he wondered aloud, as quoted in the Jefferson City News Tribune. It is not known whether anyone asked a follow-up question, such as “What?!”
Next thing you know, those Obama socialists will want seat-belt laws, or some such anti-American nonsense.
In any event, the General Assembly managed not to pass a texting ban, just like it managed not to do anything constructive for education, economic development, social services (“Hey, shut up, Commie!”), or virtually anything else that might actually benefit people.
Actually, animals were lucky to fare any better. Thanks to a late filibuster, the Senate barely failed to enact an antidemocratic measure passed by the House that would have derailed a November citizen initiative to ban puppy mills. Some legislative barbarians even tried, briefly, to open a market for horse slaughter in the state.
Horse slaughter. A few of the good old boys want us to start eating horsemeat in the U.S.
Really.
At least they cannot be accused of not seeing any role at all for government.
The legislators decimated the popular and successful Parents as Teachers education program (from $39 million to $13 million), and they also cut funding for elementary and secondary education by 2 percent across the board, although Nixon did increase political rhetoric about supporting education by an estimated 43 percent in this year’s State of the State speech.
They did pass an “ethics” bill, albeit one that respected the time-honored tradition of wealthy interests collecting Missouri politicians like stamps. No campaign-spending limits and no restrictions on the revolving door from legislator to lobbyist highlighted the no-reason-to-call-this-an-ethics bill.
Even by the legendarily low standards of the Missouri Legislature, this was an amazingly horrendous session.
They didn’t just do nothing. They did nothing in a time of economic despair.
Let’s not forget, however, the one somewhat notable mini achievement of the body, which was actually to get bipartisan consensus for requiring insurance companies to provide autism coverage for Missouri children. Good for them.
Why call it a mini achievement? Well, there’s the little detail that the legislators excluded Medicaid recipients from such coverage—an exclusion aptly described by Sen. Joan Bray, D–University City, as “unconscionable.”
After saying all of the right things about the tragic scope of autism and the need not to let “moms and dads have to sit there and watch their kids regress and slip into the darkness of this disorder,” the legislators decided that, of course, tackling this tragedy for poor moms and dads wasn’t something that the state could possibly consider paying for.
“I can smell something that’s starting to be loved to death,” snarled Senate Majority Leader Kevin Engler, R-Farmington, when Bray and others dared to include the poor in the newfound fight against autism.
I mean, let’s not get carried away with this love stuff.
In fairness to these legislative Neanderthals, hating on the poor isn’t the sole motivation for their collective cruelty when it comes to ignoring the needs of the less fortunate among us. It is true that they wouldn’t want to spend money on the poor if they discovered giant gold mines in Missouri’s cave country, but in fairness, they are simply opposed to responsible government investment at all.
Starting with Nixon’s pitiful State of the State speech, the very notion of addressing anything on the revenue side of the ledger was taken off the table. And he is a Democratic governor.
Now, give Nixon some credit: Heartless, shortsighted, antirevenue rhetoric makes for great politics. At a time when most incumbents are heading for the hills with Tea Bag zealots yapping at their heels, a spring Rasmussen Reports poll found Nixon enjoying a stunning
56 percent positive approval rating in the state.
So when the governor of the state with the lowest-salaried workforce in America decides to nickel-and-dime those employees by taking away the day after Thanksgiving as a state holiday, no one says boo.
In the same vein, no one in political “leadership” in the executive or legislative branches is remotely fazed by the lunacy of Missouri ranking dead last in tobacco taxes, nearly that low in liquor taxes, nearly that low in corporate taxes (with nothing to show for it in economic development), and so on.
Antismoking advocates claim that adding a buck a pack to cigarette taxes would raise nearly $300 million for the state even as it would cut sales by nearly a quarter of a billion packs, cutting youth smoking by 20 percent to keep some 87,000 living kids from becoming smokers.
That’s not counting the 50,000 adult smokers who would likely quit and all the millions in Medicaid savings and other health-cost reductions and so on.
Don’t believe it? Cut all of those numbers by 80 percent and it’s still worth doing.
But don’t hold your secondhand-smoke-filled breath. It ain’t happening, at least not until the people literally rise up and make it so.
A few lonely legislative souls such as Bray and Rep. Jeannette Mott Oxford, D–St. Louis, have tried to get someone—anyone—to give some intelligent consideration to addressing the state’s revenue needs. And no one—not even a Democratic governor—has the
wisdom or courage to give the matter a second of thought.
Sadly, Bray is leaving office at the end of this session, one of many victims of the state’s ill-advised term limits. After a distinguished—really amazing—18-year legislative career in both the House and Senate, Bray says it’s hopeless to expect progress to start in the legislature.
“There’s extreme hostility to taking responsibility for raising revenue in the state for fear of not getting elected,” Bray says.
She says the state should be looking for increased revenues from tobacco and alcohol taxes, from Internet taxes (which about half the states have), and from revisiting income-tax top levels that were frozen literally 80 years ago. But she says it’s up to voters themselves.
Bray says the overwhelming victory that Metro enjoyed on its April sales-tax initiative in St. Louis County (complete with a 63 percent “yes” vote) may have resonated around the state. She’s hoping it will embolden progressive groups to head for the ballot box.
“The only way revenues are going to come to state government in Missouri is from the people themselves, by initiative petition,” Bray says. “No one in elective office even wants to talk about it.”
They are, however, proud to talk about the state’s new place in America:
“We’re No. 51!”
SLM co-owner Ray Hartmann is a panelist on KETC Channel 9’s Donnybrook, which airs Thursdays at 7 p.m.
